Stealing Stars

Katia starts to do her French homework as Lola starts to sing. So I sit there and study my best friends at their best, Lola being crazy and weird but brilliant and Katia being smart and calm and collected. I don’t know where I fit in.

“I’m leaving.” Blake says as he walks up behind me and picks up my backpack off the ground. He opens his trunk door and tosses in my bag. Thanks Blake.

I get up off the curb. “Bye Lo. Bye Kat.” I say as I climb into the passenger seat of Blake’s blue off-road vehicle.

“It’s my turn for the radio.” I tell him the minute we are inside his car.

“My car. My station. So suck it up Echols.” Blake reminds me. We have done this for as many Fridays as I can remember riding together.

“Fine. Then I’ll sing.” But I really won’t. But I hope that Blake can’t see past my poker face.

“You wouldn’t dare.” He is right. So we just listen to some heavy metal station. I know for a fact that Blake doesn’t like heavy metal but he knows I despise it. When I get home my head is pounding and I need an Aspirin.

My backyard is a make-shift meeting ground for the too-young-to-be-old self help group run by my mother. Blake’s mom, Leona is there with my mother as well. Ever since Blake’s father left Blake and Conrad have taken care of their mother. It is quite sweet actually, save for the fact that it’s Blake and he stores away all his ill feeling for me to decipher.

I sit on the window seat in my bedroom and watch the entire afternoon unfold. I see my mother and Leona laughing with each other every time something happens at all, my father is grilling food on the barbeque, and then I see Blake. He is in his bedroom as well and is watching the happy scene too. His curtains are closed except for the portion that he is using to look from, he doesn’t see me watching him; it’s as if he is the only person in the world. He has this sad look on his face but then he turns, I don’t know if he sees me or not, and slides back behind the curtains.

I’ve seen that look on Blake’s face before. That look scares me because he isn’t the I-have-no-problems-in-the-world Blake anymore; it looks as if someone is sucking the life right out of him from behind. He had that look about him for a long time when we were nine, when his father left. Most of Blake’s fan-club has never seen that hopeless, scared face of his and I’m glad they don’t know. It would break them. It would break him.

I walk out of my room and go downstairs to see my mother. Leona and she are laughing like teenagers and it makes me almost hesitant to walk into their world. But I do it anyway. “I’m going over to see Blake, okay?”

“Chan, he’d like that so much even though he will never say it.” Leona tells me as she puts her hand on my cheek and smiles at me.

I go in through the back door which I know is unlocked. The entire house is silent so I walk up the stairs to find him. I could walk this house with my eyes shut. I take a left at the stairs and his room is the first on the right. His door is open and he is lying on his bed with only his jeans on and his hair is messy and intriguing.

“Hey.” I say as I lean against his door frame.

He isn’t surprised to see me but he looks at me and scoots over on his bed a little.

“You okay?” I get up off the wall and walk over to him and I sit on the corner of his bed.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” His voice is deep and hoarse. “Lie down with me.”

I look at him and see a blank stare on his face and I want to cry for him but then I remember how he treats me like I’m invisible. I just stare at him until he looks at me. I know he remembers how I use to hold him when he cried and how I listened to his secrets. I know that he is thankful even though he can’t say it. I don’t lie down with him because I can’t sink to his level of insecurity.