Starstruck by Brenda Hiatt Page A

unnerving, making me hesitate.
    Abruptly, he seemed to realize he was overreacting. He gave a little laugh that sounded as forced as mine had and finally started walking. “I mean, was it just because ‘Marsha’ sounds kind of like ‘Martian’? I know little kids do stuff like that.”
    Tempting as it was to say that’s all it was, I told him the truth. “No, it was mostly my own fault. I had kind of a . . . vivid imagination when I was younger. Back in second grade, I went through a phase where I told everybody I was really a Martian princess in disguise, and that someday my royal parents would come claim me and I’d go back to Mars to marry my prince. Just silly kid stuff, but I got teased a lot for a while.”
    He was still looking at me kind of strangely. “Wow, that is . . . vivid, as you said. Why do you think you, um, made up something like that?”
    I shrugged, trying really hard to make light of it, though I was still unsettled by his reaction. “Why do kids make up anything? I guess I wanted to feel . . . important or something. Special. And since I didn’t know who my parents really were, it was fun to imagine they might be special, too.” I laughed. “Really, really special.”
    Now his laugh sounded more natural. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
    “It’s still kind of embarrassing,” I said as we reached class, trying not to sound giddy from relief, now that I’d confessed what was probably my darkest secret and Rigel was still speaking to me.
     
    Other than a quick good-bye after History, I didn’t see Rigel again that day, and I missed him way more than was reasonable. I’d always sneered (mentally, anyway) at girls who needed a boy to be “complete.” But I couldn’t deny the empty feeling I had when he wasn’t around, almost like there wasn’t quite enough air to breathe. I didn’t like it.
    After school, Bri and Deb came over to my house, supposedly to do homework together, but really so they could extract every single little detail of my lunch with Rigel. They were properly incensed at Nicole’s attempt to embarrass me, but had no good theories on why Rigel had wigged out at the mention of my dumb childhood fantasy.
    “Maybe he just doesn’t have much imagination himself?” Bri suggested. “I’ve heard that people without imagination have a hard time getting it when other people do.”
    “Or maybe it reminded him of something he read?” Deb offered. “I didn’t know you then, but from what Bri told me, it did sound almost like a story you’d read in a book or something.”
    I shot a glance at Brianna, a little ticked that she’d talked to Deb about that behind my back, but she just shrugged and gave me an apologetic smile. I tried not to be bothered that Deb and Bri seemed closer these days than Bri and I were, but it hurt just a teensy bit.
     
    That night at dinner, there was no hiding from my aunt and uncle that I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I’d considered wearing them just to avoid the inevitable questions, but they made everything so blurry I was afraid I’d get sick to my stomach.
    “They’re in my room,” I replied to Aunt Theresa’s query. “My eyes seem to be improving or something—I can actually see a little better without my glasses than with them lately.”
    I wasn’t sure why I hedged instead of telling them about the sudden and apparently complete cure of my nearsightedness. Maybe it was because the only person I’d told so far was Rigel and I wanted to keep it our secret for now. That made it somehow precious.
    My aunt harrumphed. “I suppose we’ll have to take you to the optometrist, even though you’ve only had these glasses for eight or nine months. Have you checked to see if one of your older pairs will work in the meantime?”
    “Oh, good idea, I’ll do that.”
    The next morning at breakfast, I made a point of wearing my glasses from two years ago—which didn’t make things quite as blurry as my current ones—and telling