Page 4 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Courtney

A scream nearly jolted me off the rolling shelving ladder. I jumped down and sprinted to the front to find a brunette in a bright yellow Carhartt hat cowering in the corner.

“What the hell? What the hell is it? ” The unfamiliar woman’s words shuddered through hyperventilated breaths. “Holy reptilian hell in a handbasket.”

I scanned the woman for injuries, taking in every visible detail, from her double nose piercing down to the toes of her worn brown Blundstones. The woman wasn’t bleeding, but she was ghostly pale and clutching her chest. “Are you hurt?”

“Watch out behind you. There’s a—there’s a—” She pointed a tattooed index finger toward the door.

I whirled, not fully knowing what to expect. An armed assailant? A fire? A flash flood? I saw nothing at first until a small horned head popped up behind the counter.

“ Oh .” My rigid muscles that had been oddly ready to do battle on behalf of this terrified brunette relaxed. “Oh…”

“Am I hallucinating? I was just standing there. You were shelving books, and I didn’t want to interrupt, and I looked down… and…”

I approached the troublemaker slowly because he was fast when he wanted to be. I grabbed hold of him and spoke softly so that only he could hear. Although my lizard anatomy knowledge was lacking, so I wasn’t entirely sure he had ears. “C’mon, little dude. Why?”

When I turned back to the woman, her mouth was open in awe as if I just charmed a cobra rather than wrangled a highly spoiled house pet. I grabbed his leash from behind the counter, where it had fallen during his escape.

“Since when does Kansas have goddamned winged micro-dinosaurs roaming its bookstores?” The woman had a hint of an accent. Southern maybe? Or possibly Texas? I could never tell the difference.

“No. No. No… He’s not… He’s a… well… he’s…”

“He’s a… what?”

Right, here was where I needed to just start actually explaining, with words. I could do this. Speak . “He’s… he’s just misbehaving.”

“ Misbehaving ?” The woman was still on the floor, brown hair wild beneath her mustard-colored beanie.

“I guess I’m not sure if reptiles are aware when they’re misbehaving, but his carrier must not’ve been latched right. I’m so sorry he scared you.” I held out my hand, but the woman seemed too nervous about the reptile perched on my shoulder to accept it. “ Are you hurt? Did you fall?”

“No, I’m okay.” After pushing up to standing, the woman brushed dust bunnies off her coat.

“I might not be an expert on lizards, but I didn’t think any real ones had wings.

” She took off her hat and ran fingers through her wild hair, exposing what looked like a partially grown-out undercut on one side.

The lights had been turned down for the book club, so as she stepped forward, I could finally see her face.

My fingers slipped on the leash, nearly dropping it as my stomach somersaulted.

I had been about to say something, but it vanished out of my mind.

And not in the way words sometimes vanished during a flare.

Or in the way I normally felt when trying to talk to strangers while visiting Kansas and trying to be “Courtney” after spending months as Kestrel.

I had randomly lost my train of thought.

Lost it somewhere around noticing the stranger’s soft curves covered in worn denim and aged whiskey-colored leather, the piercings up the shell of her ears in addition to her nose piercings.

Her eyes were so dark you could fall into them.

She had a round, pink-cheeked face with at least four dimples around a mouth that seemed like it was created to smile.

I didn’t even know it was possible for a mouth to have four dimples.

“Are you okay? You look like you glitched.” The brunette’s gaze flitted from my eyes and the creature on my shoulder.

The animal claw-kicked my neck as if even he knew I should be speaking. “I’m sorry—you asked— Um… what did you say?”

“I said, what is the animal on your shoulder? Also, why’s it in a bookstore? And I also asked if you were okay.”

“ Oh, right. Uh —it’s a bearded dragon. And I’m—er—fine. Just zoned for a sec.”

“A bearded dragon. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. And it’s in a bookstore… why?”

“It—uh—he, I guess. Right. Well, he comes to the middle-grade book club.”

“To provide astute literary critique?”

“More like its mascot.”

“Sure. Sure.” Her brown eyes were fixed on my shoulder. “Do bearded dragons typically have wings ? Is this one experiencing some sort of hitherto unknown mystical metamorphosis we should report to the local wildlife department?”

“One of the kids 3D printed them this month and painted them to match him. They’ve been reading the Wings of Fire books the last few months. Helen thought they were funny. It latches to—”

“I’m confused. Is Helen the dinosaur’s name?”

“Helen’s a vet tech next door, but she’s also Billy Gibbons’s owner. Billy Gibbons is the—”

“Billy Gibbons… Like Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top?”

I pointed to the name tag on the carrier. “She named him that because of his ic—”

“Iconic beard,” the brunette and I said in tandem.

“Bearded dragon. Ahh. I get it.” Her lips angled up. “Why not.”

“She just recently got a horny toad lizard and named it Harry Styles. But he doesn’t like people, so she never brings him to book club.”

The brunette’s bellowing laughter filled the entire room.

After coaxing Billy Gibbons back into the carrier, I double-checked the latch. “I guess if she ever got a frilled lizard, the ones with the neck-fanning-out thing, she’d have to name it… hmm…” I squinted. “Oooh—”

“ William Shakespeare? ” Again, we both said the same thing at the same time. Our eyes must both have caught on the collection of large antique volumes in the glass case at the same moment.

In direct light, the woman’s eyes were a lighter chocolate brown color. Her eyeliner wings were so perfectly sharp it looked like she’d used a ruler to create them, except for a small smudge on one side. Her lips were full, the bottom one protruding slightly.

Those skeptically twinkling brown eyes fixed on Billy Gibbons’s carrier latch. “You know, bookstores are supposed to have cats , not roaming reptiles.”

“This bookstore pretty much has everything except cats.” I looked anywhere to avoid more eye contact until I realized that this probably seemed rude. God , why can’t I just fucking make eye contact with people? I cleared my throat. “Or rabbits. Sam—Samantha—she’s the owner—she’s allergic.”

“Allergic to cats?”

“No, rabbits.”

“Wait, so then why not cats?”

I shrugged. “That’s a great question actually. I’ve worked here on and off for ten years, and I’ve honestly never thought to ask.”

“Why on and off?”

Before I could answer, the shop door opened. Helen hustled in and grabbed the carrier. She handed the brunette an orange business card without preamble and then ran out the door.

The brunette’s skeptical eyes swept over the business card. “That bearded dragon has one point two million followers on YouTube?”

“Wow, really?” I said, looking over the stranger’s shoulder. Her hair smelled slightly citrusy with a hint of cocoa butter. Like the chocolate oranges Sam ate at Christmastime.

She turned the business card over and read the back. “And Billy Gibbons does birthday and hospital visits apparently. What would a lizard do at the hosp— You know what, never mind. I’m Thea by the way.”

“It’s—er—really nice to meet you, Thea.”

Thea scanned the space, taking in the shelves and then crossing to a display that held tarot decks and books on folklore and astrology. The playlist we’d had on during book club must have finished because the music was gone as silence fell between us.

I should say something. Ideally something both welcoming and extremely hilarious that would make Thea laugh again, because maybe if she were laughing, I could stifle my inexplicably escalating anxiety.

Up until now when I had worked at Menagerie Books during touring breaks, I had handled seasonal inventory or did administrative work in the back office.

These jobs involved spreadsheets and meticulous data entry.

Never small talk, for good reason. But last week, after months of wallowing through my “emergency medical leave” after the disaster in LA by doing audits and whatever else I could do virtually or after hours, I surprised myself by jumping at the chance to fill in for one of Sam’s managers who went out on maternity leave earlier than expected.

I had been working regularly since I was five years old, so I had to do something.

Before taking this job, I had only left the house for neurologist appointments or the occasional quiet walk with Sam or my cousin Nic.

I had ignored calls from everyone in my other life, so I was even less practiced at talking to people than usual.

If I was really going to spend the next three months in a managerial, customer-facing job, I needed to learn how to fucking talk to people like a normal fucking human.

And, oh god. Thea was looking at me again.

Had she said something? No, I don’t think so?

Had I said something? No. Then why was she looking at me?

Having a sexy, artsy woman staring back in such a frank way gave me a rush of the gut-churning, chest-galloping stage fright feeling I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager.

“Did you glitch again?”

Speak, damn it.

“I—I—” I cleared my throat, choked on my own saliva, and had a coughing fit.

Nailed it.

“You okay?”

“Totally. Just breathed in some dust. I wanted to say again I’m really sorry he scared you.”

“It’s really okay.” The warm glow of Thea’s smile seemed to unlock something inside me. “Only my ego suffered a bruising.”

“I would’ve screamed too if an unfamiliar lizard with 3D printed wings popped out at me and crawled up my arm.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Thea’s upturned nose wrinkled. “I don’t think I screamed , exactly.”