Star Struck

by Jenny McLachlan

  She puts one in her mouth. ‘Intense,’ she says, her eyes going wide. ‘A bit like wasabi candy.’

  ‘Hey.’ Betty leans round Bea. ‘You two want to come to McDonalds with us? We’re meeting Ollie and Bill there for Quality Street McFlurries. Hoshi, you can finally set eyes on the hottest boy on the planet.’

  ‘That’ll be Ollie,’ says Bea.

  ‘Er, hardly,’ says Betty. ‘Ollie looks weirdly like an otter.’

  ‘Says the girl dating the sheep.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ says Hoshi, ‘but I’m going round to Pearl’s.’

  ‘You are?’ says Betty, blinking. ‘No one ever goes round to Pearl’s house. She forbids it.’

  ‘Well, I’m in!’ Hoshi makes it sound like it’s the best invitation in the world, when actually it’s the very worst. ‘Come on, Pearl.’ She pulls me out of my seat.

  ‘Find out if she sleeps in a coffin!’ Betty calls after us.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Soon we’re walking next to the dual carriageway and Hoshi’s laughing hysterically every time a lorry goes past. She says the traffic’s giving her ‘mad energy’, but once we’re on the track to the farm, she falls quiet. ‘It’s so dark,’ she says as we walk past the cows.

  ‘No street lamps,’ I say. The last traces of sunlight have disappeared and the only light comes from the low moon. ‘Your eyes will adjust in a second.’

  A shape darts in front of us. ‘Whoa!’ Hoshi waves her hands in front of her face. ‘What was that?’

  ‘A bat,’ I say, laughing. ‘Here it comes again.’

  It’s been months since I walked home with anyone. Tiann used to come back after school, but she stopped after she saw Alfie kick a hole in a wall. He discovered Ozzie had chewed up his phone and he really lost it. Since then we’ve always gone back to hers. She says my place gives her the creeps.

  We cross the farm and go into our garden. ‘Watch out for bike parts,’ I say, stepping round a rusty exhaust. ‘Alfie uses this as a garage.’

  We go into the kitchen. ‘Hi, Alfie,’ I call. ‘I’m home.’

  Silence. ‘No one’s in,’ says Hoshi. I can tell she’s relieved.

  I shrug and whisper, ‘Sometimes he’s quiet.’

  Then I turn on the kitchen light and it’s like I’m seeing my home for the first time: the torn lino, a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, missing cupboard doors. ‘I hate washing up,’ I say, waving my hand at the sink, as though the piles of bowls and plates are the only problem.

  ‘Me too,’ says Hoshi. ‘It drives Dad mad.’

  ‘C’mon.’ I lead her through the sitting room, my eyes flicking up the stairs and over to the sofa, looking for Alfie. There’s no sign of him. I get my key out and Hoshi waits as I unlock my bedroom door.

  Without switching on the overhead light, I go to my tank, turn on the light and then I put on my music.

  ‘Beautiful …’ Hoshi walks straight to the tank and kneels down, fingers spread wide, her eyelashes almost touching the glass. ‘You did all this?’

  I start poking through the stuff on the floor, grabbing clothes and stuffing them in a bag. ‘Most of it. You can feed them if you like. One pinch of the food in the blue pot.’ I feel under the bed, looking for a missing boot.

  ‘They’ve gone crazy!’ she says, laughing. ‘What’s this one? It’s got a stripy eye.’

  ‘Butterfly fish.’

  ‘This one’s cool.’ I look over and see Hoshi’s finger following a dottyback as it slithers around the tank. ‘It looks like it’s been dipped in paint.’

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’

  ‘So pretty … but kind of incredible too,’ she says. Her face is reflecting the blue of the tank. ‘It looks like it comes from another planet.’

  ‘It’s a bicolour Pseudochromis and it’s meaner than it looks. It fights fish three times its size.’

  She stands up and takes a step back from the tank. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, not in someone’s house.’

  ‘Ever seen anything like this?’ I say, flicking on the light.

  She looks around my room, takes in the clothes on my bed, my bare mattress, the painting of a cottage left over from when this was a dining room. ‘You’re not very tidy,’ she says.

  ‘It’s horrible.’ I kick a pile of clothes.

  ‘Well, I like it.’ She goes and picks up a photo from my chest of drawers. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Me and Betty, on our first day of school.’ We’re wearing green checked dresses that reach halfway down our legs and bright white socks. The photo’s been sitting there for years.

  ‘You look like mini versions of you,’ she says. Then she peers at a photo I’ve Sellotaped to the wall. It’s of me and Kat this summer in Sweden. ‘Wow … You look happy.’

  In the photo, Kat and I are standing next to our kayak in our bikinis. I’m wearing a cap pulled low on my head. My face is in shadow, but you can still see my smile. ‘I was,’ I say. Then I pull out the necklace I’m wearing. ‘Look, Kat’s auntie made me this.’ It’s a silver pendant of half a kayak. ‘Kat’s got one too. They fit together.’ Talking about Sweden immediately brings back the fading memories of our holiday: the tight feeling of salt water on my skin, the smell of suntan lotion, lying on sunbaked rocks and knowing I was hundreds of miles away from home.

  ‘And what’s this?’ asks Hoshi, going to the window and picking up a glass rabbit that used to belong to Gran. She holds it up to the light. ‘There’s a rainbow inside it!’

  ‘It’s Murano glass. My granddad brought that back from Venice.’ I lower my voice. ‘It’s the only nice thing Alfie hasn’t broken. That’s why it’s in here. I’m protecting it.’

  ‘Has he always broken stuff?’ she asks, putting the rabbit back in its place.

  ‘Always,’ I say. ‘Mum says it’s a temper thing. She thinks it’s got worse because he misses Gran. She looked after him loads when he was little.’ I hear a creak in the corridor and glance at the open door. ‘I’ll get my toothbrush so we can get out of here.’

  I leave Hoshi studying my riding rosettes and old pictures of Tonto and go upstairs to the bathroom.

  As I’m on my way back down, the back door slams and Alfie walks into the sitting room, dragging his golf bag behind him.

  He sees me standing there then picks up the bag and tips it out on to the sofa. Clubs and balls tumble out, and one ball rolls down the corridor towards my bedroom. I watch Hoshi step into the corridor and stop the ball with her foot. She leans against the wall and smiles at me, one finger to her lips.

  ‘I’m staying at a friend’s tonight,’ I say. Alfie picks up a driver and starts waving it around like it’s a sword. He even adds sound effects to make it sound like it’s swooshing through the air. He’s obviously ignoring me, so I go down the last few stairs.

  Just as I reach the bottom step, he jumps forward and blocks my way with the golf club. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’ve just bought this off Callum.’

  ‘Nice, but I’ve got to go.’ I try to push the club out of the way but he’s holding it in a tight grip.

  ‘Say the password,’ he says, a smile playing on his lips.

  ‘Stop mucking around, Alfie. I’ve got to go.’

  He stares at me and keeps the club locked in place. Knowing Hoshi is watching makes me see how ridiculous Alfie is. I wonder if I’ve exaggerated everything, turned him into some monster when he’s just an annoying brother. But then he steps closer. ‘I’m not mucking around,’ he says. ‘Why do you think I’m mucking around?’

  Before I can think what to do, Hoshi walks into the room. ‘Come on, Pearl,’ she says. ‘We need to get to mine.’

  Alfie spins round, and when he sees her his cheeks flush red. He takes in Hoshi’s pink trainers and puffy silver coat, his eyes settling on the two knots of hair on each side of her head. He lets the golf club drop away. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A friend of Pearl’s.’

  He laughs. ‘You’re Pearl’s friend?’ The
way he says this, smiling but serious at the same time, tells me he’s in a dangerous mood. I try to catch Hoshi’s eye: I need to get her to be quiet before he loses it. But she’s not taking her eyes off him.

  ‘Yeah, I’m her friend,’ she says. ‘What’s funny about that?’

  ‘Nothing … just Pearl’s not got many friends.’ He swings the golf club in a full circle, back in control, smiling. ‘Most people round here know she’s a skank … Don’t they, Pearl?’

  My heart’s pounding. I know I should speak, but instead I stay where I am at the edge of the room and just watch as Hoshi steps closer to him, chin raised high. ‘You shouldn’t say that about her,’ she says.

  ‘Why not?’ He grins. ‘It’s true! Ask anyone. They’ll all tell you what Pearl’s like.’

  ‘Come on, Hoshi,’ I say quickly. ‘Alfie’s winding you up. Let’s go.’ I push past Alfie, who has started putting a ball backwards and forwards against the wall.

  ‘See you later, skank,’ he says.

  ‘Hey!’ Hoshi’s eyes are blazing. Alfie doesn’t look up. ‘I said you shouldn’t say that about her!’

  I see him smile behind his curly hair, but it’s not real: his fingers are gripping the club so tight they’ve gone white. Slowly he looks up. ‘Why don’t you,’ he says, leaning towards her, ‘shut up.’

  I feel like all the air has gone from the room. Every noise – the buzz of the fridge in the kitchen, the club brushing the carpet – is amplified. My heart is beating so hard it almost hurts. ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ I manage to say.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Her?’ He lifts up the golf club and prods Hoshi’s shoulder with it. ‘She needs to get out of here.’

  Suddenly I’m filled with rage. How dare he say this to her? How dare he touch her? My hand flies out, grabbing the end of the club. ‘Leave her alone!’ I say, my voice is loud now. ‘I mean it!’ I shove the club back towards him and stand between them.

  He shakes his head. ‘You don’t tell me what to do, Pearl.’

  I take a deep breath, then another, and I force myself to look right at him. I know what I have to say, but I feel sick inside. Then I remember Hoshi is behind me and I stand tall and put my shoulders back. ‘Alfie, I want you to leave me alone.’

  He stares at me, an incredulous smile spreading across his face. ‘Oh my God,’ he says. ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about this,’ I say, holding up my hair and showing him the bruise on my forehead. ‘And the staple you put in my finger when I was five, and my fish that you killed, and “skank” and “cow”, and every single thing you’ve thrown at me –’ I’m shouting now – ‘and the way you look at me like that!’ I point at his sneering face. ‘You have to stop!’

  It’s just me and him now, our eyes locked on to each other.

  ‘What if I say it’s not going to stop?’ he says quietly.

  ‘Then …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll tell Mum everything.’

  ‘Yeah? Good luck with that.’

  ‘And I’ll keep telling her until she listens and nothing is going to stop me.’

  Alfie stares at me, eyes wide, his chest rising and falling. ‘Yeah?’ he says. Then, in a single, swift movement, he swings the golf club over my head and slams it into a picture on the wall. I put my hands up to my face as fragments of glass shower over me. ‘Still going to tell her?’ he asks.

  I look up at him, shaking the glass off my hair. ‘I’m not scared of you,’ I say, amazed, reaching out to Hoshi. Her fingers wrap round mine, warm and strong. Alfie’s eyes narrow and he pulls the club back. I force myself to stand still as he smashes it down past my shoulder and into the sideboard.

  Immediately, he pulls the club up again. I take one last look at him, then I lead Hoshi away, through the kitchen and out of the back door. We tread round the rubbish and walk out of the gate and down the track, past the huddled cows and black fields. Our breathing fills the quiet night air and Hoshi holds my hand so tight that it hurts.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  We’re too wired to go back to Hoshi’s. Instead we buy chips and take them to the park. A few dog walkers stand by the gate, hands thrust deep in pockets, but the playground is deserted. We sit on the swings eating the hot salty chips, talking and swaying to and fro, our shadows drifting slowly across the ground.

  ‘God,’ says Hoshi, pressing her hand into her chest. ‘My heart’s still racing!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I told you he was crazy.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me he’d be armed!’ We laugh even though we both know there’s nothing to laugh about. She turns to look at me. ‘He scared me,’ she says.

  ‘I meant what I said. I think it was having you there.’ I push a chip into the bottom of the packet, trying to get at the salt. I’m suddenly starving. ‘But it’s going to make him mad. I don’t know what he’ll do now …’

  Hoshi’s phone vibrates in her pocket, but she ignores it – it’s been ringing on and off for ages – and pulls the zip of her coat up high. ‘Tell me about him,’ she says, passing me the rest of her chips.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  As I work my way through the chips, I tell her all about Alfie, starting right at the beginning when he’d bend back my finger if I moved his toys and I’d smack him in the face, giving as good as I got. ‘Mum left us to it,’ I say. ‘She even got a book out of the library that told her to stay out of our battles. She said we were just trying to get her attention.’ Hoshi blows on her fingers and my feet scuff the floor. I describe the tantrums he had if Mum tried to stop him from doing something he wanted to do and how he’d think nothing of throwing stuff at her too. How he got worse after Dad moved to Liverpool … and when he went to secondary school … and when he started doing weights. ‘He’s just got worse and worse,’ I say. ‘Only Gran could get him to calm down,’ I say. ‘Her and Alfie were close.’

  ‘When did she go?’

  ‘Two years ago. She went into a home. Then she died.’

  The rest of the chips are cold. I roll up the packets and chuck them in the bin. Hoshi’s phone vibrates again. She pulls it out of her pocket, checks the caller then turns it off. ‘My agent,’ she says.

  ‘About the band?’

  She nods. ‘It’s going to be called Happy Coco.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I laugh. ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘I know.’ She looks at me. ‘Maybe Alfie will leave home soon.’

  I shake my head. ‘He’s not going anywhere – no GCSEs, no job, no money. He wants to join the army, but they’ll never have him. And I’m not going anywhere either. We’re all stuck in that house together.’

  ‘You could become a dancer,’ she says, smiling. Her dimple pings on to her cheek.

  I shake my head and pat down my pockets for a fag that I know I don’t have. ‘I’ll be lucky if I stay at school long enough to get my GCSEs.’

  Hoshi starts to swing, getting higher and higher, leaning right back. ‘You could do anything you want, Pearl.’ She says this like it’s the truth.

  I let her words hang in the air, beautiful and exciting. Before tonight, I would have laughed at her, said something sarcastic, but could she be right? I never thought I’d stand up to Alfie, but I just did … For a moment, I let myself dream and I look way into the future. ‘I’d love to be a dancer,’ I say. ‘Or be in musicals. I could be in The Lion King!’

  ‘You could get paid to do the chicken noodle soup.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I smile and look out across the silent park and I start to wonder how that happens, what I’d need to do to make it come true. Mist hovers over the field where the dogs run and the trees are still and perfectly silhouetted.

  Hoshi starts to swing higher and higher. ‘We’re the only people here,’ she says. ‘It must be late.’

  And that’s when I stop thinking about the future and remember what’s happening tomorrow. ‘Hoshi, we need
to practise your lines!’

  She waits until her swing is at its highest point, then she jumps. She lands lightly and spins round. ‘So let’s practise!’

  ‘What, here?’

  ‘The fire truck can be the balcony.’ Hoshi runs over to the climbing frame and climbs the rope ladder. ‘C’mon,’ she calls when she gets to the top. ‘I need you to be Romeo.’ She sits on the edge of the platform, her legs dangling. ‘Do you know his words?’

  I slip off the swing. ‘I think I know the whole play.’

  I go and sit on the cold ground below the truck, then I look up at Hoshi and say, ‘“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.”’ Hoshi rests her chin in her hand and sighs dramatically. ‘“O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!”’

  ‘“Ay me!”’ she says with a dreamy smile.

  We work through the scene, stopping and going back a few lines if either of us makes a mistake. My fingers are so cold they’re going white, but we don’t stop. We want it to be perfect.

  Hoshi’s voice rings out in the night air. Far away, I can hear the distant hum of cars and a few lights shine through the trees. I look at Hoshi. Right now she does look like a bright angel, with her silver coat, blonde hair and background of stars.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Distracted by the stars. There are so many tonight.’

  She tilts her head back to look. ‘We should go,’ she says, her words misting the sky. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We need to finish this.’ I get up, climb the ladder and sit next to her, our feet swinging side by side. ‘“I would I were thy bird”,’ I say, nudging her.

  ‘“Sweet, so would I”,’ says Hoshi, nudging me back. ‘“Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.”’ She turns to look at me. The air smells of bonfires and wet leaves. ‘I always think Romeo and Juliet should kiss now,’ she says.

  Our faces are close. So close that I can see every eyelash above her deep, dark eyes. It’s as though I’m seeing her for the first time: when she walked into the drama studio, jumped up on the stage and looked right into me.