Stella

by Helen Eve

  ‘Another Star could stand in her place,’ I suggested. ‘If the teachers are worried about Stella in particular.’

  ‘Stella is our candidate,’ Penny said. ‘She always has been, and Lucy is just a mild inconvenience barely worth discussing. Even if the teachers want her to win, they can’t ignore the public frenzy. You saw the reaction to Stella at kick-off: it would take someone pretty high-profile to compete with that. And she has Edward too. Their level of support is unbeatable.’

  Lila nodded. ‘However many girls stand, there’ll only be one candidate, and the teachers will have to accept it. It just saves time and humiliation if no one else bothers.’

  Penny looked around, apparently only just noticing. ‘Where is Stella?’

  I spoke without thinking. ‘She’s in the clock tower.’

  The image of Stella high up in the tower like a princess waiting to be freed had fascinated me since my first day. I’d learned that the heavy wooden door in a corner of the courtyard led up to it via a spiral stairwell, but it was always locked, and the school rules – a heavy, leather-bound book kept in each student’s room – stated that it was permanently out of bounds and punishable by expulsion.

  I looked up every time I walked past, but although I sometimes saw smoke I’d never glimpsed Stella at the window again. Several times after dark I thought I’d seen flickering lights inside, but they were never clear enough for me to be sure.

  I’d tried the door a few times, fiddling with the iron bolt and invariably breaking a nail, but earlier that day I’d seen Stella darting towards the door. I’d called out to her, hoping she’d invite me up to her secret place, and she’d turned briefly but then disappeared. By the time I reached the door there was no one there, and it was shut as tightly as ever.

  The Stars were staring like I’d lost my mind.

  ‘The clock tower?’ Lila said. ‘What are you talking about? I mean, aside from the fact that Stella gets a nosebleed on the vaulting horse…’

  Katrina laid a hand on my arm. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you what happened to Stella’s sister?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Only that she died in an accident.’

  ‘It happened in the clock tower,’ Katrina explained. ‘She fell.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I stammered. ‘I had no idea … Stella never talks about it.’

  ‘Well, would you?’ Lila said. ‘If your sister had…’

  Her voice faded.

  ‘She didn’t…?’ I tried in vain to think of a tactful way to phrase it.

  ‘No one knows what happened,’ Katrina said quickly. ‘Back then, all the Sixth Formers used the clock tower as their place for, you know. So it wasn’t weird for her to be up there.’

  ‘But it was weird for her to be standing out on the window ledge,’ Lila said. ‘No one’s ever been able to explain that.’

  Penny looked pale and shaky. ‘What if Caitlin really did see someone up there? What if it was a ghost, or…?’

  ‘No, Pen,’ Lila said firmly. ‘There are no ghosts. And the tower has been locked for five years. No one can get up there and no one would try. Least of all Stella.’

  ‘If there are no ghosts, how come the clock stopped at the exact moment Siena died?’ Penny persisted.

  ‘Remember what you learned on your enlightenment retreat,’ Lila said. ‘There’s a rational explanation about the clock, and Caitlin made a mistake.’

  Mary-Ann valiantly tried to shift the conversation on as I tried to remember exactly what I’d seen. The light had been dim, after all. Maybe it hadn’t been Stella, and, if it had been, perhaps she’d disappeared in a different direction. Surely she was too careful to jeopardize her election chances by getting in trouble.

  Lila turned to me as she and Penny got up to leave. ‘Whatever you imagine you saw, don’t ever mention it to Stella.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Stella

  ‘Stop asking me,’ I tell Edward for what feels like the hundredth time. ‘I’m not wearing that thing.’

  We’re in the art room, and I sit carefully on the floor before the conversation can take an unsteadying turn.

  He won’t give up. ‘Stella, no way are you allergic to fancy dress. Tell me the truth: what do you have against rabbits?’

  ‘I hate rabbits,’ I tell him flatly. ‘Go and find us different costumes, and maybe I’ll consider it.’

  Edward mumbles under his breath a theory about rabbits being inoffensive creatures, as well as the one true Christian symbol of Easter.

  ‘I’m starting to wonder if you’re taking this campaign seriously,’ he says more audibly. ‘Are you going to be obstructive every step of the way?’

  ‘Katrina’s my manager,’ I say. ‘Go and speak to her.’

  He laughs. ‘Do you think Katrina would advise her candidate to turn down any opportunity for publicity?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, losing my patience. ‘Get someone else to do it with you. Your faces won’t be visible anyway.’

  He looks at me in exasperation and leaves.

  * * *

  It was hoped that Siena would outgrow her rabbit fixation before our garden was overrun with them, and that her ambition of creating a myxomatosis vaccine would remain unrealized. It’s no surprise that rabbits featured prominently in her election campaign, but it strikes me as ironic that her chosen symbol of new life should have featured equally prominently at an event that was anything but. Although, now I think about it, people did insist on calling her funeral a celebration of life, which was as absurd as it sounds.

  * * *

  I spent the nights following Siena’s death sitting on Syrena’s windowsill, training myself to be apart from her as if I could stretch and warp the thread that bound us. In moments of weakness I climbed into Syrena’s bed and placed my hand on the sheet to feel the miraculous rise and fall of her baby chest; closed my eyes and imagined a breathing, living sister on each side of me. Syrena’s hair streamed across the pillow, and, remembering what Siena had told me on the beach, I wove it into my own so tightly that I couldn’t see where she ended and I began; so that I felt every movement she made as if it were my own; so that we were entwined as one sister in a perennial golden braid.

  During daylight hours, Syrena behaved as if nothing had happened. She picked daisies; she sang tunelessly to herself; she baked inedible cookies with Paula. The only concession she made to Siena’s memory was to resurrect the stuffed white rabbit with enormous teeth that Siena had made for her as a school project.

  Siena was supposed to be good at Textiles, but I think she’d miscalculated the pattern, as the rabbit’s neck was disproportionately long. Syrena had compounded this deformity by winding it around the handlebars of her bike and sometimes tying it in a knot. Part of Siena’s brief had been to equip the rabbit with red LEDs for eyes, a feature that made it look demonic, especially when it was pressed unexpectedly against one’s face in the middle of the night. It was also, for reasons that were never clear, missing its left hind foot. The very sight of it made me shudder and I’d been relieved when, after years of dragging it across a variety of terrains, twisting its neck grotesquely around the swing cord and augmenting its features with lipstick and bronzer, Syrena had finally taken up with a Skipper doll instead. Now it was back with a vengeance.

  Seraphina hadn’t wanted Syrena to attend the funeral, but for once she was overruled by Paula, who forced Syrena’s resisting elbows and knees into black velveteen and gave her a handbag that held nothing but tissues. Syrena swung it around her head and hit the cat, which swiped at her idly, and when Paula had brushed her hair she tipped her head upside down to mess it up before zooming around the room and scuffing her patent shoes on the skirting board.

  ‘She needs closure,’ Paula told me after watching an Oprah bereavement special. I looked at her with trepidation.

  The church was full of people I’d never seen before, but I looked only at the floor as I held my breath to avoid the overpowering scent of lilies and led Syrena into our
pew. Seraphina stared straight ahead and I edged away from her unnaturally sweet smell towards Syrena’s baby softness. I kept my eyes averted from the coffin, but I didn’t need to, because, even though I don’t remember crying, something made me blind.

  Syrena stayed motionless during the service, impassive and impeccably behaved even as the eulogy spoke of our overwhelming and unimaginable loss, but as the coffin disappeared from view she climbed onto her seat and started to scream. I reached out for her, but everything was distorted. The coffin zoomed into painful close-up and I looked at the ceiling, only to duck at the sight of the stone angels in the eaves that seemed to swoop towards me. I clutched at my wooden seat to remind myself that I sat on something solid, but it shifted away. Then, as if in slow motion, I saw a girl falling from above, and I lost my balance.

  As the stone floor rose to meet me I was aware of two things: the sigh with which Seraphina said What did I tell you? and the rabbit’s expensively painted face.

  * * *

  ‘Stella,’ comes a voice from somewhere, and I realize that my eyes are closed. It’s Luke.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks as I realize how strange I must look hunched on the floor with my head on my knees.

  ‘Pilates,’ I tell him, pretending to stretch.

  ‘We should talk,’ he blurts out. I nod stoically as he takes a deep breath and begins at high speed.

  ‘You haven’t spoken to me since Valentine’s Day and I have to know what’s going on. Was it – was it my fault?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I push rabbit images to the back of my mind because I hate to see him in this kind of distress. ‘Please don’t think that.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I wish none of it had ever happened. I thought it was what we both wanted, and I can’t understand how I got it so wrong.’

  We talk about the way we felt that night, and the way sex takes on a life of its own and makes everyone feel abnormal if they’re not doing it, and abnormal if they are. I’m surprised by his understanding, and the idea that maybe boys and girls aren’t so different after all, but it doesn’t change anything. Luke and I can only be together for as long as we can skirt around this issue, and the most I can hope for is that we can do this until the election is over.

  ‘So what now?’ I ask.

  ‘We have to stick together,’ he says softly. ‘The next few months aren’t going to be easy, and we can’t let anything get between us. Don’t shut me out.’

  He pauses as we leave the art block and head back to the main school. ‘I wish I’d talked to you sooner. But I didn’t know how to, and Caitlin said I should give you space, so…’

  ‘What?’ I interrupt. ‘You talked to Caitlin about this?’

  He looks alarmed. ‘Well, only because we were in the library together … no, not really.’

  What’s her game? I suddenly wonder as I remember our conversation after Valentine’s night.

  He reaches for my hand. ‘What do you feel like doing? Making popcorn and watching a film with the others?’

  Last term, when the election seemed a long way hence, it seemed acceptable to while away time with the Stars and Stripes and believe it would always be possible to have Luke near me with no regard for the future; to ignore nagging memories of a night when a falling girl had changed the course of my life in unfathomable ways. But as Elevation night approaches at speed and nothing is as it should be, his suggestion seems out of place.

  Without replying, I steer him into the Common Room.

  And there is Caitlin. She and Edward are on my sofa, and, although it seems petty to say so, she must know it’s mine. She’s the life and soul of the party rather than the little mouse she was, and Luke’s comment has made me doubt the wisdom of making her a full-blown Star so quickly. She looks different too; she’s changed her wardrobe so she looks more like me, and it makes her a bit too pretty. I’m not used to playing second fiddle, and the worst thing is not being able to find it in myself to retaliate.

  The Stripes discuss which of them has the best chance with the new Spanish assistant (Henry, because she winked at him when he mastered el subjunctivo), who got caught looking through the girls’ changing room window (not Luke, thankfully), and who’s having the most luck with the Fifth Formers (all of them). I hardly listen, because it’s impossible to forget that Caitlin’s there. Why did I think my Stars needed another girl? I might as well have introduced Ebola.

  Finally I get up, shake my head when Luke asks if he should come with me, and barely look at him as he kisses me goodnight. So much for not shutting him out.

  * * *

  In my room I’m trapped with the time of day I dread; when there’s no one to distract me. I undress in the dark and pull my hair tightly out of my eyes, winding it around my hand.

  I’m floating in limbo, facing an uncertain future as my days here ebb away. Everything – friends, enemies, academic work – is spiralling away from me. The thought of not winning the election never crossed my mind until recently, but, now everyone’s watching and assessing their own chances, I have to acknowledge that victory is no longer guaranteed. Then again, perhaps it never was.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Caitlin

  In the bathroom, I tugged at my hair with my harshest comb. I hadn’t seen Stella and Luke together in so long that I’d started to imagine it was only a matter of time before Luke forgot her and started to look elsewhere. At me, specifically. Yet tonight he’d appeared with his arm around her as if she’d never broken his heart. Now we were in parallel cliques we spent plenty of time together, but as soon as Stella stepped back into the room it was as if no one else existed.

  Eventually I knocked on Lucy’s door, hoping she’d be able to distract me from my thoughts. At least she knew how it felt when Stella monopolized everyone’s attention.

  Music was playing, and when I walked in I saw she was having a mini-party with Hannah and Caroline. Ruby was there too, smoking melancholically out of the window. These days I hardly ever saw her in the Common Room or cafeteria, and tonight she appeared more miserable than ever. She was very thin, her shoulder blades sharp against the straps of her black nightdress and her green eyes dark in her pale face. She looked haunted, as if she were literally pining for her friends.

  ‘Hey, Caitlin,’ Lucy said excitedly. ‘Come in!’

  I waved at everyone, giving Ruby a sheepish smile as I perched on the bed, and worrying as I always did about how she’d react to me stealing her spot in the Stars. So far she’d done nothing worse than stare at me, so probably Ally had made me paranoid.

  Then I did a double-take when I noticed a bulge in the curtain and some brown legs and studded heels sticking out underneath it. Ruby twitched it, smiling for the first time, and Katrina appeared.

  ‘Were you hiding from me?’ I asked her in confusion.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she admitted. ‘You can’t be too careful … you know Ruby’s not exactly flavour of the month. No one would ever think of looking for us in Lucy’s room, of all places.’

  Her tone was superior, even though Lucy was helping them out.

  ‘So you’re hiding from Stella?’ I asked.

  A terrible silence filled the room and Katrina looked quickly around as though Stella could see through walls.

  ‘Did you hear the news?’ Lucy finally asked. I noticed that, as well as wearing my dress, she’d curled her hair in the same way I’d started wearing mine.

  ‘It was such a great idea to convince Lucy to compete in the election, Caitlin,’ said Hannah. ‘We’ve been trying to persuade her for ages. Imagine if she won!’

  ‘I didn’t convince her,’ I said quickly. ‘I mean … this was totally Lucy’s decision. Not mine. I just think everyone should be able to do what they want.’

  ‘And now they can,’ Lucy said happily. ‘I’m so glad I met you, Caitlin.’

  Katrina sat next to me; she appeared to be listening hard. ‘Everyone should be able to do what they want,’ she repeated quietly.
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br />   I was silent as they all chattered about the campaign; who would be Lucy’s manager and what colour posters they’d have. It had seemed so natural to encourage her to stand up for herself, but now I felt stupid for not considering the implications. What if Stella found out?

  After a few minutes I made an excuse about having homework to finish, but, as I was leaving, Ruby jumped up and hugged me. ‘I feel so much better,’ she said. ‘You’ve made impossible things seem possible.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything, really,’ I stammered, torn between relief at Ruby’s good nature and panic at having unwittingly caused this degree of independent thinking in her.

  I backed awkwardly out of the door, almost colliding with Stella as she left the bathroom opposite.

  She baulked at my dorky polka-dot pyjamas. ‘Comparing fashion notes with Lucy?’

  I hoped she couldn’t hear the voices in Lucy’s room. I edged forward, tugging the door shut behind me. My heart was pounding.

  Stella was looking at me hard. ‘No one should forget whose team they’re on, or who picked them for it. Do you agree?’

  I nodded mutely, but right then Lucy’s door swung open to reveal Ruby.

  ‘Caitlin, you forgot your comb…’ she began before her voice died away. She hurriedly shut the door behind her as Katrina’s distinctive giggle rang out, and stood protectively in front of me.

  ‘Caitlin didn’t know I was in there, Stella,’ she said steadily. ‘She wasn’t breaking any statutes.’

  She squeezed my arm imperceptibly as she walked past us both. Once she’d gone, Stella turned back to me and I realized she was still waiting on an answer to her question.

  I thought of the fun I’d had horseback riding with Lila and Penny the day before. I thought of the upcoming mixer with a nearby school that none of the Stars could stop talking about. I thought of the way my life would be without Stella to spend every possible moment with, even if we were just lounging in someone’s bedroom or doing homework.