Catch a Falling Star by Unknown

with a couple of sand-
    wiches, some chips, and two sweating bottles of lemonade. I
    recognized them as Little Eats Treats and To Go items, the pre-
    made things we kept stocked in a low refrigerator case in the café
    for people who didn’t want to wait for made-to-order food. He
    handed me a sandwich. “Hungry? These pesto ones rock.”
    I blushed. “I made those.”
    “For real? They’re good.” He peeled off the white paper and bit
    into one. “What do you use for the cheese?” He plunked down
    onto the grass, kicking his legs out in front of him, and inspected
    his sandwich.
    “Gruyère.”
    “Tasty.” He took another bite. “So, where’s this Zack?”
    I scanned the track. “There.” I pointed to the lone figure
    stretching at the edge of the track. Zack practically lived here, so
    I knew we’d see him. “He trains a lot .”
    Adam gave him a little salute. “Good to have discipline. I don’t
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    have that sort of discipline. Just parties, girls.” I wasn’t sure if he
    meant his character Scott or himself.
    I unwrapped my own sandwich. “Oh, Zack does plenty of that.”
    “But there he is.” Adam motioned to the track. “Running his laps.”
    “He’s just not very nice,” I mumbled into the white wrapper of
    my sandwich.
    Adam scanned the expanse of Little High below us and gave a
    small shudder. “Man, school looks a lot like jail.”
    “It’s not too bad.” I settled next to him, popping open a bag of
    barbecue chips. Little High was deserted except for Zack’s lone
    journey around the track. Funny how schools turned into grave-
    yards in the summer, all the busy day-to-day energy gone, the space
    left humming with emptiness. “Have you ever gone to school?”
    “I’ve had tutors,” he said, shrugging, his face guarded again.
    “The show kept me pretty busy. And now movies.”
    “Do you ever wish you’d gone to regular school?” I imagined
    Adam wandering the halls of Little High, waltzing into Algebra,
    going to football games. It would probably seem pretty lame to
    him. And they’d make him put his phone away.
    “I don’t think about it.” Then he seemed to do just that. “I
    mean, I probably would have thought it was cool at first, the whole
    high school thing — parties, football games, dances. Of course,
    none of those things are really school, I guess.” He took a drink of
    his lemonade. “Actually, I don’t think I would have liked it at all. It
    sounds boring. Always having to be somewhere every minute,
    packed into rooms too small for half that many people. Always
    having to ask permission to do anything.” He shook his head.
    “Yeah, no — I would’ve hated that.”
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    “Well, not all of us can be calling our own shots at age eight.”
    I stared at my uneaten sandwich, noticing his was already gone.
    “You still hungry?” I motioned to where my sandwich sat on its
    white paper in the grass.
    “You sure?”
    “I’m not very hungry.”
    He eyed me for a minute. “You’re not one of those girls who
    doesn’t eat, right?”
    “Oh, believe me, I eat. I’ll split it with you.” I plucked half the
    sandwich off the open paper, grabbing a stray tomato slice before
    it fell.
    He polished off his half in three bites. “I dated this actress. She
    ate, like, wheatgrass and tofu cubes. Disgusting.”
    A shiver went through me. He meant Ashayla Wimm, real-life
    Disney princess. They had dated for a while, and then, accord-
    ing to Celebrity! he dumped her in a horrible, public way. At a
    Lakers game, if I could remember Chloe’s recap of it accurately.
    She’d told me she’d almost taken down all the pictures of him
    from her wall when she’d read about the Lakers game breakup.
    Almost. It was weird to sit here with the guy whose pictures were
    plastered all over Chloe’s wall. Right now, he seemed almost nor-
    mal, but he could sneeze and it would be news on some online
    magazine.
    I swallowed the rest of my sandwich. “My dad runs a café.