No way.
Suddenly, one of the gardeners setting out the sprinklers for the evening yelps and throws himself to the side. Over the bushes to the parking lot, emerging like the great pumpkin in flight, flies an orange and yellow truck. It hits the ground with enough force to carve a dent in the immaculate grass and tears across the greens toward us, the bright-green fender smiling with a mouthful of leaves and twigs. And with the truck, blaring from the open windows so loud I can hear the speakers pop, is the Starfield theme.
“Ohmygod, what is that?” Chloe gasps.
James blinks. “A food truck?”
Cal beams. “I think it’s called the Magic Pumpkin.”
The truck skids to a stop in front of us. The windshield wipers flick on against the leaves, and Sage gives a whoop from the driver’s seat. “That was SO AWESOME!”
I drop the golf bag and run up to Sage and throw my arms around her. “I’m so sorry!” I croak, hugging her tight. “Catherine took my phone and I couldn’t explain and—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
She returns the hug, smelling like the place where I belong—pumpkin fritters and day-old coconut oil. “I missed you too! You wouldn’t believe who I picked up today.”
“I told you not to pick up hitchhikers,” I say.
She shrugs. “I’m trying to turn over a new leaf—”
Just then a black-haired young man falls out of the passenger door and all but kisses the ground. He rights himself quickly, leaning against the truck. Even though he’s a little green, everyone immediately recognizes him.
Chloe’s blond friend gasps. “Ohmygod…”
“Is that…” James says.
Chloe stands a little straighter, her eyes wide as saucers. “Darien!”
At the sound of his name, Darien Freeman quickly pulls back his shoulders and jerks his head toward her. There’s a subtle shift in his face—a rehearsed set to his lips, a levelness of his eyebrows—that makes me think of the masquerade. A mask.
He turns to me. “Elle—”
“Darien!” Chloe cries again, as she drops her club and hurries over to him. “Ohmygod it is you!” She looks around at her friends, her smile broadening in an I Told You So sort of way. “James—James, get this on video!” She slaps him on the arm to get him moving, and he pulls out his phone. She flips her hair back and rushes up to Darien. “Darien! I didn’t know how you would find me—was it the petition? You know I started that petition…”
“I can’t believe she was telling the truth,” Erin whispers to James, who nods, shocked. They’re literally speechless. I never thought I’d see the day.
My heart is in my throat when I tell it not to be, it’s speeding up when I tell it not to expect much. I don’t know why he’s here—he knows Chloe isn’t the girl he danced with—but of course he’s succumbing to her charms. Who wouldn’t?
“It took a while. I—I just wanted to formally apologize,” he says.
Chloe feigns shock. “Apologize? For what? And how did you find me?” she asks, touching his biceps, leaning toward him. To her, flirting comes as natural as breathing.
Right. Because she’s the one who wanted him anyway. Not me. Maybe in some other universe. But here—not me.
But then he tilts his head and glances over. At me. And the mask begins to slip away, little by little, until I can see something familiar underneath. He smiles at me. “I just came to return something to Elle.”
“Elle?” Chloe echoes.
He holds up a slipper made of starlight.
“Well, ah’blena?” he asks, offering it to me.
Ah’blena. There’s only one person who’s ever called me that, who’s ever wanted to.
My heart rises into my throat like a balloon.
Carmindor.
In front of Chloe and her friends, in front of James who pretended to love me and Cal who learned to love herself, and Sage who taught me that being who you are is okay, I slip a foot out of my boat shoe (ugh, country club rules) and set it before me.
He kneels and gently takes my heel, and then slips my mother’s starlight slipper right onto my waiting foot.
SHE STARES DOWN AT ME, HER messy braid of dyed-red hair spilling over her shoulder. She pushes up her boxy black glasses and steps forward, hesitant, like I’m playing a trick on her. A light brushing of freckles dot her cheeks. I noticed them before, but now I want to connect them like constellations, a starry sky on skin that is slowly but surely turning red. Glowing.
Elle.
Not Princess Amara, not the girl from the convention who broke my nose (still blaming her, don’t argue), not a stranger I can’t trust. I don’t know how I imagined meeting her—really meeting her, without a mask or a costume or a facade—I don’t even remember what I thought she might look like. How I imagined her. How I thought she’d be.
Because this is the only Elle I could ever imagine. She’s the only possibility that could have ever existed. I won’t say that she is perfect, or that she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, but the moment her gaze finds mine, she’s the best parts of the universe. She’s a person I would love to spend a lifetime with on the observation deck of the Prospero.
She swallows hard, her lips tightly together. The damp grass begins to seep into my jeans and I hear Lonny’s distinctive “keep back, please,” behind me, but I don’t want to get up. I want to stay locked here in this moment. I wait, wondering if she could—ever—forgive me. The Carmindor me, the actor me, the human me—Darien Freeman and Carmindor combined.
Finally, so quietly I almost can’t catch it—although I don’t need to, I’m watching her lips and read the words in the air—she speaks. Says what I never thought I’d hear from her.
“I hear the observation deck is nice this time of year, Carmindor.”
HE DOESN’T ANSWER FOR A MOMENT, but then he laughs. It’s soft and deep, like a velvet cake wrapped in creamy mousse. Eventually he replies—like I hoped he would, like I wished he would, my heart soaring up and up and up into space, “Only on the south side of Metron.”
He doesn’t look like Darien Freeman. He looks like any guy with dark curly hair, wearing a Starfield shirt that’s a little too small, faded jeans, and old Vans. He looks like someone who could play Carmindor if given the right color uniform, or someone you could meet at the mall.
There’s a scar on his chin that Carmindor doesn’t have, and a purpling bruise spreading around his cheeks, which—oh right. I guess that was my fault. He’s rubbing the back of his hand against one of his eyes like he has something in it. Like tears, maybe. Oh, Nox’s ass, is he crying?