The Will Of Star

         
         “I’ve had a vision,” declares Star.
           She is always speaking as though she has a podium before her.
           She is always addressing the nation, the world, possibly the universe.
         It listens.
           “A marvelous dream, Lourdes,” she continues, her eyes bright as her name, “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”
           I, with my voice like a guilty witness before the prosecutor, I say timidly, “What do you mean, Star?”
           Her being glows, her feet begin to levitate an inch above the black and charcoal-gray linoleum. Star is always tirelessly passionate.
           She is a beacon of hope, a relieving lighthouse.
           She is the very incarnation of her christening.
           Star of the fine blonde hair, not aware of her lowly, squalid surroundings, whispers to me, her silent confidante, “Skadi. That is her name, Lourdes. The answer to every prayer.”
           “Skadi?” I whisper back, tentatively conspiratorial.
           I am afraid of her answer, somehow.
           I am not brave and adventurous, like Star, willing to try new things.
           I am not like Star.
           She rounds the corner, embraces the hall we enter. The halls it seems we always are in.
           I know where these doors lead – Homeroom, English class. Biology. Still I feel as though those places are something I saw in a movie, long ago.
           Have I actually been there?
         Is this life that consists of homework and student bulletin boards and these same halls actually mine?
           “Skadi,” she affirms, with the utmost surety. It is a shame such certainty isn’t considered a virtue. Star would walk into heaven with a VIP pass.
           I fantasize about someday being so confident.
           Probably the way some people think about becoming movie stars.
           “Skadi is the mother of us all,” she explains. The bell has rung, but she shows no intention of heading toward the appropriate door; she is caught up in the cobwebs of this latest greatest idea.
           And if she is susceptible to the fragile threads of spider’s make, I am surely entrapped.
           “Skadi is the giver of life. To her must we bow.” Star’s lips resemble cherries. Dew and lipstick identically glisten. “Imagine her, Lourdes. The deity above all others: Skadi.”
           Her tone is sweetly insidious, a liqueur-filled chocolate. Lies are often softer in the mouth than veracity, but Star’s truth is so, so sugary. Delectable.
           I want to swallow.
           “The word of Skadi must be spread!” Star, seized by a fit of her sudden zealousness, throws her Civil War essay into the air. Paper flutters to the ground wistfully, a manifested sigh.
           I wonder at Star’s reckless attitude toward time. How many hours did those flitting snowflakes purloin?
           Then I wish I could be prone to random essay throwing.
           “You know what, Lourdes?” She whirls to me sharply.
           I am pleasantly cornered. I don’t know what.
           “I have to tell people about this. I have to start this.” She is radiant at the challenge. “Will you help me, Lourdes?”
           The liqueur burns my throat as it goes down. “Of course, Star.”

         A whole week passes; we go out and put up flyers. Bright yellow flyers, pink flyers, flyers spangled with glitter for what Star calls the high-probability locations.
           Telephone poles, community bulletin boards, the cafeteria walls. She skips lunch and walks downtown to pass them out at fast-food restaurants, bustling with people like hive insects in business suits.
           Only to women though.
           Star has not explained the exact precepts of her espoused doctrine, but I am gleaning that the other gender is not included in her plan of salvation.
           I am no political activist and neither am I any great diplomat. I don’t start arguments because I can’t finish them.
         Star probably has a good reason.
           I carry duct tape and tacks in my backpack now. Occasionally Star spots the rare square of post or corkboard she hasn’t yet exploited.
           I’ve never seen Star this vivacious before.
           Her pep is unrelenting and rather repressive.
           There is a meeting advertised on this flyer for the twenty-fifth of October.
           Three days from now.
           Star is an optimist. I am not. It is one of the few matters in which I do not blindly agree with her.
           (My amenability being, naturally, my only survival instinct.)
           I can’t see how this scheme of hers can succeed.
           Call me hopeless.

           We sit in the recreation room of the Community Center, Saturday night. Star is upright, beaming.
           There are precisely thirty-six ticks until the meeting is scheduled to start.
           So far, two people have shown up. Me, and Star.
           Still Star’s back is straight.
           As the minutes click neatly by though, her spine begins to curve. She bites her lip and glances down at the papers she’s prepared, pored over, scribbled on with cheery purple ink.
           She’s bursting with her message.
           She’ll resort to sidewalk prophesying, if she has to.
           Let someone come, I pray to the faceless god above. Possibly Skadi. Possibly not. Don’t let Star be so disappointed.
           The clock lets out its death knells, as it strikes the bells of seven-thirty.
           Half an hour after the meeting is supposed to start.
           I want to comfort poor Star, who is looking more dejected than ever I’ve seen her. Tell her that Saturday night is a good night for parties, not for gatherings of budding religions.
           But I do not say anything. I fear her riposte, though it is unlikely to come. I alone have adhered to her ideas, however bizarre and unacceptable, continually.
           It is the only form of appeasement I can muster, I find – which may account for my general lack of companions.
           Star is the sole forgiver of my shortcomings.
           As I am hers.
           And no one else it seems is willing to take on this role. No footsteps echo in the outside hall.
           Where are they? The dreamers, the loners, the ones looking for something new and thrilling?
           Life may be a game, but we are the refreshment stand: without us, the ball cannot move.
           We are the indirect catalysts of every play. Skadi may not be the best thing since Gatorade, but Star believes she is.
           And, given that, with what may you refute Skadi’s essentialness?
           Star is exotic.
           She does not follow conventional paths.
           She revs up her four-wheel-drive and goes off-roading.
           I follow her. I think this may be the root of her respect for my personage, as generally uninspiring as it is.
           The clock lumbers along to eight. Star is disgusted as she picks up her Skadi apparatus and marches out.
           I scurry behind. On the double.
           “Not one!” she cries in frustration. She can’t understand; how can the rest of the world be so unenthusiastic when she is so vehement?
           But she is not defeated.
           Somewhere, above I assume, a patient goddess smiles at her proselyte daughter. At her daughter’s determination, and bewilderment.
           It is only incomprehensible to me how people can, every day, ignore Star.
           She is so vibrant.
           I think that if only people could hear her, they would be drawn in, a piscine victim to the alluring silver hook. The moon of her voice brings the tide in.
           “This is not the end,” she vows through nacreous teeth, ripping the flyer savagely off its conspicuous perch, posted over the Presbyterian Spaghetti Dinner poster and the Annual Aquathon announcement. The events she might have attended if she had been in a different phase.
         I went to the Presbyterian Spaghetti Dinner with her last year. Catholic though I am.
         She adored it. Was adored. Was the female incarnation of Jesus.
         I guess she’s done with Jesus now.

           It is as if she has declared war.
           She makes no pretense of going to class. She has missed three days now.
           I wonder if her parents know of Skadi.
           I wish that were a petty query.
           Star’s parents are the sort with frown wrinkles, deep, distressed furrows above their brows. Their disapproval-to-approval ratio is not favorable for their blonde baby girl.
           Mine have crow’s feet.
         Smile lines.
           All day long Star wages her war.
           She battles the school corridors.
           She assaults the businesses downtown.
           But mostly she ambushes the newspaper editor; that is the primary shift in her formation. She sends her squadrons of phone calls and watches the poor man’s defenses obliterated.
           She is submitting an article about Skadi and the next meeting, scheduled for the third of November.
           She spent six hours and three double cappuccinos on the project.
           But she is well satisfied.
           “Things will be different,” she tells me, a complacent, contented smile brightening her features as she puts up another pink, glittery flyer.

           Star arrived at my house at six-thirty this morning so we could read the newspaper before school. She attends now, sporadically. Her article is finished.
           She waits on tenterhooks.
           We have to flip to the twenty-second page to find it, stuck glumly in an unobtrusive corner.
           Star is as excited as if she has met the president.
           She quivers in anticipation as she hands me the paper.
           As if she doesn’t know what I will say.
           I cannot disagree with her.
           Surely she is aware of this.
           I lift the paper out of her fingers and read. The article is brief, mainly explanatory. Scarcely intriguing. But I will not tell Star this.
           “It’s great,” I murmur, smile wide.
           The secret of life is whitening toothpaste.

           I thought Star’s article inadequate but evidently it put the message across.
           Today, a day after the paper was distributed, the editor was hit by a barrage of phone calls.
           Star is to be on the local radio program.
           She is to go on tomorrow morning.
           The world is surely doomed. No one will be able to resist her voice, her manifest vision.
           I will be happy when the next meeting is thronging with eager recruits. Until then, I wonder if this all is very wise.
           Star’s arguments will seem as sage as any.
           In the bare space of a night, Star has become a celebrity. Who is this crazy girl, this so called prophet of Skadi?
           Star tactfully omitted her name from the article; otherwise there may have been a few fireworks in her household.
           Neither have I informed my parents of my friend’s scheme. They may be forgiving, but they are also good Catholics. The insights of Star’s sort aren’t particularly compatible with that catechism.
           I arrived at school alone this morning, Star was prepping herself for her public debut, and there was a confluence of strawberry-lip-glossed girls in front of her previously ignored poster.
           A wink of orchid shadow, crescents of cranberry-tinted lashes.
           “Skadi?” A breathless whisper. Subdued excitement.
           Delicate ovals of vitreous maroon, clicking daintily against sheet-rock walls.
           “Should we go? Should we go?” A tangible aura of intrigue, muted interest.
           I pass them by. I’m filled with ambivalence. Do I want Star to prevail?
           Her victory has traditionally been my victory, but I am not so sure if this one won’t be Pyrrhic.
           What if our parents find out?
           What then?
           But I won’t desert Star at this juncture.
           I won’t desert her at any juncture.
           Insanity may be in me genetically, but loyalty is its sincere pretext. I hold to what I can, or what lets me.

           Monday. Parents of daughters all across town are locking their doors.
           Locking their windows too. Just for good measure.
           Skadi, while beloved, does not offer a comforting presence to most adults in this region. In any region.
           The town is sentient, tense with spidery excitement, wispy like breath in December air and effervescent.
           Even the community center possesses an aura today. It peers at Star and I, dubious but secretly intrigued – like everyone else it seems. Girls, in plaid pants and purple miniskirts, flowered sandals, clamor by the door to get in.
           They barely glance at us; we look just like them, the other devotees. Did they expect someone more important? More regal?
           Star pushes through the fluid mass of bodies, a dolphin through the sea, banging the door open with impatient confidence. A girl with red hair glares at us, catching her beret as it slides off her smooth curls.
           I want to tell her, proudly, that we are the messengers of Skadi, the ones she is awaiting, and to watch her indignation slip away faster than her beret had a moment a go.
           But I’m overpowered by my usual trepidation. I look away, and follow Star inside.
           We head to the recreation room. Where we sat, mere days ago, as empty as our location.
           We are not empty this week. There is a crowd of girls, like bubbles in champagne. Star glides past them all, radiant with triumph. She sends me a glance, fleeting.
           It is oddly as though she has defeated me.
           But what opposition have I ever posed to her?
           I let the feeling go; I am probably wrong. How Star would laugh if she knew my thoughts.
           Star hoists herself to a queenly position standing atop a folding chair. The cheap kind. Her shoes let off a metallic clang as she settles herself.
           Now Star begins to attract attention, a glance-magnet. There is the scent of revelation pervading the room.
           Distinct and sweet.
           “Let the others in!” cries Star jubilantly. “Let everyone in!”
           Everyone present, including myself, jumps to obey. It may be hard to believe that she is only Skadi’s herald, and not the deity herself.
           She wears her earrings, long and scintillating in the cheap yellow light, as though she were born with them.
         She bought them yesterday.
           And there is something about her eyes, so diamond-bright, that is so effortlessly captivating. They whisper promises:
           The moon will be yours, if only you ask.
           The recreation room is not capacious enough to hold all of us. Star directs me to find out if the ballroom is occupied.
           I think that the community center wouldn’t dare to schedule anything the same night as the Skadi gathering. Too controversial. Too risky.
           The city council members are not diplomats of the plebeian sort. They prefer to keep their white hands so immaculate.
           But I do not tell Star this. My thoughts are the one thing I do not easily surrender to her.
           The ballroom is vacant, spooky, echoey; dust like a fine velvet covers everything. The room has a sepia cast to it, the tint of an old photograph. Ghosts are palpable, seem to whisper from the walls.
         No one has been in here for years.
           Its cleanliness may not be appropriate, but its elegance surely is. I go back and inform Star that the ballroom is available for use.
           “Everyone, please!” Two inimitable words hush the twittering crowd. “The meeting will be in the ballroom!”
           One creature, composed of so many lipsticked girls, slithers toward the ballroom. I’m absorbed into the beast, my feet clicking along the hall almost involuntarily with everyone else’s. I’ve lost sight of Star but I can sense her location. Even my weak radar can pick up lighthouse beacons.
           She’s got the wattage, to be sure.
           When we are all in the ballroom, Star, amid a cloud of majestic dust, steps up to her podium.
           It is a table with peeling paint and a faulty leg.
           I am surprised again at Star’s courage. I certainly wouldn’t stand atop such a decrepit piece of junk.
         I have the feeling that it wouldn’t dare to break while she is atop it; and moreover have the feeling that Star is aware of this.
           “Friends!” Star cries.
           We are her children.
           “Bless you all in the name of Skadi for coming!” She is rapturous. She is weeping.
           There is a ripple of anticipation in the crowd, a quiet tide.
           Star begins her story. “Only a few weeks ago, friends,” she says, with an endearing sincerity, “I was blessed with a vision of the way to Salvation.”
           It’s funny how capital letters are sometimes so audible.
           “I know you’ve all heard about the normal religions. Maybe you even belong to them. Christianity. Judaism. Islam. Hinduism.
           “But what I’m here to tell you is that we’ve been wrong. All this time. The so-called gods of these beliefs are false.”
           There is a murmur of incredulity, at Star’s audacity more than anything. And of dissension, as everyone begins to realize what they wanted to hear.
           Our pool of communal earnestness has frozen to thin ice.
           It would be sagacious of Star to tread carefully.
           But she does not defend her statements, rescind them timidly. She stares us down, level blue eyes piercing each one of our hearts, severally.
           “You doubt me.” A simple observation, no challenge. A smile. “But that does not matter. Think what you will. I am here to spread the truth.
           “You have heard of Jesus, our Savior. I will speak of him because I know him best.” She smiles indulgently. “What does he promise? An ambiguous afterlife. Nothing more.
           “Is that not true? Do you not know through your own experiences that this concept – ‘Heaven’ – is never fully explained?
           “Skadi does not deny her followers explanations. She wants us to know, to trust with our complete souls. She…”
           Her words blend with the whisperings of the night; my attention is fixed on her passionate face. These words are so savory. I see every girl, even those doubtful among us, relishing them like cherry candy.
           I am suddenly frightened.
           Where has this version of Star come from?
           Has divine epiphany genuinely transformed her?
           Star has always been aptly described as eloquent. But this demonstration of her talents is unnerving. If she were speaking Vietnamese I would still be falling into the sweet oblivion of her voice, like all the others here, doomed.
           Disconcerted, but intoxicated all the same, I sway with the others, a forest of wind-blown girls swept away on Star’s zephyr. We are escaped – but from what? – and captured, utterly spellbound.
           Star’s oration has reached its conclusion, though her momentum never dwindles for a second. “Will you join me then, sisters?” Her volume level has risen, though besides the feeble warble of the wind outside the boarded windows the room is perfectly, absolutely still. Yet every ear is attuned to her tones, as if straining to catch her enunciations, and every eye, hazel, honey-colored, the deep green of secluded streams in summertime, is trained upon her form.
           She is stunning, basking in her personal sunlight.
           She represents her own universe, one so powerfully beautiful that we cannot ignore it or help coveting it.
           And we cannot believe that she is inviting us to enter it.
           We gasp out an aching cry, a battle cry. We will fight, we will die. Believe us O Star. I mean, O Skadi.
 
           “Where were you?” She asks me, her eyes big. Huge. Globular.
           “Yes, where?” He echoes.
           “Out with Star.” I am innocent, can’t you see? “As usual. It’s not a big deal, Mom.”
           She and He exchange glances. “You didn’t go to the community center?”
           I can’t look them in the eye.
           I’m an atrocious liar. Notoriously.
           “No, of course not. Why would I go there?” I pour myself a glass of milk to hide behind.
           “There were lots of girls there,” He points out.
           “Not me,” I counter.
           “Well, we don’t want you to go, all right?” Her countenance betrays her. She is worried, as is every other GoodHousekeepingSealofApproval Mother in town.
           If I had the conviction or even the energy to be rebellious, I might feel somewhat victorious.

           Next week there is another article about Skadi, but Star didn’t write it, or even endorse it.
           In fact, not only is there an article but three letters to the editor on the subject. And not all favorable.
           Star is in ecstasy.
           “There must have been fifty girls at the meeting!” she gushes to me in the school corridor. I wonder if her openness about this in public locations is particularly wise.
           Not that Star couldn’t honey her way out of just about any policeman’s fingers or handcuffs.
           And it isn’t as if she has done anything illegal. Yet.
           “America,” declares Star with satisfaction, “is a great country.”
           This sparks a surprised jet of laughter from me. “What do you mean?”
           She looks terribly amused. I’m suddenly uncomfortable.
           “Do you know, Lourdes, that in no other country would we be able to pull this off?”
           Then I wonder if that’s a good thing.
           But, in defense of the hundred-odd other nations sharing breathing space, I say, “You don’t know that’s true, Star. Have you ever been out of the country?”
           She gives me a Look. I desire greatly to rip out my own tongue. How dare I question her authority, her wisdom?
           Star doesn’t have to have gone to Cambodia, Poland, and Brazil. She knows about them as if she had created them with her own finely wrought fingers.
           And anyone who contradicts her had better have a deluge of evidence and as much charisma as she.
           “Anyway,” she continues, breezily, as if I haven’t said anything, after all, “it doesn’t matter. America’s still a great country.”
           “Yeah,” I agree, though my authenticity is blatantly hollow. I wonder why I bother to say anything.
           Although maybe it burns calories.

           Star believes that everyone is on her side, despite the fact that this is completely contrary to reality. Her reading comprehension skills are, evidently, lacking.
           Thus it was not difficult for me to deduce why she was so entirely shocked when the community center refused to hold another Skadi gathering.
           Star’s face was white enough to evoke nightmares.
           It is fascinating in itself that they still rejected her after that.
           The whole debacle, however, fails to deter her. As I expected it would. She has been even more vehement over the past few days, attempting to locate a new venue.
           I was not aware until now that Star owned a cell phone, but now she wields it constantly, with full force. She maneuvered the phone numbers out of all the attendees at the last Skadi meeting and now utilizes them like lances against her invisible, if vocal, foes.
           Finally, inevitably, she scores a mortal wound.
           “Raspberry Park!” she crows. It’s actually Rhasbury Park, but everyone knows to call it that is almost social ineptness. And no one has ever accused Star of that. “They can’t stop me from having it there!”
           They can’t. She’s right.
           I’m scared.

           To spread the word, Star gets busy – or busier, if that is possible.
           Her Study Hall period rapidly transmogrifies to a course in advertising.
           Her homework is never finished
           And she brazenly makes paper airplanes of her pink flyers and shoots them around the room while the teachers futilely scribble logarithms.
           Mrs. Greenley, the principal, hasn’t taken kindly to Star’s shift in attitude.
           Star used to be on the honor roll.
           And that is her very downfall. If Star had always been not quite a role model, no one would take note of her sudden delinquency.
           The school at large is beginning to realize who is behind this, as I have heard it coined, “Skadi malarkey”.
           They watch her.
           They have the keenness of hawk’s eyes, though perhaps they lack the perspicacity. It will be a Skadi-sent miracle if Star’s parents are not aware of her role in this by next week.
           I, I have been lying low, to avoid a similar fate.
           Star frowns at my lukewarm devotion.
           But what am I to do?
           There is a dance on Friday. A school function. Star, obviously, plans to make an appearance.
           And what a notable appearance it will be.
           If the chaperones catch sight of her and her flyers, she won’t be appearing for very long.
 
         “It’s just a dance.”
           If I’m late, Star will murder me slowly with choice, scathing utterances.
           A weapon few can defend against. Least of all me.
           She looks at me piercingly. I am only lucky that He is not present.
           Life is not basketball.
           It isn’t fair to be double-teamed.
           “I don’t want you mixed up in this Skadi business, Lourdes.”
           I roll my eyes. Begin to sweat. “Why are you so worried about it?”
           “You always do what Star does.” I know this, but it stings for my mother to confront me with the fact that I have no opinion. “It sort of seems something that she would get into.”
           I try to look indignant. “Mom!”
           She sighs. “I’m just worried. Cults don’t bring happiness to a place, that’s for sure.”
           I’m offended. Obviously.
           Skadi is not a cult.
           We don’t kidnap people or commit mass suicide.
           We don’t even drink Kool-Aid.

           I arrive at the school with Star.
           She is ignited with anticipation, hope.
           My flames were doused two blocks ago.
           Star stops the car by the curb, an inch away from red-zone illegality.
           She lives on the edge.
           Of a knife.
           “Wish me luck, Lourdes.” She squeezes my hand. It is as though she has three, for she holds mine, straightens her hair and rifles through her flyers simultaneously.
           I feel as if I’m moving in slow motion; either that or Star is on fast-forward.
           Why?
           Maybe Her sharp eyes have numbed me.
           Maybe I fear for Star, and what might happen to her here.
           Or maybe I’m just generally scared, like always.
           I wish I weren’t.
           We pay our money. We go inside. We buy sodas, Star and I, Dr. Pepper and generic tasteless lemon-lime, respectively.
           The gym is transfigured, as we enter.
           Here I have spent countless teenage hours, sunk in sweat and reticence. I can’t catch the crucial orange pass thrown my way and Star is not there; I fall amid a malicious chorus of giggles.
           Or I crash into the net, while the ball sails past, wistfully.
         Or a million things.
           Those experiences were so vivid, so sharp while they occurred; now they’re surreal and only vaguely wince-inducing.
           They make me want to wake up.
           Now, though, this dungeon is enchantingly black and loud. I feel safe, cloaked in suffocating darkness and the abrasive roar of bad music.
           These things obscure the senses irrepressibly.
           Hopefully this means no one will notice me.
           Star was born to be noticed. She draws everyone’s eyes magnetically, but I am merely her shadow: of no account or value.
           Which is how I like it.
           If people noticed me, they would think about me.
           And what would they think?
           Star pushes through the dividing, joining mass, thrusting flyers at each cell as it separates, like a drop of rain from its mother cloud.
           We continue through the crowd this way, until we reach the opposite side of the gym.
           Underneath the basketball hoop.
           The way Star is avoiding it reminds me of mistletoe – it’s as if she wants to elude some overeager paramour. I’m baffled. 
           Star faces down every problem as though it were a spider she intends to squash.
           You’re dead. I win.
           End of story.
           And then I see why.
           Like the sun shining triumphantly through the clouds, the answer comes to me. For only mere feet away, underneath the basketball hoop stands an overeager paramour. A former one, anyway.
           If Star has any inability in anything, it lies in romance.
           She is, apparently, incapable of proceeding with a few dates in any semblance of a normal fashion.
           Her relationships shatter like icicles do under pressure from sledgehammers.
           And here is the most poignant member of her recent history.
           “Hey Star.” Miles Creighton’s voice is peculiarly audible, even over the raucousness of the music. And I have the distinct feeling that he is whispering.
           “Hello Miles.” Star, robotically.
           She folds her arms and scuffs her shoe.
           Gilded stilettos.
           Orange velvet toenails.
           “How’ve you been, Star?” Miles brushes his hair out of his eyes, lazily. Amusedly.
           “Good.” She begins to shuffle away.
           “Hey, don’t be a stranger,” says Miles, smirking. The antiquated phrase is enough to make Star turn stiffly around. “I asked how you’ve been.”
           “How’ve you been?” she snarls.
           “Your Xeroxing costs must be astronomical,” observes Miles, nodding toward the pink flyers, suddenly limp in her hand. “Is this Skadi worth all that?”
           The music pounds in our heads with the rage of a tiger. Or of Star currently.
           We are silent.
           Miles stares at Star coolly.
           She does not meet his eyes. She is afraid of him.
           How strange.
           But we are spared the indignity of the cannonballs of Miles and Star’s intimacy, due to the arrival of one other battleship under full sail: Principal Greenley.
           Star’s face regains its usual character, its easy grace and confidence. Principals and their administrative implications are something she can handle. Like a cat to a reckless mouse.
           “You better get out of here,” Miles says, with no hint of emotion.
           Though I am, frankly, terrified.
           Star blows him a horrible, sarcastic kiss and melts into the crowd.
           I start to follow.
           Miles’ voice, however, keeps me on a short if pleasant leash.
           There are a few things you should know about Miles Creighton.
           Every girl in school loves him.
           (Including me.)
           He loves Star.
           And it’s all very Greek tragedy. Russian, maybe.
           If you know what I mean.
           You wonder, as the idiotically-in-love teenage mind tends to do, if Star ever actually felt any affection for him. Dating him certainly earned her a spotlight.
           Sometimes it’s hard to convince myself that’s not the only thing she’s after. The spotlight.
           “Hey, Lourdes, where are you going?” His words are soft, contrastingly poetic to the inarticulate thunder bombarding us. “No one’s after you.”
           Except for you, Miles. Apparently.
           But I refuse to believe.
           “No, but I…”
           “Oh come on.” The music abruptly switches gear, as Miles’ coaxing becomes gentler.
           We’re now cocooned in lullaby-like marimbas.
           “Dance with me for a while, Lourdes,” he cajoles sweetly.
           Beguiling. But Star must be waiting…
           “Everyone else is dancing.” His eyes are so round, so imploring. “First slow song in half an hour.”
           Convenient.
           I hesitate.
           I don’t trust convenient coincidences. As the one Miles just cited. Fate is too tricky that way.
           One is wise to be suspicious.
           I think.
           But Fate has me ensnared this time, the crafty beast. Who am I to say no to Miles?
           The most popular boy in school?
           Whom we’ve all lusted after since kindergarten?
           I look back at the mob; I can’t find Star. She’s long since blurred in.
           Star may be a conspicuous rose among monotonous thorns, but she is extremely capable of camouflage.
           I don’t why, but this suddenly strikes me as dangerous.
           This thought flies past swiftly, an arrow that has grazed me.
           I turn back to Miles’ beckoning smile.
           “One dance…” I begin, attempting impatience. Failing.
           Miles puts his arms around me, appropriately, feigning the propriety he doesn’t possess an ounce of.
           His satisfaction radiates from him, waves of heat from this charismatic sun.
           He knows he has won.
           Routed me, in fact.
           I’m impossibly aware of his body, his scent. It’s cologne it’s not him, but it’s so, so intoxicating.
           Which, incidentally, is exactly why he wears it.
           One could swear that boys like him possess some kind of prescience. How is it he could have planned this moment so perfectly, so precisely, so that every factor would lure me into this mousetrap?
           Deceiving girls, I’ve discovered, can sometimes be accomplished with something more accessible and considerably less expensive than cheese.
           “Nice song, isn’t it?”
           I wish for Austen-esque detachment.
           I wish for a mask of ice.
           I wish for that ever saving grace, haughtiness.
           I wish I could say, “Quite”, asserting my dissension with positive words and negative tones.
           Instead I get breathlessness.
           Instead I get a too eager half-smile.
           Instead I get flustered, red-faced, and though the keenest eyed among us cannot perceive color in this obscurity, I’m sure Miles can tell.
           And instead I say, “Yeah, it’s great.” Gasp. “Isn’t it?”
           He doesn’t reply; he strains my heartstrings.
           And suddenly I’m swept by the atmosphere: the look in his eyes, the dull roar of the music, the subtle thrill of the idea that I’m defying Star, and the fear all combining to make a mutinous potion as virulent as cyanide.
           The intangibles now constitute a tangible, an inexorable tsunami.
           I taste this feeling carefully; it’s a risky concoction, one I haven’t tried.
           It’s like sushi.
           Is it worth the bacteria?
           But I don’t think of it that way. This is safe, if caloric.
           Peanut-butter pie and milk chocolate, raspberry cheesecake. Petit fours.
           I try not to wonder if, like so many French desserts, this will be too expensive for its sweetness.
           Not worth it?
           But these thoughts catch in my throat.
           I want it.
           Undeniably, inescapably, I want it.
           I want to catch it, like a butterfly in a net.
           I want to define it, like a long word that never is remembered.
           But the butterfly evaporates to mist in my fingers; the words disappear from the page. It’s elusive, it’s delicious, I can’t stand it.
           Miles is grinning.
           He knows.
           Of course.
           What fools we mortals be.