The Stars Will Shine Read Online Free PDF

across his face as he watches me scowl at him. He gulps his milk down as I turn back to the refrigerator. The cold air gives me goosebumps, and I shut the door with a shiver and a groan. I’m going to starve in a rich family’s kitchen.
    When Aunt Miranda speaks next, it’s from this room, just a few steps away from me.
    “Delilah, we don’t use those words in this household,” she says softly. Her face contains a wrinkle of concern. She’s like a therapist, gauging how to talk to me, how to draw me out.
    I stare at her, oblivious. “What words?”
    “Well…inappropriate words.” She straightens her gold chain necklace and folds her hands neatly in front of her.
    “Inappropriate words,” I repeat slowly, still not getting it. And then finally it clicks. “Ohhh, you mean ‘shit,’” I say bluntly. “And other words of the foul sort.” I twiddle my thumbs and feign an apologetic face. “Words like ‘bitch’ and ‘ass’ and ‘fuck’?” Aunt Miranda cringes especially hard on the last one…You’d think she was the Virgin Mary, purified from sin by God himself.
    “Yes,” she says, her lips thinning. “ Those words.”
    A smile curls one side of my lips, and I just stare at her darkly for a drawn out moment. As soon as she starts to move uneasily under my gaze, I pop my lips and ask, “Did my dear daddy inform you of my sexcapades?” She nearly chokes. I turn back to the refrigerator and open it once more. “He’s hoping, you know, that you can reform me”—I give her a pointed look over my shoulder—“as he’s been unsuccessful himself.” I’m not sure what drives me to push people’s buttons, to make them writhe in their skin, but I do it. I always do it.
    A sneer takes my face, and maybe it’s only me that knows it’s to hide the bitter truth—that there’s a dead soul inside of me. I close the refrigerator again, hands still empty, and turn back to Aunt Miranda. She stares at me, her eyes stony and the lines of her face drawn hard. I don’t know what Dylan’s expression looks like, but I can feel his gaze burning the back of my head. Why are they shocked? They knew how I am. Or maybe Aunt Miranda really didn’t know what she was getting into, taking me in, until now.
    “He was probably too embarrassed to tell you everything I’ve done.” I’m unable to stop myself now. “Like my hitchhiking story.” I run my tongue over my upper lip, still curled, and Aunt Miranda flinches. I think she suspects what I’ll say next. “That was the last straw for him, you know…When four college guys picked me up, and I thoroughly repaid each and every one of th—”
    “Enough.” Aunt Miranda’s face is tight, and she hunches over in a sickly way. I had to say it, though; I had to see on her face that lack of doubt, the way she didn’t question, even in her mind, what I said. Because it’s too believable—that I am so fucking screwed up, I would give it up to four strangers as payment for helping me out.
    I laugh once in disbelief then leave the kitchen in a blur, having unsuccessfully found breakfast, but having very successfully alienated my hosts. My eyes water up just the slightest before I exit the house and slam the front door behind me. With a gasp, I suck in the rural California air, and the tears that were on the verge of falling slide back in retreat.
    And I convince myself that if the tears don’t fall, they don’t exist.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    There’s something about home improvement stores that relaxes me. Maybe it’s the cold, hard gray floors; the stacks of stiff wood; the acrid, synthetic smell of paint; the sounds of saws buzzing and metal clashing on metal.
    I’m standing in the interior paint section of Lowe’s, browsing the wall of too many color samples, trying to find the one color I’d be willing to stare at for a whole year. A Lowe’s employee, maybe a year or two older than me, approaches. Her blonde hair is tied back in a