Where the Stars Still Shine Read Online Free

real.

     
    “Take the window.” Greg gestures toward the far seat in row eight. “You can watch as we take off and land.”
    He doesn’t know if I’ve ever been on a plane before, so his suggestion makes me feel as if he thinks I was raised by wolves. My cheeks go hot with anger, but his expression seems earnest, and I realize maybe he’s being kind. The truth is, I’ve never been on a plane, and I
do
want to watch as we take off and land.
    Sitting beside the window reminds me of Mom. We didn’t always have a car. Sometimes we rode the bus, buying as much distance as our money would allow. Shealways gave me the window seat, putting herself between me and the crazies—like the old lady whose lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth. She was convinced I was her dead daughter come back to life. When Mom refused to give me to her, the woman screamed until the driver stopped and made her get off the bus. The plane to Tampa is different from the bus. It doesn’t smell bad and nearly everyone is smiling. Probably pleased to be escaping the breath of winter that’s been at the back of our necks for the past couple of weeks.
    “Takeoff is always my favorite part,” Greg says, craning his neck to look out the window as Chicago shrinks smaller and smaller. “I guess because the destination—unless you’ve been there before—is ripe with possibility.”
    The city disappears beneath a bank of clouds, and I close my eyes to keep from crying again. With every mile I’m farther away from my mom than I have ever been and I am … lost. Life with her is wonderful and terrible, but at least I know how to be her daughter. I have no idea how to live in Greg’s world.
    “I have something for you.” He holds out a red leather photo album. I take it and open the front cover. Pasted on the front page is a pink birth announcement card for Callista Catherine Tzorvas.
    Running my fingertips over the raised black letters, I speak to him for the first time. “My name is Callista?”
    Greg’s chuckle dies in his throat when he realizes I’m not joking. “You didn’t know?”
    I shake my head, and his eyebrows pull together. I watch as a battle wages on his face, wondering if he’s thinking the same bad things about Mom as I am. When she stole me, she left behind all the parts she didn’t want anymore. Including my real name.
    “It’s Greek,” he says finally. “It means ‘the most beautiful one.’ And Tzorvas”—the
tz
makes a
ch
sound when he says it—“means you’re part of a big crazy Greek family whose noses will be in your business all the time, but who will drop everything if you need them.”
    I don’t want to be angry with my mother all over again, so I push the feeling away and turn the page. There is a snapshot of her holding a newborn me, with Greg beside her. They’re teenagers—about as old as I am now—and she’s the beautiful grunge girl I remember. Mom is looking down at me and he is looking at her. He
loved
her and she wrecked him.
    I exhale as I close the album.
    “Sorry,” he says. “It’s a lot to process, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I made it for, um—it’s yours, so you can look at it whenever. No rush.”
    I rest my head against the little oval window, and for a while I just sit, watching the clouds and the miles pass. Through a break I see what I think might beTennessee. Mom and I lived there for a few months when I was seven. I remember, because she worked the morning shift at a diner and would sometimes take me to the park to play with other kids. The other moms would circle up to talk—some with babies on their hips—but they never included my mom in their conversations. If she cared, she never showed it. She’d fan herself out on the grass with her portable CD player, chain-smoking cigarettes and singing along with Pearl Jam, her forever favorite band. Tennessee wasn’t as good as our first place in North Carolina—where I still went to school—but we were still