The Stars Never Rise

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After school, I stuffed the discipline notice into my satchel along with my books and walked home the long way, which led me past the Grab-n-Go. I stood across the street for several minutes, watching through the window for Dale, the assistant manager, to take his afternoon break. That would leave Ruth at the register, and Ruth never looked up from her crossword puzzle long enough to notice that I’d paid for the gum on the counter but not the food in my satchel.

I hadn’t come for food this time, and that fact made me even more determined to avoid Dale.

When he disappeared into the back room, I jogged across the street and into the store, wishing for the millionth time that there was no bell to announce my presence. Ruth looked up, focused on me for half a second while I perused the selection of candy, then went back to her puzzle.

As usual, I hesitated in front of the locked display case of cola, where a single bottle had been gathering dust for most of the last year because no one in the neighborhood could afford it. Then I drifted silently toward the half aisle of toiletries and over-the-counter medications while the screen mounted at the front of the store played the news.

“The badly mutilated corpse of April Walden, the teen who went missing from Solace two days ago, was discovered in the badlands south of New Temperance yesterday, less than a month after her seventeenth birthday. Church officials believe she was killed by a degenerate.”

“No shit …,” I mumbled, wandering slowly down the aisle, listening for any mention of the degenerate killed fifty feet from where I stood.

“Still no word on why Walden left the safety of Solace’s walls, but one high-ranking Church official ventured to conjecture that she was, in fact, possessed before she ever left the town.”

After that, the reporter transitioned to the latest death toll from the front lines in Asia, where brave soldiers and elite teams of exorcists were steadfastly beating back the last of the Unclean in the name of the Unified Church. As they’d been doing all my life. The location sometimes changed as one area was pronounced cleared and troops moved to cleanse another region, but the battles themselves were always the same.

We always won, but it was never easy. Losses were inevitable. Sacrifices would be honored and remembered.

I’d taken three more steps toward a narrow white box on the top shelf when a familiar six-note melody signaled the switch to the local news, which played on the hour, every hour, to keep citizens informed about the happenings close to home. The happenings the Church wanted us to know about, anyway.

I’d sold our television almost two years before, when I realized I’d rather have a functioning microwave than hear the same pointless recitation of “news” over and over, night after night.

But this time I listened closely. A degenerate inside the town walls would definitely make the local news, and with any luck, the report would tell me how close the police were to identifying the mystery boy and girl who had fled the scene that morning.

“Church officials are on the lookout for a group of adolescent offenders last spotted near New Temperance, wanted for truancy, heresy, and theft. Reports indicate that the group has between three and five members, only two of whom have been identified at this time. Reese Cardwell is seventeen years old. He has light skin, brown hair, and brown eyes, but his most prominent feature is his size. Cardwell is six feet six inches tall, and his weight is estimated at over two hundred and thirty pounds.”

The school picture they flashed on the screen could have been any boy at my school. He looked young and friendly, and you can’t tell much about a person’s size from a head shot.

“Devi Dasari has dark hair and eyes and is estimated to be five feet seven inches tall. Demonic possession is suspected for all members of the group, but unconfirmed at this time. Citizens are asked to report any suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces to your local Church leaders.”

Fugitives in New Temperance … And if the fugitives were suspected of possession, there would be exorcists in New Temperance too.

I’d seen both suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces that very morning, and New Temperance was too small and dull a town for that to be coincidence. But one of the faces I’d seen had belonged to a degenerate—definitely not a teenager—and the other belonged to an exorcist too young and unbranded to be ordained by the Church.

Why wasn’t the news reporting the dead degenerate? Were the possibly possessed teen fugitives unconnected to the demon that attacked me? Was their story big enough to eclipse reports of a degenerate inside the town walls?

That was almost too far-fetched a thought to process. Obviously, the news was omitting some relevant—and no doubt important—piece of the story. Probably the piece that would connect the dots.

But on the bright side, there was no report of a fifteen-year-old pregnant dissident arrested for disobeying the direct order of a Church official.

Near the middle of the aisle, I took the box I needed from the top shelf, wiped dust from it with my hand, then slid it into my satchel. At the end of the aisle, I turned left, heading toward the gum for my legitimate purchase. But I froze two steps later when Dale stepped into my path.

“Whatcha got there, Nina?” he asked softly so Ruth wouldn’t hear.

“Nothing yet.” I pointed past him at the display of chewing gum.

“Open your bag.”

Shit! “Not today, Dale. Please.” The word tasted sour, but I was willing to beg. I couldn’t leave the store without what I’d come for, and I couldn’t let him see what that was.

“Nothin’s free,” he whispered, stepping so close I could smell the coffee on his breath. “You gotta pay, one way or another.” His pointed glance at Ruth was a threat to rat me out. He knew as well as I did that there were no more than three coins in my pocket—nowhere near enough for what I’d taken, even if he didn’t know what that was. “Your choice.”

But it wasn’t, really. It was never my choice.

He gestured for me to precede him down the aisle, and I did—I knew the way—my stomach churning harder with every step. At the back of the store, he led me past the grimy restrooms and into a small supply closet, where he held the door open for me in a farce of chivalry.

I took a deep, bitter breath, then stepped inside and shoved a mop bucket with my foot to make room. Dale came in after me, and I pressed my back against the wall to put as much space between us as possible. He pulled the door closed and fumbled for the switch in the dark. A single bulb overhead drenched the closet in weak yellow light, casting ominous shadows beneath his features, making him look scarier than he really was.

Dale was a dick, and a stupid dick at best. But he wasn’t scary. Demons were scary. The Church was scary. Dale was just an opportunistic asshole in a position of minor power.

“Give me the bag.”

I set my satchel on the floor and pinned it against the wall with my feet. He couldn’t know. No one could know.

“Fine. Take it off.”

My teeth ground together as I unbuttoned my blouse. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the way his breathing changed. The way his inhalations hitched, his exhalations growing heavier and wetter with each button that slid through its hole.

“Take it off,” he repeated when I reached the last button.

Eyes still closed, I let the material slide off my shoulders, down to my elbows. His feet shuffled on the concrete floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. A second later, his fingers were there, greedy and eager. They pushed at the remaining material, shoving my bra up, squeezing, pinching.

I let it happen. I had no other way to pay.

But when his fingers fumbled with the button of my pants, my eyes flew open. “No.”

His hands stilled but didn’t retreat. “It’s not just a can of soup this time, is it? Or a loaf of bread? Whatever’s in that bag today, I think you really want it. I think you need it. Well, guess what I need….”

He tried for the button again, and I shoved him back, then clutched the open halves of my blouse to my chest. “I said no.”

“You want me to call the police?”

I made a decision then. One I couldn’t have made a day earlier. “Call them. I’ll tell them how you’ve been charging a poor, hungry schoolgirl for a year and a half, corroding my morals and defiling my innocence. We’ll see who they arrest.”

His hands fell away and his gaze hardened, staring into mine. Trying to decide whether or not to call my bluff—and any other day, it would have been a bluff, because I couldn’t afford for the police and my mother to meet. But thanks to Melanie’s collection of offenses, they were going to meet anyway, sooner or later, and if picking “sooner” would keep Dale’s hands off me, so be it.

I suffered a minor moment of panic when I realized that if I had him arrested, there would be no more free food. But then, it was never really free in the first place, was it?

“This arrangement is over.” I tugged my bra back into place, trying to forget the feel of his fingers on my skin. I buttoned my shirt while he glared at me, and then I threw my satchel over my shoulder and pushed past him to the door.

I marched to the front of the store and paid for my gum. Ruth didn’t even notice my untucked shirt.

“If I ever see you in here again, I will call the police,” Dale growled through clenched teeth as I reached for the front door.

I stopped with the door halfway open and turned back to look at him. “If you ever see me in here again, you’ll need them.”

FIVE (#u5bc4caf5-9a93-5657-986c-d7475adf932a)

The walk home felt longer and colder without Melanie next to me. When I passed the Mercer house, two doors down from ours, I wondered who was watching Matthew and his sister. Then I wondered if Sister Camilla had ever let the poor kid off his knees. The Church had discretion—she could keep him until his parents came and signed for him if she wanted, and there was little his parents could do or say about it without seeming to support their son’s sins.

A child’s behavior was widely considered a reflection of his parents’ private lives, and few ever protested a child’s harsh punishment for fear of being declared an unfit caregiver and losing custody of the “sinful” child in question.

The drizzle had stopped, but daylight was already fading, accelerated by the dreary cloud cover. Soon Matthew could add his fear of the dark to his current cold, wet misery.

Our house was quiet when I went in through the back door, careful not to let it slam behind me. Mom usually slept through dinner, and most days, if we were careful, by the time she got up we’d already be in our room for the night, whispering while we finished our homework. But now things had changed. I’d planned for us to eat one of the cans of soup I’d taken from the Turners, with a slice of bread each, but was that enough for an expectant mother? Should I make both cans? Or give her the last of the peanut butter as well?

I’d just burned my bridge at the only store within walking distance, which meant that when the soup and peanut butter were gone, I’d have to break into the emergency cash for bus fare to an actual grocery store and either pay for some food or risk getting caught shoplifting by employees whose habits I didn’t know.

One more year.

If Mellie and Adam had waited one more year to give in to their hormones, I would have been old enough to work full-time.

But then, I had no high ground to stand on. I couldn’t even claim to have loved the boys I’d used in my carnal rebellion against the Church. At least my sister had that—someone who loved her. And surely once she told him about the baby, he’d want to help feed it.

And its mother.

Melanie’s satchel hung over her chair at the kitchen table, but that was the only obvious sign that she’d made it home. When I opened the bedroom door, my sister sat up on the bed, her eyes wide with fear until she recognized me in the dying light from the half-covered window. “Did she wake up?” I whispered, pulling the door closed behind me.

Melanie shook her head, and I knew with one look at her rumpled school clothes that she’d been in bed all day, not because she was tired or sick, but because moving around the house would have increased the chances of our mother waking up to find her at home.

“Anabelle scheduled the makeup physical for next week, but she couldn’t get you out of this.” I reached into my satchel for the disciplinary notice and handed it to Mellie. She set it on her scuffed nightstand without reading it. She knew what it was with a single glance at the heading on the paper.

“And I picked this up for you on the way home. I figure we should be sure before we start borrowing serious trouble.” I pulled the stolen cardboard box from my satchel and tossed it onto the bed. Even if I’d had the money to pay for it, I couldn’t have—you have to show identification and a parenting license to buy a pregnancy test.

Melanie picked up the box with shaking hands. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“I know.” My sister was smart but impractical. She thought about things all day long, but rarely about anything that would put food on the table or clothes on our backs.

“Should I take it now?”

I set my satchel on the end of my bed. “The sooner, the better.”

Melanie opened the cardboard box—her hands still shaking—and read the directions while I changed into the same jeans and long-sleeved tee I’d worn the previous afternoon. “I’m pretty sure you just have to pee on the stick,” I said, when she still seemed confused by the time I was fully dressed.

“I know. But when I do that, we’ll know. For better or worse, we’ll know for sure, and I’ll have to stop pretending everything could still be okay.”

“Everything will be okay, Mel. One way or another. I promise.” She gave me a small, terrified smile. “Now, go pee on the stupid stick.”

I followed her to the bathroom and stood in the doorway while she took the test and then covered the end of the stick with its plastic cap and set it on the bathroom counter. We both stared at the indicator while she flushed the toilet and rinsed her hands.

The directions said we had to wait two minutes before reading the results, but the second line appeared in the result window in less than half that time. Before Mellie could even dry her hands.

Phantom obligation settled onto my shoulders, and I felt my connection to the outside world severed, as surely as I’d felt the snip that severed my genetic line—not physically, but absolutely. There would be no college, no teaching, and no career. For me, there would only ever be New Temperance and whichever factory job would put the most food on the table and diapers in the pantry.

“That’s it, then.” Melanie sank onto the toilet seat, the test stick held between her thumb and forefinger as if it might break. “This is really happening.” Two fresh tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. “I’m actually pregnant.”

“You little bitch!”

Melanie’s gaze snapped up and her eyes went wide. I turned to find our mother standing in her bedroom doorway, one bony, blue-veined hand clutching the doorjamb. Her faded tee hung from her shoulders straight to her bare thighs, too big on her thin frame, and her skin was paler than I remembered. Paler than it had been the day before, somehow. I could see most of her veins through her flesh.

My mom grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the way with more strength than should have been possible from such a frail form and wasted muscles. Her grip bruised. She stepped into the bathroom doorway, her thin feet straddling the threshold, and somehow she seemed to take up more room than she should have.

Melanie tried to back away from her, but she was trapped between the toilet and the tub.

“How far?” My mom’s voice was rough. Scratchy, as if she’d been gargling gravel.

“I don’t …? Wh-what …?” Melanie stuttered, and the pregnancy test fell from her hand to clatter across the floor.

Mom picked it up, and her knees cracked when she moved. I frowned, staring at her ankles. Had the bones always been so prominent? She glanced at the test, then threw it at Melanie.

Mellie flinched. The plastic stick hit the tile beside her right ear and broke into several pieces. I did an automatic inventory of the bathroom, trying to anticipate what would be thrown next and how badly it could hurt my sister if Mom’s aim improved.

Ancient, heavy hair dryer. Empty hand soap bottle. Stick of deodorant.

“How. Far. Along?” our mother demanded carefully, deliberately, and I wasn’t sure whether she was going slowly for her own benefit or for Melanie’s. “How old is the belly rat?” She shot an angry look at my sister’s flat stomach.