by Helen Eve
Even before he speaks, something seismic is happening. I’ve never let myself think about him this way, but now I can’t seem to move. Luke is different to Edward because with him I can breathe.
This time I let him hold my hand. He tells me that, even though we’ve only been alone together once, almost four years ago, he’s never stopped thinking about me. Now I can acknowledge that I feel the same. He tells me I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, and, because he thinks so, I believe that I am. He winds my hair around his fingers, tugging it like someone who has searched for me. His touch on my neck is electric and I stroke his arm, hoping to replicate this intensity in him. He kisses the inside of my elbow and I’ve never felt this before. I press my knee against his and there’s nothing but him. He touches my chin and pulls me to face him and we don’t wait any longer. We kiss until my jaw hurts and he has cramp in his leg and the sun is coming up and the party is over and not only am I forever his but I am found.
* * *
I once believed that I didn’t exist except as a projection of Siena’s past and Syrena’s future; that I was merely an intersection of their characteristics, suspended in time. Now we merge and mesh into one sister until our duplications don’t invalidate us, but bind us in an endless constellation. My sisters show me that beauty doesn’t have to be our destruction; it can be our inspiration. And all the time I’ve been painting my inspiration, I haven’t been painting myself.
I’ve been painting what we are to each other.
* * *
Memories flicker before me like flames and I blow them out one by one. I extinguish my struggle with Edward; the searing clock tower; Siena’s bewildering loss.
And when there are no more flames, I see only the light of stars.
I see Luke, my one rebellion, who showed me that I could have something more than the rigid path I’d chosen. Luke, who shattered my careful plans into beautiful oblivion. Luke, who hardly saw the girl I could have been, but who never gave up on the girl I was.
I see Syrena, my future; the only second chance I’ll ever need.
And I see Siena, the star I must await no longer and will never lose again. We are interwreathed as our future realigns itself into something glorious and unfolds before us in a blazing stream, with every golden sequin leading us into amaranthine avenues of hope.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Caitlin
I remember several things very clearly about July sixth. I remember fat summer raindrops on the window ledge after a week of damp humidity. I remember a rerun of Friends, where Ross gets stuck in his leather pants. I remember taking my first steps, clinging to a wall and a crutch and shuffling at a snail’s pace.
I remember the sound of Stella’s mother as she was led down the echoing hall and away. I remember the expression of the student nurse who sobbed uncontrollably as he took my blood. I remember the sensation of falling with nothing to tether me as my parents, battle-scarred by this experience of hospital, sat on each side of me and held my hands.
‘She didn’t suffer,’ Dad said, his lips taut and pale.
Define suffering, I said in my head.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said out loud.
Then there are gaps. I don’t remember how I came to sit alone outside the hospital in the dead of night, watching visitors leave the car park as if she might be amongst them. I don’t remember what Luke said when he came to see me, although I knew he was a different Luke, who would never truly belong to the life ahead of him. I don’t remember why I faked a relapse before the funeral even though being left behind was so much worse. I don’t remember why the thought of leaving Temperley High was such a terrible one that I begged to return that September.
And I don’t remember what happened to me between leaving hospital and returning to school, except that by then I’d uncovered the survival instinct to believe I deserved a different fate to Stella.
But I do remember why, in my need to understand how the terrifying symmetry of our existences had been rendered incomplete, I began to write my own account of events, to explain why sometimes the rightful winner is also the rightful recipient of a reader’s sympathy.
* * *
Why is everyone so obsessed with the underdog anyway?
Epilogue
Caitlin
Welcome to my republic.
It’s the first day after the summer vacation and I’m in the cafeteria at breakfast, working hard to ignore my best friend Katrina, who is in danger of boring me into a stupor.
‘And Dr Tringle said, wouldn’t it be great if this year the Prefects were elected democratically instead of the Head Girl choosing them?’
I snap back to attention. Democracy is a very bad idea, and Katrina should know that by now. An election will mean enduring a motley crew of the badly socialized in our new Prefects’ house rather than the streamlined team I’ve already selected.
‘Democracy is a great idea,’ I say warmly. ‘What a shame it’s too late to change the process.’
‘It’s not too late,’ she says. ‘We can hold elections at the end of the week, as soon as Elevation is over. It would show we’re committed to ending the apartheid.’
I really wish Katrina hadn’t taken up Politics A level; she was much easier to cope with when she just talked about macrobiotic diets. I’ve run out of ways to tell her that the upcoming Elevation make-up ceremony is only a formality, and that my personalized, sapphire-studded crown will be delivered any day.
‘I’ve been working on the list,’ I say patiently. ‘I have the paperwork right here.’
We’re joined at this point by the others – Penny, Ruby, Lila and Mary-Ann – who have been out riding before breakfast. Usually the start of a semester would be a cause of excitement, but today the cafeteria is subdued and melancholy. The only constant is that we’re the centre of attention.
‘Congratulations, Prefects,’ I say, passing them each a contract. Of course they all know they’re Prefects, but this way I can put my stamp on it. ‘I’m pleased to say you all made it.’
Lila looks dubious. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Elevation before deciding any of this? Katrina said…’
My phone interrupts before I can tell her that this won’t be necessary. It’s my little brother Charlie, and I watch his face on the display until it stops.
‘There’s Luke,’ whispers Penny as everyone spins around to look at the doorway.
Luke is as beautiful as ever and my heart skips at the sight of him. He nods grimly, while Katrina smiles as if it wasn’t me he kissed onstage and slow-danced with at Elevation.
‘It’s good to see you, Luke,’ she says.
Luke has agreed, at Dr Tringle’s insistence, to stand for Head Boy again. Like me, he’ll be unopposed. I haven’t seen him since leaving hospital, but now we’ll have plenty of time to work on policies and regain lost ground.
‘I’m glad we’re going to be working together this year,’ I say, turning his attention from Katrina to me.
He looks at me steadily. ‘The only reason I agreed to be in another election is because things really need to change around here.’
He looks at the table, which is still engraved with a six-point star. ‘No wonder everyone is so screwed up.’
‘Totally,’ I say, covering my name with my coffee. ‘We’re definitely the right people to introduce a new era.’
‘What gives us the right to lead anybody?’ Katrina says miserably. ‘We loved being Stars so much that we thought everyone else loved us for it too. But notorious isn’t the same as being well-liked.’
‘You’re splitting hairs,’ I say. ‘Are you saying you want to be like Lucy?’
We look over at Lucy, who’s placidly testing Hannah with flashcards. She’s completely unscathed and completely undistinguished.
‘Lucy’s alive, isn’t she?’ says Katrina.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ I persist. ‘Everyone’s still looking at us.’
‘They’re looking at us becaus
e we have a dead friend,’ she says flatly.
I wonder if it matters why we’re the focal point, as long as we are. If no one looks at us, how will we know we matter? How will we even know we exist?
‘Katrina, you’re just stressed about today,’ Lila says gently. ‘We need each other now more than ever. Stella formed the Stars; she wouldn’t want us to fall apart.’
‘Have you finished eating?’ Penny looks at my tray during an awkward silence. ‘We should get to the hall.’
I cover my untouched cereal, ignoring Luke’s suspicious glance and wondering if he knows I’ve lost four pounds since the fire. ‘I’m through.’
Ruby falls into step with me as we leave the cafeteria. In front of us, Katrina squeezes Luke’s arm, while he responds by smoothing her hair behind her ear.
‘Katrina and Luke have an amazing bond now,’ Ruby whispers. ‘Katrina says she’d never have got through the summer without him. Although I think it works both ways.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean? When have they seen each other?’
‘Didn’t you know? They’ve been staying with Stella’s family. I think it helped them to have something useful to do.’
There’s no need to tell Ruby that Head Boy business will keep Luke far too busy from now on to fraternize with the Hamilton family.
‘Is Edward coming back?’ I ask instead.
Ruby shakes her head. ‘Edward will probably disappear into that wreck of a house so he can think about Stella for the rest of his life.’
I avert my eyes from the bombsite that the courtyard has become. The area is cordoned off, but, by silent mutual consent, we avoiding walking anywhere near it.
Mary-Ann drifts along beside us, and I see bandages on her wrists. ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ I ask her.
She looks at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Not like this,’ she says. ‘Nothing will ever hurt as much as this.’
* * *
When Lila and Penny had described their plans for decorating the hall, I’d imagined cardboard; sugar paper; Hallmark mourning. But this is Temperley High, where money is everywhere.
Stars drip from the ceiling, snake around the seats, and shine underfoot. They cover the windows, shaping images on the walls and floor. And wherever there aren’t stars, there are flowers.
‘Stella hates lilies,’ Ruby whispers. ‘So we got white roses.’
Beautiful and lethal, I decide, is appropriate. Her last class picture is projected onto a huge screen, and it seems bizarre to think that she lived with us as an equal. She can’t have once been human, and played netball, and ironed her clothes with hair straighteners. It’s more natural to see her as remote, and different, and gone.
One by one, the Stars drag themselves forward to share memories. I take in images rather than words, most of which don’t even penetrate the white noise in my head.
Penny and Lila are last, although Lila is holding Penny upright.
‘She was everything,’ Penny sobs hopelessly. ‘She’s what we looked at, all the time. I don’t even know what to be without her.’
Lila tugs her back as the lights dim and the projector whirs to life. One second I’m numbed by rose scent and starlight; the next I feel acute pain, like someone dragging blades across my skin. The sensation is so visceral, so brutal, that I instinctively put my hands to my face to check for shards of glass.
Stella is applying make-up in front of the camera as if it’s a mirror. She pouts, her lips shiny with gloss, and lifts her hair over her shoulders so it falls around her face.
I see the amber flecks in her cornflower eyes; the tiny freckles on her nose; the crease of her dimples. She leans forward so her eyelashes touch the camera and then she kisses it.
‘Stella, you’re blurry,’ Katrina’s voice says off-screen.
Stella breathes hard, steaming up the lens. As the image fades to nothing, her laugh echoes and reverberates until it’s obscured by sobbing from all around me. Shifting slightly, I see Luke hunch as if he’s praying. His face is grey.
The next clip is jerky. Mrs Denbigh reveals herself as camerawoman by bellowing encouragement as each Star descends the stairs in a ball gown. This, I deduce, is the beginning of Winterval.
She keeps up a bracing list of instructions. ‘Shoulders back … not that far back, Ruby … good toes, Katrina … Quentin, not in the plant pot…’
Then Stella hovers in the stairwell, slender in her long red dress and happy as I never saw her. The camera pans down unsteadily to show Luke in white tie, his hair pushed back so he can’t tousle it. He watches Stella as I imagine him watching me.
He awkwardly puts a corsage on her wrist when she reaches him. He looks particularly tall and broad beside her, but treats her, as he always did, as if she’s made of porcelain.
Mrs Denbigh tells them to say something to the camera.
‘I’m with the most incredible girl in the world,’ says Luke.
Stella looks up at him, but it’s not an I know how cute I am expression. It’s as if she can’t believe how lucky she is. She doesn’t speak, but as they turn she smiles with pure joy, and, squeezing his hand tightly, she wraps her other arm around his waist as if she can’t bear to let him go. He kisses her.
I lean past Katrina to see the real Luke collapse in his seat as though he can’t hold himself up.
The scenes flip rapidly. Stella is in pyjamas, eating cookie dough with a wooden spoon. She flicks some at Ruby, who screams, ‘Carbs!’ She and Mary-Ann laugh as they make snow angels on the football field and then, in summer, turn cartwheels. She’s winning the hurdles race at Sports Day even though all her competitors are far bigger than she is, and most are boys.
She’s cheering at a soccer match in a Stripes shirt that reaches her knees; making out with Luke until Lila turns a garden hose on them; belting out ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ at a talent contest; charging across a field on her horse; eating Cheerios with Katrina, spoons held between their toes. Aged twelve, the Stars sit cross-legged in a candlelit circle, yelling, ‘Stars aligned!’ in childish, canary voices. They are caught by Mrs Denbigh, who threatens wearily to put them on clean-up duty. I’ve just had a manicure, Katrina tells her with temerity.
Then a huge Christmas tree is in shot, and Stella and Katrina are covered in tinsel and wearing Santa hats. Their hair is waist length and shining, their skin translucent.
‘Lessons are cancelled and Jamie’s got champagne,’ they tell the camera excitedly. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Of course!’ Lila and Penny say behind the lens. ‘We’re just waiting for the others.’
Stella and Katrina grab each other, tossing away their hats and running like fauns. As Penny yells, ‘Don’t go!’ Stella turns around and blows a kiss.
The heavy automatic door has swung open behind her and for a moment the winter sunlight surrounds her in a flaming halo. She is golden in the gloom of the hallway, laughing and unspeakably lovely and forever seventeen.
‘Love you,’ she calls. ‘You haven’t seen the last of me!’
She disappears as the screen fades to a shower of silver stars, and then black.
And even though the movie, like Stella herself, is nothing more than a chain mail of propaganda, I know why Luke’s knuckles are white; why he grips the seat in front as if he’s still in the tower and contemplating following her over the edge.
And as Katrina moves the projector screen from centre stage I see that the image of Siena has been shifted to the right, allowing another to share its prime spot. It’s Stella’s self-portrait, complete with sash and crown, and, as she looks down from the Head Girl’s position, everyone in the audience gets to their feet.
* * *
When I hear whispering behind me, I shiver involuntarily at the echo of high heels on wood. I turn to see a petite figure with a mass of blonde hair cascading, waterfall-like, to her waist, and endlessly blue eyes.
Sunlight dances on her hair, casting star shapes on her cheek and bathing her in yellow light. It’s not Stella
, I tell myself. It’s not Stella.
And now I remember this girl as the little figure who balanced on the edge of the tower that night and reanimated the clock before swinging herself nimbly back inside the attic to tell me, even as the fire smouldered and rumbled, that the white Elevation dress I’d bought that afternoon off the rack in an attempt to copy her older sister would never compete with her bespoke creation.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ I told her. ‘What do you do up here? And why do you have all these clothes?’
‘Stella doesn’t want these things; she only wants Siena’s,’ the girl had said. ‘She only thinks about Siena. She only wants to be Siena. I collect her so that I can keep her with me.’
‘But you’re only a child!’ I was incredulous. ‘Doesn’t anyone miss you at home?’
She looked at me scornfully. ‘I can do as I like.’
‘You’re wearing Stella’s Elevation dress,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘It’s my dress now. And I look exactly like Stella.’
I remember the girl who wasted precious seconds pushing a portrait through floorboards to safety and who screamed because her stolen white dress was caught and she couldn’t leave it behind. I remember the girl Stella tore over burning floorboards to free; the girl she managed to push into the safety of Katrina’s arms before the world turned on its side.
And I remember Syrena clawing like an alley cat against Katrina as an explosion knocked Stella backwards and upwards and away, her iridescent face lighting up the night sky like a flame.
Don’t leave me.
I’ll never leave you.
Stella’s bedroom had held everything of Siena and nothing of herself, as if Siena’s possessions could sustain her when everything else had slipped away. She had barely seemed to notice as Syrena stole her piece by piece and made the tower a treasure trove of her hijacked identity. While Stella had poured everything that was left of her into the recreation of Siena’s dress, Syrena’s attempt to imitate Stella through that final, devastating theft had forced them forever apart.