Page 13 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Courtney

Even though my rental house was only a block farther than Sam’s place, the part of the walk I did alone always felt the longest. Nevertheless, the frigid blast of air felt somewhat soothing on my cheeks, which burned any time I thought about Thea.

When I decided to leave Sam’s basement guest room and sign a lease of my own, I thought the small furnished house in Kansas would feel like a symbol of my biggest failures.

It meant I was officially taking a break from my life as a nomadic working musician.

The house wasn’t anything special. Two stories.

Three bedrooms if you counted the tiny room off the kitchen on the first floor.

Two bathrooms with vivid, dated tile. The tan appliances were from the seventies but still functional.

The kitchen floor was cheap linoleum. I had expected renting this house to feel like the adult version of placing myself in time-out.

I had expected to feel trapped. But instead, every night when I stepped onto the house’s old green shag carpet, all the tightness in my chest unfurled.

It felt like… something. But I didn’t exactly know what.

I hung my coat on the peg by the door and exhaled.

Somehow this little olive-green house in Kansas felt like a refuge.

Strange .

I sat on the floor of the dining room and pulled off my hat. As the knit fabric slid over my ear, a tugging pain reminded me of Thea too.

Thea who wanted to stay here permanently.

When she’d said that so matter-of-factly, part of me felt jealous. I’d said some things to Thea I hadn’t said aloud to anyone else, and they had been clanging in my head over and over again ever since.

“I think I’m turning over a new chapter actually.”

“It might be time to retire from all that.”

There were too many feelings wrapped up in those words for tonight. I couldn’t believe I had said any of that to a practical stranger. Too bad that I hadn’t been able to be as open or normal today when I talked to Thea.

The idea that I sucked at flirting pushed on an old bruise I had nearly forgotten.

“Dove needs to smile more.”

“Everyone else looks great, but Dove seems like she’s not actually feeling the Spirit.”

I don’t remember when my parents started calling me by my middle name all the time. It was after we had all begun performing together, back when the Starlings and their little Dove were announced from pulpits across America.

No matter how loud the applause was, the aftermath was the same.

The criticism picking me apart body and soul in an effort to shape me into their pretty and perfect little evangelical puppet. My mask became their paycheck.

“Maybe we should just put Dove in the back if she’s going to look bored when she sings.”

“Why can’t you just smile, Dove? Everyone else looks like they want to be here.”

It was never enough.

The applause was too loud.

And the lights were always too bright no matter where I was. No matter how hard I worked or practiced, that part of it never got easier.

I sighed and squinched my toes into the deep pile of the old carpet several times.

My arms braced with locked elbows on the drop-leaf dining table.

It had been shoved to the side to accommodate a setup of ten instruments—all the instruments I owned except the electric cello I used as Kestrel, which I assumed was with Demetrius, even though I hadn’t asked him to hold on to it.

The months’ worth of dust coating every key and string of my instruments sent a pang through my chest.

In the safe dimness of this room, I could admit I was afraid.

What if I just couldn’t do it?

What if I sat down to play and what I had before was gone?

Somehow the questions—the uncertainty—were easier than trying and failing.

My fingers traced the taut, untuned strings of my beat-up acoustic cello.

My eyes closed as if that would protect me from the onslaught of memories.

I didn’t want to remember holding that napkin backstage before I screwed everything up.

Or the familiar face in the crowd. The sirens or the accusation or the pain.

I took a deep, grounding breath, willing my fingers to pick up my bow. I couldn’t.

I also couldn’t block out the bad memories.

I was in Los Angeles on a stage. My life was about to change. It was going to be the biggest day of my life. I wasn’t Dove. I wasn’t Courtney. I was Kestrel.

That was the badass version of myself. When I wore that mask, my bow was a weapon protecting me from the past.

But that night it felt unsteady in my hands.

Still, I walked out onstage with Demetrius, and when the lights went up, I smiled. My eyes burned, and my head pounded, but I had trained my entire childhood for this exact situation.

Demetrius sang better than ever. He took the higher notes—the hardest ones that he didn’t always sing.

A hazer went off unexpectedly, then a pyrotechnic effect that sent sparks flashing directly in front of my face.

I was that little girl again.

If you mess up, they won’t know unless you tell them, Dove. It’s on you if they see it on your face.

The bassist turned his back on the audience subtly, rolling his eyes at the smoke. He was the official reason they weren’t supposed to have anything that created smoke or fog turned that way during shows. He snuck in a few puffs on his inhaler without the cheering crowd seeing it.

Demetrius saw everything, and I knew him well enough to know he was pissed.

But he was as well trained as I was.

A high-pitched shriek of feedback came through my new earpieces. That reaction was harder to hide. The stage lights weren’t as bad as I’d expected though. Maybe I’d been too rigid about them.

The sparks flashed again.

I played on.

Auras rippled across my field of vision, making me see everything in one eye like I was looking through a prism. I had played through this before. I would play through it now. I just had to get through this show.

As Demetrius asked the crowd to cheer louder, I smiled. This smile was real. It was almost time.

“ Kestrel. ” Demetrius gestured that I should take a few more steps toward him. He asked them if they wanted to hear something no one else had heard before.

The crowd went feral.

A bright spotlight hit me.

It was my turn to speak.

I made it three words before something popped in my head. My bow slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the stage.

The crowd fell silent for a moment, unsure whether this was part of the performance.

Unsure if they should laugh at my clumsiness.

I tried to laugh as I stepped to pick it up again, but my right foot dragged, causing me to stagger.

The fractals of an aura were familiar, but now everything tilted and glimmered.

Seconds slowed and became as garbled and confusing as my efforts at speaking. Demetrius appeared in front of me. His broad body blocked me from the crowd, but every word I tried to say came out slurred and stuttered.

He half-carried me offstage, not caring that my instrument—my precious sparkly electric cello—had fallen, sending another deafeningly loud note of feedback crackling through the sound system. I tried to tear my earpieces out, but my right hand wasn’t working.

“She’s hammered,” said the woman who had handed me the napkin. “So sloppy. Have security take her to the bus to sleep it off. Someone told me earlier she was an addict.”

“Courtney, are you okay?” Demetrius lowered me to the ground.

A label rep peered down his nose at me. “It’s the pressure. The label was worried something like this would happen. Such a pity. She probably just needs some coffee.”

“She’s not drunk.” Demetrius put his face right in front of mine. “Try to smile.”

“Smile, Dove.”

“Why can’t you just fucking smile the way you’re supposed to.” My father grabbed hold of my face.

I tried to smile. “It f-f-feel wr—”

I tried to speak again but it was even worse.

“Why is she talking like that? Does she normally talk like that?” another voice said with completely unveiled contempt. I couldn’t turn to see who had said it.

Demetrius’s dark eyes widened. “My god, I think… I think she’s having a stroke. Call an ambulance.”

The label exec sniffed. “She’s just being dramatic because I wouldn’t let her wear her angsty little sunglasses tonight. I heard she has tantrums about the smoke machines too. I swear she always acts like—”

“What did you say?” Demetrius nearly growled at the label exec.

Richard, Demetrius’s manager, stepped in between them, willing Demetrius’s attention back toward me. Somehow, he was also on two different phones at once. Or maybe I was just seeing double.

The exec’s arms lifted defensively. “They’re recording this for the music video. The label had a lot of money riding on it, and the videographer wanted some shots—”

“I don’t give a damn what the videographer said. Call your boss. I want you gone.”

Richard lowered his voice. “You need to get back out onstage.”

“I’ll get back out onstage when I see the—”

Richard gestured to someone out of my sight line. “See, the medics are here. She’ll be fine. You need to get back out there. This is your big moment, Demetrius. Don’t blow it because of her. She wouldn’t want you to blow it.”

I tried to speak again. Say that yes , I actually agreed with Richard this time.

Demetrius bent down. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and lifted the arm that still worked, probably to point toward the stage. “G-go.”

After that, everything became a blur of action. Things were getting attached to me from all sides. I was poked and prodded. It was too much for me, as dizzy as I was.

A medic grabbed hold of me. “Wait just a sec, missy. We’ll help you onto the stretcher.”

“Oh… okay.” The words were clearer, which was a relief. My vision was less obscured, but the light was still rippling. It was still like seeing everything through crumpled cling wrap or glass tunnels showing the animals underwater at the zoo.

“I interrupted her injecting herself with something backstage earlier. She tried to hide a bunch of pills at that meeting,” the label exec said. “Make sure they do a full drug panel on her. For her own safety of course.”

“I’m n-not. I didn’t…” God, it was so frustrating. Why wouldn’t the words come out? I could think them, but it was like they kept getting stuck somewhere. Pain cracked my head in two again. “My h-head.” My hands felt stronger now. I held my head between them.

I had thought that night couldn’t get any worse.

Then the familiar face I had seen in the crowd before the spotlight hit me appeared. He was backstage now, ten feet away from me.

“Hello, Dove.”

If I was having a stroke, there was no one I wanted to be with at the end less than the man walking toward me.

This whole thing had been a mistake.

Everything that brought me here was a mistake.

Bile rose in my throat. I threw up all over Richard and the label exec, who were standing closer than I thought. I fell back onto the stretcher, closed my eyes, and waited to see if I was going to die.

But I didn’t.

And tonight, standing in my rental house in Kansas, it had been exactly three months to the day since I last played.

Sam and Nic had been the ones to set up the instruments here when they helped me move in.

They shouldn’t have bothered. My hand balled into a fist above my bow.

I fucking can’t.

I couldn’t do it.

Because Courtney Starling—the person beneath all my masks—has no idea who she really is anymore.

I didn’t eat dinner.

I headed straight up to bed.