Dead Stars

1

If you roll a tube of Chapstick all the way down to the bottom, it looks like a popped pimple, and that's something that Cressida always said bothered her. But she wore the stuff anyways. Cressida spread the waxy cherry balm over her thick lips, popped the lid back over the top with a snap, and tucked the tube down into the metallic casket she stood over.

"There you go, Marie," she sighed. "Ought to last you a good week at least."

The dead woman, well Marie, had taken in the trouble-making Taylor sisters six years ago when Juliet was still a kid and Cressida was just a day past having her first kiss with a fat man in his forties. It was a fitting arrangement as it allowed Marie company and someone to do the dishes. And doing the dishes wasn't such a bad trade off when the alternative was staying with a father who had too much time and not enough designer drugs—or having to kiss the fat man for them at his behest.

Juliet hovered over the coffin at the top. She tucked a strand of long, wavy curls behind her ear and stared down at Marie's unusually cakey face. They smeared red lipstick all over her thinning lips. Marie never wore lipstick. She only ever wore the same teal, button-up Hawaiian shirt and a loose scrunchie over abnormally frizzy hair. Marie was plain. And she didn't let the girls wear makeup, either.

But today, Cressida was covered in it. Her perfectly sleek blonde hair stayed behind her just the way it was supposed to—like she could command the very air around it. She was put together, well put together. Her white, lacey shirt cuffed above the elbows and hugged at the right spot above her hips. The darkened eye shadow smoldered around thick lashes, and she didn't shed a tear. Cressida was the picture of strength to Juliet. She was always so pretty. She always knew what to do.

"What now?" Juliet whispered to her older sister.

"Well," she sighed, but she didn't have an answer for her this time. She just turned and scanned the room around them.

There were a lot of people that showed up for Marie. A lot of them were people Juliet knew: neighbors, coworkers, and the stringy-haired smoker from the dollar store where Marie always got those corn chips she liked.

Marie wasn't all that bad. She had friends, all kinds of friends. A lot of people liked her, and she'd always been nice to Juliet—even if it was a distant type of nice.

But distance was just what Juliet was craving at the moment. Crowds of people, the chattering, the sniffling, they were the perfect mix of just enough anxiety and vile to make her stomach flip on the inside. There were too many people, too many sets of eyes just staring.

Juliet followed Cressida's gaze into the fray. Juliet knew most everyone there. Behind the white plaster columns, standing just outside the door, was a man she didn't know, though. He kept his face set straight ahead at the girls—no, at Marie—and didn't move an inch. He was tall, and the shadows sunk deep beneath his high, chiseled cheek bones. He was younger than most of the men there. Black hair slicked back behind his ears, and his eyes wore a dusting of moon rock that made them look an unusual shade of heavy gray. He must have been Marie's son.

Juliet knew she had one. She'd just never met him. And if it was him, he didn't match up to the stories. But it had to be him, because he was the only one there Juliet didn't recognize. Marie always said he was a lazy, messy, pain in the ass but a good kid...went off to study law in Atlanta. This man wasn't messy at all. Everything about him was clean cut. It was no wonder he was staring at Cressida. They matched, and Cressida always took the eyes of men off everything else.

Juliet looked back down at Marie one last time. They had her head in there all wrong. The pillow made her double chin look wider than it was. She would've hated the blue dress and the pearls. She would have hated everything about this kind of viewing. Why did Juliet know that and not her own son? But he was a good kid. Mothers always believed that kind of bull. If he was a good kid, he would've been there before she died. Juliet felt herself tear up but bit the tears back. Cressida would give her crap if she cried all over her new dress.