Stardust: Selling Love and Buying Stars

☆   ☪   ☆

    Up high on the roof of the Tetro residence, two reposed forms sprawled across the black shingles fresh with the dew of rain. The damp roof wet their clothes and their skins with an earthy scent, but neither of them seemed to mind at all. They were far too enraptured in the clear moon that hung heavy over their heads, and the blinking stars huddled in small groups that lit up the velvet of midnight.

One of the inky, shadowed forms briefly stirred. Streaming locks tinged with night ruffled in the breeze as this form rolled over to face the other larger figure.

"I can't believe you threw a dodgeball right at Billy Abel's nose today," delicately whispered the smaller silhouette. "He was gushing blood all over the gymnasium."

"He shouldn't have called you a cunt," said the larger of the two, whose voice was much more gruff.

The first to speak nodded in appreciation, and returned to its back.

A silence fell upon the two. Their synced breathing, and the quiet whistle of the night's breeze, were all to be heard on the roof.

The blinking lights of an airplane high up in the clouds succinctly captured their eyes where the white lights were reflected in their pupils. The lights pulsed and swirled through their sights, but were soon gone once a cloud swallowed the plane and all those within it.

Not too much longer, the smaller figure stired once again, disrupting the still of the rooftop. "Ya' know he's gonna be comin' after you now, right?"

In a swift series of movements, the larger silhouette rolled over on its side to face the smaller nuisance that did not seem comfortable with the quiet, and striked the lighter pulled from its pocket.

The lighter spat out a small, golden flame bright enough to illuminate the faces of Skylar and Brennyn.

A bothered frown was etched across Brennyn's features while the flame danced in her irises.

"Do you think I'm scared of him?" Skylar inquired. He moves the lighter to get a better look at his company's face.

Her frown deepend. "No, 'course not."

"Then, tell me what's bothering you," he pressed.

She sighed. "It's just..."

"Just what?"

"I don't want you to leave," she whined. Her bottom lip poked out into a pout, and her eyes seemed to gloss over with a film of twinkling wetness emphasized by the flame.

"I'm not goin' anywhere," said Skylar. His tone was hard and determined, yet his brows slightly furrowed once he noticed her eyes.

"Are you crying?" he whispered in shock.

"No."

"Yeah, you are."

"No, I'm not!" she barked. Her rough tone echoed amongst the suburb.

Skylar exhaled in a slow breath, his features softening, and his head tilting in her direction. His sights traced along her face that tried so very heard to put up a brave front. A disheartened smile quirked his lips.

"Don't look at me like that," she grunted. She shielded her face with her palms, hoping to hide from his gaze.

"Like what?"

"Like... that," said she. "All caringly and shit."

Despite her protests, he only continued to look at her until her tiny fingers parted to peek at him, and she sighed once more. Her hands fell to her sides, losing the battle of trying to hide her broken expression.

"You're on probation," she whispered.

"And?"

"And, if you get into another fight with that asshole, Abel, you're gonna go to juvie or jail or something, and you're my best friend, and you're not allowed to leave me here in this stupid city, at this stupid high school, with all of these stupid people," she said. "You're the coolest, funniest, best thing that has ever happened to Cetus," she cried, "to me."

"Awe, B," he cooed. His big hand moved to wipe away a stray tear fluttering down her cheek.

She sniffled and bit her lip looking absolutely pitiful.

A faint smirk tugged at his lips. "Are we having a moment?"

"Shut up," she howled. Her small, ineffectual fists repeatedly swatted at him.

Unrestrained, uncontrollable laughter broke from his chest. The flame of the lighter died as he dropped it to cover his head from her hailing fists.

"You're such a dork," she giggled, giving him a light shove.

"I thought you said I was cool?" he grinned.

She peevishly rolled her eyes, but the smile curving her pink lips was not successfully hidden.

"Okay, seriously Sky, you need to stop getting in trouble, 'cause you're not allowed to leave me," she said. Her face reverted to a calm seriousness.

A rough sigh ambled passed Skylar's lips. He flopped onto his back, where the shingles sent frore shivers up and down his spine. In a gesture completely out of his character, he shut his eyes from the night sky above.

"Sky," said Brennyn in a fragile whisper.

Never, since they met in 8th grade, had she ever seen Skylar turn down a chance to look at the stars. On any given day, Skylar would be willing to bore everyone with his constant chatter of galaxies, and pointing out the tens of constellations in the night sky. It was his passion, and one never to be replaced. The fact that he had shut his eyes to it was a harbinger of worry for Brennyn.

"Last time I saw my mom, she said somethin' about goin' back to Michigan," he muttered.

"No," Brennyn exclaimed. She darted up as quickly as a jack rabbit, with her features contorted into an angered panic.

"You've only been here for two years! Why would she want to go back to Michigan?! Doesn't she like it here?!" she wailed.

When Skylar didn't answer, she frantically continued. "You said she moved here to California because there's more work and opportunity for the both of you! She said you got in too much trouble in Michigan, and that a change of scenery is what you needed! Obviously, there's nothing back in Michigan for either of you! Except jail time, maybe!"

"Except Tyler," Skylar said.

Brennyn huffed in annoyance, "If he's your 'childhood best friend' like you say he is, then why hasn't he come to visit you in the entire two years that you've been in California?!"

A ragged exhale clawed at Skylar's chest. He hauled himself up with a scorn-infected leer bleeding across his face, and it was aimed at Brennyn. His expression was intimidating enough to shake her bones, and coerce her to slightly cower.

"Because we're not fuckin' rich, like you, with gold-plated credit cards shoved up our asses, and the newest cars to get us everywhere! He can't afford to come see me because we're both below the poverty line! And you don't know jack-shit about him, so don't even go there," Skylar hissed.

"My family isn't rich," Brennyn snapped. "For your damn information, we're considered middle class!"

"Bullshit."

"No, it's not bullshit, Skylar! The person you should be yelling at about being rich is your little girlfriend, Leah! She's the one sitting on thousands of dollars in a trust from a daddy who's the CEO of some huge company!"

Skylar's shaky, sickeningly pale hand rose to point a nail at Brennyn's throat. "Don't you dare bring Leah into this," he retorted.

"Or what?" she sneered. "Are you gonna run back to her, tell her everything I've ever said about her slutty ass, and then have her beat me up like the obedient little bitch she is under your command?"

"Don't push your luck," he seethed.

Brennyn bitterly laugh. "Better yet, are you gonna run back to your mom and have her do something to me? Actually, where is your mom? She doesn't seem to give a fuck about you since she's never around!"

The opposing end got eerily silent. Skylar's pallid features drained of all hint of expression; as cold and dead as a corpse or the eyes of a shark.

"Oh, god," Brennyn muttered. A look of terror crashed over her like the Pacific tide. "I didn't mean that, Sky!"

Normally, these quarrels go as any would between two friends: raising voices, furious finger-jabbing, cursing, insults, and then, somehow, the two would wind up laughing it off and go on as if they were not just threatening bodily harm to one another. They have had a million and one arguments in that very tedious sequence, but never, ever has Brennyn gone so far as to bring Skylar's sole parent into the hurling of insults, nor has he ever singled out one of her family members. If this were equated to boxing, Brennyn's insult would be considered a prohibited jab; one below the belt.

"I could say the same about your mom," Skylar spoke very lowly. "Remember two years ago, right after you met me? Your mom was barely ever home for an entire month, and then we found out that she was fuckin' our old gym teacher, Mr. Pender."

A spiteful, twisted smirk curved his lips, and the gleam in his eye was indescribable in its wickedness. "I wonder how your dad would feel about that..."

"Skylar, you can't tell him," Brennyn croaked.

Her eyes were as wet as the rain-logged rooftop, and they begin to flow over her bottom lashes like the gutters in a storm.

Skylar looked disgusted. "I would never seriously do that to you," he scoffed.

She sighed in relief.

Skylar's contused fists began to endure a fit of trembles. Maybe because of reposed anger stemming from his yearning to tear Brennyn's ego to shreds with every hideous truth about her that he had locked away, since she seemed so keen on throwing personal tribulations in his face. Or maybe it was because of the wrenching in his gut, the horrid pounding in his head, and the erratic beating in his chest that he had been feeling the ache of since school ended.

"But... I'm sure if you had something that devastating on me, you'd be ready to use it against me in a heartbeat," he spoke callously.

In a quick turn of his heels, Skylar began to make his departure.

"No, I wouldn't," Brennyn called after him. Her voice continued to break and croak as she watched his figure disappear.

"Where are you going?" she cried.

"None of your fuckin' business," his voice echoed in spite.

His dexterous hands, though shaking so evidently, lowered him to her window. From there, he climbed down the viney trellis blooming with white hydrangea. He dropped down the last few feet, where a tiny bush strewn with hazardous pickers nearly snagged his laces.

The grass of the Tetro's front yard squished beneath the worn soles of his shoes, and just as he made it into the street, the sprinklers cranked on to soak the lawn once more.

The suburb was quiet, save for the slight patter of Skylar's shoes against the newly cemented street. Not a single light was on in any passing house, nor was there even the slightest stir. Every gate was closed, and every car was parked safe and warm in its garage.

Despite the calm of the neighborhood, a violent annoyance of an ache thrashed in Skylar's gut and slowly seeped upwards until it had wormed its way into his head. A deep leer echoed across his face, and the quiet began to bother him, sending his nerves screaming on edge. His urge to bang things, break things, and wake every soul because they should not be allowed to have a good night when he was not was unbearably strong.

His walk turned into vengeful stomps, amplified by the nightly patrol officer whose oncoming head lights bathed Skylar in their glaring brightness.

The young officer slowed his vehicle to the same pace as Skylar's walk, and his dark sights squinted to examine the walking youth.

Skylar's sinopea irises also squinted in anger.

The vehicle braked, but Skylar continued.

"Do you live here?" called the officer from his window.

"No," Skylar grunted.

"What brings you to this neighborhood so late at night?"

"Free drugs from the surgeon that lives down the street, the rich sluts that give good head, and the fuckin' scenery," Skylar snarled.

"Watch it, kid," seethed the officer.

"Bite me, rookie."

"Hey!"

"You're not even the police. If anything, you're just security or a cheap rent-a-cop," Skylar seethed.

Skylar had seen enough police to have their appearance burned into his remembrance. The fact that the car was not marked, the evident lack of a badge, and the entirely different uniform that this "officer" wears compared to the rest of the Cetus City Police Department were tell-tale indicators of him being unofficial.

"Don't let me catch you over here again, smart ass," the officer warned.

A faint smirk crossed Skylar's lips. "Trust me, you won't."

With that, the officer drove away in the direction of the posh Tetro residency whose rotating sprinkler heads echoed in the distance. His red taillights soon faded completely behind the rows of identical, mountainous homes.

Skylar continued with the moon beneath his feet in the form of reflections in puddles.

Beyond the tidy neighborhood, Skylar happened upon the busy highway that separated the suburbs and the slums. The traffic lightened in wide gaps between vehicles, allowing him just enough time to dash across the oncoming traffic, hop over the divider in the middle of the roadway, and sprint between outgoing cars. He weaved in and out of the blaring headlights, and a few horns honked at him, but he could not care any less.

The familiar scents of burning rubber, lingering cigarette fumes, and muffler residue coalesced in the air of the squalid neighborhood on the opposite side of the highway. The few sparse streetlights that had not been busted over the pitted street buzzed and snapped over Skylar's head. Wrappers, plastic baggies once filled with some drug or another, and glass littering the street cracked beneath the soles of his shoes. Chained Pit Bulls snarled from the yards of the tiny, rundown homes whose windows were boarded, and whose siding was stripped or tagged with graffiti.

He crossed another roadway, but this one was more quiet with two lanes that only saw a few drivers on this side of town at this time of night.

Soon, Skylar and the sidewalk were swallowed up by the liquor stores, gas stations, little supermarkets, fast food joints, and the exposed bulbs of the streetlights that buzzed with mosquitoes on either side of the road.

The ache in Skylar's head was amplified by the brightness of the droning street lamps and the blaring white directional lines on the road that seemed to illuminate off the cement. His hands trembled fervently at this point. The heave of his stomach was pushed far up into his throat, as if he might spew the few french fries that Shannyn gave him at lunch all those hours ago.

Between a closed pharmacy and a boarded-up Taco Bell with "out of business" sprayed across the door, Skylar turned into a short alley. The sleeping bag of an absent homeless person was propped beside a dumpster overflowing with months worth of garbage. The stench was unbearable, but it was as if Skylar wasn't bothered by it whatsoever. A flyer for a missing child, dated three years prior, adhered to the bottom of Skylar's shoe by way of the sticky grime coating the alley. He shook it off and the wind carried it out of the alley, and over the roof of the pharmacy to god-knows-where.

The alley's end spit Skylar out onto a patchy lawn of dead-brown grass trashed with used syringes, glass, and cigarette butts, otherwise known as the local park. On a sign in the middle of the lot whose paint peeled horribly, the title of Proctor Park was just faintly read. Not many people brang their children there, what with the hazardous trash, the begging homeless people, drug trafficking activities, and the corroded play equipment that was a whole other danger in itself. The little slide looked as if it might shatter into a heap of blight shards if someone were to give it the slightest touch.

There, in the midst of the ruinous park, Skylar plopped down on one of the oscillating seats of the swing set. The rusted chains creaked and grated against the eardrums from his added weight. He plucked a withered cigarette from his pocket and his head was soon clouded in smoke. For nearly an hour he sat there with nothing interesting in sight, save for the stray mutt that sniffed along the street for a morsel of food.

As if it were planned like clockwork, Skylar turned his head to the left just when an old, white Cadillac pulled into the lot of the park. Despite its age, the vehicle was well taken care of and was as quiet as a mouse as it crept along the pavement.

Skylar rose to his feet just as the tires came to a gentle stop. Flicking his cigarette away where it mingled with the other misfits in the lawn, he approached the waiting vehicle whose muffler puffed out clouds of heat that ebbed beneath the vehicle in a ghost-like appearance.

The window on the driver's side was rolled down and the middle-aged face of a man emerged from the blackness within the Cadillac. Just from a glimpse of his face, one could tell that he was a fairly muscular man with a charm that seemed to intimidate most. Crows feet crinkled beside his eyes and his black mustache lifted to expose a pearly smile. A smooth voice rolled from his shadowed lips. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon," he said.

Skylar bent down to be eye-level with the man and rested his arms on the door. "I ain't got time for pleasantries, Rich."

Rich reverted to a solemn stare. "You're too good for this, baby. When ya' gonna stop selling yourself like this? No that I'm complaining, though."

A groan of amusement rumbled from Skylar's throat, and the slightest quirk of a smile pulled at his mouth like a puppet.

"You know I'm more poetic than that," Skylar said. "I'm not selling myself. I guess you could say... I'm selling love... and you look like you could use some."

"I find it hard to believe that you know anything about love. You're about as emotionless as my father... he's dead," Rich laughed.

Skylar's head cocked to the side. "And you know something about love? You're the man who's made cheating on his wife a pastime."

Rich's lips drew to a tight line, but were released just as quickly when he asked, "How much do you need?"

"I just need a fix."

"Will ya' take a couple grams, and fifty bucks for a few extra minutes?"

"Is your wife givin' you blue balls, again?" Skylar sneered.

Rich furrowed his brows, adding to the glaring frown beneath his mustache to which Skylar teemed with amusement. A hearty laugh coursed through Skylar as he rounded the car to get inside. The familiar warmth of the leather passenger seat sent a current of goosebumps erecting across the canvas of his skin; Rich always had the heat on the perfect temperature for these cool nights.

The charcoal mustache revealed Rich's pearly whites once more as he opened one of his large palms to reveal a little, crystalline vial filled with a white powder that seemed to shimmer in Skylar's eyes. Contrary to the illumination that he saw, it is actually quite dull, like baking flour.

Skylar, ornamented in greed, snatched the vial between contused fists that had been aching for a fix all day. He scanned the glass in brief examination for only a tenth of a second before he shimmied off the tiny cork and tossed it somewhere in the darkness of the backseat. He plugged his left nostril through its fit of eager twitches, and inhaled the substance from the vile in his other airway.

It felt cold to Skylar's senses - really cold - and somewhere, deep in a distant corner of his remembrance, he envisioned himself breathing in snowflakes like he did as a child caught in a harsh Michigan winter.

"Aye, what'd you call that last time? Somethin' weird, I remember," Rich's gruff voice hummed while his sly digits crept across the center console to trace along Skylar's inner thigh.

Inhaling the last few particles in the vial, a smile touched Skylar's lips.

"Stardust."

☆   ☪   ☆

He didn't ever remember the red taillights of Rich's Cadillac being so ruby before, like luminescent gems pulsing from either side of the trunk, but, then again, Skylar didn't remember a lot of things. He hardly even caught the quick flash of a smile bestowed to him through the rear view mirror as Rich's taillights disappeared down the street.

Just a mere twenty minutes passed from the time Skylar entered the Cadillac to the time he got out. Once the car was out of sight, Skylar hawked up every droplet of saliva in his throat to expel the foul taste of Rich. Despite the taste poisoning his tongue, he felt so much more alive than he had all day. The ache in his head had subsided, his hands were steady, the pain of his stomach had  dissipated, and he felt like he could breathe so much better. However the erratic pitter-patter of his heart still persisted, but it was livening.

It was terrible how the lack of a little stardust could make Skylar feel so much affliction. But now that the stars were ebbing through his system like they did in the black sky overhead, he could function again.

"It's amazing how much a blowjob can get you," Skylar chuckled to himself, fumbling with the fifty dollars and second vial in his pocket.

His concept of time was blurred between the lines of conscious thought and narcotic euphoria: he did not know how he got back to the freeway, but he did know that the headlights looked like UFOs flying right at him, and he swore that he saw a dog walking sideways somewhere (quite possibly nowhere) on his way there.

He sat beside the highway, watching all of the clamorous vehicles blur by while their lights danced across the wet pavement. In the distorted, insensible mind's eye of Skylar, the taillights morphed into red silhouettes of people pulsing against the night air, flouncing across the roadway where they reflect off of every surface. He would join them, but some remote part of his mind remaining unaffected by the stupor of the drugs kept him grounded where he sat.

Soon, the dancing ruby people dissipated into the breeze where they left Skylar's hazy eyes to fixate on the divider in the middle of the highway. The cement was cracked and chipped; its pieces stolen away by irresponsible drivers whose cars lost control for some reason or another. The longer he stared at it, the more he felt a come-down. A high like that had never worn off so fast before, but the realities of life took away any euphoria he had. Those realities being that that divider was much more than a separation between opposite-going traffic, and the impoverished side of Cetus, California from the upstanding side. It was a symbolic representation of Skylar's life, rather lives. Across that partition was Skylar's other life; the life with school, friends, and those few hours of sobriety. This side of the divider was the life riddled with his daily escape in the forms of intoxicating dusts and distilled spirits, the expensive sale of "love," and a deep feeling of being very lonely here, like he felt right now.

Skylar inhaled the second vial without a care of the consequences he could suffer from indulging in too much in such a small window of time. But, again, the concept of time was lost. It already felt like days since he had been there, when he had only spent under ten minutes beside the highway.

The highway divider, and the notion of having parallel lives, seeped through his tiny cracks of sobriety, and those cracks soon filled with that ivory stardust. As tragic as it was, neither of those lives knew about the other; under the influence of stardust, they had never met.

☆   ☪   ☆