I Can See the Stars

Chapter Two

I did not sleep.

I stayed up all night, going over everything.

Around midnight, I walked out of my mom's trailer. Carefully and quietly so my mom wouldn't hear me. I walked onto our two-foot-wide landing that was in front of our door. I wouldn't even call it a porch. I looked around at the other trailers. Most of them have their lights off but some tenants are still awake.
I walked over to the ladder on the side of the house and started climbing. My hands touching the cold metal bars as I climbed.

When I reached the top, I crawled to the center and looked up at the stars. There weren't many because of how close they were to Chicago. I could only see the brightest. The moon was there too but I didn't care about that. The stars are my favorite. I don't know what about them makes me so interested. I want to be an astronomer one day. It is incredible to me.
I didn't know why my mom kept those photos from me. She had them the whole time. The whole time that I was trying to remember my brother. Anything. His face, his voice, his. . . Anything at all. And she had photos. Ugh! I'm so angry.

Also, the fact that I drew a perfect image my brother out of memory. But I had no memory. It freaked me out. The look on my mom's face when she saw it. It was weird that I didn't realize it before. Of course, I didn't know what he looked like but there were other things. The fact that I recognized him but couldn't name him, the crooked nose that looks exactly like mine and my mother's, and Cora didn't know who he was. Cora moved to our school, to Chicago, the year of the accident. Cora never met Matthew.

I'm thinking about all of this during homeroom. Everything else is normal. I can hear Mackenzie, Jasmine, and Francesca talking about the upcoming Halloween dance, they seem to be talking about their dresses. The computer nerds were probably hacking into government systems or watching inappropriate videos on their phones and laptops. A few nerds were reading and finishing up their homework. They all have normal lives, normal families. Their dads do not live in another state. Their moms do not work over twelve hours a day. Their siblings are not dead. They didn't lose their memories. Hell, Mackenzie, Jasmine, and Francesca were talking about a school dance.

All of the thoughts were too much. I rested my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. My parts of my hair falling around my face. I took one hand off of my face and started twirling a curl in my hair. Just trying to clear my mind. Even if there were tears collecting in her eyes, ready to fall.

"Are you okay?" I jumped, startled by the noise. I look to my left to see Brightly. He looked concerned at my condition. "You look tired."

I probably did. My hair wasn't brushed, I just put it into a messy bun, hoping that it would look okay. I was only wearing mascara and it was very light. My eyes had bags.

"Didn't I tell you yesterday? You aren't supposed to talk to me, it's a rule. Yesterday was mandatory." I pushed the frizzy strands of my hair that sprung out from my bun out of my face, blinked my tears away, and exhaled. Then I started picking the skin from around my fingernails. "Leave me alone." My finger started to bleed.

"Yeah, well, I'm a rule breaker." He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair. He wore a crooked smile. His eyes spotted my bleeding finger. "And how 'bout you stop with that." He tried to separate my hands but I pulled them away.

"It is nothing that colludes with you." I opened my sketchbook and started sketching a new person.

"Why won't you let me have a conversation with you? Like, I'm trying to be your friend. Why won't you let that happen?"

I shut my eyes, trying to compose my anger. I slammed my sketchbook shut, making people look in our direction, and looked at Brightly. "I do not need you to be my friend. You are just going to leave once you find better friends. And I don't need any other drama in my life. So, leave. Me. Alone."

He let out a laugh under his breath. "Can I at least get your number?"

"My number? You want my phone number? Why?"

"Well, maybe you're not as good at predicting the future as you think."

"No," I laughed.

"Come on. Please?"

"No. I will not give you my number in a million years."

I gave him my number. . . Willingly. (Which was what scared me the most. Brightly didn't have to force my hand to write it out.)

After I gave it to him, he got up, clearly happy with his success, and walked over to sit with his jock friends. Right when he sat down with them, Mackenzie walked over and sat next to Brightly again. She actually sat on his seat with him.

And he shoved her off. It was actually quite funny. Only I caught it so when I snickered, Mackenzie spotted me. . . And walked over.
She sat on my desk. With her booty shorts pulled up so high that I could see things that I definitely did not want to see. Her bleach blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail today and—because of the extensions— it reached her waist.

She looked at me with her cake face. "It's Frankie, right?"

I was shocked that she still remembered my name from two years ago. I nodded my head while trying to figure out a way to get her away from me. Her flower perfume was making me suffocate. I hate the smell of flowers.
She leaned close to me. "You may think that it's cute. You know, the whole 'nerd thing'. But Oliver is mine. So back off or else."

"Oh, did he ask for your phone number too?" And then I tilted my desk so she fell off.

"Francis Sue-Ellen Finnegan, would you like to explain to me why you have in-school suspension tomorrow?" My mom slammed the door and raised her eyebrow. "I got a call from your school while I was in the middle of doing something very important. And do you know what they told me? They told me that you shoved a girl off of your desk and broke her ankle."

"Yeah. She was threatening me. And how would I know that her ankle was going to break." I set down my notebook. (I was supposed to be doing my homework in the notebook but I was really just doodling.) I stood up and walked over to my mother who was pacing in our tiny kitchen.

"Ugh, Frankie, It doesn't matter what she was saying. Her parents are threatening to sue us!" My mom stopped pacing and was yelling in my face. "We could lose everything! You do know that, don't you? And then you would have to go live with your father all the way in Indiana while I am homeless back here. And I do not want you to live with a man that you don't even know." She leaned over the sink, trying to calm down.

I didn't think about that. The fact that Mackenzie's parents might sue us. We barely have enough money at all. If the Hawthorne's sue us. . . My life would be for nothing. Mom's right. I would have to live with my dad. The man that I forgot. I have only had one conversation with him since the car crash. It was on the phone, five months after I woke up. He didn't even come to Matthew's funeral.
"Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't know that they could sue us. Will apologizing to Mackenzie help at all? Because I'll do that."

Mom shook her head and walked over to me. She put her hands on my shoulder and smiled at me. "No, sweetie. This isn't your fault. After the accident. . . I have just been pouring myself into my job. I haven't been parenting you as much as I should." She walked over to the fridge and pulled out a beer bottle.

"Come on, mom. You don't need that."

She waved her hand to shush me. "Shut up and go to your room.

And I spent the rest of the night on my roof, watching the stars.