Gemini Rising (8 page)

Arriving back at my own house on Sunday, I feel torn. It was such a great weekend, but now real life is hitting me with a vengeance, right in the face. I’m still wearing Elyse’s jumper and trying to cling onto the new sense of confidence that being with her gives me.

Understandably, I do not receive the friendliest welcome home in history.

‘The wandering traveller has returned,’ is all my mum says when I walk through the front door.

In a way I’d prefer it if we could have a blazing row and get it over with, but she sounds perfectly civil, just a bit cool and removed. I know I ought to apologise, but I don’t want to be the one to bring it up if she isn’t going to. I don’t know what to say to make it right. Instead I take the coward’s option of saying I have homework and escaping upstairs as soon as possible. Even Pete’s being a bit offish with me, and that’s almost unheard of.

So I open my bedroom door and prepare to make a dramatic dive onto my bed, all the better to lie there feeling sorry for myself and dreaming about Jago –
his name is Jago
– for a while. But something stops me in my tracks.

There on my bed is a parcel – well, a screwed-up carrier bag with a note propped on the top. I go for the bag first, and gasp when I see its contents. A mint-condition vinyl single of my favourite Trouble Every Day song – which I know was limited to only one hundred copies and is almost impossible to get hold of. I’ve been trying to get one on eBay for ages – I don’t own a record player but the front cover art is so amazing I’ve long been dreaming of putting it up on my bedroom wall. It’s a serious collectors’ item and incredibly cool.

I unfold the note and am even more surprised to see a semi-familiar felt-tip scrawl:

‘Hey, Sorana – You like this band, right? Some guy at school was selling this and I thought you might want it. Shame I didn’t get the chance to give it to you in person. Happy birthday – and sorry I’m a dick sometimes. Love, Josh.’

Josh has always been a bit like this – hot and cold, one minute seeming interested in me and the next leaving me hanging. Let’s face it, it’s probably part of why I’ve had a serious crush on him for so long. But he has never, ever bought me a present before – and he’s certainly never apologised for anything before.

I sit there holding the note for a long time after I’ve read it. The next thing I am aware of is my mum’s voice – clipped and to the point – shouting up the stairs.

‘Sorana, lunch in five!’

‘Coming!’ I shout back.

I grab my phone and, before I can agonise over it, thumb out a quick text message –
‘Hey Josh. Thanks so much for the record, I really love it! Sorry I had to run off – crazy weekend! Hopefully see you soon, S X’
.

I shove my phone into the pocket of my jeans and run as fast as I can down the stairs and into the kitchen, sliding on my socks and crashing into my mum. Ignoring the dish of glazed carrots that she’s carrying in her oven-gloved hands, I grab her and don’t let go.

‘Mum, I’m really sorry – I know I messed up but I just panicked and I didn’t know what to do.’

To my surprise, she starts laughing.

‘See, that wasn’t so bad – that’s all you needed to say. Let’s forget it, shall we?’

I nod emphatically and follow my mum through to the dining room with the gravy boat in hand. Pete and Daisy are already sitting at the table and look relieved when they see that Mum and I are smiling. I realise I’m absolutely starving, and start piling my plate up with roast potatoes, when my phone beeps from the depths of my pocket. Thankfully, my mum is in a forgiving enough mood not to remind me that no phones are allowed at the table on a Sunday – because I cannot wait to check it out.

‘Yeah, see you soon – I hope. Let’s stay in touch, OK?’

It ends with a smiley face. My brain briefly flickers to the memory of Jago clutching his guitar and leaning around the kitchen, and something tells me that he would never, ever sign a text message with a smiley face. I catch myself and can’t believe I’m nitpicking when Josh is being so nice for once. I guess I can overlook it, despite my snobby aversion to emoticons of any kind. Smiley face or not, my day has been made.

Something tells me that Elyse was right – everything seems to be looking up since I’ve met the twins, and maybe there really is no such thing as coincidence.

And as the weeks go by, it seems to be true. Now that I’m friends with Elyse and Melanie, life is decidedly better. Not only because the girls at school are all being much nicer to me, or because Josh has been texting occasionally – but mostly because it’s been really cool to get to know them more. We see each other every weekend without fail, either round at someone’s house or just hanging around in town on a Saturday.

Although my mum has a rule that we all spend Sundays together as a family, I’ve been spending less time at home than ever before. I just can’t bear the idea of missing out on anything with my friends, whatever that may entail.

At school, as the twins have settled in, the glamour and aggression have died down. They are just two semi-ordinary girls in our class who happen to be friends with Shimmi, Nathalie and me.

For instance, even though she’s so confident, Elyse doesn’t seem particularly good at any academic subjects – it’s hard to tell whether she’s not that bright or just doesn’t care, but it’s slightly weird since we’re in sixth form and supposedly there by choice. With Mel, it’s even harder to tell. The main difference between them in this respect is that Melanie’s handwriting is beautiful – whereas Elyse’s is always a hasty, unconsidered scrawl, Melanie can spend an entire afternoon making one sentence look perfect, in fancy calligraphy and with accompanying illustrations.

Both of the twins, Melanie in particular, are scarily good at art. Elyse shrugs it off, but she could draw anything you asked from memory. Mel can do the same but better; it’s only once I’ve seen her in action that I realise this is what she is doing so much of the time, when she’s hunched over silently with her head down. She fills notebook upon notebook with intricate pencil and Biro drawings, accompanied by what looks like pages of dense handwriting – I only ever catch the odd glimpse, but they look so beautiful I don’t know why she’s so secretive about them.

Mel is naturally reticent and this, combined with Elyse’s forceful personality and our shared Remedial Maths classes, means I feel like I haven’t really got to know Mel nearly as well yet. I’ve been trying, but she’s so self-contained, it’s difficult not to feel like you’re prying.

‘What are you writing?’ I ask as Mel shoves her notebook into her bag.

She looks worried as she pushes her school bag out of sight. ‘Um, nothing much, really. Sketches, a little bit of poetry, I suppose. It’s not very good.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘No! I mean, no. It’s crap – I’d be embarrassed, that’s all. It’s really nothing much.’

I’m totally intrigued, but I let it drop. However, I realise I must still be staring at her, because she looks up and meets my eye in a strange way.

‘I fell out of a tree,’ she says flatly.

‘Pardon?’

‘My scar. I can see you looking at my face. It’s nothing dramatic – I fell out of a tree when I was eleven.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t…’

My voice trails off. I was. We both know it.

‘Well, thanks for telling me. It makes you look even prettier somehow – mysterious as well as pretty.’

‘I dunno about that,’ Mel replies and we both laugh. ‘Thanks, though. I know Elyse is sort of the cool one of the two of us, but she
is
right. We’re all really going to be friends; it’s meant to be – you and me, as well as her.’

‘I hope so. We should, you know, hang out and talk more.’

‘Yeah. Maybe when it’s just the two of us.’

Mel said that Elyse was the ‘cool’ twin, but I think she’s wrong. Mel is so cool she doesn’t feel the need to talk, to define, to prove herself constantly. I wish I could be more like her.

In fact, both of the twins are so unlike everyone else in the school that I suspect if they weren’t (a) pretty, and (b) utterly impervious to what anyone thinks of them, they would be considered really quite freakish. But even as their presence in the class has become normal, everyone else still seems to hold them at a reverent arm’s length.

But the biggest change to have occurred is that it now seems to be taken as casual fact that we are a gang – Elyse, Melanie, Shimmi, Nathalie and me. I’m no longer just a straggler; that much is obvious. I have to admit, I like the new feeling of power that this sort of belonging brings with it. A proper little gang against the world is infinitely better than just me.

We walk through the corridors and along the catwalk arm-in-arm, bitching and cackling about whatever crazy things we did that weekend, making too much noise and not caring. Small rebellions, yeah OK, but still things that I would never have dared to do not so long ago.

It feels like we’re a bit protected from the old crossfire that we used to be caught right in the middle of. Even Amie Bellairs is being different with me now that I’m friends with the twins – we still don’t really speak in the mornings, but she’s stopped actively being bitchy towards me. With Elyse and Melanie, the A Group just seem to leave them alone, with a silence that seems less like blanking them and more like wary respect. It’s a welcome relief, but it’s kind of unsettling – it feels like something must be brewing.

I know from past experience that nobody has ever got out of that group unscathed before. That’s simply how it is – I don’t think there’s a single girl in the class who hasn’t been on the receiving end of some sort of pointless vitriol from Amie Bellairs. If you’re not in her gang, then you’re either too fat, too thin, too clever or too thick. Except for Elyse and Melanie Johansson.

Then, in Sociology on an otherwise ordinary Thursday morning, things take a turn for the weird. Miss Anderson is quite scary at the best of times, and she already openly despises the twins. Elyse, in particular, refuses even to try. To be honest, I can totally see Miss Anderson’s point – but it’s hugely impressive to see Elyse refuse to back down amid such fierce opposition.

During a discussion about the breakdown of the nuclear family, Miss Anderson’s sadistic gaze alights on Elyse, and she asks her to come up and draw a diagram on the whiteboard.

‘Elyse, I think it’s time you tried to contribute
something
.’

‘Sorry, Miss,’ Elyse replies. ‘I haven’t read the chapter; I don’t know.’

‘I see. Then perhaps we can discuss some extra reading at lunchtime, when you stay here after the class today. Lexy White, you might as well go ahead. Elyse, I really do wonder what your problem is.’

Lexy stands up. ‘What, other than being a skanky goth who’s obsessed with that lame band Trouble Every Day?’ she laughs, like it’s no big deal.

It is a big deal. Clearly Lexy hasn’t realised that the social pecking order has changed since she last looked. Does she not realise that this is really not the same as calling me ‘Skeletor’ or making Nathalie cry with a single, withering glance? There’s actually a collective intake of breath as everyone looks to Elyse.

I can’t be the only one who is taken completely by surprise when she does…nothing. She smiles beatifically back at Lexy and doesn’t so much as make a face or roll her eyes or
anything
. She doesn’t say a word. Even Lexy looks surprised, like she was expecting to excel herself in some kind of throw-down in the Sociology room. To be perfectly honest, I was half-expecting Elyse to stand up and punch Lexy in the face.

Lexy makes her way to the front of the classroom with a little saunter in her step, clearly hoping to score major points with Amie and the others. This makes it all the more hilarious when she goes flying over her own feet, in what actually looks like a pretty nasty fall. One minute she’s standing up, the next she is smack-down on the classroom floor. It’s quickly obvious that she’s not badly hurt, but she’s fallen as legs-akimbo awkwardly as possible and, even worse, a bottle of orange juice that Sabrina Robinson had perched on the edge of her desk has tipped down the back of her shirt.

Most of the class are suppressing giggles and Lexy looks understandably mortified. Given what just happened, everyone’s eyes automatically swivel for a moment towards Elyse. Miss Anderson glares at her, like she’s furious not to be able to blame this directly on her.

Because, the thing is, it’s clearly not her fault – Elyse is sitting metres away from Lexy, almost all the way over on the other side of the room. She’s still smiling vacantly, and concentrating hard on a piece of black ribbon that she’s holding taut between her hands.

‘You really think you’re something now, don’t you?’

I should have known better than to hang around in the common room after all my friends have gone home. Especially after what happened between Elyse and Lexy today in Sociology. I got chatting to Miss Webb about Cordelia in
King Lear
and barely noticed that the rest of the class had left ages ago. By the time I came back up here, the common room was already deserted except for the A Group. They’re huddled up on the sofa, no doubt killing time before going into town or round to Amie’s house.

I can sense that they’re all – for once – paying a bit too much attention to me as I rifle through my locker for my Spanish dictionary. Lexy wanders over and stands unnervingly close while I try to get my stuff together and leave.

‘Yeah, she really thinks she’s hot shit all of a sudden…’ she laughs to her friends when I don’t respond.

I’ve managed to put up with their sniping for the past six years and there’s no reason why things should be so different now. But I know that things are, in fact, very different.

‘Hey, we’re talking to you!’ Alice snaps.

They form a kind of unofficial circle between me and the door. If I take a step in any direction, I know they’re all going to be right up in my face.

‘I
said
– you really think you’re something, don’t you?’ Lexy repeats.

‘Not really,’ I mutter, a snappy comeback nowhere to be found.