Page 5 of Meet Me in the Stars

“I get it,” I nodded, touching his shoulder, half afraid he’d shatter and scatter through the breeze like the cigarette ash still floating around us. “I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll be the level-headed one.”

“You always were even as a fucking kid,” he laughed, shaking his head.

“Maybe I was born for this role,” I said, trying to sound like Jonah talking to a rowdy crowd of fans. He had such a way of calming everyone down before things got too out of hand. “So, what’s the plan?”

“For today?” Dad asked, rubbing at his forehead.

“For her arrangements,” I said.

“Reading of the will tomorrow. Some sort of brunch at her parents’ house the day after. Then the funeral the next day. That should give everyone time to get in. After the funeral,” he paused for a deep breath, “is her pyre. She doesn’t want to be beneath the ground.”

“No, she wouldn’t want that,” I shook my head, trying not to think of what was left of her burning away. “She loved to be in the sky. She wouldn’t want to be locked in some coffin-den forever. She’d probably joke about if she wanted that she’d have stayed at her parents’ house.”

“That’s funny,” he laughed. “Only, if you can, kiddo, if you can manage ---” he took another deep breath. “Be kind to her parents. Her dad’s sick too and her mother is beside herself.”

“They never did anything to me. It was—” I decided it wasn’t important who did what to me.

“I know. My parents. We should’ve told you she was sick.”

“Is that what was really going on?” I asked him and he nodded.

“You’ll hear more, I bet,” he pushed himself upright on wobbly knees as if he hadn’t stood up in a long time. “She made a video for her will reading. Didn’t trust anyone else to do it justice.”

“That’s Mama Lotus for you,” I nodded. “Do you need help?”

“No, I just gotta stretch them out I think,” Dad said, looking older than I’d ever seen him before.

My inner beast howled, and the sound bounced around my skull, but I didn’t let it out. I wanted to beg him to get it together and not follow her through her door. I couldn’t handle it. Teddy and the others couldn’t handle it.

“I’m not dying,” he said, picking up my thoughts over our family link. “I just haven’t stood up since she died. It was choosing between burning down London and becoming a stone. London’s been burnt down enough recently, don’t you think?”

I didn’t say anything. I thought once was too much, but London had a history of burning and it would probably burn again because everyone was an asshole. I leaned against the balcony railing and looked down at the swing set and slide we played on as kids. I could almost feel Lotus’s hands on my little self’s back pushing me on the swing as I shouted ‘higher’ and pumped my legs. I swallowed hard. Other people had more right to feel all of this. So, I pushed it down. After I got Dad, Teddy, and the others through all this I’d grieve back home. Hell, maybe I’d go stay with my parents for a few weeks. They were all beside themselves too. Hell, even Uncle Lee. Poor Uncle Lee.

“Don’t,” Dad shook his head. “Don’t start playing that game. No one has any more right to grieve her than anyone else. Don’t think for a moment she loved you less than she loved those egg brats. She didn’t. The situation was just difficult with our families scattered so far apart.”

I turned around and hugged him because now wasn’t the time to talk about anything too deep. The years behind us were behind us and would never circle around in front of us again. They were gone. Time only runs in one direction. All we could do was try to make the years and days in front of us better than those behind us. Though, I didn’t see how any of us would do that with how dead Lotus was. Dead is dead, but somehow standing on that balcony she seemed impossibly dead – like more dead than the other dead people.

Dad hugged me tight and I rested my forehead on his shoulder despite how much he smelled like an ashtray. If Syre was dead all of Heartville would smell like a fucking ashtray. He was doing the best he could.

Chapter Three

Fred Moonscale

My mother-in-law alongside Medwin Moonscale had the reading of the will catered. It was a small event. Her parents, me, the kids, Lee and Blake, and everyone’s true-mate who had one. Everyone’s true-mate was there except for mine. I swallowed hard. It felt like a ball of fire lodged itself behind my tonsils and refused to go down. The others were at the snack table grazing while we awaited the attorney’s arrival.

I sat down in an armchair, front and center. My eyes drifted closed as I thought of her. Lotus. Her name echoed around my skull as her image came into my mind. So much blonde hair and always smiling. I could almost feel her hands drifting over mine. She’d tell me that her mom had them make those fancy steak-style pigs in a blanket that I liked so much. She’d tell me to eat some of them. Only, I wasn’t getting up ever again. I’d sit right here and remember her forever or at least as long as they let me. I missed the cigarettes from the balcony. With them I could think with my eyes open. Relik had indeed brought me ‘good’ pot, but I hadn’t touched it. I didn’t want to miss a single moment of laying my little flower to rest. She deserved my full attention now more than ever.

“Hey,” Teddy’s voice drifted into my ear from the right side as he sat down. “I brought you some of those fancy pigs.”

A plate found its way into my hand, and I opened my eyes to stare down at them. He arranged them the way his mother always had with the food surrounding the fancy mustard that I could never remember the name of in the middle.

“It’s sesame mustard,” Teddy said as if hearing my thoughts.

Hell, maybe he did over the family link. It was hard to tell anything about the links right now. They were weighed down by her passing. No one could believe Lotus was dead. Wasn’t she too much of a spitfire to die? If only being stubborn kept you alive. No one on the Moonscale Flight link would ever die.

“Dad, you have to eat,” Teddy said.

“Eat up,” Duke said, sitting down on the other side of me. “Here.”

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