Gemini Rising (18 page)

It’s as if she knows exactly how to get to me. She’s so right, it hurts. I look up at her and she knows I’m sold. She gives me a big, wet kiss on the cheek in celebration, and at least I’m pleasing somebody.

She grabs my hand and – with me barefoot, in my pyjamas – we run out into the night, away from my house and my family, and into the rain and the dark.

I don’t know what I imagined would happen when Elyse and I escaped – I guess just that we would run off into the distance like two girls in a film, going nowhere – but I do know it’s not what I find there waiting for me.

Elyse drags me along on my bare feet to the end of the road. Around the corner, just out of sight of the house, is a car that I don’t recognise at first – the headlights are blinding me so all I can see is the rain cutting through the white light.

‘Get in!’ Elyse shouts, and leaps into the front passenger side.

As I get closer, I can see that Shimmi and Mel are in the car. It takes me a minute to notice what is wrong with this scenario – Shimmi is sitting in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel. Of her
dad’s
car. Shimmi, who has had precisely three driving lessons, appears to be driving her dad’s shiny, new navy-blue Mercedes. Suddenly I can see the cause of Elyse’s urgency – if Shimmi’s had to make a break for it like this, if things are that bad, then we all need to stick together. I’m glad I’m here. I bundle into the back seat next to Mel.

‘Right, the gang’s all here – let’s go!’ Shimmi declares, undeterred as she stalls the car once before roaring off from the kerb.

‘Um, can someone please tell me what’s going on here?’ is all I can manage.

‘See? I told you this was major.’ Elyse turns around in the front seat and grins at me like I should be pleased.

As we pull out of my road and I struggle with my seat belt, Shimmi is driving way too fast and doesn’t seem to have a clue what she’s doing.

‘I’ve escaped!’ She ought to be petrified, but she sounds only elated. ‘My dad was talking about sending me to boarding school, to stay with relatives up north, or even my uncle in Bangladesh – all kinds of crap. I’m just not doing it, so I escaped. I nicked my dad’s car keys and I climbed out of my bedroom window. Sod it – it can’t get any worse. If there’s anything that’ll help, it’s the four of us – maybe we can, you know,
do
something.’

‘So, we came to the rescue!’ Elyse adds. ‘Shimmi drove over to our house, and we decided to come and get you. I thought we should all be together for this. The others thought you’d say “no”, but I knew you’d be up for it. I knew you’d come through for us in the end.’

‘Shim, I didn’t even think you could drive? You don’t have your licence yet.’

‘It’s not that hard. My brother’s given me a couple of lessons. I suppose if we get pulled over we’d be screwed, but I kind of know what I’m doing.’

The audibly crunching gears and the way we are wobbling along the line in the middle of the road kind of negate her confident tone. Elyse rolls her eyes at me and swigs from a bottle of vodka stashed in her coat pocket.

‘So, we’re heading back to our house – my dad’s away working, as usual,’ Elyse informs me. ‘I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.’

Mel and I perch quietly side by side in the back seat – me surreptitiously trying to pull my pyjama shorts a bit further down my goose-bumpy legs – while Elyse and Shimmi discuss ‘supplies’. Elyse passes Shimmi the vodka bottle for an occasional swig while she’s driving. I try to ignore this, and hold on tightly to the door handle whenever we swing too fast around corners. The car swerves all over the wet road and I keep thinking we’re too close to the headlights whooshing at us from the opposite direction.

After a little while, I notice that Melanie is even quieter than usual. She’s hunched in on herself, her hair hanging over her face and obscuring it entirely. The other two girls are dressed up in minuscule party clothes, but Mel is looking plainer than usual and wearing baggy army-style fatigues. She appears to be deep in thought, staring out of the car window as the lights whizz by; occasionally she’ll mutter something out loud, as though she can’t quite keep whatever is on her mind to herself.

It’s a relief when we pull haphazardly into the twins’ driveway. I can see candlelight flickering at the windows and feel the bass of thumping music vibrating as we go inside. It’s obvious they left in a hurry – it’s like walking into a party on an abandoned ghost ship.

Elyse throws open the doors and strolls in nonchalantly among the flickering candles, ignoring the fact that the music is so loud our ears might start bleeding at any moment. She has even more disregard for the place than normal – dropping things as she goes and not even bothering to shut the front door behind her. As my eyes adjust to the dim light, I realise the house is in a shocking, squalid mess – it looks as though it has been recently occupied by squatters. This may not have been the cosiest of family homes to begin with, but now it barely resembles a family home at all. There is hardly a surface that isn’t covered with Elyse’s candles and other assorted crap – dirty plates and glasses, stinking full ashtrays, clothes discarded in every room, Mel’s drawings scattered about. I know for a fact that their dad has only left them alone for a couple of days; I don’t understand how everything has gone so rapidly downhill.

Elyse doesn’t seem to care. She attacks her alcohol stash, handing out bottles and telling us to have everything we want, lighting a cigarette and dropping ash all over the carpet. The air of wild abandon is kind of contagious. It feels like an imaginary world where there are no parents or consequences and we can do what we like. I’m miles from home in my pyjamas in the middle of the night, a parallel dream universe that isn’t quite real – I might as well have a drink and at least try to have a good time.

Getting a good look at Shimmi in the light, I can see that Elyse has obviously got her hands on her. As we all know, Shim is no stranger to the Lolita look, but this is a new, dark direction. The clothes must be Elyse’s, as they are all black and a little bit too tight for her – she looks like she’s in fancy dress as Elyse, basically. It’s not only Shimmi’s outfit and make-up that look different – there’s a new nihilism about her, a reckless air that I’m more accustomed to detecting around Elyse. Her usual fun, cheeky look has disappeared. She’s glassy and brittle and wound too tightly.

The clock on the mantelpiece says it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning, but Elyse has turned the music up louder than ever – one of Trouble Every Day’s most aggressive songs,
You Versus Me
. Elyse catches my eye and winks, a wicked smile on her painted lips.

‘We’ve got a lot to do tonight, ladies,’ she purrs. ‘I’m going to get us set up with the four corners; stay here.’

As Elyse vanishes, I realise that I haven’t seen Mel for a while. Shimmi is usually easier to talk to when there are no witnesses for her to show off to, especially when she’s in a mood like this.

When she catches me looking at her, she makes a face and sulkily mouths, ‘What?’ before downing her drink with gusto and dancing with herself to this music she doesn’t particularly like. Shimmi has made a choice and she has chosen oblivion. There’s clearly no point trying to reason with her.

With nothing else to do, I wander off and take a glass of wine with me – that I made sure to pour myself from a new bottle.

When I open the dining-room door, I find that I don’t even need to switch on the light – the candles are already lit, glowing and dripping in the middle of the table. The Ouija board and all of the astrology books are spread out around them. There are four chairs ready for us. For a moment, I am entranced, seeing it all laid out. It’s beautiful – like something from another time or another world entirely.

Then I stumble in the doorway. I look down and see that my foot is tangled in the strap of Mel’s schoolbag. It’s lying there open, with her notebook right on the top. The music is still blasting, but there is no one to be seen. My stomach is making a fist as I quickly snatch it up.

As I flip through the pages of dense words and sketches, something in my mind clicks like clockwork. If I had to see this – and I half wish I hadn’t seen it at all – then I just wish I’d seen it sooner. Mel’s black eye, the sleepwalking, that night when we both nearly drowned… I should have been more insistent when I asked what it was she was writing in her notebooks all the time. I should have tried harder to talk to her on her own.

I don’t have time to think any more, when I am interrupted. Luckily, I hear Elyse’s manic laugh before she appears, so I have time to drop the notebook back into Mel’s bag. I feel weirdly glad not to be touching it any more. Still, I’m sure my face must be powdered with guilt.

‘Well, well,’ Elyse smirks as she pushes past me into the dining room. For a minute I worry that she knows what I’ve seen, as if she can somehow read my mind. ‘We all wondered where you’d got to. You’ve beaten us to it, Sorana.’

‘Really?’ To my own ears, my voice sounds forced and suspicious, but luckily no one else is paying attention. ‘I must have just guessed you’d all come in here.’

Elyse is leading the way, with Shimmi at her heels swigging from a very suspect-looking bottle, and Mel dragging behind as if she’s reluctant to join in whatever’s going on. I still have the images of Mel’s notebook flashing in front of my eyes, and suddenly I’m worried about what she’s really thinking. Seeing her now, it’s impossible to tell.

‘Ladies, it’s time. I think you all know what I’m talking about. We’ve got work to do tonight.’

Shimmi soon stops giggling and messing about as she sits down at the table, looking suddenly focused and serious. It’s worrying that she has so completely bought into all this, as if she’s pinning all of her desperate hopes on something hopeless.

It can’t be possible – I must just be feeling jumpy – but I could swear that the candles flare up and burn brighter for a second when Elyse takes her place at the table.

‘Tonight’s an important night for the four of us.’ Elyse’s eyes are flashing with reflected flames. ‘Tonight we take our revenge.’

‘Revenge?’

‘Yes, revenge! We’re going to take revenge and take our power. That spineless bitch Nathalie, Amie Bellairs and Lexy White, Miss Webb, Shimmi’s parents – all these people are in our way and we can stop them. It’s about time.’

‘Yeah!’ Shimmi agrees enthusiastically. ‘Revenge! We deserve it!’

‘Exactly. The days of us being told what to do are over – we can make that happen. We can make all these things in our way just…disappear. It’s in the stars – Gemini is rising tonight.’

As Elyse says this, the candles flicker and the glass on the table seems to move slightly, even though nobody is touching it. A sick feeling of fear clogs my throat.

‘
No
!’

The voice comes out loud and clear, and I am surprised to find that it is mine.

‘What do you mean “no”?’ Elyse sounds almost bored, as if this is just a waste of time before I cave and do what she says.

It suddenly seems so simple. It’s as if, for pretty much the first time in my life, I have found my voice.

‘I just mean “no”, Elyse. I don’t care if you think it’s just mucking about or whatever. I’m not doing it, not against other people.’

‘Why do you say it’s “just mucking about”, Sorana? How can you be afraid of something you say you don’t even believe in?’

‘It’s nothing to do with being scared.’

‘Sorana Salem,’ Elyse says with a nasty little laugh, ‘you are scared of everything.’

‘Do you know what? You’re probably right. That used to be true. But I’m not scared of you, Elyse. Not any more. And I’m not doing this.’

She gets right up in my face, jabbing a finger at me while spitting poisonous words. Even the other two look startled by the sudden strength of Elyse’s vitriol.

‘Then. You. Can. Just. Get. Out. We don’t need you here. We never have. You’re a loser, Sorana – you’re nothing without me, or have you forgotten already?’

Elyse has always known that I’m the weak link, and sometimes it’s as though she is looking into my head and can see all of my fears: I’m not really one of the gang; I’m just a good girl who wants to play at being bad; I run home at the first sign of danger.

‘But, Elyse,’ Mel almost whispers, ‘we
do
need her. She’s our Gemini. The four, remember?’

I flash back to my glimpses of Melanie’s notebook, and look over to her for a sign of whose side she’s on. She won’t meet my eye.

‘Shut up, Mel!’ Elyse thunders. ‘We don’t need her. She’s no use to us if she’s going to betray us like this. I could see that there was death somewhere in the chart for today – if she carries on like this, it might be closer to home than we realised…’

‘Oh, come on!’ I protest. ‘Elyse, this is getting out of control – I’m not doing anything wrong. You lot can do what you like, but I’m not getting involved.’

At this, Elyse laughs in my face yet again.

‘But you
are
involved, Sorana. Up to the eyeballs. Did you really think you could back out now?’

As if on cue but surely a weird coincidence – the glass on the Ouija board suddenly topples from the table and smashes into pieces. She raises her eyebrows at me, and dares me to back down.

‘Take care, OK, Sorana?’ she says. ‘I mean, you never know what might happen tonight. I’ve been such a good friend to you – and this is how you repay me? Your life was so shit before you met me; I thought you’d have a bit of loyalty. Like I said, there’s death in your chart tonight…’

As she says this, deliberately casually, she picks something up from the table that shines sharp and silver in the light. I think back to Amie’s ruined face, Lexy’s Rorschach ribs, Shimmi passed out on that bed, the warning that Nathalie tried to give me, the warnings from everyone that I haven’t listened to. I can’t be in that room with her a moment longer.

I turn on my heel and run out of the room. I keep running and I don’t stop. Not until I have made it out of the back door and into the night.

Out by the river, it’s cold and dark and still pouring with rain. I just wanted to get out of there, but now it feels like a chance to get help and put a stop to all of this.

The light is on at Gareth’s window, for once a good thing. He could help me – to get Shimmi out of there and both of us home. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s better than me on my own. Fumbling in the dark, I let myself in through next door’s back gate. I can see Gareth silhouetted at the window and I’m about to start waving, trying to get his attention, when I realise that he is not alone.