Trailing Stars (Trailing Stars #1)

Chapter 6

I swallow, forcing a smile on my face. "Wherever is fine."

Clara's eyes light up. "You mean that?"

I blink. "Sure..."

"Great." A conspiratorial smile settles on her face. "Let's go."

Clara shoots me a sly look before bounding down the porch steps. I look after her before I slowly follow. What did I just get myself into?

***

About fifteen minutes later, we're standing outside Blackwater. Clara walks right up to the main entrance and types in a code to get in, saying it aloud in a sing-song voice. She does the same when she shuts off the security system inside, looking at me with a smile and a glint in her eyes.

"Let's go," she says.

I follow her. "Go where?"

She smirks. "You'll see."

Clara goes down a few hallways before taking me up multiple flights of stairs. When we reach the top floor, she leads me into a classroom and pushes one of the windows open, climbing out onto the roof. She looks back at me, arching an eyebrow when she realizes I'm not immediately clambering out after her.

Well, I followed her this far. Might as well go all the way. I climb outside, the snow crunching beneath my feet as I sit on the edge of the window and glance around. Every square inch of the roof is covered in snow except for the area beneath a small roof shade, including two chairs with a bookcase and basket full of snacks between them.

I gesture to the setup. "I'm surprised I haven't noticed that before. I have class in this room every day."

Clara shrugs. "Nathan and I made sure it was out of sight. That was the agreement." She nods toward the teacher's desk. "We're pretty close, so she doesn't tell anyone we're out here unless we're ditching class." Clara holds her index finger out, giving me a meaningful look. "Which we don't unless it's a friend crisis."

Clara seems open to talking about what's considered a friend crisis, but she might ask me about my life if I ask about hers. Probably better not to leave any opening for that, so I change the subject. "If it's not a friend crisis, what do you guys do when you're out here? Read?"

She follows my gaze to the bookshelf. "Those are actually all of Nathan's old journals."

My eyes widen. "Really?"

Clara laughs, nodding. "Yeah. He writes pretty much all the time. He's weird like that."

I don't know if weird is the word I would use. More like dedicated and thoughtful. But I don't push the point. "Do you think he would mind if I flipped through a journal?"

Clara shrugs. "I don't think so. Go ahead."

I cross the roof and pull a journal out at random. I sit on one of the chairs and flip through it, skimming the poems. They're different but similar to the ones he shared with me yesterday. Still about stars, but I think his newer ones go more in-depth about what stars are and how they form and what happens to them. These feel more experimental like he wasn't sure what he was writing about.

"Hey," Clara says, breaking me from my thoughts. She takes the other chair. "What was your poem about?"

I blink, my grip on the journal tightening. "Mine?"

She nods. "Yeah. I don't know you that well yet, so it was hard for me to figure the poem out."

I shake my head. "There's not much to say. I just wrote whatever came to mind."

Clara sits up, her eyes darkening. "We're friends, right?" I wouldn't really call us friends since we barely met, but I nod. I don't know what I expect her to say, but it's not, "Then, why are you lying to me?" I blink. How do I even respond to that? I don't have to—thank god—because Clara sighs, relaxing in her seat. "Sorry, but not sorry. Nathan's always telling me I shouldn't say things like that, but I want the truth from my friends."

I play with the edges of the journal. I want to look away, but I feel like that'll make Clara think I'm lying again. "I wasn't lying. There isn't really anything to say about the poem. It's just something I promised to do."

The corners of Clara's mouth turn up, and her eyes lighten. "Don't let Nathan hear you say that."

The mood lifts, and we move on to other topics. My favorite is probably how Nathan and Clara became friends. It's not at all surprising that it was all on Clara's part, but I find myself laughing at the details anyway.

"He always wanted to share his writing in class," Clara smiles, her expression softening. "But if you asked him to share it with you one-on-one, he'd get so shy, it was ridiculous. I stopped asking at some point because I didn't want him to feel like I was harassing him."

I sit forward, holding my chin in my hands. "So what'd you do instead?"

"After he finished sharing his poems, I would tell him how much I liked them and ask what they were about and how he came up with them. That was the only time he was willing to share anything about his poems one-on-one. So I kept complimenting him and asking right after he shared, and if we weren't supposed to talk, we passed notes back and forth about it. Eventually, he got used to me, and now we're best friends."

I smile. "You two sound really close."

"You have no idea." But I do. I would give anything to be that close to someone again. Actually, not someone... Morgan... I swallow, hoping that fills the void that just opened up inside of me. I think it does a little bit because Clara doesn't ask me about my change in mood. "Anyway, I feel like I've been doing all the talking. What about you? Any childhood friends?"

A twin doesn't count as a childhood friend, right? "No. Not really."

"Then, any close friends I should know about in case they come and accuse me of stealing you?"

I shake my head. "No. No friends."

"What?" Clara leans against the armrest. "That doesn't make any sense." She narrows her eyes. "Nathan mentioned you just moved here, but don't you still talk to your old friends from when you lived with your parents?"

I shrug, sitting back. "We drifted apart." Before Morgan even died. My fault, I think.

Clara frowns, scrunching up her face. "Well... I guess it's not so bad. Now that you have me and Nathan, you'll never make friends or think of your old friends without thinking that they suck compared to us."

I feel the corner of my mouth turn up. "Definitely."

Clara laughs, her eyebrows shooting up. "Really? Just like that? No argument?"

I shake my head. "No argument."

She laughs again, and I listen to her voice fill the space around us, sure that she's not far off on her prediction.