Gemini Rising (6 page)

The three faces of my friends are shining out behind Mr Johansson, looking hopeful, like they’d be completely
crushed
if I couldn’t come out to play. Just because I know it’s how this game works, I have to look as hopeful as they do, making ‘fingers crossed!’ kind of faces at them behind my mum’s back, even though I really, really wish they weren’t here.

‘As you can see, we’ve got friends over for supper, and it’s actually a celebration for… Sorana, do you
want
to go?’

‘Um, can I?’ I say, because what else can I say? Especially when Josh is looking right at me and I have the chance to prove a point.

Mum looks kind of like I do when Shimmi is trying to talk me into something that I don’t really want to do.

‘Well, it’s up to you, Sorana. You’re seventeen years old, after all. It’s your call.’

She sounds very weary, but her eyes are boring holes in me and suddenly I really want to say no.

‘OK… I suppose I’ll go, then.’

‘Thanks, Mrs, um.’ Mr Johansson looks relieved. ‘We thought it would be nice for them to stay for the weekend, so I’ll make sure she gets home on Sunday morning if that’s all right with you. We’ll all go and wait in the car while Sorana gets her things. Get out of your hair. Very nice to meet you. Goodnight.’

The others all murmur their awkwardly polite goodbyes as they follow the twins’ dad back out to the car.

‘Sorana May Salem!’ Mum hisses as soon as the front door has closed behind them, the pleasant atmosphere killed entirely. ‘I really do not appreciate being put on the spot like that! I suppose you knew that they were just going to turn up out of the blue and spring this on me?’

‘No way! That’s so unfair!’ My voice drops to a whisper. ‘I didn’t… I don’t even really want to go.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Well, you’ll have to now. You should have just
said
, you silly girl. Sunday morning, indeed! We’ll finish your birthday dinner without you, if that’s what you want. Just get your things and go.’

It turns out that the twins don’t live all that far away, even if it seems like a million miles. Their house is over on the other side of town, right on the outskirts and near the river – the slightly posher and much quieter part, practically like the countryside compared to where Shimmi and I both live in the middle of town. It seems wrong to me, somehow, that they live in an ordinary house not too different from mine, and that they have an ordinary dad who listens to Radio Four while he’s driving.

If this were anyone else – being driven around by their dad, sucking up to him like obedient twelve year olds and getting him to ask my mum if I could come round for a ‘sleepover party’ – the mockery would be merciless. And it would be mostly by Shimmi.

As the twins’ dad is driving, we are all being quiet and contained, but there is much giggling and nudging going on. Elyse is sitting in the front seat, and she keeps turning around and making faces at us. She catches my eye and winks. I smile back but, hemmed in between Shimmi and Melanie in the back seat, I am stiff and anxious. I still feel guilty – I can’t stand it when my mum is angry with me. Luckily, if I’m being quiet and weird, no one seems to notice. Mel is gazing out of the window, apparently lost in her own world as usual. I can feel Shimmi practically jiggling with excitement on my other side.

I look past her to the orange street lamps whizzing past the dark window, and try to relax and think about anything except how my mum had been when I left, or my family eating spaghetti and meatballs without me. I think of Pete’s surprise cheesecake and how I won’t even be there when he brings it to the table. The idea of it makes me want to cry.

Then I think of something else that doesn’t seem quite right.

‘Hey, where’s Nathalie?’

‘Oh, her house isn’t really on the way,’ Elyse explains. ‘So she said she’d get a taxi over or something.’

I still can’t stop thinking about my mum, and feeling terrible about myself – but as we drive further through the dark something funny begins to happen. It’s as if my combined feelings of unease have nowhere to go other than into the pit of my stomach, where they turn into a strange sort of excitement that takes hold of my whole body.

The house where Elyse and Melanie live is at the end of the road, the most isolated from the others, hidden behind gates and a thick hedge. It looks maybe Victorian, not vast but big and a touch more interesting than mine or Shimmi’s houses. I really, really like it. I find that I am incredibly curious about where, and how, the twins live. I am convinced that their daily existence must be so much more glamorous than mine.

‘Home sweet home!’ Elyse says with a note of sarcasm as she skips up the path towards the house.

When she lets us in and switches on the light, a conversely gloomy feeling descends. I shiver as I walk through the door, chillier still than outside. It smells like no one’s been here in a while, and the stark electric light doesn’t do much to soften the impression.

‘Come on,’ Elyse says, taking me by the hand and ushering Shimmi along behind. ‘We’ll go up to my room. Thanks for the lift, Dad.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, looking slightly awkward.

The building itself is stunning, but it looks like nobody’s done anything with it in years – the furniture and the decorations are like something from my grandma’s house in the ‘90s; I’ve seen pictures. Only it’s a bit sparser, as well as messy, all at once – I can’t get a sense of the house’s character at all, and can scarcely imagine that this is where the twins actually live. It’s as if there’s a thin film over everything, making it less bright than it should be.

‘It’s nice to meet you, girls,’ their dad says to Shimmi and me. ‘I’m very pleased that you’re all such good friends already; I think this new school is going to be just the thing.’

Then, to Elyse and Melanie: ‘I’m leaving shortly; I’ll be back on Sunday. You’ve got my mobile number, and don’t forget there’s Gareth and his family next door if you need anything. All right? That’s fine with your parents, isn’t it, Shimmi and Sorana?’

He obviously doesn’t realise that this is not really the done thing – but Elyse and Melanie have probably convinced him otherwise. Before I can even open my mouth, Shimmi has leapt in to confirm that this is absolutely fine, spiffing, marvellous, exactly what our parents would have wanted
and
expected, while the twins chorus their agreement and smile winningly at their father.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ Melanie says, giving him a kiss on the cheek. ‘See you on Sunday.’

Elyse leads us up the stairs and along a corridor to her bedroom – the house is bigger than it looks from the outside, and I am intrigued by the dark corners and closed doors. There is no such mystery in my house, where the layout is instantly recognisable because it is like so many other suburban houses everywhere.

Despite the rest of the house feeling cold in all senses of the word, when we reach Elyse’s room, it is instantly obvious that this is her bedroom, that it couldn’t be anyone else’s. It’s a big, irregular space that looks like the rest of the house in that it was clearly once, possibly quite recently, as grimly neutral as the downstairs rooms that we saw, but Elyse has plastered it with Trouble Every Day pictures and other random pages ripped from magazines. There is not a millimetre of blank wall space to be seen, with only the tiniest glimpses of the faded wallpaper beneath. Candles clutter every surface and the large, draughty window is pitch dark, swathed in long, shabby velvet curtains that lie open and trail onto the floor.

It has a slight look of the derelict about it, like something out of a film, possibly depicting a serial killer’s room – except with a gothy, teenage, music-obsessed twist. Compared to my own bedroom – which until right now I had thought was quite cool – this place is a whole new level of amazing.

Amid this riot of coolness, my eye is drawn to one thing in particular – a chart on the wall, in pride of position above the bed. It’s a big, circular diagram, divided into sections and full of dense writing and indecipherable symbols, surrounded at the edges by little moons and stars.

Elyse chucks herself onto the bed, then plugs in her iPod and fiddles about until Trouble Every Day’s
Dead Flowers in the Fireplace
fills the room through the speaker system. It’s one of their quieter, moodier songs, and it makes me feel all woozy. She goes around the room with her lighter, igniting various candles and burners and incense sticks. The light flickers on the peeling collaged walls and softens them to a blur. We all huddle on the bed, shoes kicked off, listening to Trouble Every Day and chatting. Until the twins’ dad’s voice drifts up the stairs.

‘I’m off now – bye, girls. Remember, Gareth next door is at home if you need him. Goodnight!’

We hear the heavy slam of the front door, followed by the sound of a car starting and eventually making its way down the road until it disappears. There is a brief silence as though we are waiting for the meaning of these sounds to process in our brains. Then we all look at each other and Elyse flips back to her iPod – skipping through the songs until the much louder rock-out of
Cut-Throat Queens
blares out – and then she jumps up on the bed and executes a mad dance of pure, unrestrained, wild delight.

‘Come on, then!’ she shrieks, jumping down off the bed and getting some impressive air before she lands sprawling on the floor and nearly takes out a shelf full of candles.

She leads us down the stairs and through the blank, chilly rooms until we find ourselves in what is clearly a little-used formal dining room. Elyse heads straight for a cabinet in one corner and crouches down, methodically passing musty bottles out to Melanie – gin, vodka, crème de menthe, brandy. She dusts them off and examines them with a shrug of her shoulders.

‘It’ll all taste OK with Coke. If we want anything else we just need to go next door and see Gareth. “Call Gareth if you need anything” says my dad – if only he knew! Loser.’

I don’t know if she’s referring to Gareth Next Door or her dad, but I’m surprised in either case that she sounds quite so scathing.

‘Come to think of it,’ she continues, ‘let’s go round and see Gareth – he’ll only be over here bothering us later if we don’t. He’ll think up some excuse to knock for us – like, “oh I thought I heard a noise” to try and freak us out – and then we’ll never get rid of him.’

‘You’re the one who’s always going round there, Elyse! Gareth’s our next-door neighbour,’ Melanie fills me in. ‘He’s nineteen and he’s a disgusting pervert, but Elyse flirts with him so that he’ll sell her drugs.’

‘Mel! It’s not like that!’ She grins at me. ‘Well, OK, actually it is – but he’s harmless and he’s cool for keeping us in booze and the odd smoke or whatever. Let’s go and see what he’s got for us.’

When he comes to the door, there is no way that Gareth is the boy from the gig – I was really seeing things. He is exactly the type I would have expected from Elyse’s comments about him. But, although he’s definitely not hot, he’s not quite as bad as Elyse and Mel made out. In fact, although this may just be a reflex action because she is officially boy-crazy and simultaneously starved of any male eye candy, Shimmi is doing her sexy face at him – she looks like she has something in her eye – and posing like some sort of demented glamour model.

As well as Shimmi and her crazy ways, I’m surprised at the change in Elyse as well. Having said repeatedly how vile Gareth was, she doesn’t look as though she feels that way at all. She’s gazing at him like she’s so happy to see him. Then again, I guess that’s one of Elyse’s talents – she always manages to make me feel like the most important person in any room; maybe she does that for everyone. I guess she must be a better actress than I realised.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem completely ridiculous that she’s looking at Gareth like that. He’s not bad-looking, as he’s tall with nice brown eyes, but he’s a bit heavy-metal and quite overweight; he’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a grubby Cradle of Filth T-shirt. He looks half familiar, although I can’t quite place him. I can see a paused computer game on the large TV in the sitting room behind him, and he has a tiny smear of ketchup by the side of his mouth.

‘All right, Gareth?’ Elyse shrugs. ‘Shimmi, Sorana – this is Gareth Next Door. These are our friends from college.’

I like how Elyse says ‘college’ rather than ‘school’, and make a mental note to do the same.

‘All right?’ Gareth grunts, and I notice that he has a scrap of something brown stuck in between his front teeth.

‘I just needed to get that…stuff…off of you, like you said. Then we’ve got to go; we’ve got loads of things to do, you know, for college.’

‘You can all come in and hang out if you want. My mum and stepdad are away; I’ve got loads of beers in and I’ve got a couple of pizzas…’

‘Thanks a lot, but Sorana and Shimmi aren’t really into
Call of Duty
– and, like I said, we’ve got this project to do so we’re pretty busy. I’ll just come in and get the stuff, then we’re off – OK?’

‘Yeah, yeah, all right. Only asking. Come upstairs and I’ll get it for you.’

Elyse and Gareth disappear up the stairs. Shimmi, Melanie and I are left hanging around on the doorstep. Mel and Shimmi both wander off into the front garden rather than stand about waiting, and Shimmi starts babbling at Mel about something or other. I am just about to follow, but then I stop listening and her voice becomes a distant drone. I peer around the gap in the half-open front door and the breath is practically knocked out of me.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, barefoot and holding an acoustic guitar in his other hand, he is talking on the phone and oblivious, all furrowed brow and careless hair. He is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

I have no idea who he is or if he actually lives here, but the tail end of that night at the Arts Centre begins to fall into place – Gareth was the driver that night, but I was sure there was someone else in the car. I wonder why Elyse lied. If they’re all neighbours, it makes sense that they would get a lift home together. I feel a tiny glimmer of hope and immediately tell myself to stop being stupid.

Suddenly I wish that Elyse had taken Gareth up on his offer of
Call of Duty
and a deep-pan Domino’s. When Elyse reappears, she is met with the sight of Shimmi and Mel deep in conversation on the front lawn, and me still lurking at the door like some sort of peeping Tom. I quickly look away and pretend to be very busy examining my shoes. As Elyse jogs down the last few stairs, Gareth reappears behind her all breathless and shiny, and Elyse tucks a tiny cellophane bag into the pocket of her skinny jeans.

‘Cheers, Gareth.’ She winks at him and he grins like it’s made his night, but she is already out the door before he can say another word.

Unable to tear myself away, I end up being the last one stuck there on my own, hovering awkwardly while Gareth clearly couldn’t care less whether I’m there or not. ‘Bye, then. It was, um, really nice to meet you. OK, thanks, bye.’

As we head back up the twins’ drive, we’re greeted by the sight of Nathalie, sitting on the doorstep, practically shivering. She looks furious as she brandishes her mobile at me.

‘I’ve been trying to ring you for ages! Where’ve you all been?’

‘Sorry, Nats – we were only next door,’ I dive in. ‘You haven’t been waiting long, have you?’

‘Not
too
long, I suppose…’

‘Well, then…’ I smile tightly and will her to chill the hell out.

‘Well, then – let’s get inside and get this party started.’ Elyse finishes my sentence for me and steps indelicately over Nathalie to get through the front door.

We all pile back into the house and straight up to Elyse’s bedroom, where we’d left the candles still burning. It’s like a haven in there; it’s a miniature kingdom and it’s all ours. Elyse starts cracking open all of the bottles nicked from her dad’s dining-room cabinet. She arranges our various spoils on the dresser, along with a stack of glasses, and says we should help ourselves, like it’s a bar or something. She turns up Trouble Every Day and lights more candles. This is no longer like hanging out at Nathalie’s on a Friday night, watching TV and eating pizza – this is more like a real party.