Read Online Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole - Free Book Online Page A

Rushmore. He doesn’t mention Mom, though I’ve known about Rushmore since I was a baby. It was part of their song, from that time before I existed, the time when they fell in love.
    “You don’t want to see it, just to see it? It’s like, some kind of American… thing, isn’t it?” Kat looks up from painting her toenails. “I mean, I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
    “Not Rushmore.” My parents met there on a church retreat when Dad was in seminary and Mom was in college. The stories they used to tell in tandem—about Mom asking Dad to take a photograph of her with her best friend next to the monument; how he had accidentally opened her camera and exposed the whole roll of film. Too many details—ones that I remember—the way they finished each other’s sentences. And later the photograph album of their Mount Rushmore honeymoon trip—pages of snapshots with their bright, youthful smiles so full of the expectation of future joy—all these details crowd out any appeal I may have found in the mountainous sculpture.
    I send him a response: Take a step. I’ll save Rushmore for you.
    “All right, cool. Carving a bunch of giant, dead white guys seems such a stupid thing to do to a sacred mountain.” She wiggles her toes.
    Devil’s Tower is pretty much as we expected, minus the aliens. We shuffle around the base in a crowd thick with strollers and toddlers wearing backpacks with leashes attached, and sunburned young lovers handing their cameras over to strangers to capture their bliss with the otherworldly rock formation rising above their heads.
    Kat rubs the back of her neck and scratches at a mosquito bite on her ankle with the edge of her other flip-flop. “Let’s get out of here.”
    “That’s cool with me.” I have a headache.
    The air inside the car is thick and hot, and it ripples out across the parking lot in waves. There is still a freshness in the air, though, in the smooth June sunshine that isn’t yet oppressive with midsummer humidity. “Next stop?” I pull out the atlas.
    Kat shrugs, looking a little peevish. “I don’t care. Will you drive, though? I get so bored.”
    I trade the map for the keys and climb into the driver’s seat, a flash of pale, freckled legs peeking out from underneath my skirt. I frown at them and wish, for the millionth time, for some pigment. “God, look at my legs. I look like a ghost.”
    Kat doesn’t look. “I like your legs.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re alone in that opinion.”
    “Not true. The boys in A.P. Lit. used to go on and on about them every time you wore a skirt.”
    Yeah, right. The boys in A.P. Lit. were too busy geeking out over their role-playing games or whatever to notice my legs—of that I’m sure. I roll my window down all the way before closing the door. “Oh my god, it’s so hot in this car, I swear I’m going to melt.” I lift the hair off the back of my neck. “Whatever, Katy. There were no boys ogling my legs. You made that up.”
    “Why would I make it up? That would be kind of weird.”
    “You know you’re always trying to make me feel better about myself. And it’s not like I’d ever know, with a lie like that. It’s not like I’m going to call up Danny Nash and Norman Whatshisface and be all, ‘Hey, did you used to look at my legs?’”
    Kat grabs my arm. “Call,” she says. “Call them and ask. I’m serious.”
    I roll my eyes and point at the map on Kat’s lap. “Find me a road. I’m ready to move.”
    “Fuck you.” She fiddles with the music. “You’re not listening to me, Anna. You have no clue how many people lusted after you.”
    I shift into reverse and back out of the parking spot. “What do you mean, ‘fuck you’? Which way should I go?”
    “I mean fuck you, you don’t even realize when someone’s crazy about you, Your Royal Aloofness.”
    “My Royal Aloofness?” I frown. Is that what people think of me?
    There’s a pause, and I look over to see her fumbling with her sunglasses.