The Stars Will Shine Read Free Page B

use me won’t numb the pain.
    “This behavior, Delilah…It’s unacceptable,” Dad goes on. I swallow but end up making a sound partway between a gasp and a gulp. I wipe at my eyes again, which won’t stop watering. “I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know how to handle this….I don’t think I ever did. Your mother—she would’ve known.”
    My face furls tearfully. “Well, she’s dead, isn’t she?” Tears spray from my lips. “She’s not around to teach me anymore! It’s only you , Dad.”
    His voice is strangled when he says, “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do it...” His words are almost a whisper, and his shoulders are sinking. My God, he’s really giving up on me. And he’s crying. I haven’t seen him cry like this since he told me my mom died. “You’re getting more and more out of control.” I know he expects me to beg him, to promise I’ll change my ways, to do anything to convince him not to give up on me. But I don’t. I just stand there, letting my own tears pour down, because he’s right—I’m a lost cause.
    I bow my head, suddenly sobbing, and he pulls me into a hug.
    “Your Aunt Miranda…” he says. “She’s offered to take you in for your senior year.” I feebly shake my head and pull away from him, gasping for breath now.
    “I don’t—want—to live—with Aunt—Miranda,” I manage to get out between sobs. “She’s—so—uptight.”
    Dad reaches for me again, but I pull farther away. “I think it will be good for you.” His expression, a blend of helplessness and regret, pleads with me.
    “Why, Dad?” I whisper. I wait for him to meet my eyes. It takes him a while, and when he does, he flinches. This really is hard for him.
    “I work so much, Delilah. I’m trying hard to be a good father, but I’m just not around enough to help you. Miranda—she will take good care of you. You haven’t seen your cousins in a while.”
    We’re silent for a whole minute, me still staring at him, him still avoiding my eyes. By the end of that minute I’ve stopped crying, but my voice is small when I say, “I don’t want to move to California.”
    But even as I say it, I can’t come up with an excuse for why not. It’s not like I have any real friends here. There’s Eleanor, whom I sometimes read next to at a table in the school library at lunch, but she and I have only ever exchanged a few words. I think I told her I liked her backpack once. There’s Collin, whom I sat next to in U.S. History this past year, and whom I usually paired up with when we had to do partnered projects. He hardly ever talked, except strictly about schoolwork, so it worked for me. Then there’s—well, besides Lyle, who is no more—there’s no one else. My brother, Dave, will be starting his senior year at the University of Illinois this next year and is living there for the summer, not that we’ve been close these past years anyway. And my dad and I—well, here’s where we’re at.
    “I think it’d be best for you to finish out the summer there, too,” Dad says.
    “The summer’s just started—”
    “That way you can get to know the area and settle in with Miranda and your cousins.”
    My cousins. Dylan and Leah.
    The last time I saw them, I was eleven years old and Dylan, who’s my age, hid a caterpillar in my Rice Krispies. I only saw the damn thing when it happened to move beneath the cereal in the very spoonful headed right for my mouth. I want to tell my dad that story just so he knows that Miranda’s parenting style probably isn’t much better. But I don’t. Nothing will change his mind.
    “I can’t believe you got into a car with complete strangers. Four frat boys to top it off.”
    “They weren’t frat boys.”
    “God, Delilah, I thought I taught you better than that.” You have no idea what all I’ve done, Dad. “I’m so…disappointed in you.” And he really means it. I can see it in his eyes, in the droop of his shoulders, in the length of his