Lost Stars by Lisa Selin Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

delicious,” I said. “If I liked parsnips.”
    â€œIt causes a terrible rash.”
    It was quiet in the bathroom, the industrial green paint soothing in the late afternoon sun, the tile cool. Lynn dried my hands with a graying towel and looked up at me. “You’re funny, Caraway,” he said.
    â€œI know.” He didn’t seem amused by that.
    â€œBut that doesn’t mean you can get out of things. That doesn’t mean you’re excused.”
    â€œI know that, too,” I said, looking down at my hands that seemed poison-free. For once: poison-free. He was holding the towel, and my hands were in it, nesting in the cloth.
    â€œYou can do this,” Lynn said. Did he know the sordid tales of my youth? Or was he just saying that I could handle the hot sun and the rigorous demands of weeding and footbridge building? He handed me a bouquet of jewelweed to rub on my hands.
    I wanted to answer him, but something was stuck in my throat. It was hard to talk. The only thing that came out was a whisper: “I don’t know if I can.”

Chapter 4
    The boy wasn’t there the next few afternoons when I rolled my bike into the yard after work. For this, at least, I was grateful. I didn’t want him to ever see me with my hardhat and shitkickers and flannel shirt again. Maybe he’d left for good. Maybe he had been visiting Mrs. Richmond and had already gone home. Maybe he was an apparition, a vision of the future. I hoped so. If he wasn’t real, I hoped he would be someday.
    My father had put a moratorium on leaving the house or having visitors, but the phone, thank god, was now within limits, and when I talked to Soo that night, she spoke of Justin and Justin and Justin. I picked at the calluses on my fingertips, my badges of pride, grown there after years of playing guitar, and I tried to listen, but with every word about their upcoming co-adventure at college in the wilds of western New York, my chest tightened more.
    â€œDo you think they’d ever let us room together?” she asked me. “Does that happen?”
    â€œHold on, I just happen to have the manual on co-ed collegiate cohabitation right here,” I said.
    â€œHa ha.” We fell silent for a minute, something that happened more often it seemed. And in that silence I reached for my default vocabulary; the only way to explain what was occurring here on Earth was to use the stars.
    â€œAccretion,” I said.
    â€œOh, boy. I think we’re getting into some astrophysics again.” Soo had gotten a D in physics, though I’d tried to tutor her. Too much vodka had made that endeavor challenging.
    â€œIt’s when an object in space grows by attracting more matter through gravity—​it just pulls more stuff toward it.”
    â€œAnd this metaphor fits because?”
    â€œYou’re all leaving. Just taking it all with you and leaving.”
    In her silence, I heard reproach and rejection—​too needy, too nerdy, too young. Or maybe guilt, or sadness that she was going and leaving me behind. I couldn’t tell anymore.
    And then Soo changed to her chirping, happy tone. “Hey—I met a neighbor of yours at the record store the other day. Dean something or other. He’s staying with your neighbor Mrs. Richmond for the summer—​that’s his aunt or something.”
    I stopped playing with my calluses. My hands were starting to feel a little itchy.
    â€œCarrie? You there?”
    â€œMmm,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
    â€œWell, he’s cool,” she said. “He has a summer job fixing bikes at Reinventing the Wheel, and he plays the drums.”
    â€œMmm,” I said again. Dean: I just loved the sound of it. Sweet and solid and kind of grown-up.
    â€œHe has long hair,” she said.
    I took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could, the same way I did when I was smoking. Only there was no joint and