Starworld Read online

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Zoe

  Sam

  Epilogue — Zoe

  Acknowledgments

  Resources

  If I have a superpower, it’s invisibility.

  Like the perpetually overcast skies of Portland in winter, I’m part of the background — a robot with a disappearance drive, the dullness against which everyone else shines. My nondescript jeans and hoodies, along with the absence of any observable personality, allow me to slip through entire days with negligible human interaction.

  With the power of invisibility comes the freedom to daydream, which is useful because I’ve never been a fan of reality.

  Reality overflows with unanswerable questions:

  How many colors does it take to properly render a nebula?

  Why do people like having televisions on in the background?

  Would my mom be more or less tolerable in a gravity-free environment?

  Thinking of the world in terms of fantasy is sometimes the only thing that helps me survive. Homework is the paperwork that keeps my kingdom running. Puddles that soak my shoes could be portals to other dimensions. The legions of people who overlook me in this hellpit, better known as high school, are trolls to be dodged or ghosts to slip between.

  It’s barely a month into senior year and I’ve already built a fortress of enormous canvases in the back of the art classroom, staking out a corner that makes the most of the weakening natural light as fall edges toward winter. There isn’t much of a view through the windows — just the greenway that hugs the south side of the school heading back toward the football fields. I have the perfect vantage from which to see the occasional stoner or handsy couple heading into the woods when they’re supposed to be in class. Sometimes I spin stories in my head of what their lives might be like, knowing only that they’re nothing like mine.

  As usual, the art room is populated with a mix of dedicated artists and people just looking for easy As, all of whom are happy to treat me like a piece of furniture. I swirl oil paints together on my palette, waiting for just the right shade of indigo to develop as I mull over some equations I’m certain will be on the AP Physics quiz later. Lost in a mix of math and pigments, I nearly crap a clutch of flaming dragon eggs when an unfamiliar voice behind me softly says, “Oh god, this is perfect!”

  I swivel around on my stool only to be shocked immobile by the girl standing in front of me. Her wavy dark-brown hair cascades over a sweater the color of seafoam, and a little star pendant rests between her collarbones.

  Zoe Miller spoke to me. I’ve clearly entered a parallel dimension.

  Unfortunately, there are no nearby supply closets in which to hide from the inevitable shame I’m about to bring upon myself if I try to respond. With my brain short-circuiting as I try to determine why she’s talking to me, my eyes drift slowly down until I’m staring her right in the high beams. And when I realize what I’m doing, heat rises into my cheeks until I’m sure they’re a shade best used to paint the ass of a fire truck.

  “This is amazing, Sam!”

  I force myself to meet her gaze, staring back with the poleaxed expression of a dead fish. Her eyes are an impossible shade between green and blue, dark around the edges and fading into a hint of unexpected bronze near the pupils.

  It seems highly unlikely that Zoe would know my name. This is the girl with a transcendent voice who made half the assembly cry with a song from Les Mis in middle school, the girl pretty enough to coast on her looks but whose name regularly appears on the high honor roll, the girl at least half the school worships from afar. Thankfully, unlike those dickhats, I’m immune to the senseless adulation of beautiful people — largely because, with the exception of my best friend, Will, I mostly like to pretend other humans don’t exist.

  “This landscape is so surreal,” she says, pointing to a finished canvas, seemingly not bothered by my corpselike response. “And the light! It’s amazing.”

  I turn to the painting she’s talking about. It’s one of my smaller ones, about three feet by four, a landscape that kind of looks like the deranged product of a mind meld between Paul Nash and Bob Ross.

  She gestures to another painting of a dragon playfully rolling on the grass in front of a castle, the background bedazzled with enough color and glitter to outfit ten marching bands. “This is yours, too? It’s so different. It reminds me of a fairy tale I loved when I was little.” She smiles at me.

  Even though I continue to respond to her compliments with silence and twitchy blinking, she soldiers on.

  “Is there any chance you’d consider letting me borrow the landscape? I’m helping with the set design for STOTS, and it’s perfect for this year’s play.” She tosses her dark hair over her shoulder, and a wave of subtle perfume hits me. It may be a rainy fall day in Portland, but the girl smells like pure summer — sunshine and citrus and verdant things.

  “What’s STOTS?” I finally manage. They must be putting on an awfully strange play for one of my paintings to make sense as part of the set.

  She tilts her head at me, as if she’s surprised that this isn’t common knowledge, which, for all I know, it might be. “Student theater? It stands for Students Take Over the Stage. In the fall we do a show that’s completely written, designed, and directed by students, with no teacher supervision. Well, theoretically, anyway.” Her expression confuses me. It’s warm and kind of conspiratorial — as if she knows me or likes me or something. I feel vaguely hypnotized, which makes me think it’d be wise to flee this situation at Mach 10.

  “I don’t know,” I mumble. Something on display means visibility — the last thing I want this close to freedom. It’s finally senior year, and I’m certain my goal of never gracing the pages of the yearbook is within reach.

  “We’d be super careful with it,” she says. “Everything gets locked up at night.” She turns to look at the landscape again, her expression filled with something that looks strangely like admiration or wonder. “It’s just so perfect for this play.” She raises her graceful eyebrows in a hopeful expression.

  The stool squeaks as I shift my weight uneasily. I’m not sure how to respond but am increasingly uncomfortable with the intensity in her eyes. No animal, vegetable, or mineral has ever looked at me like this in the history of my entire life.

  “I’m not sure,” I say, which is at least marginally better than wow you smell good please go away but maybe let me sniff your hair first.

  She nods, but I can tell she’s disappointed. “Would you at least think about it?” She gives me a smile that makes me feel like my stomach is full of rocket fuel and I just swallowed a match. “Can I give you my number, and you can let me know if you change your mind?”

  I pull my phone out of my messenger bag and hand it to Zoe, wondering how I fell into this alternate reality. Five minutes ago, this girl giving me her phone number was as improbable as Pegasus flying me to the moon. I peer around the canvas I was working on until Zoe interrupted me. The rest of the class is somehow completely oblivious to the rupture in the space-time continuum that made this exchange possible.

  “Okay if I text myself from your phone so I have your number, too?” she says. “Not that I’m going to keep bugging you.” But she glances up as she says the last part, a tiny mischievous smile on her face that fries my few remaining circuits. I nod weakly.

  “Thanks,” I manage to say as she gives my phone back.

  “See you later,” she say
s, and walks off, leaving me gawking after her.

  Will is going to lose his mind when I tell him about this. His mom made him take choir freshman year, and Zoe was one of the star singers — he had a hopeless crush on her that he wouldn’t shut up about all of fall semester. Thankfully he came to his senses by Christmas, because no one in our social cesspool could ever hope to get a date with her.

  In my haste to clean up and get to AP Physics in time to text him before class, I drop my dirty paintbrushes on the floor, ensuring my lateness unless I run. I make a mad dash through the crowded halls and text Will as soon as I take my seat in class.

  You are not going to believe who just gave me her phone number.

  He immediately responds: Jyn Erso? Princess Peach? Diana Prince?

  I roll my eyes. Granted, any of those is about as realistic.

  Me: Zoe Miller.

  Will: Are you ducking with me?

  I keep telling him to fix his phone so autocorrect won’t make him constantly talk about ducks, but he thinks it’s funny. Now quack has become our code word for times when profanity is best avoided.

  Me: Nope. No quackery.

  The bell rings and I shove my phone into my messenger bag. He’s going to have to live with the suspense of not finding out the details until physics is over.

  I try to focus on the problems in front of me, but my mind keeps dredging up Zoe Miller: arching eyebrows, seafoam sweater, my humaning failure, her perfect hair. Now that she’s gotten within a few feet of me, I can see (or smell) why Will was smitten with her. Instead of launching into my explanation of Newtonian mechanics, I sketch a rocket propulsion system in the margin of my paper to try to get my head back in the game.

  “Miss Jones,” Mr. Sherman barks as he paces past my desk.

  I startle, then hunch lower over my desk. His tolerance of anything resembling daydreaming is on par with the hospitality Satan would offer a snowman.

  I abandon the shading on my combustion chamber and start filling in the answers to the questions. I can’t afford to get any negative attention from teachers. Flying under the radar with the highest possible GPA is my one-way ticket to an aerospace engineering program at a decent college somewhere — anywhere — that isn’t here.

  After class I pull out my phone as I let the flow of foot traffic guide me toward my locker and ultimately the hellpit’s exit. Will’s texted me half a dozen times.

  Zoe Miller???? For real?

  How the duck did you get her attention?

  You better not be making this up.

  WTF is going on?

  WHY CAN’T YOU TEXT ME BACK IN CLASS LIKE A NORMAL PERSON?

  He gave up about halfway through last period, but I’m sure he still checked his phone under his desk every five seconds.

  I type: I’m not a normal person. I’m a robot.

  He writes: EXPLAIN YOURSELF, ANDROID.

  Everyone is grabbing coats from their lockers and pulling their hoods up before they head out into the afternoon. I glance out the window. The pickup area out front is a blur of yellow school buses against the tall evergreens thanks to the raindrops collecting on the glass. I forgot my raincoat this morning, and the walk home will be just long enough to drench me completely. The bus isn’t an option — spending ten minutes in an equally enclosed space full of space cockroaches would be preferable to enduring a bus mostly full of freshmen.

  Me: Can you give me a ride home? I’ll explain on the way there.

  Will: What’s in it for me?

  I lean against my locker and roll my eyes. Our usual bargaining has taken a turn for the hardcore in the past two weeks thanks to his repeated attempts to get me to part with some paladin armor he’s been lusting after and can’t beat the side quest for in our current favorite game. No doubt he either wants that or for me to play meat shield in some stupid first-person shooter.

  Me: First-person shooters this weekend. 2 hours without complaints.

  Will: DEAL.

  I open my locker, revealing a collage of rockets, shuttles, satellites, probes, and rovers designed all over the world. By the time I’m done shoveling books from my locker into my bag, it weighs as much as an adolescent hippo. I slam the locker shut, then look at my phone again.

  Will: Is it cool with you if we stop by the comics store on the way?

  Why? I text back.

  Will: Kitty got a part-time job there . . .

  If I were still sitting at a desk, I’d bang my head against it. Kitty always regards Will with the hungry gaze of a velociraptor, and he looks back at her with bloaty heart-eyes, yet he still can’t seem to ask her out. Personally, I think she smells kind of like canned green beans, but to each his own.

  Me: I guess so. But I have to be home before 5, and I’m docking half an hour from the first-person shooter deal.

  If he’s going to spend my time trying to grow big enough cojones to ask Kitty out, I’m setting a time limit on it.

  Will: Cool. I’m in the car now.

  I scurry out the front doors of the school and make a dash for the senior parking lot, where Will’s ancient Subaru hatchback is idling with the subtlety of a jackhammer. It’s a miracle the thing still runs.

  “Your chariot, my lady,” Will says as he opens the passenger door from the driver’s side with one of his freakishly long arms. The hinges creak ominously, just as one would expect for a vehicle that’s twice our age and looks like something salvaged from the set of a horror movie.

  “Debrief me on Zoe Miller,” he says before I even find the sweet spot in the seat where there aren’t any springs digging into my butt.

  I explain what happened in art class as he pulls out of the parking lot.

  “I wonder why she’s working behind the scenes instead of in the show,” Will says. “She usually has a leading role.”

  I shrug. “All I know is what she told me.” I don’t really pay attention to anything happening at school other than what’s necessary to get good grades.

  “So why don’t you just do it?” he asks. “They’ll probably put your name in the play program. That’d be cool. And maybe you could put it on your college applications to make you look more well-rounded. Schools love that stuff.”

  “It’s not like I’d be in the play.”

  He shrugs. “It’s even better. You get credit for involvement without ever having to show your face. You should text her now.”

  “Ugh,” I say, my stomach churning at the thought. But Will has a good point about college applications, which I’ve already been working on. My grades are good, but the essays are more challenging. What am I supposed to say when I have no life outside of school and gaming with Will? I have about as much interest in extracurriculars as I do in licking the inside of a trash can.

  I pull out my phone and scroll down to the bottom of my paltry list of contacts, half expecting Zoe not to be there. My stomach flutters in an unfamiliar way as I reach her name and remember her eyes. It makes my head hurt thinking about all the colors I’d need to paint them. Even her eyebrows have the kind of long, sweeping arch that begs to be drawn. I’m not sure I’m ready to agree to my painting being put on display in such a public place, but I sort of want to talk to her for some masochistic reason. People sometimes notice my paintings, sure. But they don’t look at me the way she did this afternoon. Even though it scared me, I want it to happen again.

  “I don’t know what to say to her,” I say.

  “Might I suggest, ‘Sure, you can use my painting for the play if you go to coffee with my adorable friend Will’?” He grins impishly. “Even ten minutes with one of the most unattainable girls at school would certainly up my social standing.”

  “No way. She has a boyfriend,” I say. I’ve often seen her holding hands with Hunter, a basketball player who is part of a social echelon neither Will nor I could ever hope to reach unless gravity underwent a sudden reversal. And even if Hunter were out of the picture, Zoe probably has no shortage of willing suitors. Competition for a girl like
her is undoubtedly stiff — in every sense of the word.

  “Alas, my princess must be in another castle,” Will quips.

  “Yeah, the comics shop,” I mutter, chucking my phone back in my bag. I can’t do it.

  I’m spared from having to think about Zoe further as Will launches into a list of Kitty’s virtues that he’s clearly spent far too many hours developing.

  “Why don’t you just ask her out already?” I say when he finally takes a breath.

  “I’m not sure she likes me as more than a friend.”

  I snort. “Get your eyes checked — she wants to climb you like a utility pole. You should go for it.” Just because I don’t see the appeal doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be happy.

  “You think so?” He’s all smiles now.

  “It makes more sense than stalking her like a creeper,” I say. We’ve had this conversation approximately five hundred times since the beginning of our junior year when she moved from California to Oregon and immediately fell in with his group of friends. I don’t understand how his optimism and boneheaded recalcitrance to actually do anything go together so comfortably.

  “Maybe,” he says, running a hand through his tousled brown hair.

  When we arrive at the comics shop, all six and a half feet of Will goes flying out of the car with the eagerness of a gawky puppy. I leave my messenger bag in the car and follow him, manually locking the passenger door since the electric door locks died sometime in the Mesozoic era. The sign above the comic book store reads AWESOMESAUCE COMICS in a neon-green typeface. The smell of freshly baked cookies wafts over me from the place next door, Karen’s Kookies. I grimace at the sign. Why businesses feel the need to abuse the English language in order to stand out has never made any sense to me. It’s the marketing equivalent of a taxidermist stapling a dead squirrel to his face to advertise his services: a unique idea, but not one that’s likely to give customers faith in anything besides the proprietor’s stupidity.

  We walk into the shop and hardly anyone is in the place. A couple of middle school boys are trying to get their dad to buy them plastic light sabers, and a bored, stoned-looking dude with ragged facial hair and gauged ears watches them from behind the counter.