Trailing Stars (Trailing Stars #1)

Chapter 3

I'm one of the last ones to wake up. This wouldn't be a problem if it was just me and Hannah, but now that the rest of the family is here, walking into the kitchen feels like walking into the Supreme Court. But at least Hannah slides a plate of pancakes to me when I sit at the table. I doubt a judge would be kind enough to give me pancakes while sentencing me to jail.

I drown my pancakes in syrup, making Dad smile. "Some habits don't change."

I eye his syrup-drowned pancakes. "You have the same habit."

"That's probably where you get it from." He ruffles my hair. I smile down at my breakfast. I miss this. "So tell me more about your friends." But I don't want to hear that. Hannah and Mom stop their conversation to listen. My grip on the syrup bottle tightens, making Dad arch an eyebrow. "That's a lot of syrup..."

I nod, inhaling. "Right..."

I set the bottle down and stab a pancake with my fork, trying to think of something to say. I could go back to the names I listed yesterday, but I can't make myself say anything about them. If I'm supposed to give more details to Dad, I'd rather have an honest answer than a lie.

I fight to keep my breathing level when two names clearly appear in my head: Nathan and Clara. Those are the names I say aloud.

"Who?" Hannah's eyebrows furrow. "How come you never mentioned them to me before?"

I shrug. "We only met yesterday."

Her eyes flash, and she leans forward. Wrong answer. Overprotective big sister mode activated. "Yesterday?"

I nod, running my hands down my pants. "Yeah. Yesterday."

"What are they like?" Mom asks.

From the way Hannah's studying me, I have a feeling that if I say I don't really know what they're like, she's going to do a full investigation herself. "They're pretty cool." I glance up at the ceiling as I try to think of something else to say. For someone that talked to Nathan for over an hour, I'm blanking pretty hard on facts about him. "Um... Nathan likes poetry. Clara thinks it's okay."

"Poetry," Dad muses like it's the most character-defining thing he's ever heard. "Do you think we can meet them before your winter break is over?"

"Maybe the new year," Mom suggests.

I grit my teeth. Please don't talk about the new year...

"Christmas comes first," Kate yawns, rubbing her eyes as she comes into the kitchen. She pulls out the chair next to me and sits. "Besides, New Year isn't as important."

"Yeah," Dad jokes, "because the day your sister was born doesn't matter."

Kate points a finger at Dad. "That's not what I meant."

Hannah laughs, but her eyes still narrow when she looks at me. "What do you want to do for your birthday?"

Kate scoffs, waving her fork around. "Traditions of course."

She looks at me for a reaction. I try not to give her anything to go off of, but it's hard to keep a neutral expression when I think about what we usually do on my birthday and how it started. Morgan and I were turning twelve, and we tried to see who could stay awake the longest for our birthday. We even took naps and set an alarm for midnight on January 1st. Sometime throughout the day, it became a team effort, and if one of us fell asleep, the other would smash a snowball in the other's face until we both passed out at midnight on January 2nd. Everyone found it funny enough to join us the next year, so now we always try to stay up for the full 24 hours on my birthday, eating cake, watching movies, and keeping each other awake to make the most of it.