Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“Stardust,” I finished, bunching up a few notes into a melody in my head. Of course I was still dressed in the same clothes I’d worn to the gig. And of course I smelled like stale piss in a dark London alleyway. “Silence, now.”
She didn’t scold me. Instead, she started braiding small pieces of that blue hair as I came up with something…new. I closed my eyes, my fingers trembling a little. Finding a good tune felt very close to finding a flower in the sand. Improbable, rare, thrilling. I played for a few minutes before pulling Tania’s strap off of my shoulder and propping it against my door. I took out the little notepad and Sharpie from my back pocket and started writing the notes. When I looked up, New Girl was still braiding. The troubled look on her face told me she felt sorry for me. The thought was unsettling.
“Tell me about yourself.” I ignored her quizzing eyes.
“You’ll need to be more specific than that.”
“What makes you, you? Your personality. Your secrets. Your quirks.”
Another girl would giggle, avert the topic, or play dumb. She didn’t.
“I’m left-handed. Hate clowns. Love making dresses. It makes me feel…” She looked up, searching for the word. “Focused.”
I strapped Tania back on, my pick moving over the strings without direction.
“What else?”
“I don’t have any social media accounts. If I could study anything, it’d be fashion. I used to work at a thrift shop called Thrifty in Beverly Hills run by a seventy-year-old woman named Clara before she closed it down to spend more time with her family. Working there was—still is—my dream job.”
She looked at me like I would deem her dreams too small or too insignificant. I bet anything she didn’t know I hadn’t planned on becoming a hotshot TMZ regular. The initial goal was far more romantic. I got sucked into this world by my childhood mate, Will. We used to have a band together—The Kryptonites—before we’d decided to go solo and live together in London, all five of us—me, Will, Alfie, Blake, and Lucas. I’d wanted to stay indie when Will got that fat, mass-production deal. He was the one who’d hooked me up with Grapevine Records. Who’d made me me, in more than one sense.
My fingers were moving faster, chasing a rhythm, a forgotten song that was always there in my head. This was why I wanted her in the hallway. Somewhere neutral. Not in one of our rooms, where all I’d think about was how to shag her, because she was there, with a pulse, and in all probability willing. I needed her words and her thoughts and her disposition. I wanted to suck her soul dry and pour it onto the pages, my pages, getting my money’s worth out of my babysitter. Because she was innocent. And strong. And so infuriating, picking at her brain felt like a necessity.
“Go on, Stardust,” I taunted her. She knew it. It wasn’t a moniker. It was a dig.
“I have one brother.” She omitted her parents’ death this time when speaking to me. She’d offered the information to my bandmate freely enough. Maybe she saw me as the enemy and Lucas as an ally—stupid, stupid girl. “I ride my bike everywhere.” She paused, her front teeth sinking into her lip again. “And I have something to tell you, but I’m not sure it’s my place to say it.”
My head snapped up at her last confession.
“What could you possibly know that I don’t?”
“Oh, wow.” She blew air, shaking her head. “Look, I just want to help you.”
“And you are. You’re helping me by doing everything short of changing a fucking diaper to make sure I don’t dip my nose in the white stuff. That’s your job done. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
She stared at me, insolent, her gaze telling me she knew what I was doing. I was pushing her away in a last bid to make her leave, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Not all the way, anyway. She was going to stay, whether I liked it or not, and the least I could do for myself was use her until there was nothing left to take. The way Fallon had used me.
“You annoy me so much, sometimes I want to cry,” she gritted through clenched teeth.
I smiled, knowing for a fact I had another set of notes to write down. It was time to finish our session. She’d turned out to be more productive than anticipated. This was all I needed. I’d spend my night writing.
I climbed to my feet, my fingers wrapped around Tania’s neck, and knelt forward, getting into Indie’s face.
“When I finally lay my hands on you—and make no mistakes, Stardust, I will—you will be crying, all right. My name. Over. And. Over. Again.”
Melbourne, Australia
Two days had passed since the hallway.