Gemini Rising (15 page)

‘Spirit, how did you die?’ she asks, in a flat, dead voice that is not quite her own, and I can feel Mel give a shudder next to me.

Suddenly, our eyes are all wide open as the pointer careens around the board until it is screeching, and then begins to slide, slowly and precisely, towards the letters in order.

D – R – O – W –

Then a cold gust of wind tears through the room as the door bursts open with a crash and the pointer flies off the board. All the candles surrounding us are blown out simultaneously and the room is plunged into darkness. We all scream in perfect unison, and the scream into the dark feels endless, like falling out of a dream.

‘Bloody hell!’ a male voice exclaims, along with another loud crash.

The electric light is switched on, so unnaturally bright that it hurts my eyes, slowly revealing a teenage bedroom filled with nothing but smoke and fear.

‘What the hell are you lot doing?’

It’s Gareth Next Door.

‘What are
you
doing, more like?’ Elyse retorts. ‘Spying on us again? How did you even get in here?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Elyse. The back door was open – you knew that. I was just checking you girls were all right – your dad asked me to look out for you, remember?’

I’ve noticed that he keeps saying this and it sounds lamer every time – he must realise this himself to sound so defensive.

‘I brought round some cider and thought you might want to hang out. I wasn’t expecting all this “hubble, bubble, toil and trouble” shit.’

‘Oh, shut up. We were just doing the Ouija board. No big deal.’

Elyse actually looks embarrassed, which makes her even more pissed off. She stands up and faces him down. I notice that Gareth is clutching a straining carrier bag, so I suppose he’s telling the truth about the cider, at least. Although he’s so much bigger than her, he looks oddly defenceless next to Elyse, who’s all angles and jabbing and needling. She goes right up to him and punches him in the arm and then in the side, in quick succession.

‘Oi, get off!’ Gareth bats her away, rubbing at his meaty arm.

‘Ooh, did that
hurt
? Are you scared of getting beaten up by a
girl
?’

She follows this up with a little storm of stabbing punches, giggling all the while. He shields himself with his carrier bag full of cans, fending her off ineffectually with the other hand.

‘Just give me the cider and get out of here, all right?’ Elyse demands, trying to grab the bag out of Gareth’s clenched fingers.

‘No, get off!’

They’re practically wrestling, Gareth trying his best to hold Elyse at arm’s length until she stops.

‘Give it!’

The carrier bag splits and cans of cider go rolling and fizzing around the floor. This removes the barrier between Elyse and Gareth – and she slams into him as hard as she can with one shoulder. Visibly losing patience this time, Gareth pushes her back even harder – a violent shove that seems designed not just to get rid of her, but to cause actual harm.

Elyse spins backwards and loses balance entirely, both feet propelled off the floor before she crashes into her wardrobe. It’s a heavy, old wooden one, and her head makes an ominous clunking noise as it makes contact with the solid surface. The force is enough to knock her out. She goes silent as she crumples down to the ground in a heap.

Within the space of a few seconds, the atmosphere has changed and nothing is fun any more. I struggle to my feet, but Gareth is quicker. Before I can do anything, he lunges towards Elyse, and I honestly have no idea whether it’s to help her or to inflict more damage. It all happened so quickly, I’m not sure if the shock of this has been enough to make his fit of rage blow over.

Suddenly I can’t see how I ever thought he could be harmless. There’s no denying the fact that he is much bigger and stronger than any of us, and that he has just thrown Elyse halfway across the room. She might have been goading him, but she also might be really hurt.

‘Get away from her!’ Melanie shrieks at the top of her voice, before Gareth can touch her sister.

‘Look, Mel, I—’ he blusters, taking a step towards her.

The noise she makes is painful – worse than a scream and more like an alarm. Then she goes very quiet and very still.

Eventually she speaks, sounding far away, like she’s not really here. ‘I said, go away. Leave us alone.’

My vision goes into slow motion as I see the bookcase on the wall start to sway. It’s next to the wardrobe, so I guess the impact of Elyse’s fall had a knock-on effect. Mel keeps her eyes fixed on it as the bookcase crashes to the ground only millimetres away from Gareth – taking an avalanche of books, CDs and lit candles with it.

‘Get out and don’t come back,’ Mel shouts.

Gareth only falters for a second before doing exactly that. He runs out as fast as he can and doesn’t look back. I can hear him careening heavily down the stairs like he’s being chased. It’s only then that I come to my senses enough to do something. I rush over to Elyse, who seems to have recovered somewhat. She’s sitting up and grinning amid the wreckage, and she brushes me away when I try to help her up. She looks fine. We all look around at one another, wide-eyed and incredulous, trying to figure out what exactly just happened. There is silence.

Until Elyse bursts out laughing. She starts and then can’t seem to stop, until she’s rolling on the floor and nearly crying with it.

‘See, I told you! We did it!’

‘Did what?’

‘We made that happen! We got rid of Gareth. I had this feeling he was going to do something really bad to us, but we stopped him! We got rid of him!’

‘Yeah, but…’

‘I don’t care what you say – you all know it’s true.’

She leaps onto the bed, turns Trouble Every Day up to deafening, and starts jumping and dancing wildly. After a while, there’s no choice but to join in. Whether Elyse’s theory is true or not, the sense of being in a gang has never been stronger. That kind of power in itself has to count for something.

We know that we won’t see Gareth again in a hurry.

I wake up in the dead of night, with the intangible feeling that something is amiss. It’s like in a bad dream, when someone’s telling you something really, really important but it’s as though they’ve hit the ‘mute’ button. You know?

I stagger to my feet and regain my bearings, barefoot but still in my jeans and T-shirt from last night. There is a sudden full moon gap in the cloudy sky. It illuminates the black window so I can see into the garden and the river beyond. I hear a crash and see two figures running out through the gate and towards the towpath. I begin to realise what must have woken me up as I slowly register that neither Elyse nor Mel is in the bedroom. Shimmi is sprawled diagonally across Elyse’s double bed.

If Elyse got up for one of her late-night walks, maybe Gareth spotted her and is still angry about what happened earlier… Some sort of reflex impulse propels me into action before my brain has fully engaged. I’m the only one who knows Elyse is out there, and in danger. I’m running out of the room and crashing down the dark staircase. I rush through the kitchen, and then I am outside following the two figures I saw through the window. I don’t care about anything else. I’m not even thinking clearly enough to be frightened.

I run through the wet grass of the garden and then out onto the rough towpath, my bare feet barely registering as the ground becomes more treacherous. The path along the river is quite narrow, only about a metre wide. My feet are moving of their own accord, thundering full pelt; one wrong move or badly placed rock would send me tumbling straight into the dark mass of water.

I can see somebody ahead, not too far in the distance. I am catching them up, one figure in front of me chasing the other into the horizon. I force my legs to move faster and faster – wishing that I had actually made an effort during all those wasted Games afternoons – until I am gaining on them. I think I can hear shouting far away, but it might be the wind playing tricks on me.

The run feels interminable, as though my lungs might burst and my legs collapse under me, when the two figures ahead come to an abrupt halt. I lurch the final distance after them, doubled up and staggering at the edge of the water. Suddenly the fear hits as I realise that I am here and not running any more, that this is it.

I look around me, and I see that there is no Gareth. The two people I have been chasing are my two friends. Elyse and Melanie. Oblivious to my presence, only a few steps away, they seem to grapple for a minute, as though one of them is trying to stop the other from falling into the river below. As I watch them in this strange ballet I begin to wonder if it’s actually the opposite, although surely it can’t be.

There is a huge splash, and a scream, as Melanie falls into the water. Elyse is standing on the bank, shell-shocked, when she finally spots me.

‘Sorana! What the hell are you doing out here?’

Just a minute ago I thought I knew, but now I am totally lost. Melanie is thrashing in the water below, her head going under, starting to panic. Elyse hasn’t moved – so I jump in.

The water is so cold that it knocks all the remaining breath out of me. It feels thick and grubby as it soaks into my clothes and weighs me down like solid concrete. Despite the freezing cold and the rushing current, I find that my feet can just about touch the bottom. I wade through mud and weeds towards Mel – she’s just out of reach, her blonde hair soaked black as it floats on the surface.

I manage to get a grip under her armpits and drag us both to the side, slipping and choking under her weight. I don’t even know if she’s breathing; she’s so sodden and heavy, she’s like a dead weight.

‘Elyse! Help me!’

Elyse doesn’t seem to hear me. I can’t see her clearly from down in the water. I have to haul Mel back onto dry land myself. She’s bigger and heavier than I am, and the distance onto the bank feels vast. I pull myself up after her by my elbows, through the nettles and rubble on the side, and we collapse onto the grass.

I can’t even register relief that we’re safe. We’re both shivering so hard, we can hardly function. My limbs feel like jelly, and the fear and danger have finally hit me. I am completely done for.

By the time I manage to sit up and open my eyes, Elyse has gone. She is walking away, back towards the house. Without saying a word, leaving Mel and me behind, half drowned. Melanie looks quite serene and composed, despite the fact that she’s soaking wet and shaking violently.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she says, holding out a hand for me to take and pull myself up, this time.

The hot shower feels better than anything has ever felt in my entire life. It’s such a relief to be clean again, and for the warmth to seep into my bones. My brain is still out there by the river, but my body at least is coming back.

In the tail end of last night, Melanie and I finally made our way back to the house, practically holding each other up all the way. Elyse was long gone ahead of us. With almost every step, I kept asking, ‘What happened, Mel?’, a constant mantra, but it was like she couldn’t hear me.

‘I’d better go to bed,’ she whispered as soon as we were back inside.

Then, instantly, she slipped away up the stairs, leaving me alone. On autopilot, I crept along the corridor back to Elyse’s room. I held my breath as I opened the door, but the only person in there was Shimmi, still asleep on top of the bed. I quietly changed into a clean, baggy T-shirt, and draped my wet clothes over a radiator. Wanting nothing in the world more than a warm and comfortable bed, I elbowed Shimmi onto her own side and manoeuvred myself in next to her. She stirred and muttered something in her sleep.

Suddenly, I wanted to talk to her before the night was over. I already knew that in the morning I would probably begin to wonder if I dreamed all of this.

‘Shim? Shimmi, wake up.’

‘Wha–? Oh, Sorana – go to sleep.’

‘Listen… Are you awake?’

‘Urgh, sort of. What’s the matter?’

‘It’s just, don’t you think tonight was sort of weird? A bit scary, even? The Ouija board… and what happened with Gareth?’

‘No. It was cool. Go back to sleep.’

Before I had the chance to say another word, Shimmi was snoring again. She probably wouldn’t even remember our conversation when she woke up.

Despite how tired I was, I thought my eyelids might stay glued open all night, but actually I must have zonked out at some point. When I woke up, the light was bright and clean, and my surroundings didn’t look half so sinister any more. Not waking Shimmi this time, I crept straight out of bed and towards the nearest bathroom. I locked myself in and turned the shower on full blast.

I stand under the hot water for ages. As I thaw out, everything begins to hurt: my feet are bloody and battered, my legs and hands grazed and still caked in mud – and I realise that last night really was real.

I still can’t explain any of it, though. I’m not even sure now that I did the right thing. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been there, but somehow that doesn’t feel like the point.

When I eventually drag myself out of the shower, I find that my clothes still aren’t dry. I only brought one pair of jeans with me, so I am forced to put on my school skirt with a T-shirt. I must have been hours in the bathroom, because Shimmi – who would sleep in until lunchtime every day if she was allowed –is nowhere to be seen. I can hear activity in the kitchen, and the TV is blaring downstairs. The noises are incongruously normal.

I start to head downstairs to find the others and see what’s going on. Then, at the last minute, I change my mind. Instead, I turn the other way down the corridor.

We always hang out in Elyse’s room, which feels like the centre of our world when we’re here – but it’s stopped me from noticing how much the rest of the house feels like it’s out of bounds. I find the door to Mel’s room, and suddenly think maybe it’s a bit odd that we hardly ever go in here. Mel’s so quiet and secretive, sometimes she just disappears and nobody follows her.

It’s nice in here – it’s much brighter than Elyse’s room, and feels calmer somehow. There are a few pictures of Trouble Every Day on the walls, and some of Melanie’s own drawings – it’s much more like my own average bedroom at home, but there’s something about it that’s bleaker. Melanie is sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and working furiously on one of her notebooks. When she sees me, she looks up abruptly like she has been caught. Still, she nods when I ask if I can come in.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. Thanks.’

She nods as if she’s trying to convince both of us.

‘Mel… What actually happened?’

She doesn’t say anything, but I get the feeling that she will, so I just keep quiet until she does. If I sit here long enough, she’ll tell me.

‘She was sleepwalking – weren’t you, Mel?’

Mel and I both straighten up with a jolt, really looking like we’ve been caught doing something wrong this time. Elyse is standing in the doorway. I have to remind myself that talking to Mel by herself is not a crime.

‘Morning, Sorana. Hope you slept well. Yeah, Mel has this sleepwalking problem and she let herself out of the house again last night – good job you and I were both there to help, wasn’t it?’

I don’t say anything and neither does Mel.

‘Right, as long as I’m not interrupting a private conversation here, Shimmi and I are making pancakes for breakfast.’

Melanie immediately follows her sister down the stairs. Once she has gone, I stay there sitting on her bed for a minute, looking around blankly.

I don’t have to think about it for long. Instead of going straight down to the kitchen, I go back to Elyse’s room and pack up my things. My jeans are still wet, but I have to shove them into my bag anyway – I know I look pretty ridiculous in my old T-shirt and school skirt, socks and Converse, but I don’t have much choice and I don’t particularly care right now. I check my phone and then realise that, as usual, I don’t have any reception here.

The other three are having brilliant fun causing havoc in the kitchen – flour flying and a dozen bowls dripping batter everywhere. Part of me wants so badly to join in and have fun and be normal, but something’s stopping me. I feel churned up and bad enough about it that what I’m about to say is kind of true.

‘Look, you guys, I’m sorry to be so lame but I’m really not feeling well…’

‘Oh, what?’ Shimmi exclaims. ‘That really
is
lame, Sorana. We’ve still got the whole weekend, and we need the four corners! We’re going to draw up a new chart this afternoon, to find out who grassed us up to Miss Webb the other day; Elyse has everything ready. You’re not bailing on us now, are you?’

Four corners? Even Shimmi’s using this weird language like it’s her own.

‘I think I should go home,’ I continue. ‘I wouldn’t be much fun, anyway.’

‘Like you ever are…’

‘Shimmi,’ Elyse admonishes, ‘don’t be such a bitch. Sorana can’t help it if she’s ill. If she wants to go, we should just let her. We’ll be fine without her; there’s no need to worry about that.’

Only I can hear the slight note of disdain in Elyse’s voice. Of course they’ll be fine without me. Of course I should just go –
if
I really want to. It feels like yet another test – one that I’m failing. Although usually I would do pretty much anything to be on Elyse’s good side, after what happened last night I actually don’t think I can take any more of this. I’m simply not up to it.

‘I think I’d better ring my mum to come and collect me, actually, if that’s OK. Elyse, can I use your house phone? I can’t get any reception on my mobile.’

‘Oh yeah, I suppose so – if I can actually find it…’

Elyse makes a big show of huffing and tutting as she looks for the phone. Eventually she emerges from the sitting room with a chunky, old-fashioned portable phone.

‘There you go; we never use it, that’s all.’

I take the phone from Elyse and go out into the hallway. I really hope someone’s in at home. The idea of my family having a normal weekend without me makes me feel a bit sad. The phone rings and rings, and when my mum finally answers, I could actually cry with relief.

‘Mum, it’s me. Sorry to be such a pain, but could you please come and pick me up?’

‘Sorana, are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I just… I really want to come home.’

She must hear in my voice that something’s up, because there’s no messing about after that. She double-checks the twins’ postcode with me for her sat-nav, and says she’s got a few things to sort out but she’ll be here to get me in about an hour. I can hear Pete in the background asking what’s going on, and she quietly tells him that he and Daisy will have to go to the garden centre without her. I feel a bit bad, but not enough to change my mind; I just really want my mum to come and get me.

Once it’s all arranged, I feel better. I go back into the kitchen and manage to laugh with the others over their pancakes as we watch
Spongebob Squarepants
on kids’ morning TV. But after about forty-five minutes have passed, I begin to get twitchy. Constantly checking the time and glancing out of the window, in case my mum turns up early. I cannot possibly risk her rocking up here and being greeted with this chaotic house, asking where the twins’ dad is and forcing me to lie about it in front of my friends – I’ll never be allowed out again. More than that, the stress of having to formulate a composite version of myself on the spot – a combination of the ‘me’ I am with my friends, and the slightly different ‘me’ that I am at home with my family – would be beyond me this morning.

When almost an hour has gone by since I called my mum, I am so anxious about it that I have to act on it.

‘Do you know what? I think I’d better go outside and wait for my mum, make sure she can find the place. I could probably do with the fresh air, anyway.’

‘You do look a bit peaky, actually, babe,’ Elyse says. ‘Feel better, yeah? We’ll see you on Monday.’

We hug with what seems like the usual affection, and I hope this means that everything is OK between us. Much as I want to go home, I couldn’t bear for it not to be OK. However, I can’t forget about the enormous shadow cast over the room, the thing that nobody’s talking about. I wonder if any of us will actually mention what happened last night, out by the river, ever again.