Star Chaser

Chapter Five

I watched Orion pull his ridiculously impossible magician's trick every day that first week, doing most of the chores and arriving at school, looking too good for what his personality deserved. I had an uncomfortable amount of free time on my hands. The only chore left was keeping track of the corn stalks. How could Orion do something so easily with so little practice? And why couldn't I?

At the end of a very painful week of watching him jump through every difficult hoop I could think of, I had no choice but to agree to let him stay on. It would have been a stupid move to ask him to leave. I had to admit that even though I hated him, he did a great job.

"He can stay," I muttered to my dad over dinner that Friday as I stared down at my half-eaten chicken spaghetti, poking at it halfheartedly.

"You don't like the kid do you?" my dad asked, sitting at the other end of our dining room table. He brought a napkin to his beard, which was peppered with marinara and parmesan cheese, and meticulously wiped it clean.

"Nope," I said stabbing my fork into a piece of chicken.

My dad laughed, his voice booming across the dining room, shooting more color into his beard. "I've never known you to hate anyone."

"We all have our firsts," I answered with a mouthful of food.

He made a face and began to clean his beard again. "You have no manners." I shrugged in response. "He's handsome."

It was my turn to make a face. "Dad... I've never heard you call anyone handsome before. You've used smoking and hot, but handsome? That's weird even for you."

My dad stood up and rinsed off his plate. "Hon, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how objectively attractive someone is. There's that whole..." He picked up a sponge and waved it around, sending soap suds plopping down onto the counter as he tried to remember the word he was looking for. "...symmetry thing. It's science." He finished washing his plate.

"His personality is terrible," I said, joining him at the kitchen sink with my own plate.

My dad muttered something about how he was never going to get me married off if I wasn't open to new possibilities. I quickly washed my plate, scrubbing furiously at the cheese that was stubbornly clinging to the surface. "Dad. Just because someone is good at something and is objectively attractive doesn't make them a good match for me."

He chuckled. "Unlike the Millers kid, he'd last five minutes on this ranch and has. Even with everything you've thrown at him." He shot me a look. "I've never seen anyone try so hard to prove that they belong here. Cut the kid some slack."

I picked up a rag and began to dry my plate. "No promises."

He wiped down the counter. "Try Alina. He's good at his job."

I placed our plates in the drying rack, processing the last week. "And don't you find that strange? He's faster than he should be. It's humanly impossible to do what he does," I said mostly to myself.

My dad turned and looked at me with a brow raised as he placed the drying rag over his shoulder. "Now you have a problem with someone being fast?" He scoffed. "First you thought he couldn't handle it. Now he's so fast that you're suspicious? All that coffee has started to rot your brain, baby girl."

I groaned. "It's not the coffee." 

He chuckled as I left the kitchen in a huff. I was not interested in talking about Orion's attractive level or hearing my dad talk about the side effects of my coffee intake. Slumping onto my bed face first, I buried my head into my pillow, processing the week's events, trying to wrap my head around the impossible.