A Pocketful of Stars, page 7
Izzy nods sagely. ‘It would be hard, but I’m not very squeamish. You can’t be when you have two younger sisters.’
I nod, wondering what it would be like to have sisters or brothers. I can’t help but think of Aunt Zaina, who lives in Kuwait. Dad rang her the other day to tell her about Mum. I wasn’t there, but apparently she was quite upset. Dad said I can chat to her when he rings to update her next week. I’ll probably chicken out, though. I’m not very good at speaking on the phone.
‘I don’t have any siblings,’ I say. ‘But I do have a dog!’ Izzy’s face lights up like a starry night. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know that! What’s its name?’
‘Lady!’ I say, and then I talk about her for ages. I tell Izzy about the way she follows me around the house, how she always knows the best way to cheer me up. I tell her how moody she can be, but how that makes me love her even more.
As I talk I feel a warmth spread through my body.
Maybe I don’t have to have just one friend. Maybe there’s room for someone else after all.
‘Done!’ Izzy declares eventually, handing me a compact mirror.
I look at myself and almost gasp. I love it. The purple makes my brown eyes sparkle, especially with the mascara Izzy added. I’ve never tried it before but my eyelashes are like giant spider legs. In a good way.
I frown.
‘What’s wrong?’ Izzy looks worried.
I pout. ‘I don’t want to take it off for lessons.’
Izzy’s face relaxes.
‘You’re really good,’ I add. ‘Have you thought of going into animal grooming? Bit of lipstick for the poodle, some eyelashes for the daschund?’
Izzy laughs so loudly she snorts. ‘Would you like your eyeliner in a cat-flick style, Ms Collie?’ she says in an overly posh voice.
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly! Can’t stand cats,’ I retort, and we fall into a fit of giggles.
She takes her green eyeshadow off and leaves a few minutes later to chat to one of our teachers before lessons start. I slide back towards the wall, lean against the radiator and let the warmth permeate through my body. I’m just about finished removing my make-up, when something weird happens.
I can smell it. Mum’s perfume.
I sit up and look around. I half expect Mum to jump out from behind the curtain and yell, ‘Surprise!’ Then she’ll tell me that she’s cured and that she loves me and that she’s sorry about our argument.
I’ll say the same and we’ll go back to her flat together. I’ll tell her all about the dreams and how she was like a sleeping princess waiting to be rescued from her tower.
But she doesn’t.
Instead I notice her perfume in Elle’s hand.
My body freezes and I count the number of drops she uses on herself and Abir. One, two, three, four, five dreams down the drain.
‘Elle!’ I eventually choke out.
Elle and Abir look up at me. ‘What?’ she asks innocently. ‘It was poking out of your coat, Saff. Sorry. It’s cool, though. Very vintage.’
She doesn’t realize what she’s doing, I say to myself, but I still stand up and snatch it back, nostrils flaring like an angry bull.
‘What’s your problem?’ Abir says, rolling her eyes.
‘It’s my mum’s.’ I bend down so I’m level with her. ‘And there are only a few drops left.’ My voice doesn’t wobble and I don’t turn away. I look her right in the eye. ‘Want to say something else, Abir?’
She stares at me for a moment, mouth open. Then she shakes her head.
The monster in my belly growls in satisfaction. I haven’t seen it since my argument with Mum.
‘Good.’ The monster cheers.
I grab my things then, and storm out.
I can hear Elle and Abir whispering furiously to one another as I leave. It makes me feel uncomfortable. What if they’re saying mean things about me? Part of me wants to turn round and apologize, the way the old Saff would have. But I don’t.
Elle scribbles Sorry in her notebook, during History.
She adds a smiley face underneath it.
It’s fine, I write back. I leave out the smiley face, though.
When I get home from school Lady bounds up to me, acting like she hasn’t seen me for days, even though it’s only been a few hours.
I bend down, stroke her, and kiss her forehead.
‘Want some treats?’ I ask in a high-pitched voice. Lady jumps up on me and wags her tail. That’s her way of saying, ‘Yes.’
‘Come on then!’
I walk over to the kitchen windowsill to her treats. They’re in a ceramic pot shaped like two cats, with their tails curled round one another.
It’s only when I go to shut the lid that I notice the resemblance. The heart-shaped marking on their backs.
Weird.
I empty Lady’s treats into a container. She looks up at me, scandalized. ‘I’m not stealing them!’ I assure her. ‘But you have to admit,’ I say, ‘it’s pretty offensive for dog treats to be in a cat pot, isn’t it?’
I give Lady two of them, because she looks kind of annoyed. She responds by slinking off into the living room and taking a nap.
After I give it a good clean I stick the pot in one of Mum’s old hat boxes under my bed for safekeeping, until I can figure out exactly what is going on.
‘Look at this,’ Matty whispers to David next to me.
‘That’s hilarious,’ David says in a robot voice.
‘Spottie Lottie,’ Matty adds smugly, obviously pleased with the rhyme he’s made up.
My stomach lurches. They’re talking about Charlotte Baker and, by the sounds of it, what they have to say isn’t very nice.
I watch them for a while unnoticed. They’ve basically spent our entire ICT lesson taking photos of people and laughing at them. Matty’s even added little red splashes coming out of Charlotte’s spots to look like lava on a volcano.
Matty catches me looking and raises his eyebrows. ‘Want to have a look?’ he says, shoving his phone towards me. I turn away and shake my head. ‘You’re in there somewhere, Dobby.’ He adds the last bit so quietly I can pretend not to have heard.
I ignore him, but I can’t ignore the jolts of electricity going through my stomach.
Matty laughs in my face and crosses the room to some of the other boys, including Jonnie. I can hear a ripple of laughter rising and falling, like the notes on a glockenspiel.
David stays in his seat. I can feel his eyes on me. Eventually I turn to face him.
‘I . . .’ He rubs the back of his neck. He takes a breath and starts again. ‘I just wanted to say, I heard about your mum and I hope . . . I hope you’re OK. My dad was ill last year . . .’
He smiles awkwardly at me, like he’s embarrassed.
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ I’m just as bad at this sort of thing as he is. ‘Is he . . . OK now?’
David’s face lights up. ‘Yeah, he is.’ He pauses. ‘And your mum’ll be too, I bet.’
I nod. I hope so, I think.
‘Back to your seat, please, Matty,’ Mr Mitchell says, interrupting our conversation. ‘Or do you want a detention?’ The room falls silent, and everyone turns to stare at Matty.
I cross my fingers, hoping he’ll get in trouble.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Matty responds, shooting him a winning smile. ‘I was just asking Jonnie a question about the work.’
‘That’s OK,’ Mr Mitchell says, softening like butter. ‘Just make sure you come to me next time.’ He turns away and my jaw drops. I can’t believe he fell for that!
Matty returns to his seat and shows David another one of his victims.
I feel angry, my insides burning, but on the outside all I do is freeze, because I’m a massive coward. So instead, I get revenge the only way I know how. I imagine Matty and Jonnie as wizards in Fairy Hunters, and I’m the most powerful fairy around. I use all my best spells and defeat them both. I start with a stun, followed by fairy-dust blast, and finally transform them both into weasels. By the end of the lesson I’m almost smiling.
But sometimes I wish I could be as brave in the real world as I am in my games.
When I get home from school Dad’s already back from work. I can smell cooking and my nose follows it to the kitchen, like Hansel and Gretel and the breadcrumb trail.
I burst out laughing when I see Dad.
‘Why are you wearing a flowery pink-and-green apron?’ I ask.
Dad turns to me. ‘I don’t want to get any sauce on my shirt,’ he explains. ‘And anyway, what’s wrong with my apron?’
‘Nothing,’ I say with a shrug.
‘By the way,’ Dad says as I take a seat at the kitchen table, ‘what have you done with the cats?’
‘What?’ I imagine for a moment that all the cats in the world have disappeared, and Dad is blaming me for it.
‘Treats . . .’ Dad says, which doesn’t really explain what he means, but I understand.
‘Oh, I . . .’ I don’t really know how to explain this.
Dad stirs the sauce and pasta, and sits down across from me. ‘Is it because of your mum?’
My insides turn to dust. He must know about the dreams.
I don’t want him to for some reason . . . I like that it’s just between Mum and me.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say confidently. On TV whenever the police questions anyone, they always deny it. So that’s what I plan to do.
‘Did I ever tell you the story behind them?’
I frown. Now I’m confused. ‘About what?’
‘The cats.’ Dad sighs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
The thing about Dad and me is that we don’t talk much, so sometimes our conversations don’t go anywhere. If Mum were here right now, she would say something like ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, you two, speak in full sentences. Your father is trying to tell you a story,’ she would explain to me, rolling her eyes at him. But she would be grinning too, because as much as she moaned at us, she loved us.
‘It was the first present your mother ever gave me,’ Dad explains. ‘She’d decided what we were going to do on our first date.’
Of course, I think. Classic Mum. And suddenly I miss her so much it hurts.
‘She wanted us to paint ceramic pots and turned it into a competition. She won, of course. I picked a boring old bowl and painted it plain blue.’ Dad’s eyes crease as he looks back into a half-remembered past. ‘When your mum found a pot with two cats on it, she started jumping up and down excitedly. She always had a way of making even the most normal things fun and magical.’
I watch Dad, spellbound. I’d never really heard any of his stories about Mum before. But I realize now I want to know everything about her. I want to fill my mind with her stories, swim in her past, and fly through the future with her.
‘When she finished, I asked her why she picked that pot in particular and she told me that when she was a child there were these two cats that lived near her house. She said they led her to a magical hideaway, where she used to meet with her best friend.’ Dad laughs. ‘Your mum was always telling stories like that, as if her life was some great big adventure. I never knew which were real and which weren’t, but I always enjoyed being a part of them.’
The magic hideaway is real! I want to say. It is!
I realize in that moment that I believe it is. And the missing piece slots into place.
These aren’t dreams I’m having; they’re memories. And they’re of Mum’s life when she was my age.
Suddenly I want to watch them all, to know everything I can about Mum. I just need to get through that door.
As Dad carries on cooking my mind drifts back to his story, and I think about how happy they once were.
‘Dad?’ I say when he starts serving our food.
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you and Mum split up if you . . . If you loved her so much?’
Dad’s face drops, and he turns away. ‘It’s not that simple, Saff.’
And I can tell from his voice he doesn’t want to say any more. But that’s OK. Dad has his secrets with Mum, just like I do.
The house is different today, newer. The cracks in the walls have disappeared, and the photos are no longer faded. Like I told Izzy, the doctors gave us good news the other day. Could the house be getting better because Mum is? It is alive after all.
And maybe, just maybe, me playing this game is helping her.
The more I visit, the better Mum seems to be doing.
The tap is running in the bathroom next to the kitchen. I notice it right away, almost like the sound is amplified across the entire house. But I ignore it. Instead I run up, up, up the stairs, all the way to the top of the house. I need to see Mum again, need to try to get to her.
By the time I’m standing in front of her bedroom door I’m out of breath.
The silver branches grow thick up here. I was so distracted last time that I hadn’t noticed. And blooming right above Mum’s bedroom door is another yellow flower, just like the one in the courtyard. I seem to notice a new one each time I visit.
The crack on the door is gone, so I can no longer see Mum asleep on her bed. But that’s OK, because it’s the keyhole I’m looking for. I walk to the door and inspect the golden handle. It has intricately patterned carvings that wind all the way round it.
That’s when I realize there’s no keyhole. But then, how is it locked?
‘Mum?’ I call, knocking. ‘Mum, open the door!’
Nothing.
I bend down and try to peer through the crack beneath the door. I can see the room, same as before, but from this vantage point I can’t get a glimpse of Mum.
I try a few more times to open the door, but it doesn’t budge.
Think, Safiya, think.
Could it be magic, like everything else that seems to control the house? Silver branches growing on walls, cats that lead humans to secret hideaways, and swirls of smoke shaped like birds.
I know now this place is magic. And I know it’s real. But it’s not the sort of magic that comes from wands and spells. It’s perfume that holds memories; it’s being closer to Mum, and talking to Dad. So then, what is the key to the door?
That’s when I feel it, and it’s as if the house is answering my question. The damp.
It starts at my toes and works its way up my legs.
I stand up and gasp when I see it. The house is filling up with water. Fast.
The stairs below have turned into a pool. The water comes up quickly, threatening to fill the entire house. How is this happening? There are open windows and doors all over. This doesn’t make any sense.
The water is slipping through the gap under Mum’s bedroom door.
What if it drowns her? The realization lands hard in my chest.
I look down the stairs again. The photos on the walls still hang there, and the furniture below hasn’t moved an inch.
The leaves of the silver branches beckon me, like they’re asking me to go back down.
Where is all this water coming from? It can’t be the tap, can it? It must be . . . but why?
I think back to the bird of smoke, and how it guided me up the stairs to Mum’s room. The game was telling me to come here, wasn’t it? Yes. But then it tried to guide me back down and I . . . ignored it.
Dread surges through me. I made this happen. It’s like this really is a game, and I’ve broken the rules. In Fairy Hunters if you try to cheat, instead of getting kicked out of the game your character is stripped of all but their most basic powers, making it virtually impossible to win.
I was cheating because I was meant to turn the tap off, not come back upstairs. That’s why the memory faded last time – I wasn’t doing the right thing. And now it’s trying to warn me again. But what is it trying to tell me?
Think, Safiya, think!
I hit myself on the head, hoping it might knock some sense into me. It does, because I almost poke myself in the eye with the bracelet.
The bracelet! Of course!
When I found the bracelet from the first memory it unlocked the second one.
And when I found the cats from the second memory it unlocked the third.
The aim of the game is to find objects and unlock memories.
And mum’s room isn’t the next level; it’s the boss level. The final one. That’s what the bird was trying to show me.
I don’t have time to think about it any more, though, as the water is now up to my ankles. I just dive.
The water is cold, but it’s a relief from the heat of the day. I try to swim down, but it’s harder than it looks, and I float up to the top, splashing around like a duckling.
I try again, this time holding on to the banister. I pull myself down with force, while trying to hold my breath, and use the stairs to guide me down.
I’ve always been all right at swimming, but I’ve never had to save someone from drowning. Something takes over my mind, my body, and I push with all my might. I swim down, down, down. Eventually I make it to the bottom of the stairs. Everything looks exactly as it had before the water filled the house. Except it’s hazy, like I’m peering through frosted glass.
I look up, and just about see where the water ends towards the top of the house. If I let go of the banister, I’m going to float up, up, up.
I push myself off the bottom of the stairs and try to swim to the bathroom door a few metres away. But, as I kick off the bottom step, my body floats upwards even as I propel myself forward.
I almost make it across. My fingers trace the edges of the door frame, but I can’t get a grip, and I float away from it like a discarded piece of rubbish in the ocean.
I’m running out of breath now. I know nothing will happen to me here – it’s only a game – but what if something happens to Mum? It’s her mind after all. If I run out of breath before I turn off the tap, will it keep running even after I’ve left the house?
I don’t think any more. I don’t have time to. I just act.
I let the ceiling of the foyer catch me and kick off it like a frog. My fingers manage to grab the frame of the bathroom door this time. Now I just need to get from there to the tap. I use all my remaining strength to force my body down. I miss the tap the first time and bounce upwards, slamming against the ceiling.
