Chapter 2: Stella

                Lucas blinked open his eyes as the sunlight pierced through his blue curtains. Yawning, he put on a shirt and walked to the bathroom.

                Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he brushed his blond hair hurriedly to the side. When he was satisfied, he jogged downstairs and ran into the kitchen. His mother was flipping pancakes, humming a quiet tune to herself.

                As Lucas stepped closer, he recognized the tune to be “Shooting Star” by Owl City. His mom suddenly spun around, tossing the pancake off the pan and into the plate resting on her free hand. It landed perfectly in the center of the plate, its smell intoxicating the air and making Lucas’s stomach grumble.

                “Lucaaaas! You’re awake!” she smiled brightly and handed the plate to Lucas, who took it firmly in both hands, “Don’t sneak up on me like that next time! I could’ve hit you with the pan!”

                Lucas nodded absentmindedly, taking the plate back to his seat and spreading butter and honey on the surface of the pancake.

                “You didn’t have to cook breakfast for me mom,” he said, the honey dripping over the edge of his pancake. “ I’m perfectly capable of making pancakes myself.”

                His mom frowned, flipping another pancake repeatedly while continuing to hum.  “Lucas,” she said, the cheerfulness gone from her tone, “ I know that you want to do everything by yourself ever since your sister-“

                “I’m done.” Lucas interrupted, pushing his honey-stained plate and sticky utensils into the sink forcefully.

                His mother sighed as Lucas walked over to the door, slinging his backpack around one shoulder and heading out the door.

                “Have a good day, Lucas.”

                “Okay, mom.” The door slammed shut behind him as the mother stood staring down at the black burning pancake.

~|*|~

                Lucas stepped off his bus and onto school grounds. Rushing inside, he navigated the narrow hallways to his locker, squeezing past other high schoolers walking a bit too leisurely for his tastes.

                His fingers quickly twisted the dials to the correct 4-digit combination: 7-8-2-7. He opened the locker roughly, proceeding to hurriedly stuff school textbooks and notebooks into his backpack.

                Lucas slammed the locker shut and clasped the lock back on, running a quick swipe of his thumb over the dials to mess up the combination. Zipping his backpack up and slinging it over his shoulder, he began to walk to his next class. In a fast-walking manner, Lucas swerved though the throngs of students, hoping to have a few minutes of an empty classroom to himself.

                But as he entered his first class, he found that someone was already in the classroom, sitting in her seat; head down on the table, with her brown, straight, silky hair askew upon her desk. One of her arms lay hidden under her head while the other stretched out in front of her, fingers dangling limp in the air. She had long, slender fingers; like those of a pianist.

                When he sat down in his usual seat to her right, her head snapped up and dark, chocolate-brown eyes found him from under layered bangs. She blinked, her long curling eyelashes catching his attention. She wore no make-up, he observed. Just a natural beauty. Little light-pink lips pursed, her dainty eyebrows pulled together in a concentrated look.

                “Why are you staring?” she asked bluntly, frowning.

                “Lucy!” he said, suddenly. The name just poured out of his mouth unexpectedly. The girl was Lucy Lampruthe, the girl he had met the evening before in the dark hallways. He recognized her pointed way of speaking, how she always seemed in a rush to get to the point.

                “What?” Lucy questioned, cocking her head to one side, frowning. “How do you know me?”

                Lucas realized that she couldn’t have seen his face from the night before. Before he could help it, he burst out laughing. Her face lapsed into a phase of confusion before turning into a sneer.

                “You’re that stupid boy from the night before,” she said simply before putting her head back down on the table.

                Lucas stopped laughing and became very quiet, turning his head around to face the front of the board.

Students began to shuffle in and sit down just a few minutes before the school bell gave a ring, signaling the beginning of first period classes.

                The teacher walked up to the board and began the lesson. Today’s lesson was on the birth of stars.

~|*|~

                When the bell rang for the end of the day, Lucy ran out of school began to walk home. It was still the middle of fall and quite cold. The dying leaves scattered the sidewalk around her feet as she shouldered her backpack and began to walk uphill, towards the 4-way intersection at the end of the sidewalk.

                Barely before she reached halfway, her fingers began to numb with the chill. She held them against her neck, which provided some heat. Her breath was visible in the air, and when she warmed her freezing hands up with her breath, some of it would leak through her fingers, giving a smoking impression.

                Cars drove by her left side, her hair blowing in front of her with the wind each time. Her destination, the city bus stop was soon right before her. She walked into the sheltering glass walls and waited inside for the bus.

                Inside with her were two older women and a young couple with their child. Lucy felt a great surge of envy and jealousy rise up in her heart as she glanced at the small family. The little girl being swept up into her father’s arms, giggling with delight and she was snuggled and cuddled with.

                Feeling something cold on her face, Lucy reached up a hand to touch her cheek; realizing that she had been silently crying the whole time. She sniffled. One of the women offered her a tissue that she accepted gratefully; wiping her tears off and holding the tissue tight in her shaking hands.

The tears wouldn’t stop falling. Lucy silently wished that she had brought her own pack of tissues from home, but of course, she hadn’t done so.

A few seconds later, the bus came to a stop in front of the glass shelter, opening its doors to let a jogger and his dog off. The couple picked up their child, saying “Let’s go, Lucy,” making Lucy cry even harder. Tears overflowed from her eyes, and she was trying her best not to open her mouth and start bawling.

Following the two women onto the bus, Lucy swiped her bus ticket and took a seat near the window in the back; sniffling and hiccupping quietly. Luckily, there were not a lot of people on the bus to complain about her crying. Just the people she boarded with, plus three other college students.

The bus door stayed open for awhile, Lucy looking out the window at the glass shelter and turning to look back at her school. As the bus doors began to close, Lucy saw somebody running up towards the bus. He was panting hard, his breath making quite a fog in front of his face. His hand was stretched out towards the bus and as he came closer Lucy saw his lips form a word: “Wait!”

Without thinking, Lucy yelled, “Wait!” at the bus driver, who closed the door and looked at Lucy.

“What?”

Lucy froze, surprised at herself. “I-I think that boy wants to get on the bus,” she said simply, pointing out the window at the boy who just arrived at the bus station, coming to a stop in front of the bus door, looking in.

The bus driver gave a hmph! And opened the door up for the kid. He got on and paid with cash, then made his way to the back, sitting next to her.

“Thanks a lot, Lucy,” the boy said between breaths, “I totally thought the bus was going to leave without me!”

Lucy stiffened at the familiar voice. Turning her head slightly, her suspicions were confirmed. The boy she had helped was none other than Lucas Starring.

He beamed at her with a wide smile, his blonde hair tousled from running.

Lucy tried to get up and get off the bus, but the door was closed and the bus started forward with a jolt, sending her back onto her seat.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asked, concerned all of a sudden.

Looking down Lucy replied, “As if a fall like that could hurt anyone.”

“No, no, I mean-” he corrected, “-you looked like you were crying,”

Lucy looked up at the little family instinctively and started tearing up again. She held the worn tissue into her face, crying quietly; occasionally hiccupping and sniffling and ignoring Lucas’s attempt to find what was wrong.

“Daddy, why is that girl over there crying?” a small voice asked innocently.

“Shh, she probably just had a bad day, Lucy,” came the soft reply.

Lucy gave another sniffle at the words, dampening the tissue even more with her tears.

Lucas whispered a little, “Oh,” as he realized part of the situation.

Lucy wiped her tears away and tried to maintain a neutral face as she looked out and slouched against the window.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,”

“Shut up,” she mumbled; her eyes red after crying. She noted silently that her stop was pulling up. Gripping her bag straps tighter around her shoulders, she prepared to get off.

To her surprise, Lucas did the same, smiling over at her when he came to the same realization. “Looks like we’re both getting off here,” he grinned.

Lucy frowned as the bus came to a stop and made it a point to get off the bus first. Right after getting off, she began to hurry down the sidewalk, past several churches and other buildings; her destination a wide grassy area filled with gravestones on the other side of the street ahead.

Footsteps followed behind her and Lucy turned around angrily, glaring at Lucas, who gave a slight smile and continued to follow her.

“Why are you following me?” she asked pointedly, stopping to turn around and face him.

Lucas stopped and stared back, his eyes looking sad as his smile faded, “I’m not following you.”

Lucy said nothing, unconvinced.

Sighing, Lucas swung his backpack around in front of him on his right shoulder, using his left hand to open the biggest pocket and reaching in; he pulled out a small bouquet of yellow roses. The petals were a bit crumpled from being in his backpack, but they were stunningly beautiful nonetheless. Lucas silently zipped his backpack back up and repositioned it over his shoulders.

Looking down at the vibrant roses with a sad smile he said quietly, “These are for my sister,”

Lucy turned around swiftly before he could say anymore. Silently, she took out her own bouquet of dark red roses from her backpack and continued walking towards the graveyard.

They crossed the road together, red and yellow rose bouquets in hand, backpacks over shoulders. Lucy’s hair blew with the wind as they entered the graveyard. She silently wished she had brought a ponytail, but there was no such thing. Slowly, she walked into the nearest row and a few steps down, stopping at a small gray tombstone that blended in with the others.              

Kneeling down, Lucy held the bouquet to her face and peered in, breathing in the sweet, fragile scent of the roses. Then she slowly placed the bundle of red in front of the tombstone.

After muttering a silent prayer for her dad watch over her, she got up and looked for Lucas, spotting him a ways down the same row, kneeling in front of a narrow rectangular tombstone with his bouquet of bright yellow roses.

Lucy quickly strode over, peeking over his shoulder to read the inscription in the tombstone.

Stella Starring

Born: May 17, 1997

Died: January 1, 2013

“May you depart from this Earth peacefully,

and be taken up into the sky to be a star.

Shine bright, my angel.

Shine bright.”

-Stella .S

          

                 In front of the tombstone was a neatly framed full-body picture of a girl who Lucy confirmed was Stella. She looked very much like Lucas, bright blonde hair with vibrant blue eyes.

In the picture she wore a white puffy-sleeved blouse edged with lace under a mini black sun dress. There was a red ribbon tied neatly just below her chest and above her stomach, as well a matching red thinner ribbon tied around her neck and blouse. There were pure white frills at the bottom of the sundress, at least three layers of it.  She wore white stockings and plain black Mary Janes.

                Her hands were behind her back, and she was smiling a small, kind smile that seemed to take Lucy in. She was posed underneath a huge oak tree, her dress billowing slightly in the wind as red and yellow leaves fell around with the fall weather. Her eyes were sparkling, like the ocean on a bright summer day. Her golden hair was tied in two braids, one of them coming in front to rest on her left shoulder. Her bangs reached to her eye brows.

                Lucy smiled at her. She was just so pretty, she couldn’t help it. She was about to say something of the sort out loud when she heard a soft crying. Lucy swiftly looked twice around the graveyard before realizing that Lucas was the one crying. She shifted around to his side, squatting down next to him and peeking at his face.

                Tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped off his chin. He was shaking terribly, every sob ripping out of him and screaming out into the cold air. His hands were clenched in fists, pressed up against his face. The bouquet lay forgotten on his lap.

                Lucy began to reach out a hand to pat his back, but he suddenly hastily wiped his tears away and picked up the bouquet, staring at it intensely. The tears dried quickly on his cheeks on the autumn air. He began to talk.

                “Dammit, why’d she have to die? Dammit all. Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” he yelled out, still glaring at the bouquet.

                The word slipped out of Lucy’s mouth before she could help it: “How?”

                “How?” Lucas raged, “How? She fuckin’ was being nice that’s how! Her personality-so nice and caring it was almost suffocating!” Tears started flowing again, but Lucas ranted on. “Dammit! She just had to care for me, do everything for me, and look where it got her!” Silence filled the graveyard, followed by Lucas’s miserable sobs. He lowered his tone and kept talking. “Ever since she was born, she had leukemia. It was chronic, so it didn’t affect her immediately, but she started showing symptoms in 10^th grade, when I was still in my last year of middle school. My parents only filled me in on her condition then.” He took a deep breath.

                Lucy was silent, staring at the picture of Stella. Such a beautiful girl, you wouldn’t think of the pain she was in. No, not with that smile.

                “She was admitted into a hospital, and after chemotherapy, came back. That picture was taken before her chemotherapy. We went out in our backyard and had a little picnic before we left the house. This was around two years ago, 2012, in the fall. A week after she came back, I caught a cold or something. Either way, I got sick. Our parents were out on a business trip in Australia, so Stella was the only one who could care for me.  

                “So she did. She cooked for me, did all my laundry, took care of the house, too. And on top of all that, she kept up with her schoolwork and pulled off straight A’s for that quarter. She was smart, real smart; I looked up to her so much.

                “But I was really sick, so it wasn’t a surprise that she soon caught my sickness too. She was supposed to be resting after the chemotherapy. But she was doing so much, that when she got sick, her body tried to focus her energy on resting. Exhaustion took over and her grades dropped, the house became messy, my clothes piled up in the laundry basket. I was still so sick, I couldn’t help her much. It was all I could do to try to persuade her to lay down and rest. She always would smile, and say ‘Okay, Lucas; right after I fold these clothes,’ or something like that, then she would never get around to it and just ended up pushing herself too hard each day. I couldn’t call my parents either because even if they wanted to come back, they couldn’t, because no flights were coming out of Australia until two more weeks.      

                “And when my parents got home two weeks later, she was in a really bad condition. I was better by that time, and was trying my best to make her rest, but she kept getting out of bed when I wasn’t looking and doing something like her homework or cleaning or cooking. Her face was flushed all the time, and she was breathing hard every day like she had just run a marathon. Often, she would collapse right where she stood from exhaustion.    My parents took action as soon as they got home and sent her to the hospital. She stayed there for a long time.

                “They couldn’t do chemotherapy a second time with her sickness. It was too risky. When December rolled around, the doctors said they couldn’t do any more for her and sent her home for Christmas. She was in a wheelchair, her eyes sad and dull, because she couldn’t walk without stumbling.

“We had a really quiet Christmas that year. The only thing Stella would say was how she was sorry that she hadn’t gotten any of us presents. Like that mattered!” he scoffed, crying again, “The best present she could’ve given us was her life! But she couldn’t…

“She passed away as we were watching the New Year’s Eve Ball drop. It was like counting the seconds to her death. We were all just sitting on the couch, watching the TV. Just a second before the ball hit zero, she took a shuddering breath. We all turned instinctively, and just like that, she slumped forward as the countdown reached zero and fell onto the floor. Gone. Just like that. We all knew it too. Dad only lifter her limp body up silently and laid it on the couch. We all sat on the floor in front of her just looking at her. I shook her shoulder, waiting for her to wake up, waiting for me to wake up and find it was all a bad dream. But she was gone!” Lucas sobbed, squeezing the bouquet roughly.

Lucy stayed silent, crying along with him, staring at the picture. “I’m sorry, Lucas,” she whispered softly, squeezing his shoulder. “I would’ve liked to meet her. Did she write that poem?”

Lucas sniffled and looked up at the poem inscribed in the tombstone. “Huh? Yeah, she wrote that when she was little, apparently. Our parents always compared her to a star, shining so bright and vividly. So they found that poem and had it engraved.”

Lucy nodded without a word.

Lucas seemed to realize what he had come here for and placed his flowers in front of the picture with trembling hands. He hadn’t realized how cold it was outside.

Silently, they both stood up and trudged back to the bus stop, where they parted ways. Lucy began to walk home while Lucas stayed to wait for the bus.

~|*|~

Lucy walked home at a dragging pace, admiring the fall foliage and smiling to herself. She remember clearly admiring the same foliage in the past, walking down the same street with her father. Her father. Lucy stopped in her tracks and stared into the trees. Her father, who was dead. “Stop it,” she murmured to herself, tearing her eyes away from the trees.

For the rest of the walk home, she kept her gaze glued to the sidewalk.