Starry Eyed

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

The weeks trickle by strangely, defying all sense of time and feeling everybody has ever had. Sometimes it lurches and jumps, other times it is as draggingly slow as a car being pushed down a road. I feel increasingly sick as the days groan past. I don't have any contact with my fellow pupils all Thanksgiving holidays; everybody is scared shitless, and nobody will talk to me, even though I actually have real friends for the first time.  Star doesn't dare to even look at me, and I don't get a chance to see Finn. Thanksgiving is awkward and forced, and my parents don't mention a thing about a kid from my school being murdered. Perhaps they don't even know. We play cards, and watch movies. 'Dead Poets Society', 'Little Miss Sunshine', 'Ghostbusters', classics and modern day blockbusters and dorky coming-of-age teen flicks. But it is not a real Thanksgiving to me. When I return to school, Star will not talk to me, and Finn doesn't show up at the biology class we're in together.

I think everyone is scared. There's not much chatter in class or in the halls, and the teachers seem afraid to call their students out on bad behaviour. Not bad behaviour, really. It's just that people can't focus, can't understand what others are saying. I wonder how to go about seperating the real friends of Harlem Potts to the heartless fakes like me.

Cops are still buzzing in Finn's dormitory, and some of our classes are cancelled because police are investigating. Every room is searched like it is the room Harlem was murdered in. But if the cops find anything, they don't give it away.

Not knowing Harlem seems to be what has sliced an enormous chasm between Star and me. Sometimes I imagine a face, try to trick myself into knowing him, but there is no way to fool your own mind. I am hopelessly lost in an unescapable void. It seems I can't fix things with Star until I fix things with Harlem, and the only pathway to Harlem is death.

Death brings things to an unavoidable stop. And we try to swerve and miss it all the same, but failure is inevitable. I believe we all have a destiny, that fate has already illustrated our lives in all their struggling glory. The gorey details of our futures are carved into the constellations. We can't move stars. We build ourselves up to be invincible, to say we can do anything we like, but nobody can move the stars.

Friday morning brings the funeral. It's cold and bitter outside, but not yet raining, stuck in that grim phase of cloudy skies and threatening temperatures. I never packed a suit for Huntley. I didn't expect to need one.

I don't really have the right to attend, but I feel obliged to. The sad thing is that I'm not going for Harlem. I'm going for Star. It makes me so two-dimensionally heartless that I almost don't go, but it's the only thing that might release some of the weight of guilt from my already slumping shoulders.

So in the frosty morning, I am up by eight for the assembly in the hall. James has been combing his hair for an especially long time. It matters more now he has a reason to look tidy. Of course, he has an actual tuxedo, quite tight-fitting and well-ironed in all its glory. I don't dare to ask if he has another. We have barely spoken in days, and the streak doesn't need to be broken.

I find the best pair of jeans I have, also known as the least crinkled pair, and match them up with my tidiest plaid shirt. I hope it's enough. It has to be enough, because I don't have a tie stocked away.

All the girls will be locked inside their dormitories, staring into bathroom mirrors, applying blusher that makes their cheeks burn and lipstick that they hope isn't noticeable. I stand in my own room feeling useless. What I wear doesn't matter; it will never be enough.

My hair is a mess, so I resort to standing next to the Ken doll in the mirror and doing his favorite thing. The teeth of my comb get tangled in my bed hair. How stupid it is that on the day I really need perfect hair, my hair just won't co-operate.