“Have you ever heard of Damian Marshall?”
The change is startling. Her lips slam shut, and she goes so pale she’s almost gray. For a second, I think she’s having a heart attack.
“Sandra? Are you okay?”
Her eyelashes flutter, and she looks me up and down before nodding vigorously. Her cheeks turn bright pink, and the color spreads down beneath the collar of her shirt.
Behind me, the people are still watching and whispering.
“My grandson said he’s a famous actor,” Sandra says. “When I asked... When I... about...” She makes a squeaking noise as she claps a desperate hand over her mouth.
Great. Just fantastic.
I get home and leave the vegetables on the kitchen counter, then go to the living room where I slump on the couch and pull out my laptop.
“Did we become vegetarians when I wasn’t paying attention?” Stef calls from the kitchen.
“We’ll order pizza,” I say, pulling up one of the celebrity news sites I’ve discovered over the last couple of days. It shows a bunch of pictures of Damian. A screenshot from the video, except now I’ve been blurred out so I’m a dark shape in his lap. A picture of him trying to get through the crowd of people at the marina in Anchorage. It still refers to me as “an unknown male employee of the Wild Eagle Lodge,” and I guess I’m supposed to be relieved about that because it means they don’t care enough to find out my name. I’m not the story. Damian is.
But the thing they’re all forgetting is that here, in my hometown, with people I’ve known forever, I’m the most interesting thing that’s ever happened. One step away from someone they idolize. Someone they think they know.
Someone I thought I knew.
“Stop torturing yourself with that asshat,” Stef says as she comes to sit next to me.
“Language,” I say. “There are children present.”
Robbie’s been drawing at the kitchen table. He’s got his headphones on, but despite them, he laughs softly to himself and mutters something that sounds distinctly like “Yeah. That asshat.”
I try to keep myself busy, but with my house already scrubbed to the baseboards and dinner coming in a box, there’s not much to do. Normally this is the part where I’d go down to the wharf and work on the boat, but I don’t even have that option. Dinner’s awkward because the obvious topics of conversation are Damian—who I don’t want to talk about—and Graham—who I do want to talk about, but I will almost immediately say the wrong thing. So we let Robbie talk about salmon spawning while Stef and I avoid making eye contact.
Once Robbie’s in bed though, I quickly run out of places to hide.
“So,” Stef says. “When you headed off to that job fair in Anchorage, I bet you didn’t see this coming.”
“Can we not?”
“Okay. Then do you want to talk about what you plan to do when I move and you’re up here all by yourself?”
“I was by myself before you arrived.”
“And you were lonely. I saw. The state of this place was—”
“Hey!”
She puts an arm around me, and it’s an uncomfortable feeling to have my little sister dispensing life advice.
“You’ve given up a lot for this family,” she says. “For Dad when he got sick. For me. I want to make sure you’ll be okay.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“By living on salad and take-out pizza while you hide from the rest of the town?”
“That’s not my fault. I’m sorry a moment of poor judgement has turned me into the subject of local gossip.”
Stef sighs, dropping her head on my shoulder. “You could come with us.”
“What am I going to do in Anchorage? I can’t be in the way while you try and figure things out with Graham.”
