Chasing Stardust: A Novel By Erica Lucke Dean - 4

Wild Is the Wind

The Betty has at least ninety-nine problems, but the prehistoric 8-track player isn’t one. The clear blue sky and miles of black pavement inspire me to roll down the windows and blast vintage Bowie from the speakers. Somehow it seems appropriate. Pushing the speedometer needle toward seventy-five, I belt out “Rebel Rebel”—the only song I know all the words to.

More than once, Damian’s face flashes across my iPhone display, and each time, I hit the big red eff-you button. I’m nowhere near ready to deal with him. I have no desire to hear him complain about how my life choices affect him. That doesn’t stop his cheesy grin and dark eyes from getting under my skin. But with every mile I put between us, the easier it gets to breathe. Maybe Jeanie’s right. Maybe it’s time to give Damian his walking papers.

“What now, Mom? Am I doing the right thing here?”

I can’t help wondering what she’d make of my solo trek across the country. Or my joke of a love life. God, it isn’t even the whole joke, just the punch line. What I wouldn’t give to hear her voice again. She always said exactly what I needed at any given moment.

“ Are you sure you wouldn’t rather join the theater club? ” Worry stained her voice, and her mouth twisted into a lopsided bow as she gnawed on her bottom lip the way she always did when I was about to take the field.

We were standing at the bottom of the stands, just before the homecoming game junior year. My first year as the top of the pyramid, and the first time Damian paid me any attention. I was a tangled knot of anxiety, but Mom should’ve been thrilled. It was everything she’d ever wanted for me. So why did it seem like she wanted me to quit?

“Like Jeanie? No thanks.” I pulled my laces tight and stood, tugging my pleated skirt over my spankies. “You did cheer. You said it was the most fun you ever had.”

“No. I said it helped shape who I am.” She handed me my blue-and-gold poms, then gave me a crushing one-armed hug.

“Same thing.”

With a dry laugh, she tucked a lock of my dark-blond hair behind my ear. “Not really.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna be just like you, remember?”

“As long as you don’t end up like your grandmother,” Mom muttered, her smile faltering.

“Never gonna happen.” With a laugh and a wave, I turned and bolted toward the rest of the squad as the marching band played the school fight song and the crowd roared.

A horn blares behind me, startling me back to the present. I dry the tears collecting at the corner of my mouth with my shoulder. Mom may not be here, but something tells me she’d say it was time to suck it up and get this over with.

I hit the automatic redial and put the call on speaker.

“Hey, babe,” Damian purrs into the phone, using his smooth John Legend voice. “You just now rolling outta bed?”

A twinge of guilt pierces my chest. “Actually . . .”

Before I can get the rest of the sentence out, a minivan full of kids cuts me off, and I swear under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Damian asks. “You sound stressed.”

Understatement. “I’m, uh, on the interstate heading toward Ohio.”

“Ohio?”

A loud noise clatters through the line, making me jump.

“Hold up, I thought you said you couldn’t go because your sister fell off the roof?”

“No.” I choose my words carefully, making sure he comprehends what I’m saying this time. “What I said was my sister fell off the roof so she couldn’t go.”

“Ah, okay.” He snickers under his breath. “Stuck with your crazy grandma all week?”

“Uh . . . not exactly.” Come on, Zoey, grow a pair and spit it out. “My grandma stayed home to help Jeanie, and—”

“Who’s driving you to Cleveland?” Damian’s voice turns icy.

My stomach clenches, and I clear my throat. “Me?”

“Nice one.” He laughs. “For real, who’s driving?”

“I’m not kidding.” It takes every drop of willpower to tamp down the moral outrage. “I decided to go on my own.”

“What the hell, Zoey?” Damian shouts. “You can barely drive!”

“That’s not true!” As if making his point for him, I slide in front of a Prius, barely missing their bumper. “I can drive.”

Damian snorts. “My eighty-three-year-old great-grandpa can drive. He also drove his car straight into the Tastee Freez last August. Thought he was pulling into the drive-through window. Unfortunately for him, they don’t have a drive-through window.”

“I’m not your grandpa, and I’m not gonna drive into a Dairy Queen.”

“Tastee Freez.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

“Listen, Zo.” He switches to his I-have-two-years-of-college-under-my-belt-so-I-know-best voice. “It’s early. You couldn’t have made it to the state line yet, so it’s not too late to turn around.”

“No. You listen.” Tears of frustration burn my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. He’s made me doubt myself for the last time. “I’m not turning back. If that’s not okay with you, then break up with me. Otherwise, get over it.”

“I don’t wanna break up, I just want—”

The asshole in the car behind me lays on his horn.

“I gotta go.” I swipe at the traitorous tear rolling down my cheek. “I’ll call you when I get to Memphis.”

“Zo, wait!”

I hang up and toss my phone into my tote where I won’t hear it if he calls back, then crank up “Rebel Rebel” again.

A few hours, one pit stop, and several 8-track changes later, I reach the Cleveland city limits. With my legs sticking to the cracked vinyl seat and my pulse jumping, I exit the interstate at East Ninth. My sweaty palms make gripping the steering wheel almost impossible as I navigate the dense traffic. Even the voice on my GPS sounds nervous as she guides me past the baseball stadium and through the city toward the Music Hall at the Public Auditorium.

I loop the square several times before finally landing a parking spot a few blocks away. Then, using the faded Polaroid I lifted from Mom’s diary as a guide, I set off on foot.

Jeanie wasn’t kidding about the heat. At barely ten thirty, it’s already close to eighty degrees. An unappetizing combination of sizzling hot dogs and sulfur from the nearby steelyard wafts through the air. And for a Wednesday morning, the park is packed with an odd assortment of people. Between the babies, the old people, and the underlying stench, it’s as if I’ve wandered into a diaper ad.

A pair of businessmen in starched suits eye the silver urn poking out of my tote but don’t say anything. Then a group of shirtless guys pauses their game of Frisbee to stare at me as I wander toward the fountain in the picture, but I don’t let their unspoken questions distract me from my mission. I keep moving, eyes locked on the statue in the distance. Perched on top of his orb in the center of the fountain, the tarnished bronze man appears to be climbing out of a sea of fire, reaching toward the sky like a shimmering green merman.

By the time I reach the Fountain of Eternal Life, my nerves are live wires, sparking and snapping with electricity. Everything looks exactly as it does in the photo, giving me the weirdest sense of déjà vu. I can almost see Mom sitting on the polished granite rim of the shallow pool with the imposing statue looming behind her, her blond hair whipping in the breeze.

With Mom’s smile sparkling in my mind’s eye, I pull out her diary and flip to the page titled “Cleveland.”

June 1992

It rained all week, the heavy kind that drenches you to the bone the second you step outside. Grammy Jane said the powers that be knew something was up. Three days later, the sun came out. Not even an hour after that, Mom pulled into the driveway in her god-awful yellow Cutlass after almost six months of zero contact, saying it was time I knew the truth. Maybe I should’ve told her to turn back around. But for some reason, the mischief in her eyes sucked me in. Now here I am, in Cleveland, right outside the first place Bowie played in the US, and I swear I have more in common with the damned marble guy in the fountain.

This is it. The thought hits me like a lightning bolt. This is where I need to spread Mom’s ashes.

After setting my bag in front of the fountain, I pull out my phone to take the pictures I promised Jeanie. But before I can snap even one, a guy whistles at me.

“Hey, girlie! You can’t get a good shot that close up.” The guy jogs toward me. He doesn’t look much older than me, but he’s dressed like someone’s grandpa, wearing faded navy Dockers with splotchy bleach stains from the pockets to the knees, and a blue-checked, short-sleeved button-down shirt. Sweat beads on his forehead as he reaches a hand toward my phone. “Here, let me.”

Instinct tells me I should back away, but his wide smile and perfect white teeth draw me in.

I hand him my phone. “You press the circle—”

He laughs and backs up a few feet. “I know how to operate an iPhone. Smile pretty, now.”

With a cautious glance over my shoulder, I climb onto the rim of the fountain and position myself exactly where my mom stood thirty years ago. A slight gust blows my hair from my face, and my stomach flutters as if sensing her with me.

Are you here, Mom?

The man snaps a few shots, then hands me my phone.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“You are most welcome. It was my pleasure.” He overexaggerates his diction, speaking with an accent I can’t place—a weird cross between British and French—but his English is perfect.

I expect him to jog back in the direction he came, but he sticks around and watches the clouds slide by as I shove my phone into my back pocket.

“What brings you to the city today?” He tears his face from the sky and eyes the silver urn jutting out of my bag.

“Uh . . .” For reasons I can’t quite comprehend, I tell the truth. “I’m here to spread my mom’s ashes.”

“Ah.” He nods, dropping his dark eyes to his beat-up leather shoes. “Sad day, then.”

“Yes. Very.”

He peers around me, as if expecting an army to descend at any moment. “Where is your family?”

I twist a strand of hair around my finger, then let it drop. “They, uh, couldn’t be here.”

“Then I’ll stay with you. So you won’t be alone.” He sits on the edge of the fountain beside me, folding his hands in his lap.

“You don’t have to do that.” Damian’s disappointed face flickers in the back of my mind. I can imagine what he’d say about me hanging out in the park with a total stranger.

The man flashes a friendly smile. “I know.”

Shoving Damian out of my thoughts, I smile back and pull Mom’s urn from my bag. After twisting off the lid, I sink my fingers into the coarse sand. With a shudder, I quickly pull them back out again. “I’ve never done this before.”

He winks. “Neither have I.”

“I’m Zoey, by the way.” I shift the urn to my other arm and hold out my clean hand.

“Nice to meet you, Zoey.” He shakes my hand. “My friends call me Junior.”

“Nice to meet you, Junior.” Something about Junior’s open smile puts me at ease. I plunge a hand into the urn again and tighten my grip on a fistful of sand, slowly drawing it from the jar. “Should I say something? A prayer maybe?”

Junior gently squeezes my shoulder. “God knows your heart.”

I nod and face the fountain, closing my eyes as I raise my hand, ready to release Mom into the air. “I love you, Mom.”

One at a time, I open my fingers . . . just as the wind shifts. The light gust blows the ash back into my face, and I gasp, inhaling the tiny particulates.

Air whistles in and out of my lungs as I struggle to breathe. “Are you kidding me right now? What in the actual hell, Mom?”

My nose and throat burn, and every time I think I have a handle on the coughing fit, I inhale and it starts all over again. Oh my God! I totally snorted my mom, and she smells kinda like Sour Diesel.

I wipe my tongue on the bottom of my shirt, but even that’s covered in a layer of ash. Why is it so . . . salty? The briny taste sets off my gag reflex, and my breakfast climbs up my throat. “Holy shit, I think I swallowed . . . oh God. I need water.”

Panicking, I scramble over the edge of the fountain like a rabid squirrel and stick my face in the pool. After thoroughly rinsing my mouth without swallowing, I plop down on the rim to catch my breath.

“I really hope I don’t die from E. coli. I blame my mother for this. She’s the one who wanted her ashes spread.”

Beside me, Junior’s laughter slowly dies down as he wipes a layer of gray dust from his face. “Your mother, she has a good sense of humor, no?”

“No.” I toss an icy glare skyward. Water drips down my nose and chin, soaking the front of my thin white T-shirt until it’s practically see-through. “She has a shitty sense of humor.”

A stern woman marches toward us, wagging her finger at me. “Can’t you read? No swimming in the fountain!”

“I wasn’t swimming, I was spreading my mom’s ashes and the wind—”

The woman’s eyes go straight to Mom’s urn.

“ Human ashes? In the park? You can’t do that!” Her voice inches its way up the scale until dogs from miles around can hear her. “I’m calling security.”

“Uh.” A fleeting desire to pitch a fistful of ashes into the lady’s face grips me, but I shake it off. “That’s my cue. I need to go.” Without another word, I screw the top onto the urn and shove it into my bag. Slinging my tote over my shoulder, I make a break for it. “Thanks for your help, Junior.”

With one last wave, I leave my new friend to face the music and sprint all the way back to the car. With Cleveland safely in my rearview, I set off for Memphis, hoping I don’t end up eating Mom’s ashes at the next stop.