Chapter Text
Star drops her last quarter into the coin slot, listening to it land in the receptacle with a satisfying clink.
She copies the number from a crumpled page torn out of the phonebook. She’d been in a uniquely conciliatory mood when she’d first aged out of the system half a year ago. That mood had lasted about as long as she had spent in line for the phone.
“...Hello?” The voice is softer than Star remembers, like milk and cookies, or late nights helping with math homework. She wonders if there’s someone on the other line who’s only ever known this softness.
“Mom? It’s…” her throat catches on the last word. “It’s me,” she says instead.
“…Baby?” An edge creeps into the voice. Familiar, but different. Fear?
Star bites a piece of dry skin on her lip and tears at it until she tastes blood. Why does she get to be afraid of me? “Look, I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just–”
“...Do you need money?”
The words hit Star like a slap in the face. She wants to be indignant. To tell her mother not to bother, because she’s never once needed anything from anyone and she’s not about to start now. She wants to slam the phone back on the hook and walk off into the sunset.
“...Yeah.” Star takes a breath. “Um, look… I’m in Santa Carla right now. It’s maybe a few hours from where you are, so… if you had anything, or even if you’d be willing to let me stay with you… just for a few days, and then I’d be out of your hair.”
The silence stretches on for what feels like an eternity. “Mom?”
A heavy sigh from the other end. “…I don’t know, baby. The kids need new school supplies, and they’re already sharing a room as it is…”
The kids. Star tries not to linger on the sentiment, or the strange fondness implied therein. “I can sleep on the couch. Or the floor, even. You’ll barely even know I’m there.”
“…I’m sorry–”
Star puts the phone back on the hook. Waste of time. She shouldn’t have expected anything different.
She uses the phonebook page to fan herself as she leaves the phone booth. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in Santa Carla, and the boardwalk is crowded, full of excited children dragging exhausted parents past the caricature booths and souvenir shops to the line for the carousel. The air is heavy and humid, suffocating Star in the scent of cotton candy and Coppertone suntan lotion. She slips into a convenience store to gain a reprieve in the AC, sneaking into the bathroom to freshen up with paper towels and hand soap before anyone can yell at her for not buying anything. A proper shower is a luxury, one she hasn’t been lucky enough to have since last week, when a 14 year old gave Star $5 to pierce her ear at a truck stop in Santa Fe.
Star manages to kill almost an hour in the store before the cashier catches her sipping Coke from the fountain and shoos her out. By then, the sun has gone down enough that she can find a shady spot under the pier not covered in broken glass and cigarette butts. She picks up a pretty piece of green sea glass and puts it in her bag, where it joins such distinguished company as a commemorative Route 66 penny, a gas station matchbook, and half a cigarette bummed off some jerk on the boardwalk scamming tourists with overpriced piercings.
Star is no stranger to sleeping rough– she’s done it all across the continental United States. There are worse times and places to do it than summer in Santa Carla, where the temperature never falls below 75 degrees and it almost never rains. Sleeping inside is a luxury for places with snow, when Star can scrounge up enough money from odd jobs to exchange the cold for bed bugs, or else charm a stranger enough to earn a night on their couch.
Star sighs, watching kids build sand castles on the beach until the sun starts to hang low over the water. The sky turns red and gold and purple, and the children clinging to their parents are slowly replaced by teenagers avoiding them. Star leans back against a wooden post. It’s hardly a comfortable sleeping position, but it will save her from having to shake sand out of her hair later. She closes her eyes, letting the sound of the waves crashing on the shore lull her to an uneasy sleep.
-
“Hey, look at this.”
Star winces as she opens her eyes, trying to ignore the cramp in her neck and the sand smashed into her thighs. It’s dark now, and she shivers involuntarily as her eyes adjust to reveal a dark silhouette standing over her.
Star rubs her eyes. It’s a man, she realizes, with dark hair teased into horns above his head. He’s wearing a patch-covered vest and the kind of jewelry Star was fond of before she’d sold most of her possessions to fund her travels.
“It’s a girl,” another voice says, and Star identifies a second man in a questionable jacket as its source.
Star can count four men in the moonlight– two in addition to the ones who’ve just spoken.
“No shit, Dwayne,” says a man with long dark hair past his shoulders. “Do you think she saw us?”
Star looks between the four strangers. Vaguely, she wonders what they might be up to– tagging, underage drinking, pot (that smell is unmistakable), then quickly thinks the better of it. Nothing good has ever come from getting involved. “I didn’t see anything,” she says, grabbing her bag and pulling herself to her feet. “Have a nice night.”
“Oh come on, don’t be like that,” the one in the ugly jacket– Dwayne, Star thinks the other one called him– says with a laugh. “The night is just getting started, baby.”
The rest of the group jeers at that, and Star’s eyes dart around for an opening in their formation. She knows what it’s like to be afraid; she still has a road rash from diving out of a moving truck when its driver got too handsy, and she’s tucked herself into a fair number of implausibly small hiding places to dodge the attentions of men whose routes seemed too similar to her own. She knows the odds of her successfully fighting off four men.
“I’m not your baby.” Her voice drips with as much irritation as she can muster, as if she can somehow repel them with contempt alone.
The last of the interlopers, a man with a bleach-blond mullet and a chain of keys around his neck, cocks his head. “Hey, our bad,” he says, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Just wanted to apologize for waking you. Right, Paul?” He nods at the first guy, the one with the horns.
He— Paul, presumably— squints for a moment before relaxing into a shrug. “Yeah. No need to leave because of us.” He smiles at her, and it almost seems friendly.
“How kind,” Star says flatly. She sighs, lowering her head and kicking the sand on the ground. “But it’s fine. I shouldn’t be out here this late, anyway.”
“Right,” says the one with the keys. “I’m sure it’s well past your curfew.” He smirks at that last word, like he knows there’s no one who will notice if Star drops off the face of the earth tonight.
“Yeah,” Star says, staring at his nose so she doesn’t have to look him in the eyes. “So I should go.”
It feels like hours before he responds. “Okay,” he concedes. “Sounds good.”
“Really?” Jacket responds. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Keys shrugs. “Unless the lady would like us to walk her home?”
“I’m good,” Star says, all too quickly. She backs up against her post and slides off of it to escape, making sure not to take her eyes off of the strangers until she’s confident that she’s visible from the boardwalk. At that point, she turns and starts to run up the sand.
“I’m David, by the way,” a deep voice— the one with the keys— yells from behind her. “I hope you’ll give me your name next time.”
Next time. Star laughs under her breath, tossing her bag over her shoulder. It feels heavier, like it, too, is intent on being an obstacle to her escape.
She doesn’t let her guard down until her feet hit solid ground. The boardwalk is sparsely populated at this hour, consisting mostly of people with nowhere else to go after dark. People like me, Star thinks bitterly. There’s an eerie beauty to it, watching Santa Carla’s less savory elements dart around like moths in the light of the street lamps.
The brightest lights surround the bulletin board, presumably to improve visibility, though Star can’t imagine anything placed there would remain visible for more than a day or two. There must be years worth of missing persons posters, advertisements, and suggestive solicitations plastered on there, forming a layer of paper at least an inch thick. One page even advertises “Frog Security,” though Star can’t tell for certain whether that’s supposed to be security from or for frogs. Below the board, there’s a bench covered in chipped blue paint.
She pulls off one paper— advertising a $100 reward for anyone who can find a missing cocker spaniel— and lightly contemplates a brief stint in the dog-catching business. She would certainly feel better leaving town with some cash in her pocket.
Star sits down on the bench, dropping her bag next to her with a thud. She pauses, contemplating the sound for a minute. She owns nothing capable of creating such a noise. She picks the bag up with her fist and swings it around a bit, feeling the weight of it in her hand. Heavy.
After a moment of contemplating whether she wants to let the metaphorical cat out of the literal bag, Star’s curiosity wins out. She shoves her hand in, feeling something small and cold inside. She pulls out a golden ring just big enough to slide past the first knuckle of her thumb, and turns it over in the light. An inscription inside the band reads For Doris.
She looks around to be certain she’s alone, then dumps the bag out beside her. The bag has more stowaways; a charm bracelet, a single hoop earring, and several strings of beads that have tangled together into a multicolored lump. Inside the lump, Star spies a glint of silver, and after a good five minutes, she finally extricates a silver watch band. She flips it around to look at the timepiece, squinting to make out 2:34 before her eyes catch on the delicate lettering marking the watch as a Rolex.
She shoves it back into the bag like it’ll burn her eyes if she looks at it too long. For a moment, Star wonders if she might have grabbed someone else’s bag by mistake, but she recognizes her smashed penny and the sea glass amongst the interlopers. A million other possible explanations flit through her mind, but the only ones that make sense point directly at the men she met under the pier. When I was sleeping, she decides. That must be it, though understanding the when still doesn’t illuminate the why.
—
$521.68. That’s the amount of money the haul nets her when all is said and done, once the pawn shop finally opens at 8 and the guy behind the counter finally gives up on getting her to accept store credit. Star imagines the watch alone is probably worth more than that, but she’s hardly in a position to complain, not with a stack of hundred dollar bills shoved in her bra. It’s an unfathomable amount of money for her to have at once, much less in a time like now. If she plays her cards right, Star might be able to stretch it for a few weeks, maybe even long enough to set herself up somewhere new.
A buck fifty gets Star a plate of eggs and buttered toast, and it’s so delicious she can almost cry. Twenty five bucks buys her a room with a bed and a shower. She relishes the hot water, staying under it long after she’s washed herself clean and rinsed all the sand out of her clothes. When she’s finally done, she hangs the clothes to dry on the curtain rod and wraps herself in a towel, avoiding the gaze of the fogged-up mirror to make her way onto the bed.
The digital clock on the nightstand reads 9:42. If I go to bed now, I could get eight hours of sleep and be out of here by six, she thinks. That would have her rested and well out of town by sundown. The thought appeals to Star— part of her can’t shake the feeling that if she isn’t out by nightfall, she’ll never leave Santa Carla alive.
Star bites her lip. Motel checkout is at eleven tomorrow, meaning her twenty five dollars has bought her twenty five hours and eighteen minutes in the room. If she leaves at six, that’s seventeen hours she’s paid for without using. Seventeen dollars wasted, more or less. She should view it as a small price to pay for her safety. Getting out of town, far from the men who’d scared her so much that night, should be Star’s top priority. Even so, she can’t shake the memory of her last quarter clinking into the coin slot, or of the many days spent picking up bottles and cans to make enough money to eat that night.
Star lays flat on the bed, looking up at the popcorn ceiling. There’s something else making her hesitant to leave, of course. The guy from the pier, the one who’d called himself David, had looked at her like he knew everything about her. He’d seemed so confident that the two of them would meet again. If anyone was responsible for Star’s sudden fortune, it had to be him, and Star would be a liar if she said that she didn’t want to know why.
Star gets up. She flicks the lights off and closes the curtains, letting a little sliver of light peak out so she can still see around. I can figure it out when I wake up, she tells herself, crawling under the comforter. The sheets feel clean and cool on her skin, and they make it easy for her to forget her worries and drift off.
The sliver of light is gone when Star opens her eyes again. Looking through the curtain reveals it’s gone dark, and looking at the clock reveals she’s slept 3 hours more than intended. Star’s clothes don’t seem to have gotten the memo; they still haven’t dried fully, and a quick check of the bathroom confirms there’s no blow dryer.
Star leaves her room with a motel towel, a roll of toilet paper, and a bar of soap added to her bag. The dampness in her clothes makes her shiver a bit in the nighttime breeze. Avoiding the urge to go inside and hang them back up, she starts walking.
The boardwalk is alive at this hour, late enough to draw out older crowds but not so late as to send the more responsible among them back to bed. Teenagers crowd the carousel and the fair games, and vendors fight to sell them cotton candy and stuffed animals and overpriced piercings. It’s enough to make Star feel nostalgic, though she can’t say what for.
She buys a hot dog for seventy five cents and wolfs it down on the pier with all the ravenousness of someone who’s barely eaten in the past forty eight hours. She licks her hands clean and shoves them into her bag, noticing for the first time that she’s missing half a cigarette.
“Need something?”
Star nearly falls off the pier. “Jesus Christ,” she says, once her heart rate slows down enough for her to recognize that she is not, in fact, dying, and that David is sitting next to her.
“Not quite,” he smirks. “Though I do come in peace.” He holds out a fresh cigarette like an olive branch.
Star looks around. It’s just him. “No peanut gallery tonight?”
“They’re practicing,” David shrugs.
Star relaxes a bit. If things go to shit, she might stand a chance against him alone. “For what?”
“We’re playing at the bar near the video store tomorrow night.”
“You’re a band?” Star laughs. “I should have assumed.” She takes the cigarette, letting David light it, then takes a drag. “I didn’t take you for the menthols type,” she groans, offering it back to him.
David pulls out another cigarette instead. “Not a fan?” He puts it to his lips and lights it. “I’m told they go down smoother.” He exhales with a cloud of smoke.
Star rolls her eyes. “You sound like my mom.”
David laughs. “That’s a bad thing, I take it.”
Star ignores him and puts the cigarette back in her mouth. “Are you any good? The band.”
“How do you define ‘good?’” David asks.
“Oh, so you suck,” Star jeers.
“We don’t have to,” David says, looking out over the water.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Star follows his gaze to the shore, watching the moon’s reflection distort and reform on the water. “If you just find someone who plays the triangle, it’ll all come together?”
“I was thinking more like a second vocalist. A woman, maybe. Happen to know anyone like that?”
Star hasn’t sung since the summer she turned 8, when her mother decided they were going to be Pentecostal. For a whole 5 weeks, (Sundays and Wednesdays) they’d gotten up at 6 in the morning so her mom had time to make them breakfast and straighten Star’s hair with a hot comb.
Star had admired the church choir. They’d seemed so in tune with one another, clapping and stomping in perfect unison, each voice knowing its place in the harmony by heart. It had sent her heart soaring, and in week 3, she’d confided this in her mother, who responded by carving out an hour each evening to help Star practice her singing. They’d both been so excited for her to try out for the children’s choir in August.
On Saturday of the 5th week, Star’s mother was arrested for sending threatening letters to the pastor’s wife, and Star went back into foster care for another year. That was the end of that.
“Is that your evil plan?” Star asks. “Give money to a woman on the beach and she’ll feel so indebted that she’ll have to join your shitty band?”
“Did I give you money?” David says innocently. “I thought we made a trade.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out Star’s half a cigarette.
Star almost believes him. “Is that what you usually pay? If so, I’m scared to ask what you want for this one.” She flicks the butt of her cigarette off the pier.
“I’d settle for your name.”
She glares at David, trying to see if she can divine his intentions just by looking at him. “Star,” she says, because it’s as much her name as anything else anyone’s called her.
If David questions that, he doesn’t show it. “Well then, Star,” he says, “what are you going to do with the money?”
He already assumes that she sold it. That makes Star feel a little better. She shivers and changes positions to hug her knees. “I dunno. Know any crack dealers?”
That makes him laugh. A real laugh, Star thinks, from his chest. She finds herself liking the sound of it. “Hey,” David says, “if that’s what you want, go ahead. It’s yours.”
“And all for half a cigarette,” Star says. “Lucky me.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Am I supposed to?” Star spits. “I meant to leave town last night, and yet here I am, talking to you. It sounds like you’ve gotten what you wanted.”
“…So you’ve chosen to stay here, and that’s my fault? What a monster I am.”
“You’d rather me believe you gave me that stuff out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I didn’t say that,” David sighs. “I like you, Star. I want to help you.”
Star stands up. “Why? Because I’m a woman? Because you think I’ll blow you if you throw enough money at me?”
“Because you assume that anything good in your life has to have a catch,” he says, looking up at her without a trace of amusement on his face.
Doesn’t it? Star thinks. “I haven’t been proven wrong yet.”
“Let me try, then.” David slides back on the pier and pulls himself to his feet, walking to look Star in the eyes. He’s not bad looking, she thinks despite herself. “Meet me on the pier at 8:30 tomorrow. I’ll buy you something to eat.” He says it so earnestly, like he’s asking a coworker to get drinks after work.
“Buying me dinner? Is that supposed to make you think you don’t wanna fuck me?”
“No,” David grins. “It’s supposed to trick you into coming to our set at ten.”
He dances past her allegation, Star notices. It disturbs her that she finds that promising. Star raises an eyebrow. “For the band that could not suck? Color me stoked.”
David fiddles with one of his earrings, then shrugs. “I won’t make you come. You can leave Santa Carla tonight, if you like. Or you could stay, and meet my friends for real. The choice is yours.”
“Right,” Star says skeptically. Just like that.
In the morning, Star buys a paper bag at the thrift store for five bucks and fills it with clothes. She tells herself that she’s just preparing to go on the road, that her decision has nothing to do with people in Santa Carla seeing her in the same clothes night after night. That lasts until she gets back to the motel, when Star realizes it’s almost check out time and officially pays for another night.