Catch a Falling Star Read online

  He relaxed his shoulders, tapping out another cigarette but not lighting it. “I can eat something here.”

  “Nutritious.” I chewed my lip, already feeling the air loosening between us, and held the salad to him. “Come on, despite the obvious appeal of a Ho Ho and Funyuns dinner, you love Caesar salad.”

  He pulled his free hand from his jeans pocket. “Thanks, sis,” he said, taking the bag. “I do love me some Caesar.”

  The phone began echoing inside the Fast Mart, its trill muffled. His eyes darted toward the sound. “I gotta get back.”

  I didn’t stick around to watch him answer it.

  I preferred my brother’s fake face.

  The light in my closet had burned out. I ran to the basement, grabbed a box of bulbs, and, returning, scooted a chair close enough so I could replace it. Extra Pickles watched me intently from his perch on my bed, his tail thumping. “There,” I told him, the closet flooding with light. He wagged his approval. I searched the shelves for the old quilt I wanted to bring for star watching tonight. As I pulled it from the top shelf, a pale satin bag slipped out with it, landing first on my head, and then on the floor beside me. A familiar tug pulled at my chest. Reaching down, I picked it up, the fabric slippery in my hands.

  My dance bag.

  I’d shoved it back there over a year ago, not wanting to throw it out with some of my other dance stuff. I turned it over, running my fingers over the frayed dark blue stitching of my name in the bottom corner. Inside, I could feel the rounded lump of my first pair of pointe shoes. Mom had made the bag out of the costume I’d worn in The Nutcracker the first time I danced Snow, the ice-blue satin almost white. She’d stitched my first name and appliquéd a lemon slice of moon next to that, a few bright stars pocking the fabric around it. I’d carried it to class almost every day for five years.

  I tried to push the ache back down, away from where it pawed at my heart, remembering Mom’s suggestion about checking in with Nicky. When I’d quit, I’d filled two black garbage bags with leotards, costumes, shoes, and posters, and told Mom to donate them, but I couldn’t get rid of this bag or those shoes inside it, so I’d pushed them far and away and forgotten about them behind the quilt.

  “Carter? You coming?” Chloe called up the stairs. “What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing!” I hid the bag between some hanging clothes. “Be right there.” Extra Pickles cocked his head, his ears alert. “Don’t look at me like that,” I told him, clicking off the light.

  “How’s John?” Alien Drake settled down next to me on the quilt. Chloe peeked out from behind the telescope he’d positioned for her, eyebrows raised.

  We didn’t usually talk about my brother, but they knew I’d just seen him. I studied the stretch of dark sky above me, my eyes soothed by the dim twinkle of stars, the cool bath of night air. “It’s been pretty mellow for a while, which worries me. You know John. He goes through waves.”

  Alien Drake gave my arm a squeeze, then moved on to dig through the grocery bag we’d hauled onto the roof. After extracting a bag of Doritos, he popped them open, the air infused with sudden nacho cheese. Next door, the neighbor’s sprinklers went on, drowning out the sound of the creek behind the house. “Did he end up seeing that counselor? That one your mom found?” He chewed a handful of chips. Alien Drake always seemed to devour food rather than eat it, huge quantities disappearing in seconds.

  “He did. At least we think he did.” My parents didn’t go with him to the meetings anymore. “He said he did.”

  I didn’t miss the look Chloe and Alien Drake exchanged.

  At sixteen John had been diagnosed as a compulsive gambler and had spent the last three years in and out of various support programs. He’d burned through too much money to count and had severed most of his relationship with my parents when he’d stolen from the café safe at the end of my sophomore year. Chloe and Alien Drake had gone through most of it with me, talking to me when I wanted to talk, but also just knowing when to not talk about it.

  Right now was starting to feel like one of those times.

  “That’s good,” Chloe offered, peering back into the telescope.

  Alien Drake must have sensed my unease because he changed the subject. “Oh, I was going to tell you, I had a great idea for our blog.”

  Relieved, I sat up. “What is it?”

  “Well, obviously we should mention something about Hollywood being here. Sky stars. Movie stars. It’d be a good topic.” Chloe and I waited for him to elaborate; sometimes it took a while to see where Alien Drake was going with an idea.

  Crunching chips, he said, “So I was reading on Universe Today that the most massive stars are often the shortest lived.” He went on to explain that we could write about how many movie stars often burn big and bright but flame out. “It’s an interesting comparison, right?” He tilted his head, waiting for our response. “I mean, especially considering what a mess Adam Jakes is.”

  He had a point. I pulled a notebook into my lap so I could jot down some ideas. Adam Jakes was the most famous thing to walk into our town in the last decade partly because of his storied past. Chloe had already informed us that one of the reasons they were shooting a Christmas movie in June was because Adam Jakes had been in rehab the past few months.

  Chloe, always quick to defend her beloved Hollywood, frowned at us. “You know, a lot of celebrities get better. I read somewhere that Adam Jakes is really trying to focus on his career again. That’s why he’s doing A Christmas Cheryl.”

  We stared at her blankly.

  “The movie they’re shooting right now.” Annoyance crept into her voice. “It’s a remake of A Christmas Carol. It’s supposed to be a really sweet family movie.”

  “A really sweet publicity stunt.” Alien Drake stuffed another handful of chips into his mouth.

  Chloe shrugged. “You don’t know that.”

  Alien Drake chewed. “Sure I do. This is his management’s serious attempt to get him through phase four.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “Is this the Alien Drake Five Phases of Child Celebrity theory?”

  He grinned. “Why, yes, it is. Thanks for asking.”

  A theory of Alien Drake’s I hadn’t heard? “What is that?”

  Chloe groaned. “Don’t encourage him.”

  Alien Drake chewed another mound of chips. “Phase one: adorable child actor in a well-known series or film.”

  “Check.” I smiled.

  “Phase two: branches out, enters teen years, people who care about that sort of thing hold their breath.” He nodded exaggeratedly at Chloe, who stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Check.” I held up two fingers.

  “Phase three: the train wreck of predictable behavior. Clubs, drugs, depression, rehab. Fill in the blank with disorder of choice.”

  Chloe was trying not to laugh. “You’re a very cynical young man, Mr. Masuda.”

  I held up a third finger.

  He grinned at Chloe before continuing. “Phase four: the comeback.”

  “A lot of them make comebacks, real ones,” Chloe insisted. “People like a comeback story.”

  “Did you read that in Celebrity Comebacks, the paperback edition?” Alien Drake crumpled the chip bag, stuffing it back into the brown sack.

  She made a face. “Some of us who care about that sort of thing do like a comeback. You know, real, honest-to-God comebacks. Not everyone hates Hollywood like you two.”

  “Hey, I love movies!” I told her. “We don’t hate Hollywood.”

  “Yeah, we do,” Alien Drake said. “I love movies, too, but Hollywood and movies are not the same thing.” He reached for Chloe’s hand. “But we definitely adore you.”

  Chloe popped open another bag of chips, keeping it just out of his reach, but then she slipped her hand into his and tilted the chips toward him as a peace offering. “I know.”

  “So Adam Jakes is clearly in phase four?” I asked.

  “Obviously,” Chloe said, grinning at Alien D
rake’s bemused look. “What? Even I have to admit, it’s a pretty good theory.”

  “And what’s phase five?” I sipped my water, waiting.

  Alien Drake hesitated, twining his fingers tighter around Chloe’s. “Phase five has two branches. Either they figure it out, or they burn out, supernova style. In which case, the only place we’d ever see them again is on some third-rate reality TV show.”

  “So phase four is kind of the key, sort of determines if the star burns out,” I said, and Alien Drake nodded, staring up at the dark sky.

  I thought about Adam Jakes, emerging like a zoo animal from the shop today, barely blinking away his bored expression; thought about all his bad press, his strained face all over the magazine covers. “Given the particular movie star in our sky right now, I think it’s a great idea for the blog. The life cycle of a star.”

  Was that what we saw today? The fading embers of Adam Jakes?

  the next day, Hollywood returned. Only this time, they caused a bit more of a stir, shutting down two main streets and blocking access to a stretch of shops. I could see the flurry of activity from where I stood in the patio of Little Eats. I knew our locals and it wouldn’t be long before they started getting grumpy.

  Little was named after Daniel Little, a miner who’d struck it rich on gold in the 1800s. The Daniel Little house, now a hotel, sat like a sky-blue Buddha at the top point of Main and Pine Streets, the arms of the Little triangle meeting Gold Street at the bottom. Each year, tourists flooded Little, taking pictures of it, painting it, or just wandering through its restaurants, shops, the winery’s tasting room, or Mountain Books. “Where are the billboards?” they would wonder as they sat in our patio, stabbing at a Cobb salad. “It’s so cute,” they would sigh to me as I refilled their iced teas. “You must love living here,” they would say.

  Thing was, I did love living here. And I didn’t mind the tourists the way some of the locals did. They were a huge part of our café, and they gave me a constant reminder of how lucky I was to live here.

  A flurry on the sidewalk caught my eye. Speaking of locals, I watched six of them, backs straight and packed like bowling pins, storm by the café, their arms full of poster boards taped to yardsticks. Protesters. Already?

  Then I noticed Nora Trent, thin as a birch tree and six feet tall. John sometimes joked that Nora could just fasten her protest poster to a hat and she’d actually look like a picket sign. Nora was a constant fixture at our house, and she often helped Mom with some cause or another; still, she always seemed to resent being second in command, and with Mom off in the Central Valley, Nora could run her own show.

  And now she was heading toward the movie set.

  Mom would never have wasted her time on a soft issue like Hollywood. Gripe about it? Sure. Roll her eyes at it. Absolutely. But protest it? Never. Mom wasn’t a bumpkin, and she wouldn’t act like it by toting a picket sign down to a movie set. Rose Moon would see the bigger picture, would know the kind of money coming into Little would be good for future causes like parks and stream cleanup. So unless Hollywood started mistreating animals or dumping chemicals in the river, Mom would stay out of their way.

  It wasn’t like I was siding with Hollywood, but they didn’t need Nora Trent gumming up their set, and honestly, it was embarrassing to Little. Maybe it was the sweet card that Debra (the frizzy-headed stressball from last night) had left taped to our window this morning gushing about the salads, or maybe I just felt like Nora was getting a bit big for her britches with Mom gone; either way, I pushed through our gate, following Nora and her gang to the edge of the roped-off section of Main.

  “Hi, Nora.” I tucked my hands into the pockets of my shorts. “Pretty cool, huh? A movie being filmed here.”

  “Hmmm,” Nora replied distractedly, holding her hand flat like a visor, scanning the busy crew, her eyes flicking like some sort of human tracking system, cataloging the number of cables, vans, lights, set additions, and mentally calculating their total environmental impact.

  I tried a different tactic. “I thought you were going with Mom.”

  “No, no. Someone needs to stay here.” She directed the five other women to set up next to Foothill Realty.

  Nodding, I noticed Adam’s manager standing near one of the vans. Parker Hill. He watched us, his glasses pushed into his hair, his eyes narrowed. “Sure, okay. Make sure Hollywood doesn’t push its big-business attitude around here, right?”

  Her face brightened. “Exactly.” She patted my shoulder.

  “Keep corporate out of Little,” I added.

  She gave a quick nod. “Your mom’s doing a good job with you, honey.”

  Parker took a couple steps toward us, obviously listening.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, okay, no offense, Nora, but where is everyone? I mean, six of you? Seems like an off day for you, really.”

  Nora bit her lip, her eyes sliding to the five women, one of whom was using her sign to fan her face. “Carter, I don’t have to explain to you that protest is about being a voice, even a small one.”

  I nodded agreeably. “Totally, of course. But don’t you want to plan a bit more, figure out what it is you’re trying to say?” I motioned to a short, wiry woman almost as tall as her sign. “I mean, her sign’s in pencil,” I whispered. “That’s kind of amateur hour, Nora.”

  Nora’s sign dipped.

  “You guys should come up to the café. I’ll pour you some iced tea and you can strategize. I mean, what are you even protesting?” I asked, motioning to a sign that just read: NO, Hollywood, NO! “No what, Nora? No what? It’s not very well thought out.” I started up the hill a few steps, hoping I could pull her with shame and the offer of free drinks.

  Nora hesitated, just a moment; then she turned on a heel to round up her drooping group. Shaking my head (that was too easy), I started for the café, but not before catching Parker’s eye. He tipped an imaginary hat at me and gave a little bow.

  I flipped the sign to read Closed (Come Tomorrow!) and lowered the front shade. A few seconds later, a tap on the door startled me, and I zipped the shade back up, coming face-to-face through the glass with Adam’s manager, Parker Hill, his green eyes smiling, his hand raised in greeting.

  I let him in. “Did you need a drink or something?”

  He stepped into the cool café. “Actually, I need to speak with you. It’s Carter, yes?”

  “Yeah.” How did he know my name? My cheeks warmed at the way he said it in his charcoaled British accent. I was such a sucker for it. Too much PBS Masterpiece and Jane Austen movies.

  “You have a moment?” He let his gaze float around the café.

  “Sure.” I motioned to a table, my stomach fluttering.

  He sat, slipping his iPhone from his pocket and resting it on the table.

  I chewed my lip. “You want something? I just turned the machine off, but I could make you an iced tea.”

  “Lovely.”

  I hurried to pour some lemon tea over ice, garnishing it with a fresh sprig of mint, and setting it on the table in front of him.

  He didn’t touch it. Scrolling through his iPhone, he motioned for me to sit across from him.

  I slid into the chair, gazing at all the busing that still needed to be done on the other tables around us, at the bulging piles of dishes already on the busing cart. I would be here a while tonight.

  He looked up from his screen. “Charming place.” He made a vague motion in the air with his hand. I studied all the pictures on the walls, all the paintings and photos Dad had collected — different shots of diners or cafés we’d discovered over the years. No matter how many we found, he just kept hanging them up, so not much wall space remained. The collection must be well over a hundred prints by now. I almost didn’t notice it anymore.

  “We like it.”

  Parker’s eyes fell on me. “That was quite clever today. With those protesters. Thanks for helping us out.”

  “Believe me, I was helping them out, too. They were about to loo
k like idiots.”

  “Anyway, the point of my visit is that it got me thinking.” When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and leaned on the table with his forearms. “Listen, this is going to sound a bit strange, and I’m hoping you take it the proper way because it’s really a compliment.”

  My neck prickled the way it did when John was about to lie to me about something. “Okay.”

  Parker glanced around the empty café as if making sure it wouldn’t suddenly turn into a massive recording device. “We’d like to hire you.”

  “You mean, like more Caesar salads?” They must have really liked my dressing.

  He gave his head a little shake. “Not exactly. I mean you.”

  “Me?” I picked at an unused napkin someone had left on the table. “I’m not really an actor or anything.”

  Nodding, he leaned even farther forward, comically forward, like he might take a nap right on top of the table. “Which is why it’s bloody perfect. It’s not acting. More like just your average make-believe. Do you fancy fairy tales, Carter?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, you’re about to be the princess in one, if you say yes.” He took a deep breath. “We’d like you to pretend to be Adam’s girlfriend while he’s shooting in Little.”

  Had I heard that right? “Pretend to be his girlfriend?”

  He studied me closely, narrowing his eyes. “Just for a few weeks.”

  “From what I’ve read, Adam Jakes doesn’t have a hard time getting girlfriends.” The normal hums and clicks of the café grew suddenly loud around me. I gave a nervous sort of laugh. “I mean, he’s a movie star.”

  Parker’s face shifted like clouds gathering. “Then I’m sure, if you’ve read about Adam, you know he got into a right spot of trouble a few months ago.”

  I almost laughed; from what I’d read, “a right spot of trouble” was like saying the Titanic hit a bit of an ice cube. “Um, yeah.”