Falling Stars Read Free Page A

the room, but the twins ran for the table. Jessica, who had the same brown hair and green eyes as Alex, stopped at a sharp word from her mother. But Sarah…black hair, light blue eyes, all expressive attitude, climbed right up into her chair and grabbed a sandwich.
    At the sight of Sarah suddenly gobbling forbidden food, Andrea and Jessica froze. Carrie’s eyes darted back and forth between Sarah and her mother, and Julia just shook her head.
    “Young lady!” Mrs. Thompson shouted loud enough to shatter windows.
    Sean lifted his hands to his ears as if to block out the sound, and Sarah shouted back, “Hungry!” and stuffed the sandwich into her mouth.
    Let me tell you something. Back in the day I used to go with Wheezy and Gearhead and Lenny and hang out in the cemetery and get wasted, and sometimes we’d get high on whatever we could afford. It was all fun and games, and when the cops came around we’d run like hell through the gravestones and out into the neighborhood, cutting between houses and gardens to get away. Half the fun was outwitting the cops. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, one time I was running through the gravestones and it had rained the night before, so the ground was slick. I felt my feet slip out from under me and I went sliding along, then slammed into a wall. It knocked the air out of me, which was no big deal, and almost got me caught, which was. But then I heard the cop behind me slide, and he didn’t make a nice soft thump like I did. He hit something with a loud crack and cried out.
    Aw, shit, I thought. See, maybe I was trouble, but my dad was a cop. And that guy was probably somebody’s dad. Suddenly it had stopped being a game. I ducked my head around the gravestone, and there he was. A Cambridge cop, and worse, one I knew. Officer Brandon McCaffrey. Yeah, I knew him. He knew my dad. It was all one big incestuous family. And from the look on his face, Officer McCaffrey was in a world of pain.
    I couldn’t leave him. So I slid back around the gravestone and said, “Shit. Let me call for help.”
    Bad idea. See, I didn’t think. Officer McCaffrey had a radio and was perfectly capable of calling for help. He had a nightstick too, and he was pretty good at using it. From a supine position in incredible pain from a broken ankle, he still managed to clip me right on the temple with said nightstick, knocking me out. McCaffrey spent the rest of the winter working behind a desk. I spent two nights in the hospital and two weeks in jail.
    And the icy, murderous expression on his face right before he knocked me cold? That was the expression Adelina Thompson had on her face when she started walking toward Sarah, who had at that point consumed the entire triangle of sandwich.
    You can’t really blame her. Sarah was being intentionally defiant. And then it got worse. Because when Adelina started for her, Sarah jumped onto the table and ran for dear life. Her little feet knocked over a plate with a sandwich, then a pitcher of milk—seriously, who puts milk in a pitcher?—and then they were moving faster than her body and she started to slide on the table in the spilled milk, straight toward Carrie, whose eyes had widened.
    “Young lady!” Adelina screamed.
    Sean, who had thus far only managed to mortally offend one of Julia’s parents, decided it was time to start on the other one. With a full-throated roar, he shouted, “ Let’s all start screaming !”
    Jessica and Andrea both burst into tears, and an astonished Adelina forgot all about Sarah, who made her getaway by sliding down the length of the table until she slammed into Carrie at the end. Carrie swung her to the floor and Sarah ran out the door. Adelina stared at Sean, slack-jawed, and I said, “Sean, stop!”
    Julia raced to Sean and she did something I’d never seen anyone but our mother do successfully. She put her hands on both of his shoulders and looked him eye to eye as best she could, given that he was