Wish Upon A Star

by Mary Sheldon

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

From acclaimed author Mary Sheldon comes a novel of ambition and desire about a woman who outgrows her life, only to discover a new one--with new dangers--just around the corner. . . Growing up in Palm Springs, Pandora Brown had daydreams that couldn't be contained in the small desert town. She yearned for something more fun, more glamorous, more fulfilling--like her uncle's life as a Hollywood agent. If wishes came true, that's where she'd be. . . And suddenly, Pandora is given her chance. Her uncle dies unexpectedly, leaving Pandora his agency. With childhood sweetheart Gary along for the ride, she shakes the desert sand off her feet and heads for Los Angeles. But the little girl from Palm Springs has a lot to learn about Hollywood, particularly the cutthroat world behind the scenes. She turns to her uncle's beautiful young assistant for help. But the savvy, charismatic Lori has her own selfish--and vengeful-- motives. She encourages Pandora's interest in the dashing owner a rival talent agency, a harmless crush that results in a deadly obsession. And when Pandora falls into a passionate affair with a stuntman, the love triangle is destined for disaster. . . Mary Sheldon, the daughter of novelist Sidney Sheldon and actress Jorja Curtright, grew up in Los Angeles and New York City. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters and is working on her next novel.

Release date: August 15, 2012

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

I was eleven years old the first time I saw her.

It was a beautiful morning in the Palm Springs desert, full of birdsong and oleanders and September sunshine. But it was the first day of school, the first day of sixth grade, and I wasn’t in a mood to appreciate any of it.

I bicycled down Tachevah Drive as slowly as I could. All too soon, I reached the familiar redbrick school building, and tied up my bike. Not a whole lot had changed at Katherine Finchy since I’d said good-bye to it in June.

My friends were already there in the play yard. We did a little roughhousing, and started a game of handball, but none of it really got off the ground. We were bored with one another already. We had spent every afternoon that summer going to each other’s houses, playing in each other’s yards, cooling off in each other’s swimming pools.

One by one, we gave it up.

I noticed the new girl the moment she came into the schoolyard. She was different from any girl I’d ever seen before. For one thing, she was very pale—her skin made me think of vanilla ice cream and my mother’s best china. And she was wearing a dress. No girl I knew did that, unless it was church or a birthday party, and even then it was just a skirt and blouse. This girl was wearing a real dress, white, with flowers all over it.

But the thing that struck me most was her hair. It was long, almost to her waist, and shining gold, just like Sleeping Beauty’s in the movie.

She was carrying a big plaid book bag, and it kept bumping against her legs every time she moved. The closer she got to us, the slower she walked.

“You look just like a robot!” someone yelled. The girl’s face started to turn red. It was as if a glass of burgundy wine had been poured over her cheeks.

“What’s your name?” someone else called out.

The girl shook her head. “I won’t tell you.”

She had a strange voice—I’d never heard one like it. It seemed to hit two notes at the same time.

I thought it was great that she wouldn’t tell us her name.

The bell rang then, and Monster McClellan, with her blue hair and pointy eyeglasses, came out of the classroom. She told us to come along inside and choose our seats for the year.

Everyone rushed in, grabbing desks, and calling out to their friends to sit next to them. I had done the same thing, too, every other first day of school, but this year I waited. I wanted to see where the new girl was sitting.

She was the last one to come into the classroom. There were only two desks left—the worst ones, closest to the door. She took the first, and I sat down beside her at the second.

I could see my best friends, Bobby and Tom, staring at me in amazement.

“Welcome back, Falcons,” Mrs. McClellan told us with a big smile. “I swear you’ve all grown a foot since I last saw you. I hope you had a restful summer and are ready to get to work.” She waited for the expected groan from the class before continuing. “As you can see, we have a new student this year. She’s just moved to Palm Springs from Barstow, and I know you’ll all help her feel at home here.” She pointed toward the desk by the door. “Class, this is Pandora Brown.”

Everyone turned around and stared. Pandora?

I wondered what Pandora’s parents had been thinking of, to give her such a crazy name. We’d all read the myth last year, and Rick Jameson next to me came up with the obvious joke.

“Pandora’s Box!” he whispered, so that everyone except McClellan could hear.

We all knew that a box meant a girl’s private parts, and everyone started to giggle. I looked over at Pandora. She was staring down at the desktop, her face bright red again.

I didn’t pay much attention to school that day. I just kept looking at Pandora Brown—the way she sat, the way she held her pen, the way she fiddled with her silver chain bracelet.

I spent most of the morning figuring out a way to get into a conversation with her. I would go up at lunch and say, “Hi, I’m Gary Ortiz; I think Pandora’s a great name. I know a place where you can catch catfish a foot long—if you like, I could take you there after school.” And when the last class was over, Pandora would get on the handlebars of my bike and away we’d go.

When the bell rang for recess, everyone jumped up and started for the playground. Everyone except Pandora; she just stayed at her desk. A few of the kids, seeing she wasn’t moving, stopped right outside the door and waited to see what would happen.

“Pandora,” Mrs. McClellan said in a loud, slow voice, as if Pandora were stupid, “it’s recess. It’s time to go out and play.”

Pandora finally stood up and walked to the door. The minute she was outside, the kids were swarming all around her.

“Pandora! Pandora! Pandora’s box!”

They kept on teasing her—first about her name, then about wearing a dress, then about her book bag, and then about her hair. They weren’t mean kids, not most of them, they were just trying to get a rise out of her. If she hadn’t paid any attention, they would have stopped in a minute. But Pandora started breathing real fast, as if she were trapped in a cage with a leopard. Then she picked up her book bag and hit Matt Meltzer square in the face.

The kids scattered to the ball cart and the handball court. Pandora walked back into the classroom, and sat down at her desk again.

At lunchtime, we got our lunch boxes from our lockers and went out to the benches. Tom and Bobby had saved me a place, and I sat between them just like I’d done every day since nursery school. I looked around for Pandora, but she wasn’t at any of the tables. I told my friends I’d be right back.

I finally found her, clear around the other side of the school building. She was sitting on the ground, in a patch of sun, and I could see her pale knees starting to turn red.

“You’ll get sunstroke,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”

I remember them clearly, the first words that odd, two-note voice ever spoke to me.

I saw she didn’t have a lunch box. “Where’s your lunch?”

She shrugged. “We had a cafeteria at my old school. My mother didn’t think I’d need to bring any.”

“Wait here a minute,” I told her.

I went back to the bench and picked up my lunch box.

“Go on without me,” I said to Tom and Bobby, and left before they had the chance to ask any questions.

I went back around the building to Pandora. I sat down next to her, opened my lunch box, and pulled out a chicken leg.

“Take this,” I told her. “My mother always gives me way too much to eat.”

“Thanks.” She took a bite out of the drumstick and gave me a smile.

“It’s really good.”

I leaned back against the side of the hot building and watched her eat. I didn’t say what I had planned to, the line about taking her fishing for catfish, but it didn’t matter. I can’t remember ever feeling better in my whole life. I guess the truth was, I loved her the minute I saw her.

Up until I met Pandora, every friend I’d ever had was pretty much a carbon copy of myself, with pretty much the same life. We all lived in the Mesquite area of town; we all had stucco houses with tile roofs and swimming pools; we all bought one another’s birthday presents at Uncle Don’s toy store, and Ron at the mall gave us our monthly haircuts. And our parents had the same kinds of jobs. For the dads, it was storeowner, paint contractor, plumber; for the mothers, receptionist, nurse, teacher. We spent all our time together, hanging around town or at one another’s houses, bicycling, swimming, going to movies. There was soccer on Saturday mornings, and Pac-Man at Shakey’s after the game. And whenever there was a special outing, it was always something communal—one family would plan a trip to Disneyland or Raging Waters, and the whole gang would caravan down for the day.

But Pandora Brown’s life was nothing like that. For one thing, she lived in Dream Homes. Dream Homes was a housing project built in the 1950s for low-income families, and by the time I was born it was a pretty dangerous community. It was okay during the day, but at night the area was known for burglaries, break-ins, drug sales, even drive-by shootings. All the kids I knew were forbidden, on pain of being grounded, to go there.

About a week after school started, Pandora invited me over to her house. I asked her where she lived, and when she said Chia Place, I couldn’t believe it. I thought there must be two Chia Places, or that she’d gotten the name wrong.

“What’s the matter?” she kept asking me. But if she didn’t know, of course I couldn’t tell her.

I almost said I couldn’t come, but then I changed my mind. I just made sure I didn’t let my mother know where I was going.

We bicycled over to Pandora’s after school. I’d never seen a home like hers before. The rest of our families were maybe a little too house-proud; we tended to repaint before we really needed to, and our gardens never had a weed. But Pandora’s house seemed very neglected. The roof had tiles missing, and weeds were growing up through the asphalt on the driveway. Pandora didn’t say anything about it, though, so neither did I.

The inside was a little rundown, too, with dusty orange rugs and shabby furniture. But I thought Pandora’s room was great. It was filled with books—not the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books the rest of us read, but grown-up books: poetry and biographies. And she had posters on her walls, like we all did, but they weren’t of Madonna or Markie Mark. They were all posters from old movies.

“Undercurrent? The Third Man? Christmas in July? Who ever heard of those?” I teased her.

“Me,” she said. “I’ve heard of them. My uncle Gene gets them for me.”

Pandora’s parents were out that afternoon—her dad had a doctor’s appointment—so she and I had the house to ourselves. She thought up a wonderful scary game, a cross between Vampires and Hide and Seek, and we played it till nearly five o’clock, when I had to go home. As I bicycled back to my house that evening, I remember thinking that maybe Chia Place and Dream Homes weren’t so bad after all.

That was the start of it. For the rest of sixth grade, at least twice during the school week, always on Saturdays, and sometimes on Sundays as well, I’d go over to Pandora’s, bicycling up Sunrise to Ramon, down Ramon and over to the Palm Springs airport. I still trace that route in my mind.

It took me until October to get up the courage to tell my mother where I’d been going. She said she knew all about it—it’s hard to keep secrets in a town like Palm Springs. And that as long as I was home by sunset, she guessed it was okay.

The first time I invited Pandora home with me, I was a little nervous about her seeing my house. It was so much bigger and better kept-up than hers, and I was afraid she’d mind. But she didn’t seem to at all. She went slowly around every room, admiring all of Mom’s knickknacks, and saying how beautiful everything was.

I was also afraid that, being a girl, she wouldn’t be interested in any of the things I liked—computers and comics and model cars—but she enjoyed them all. What she liked best, though, was my basketball setup in the backyard. We played a game of one-on-one all afternoon. She wasn’t very good, and I had a great time teasing her, twirling the ball up just high enough so she couldn’t get at it.

The girl certainly hated to lose.

When it got to be dinnertime, Mom invited Pandora to stay and have supper with us. It was a fun evening, though I could cheerfully have killed my fourteen-year-old sister, Janine—all through the meal she kept making little remarks about “Gary and his girlfriend.” I was relieved to see that Pandora paid no attention.

After dinner, Pandora said she’d bicycle home, but of course Mom wouldn’t hear of that. We loaded Pandora’s bike in our station wagon, and drove her back to Dream Homes.

When we pulled up in front of the house, Pandora hesitated.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked. She seemed a little embarrassed, and I could tell she didn’t want Mom to see her house.

“Not tonight,” I said quickly. “I still have that science project to finish.”

She gave me a quick smile.

As we were driving home, I asked my mother, “So what did you think of her?”

“She definitely has character,” Mom said. “I like that.”

“And what drawer is she in?” That was the system my mother always used for labeling people.

It took her a while to answer.

“I can’t decide if she’s top or bottom.”

That always stayed with me.

The following Friday I finally met Pandora’s mother. Pandora had been absent from school that day, and after classes were over a few of the kids invited me to get a soda with them at Denny’s.

When we got to the restaurant, I noticed that there was a new waitress. She looked like someone on a television show, with long red hair twisted up in a braid, and a face made up with orange lips and glittery blue eye shadow. She wore chains and bracelets, and long dangling earrings with bright gold balls on the ends.

“Hey, kids,” she said. “What can I bring you?”

Julia Haight looked over at me, making sure I was getting the full picture.

“Well, first of all,” she said in this phony little-girl voice, “we wanted to know how Pandora was doing. She wasn’t at school today.”

“Aren’t you sweet to ask,” the waitress said. “She’s fine—it’s just a little cold.”

Julia shot me a triumphant smile, and I got the point that this odd-looking woman was Pandora’s mother. I made my face as flat as I could, and didn’t show any surprise or disappointment.

I liked Mrs. Brown when I got to know her, though. I even came around to thinking that it was great she was so different from all the other mothers. She didn’t give a hoot about how her house looked, she didn’t want to join any of our local women’s clubs, and her cooking was a big joke—once she sent Pandora to school with a raw turnip in her lunch box. But she was good-natured and a lot of fun, and she made me feel welcome whenever I came over.

I liked Pandora’s father, too, though he was also quite unusual. All the dads I knew worked outside the house at an office or store, but Mr. Brown never seemed to do much of anything. Every time I came over, I’d find him in his den, sitting in his recliner, watching TV or doing crossword puzzles.

“Doesn’t your dad work?” I asked Pandora.

“Not anymore. He used to be a loader at Sears, but a few years ago a refrigerator fell on him, and since then he’s been on disability.”

I wasn’t sure what disability was, but I thought it sounded ominous. Frank Brown wasn’t ominous in the least, though; in fact, he seemed kind of sad to me, just sitting alone in his little den hour after hour. Pandora told me he enjoyed playing Parcheesi, so I made a point of challenging him to a game whenever I came over.

Sixth grade was a tough year for Pandora. As smart as she was, she didn’t concentrate in class or always do her homework, so her grades weren’t very good. She wasn’t popular, either—she put no effort at all into getting along with the other kids. I knew it was just shyness, but it was a pity—it made everyone dislike her. The girls used to call her Jellyfish, because she was so pale and her hair was so long.

Pandora didn’t care—she said girls were catty and dull. “Except for Steph, of course,” she’d always add.

Steph Bradley was a girl Pandora knew back in Barstow, her best friend from the time she was a baby. I used to hear a lot about Steph, about all the things she and Pandora used to do together, and, to be honest, sometimes I got a little jealous.

Then one weekend, Steph came to visit, and Pandora invited me over to meet her. To my surprise, we got along just fine. Steph was a freckle-faced tomboy, very friendly and funny, and the three of us had a blast, riding skateboards all around the neighborhood. Pandora made up a phrase for the two of us: “Steph, my Glorious Girlfriend, and Gary, my Best Boy Buddy.” I felt like I had passed some kind of major test.

As the year went on, I thought Pandora would start to make more friends in Palm Springs, but she never did. She continued to be the odd one out, the one who was whispered about. And because we were always together, that reputation started rubbing off on me, too. I had always had a lot of friends, but now things began to change. Two girls who had had crushes on me since kindergarten started ignoring me all of a sudden, and some of the guys—but never Bobby or Tom—quit asking me over to their houses. My mother worried that I was less popular than I used to be, but I didn’t care. I was perfectly happy just being with Pandora Brown.

Those days with Pandora. Looking back, I can see that we really didn’t do anything so very extraordinary. It was just that whatever we did, Pandora had the gift of making it fun.

She was interested in everything, and nearly every week she had some new craze going. For a while it was birdwatching, then it was diving, and then it was gymnastics. We spied on the neighbors, we collected rocks, we baked bread, we tried to write a play. Even my sister Janine helped with that one.

Pandora also loved going on hikes, so we spent a lot of afternoons up at Taquitz Canyon. The very first time she went, she made it all the way to the waterfall—I was very impressed.

But her biggest passion was old movies. Her uncle Gene was a talent agent in Hollywood, and he sent her all the classic films—we never had to go to the Wherehouse to rent anything. We’d make some popcorn and sit on her bed, and watch Citizen Kane and The Philadelphia Story, and everything in between.

Occasionally—I think these were my favorite times of all—Pandora and I would just hang around her backyard and talk. She loved to dream about the future, but her plans kept changing. Sometimes, she said she wanted to be an actress; other times, it was a painter, other times, a pediatrician. But her biggest goal was to end up very rich—she wanted to be able to take care of her parents someday.

Pandora and I would usually end our afternoons together by taking a walk across the street to the Palm Springs airport. We’d stand by the chain-link fence for an hour sometimes, just watching the planes taking off.

“I wish that were me,” she would always sigh.

I didn’t like it when she said that. I didn’t like to think of her ever going away.

For Halloween that year, I was a pirate, and Pandora went as Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She bicycled over to my house and we trick-or-treated all around the neighborhood. By the time we’d finished it was eight o’clock, and past dark. Pandora said she could bicycle home by herself, but I told her I would come with her. We sneaked out without my mother seeing.

I’d never been to Dream Homes after dark before, and it was definitely a little scary. Nothing was going on, exactly, but there was a distinct feeling that at any moment something bad could happen.

When we turned the corner of Pandora’s street, we stopped. From a block away, we could see that her house had been completely trashed. Rolls of toilet paper were strung through the bushes, garbage was dumped all over the front porch, and the fence was spray-painted with graffiti.

Pandora stood staring at the mess. Under the streetlight, I could see that her face had faded to the color of cottage cheese.

“I hate this place,” she whispered. Her voice sounded hard, like a grown-up’s. “I want to get out of here.”

I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. She started crying, and I put my arms around her until she stopped.

The next day was Saturday. I came over early in the morning and helped her and her mother clean up all the mess.

That November, I finally met Pandora’s Uncle Gene, the agent from Hollywood who sent her all the posters and videos. He drove down from L.A. for Thanksgiving dinner, and Pandora invited me over for dessert.

I have to say, I didn’t particularly care for Uncle Gene. He looked like an agent—he had a punk hairstyle and his shirt was open almost to the waist. All he talked about was show business, and the actors and actresses he handled. I’d never heard of any of them, so most of it went right over my head, but Pandora and her father didn’t miss a word.

When I finally said I had to go, Uncle Gene shook my hand.

“Nice to have met you, Larry,” he said. “If you ever want to break into the business, give me a call. You’ve got that Tom Sawyer look going. I might be able to do something for you.”

I was embarrassed, but Pandora was thrilled.

The next morning, she called to say that Uncle Gene had invited her to come back to L.A. with him for the weekend. She was very excited about it, telling me all the places he was going to take her, all the things they were going to do together.

“But I thought the two of us were going hiking on Saturday,” I reminded her.

There was a long pause. Then I quickly got hold of myself and told Pandora to go to L.A., and have a great time.

All weekend long I was scared I’d get a call from her saying she was never coming back, that she’d decided to stay in L.A. forever. But Sunday afternoon Pandora returned, and I bicycled straight over to her house.

She couldn’t stop talking about what a wonderful visit she’d had.

“We went to the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the Farmer’s Market and the La Brea tar pits. I even got to see Uncle Gene’s office, and I met this very famous agent who works upstairs.”

I must have looked a little forlorn, because Pandora grinned at me.

“I almost forgot; I brought something back for you.”

She handed over a small plastic Oscar, with a plaque on the base that said “World’s Greatest Friend.”

“It’s not real—it’s only made in China,” she told me.

But I didn’t care where it was made. It was the most wonderful gift I’d ever received.

December sixth was my father’s birthday. Dad had died when I was eight, but Mom, Janine, and I still celebrated with a cake and presents for one another. One night out by the airport, I told Pandora about our tradition. I was afraid she’d think we were weird, but she said she thought it was a wonderful idea.

“What was he like?” she asked me.

I didn’t talk about Dad much—I still missed him a lot. But I told Pandora a couple of things: how he used to love to hike, and what a beautiful singing voice he had.

Suddenly I couldn’t go on. I was scared I was going to burst out crying. Pandora put her hand in mine, and we didn’t talk about him anymore. The day of Dad’s birthday, though, she came up to me at recess and handed over a little wrapped gift.

“In honor of you-know-who.”

The day school let out for Christmas vacation, the fifth and sixth grades had a special assembly. A professional artist, a children’s book illustrator, came to speak. Instead of lecturing, though, he went around the room and handed each one of us a pencil and a sheet of paper clipped onto a board.

“I want you to do some drawing from life,” he told us. “The only real way to learn about art is by practicing it.”

He looked around the auditorium, at the rows of seated children, then pointed to Pandora.

“And I think we’ll use you for our model.”

He went down the steps, walked over, and took her arm as if she were a grown-up. Then he led her back up on the stage and settled her onto a chair. I could see from the other girls’ faces just how envious they were feeling.

For the next twenty minutes, our assignment was to draw a portrait of Pandora. The girl on my left drew her as a cartoon figure with stick arms and legs; the girl on my right drew her as a buck-toothed monster, covered with scales.

I didn’t draw anything. I just kept looking at her, sitting so still and beautiful on that chair, her face slightly raised, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and I wrote her nam. . .