Secret Star by Nancy Springer Page A

light there, not a glimmer, but this neck of woods was not too wide. She fought her way through and went rushing down the overgrown pasture, tramping through cedars and honeysuckle toward Kamo’s camp.
    He was still there. Thank God, he was still there. On the dark air she could hear his radio, sweet and clear, playing a Crux song.
    Then it stopped. He had heard something coming, crashing along like a moose.
    Tess slowed down a little and got herself under enough control so she wasn’t bawling like a moose too. It was okay. It was okay. She could see Kamo’s camp-fire now, burned down to embers, guiding her to his camp like an oversized golden star somehow knocked to the black ground.
    She blundered her way up to it, and there he was, sitting very still on the other side of the glowing coals, and the way the faint light found him she felt for a minute as if his face were floating in the black night, a tawny butterfly lifting toward her.
    â€œKam.” She could barely talk, she was panting so hard. “Kam, don’t go.” He was packed to leave, she could tell even in the dark. The rope he had hung his clothes on was gone from under the eaves. No pots sat by the fire. His knapsack bulged.
    He stood up, and his face blinked out. All she could see were his jeans from the knee down and his booted feet.
    â€œKam, please. Don’t go away.” Still crying, damn it. “I’m working on it, I—I’m so close. I can almost remember.”
    He kicked dirt over the fire. She couldn’t see, didn’t know where he was.
    â€œKamo!”
    â€œI’m right here.” His gruff voice sounded near her ear. He stood beside her and put an arm around her shoulders—just one arm, light and easy, but it was as if he were made of peace. Calmness seeped through her from his touch. Gently he turned her, aiming her toward home, and he started her walking. He walked beside her with his arm lightly riding on her.
    â€œYour daddy’s never gonna forgive me now,” he teased. “Leading you astray. You’re out running around in the night, and he’s gonna fetch his shotgun. He and Ernestine are gonna hunt me down.”
    â€œDon’t go,” Tess said.
    He sighed. She could feel the sigh run like a soft drumroll through his warm shoulder. He said, “I have to keep looking for him.”
    His daddy, he meant. She said, “I’m telling you, I’m almost there. I’m going to remember.”
    â€œYou been—trying to force yourself?”
    â€œKind of.”
    He stopped walking, faced her even though they could barely see each other in the darkness and put both hands on her shoulders. “How come?”
    â€œI have to do something, don’t I?”
    â€œNo, you don’t. Not for me. Listen, if you’re gonna remember, you got to do it for yourself.”
    She had thought he would be grateful. She flared at him, “I’ll do it for you if I want to!”
    â€œIt might—it might hurt you, Tess.”
    â€œI don’t care!”
    He turned and started walking again. Taking her home the back way, toward the creek bottom, he didn’t blunder into a thing. He walked through the dark like a cat. Sometimes he seemed barely human. Where did this guy come from? Who was he? Trying to figure him out was as frustrating as trying to see into her dreams. Tess demanded, “What the heck kind of name is Kamo, anyway?”
    With a quirk in his voice he shot back, “What kind of name is Tessali?”
    â€œSo my mother got in a poetic mood.” Girls were allowed to have weird names. “I’m serious, Kam. What flavor are you? Greek or something?”
    He sighed again. “I don’t really know.”
    It sounded like his mother hadn’t told him much more about this Rojahin man than Daddy had told her. Tess tried another question. “What kind of musician? You said your father was a