Cassidy - Steal the Stars

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

To K. And to Mac, Sean, Jordana, Bart, Marco, and Jen. We did the thing.

The great acknowledgments clich is no one writes a book alone. This is true by roughly a billionfold for a novelization. This book quite literally would not exist without the work of everyone who made the Steal the Stars podcast a reality. Thank you to the cast: Jorge Cordova, Brittany Williams, Daryl Lathon, Neimah Djourabchi, Brian Silliman, Kelley Rae ODonnell, Rebecca Comtois, Christopher Yustin, James Wetzel, Reyna de Courcy, Jason Howard, Abe Goldfarb, Seth Shelden, Hanna Cheek, Autumn Dornfeld, Jennifer Tsay, David Shih, Sol Marina Crespo, Tarantino Smith, and especially Ashlie Atkinson in the central role of Dak. Your talents, your insights, and even your off-mic questions and observations informed this text and made my job of exploring the depths of this story immeasurably easier. The podcasts sound designer, Bart Fasbender, is an evil genius of sonic creation and was able to do in a single cue what took me hundreds of words, but I am grateful to him for making some very out-of-this-world stuff concrete and real. It almost goes without sayingbut will not!that this book is also deeply indebted to the series director, Jordana Williams, and producer, Sean Williams. There are too many reasons why to list even briefly in print, but one of them is certainly egg rolls. Massive thanks are also due to editors Marco Palmieri and Jen Gunnels for their guidance, their support, their encouragement, and their belief in this project. This is my first novel-length work and, as Ive described novelizing as a sort of training-wheels experience, Marco and Jen were the steadying hand on my back as I wobbled down the sidewalk. Humble thanks (and pancakes) to Kelley, for putting up with my writing schedule during a very special time in our lives. Lastly, two more acknowledgments must be given. First, to the listeners of Steal the Star s. I hope this novelization has honored your listening experience while also giving you enough new dimensions (and a few fun digressions) to make you glad you picked it up. Its the job of the writer to be specific, but if you spent seven hours listening to our audio drama, then I know you have your own personal vision of a lot of these events and characters. I respect that ownership and I hope mine is able to coexist peacefully alongside yours. And second, and most of all, thank you to Mac Rogers. Thank you for your words, for this world, for these characters, and for entrusting them all in my hands. It was an honor to write by your starlight.

Everyone has the dream their first night after meeting him. Of rushing blackness, a void infinite and unchanging yet still that feeling of movement.

Everyone is left with the thought, the same conundrum:

Am I hurtling toward something alien?

Or is something alien hurtling toward me?

RIGHT BEFORE I heard the guys collarbone break, I remembered a print hanging in my grandmothers house. In the guest bathroom, written in an innocuous font over a pastel flower: Theres nothing more satisfying than seeing joy on the face of a friend.

My grandmother had obviously never thrown a guy twice her size across a room before.

Now, look, Im not a violent person by nature. I dont actually enjoy fighting. It stresses me out and makes me feel the bad kind of tingly for the rest of the day. But when a guy sidles up to you in one of only a handful of bars you have the option to patronize and his breath smells impossibly of socks and he leads with maybe the tritest pickup line in history, making it both annoying and insulting? Well, you make sacrifices.

Excuse me, he breathed, he exhumed, and if Id had a force shield I would have deployed it. He tried again, his voice low and (snort) sensual. Excuuuuse me.

I made the mistake of responding. Not muchbarely more than a sustained blink, not even looking in his directionbut he took it as leave to continue. It set him up for the clincher: Was your daddy a thief?

* * *

THE THING nobody tells you about the end of your life is sometimes you have so much damn longer to live afterward.

Im talking days, weekshell, decadesfrom when your life ends until your body finally gets the message. In my case, my life ended the day after I threw this guy across the bar and Ive been running ever since. I didnt even get, like, a five-minute break to mourn.

And its all your fault, by the way.

Of course, I say my life ended that next day, but the truth is Ive had difficulty pinning down the exact moment it happened. Believe me, Ive tried. I really cant help myselfI may not have been a scientist, but overthinking is something you catch hanging around them, like a disease.

When was the precise moment my hull breached, my engine failed, my horse went tits up? Was it when I looked at your bare chest and realized I could see your heartbeat? Maybe it was before then, that first handshake, looking into those eyes? Maybe its the most accurate to say my life ended the day I dropped everything and started working at Quill Marine in the first place, signing my life (and all my fraternization rights) away?

Yes? No? All of the above? Who fucking knows? Technically, its not the bullet that kills you, its the lack of oxygen to your brain due to the ruptured blood vessels, right? You parse something long enough and it loses all meaning.

Except those eyes. If anything, the more I parsed those eyes, the more meaning they took on.

Anyway. Back to the guy at the bar.

* * *

IM ASKING, was your daddy a thief?

Im asking myself how a guys mouth can smell so much of feet.

I usually have one drink on the way home. No more and, if theres a just and loving God, no less. I could just as easily have that one drink in my house, but for whatever reason I prefer not to drink in silence.

There are a surprising number of bars around this tiny townor maybe its not that surprising, if youve ever lived in a tiny townbut I usually stick to this one, the Heron. Its got a better juke. Also, of course, consistency helps avoid unwanted run-ins with co-workers. Again: fraternization.

Because he musta been a thief

Here it comes.

cuz he musta had to steal the stars from heaven

Feeeeeet.

to put them in your eyes.

Uuuggh. At last, I turn to him, hoping these eyes hes so fond of have somehow found the ability to shoot poison.

No. I turn my attention back to my glass.

Its a word Im sure hes heard a lot. It whisks off him like a drop of water off a windshield.

I, uh, I see you in here a lot, you know. Hes rubbing his fingers back and forth across the bar while he talks, absently, clumsily. Like a piss-poor massage. I put my rocks glass down as close to those knobby worms as I can, trying to send out the signal that Im okay with crushing any part of him that gets too close to me.