Free The Stars Will Shine by Eva Carrigan

cold smile curl my lips, “what’s it to you if I had?”
    Dylan scoffs. “You’re such a whore. I don’t know why my mom let you stay with us.”
    Aiden steps forward so that he blocks our sight of each other. “Cut it out, Dylan. Now .” But Dylan is already storming from the room, and he slams the door on the way out, leaving Aiden and me alone.
    Neither of us says a word for an entire minute.
    “The color looks good.”
    “Huh?” I squint up at Aiden through the strands of hair that hang tangled and limp along my face.
    “The orange. It looks good,” he clarifies.
    “Oh.” I glance around the room, distracted. “Yeah…Thanks for picking it out.” He nods, eyes on the floor. And then his lashes lift, and his gaze steadies on mine, almost deliberately so. My lungs clench hold of the breath I was about to let out.
    “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he tells me. He walks backwards a few steps, eyes still trained on me, before turning and heading out the door. The air comes out of my lungs with the force of a windstorm.
    What Aiden doesn’t know is that Dylan isn’t wrong. He’s wrong about me sleeping with Trevyn, yeah, but he’s not wrong about me being a whore. And I don’t really blame him. In a way, I understand why Dylan doesn’t want me in his life…because just as Trevyn said today, Dylan and I are blood. And that alone ties us, no matter how different we are, no matter how little we’ve seen of each other in our lives. I’m just someone he doesn’t want to answer for, someone he doesn’t want causing rifts in his friendships, someone he doesn’t want around to be a bad influence on his little sister. Most of all, I’m someone he doesn’t want to claim as blood.
    I hear music start up in Dylan’s room—a riff on an electric guitar. He must be playing. It sounds like pure melancholy…Led Zeppelin’s version of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You.” I collapse onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
    I don’t think about anything for the longest time except for trying to find shapes in the plaster—elephants or faces or ships—like I did with my mom when I was little. An hour later, Dylan is still playing, and I think I hear—I sit up—Aiden singing? His voice barely carries through the wall. Maybe it’s Dylan, I don’t know. But whoever it is, his voice is strangely beautiful.
    I sigh and let my cheek touch the bare mattress as I listen.
    “Dylan, Delilah, dinner!” comes a shout from downstairs. Aunt Miranda has just returned home, probably with takeout. I can hear Leah’s flip flops smacking the marble tiles. The jam session in Dylan’s room cuts to silence.
    Once I hear Dylan head downstairs, I yawn and roll onto my side. I still can’t stand the thought of sitting at that table, with Aunt Miranda trying to keep small talk and probably trying to correct the way I hold my fork and chew my food. Which is why I close my eyes and fall asleep instead.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    Two birds are perched right outside my window. They cock their heads at each other, while hopping back and forth, and neither will shut the fuck up . I yank my pillow out from under my head and chuck it at the window. The birds, startled out of their wits, take flight in opposite directions.
    Ugh , now that I’m awake, I’ve got this sudden, overwhelming urge to pee, and it’s making my bladder ache. And at some point in my slumber, my feet must have gotten tucked awkwardly under my legs, resulting in the pins and needles sensation overrunning them right now. I manage to plant them on the ground and shuffle to the bathroom.
    Since I skipped dinner last night, I roused for a midnight snack. As I passed the golden pool of light at the foot of Dylan’s door, I heard him and Aiden letting out endless streams of expletives and subsequently hollering triumphantly about a “nice headshot” and taking some guy “out with a crowbar.” I figured they were up late playing