Ellie couldn't sleep after they returned home that night. Even after her hot shower, she remained restless and unsettled, and could not wash away the guilt that continued to wrack her with every recollection of their shared kiss.

It was the lies she hated the most. Intricate webs spun like a canvass, concealed beneath brush strokes of picturesque landscapes. Ellie could not forget the first time she saw the truth, and the anger it bore inside her. She did not bother with reasons or excuses. Lies, she concluded, were black and white, and no amount of wasted breath could ever forgive them.

As simple as it was, her brother couldn't see the lies for what they were, and Ellie often wondered if he couldn't or if he simply wouldn't. Claire had been a beautiful lie that swept into their lives so early on that she had taken on all appearances of truth over time. Perhaps he was too close and was blinded by it.

But Ellie saw it. And her stubbornness refused to let it die. Lies were black and white, after all, and there could never be any room for compromise or half-truths.

Until that kiss.

Her actions could only have been a lie. A fabrication born from boredom or anger, or maybe from a moment of insanity. It was an empty kiss, she reasoned. Completely without substance. And her own physical response had been nothing more than an automated chemical reaction to it. Yet, the more she reasoned, the harder it became to see where the black and white lines were drawn.

The world was no longer divided into binary colors, and Ellie wondered when her world began to change. Looking up into the starry sky from her opened bedroom window, she lingered on a memory from years ago; one that whispered her lies to the stars.

~X~

Ellie watched her from across the crowded room with the eyes of a petulant teenager. Her lips curled in a decided frown as she bit the inside of her cheek, unable to look away. Streamers and confetti burst and fluttered in the air like gleaming silver snowflakes around her, seemingly floating as they slowly fell to the floor. Drunken party-goers hollered and cheered while the obnoxious shrill of squawkers resounded over Bing Crosby's rendition of Auld Lang Syne, but a distracted Ellie could still make out the faint ping sound of champagne glasses clinking together as others toasted to the new year.

And still, she could not tear her eyes away.

Stardust. The word came to her like a soft whisper, resonating in her thoughts, billowing through her like a bundle of nerves, defiant of her own hostility.

She wondered about the first time she laid eyes on Claire; the pretty girl with shimmering azure eyes who'd stolen away her big brother's heart, and with it all of Ephraim's attention. With a softness and a glow too demure to compare to the blinding candor of the sun. Claire was more like the moon, her light drawn in by the shadows of unspoken things, things that Ellie had decided should not be forgiven. But, in the beginning, she was like stardust; and Ellie glimpsed a vestigial flicker of that starlight in her once again.

And it was maddening.

I must be crazy, Ellie surmised. I'd have to be.

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Every breath, every gesture, down to the innocuous flutter of her eyelashes, was like a spring of stars, and Ellie was drawn in, and all her anger with it.

Claire smiled up at Ephraim as he approached, pressing her hand on his scruffy cheek as he leaned down to take her lips. His hand covered hers and their wedding bands kissed. Ellie clenched her jaw, and the crease lines in her frown grew deeper. That feeling came back to her, strange and unknown, it knotted itself in her chest almost painfully as she looked on.

Appearing behind her, Gavin leaned forward and uttered something into Ellie's ear. She could feel the heat of his breath but his words were lost in the noise that rattled around them, and she mindlessly nodded a reply without bothering to meet his eyes. He startled her by pressing a cold champagne glass into her hand, grinning slyly as she turned to face him with quizzical eyes. Raising a flirtatious brow, he gave her a quick peek of the liquor bottle he'd confiscated into his letterman jacket before zipping it up again.

"For later," he told her, and although Ellie still couldn't hear him, she could read the words on his lips. She could also imagine the kind of trouble they were bound for if her brother caught them sneaking drinks. Ephraim was not so flexible with underage drinking, especially when it involved his sixteen-year-old sister.

Stealing another look across the room, Ellie cringed at the way Claire slid her arms around Ephraim's neck as he drew her onto the dance floor, swaying cheek to cheek. He must have said something funny because she tilted her head back in laughter.

A soft and musical laugh, Ellie imagined sourly. As fake as everything else about her.

Silently, and with deep breaths, Ellie whispered untruths, hoping to lay her wayward madness to rest. But she could not deny the stardust, and the gravitational pull that left her wanting and empty. An emptiness that demanded her attention, possibly at the bottom of several shot glasses by the end of the night. Watching them kiss once more, it struck her that later couldn't arrive fast enough. That nameless and invisible knot fastened tighter around her chest, and the ache expanded, throbbing and bursting as something inside her shattered into endless bits of shimmering shards.

Just like stardust.

~X~

So, your sister hates your wife. There are worse things in life than that.

In the weeks that followed since that day at Sutter woods, Ellie learned just how worse things could get. It came with a shortness of breath, and prickles on the back of her neck whenever Claire shared the same air as her. Something had changed. There was a spark in the air between them, ions and atoms colliding without reprieve. And for weeks, it had been unbearable.

She wasn't sixteen anymore, but she wasn't quite an adult either. Legally, she could vote but she couldn't drink. She worked part time while attending her second year of college, but she still lived at home and had never paid a month's rent. She had her own car, but her brother covered her insurance; her phone bill was discounted on their family plan. In the ways that were most apparent, Ellie was still a child, down to her twin braided hair and rhinestone decorated book bag. But the same something that had set change in motion had also taken its hold on her, unraveling her from within and remaking her anew.

Change took the shape of desires and expression, and a night came when Ellie took those desires and shaped them into words and soft sighs. Claire should not have been so surprised when it happened.

Ellie had her pinned beneath her. Silvery blonde hair spilled in waves over the plush carpet, disheveled and messy in beautiful disarray. Claire's lips, full and swollen, flushed a bright red. And her eyes were quite wide, even as she struggled to catch her breath.

There had been words. Reckless words. Somehow, they had emerged from Ellie's mouth, taking shape as their lips met. She had not realized she had spoken them, not until she pulled away and saw them take form in Claire's startled eyes. She couldn't imagine why she'd uttered them. Lips easily told untruths.

But the words, as reckless and unexpected as they were, did not feel like a lie. And it scared her.

Ellie trembled, seized by the knot in her chest, the aching throb that finally had a name. It should have come to her as no surprise, but its truth impaled her with realization. And she knew there would be no turning back when Claire whispered them back, her lips grazing along the length of her neck before Ellie stole her breath with another kiss.