In the Stars Read online

  Chapter Five

  I have so many different scenarios running through my mind that I hardly sleep all night. There are the not-so-good ones (as in, Drew is at his mom’s house and answers the door with a baby on his hip) and the amazing ones (like where Drew’s mom tells me that Drew has loved me ever since we broke up, no other girl has ever quite compared to me and she’s going to phone him right now and let him know that I’m here.)

  I wake up at eight and shower. I spend the morning watching the Disney channel as though I were a five year old child again, and take a long walk around Prince’s Island Park shortly after lunch. When I get back to the apartment, I begin getting myself presentable. Twenty outfits later, and I’m ready to go. Minimal makeup, hair straightened so it rests about an inch above my shoulders, acid-washed blue jeans, a nice looking t-shirt with plain, black flats to complete the ensemble. I think it works.

  Heather comes out of her bedroom. “You look pretty, Charley.”

  “Do I look good enough that he’ll think ‘Wow, it was a mistake to dump her, I must get her back!’?”

  I meant it as a joke, sort of, but Heather pauses and looks at me again. “You look thin. Your hair is shorter than when he knew you, which makes you seem mature. Yeah, I’d say you look good.”

  Mature? Apparently she doesn’t know how I spent my morning. I swallow hard. “Okay, well, I’m ready when you are.”

  Heather grabs her purse and we hurry out the door. I lock it while Heather holds the door to the stairwell. From the lobby we go to the outdoor parking lot behind the building. We live in a three-story building, one that used to be a house but the owners renovated it a few years ago and divided it up into six apartments. It is about ten minutes from downtown, just across the Bow River and down the hill from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Our neighbors are mainly college kids with a few young working professionals thrown in. It’s not the classiest of places, and we all have to share a laundry room but for what we pay, and considering it’s so close to downtown, I love it.

  I scowl at my car, which we pass in order to get into Heather’s. “I still can’t believe I need a new transmission.” I mutter and open the passenger side door to Heather’s Civic.

  “You have had a burst of bad luck lately,” Heather admits, starting the engine and pulling out of the stall. “You didn’t walk under a ladder or anything, did you?” Her words are overly sarcastic, but I choose to ignore that. Heather doesn’t believe in luck. She says that fate is nothing more than a lazy man’s desire to blame someone else for their flaws. I, however, know that some things happen the way the universe wants, regardless of how hard someone tries otherwise.

  “You mock, but right before Drew broke up with me, I dropped a pair of scissors on the floor. Everyone knows if you drop scissors, your love life is doomed.”

  Heather rolls her eyes and turns the radio music up three notches louder. “You’re certifiable, you know.”

  I lean back and put my knees on the dash with my legs hanging down. “This is fun, getting away with you for a weekend trip. We haven’t done anything like this in such a long time.”

  “Well, you’ve been pretty busy the last few years. Law school and then articling took up so much time.” At least Heather doesn’t make it seem like a bad thing, the way my mom does. She’s still aggravated that I forgot to call my brother on his birthday two years ago.

  “I don’t know how I survived it,” I admit. My thoughts turn melancholy as I reminisce. “I slept in the law library some nights. I would study so late that often I’d fall asleep into my case book. It was a toss-up whether a security guard or the janitor would wake me up and send me packing.”

  Heather merges onto Deerfoot Trail and accelerates. She looks relaxed when she drives, with her forehead smooth and her shoulders sinking deep into the seat, that you would never guess that she has an accident record a mile long and ten or eleven speeding tickets. I stare out the window for a few minutes in silence. I watch the city rush by, everything turning green with springtime and new beginnings.

  The opening bars of Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys begin on the radio station and for the first time ever, I listen to the words and mull over their meanings. A girl who nobody can ever forget. A girl more beautiful and confident than anyone else. I need this. I can be that girl in flames. I can do this.

  Heather sings along, her thin voice hitting all the right notes. I would join in, but for some reason I never sound the way I think I do when I’m alone in the shower. I’m like those American Idol contestants who audition and everyone looks at them like “Really? You must be delusional if you think you have a good voice. What is wrong with you?”

  “How do you know all the lyrics, Heather? Didn’t this song just come out?”

  Heather sets cruise control to twenty kilometers over the speed limit and rests her arm on the middle consol. “Dude, you have been hidden in dark caverns at Carter Clinton too long. This song’s been out for forever.”

  I cringe at the reminder of Carter Clinton and resume my stoic vigil at the window. We’re out of Calgary now, and all around for miles and miles are wheat fields, the tiny plant shoots still small and green, but in a month or so they will be golden and tall. Far off in the distance I can make out the peaks of snow-covered mountains, and blue sky stretches as far as I can see.

  “I still can’t believe they trusted that bitch over you,” Heather continues. Apparently she has no desire to drop the subject of my former employers. “She wasn’t even a lawyer.”

  I clench my fists at the memory and let out an angry growl. “It wasn’t fair. She was the one who took three-hour lunch breaks and came in late every morning. I was a model employee. I worked my butt off for them for a year for practically no pay and then bam! Fired!”

  “What happened again? I forget.” Heather adjusts her rearview mirror so she can see herself. She grabs one of the lipstick tubes she keeps in the ashtray and begins to touch up her makeup.

  “Heather!” I see my proverbial life flash before my eyes. “You idiot, put that away. We’re going a hundred and twenty on the highway! We crash, we die. Not to mention, you get pulled over for this and you lose your license.”

  Heather finishes with the lipstick and then places it back in its spot. “Sheesh, Granny, no harm, no foul.”

  I’d forgotten how absolutely terrifying it is to go on road trips with Heather. This is why I always drove. Stupid, broken car. “Okay, but I’m driving home,” I say firmly.

  “Whatever.” Heather smiles at me and I restrain myself from telling her to watch the road. “What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Carter Clinton. Remind me what happened?”

  I readjust in my seat. “Well, right when I got hired on as a junior associate they made me a sort of mentor for Grace, the intern. She wasn’t even a law student yet but was taking some political science classes during her undergrad and wanted to do an internship for extra credit.”

  “Wasn’t her dad some big wig at the firm?” Heather asks, thankfully keeping her eyes straight ahead.

  “Yeah, he was the CEO, so of course, she got the position. Right from the start she hated me, but for the life of me, I don’t know why. I mean, I think she had a bad self-image problem and was completely unmotivated to do much more than text her friends all day, but she was pretty smart when it came right down to it.”

  “Was she ugly? Ugly people can be so mean,” Heather says. Seriously, I don’t know how she gets away with saying some of the things she does.

  “She wasn’t hideous, if that’s what you’re asking. Grace was short, maybe five-one if she wore big shoes, and her designer clothes didn’t hide her thick waist or rounded shoulders. Her hair was beautiful, however, always meticulously done, and even though some of the other associates called her “The Garden Gnome” behind her back, I never did. I thought we were fine. I mea
n, I knew she didn’t love me and since she was horrifically lazy, I didn’t like her too much either, but I figured we could just work with it.”

  “She hated you because you’re gorgeous, that’s obvious.”

  “But I’m not gorgeous, Heather,” I object. “You’re the model here. I’m like the girl next door. I have freckles and my eyelashes clump unless I use that expensive mascara. I’m average maybe, but there was no reason for her to be intimated or anything.”

  Heather shakes her head. “I am gorgeous,” she concedes, “but you are too. That’s one of your best qualities. You have this self-deprecating humility about yourself. But go on. I want to hear about this wench.”

  I think back to those first few weeks. “I reported her to my supervisor when she’d only been there about ten days. She made a ton of errors, which doubled my workload because I had to proof all her briefs before we could submit them. She came late, left early and never smiled. So I made note of this, but it wasn’t like I was pushing to get her fired or anything. I was just frustrated and following protocol.

  “Anyway, after two months, I had to leave early one Friday for that retirement party for my favorite law professor at U of C.”

  “The one who wrote you the letter of recommendation that secured your position at Carter Clinton, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I smile, remembering Professor Brown—Jewish, opinionated and stubborn. “And I worked as a Teaching Assistant for him for my last semester. He was my idol.”

  “So Grace was mad that you had to leave early?” Heather prompts.

  I shake my head and rest my head on my hand against the window. “No, it wasn’t like that. I think she saw her chance to get me back for reporting her to my supervisor. I had just finished a brief for the opposing counsel, and all I had left to do was print it off and get it bound. I asked Grace, since she was my assistant, to help me out with it. I printed the brief and left so I could make it on time to the retirement party. Anyway, she screwed it all up. She grabbed the brief from the printer, then added a lot of other things to it. . . an email I had sent her earlier that day, a printout of Brad Pitt shirtless from US Weekly, but worst of all, a document that a colleague had printed on the same shared printer. Without it, I probably would have simply gotten a warning, but it turned out that the document she managed to snare was highly confidential, a draft prospectus on a deal that hadn’t yet been made public.”

  “That’s illegal,” Heather gasps and looks at me with wide eyes. Classic over-reaction. “How do you know it was her? Hidden cameras? Fingerprints?”

  “None of the above,” I laugh. “I assumed it was her, because it’s the only thing that made sense. I had asked her to bind my brief and she did, along with those glaring insertions. Besides, she was the only one with the motive to do so. It might seem like an accident, but I know Grace. She was too clever to have a made a mistake like that.”

  “This sounds so intense. You should get a movie made of your life,” Heather proclaims.

  “Don’t you remember when I told you about all this?” I wonder, staring at her bemused expression.

  Heather shrugs and faces forward again. “You were fired right before my Miss Canada pageant. I really didn’t have time to focus on your problems, as selfish as that may sound. I had that mastectomy Korean chick to worry about.”

  We both are quiet, the radio, now playing Toxic by Britney Spears which makes me bob along to the music despite myself. After driving in silence for a few minutes, Heather asks, “And you never told the firm that it was Grace who did it?”

  “Of course I told them. I even explained how it wasn’t me that had bound the brief together, but at that point the lid had been blown off on a super confidential deal. Grace had had the brief couriered to opposing counsel and they were thrilled to see such glaring errors. The firm became the laughingstock of the legal community overnight and technically it was my fault. I should have made sure that the opposing counsel got the right papers.”

  Inwardly I berate myself again. I am such a bloody idiot. I should have come to work on Saturday, instead of hanging out with Heather and sleeping off my slight hangover from the night before. I should have double-checked on Monday that the brief was correct. Although how could I have known that they’d been altered? I should have done something though.

  “You can’t beat yourself up about it.” Heather reaches across the console and pats my arm. “It’s over and done with. But I’m confused. Why did they fire you ‘without cause’? It sounds like they could have fired you with cause and not had to give you a three weeks’ severance package.”

  “That’s the point that bugs me the most,” I grimace. “It was based on my word versus her word and when it came down to it, I think they knew I was right, and that it was Grace who had made the mistake, knowingly or not, but they couldn’t fire the CEO’s daughter. She was untouchable, like Hercules. Someone had to be the scapegoat since they had fallen so quickly and so far, and that ended up being me. They couldn’t prove it, however, so they had to legally give me a package.”

  “I hate office politics.” It is beginning to grow dark out, so Heather flicks on the headlights. Shadows cross her face and make her look even more mysterious and beautiful than ever.

  “You’re lucky you’ve never had to deal with them,” I tell her. I reach into the backseat of the car and pull out a bag of rice puffs. Heather refuses to eat potato chips and so I learned a long time ago to tolerate these flavored Styrofoam-tasting circles. I open the bag and offer it to Heather. She crunches her way through a handful and I close my eyes.

  After a few minutes I drift off, my head against the cool window, listening to Heather butcher the Korean language as she sings along with Gangnam Style on the radio. Tonight we’ll find a motel, go shopping in the morning and then before I know it, I’ll be talking to Drew’s mother.

  My life has been off track for a while now. That is obvious. But I’m literally on the road to fixing it.

  Be not afraid of growing slowly,

  be afraid only of standing still.

  —Chinese Proverb

  Chapter Six

  A good night’s sleep in a Ramada Inn close to West Edmonton Mall, a steaming shower combined with a delicious bagel and hot chocolate from a café down the street, and I am feeling on top of the world. Heather has just maxed out her credit cards at Bryan’s, La Senza and Aritzia, our feet are killing us from walking through the small-city sized mall, and we are carrying more bags than I thought was possible.

  “I read in Reader’s Digest that West Ed takes up forty-eight blocks.” My nerves must be getting the best of me because I am beginning to sputter out random facts and trivia like I always do when facing something I dread. I try to stop then give in to the inevitable. “It holds world records for largest parking lot, largest indoor lake, largest indoor bungee tower and a few other things too. Did you know it would take three days of constant walking to visit the entire mall?”

  Heather shakes her head and walks faster, but I can tell she’s smiling because of the way her ears went up. “I don’t know you, Miss Encyclopedia Brown. Can’t you just act normal? Stop being the super smart you and just enjoy shopping.”

  I was this close to telling her about a lawsuit I had studied in law school where the plaintiff had fallen into the huge lake with the pirate ship in the center of the mall; instead I point at a dress in a store window and say benignly, “That looks nice.”

  It doesn’t actually. It looks like a disco ball flattened and draped on a person and the ball-headed mannequin is wearing a silver and diamond crown that I’m sure not even Kate Middleton would be caught dead wearing in public.

  “The sparkle look is definitely back in style,” Heather comments. “I should raid my mom’s closet. I know she wore hideous clothes like that back in the seventies and I doubt she’s gotten rid of them.”


  Heather’s mom is as flamboyant and glamorous as Heather. I’m not surprised in the least to know that she owned a sparkly dress or two back in the day.

  “If you think they’re hideous, why do you wear them?”

  “Because a model needs to always be on top of the latest trends. It’s the only way to show that I am versatile and marketable.”

  Sad thing is that Heather could wear a paper bag and pull it off. Sequins won’t even phase her. We finally exit the mall and stow Heather’s spoils in the trunk of her car. Then we climb in and Heather grins at me.

  “Excited? This is it!”

  I nod and sit on my hands so Heather can’t see they are trembling.

  “So where to? Direct me. I am your chauffer. And bodyguard and moral support and whatever else you want me to be today.”

  I bite my lip and clear my throat which has gone dry. “Okay, we have to get to Yellowhead Trail West and eventually onto the TransCanada Highway.”

  Heather contemplates this and starts the car. “So going towards Drayton Valley?”

  “Yeah, but not that far down. They’re closer to Wabamun Lake.”

  It takes us only thirty minutes to get there, due in part to Heather’s lead foot and an uncharacteristic scarcity of traffic. I peer out the window, my knuckles white as I grip my hands together in my lap. “Okay, turn right up here.”

  I don’t know for sure where we are, but at least I recognize the huge red barn with the smiley face on the side. Drew and I drove past that going to his parents’ because I remember he commented about how “gay” it was. Even back then the word made me cringe, and that was before all my equality and human rights courses in law school.

  “Are we lost?” Heather frowns. We’ve turned onto a gravel road and the Civic is kicking up dust, making it difficult to see.