Gemini Rising

Chapter Four

I swear it’s nothing to do with Josh’s all-too-fleeting appearance and swift exit, but I feel out of sorts for the rest of the weekend. Although the rest of the evening was fine, I felt a bit deflated from the second he left. Sunday’s always a nice, chilled-out ‘family day’ in my house, but there’s something about Sunday nights that makes me want to kill myself. That’s not just me, is it – everyone gets that?

So, when Monday morning rolls around, of course I’m tired and grumpy as usual from having stayed up as late as humanly possible in order to prolong the weekend, reading Daisy’s Heat magazine while listening to Trouble Every Day on my headphones.

Which means that the morning is a blur until I find myself plonked down at my desk with a copy of On The Road hiding my face. I’d actually forgotten that anything might be different today. No sooner has Amie arrived, checked her pink BlackBerry — spoiled, much? — and flipped open the ubiquitous fashion mag, than the common room door swings open again and the twins walk in like they have been here forever, already more comfortable than I am after all this time. They somehow manage to look just as cool in their school uniforms as they did in their own clothes – seriously, how is that even possible?

As soon as Amie sees Elyse walk in, the ice is instantly broken. Melanie is not far behind, looking nonchalant despite the fact that she’s clearly not as confident as her sister. Their coats and bags are thrown onto the nearest desk, room is made on the sofa, and the conversation is immediately intense. Though, breaking the unwritten rules, when they pass my desk, both of the glamorous new girls smile and say ‘hi’ to me.

Even though I look as though I’m engrossed in my Kerouac, I am ear-wigging furiously and spend the next ten minutes reading the same sentence repeatedly. It’s Elyse and Amie doing pretty much all the talking, while Melanie is largely silent. Abruptly, Melanie looks up and catches me staring; rather than looking startled, as I might have expected, she gives me a friendly smile. I smile back but am so embarrassed that I quickly look away.

‘Obviously you’ll want to come to The Crown with me and the rest of the girls on Friday night – it’s where all the cool people go…’

As she says this, Amie shoots a targeted, bitchy look in my direction, just to make sure that Elyse and Melanie are clear on exactly who is and isn’t included in this invitation. Simply going out on a Friday night isn’t nearly as much fun for these girls as feeling superior to the rest of the population is. I comfort myself with the knowledge that, to Amie, ‘cool’ seems to mean wearing a minuscule outfit and getting groped while puking up WKD in the street.

‘…and this Wednesday night we’re staying over at my house – my parents are away for the week, so it’s just me and my older brother. They go away a lot, so it’s become kind of a tradition – break up the week and have a bit of a party. You two’ll come, right? You can stay over at mine.’

‘Yeah, OK. Cool.’

I suppose I should resign myself to the fact that The Amazing Twins and I are never going to be friends. As the room starts to fill up, their words start to be drowned out, made less distinct with every girl that comes into the room and starts faffing and chatting. Nathalie spills into the room complaining about being behind in Sociology, closely followed by Shimmi and her incessant crowing about some allegedly gorgeous boy who did not stop staring at her all evening when she was waitressing at her dad’s restaurant on Saturday night.

‘Hey, how was sexy Josh?’ Shimmi hisses while registration’s starting.

‘Don’t even ask,’ is all I have time to mutter back before being evilled by Miss Webb.

Just like that, the day is back to a normal start again. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it will come to an equally normal finish, just like all of the days before it and presumably after it as well.

By Tuesday, I’ve been depressingly right so far. As well as all the usual hump day clichés, I hate Tuesdays because that’s my day for Remedial Maths. I’m not supposed to call it that – it’s written in my timetable as a ‘catch-up workshop’ or something – but I find that it actually makes me feel like less of a dunce just to tell it how it is.

I’m the only one in the whole sixth form doing Maths retakes, which makes it all the more galling. Even Helen Kennedy managed to scrape a ‘C’ because it was so obvious to her rich parents that she was struggling, they hired an intensive tutor to coach her throughout Year Eleven. On the other hand, my problem was that I covered it up too well – I was too embarrassed to let on that I didn’t understand a word, so I just stayed quiet in class and copied Shimmi’s homework. I’d hoped I might get lucky in the exam. My Maths teacher, Mrs Ravenscroft, was shocked when I failed. As were my mum and Pete.

I schlep to the Maths room with the scowl that Mrs Ravenscroft must think is my permanent expression – she’s perfectly nice, but my ineptitude for numbers means that she is forced to treat me like a genuine imbecile, which gets annoying pretty quickly for both of us. She isn’t there, so I settle in to the classroom by myself while I wait. I’m just getting out my books when the door opens.

‘Hi, is this Maths for dummies?’

I can’t help but grin as I see Elyse standing in the doorway making a ridiculous face. ‘Yeah, welcome to the remedial class…’

‘I’m so glad it’s not just me, to be honest.’ Elyse chucks her bag onto the floor and pulls her desk up closer to mine. ‘I’m dyslexic, and at my last school I had all these hideous one-to-one tuition classes. Now there’s two of us, we can make it fun.’

‘When you say “fun”, you do realise where we are…?’ I ask her, laughing.

‘You’re Sorana, right? We don’t know each other very well yet, but don’t worry – I can make trouble happen anywhere!’

I have the strangest feeling that from now on I might actually look forward to Tuesdays and to Remedial Maths. As Mrs Ravenscroft walks into the room, we can’t suppress our giggles.

Chapter Five

Over the next few weeks, we all start to get used to Elyse and Melanie being around. As well as having some friendly company in Remedial Maths, having the twins here in the sixth form has shifted the dynamic a bit. Elyse and Melanie seem firmly entrenched in Amie’s gang, but they’re still friendly to everyone else. Elyse may be a bit fierce but she’s inclusive; Melanie is much quieter, but seems shy and sweet. Of course, this means that the resident mean girls can’t be as openly catty without looking like heinous bitches. It begins to feel almost cheerful around the sixth-form common room.

The A Group seem subtly different these days. Amie, in particular, has started to look more like the twins – a bit more eyeliner, artfully messy hair. And where Amie goes, the rest of the group follow. Frankly, I’m worried that they might start looking like my idea of cool, which would be somehow just wrong. One morning before class, I even see Amie reading a book on star signs that Elyse lent her – not only would she have dismissed this as tree-hugging hippy crap before, but it’s the first time I’ve ever actually seen her reading a book of her own accord. God, she’ll be asking to borrow my Jean Genet at this rate.

You would have thought that the twins’ dramatic entrance to the class would have put Amie and her group right off, for fear of looking like ‘freaks’ which, to those girls, is the ultimate insult. The twins don’t really fit in at all – yet somehow they have managed to integrate themselves effortlessly into a clique that is all about fitting in. Not only that, but to have some sort of weird effect on the whole group.

One Tuesday before Remedial Maths, I notice that Elyse and Melanie have both come to school with bulkier-than-usual baggage, which looks suspiciously like overnight gear – probably for one of Amie’s free-house parties. This isn’t particularly noteworthy in itself – it’s back at school on Wednesday morning that things really start to get interesting.

It’s not like I’m keeping track but, after one of her big midweek shindigs, I would not expect to see Amie at the usual bright and early hour. Instead, she would be likely to stagger in with all her cronies at the last possible moment, giggling madly, all trying their best to look jaded and saying things like ‘um, it’s a private joke – like, you kind of had to be there?’ if anyone dared to ask what was so funny.

This morning, however, Amie rocks up early, by herself. She tries to make herself look busy and refuses to meet my eye or even look in my direction. She looks, frankly, terrible. As she’s usually so perfectly groomed, to see her looking really, genuinely rough is pretty startling. Normally, I’ll admit, I’d be pathetic enough for this to make me feel better about myself. Confronted with it in the flesh, though, it’s just unsettling.

‘Amie?’ I venture, awkwardly. ‘Are you, um, OK?’

‘Just…’ she closes her eyes for a second, as though she can’t bear even to speak to me ‘…leave it, all right?’

We lapse back into a silence that is even more painful than usual. I kick myself for even trying – of course I was going to get shot down. The rest of the A gang drift in one by one, showing no semblance of having all been round at Amie’s house together the previous night. Without exception, they are purse-lipped and quiet, although none of them looks quite as obviously bad as Amie does – a detail that would usually have pissed her off no end.

Last of all, the twins come rolling in. All that is different about them is the fact that they don’t automatically go and sit with Amie. Elyse and Melanie sit down alone together at the back, and quietly start reading their books. I keep my head down and do the same, but I am intrigued.

I know I spend an inordinate amount of time bitching about the futility of my existence, but really nothing – nothing – is as bad as I feel about Games. Even though we’re in sixth form, apparently it’s still essential that we get outdoors and do some wholesome physical exercise. ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ is one of the phrases that gets thrown around a lot, along with, ‘You’ll thank us for this when you’re older.’ Yeah, right.

Despite the sunshine, it’s not that warm today, and I swear my calves are blue when we all trail out onto the playing field. I shan’t even horrify you with tawdry tales of the changing room – just consider yourself lucky and imagine how fantastic it makes the rest of us feel when all the hotties of the class stand about chatting, nonchalant and half naked, and Alice Pincott leaps about the changing rooms in a bright-pink mesh 32D bra.

Mrs Kingsley, who is quite nice but of course really hearty and overenthusiastic, starts us off with these stupid stretches before we do anything else. This might not be quite as bad as actually playing sports, but it’s equally embarrassing when she starts on all those comedy lunges and pelvic thrusts.

‘Sorana Salem! Come on, do something, don’t just stand there looking like a wet weekend!’

This is something of a recurring theme.

‘Yeah, come on, Sorana!’ Lexy White chimes in, right on cue. ‘You’re not feeling faint, are you? You look like you haven’t eaten in about a week.’

I thought we’d all grown up a bit and got over this sort of thing of late – clearly that’s over. In fact, the A Group seem to be going depressingly back to normal. Lexy and all of the other girls in that little gang are basically perfect size-tens, and woe betide anyone who isn’t – if they’re not snidely accusing me of being anorexic even though I eat more than most of them put together, then they’re making snorting noises whenever Helen Kennedy so much as cracks open an oatcake.

The irony is that, while I’d literally move into Nando’s and sleep on the floor if they’d let me, Jo Whitley really is anorexic. She’s not that much skinnier than me, to be fair, but it’s in a really wrong way – like she’s clearly not meant to be that size, and so she’s all angular and out of proportion. Even in summer she wears about four jumpers and says she feels cold. Somehow she’s got away with wearing long black tracksuit bottoms for Games without getting in trouble, and, although she practically needs help walking as she’s so frail, she gets mostly left alone. There’s a strange sort of power in being that close to the edge; it takes a lot of dedication to starve yourself slowly to death.

‘Right, girls – hockey today!’

My heart sinks – hockey’s got to be the absolute worst. Mrs Kingsley blows her whistle and the match starts, with all the usual players baying for blood and the rest hanging back hopelessly. As I shiver and dread the ball coming anywhere near me, I am pleased to notice that Melanie seems just as apathetic as I am about physical activity.

I hang back and drift off into my own world – a happy place of books, red velvet cake and Trouble Every Day – until Mrs Kingsley starts puffing away manically on her whistle and yelling her head off.

‘That’s a penalty! Shimmi Miah, it is not funny to pretend to be playing tennis with a hockey stick – someone could get hurt. Elyse, why don’t you take this one for the reds?’

Elyse saunters up to the white line and looks as if she couldn’t give a flying anything about this stupid game of hockey – she practically sneers at the ball. Then she squares her shoulders and lines up her stick and stares a flinty look into the distance, before slamming the ball with all of her might.

Mrs Kingsley starts shouting something about above-the-waist punts being illegal, but it’s way too late. The ball is sailing through the air and we’re all gazing at it, as if hypnotised, including Amie Bellairs, which must be why it smashes her full in the face quite as badly as it does.

There’s a collective intake of breath, as I’m sure I actually hear a smashing noise. The ball hits Amie so hard that it knocks her over onto the wet grass. Everyone starts rushing towards Amie and, as they’re all so busy doing that, I wonder if I’m the only one who notices the cool-blue look that passes between Elyse and Melanie.

Alice Pincott is sent off to get the school nurse, while Amie struggles to her feet from within a protective cocoon of people. When she stands up and lowers her cupped hands slightly from her face, it takes me a second to register why it looks so wrong. Then I realise that I can’t differentiate between her nose and her mouth, because it’s all a mass of blood. It’s the most dumbfounded I have ever seen my class. Although some of the more squeamish girls look as though they might be sick, everyone wants to know what’s going on.

‘Oh my eff gee!’ Shimmi stage-whispers to me. ‘Did you see the look on her face when that ball hit Amie in the gob?’

‘Yeah, it was spooky…’ I mutter.

‘Spooky? Classic, more like. Just gawping into the sky like the rest of us and then a bloody rock-hard hockey ball hits her bang in the face?’

Shimmi is going a little overboard with her glee. OK, so Amie’s kind of a bitch and we call her ‘Amie Bellend’ behind her back, but nobody deserves that.

The school nurse has waddled out onto the pitch in her high heels, and Amie is being led away, along with her best friend Alice. Alice is crying, just like half of the girls on the pitch are. Even Mrs Kingsley looks shocked.

It would kind of go down in school history, that afternoon, especially as everyone was so dazed they couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, so all of the exaggerations may have been true. It’s probably safe to say that even girls in Daisy’s class would be claiming to find random teeth on the hockey pitch for years after that.

‘It was an accident, wasn’t it, Elyse?’ Mrs Kingsley is asking. ‘It was just an accident.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Elyse agrees.

Chapter Six

The rest of the week at school is pretty weird, after what happened to Amie, but I keep my head down and will it to go quickly. I’ve been waiting for this weekend for so long, I just keep my face buried in a book and my eyes on the prize.

On Saturday night, I rock up at the Arts Centre bang on time, in shiny new American Apparel leggings and my old Trouble Every Day T-shirt. And, of course, I’m the only one here. Typical. It’s my birthday, and I’m the one hanging around waiting. Still, I’m not going to get stressed about it because I have hit the birthday jackpot this year – not only is my birthday on a Saturday, but this weekend heralds the start of half term. Then there’s the added stroke of rare luck that has meant Trouble Every Day are playing here on my actual birthday. Best present imaginable, frankly.

I’ve already had a pretty good day – my mum let me sleep in undisturbed until a relatively civilised hour; we had pancakes for breakfast, and pizza and birthday cake for lunch; and, as well as the new leggings and other bits from my mum, Pete bought me the Alfred Hitchcock DVD boxed set – enough to keep me going for months – and Daisy gave me a really cool headband from Topshop.

Now, outside the Arts Centre, I hang about until finally Shimmi appears. She couldn’t look any more out of place if she tried. She’s done up as serious jailbait in her knee-high boots and tiny dress; her parents are usually so strict that, whenever she gets out of the house, she goes crazy and rebels in every possible way she can. As she picks her way over to me, Shimmi doesn’t even appear to have noticed that she’s drowning in a sea of ripped plaid and dirty denim on all sides. My own Converse might be the same as everyone else’s in the vicinity, but there’s a reason for that – my friend is not going to be much good in the mosh pit.

‘Some of the guys here would be quite hot if they had a wash!’ she exclaims loudly, giving me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Happy birthday, babe.’

The only thing that sucks about the otherwise perfect timing of my birthday is that it means Nathalie isn’t here. She’s been shipped off to Dubai with her mum for half term – no arguments. Excited as I am, it’s a shame Nathalie isn’t here tonight.

Anyway, more to the point: Trouble Every Day. They’re my favourite band in the world and, better yet, they’re sort of local. They’ve had a couple of singles played on 6 Music and have had a few write-ups in the NME, so people all over the place have heard of them, but they’re only a few years older than us and from a couple of towns away. Their song Everything and Nothing is my favourite song of all time, and I am officially In Love with their singer, Vincent August. He is, basically, the ideal man, in my humble, and admittedly limited, opinion. He writes all of the band’s lyrics, so is clearly amazingly sensitive and intelligent, is brilliant on vocals and guitar, and has the most beautiful face in the known galaxy.

Everyone at school knows exactly how much I love Trouble Every Day and, more specifically, Vincent August. So much so that I’m not even pretending to be cool tonight. I am so excited my stomach’s fizzing like I’ve ingested a whole tube of Berocca.

‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we haven’t seen them live since last year. Do you even realise, they hadn’t released Promises Written on Water then? It was brand new on their website last month. So, if they play it tonight, it’ll be the first time we’ve heard it live!’

‘Big wow. Hysterical much?’ Shimmi mutters.

We’ve had our hands stamped and are about to go into the venue when Shimmi stops statue-still. ‘OK, don’t look now – but right behind us, five o’clock…’

Of course, I automatically swivel around to look, but Shimmi grabs me. ‘I said don’t look, you moron! Look at me, read my lips: right behind us, weirdo twins, hockey massacre alert!’

‘No way!’Sure enough, the twins are sitting on a bench across from us, peering intently into the depths of Elyse’s bag.

‘Dare me to go and talk to them?’

‘Shimmi, come on, we’ll miss the —’ There’s little to no point in me finishing my sentence.

‘Hey,’ Shimmi greets them. ‘Mucho impressed by your moves on the hockey pitch this week – serve that snotty cow Amie Bellend right.’

‘Didn’t you hear, it was an “accident”,’ Elyse drawls. ‘She is a snotty cow, though.’

‘She’s the worst of the lot. Good thing you’re not friends with her any more…’

‘Yeah, it turned out we didn’t really have a whole lot in common. You’re Shimmi, right?’ Elyse grins. ‘Hey, Sorana – nice T-shirt.’

‘Um, thanks?’

I can’t work out if Elyse is making fun of me or not – probably because my gut instinct is that everybody is, all of the time – until she opens up her old army jacket to display the fact that she’s wearing the exact same one.

And that’s it. We’re off – all about how Elyse loves Trouble Every Day as much as I do, and so does Melanie. As we babble excitedly, it feels for a second like someone gets it. Then Shimmi starts to join in and I nearly burst out laughing, because I have never heard her so jazzed about Trouble Every Day in my whole life. I mean, Shimmi listens to Mariah’s greatest hits.

‘Oh, yeah, me too. Totally, deffo. My favourite one’s… What’s it called, again, Sorana? Something about “dead leaves in the winter” or some shit like that.’

‘Dead Flowers in the Fireplace!’ Elyse and I chant in chorus.

Then we all do burst out laughing. On the door, Shimmi and I show our hand stamps while the twins hand over their tickets, but instead of going straight ahead into the venue, Elyse immediately veers left and up the stairs.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask Elyse. ‘The gig’s downstairs.’

‘Yeah, I know – but the bar’s upstairs. Trouble Every Day won’t be on until nine, nine-thirty at the earliest. I’m not really up for seeing some crappy local support band called…’ she consults her ticket ‘…Mission to Mars, thanks very much.’

Tonight’s gig is an all-ages night, but the Arts Centre hosts all sorts of different events and the bar is still over-eighteens only – I know, from having come here to see a Polly Stenham play with my mum last year, that the upstairs bar is a candle-lit cavern with a small balcony overlooking the stage. When we walk in now, it’s a different proposition altogether. It’s still dark, lit only by candles and fairy lights – but it’s noisy and full of cool people, mostly a bit older than us as all the younger kids are downstairs.