Star

Chapter 1: Don't Stop Believing They called her Star.Her best friend, Theresa, had started it after they'd seen that old Barbra Streisand movie A Star Is Born, when it had come on the late show on one of the two Miami channels they could pick up on Arcady Key. They'd been having a sleepover at Theresa's, and both girls had fallen hard for the over-the-top rock-star romance. When Ms. Streisand's character explained that her name, Esther, meant "star" in Hebrew, well...that was pretty much all it took. Esther Wood Leigh was instantly commissioned Star.The name stuck for good reason.There was just something about her. It had begun the minute she was born. The first baby of the new year, her arrival had been announced in all the papers as if she were heir to a throne or a fortune instead of the daughter of a sometime fisherman and fulltime gambler, and the best waitress at the Garden Cove Pancake House on U.S. 1. She just naturally attracted extra attention.It wasn't that Star was the prettiest. She was kind of a late bloomer, the type of girl whose natural athletic abilities and aversion to all things "girlie" made her more tomboy than homecoming queen. But when it was time to decide who would be captain of the volleyball team or class officer or the one you'd tell your troubles to, it was always Star. People felt comfortable around her, relaxed and at home. Maybe that was why they tended to underestimate her. Like school, for example. She may have been the brightest, but she was far more likely to be called on for cutting up in class than for giving the correct answer. Only her mom knew about the straight A's, and that was because she signed the report cards. Star never told.Despite her stellar performance in school and her place in the hearts of all those who knew her, Star had been unable to afford college and tried hard to make her place in the world. She'd moved the few miles up the coast from Arcady Key to Miami, where she shared a tiny apartment with Theresa, the friend who named her. Little by little, she was saving up enough money for formal cosmetology training so she could earn some real money burning hair at a nice salon.As she made her way up the Dixie Highway from her day job at Talon's Nail and Tan Spa to her night job at Mother Pearl's Steak and Oyster Emporium, two rarely seen creases appeared between her brows. She worked hard. Two jobs took most of her time, and the few hours she didn't spend working were filled by constant activity with her friends and her boyfriend, Adam. It wasn't that the work bothered her or that she'd have traded in a single volleyball game, beach party, bar crawl, or wild night at Adam's apartment. It was a spider sense that something was missing, like that feeling you get when you stand looking into the refrigerator, not really hungry, but unable to stop looking. The feeling that this time, it might be there, right behind the ketchup and the pickled beets.Talon's had been particularly trying that day. Miss Elliott, the rather terrifying Eurasian mistress of the establishment, who'd taught Star everything she knew about nails, was breaking up with her Cuban boyfriend, Adolpho. All day in between monsoon-sized crying jags, the scissors hadn't been sharp enough, the nail polish had been sorted wrong, the tan accelerator wasn't stocked right, and the tanning beds weren't clean enough."Go home and call in sick" had been Star's advice to Trudy, the second-shift girl, when she arrived.As Star caught the long light at Calle Ocho, she began changing into her "uniform" for Mother Pearl's. The "uniform" -- and the girls all laughed at the word -- was a pair of silky, pearl-colored, onion-skin running shorts, white cross-trainers, a pair of light-toast Danskin shimmery tights, and a too-tight T-shirt with SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT ME RAW emblazoned in red across the front. Mother's made almost as much from the sale of the T-sAnderson, Pamela is the author of 'Star', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743493727 and ISBN 0743493729.