Secret under the Stars
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Elizabeth Bevarly
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19.2K
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11
Prologue
“Not again.”
“Dude. How many times has it happened?”
“This week? At least ten.”
“Nah. It’s been ten times this weekend alone.”
“Good point. And every time it happens, he looks like he’s gonna hurl.”
Fifteen-year-old Max Travers barely heard his best friends’ exchange. He was too caught up getting lost in the vision on the other side of the pool. Marcy Hanlon. The most beautiful, most charming, most graceful, most excellent... He stifled a sigh. The smartest, kindest, greatest, loveliest... He stifled a second sigh. The most...awesomest human being on the planet. In a hot-pink bikini. Slathering suntan lotion on her ivory shoulders while she chatted with her two best friends at the Endicott Country Club on a bright September afternoon.
Brilliant. She was absolutely brilliant. Radiant, even. Luminous. Max had read that word in a book for English class last week, and after looking it up, all he could think was that it described Marcy perfectly. ’Cause she for sure brought light into every second he was around her, and everything in his life was drab and dull when she wasn’t there.
Which was usually. Other than a few scattered times at the pool during the season, he rarely saw her anywhere but school—and there, they only had two classes together this term—and every Saturday, when he went to her folks’ house to take care of their garden while his boss, Mr. Bartok, tended the rest of their perfectly manicured estate. And those Saturdays would be coming to an end in a few weeks. Yeah, he could squeeze in an extra month or so freelancing for the Hanlons, but that would be it. Mr. Hanlon hated Max’s guts—because, among other things, he probably knew Max had a thing for his daughter—but the old man was smart enough to realize that no one in Indiana could keep his dahlias going longer than Max Travers could, and no one could get them to bloom earlier in this zone. Once the dahlias were done, though, Max could kiss goodbye any chance of seeing Marcy outside of Biology or Algebra II.
“You should go talk to her,” his friend Chance said from his left side. “Ask her what she’s doing later.”
“Yeah,” his other friend, Felix, agreed from his right. “She’s with Claire and Amanda. Maybe we can get all three of them to meet us at Deb’s Diner for burgers.”
Oh, sure. He might as well try to talk to the Queen of Sheba—or Makeda, as his Ethiopian mother had called her in the stories she used to tell Max at bedtime when he was a kid. The Hanlons probably had as much wealth as Makeda and King Solomon combined. No way would they let Max near their daughter. As it was, her three older brothers had been staring daggers at him and Chance and Felix ever since they entered the pool area, thanks to the three of them being working-class scum. The only reason the friends were even allowed at the pool was because it was a perk of their summer jobs—Max worked as a greenkeeper for the club, Felix bused tables in the restaurant and Chance was a lifeguard. But the Hanlon brothers’ contempt for Max specifically—and Mr. and Mrs. Hanlon’s contempt, for that matter—went deeper than the economic divide, he knew. There was just way too much melanin on his mother’s side of the family.
“I’m not gonna go talk to her,” he told his friends, never taking his eyes off Marcy. “Holy crow, that’s just an invitation to get pounded by Remy and Percy and Mads.”
“Pshaw,” Chance huffed theatrically. “Remington and Percival and Maddenford Hanlon wouldn’t last two minutes with the likes of us.”
“Yeah,” Felix agreed. “And who the hell gives their kids names like that? Seriously. That’s just an invitation for them to get pounded by their classmates.”
Hah, Max thought. Felix wished. Marcy’s brothers had all lettered in football and wrestling. He and his two friends would be little more than oily spots in the grass when the Hanlons got through with them.
“At least Marcy’s got a name that doesn’t take all day to write out,” Chance said.
“At least Marcy doesn’t think she’s better than everyone else in town,” Felix added. “Though how she turned out that way, coming from a family like hers, I’ll never know.”
It was definitely one of Endicott, Indiana’s greatest mysteries, Max had to admit. Her father, Lionel Remington Hanlon IV, was, no question, the richest guy in Endicott. He was almost certainly the richest guy in southern Indiana. Hell, he was probably one of the richest—maybe even the richest—guy in the whole state. The Hanlons lived in a huge house atop a huge hill just outside of Endicott, one that had been built when the town was just a wayside port on the Ohio. It was surrounded by ten acres, all of it—save the garden—rolling green knobs that overlooked the river. They had a tennis court, an in-ground pool and a stable with three horses. Max had never been allowed to enter the house, but he’d heard there was a bowling alley and movie theater in the basement, along with a huge wine cellar.
And, of course, there was the garden, a half acre that Max both loved and hated tending. Loved because Mr. Hanlon insisted on having some of the most exotic, expensive plants he could find, many of which weren’t even suited to Indiana’s capricious climate. Hated for the same reason. Every year, Max planted and cared for them as long as the weather would allow, then had to watch them shrivel and die when fall set in, never to return. Then he’d have to pull out their formerly glorious carcasses and turn them into mulch for next year’s assortment. It was a crime the way that guy just discarded some of the most beautiful, most perfect things in the world because he didn’t have the time or concern for them. He only wanted them as showpieces to flaunt his wealth.
Max looked at Marcy again. She was chatting happily with her friends, not sparing so much as a glance for Max. He didn’t take it personally. She wasn’t sparing a glance for any other guy, either. Even though there wasn’t a guy in Endicott who wouldn’t walk over hot coals for her. Felix was right—she was nothing like the rest of her family. They’d sat next to each other in Natural Science for a whole term last year, and they’d been partnered for a week to do a research paper on The Scarlet Letter in English. Max had thought the story was pretty tedious and the characters kind of annoying, but Marcy had loved it. Thanks to her enthusiasm, they’d gotten an A on it. And thanks to her being so kind and so smart and so beautiful and so excellent and so perfect, Max had fallen hopelessly in—
“Well, if we’re not going to the diner later,” Felix said, jarring him back to the present, “then let’s hit the club restaurant. They still have some Bob cookies leftover.”
Max smiled at the mention of Comet Bob, Endicott, Indiana’s sole claim to fame. The comet had been returning to the planet every fifteen years for centuries, always making his closest pass in the skies above their small town. No one knew why. At this point, no one cared why. But the residents of Endicott had come to claim Bob as their own.
Legend had it that anyone born in a year the comet visited—which Max and Chance and Felix had been—could make a wish the next time Bob came around, and then see that wish granted on his third visit, when the wisher was thirty. Max hadn’t been immune to the whimsy surrounding the legend of the wishes. In fact, he’d embraced it. All three of them had. A few nights ago, when Bob was directly overhead, he and his friends had sent wishes skyward. Chance had wished for a million dollars. Felix had wished for something interesting to happen in their sleepy little town. But Max...
Max had wished for the most noble thing in the world. True love. He’d wished Marcy Hanlon would see him as something other than the guy who took care of her family’s lawn.
“So who wants a cookie?” Felix asked. “They’re not giving them to club members, since they’re not so fresh anymore, but we wretched refuse can help ourselves. Who’s up for a kitchen raid?”
He and Chance were off like a shot, but Max couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. Because Marcy had glanced over long enough to catch Max looking at her, and now she was looking back. Then she lifted a hand to offer him a quick wave. And then—then—Marcy smiled at him. The most perfect smile Max had ever seen.
But then her brother Remy called her name, and her other brothers came to join her. The looks they gave Max were nothing short of menacing. He didn’t care. In fifteen years, none of it would matter. Because in fifteen years, Marcy Hanlon would be out from under her family’s thumb, and Bob would be granting his wish.
And Max would be right here in Endicott, waiting for it to happen.
