I rush toward her, grabbing the collar of the jacket. “Give it back! It’s not yours!”
“It’s not yours either!” Chloe replies, darting away from me. The collar slips from my grasp. “This was in our house, so it’s ours!”
“Yours?” I cry. “None of this was ever yours!”
I grab hold of a sleeve and tug on it. Chloe repels against me, trying to wrench away, but something tears and comes off in my grip. At the sound, I drop the sleeve as if burned and stare down at it.
No—no no no no no no—
“Ugh,” Chloe mutters, dropping the jacket. “Cheap garbage.”
I gather it up and press it against my chest. Willing it back together.
“Wait a second.” She spins around. “If you were going to the contest, that means you have a pass, don’t you?”
My blood goes cold. I’m shaking.
“Of course you do.” She tears a poster off the wall and it comes down in scraps. “Oops, not there. Or there,” she adds as she knocks a frame off the hook and opens my drawers, dumping clothes onto the floor. I watch her, still shaking, still with my arms around myself because I don’t want to let go of the jacket. My dad’s beautiful, ruined jacket.
“Hmm, now where would you put it?” Chloe turns full circle and then pauses on a poster. She glances at me as I pale, then back at the poster, and tears it off the wall. Behind it, tucked into the frame, are my con passes.
I jump to my feet. “Give those back!” I snap.
“Or you’ll do what? Run and tell Mom?” she mocks. Just then she sees the worst of it: my savings, balled up in a rubber band, and the bus tickets to Atlanta.
“What’s this?” Chloe sounds practically gleeful as she scoops up the tickets. “Greyhound tickets? Gross. Oh no—oops.”
With one swift motion, she rips them in half. And then in half again, and again and again until the tickets—the nonrefundable cash-fare tickets that Sage and I were going to use tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m.—are a pile of confetti.
“This should do nicely.” She takes the roll of bills and pockets it. “We can just buy a better costume. Thanks.”
“You can’t.” My voice cracks. “You can’t or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what?” Chloe sneers.
“Or—or I’ll tell Catherine you’re going to the con! She won’t let you. I’ll make sure she doesn’t.” I grip my dad’s jacket tightly. “I’ll—I’ll—”
I’ve never stood up to Chloe. I’ve never threatened her. Never in my life. And for a moment she’s shocked that I am, but then she blinks and her face falls into the dead-eyed look I know so well. How she looked last summer when she asked me why I thought James could ever like me. When she asked how I could have misinterpreted his kindness. When she made me out to be the freak, when the answers were always on the tip of my tongue.
But that’s peanuts compared to this. That was the appetizer. Now she has my con passes, my savings, my mom’s dress—she has to have mom’s dress, who else would?—Chloe has everything. She has everything I ever wanted.
“You’ll do what?” she says, stepping over the piles of clothes strewn across the floor. “If you tell Mom, then so will I. How do you think she’d like hearing that her stepdaughter is hanging out with a druggie?”
“Sage isn’t—”
“Or that she’s been skipping work?”
“I haven’t!”
“And who would believe you? You’re nothing, Danielle. You’re nobody. You never will be. No stupid dress can change that. You’ll always be the friendless weirdo whose daddy died.”
She shoves her free hand into my shoulder. I stumble backward, unable to catch my balance, and tumble onto my duffel bag. My duffel bag, where nothing is left but the beautiful crown Sage made me.
There is a loud solid crack, and my heart stops.
“Chloe?” Catherine calls up from the front door. “Calliope? I’m home!”
Chloe smirks. “Coming!” she replies, flipping her hair behind her shoulder, and leaves my room.
Slowly, I pick myself up, but the damage is done. I don’t need to open the bag to know what I’ll find. I do anyway—the crown that Sage spent hours crafting lies in pieces at the bottom. I pick up a few and they crumble between my fingers.
Bile rises in my throat.
Outside my door, there’s a padding sound of footsteps. I look up just as Cal peeks in.
“Elle?” she asks timidly—and then gasps. “Oh my god—what happened?”
I curl into myself. I wish the Black Nebula would eat me whole. I wish it would take me away. Hot tears burn as I squeeze my eyes closed and then they gush down my cheeks. I just want to go away. I don’t want to exist anymore.
“Elle…?”
“Get out,” I tell her, my voice wavering. “Get out of my room, Cal.”
For a moment she doesn’t move, wanting to stay. To, what, watch as I break down? Does she get a kick out of it, like her sister? But then she sinks away.
It’s all ruined. Everything is ruined. Just once I thought I could have something for me. Just once I thought…
But I guess this universe doesn’t have happily ever afters. I was stupid to think it could.
I find myself reaching into my back pocket, taking out my phone. I close my eyes, holding it against my chest, afraid it’ll be taken away too. Everything’s taken away.
Everything always is.
Even Carmindor.
It’s past midnight. He might be asleep. I remember the way his voice sounded. Deep but young. Weightless. Sweet. I wonder what it would sound like if he ever called me ah’blena aloud.
That thought is what makes me tap the phone icon beside his number, put it to my ear as my heart races faster and faster, as the signal pings off a satellite far into space and sends my call back down to earth to the exact spot I wish I could be.
His phone rings once, twice, a mayday out into this impossible universe. And then it goes to voicemail. A generic one without his voice, so it could be anyone’s. He must be busy. Or asleep.
I hang up and press the back of my head against the door, blinking back the tears to try to stop crying.
We don’t look up often, I remember texting. Maybe we should start.
Only glow-in-the-dark stars whisper down to me, an imaginary constellation. It took Dad and me an entire weekend to hang them. Afterward, we stretched out on the floor and stared up at the ceiling and he asked me, “Where do you want to go? Pick a star, any star. Then set your course. Aim.” He pointed at a star, one eye closed, and pulled his thumb down as though he was firing a stargun.
I stretch my hand to my destination, aiming with one hand, and falter.
“Ignite!” I hear my father say, even though he’s not here and never will be again. Because this is the impossible universe. And there is no Carmindor, there is no Prospero, or Euci, or the Federation, or observation decks. There’s just me, stranded on the wrong side of everything that I love.
Like Princess Amara, lost in the Black Nebula.