Starlight (Book 1)

15: Maybe the Mall Isn't So Bad After All

The rest of the week passed mostly as a melting pot of weekdays. Wednesday wasn't even all that bad.

By the time Vivian forced me to leave the house, I was mostly ready to accept my fate. Similar to how Jax dragged me out during the evacuation drill, I let Vivian do whatever she pleased and I followed.

Either way, she had chores to complete, something to do with yearbook club and her camera. It meant that when she came to pick me up, I got subjected to a few minutes of pointless rambling where she explained some drama that was going on between the editors and the photographers.

It was a lot less like Romeo and Juliet than it sounds; I promise.

I didn't really mind following. The mall was as loud as I had expected it to be, and every time a group of teenagers that looked around the same age as I passed, a sinking feeling in my ribs poked its way through my chest. Thoughts of Dad and Papa filled my head like pots and pans banging together as Vivian cycled through the clothing racks, holding up the occasional shirt or sweater for my approval.

By the time Vivian invited me for the second time, I had given up on everything else so much that I needed a distraction.

I had gotten no closer to figuring out what was going on with Orion and Spark. Phantom had been strangely quiet ever since the burning of Summer Street, something I could only assume meant nothing good for the status of finding the person Riley had mentioned.

As Vivian paraded in and out of the fitting room, trying on various outfits in alternating colours, I tried to work out who the person Riley was searching so desperately for could be.

My mind scraped against every clue I had received since Nymphéa street. I had already crossed out Nia and Priya, since neither Diamond nor Amethyst had gotten themselves into any of the fights lately.

I even considered, for a painful moment, that the person could have been Mabel, or even Grace. It would have made sense, I told myself—getting Mabel to stop being annoying was a decently worthy cause—but I knew Riley would never stoop that low.

On the other hand, Vivian was hotly talking about the struggles of women's clothing sizes never fitting her rounder figure, and I was pretty sure she'd been waiting for me to say something for a few seconds now.

I hoped she wouldn't crucify me for tuning out and asked, "What?"

Apparently that was the correct answer, because Vivian nodded enthusiastically and said, "I know, right? Isn't it just so unfair that I can be a medium at some stores but an extra large at others? Like, do they just throw a dart at a board to determine this or what?"

We had come to a stop in front of a nail salon. Considering I wasn't paying attention, I somehow got roped into choosing a colour to paint my nails without ever being conscious of the fact that that's what I was doing.

Shrugging, I chose a pale purple to match the shoes I was wearing as Vivian kept chattering away, having picked out a nice sparkly turquoise for herself.

It turned out pretty decently for me, since the woman doing our nails was happy to be Vivian's soundboard for the time being.

"It's nice, isn't it? I almost never do this," she was saying.

"Yeah," I said, the guilt for ignoring her settling in. "I had to teach myself how to paint my nails—do my hair, you know?"

Of course she didn't know. Why had I said that part? But it was true. Most of a preteen years were spent looking up how-to articles and internet videos on how to braid my hair, do my eye makeup, and basically everything else. It wasn't that my dads didn't try—they definitely tried.