Diaz Plan Chapter 15

Star and Mrs. Diaz had been marching through the forest ever since dawn had broken, after spending a fitful night in a hollow log, listening for sounds of castle guards looking for them. Every once in a while, Mrs. Diaz would look up into the sky, at the gigantic burning eye, and sigh wistfully.

By some miracle the woods were silent. Star knew her parents would be sending out patrols to look for her, but wherever they were looking, they weren't anywhere close. In the beginning, she and Mrs. Diaz had remained silent to avoid giving away their position, but after a while they stopped worrying. When Mrs. Diaz spotted a relatively clean lake, with a waterfall splashing into it, she insisted they stop so they could freshen up, and Star agreed. She needed to look at her map anyway. Maybe there was some place they could rest other than the forest tonight.

But she found she couldn't concentrate on the map. Without the steady march to keep her occupied, her thoughts turned immediately to Marco. She was having difficulty imagining a resolution to all of this where she got to see him again, and that left her feeling empty inside. She tried to keep her mind off him, but all she could think of were his big brown eyes, and his smile that had always been able to lift her spirits. She sniffled and wiped away tears.

"Are you okay, dear?" called Mrs. Diaz from the lake, where she was rinsing out her shirt.

"Ah...yeah, I'm fine. Hey, Mrs. Diaz? How did you meet your husband?" Star was curious, but she was also just looking for something to keep her mind off of Marco.

"Oh, it was so long ago," murmured Mrs. Diaz, staring off into the distance. "The first time I ever met him, I thought he was a huge jerk, actually. It was at a friend's halloween party. But at the end of the night, I was dancing with him. Have you ever danced with someone and just felt so happy and free? After that, well..." she smiled wistfully.

Star considered Mrs. Diaz's question, and realized she had felt that before. When she was dancing with Marco. The realization was  like a punch to her gut, and she put her face in her hands and tried to muffle a sob.

Suddenly Mrs. Diaz was there, arm around her shoulders, patting her back. "What's wrong, Star?"

Star drew in a shaking breath and calmed herself down. "It's...what if I don't ever see you guys again? You and Mr. Diaz have been so nice to me, and Marco...he's the best friend I've ever had. I can't imagine never seeing him again. Well I can, but then it feels like I've been kicked in the chest."

"Haven't you ever had any other friends you've had to leave behind before? Sometimes leaving behind friends is just part of life."

"None like Marco," Star sniffed. "I've had friends I had to say goodbye to before, but...I really don't WANT to say goodbye to him. Maybe it's stupid, but I...I guess I thought we'd just be friends forever." She shrugged and gave a miserable smile. "I mean I sort of want to be friends with ALL my friends forever. But something feels different with Marco."

"It sounds like you two are really close." Star was sitting beneath a tree, and Mrs. Diaz seemed to be merging into the shadows of it, although she was only a few feet away. All Star could really see were her glittering eyes.

"Yeah, I guess we are. He's...just special to me. When he's happy, I'm happy."

"Reminds me of how I felt about my husband, after I met him," Mrs. Diaz murmured. Her expression was unreadable, a mysterious smile half hidden in shadow.

Star blushed furiously at that, though she wasn't quite sure why.

"Does he ever make you angry?"

Star blinked, not sure how to respond. "Well...I mean, sure, sometimes. Right now I kind of want to punch his stupid face for making me so sad about never seeing him again."

Mrs. Diaz's smile widened, her eyes now little more than two twinkling stars in the shadow. "Do you know how I first realized that I loved my husband?"

"No, how?"

"It was after our first serious fight," said Mrs. Diaz. "I was so, so angry at him. Furious. And hurt. And I had hurt him, too, I could tell." Mrs. Diaz pulled at her hair, lost in the memory. "THAT was how I knew I loved him. The fact that he had hurt me so badly. And I knew he loved me, because I had hurt HIM.

Before that, I had been very fond of him, yes. His happiness was my happiness, like with you and Marco. But that alone isn't love. Love is being so close to someone that they can hurt you very easily. And that makes you want to lash out at them, sometimes, to try and hurt them, because they are your weakness and they don't realize sometimes how much they hurt you, and all you want to do is hurt them back. Hurt them back, to make sure they feel the same way about you, and because they've hurt you. And beneath it all, you're happy to feel the pain, because that's how you know you love, and are loved. There is no love without pain and cruelty."

Star was completely silent, digesting this. "Love is crazy," she said finally.

"Yes," Mrs. Diaz whispered. Then she gave a loud laugh. "One day, of course, you learn to live with the person you love. You have a sort of lifelong truce. But in the beginning, there needs to be that pain, or else there is no love. At least, that's how I always thought about it." She patted Star on the arm. "Why don't you take a bit of a rest? You look like you could use a nap. I'll wake you up when I'm done cleaning up."

Star nodded, suddenly realizing that she WAS, indeed, very tired. She hadn't felt that way before. She lay down in the leaves piled beneath the tree as Mrs. Diaz returned to the lake, her thoughts inevitably drifting to Marco, and what Mrs. Diaz had said. Did he ever hurt her? Actually, he did. There were things he said sometimes that got her so, so angry. And sometimes, just sometimes, when he was paying attention to Jackie, there was a stab of jealousy that twisted inside her, though she tried to keep these things to herself. If she was honest with herself, when he told her about his kiss with Janna, she had been mad with jealousy. She had told herself that this was just because she was worried about losing her best friend to a romantic relationship, but she couldn't be so sure. And...did she ever make him angry? She couldn't remember. Maybe she didn't. And then, all of a sudden, the fact that she wasn't sure if she ever made him angry made HER angry, though she couldn't really figure out why.

She drifted to sleep to these thoughts.

In her dreams, Mr. and Mrs. Diaz were both smoky, floating shadows, holding her by the arms, leading her across a grassy plain to a dark forest while a full moon hung in the sky. They paused at the edge of the dark forest, and Star could see Marco, about ten feet in the forest.

"Marco!" she called out, but he just gave her one of those uncaring smiles he got sometimes, waved, and disappeared further into the forest. And suddenly she was furious with him.

She dove into the forest, tearing through brush and smashing aside tree branches, chasing after Marco. But he was no longer there. Instead, a black wolf chased her through the forests, nipping at her heels, biting her legs and arms. Every time she was bit, she felt an odd mixture of fear, pain, and happiness.

Finally, blood pouring from her wounds, she grabbed a sharp stick, and, the next time the wolf came to bite at her, she stabbed it, driving the stick into its side. The wolf yelped and whimpered and disappeared into the shadow of the forest...only to reappear as Marco, staggering out of the shadows with a wound in his side. He was also extremely naked.

"Oh...wow, nice," was all Star could think to say, stupidly, in her dream, before she realized that she was naked too. "Oops," she babbled, and then Marco had grabbed her and was nipping at her neck, and she grabbing him and wrapping her legs around him and gasping-

And then Star gasped herself awake. Trembling, she shook the leaves out of her hair.

"Oh, are you awake?" said Mrs. Diaz happily, from the shore of the lake. "I was just getting ready to wake you."

"Uh...yeah..." said Star, jumping up. Wanting to get the dream out of her head, she grabbed her map and unrolled it again. "Uh. Hmm. Let's get moving again, Mrs. Diaz. I think there's a farm or a village up ahead that we can reach before nightfall."