A Sea of Stars (11 page)

“W
hat on earth were you doing out there, Maya? At this time of night?” cries Mum, clutching me tight in case I fall off the edge of the planet. “It's three o'clock in the morning!”

“I… errrrmm,” I stutter.

I don't know what to say. The damselflies are whirring so much I can't stand up properly. My knees can't hold me any more. The kitchen is kind of spinning and this huge black cloud of wrongness is sitting on top of my head. I didn't mean to upset anyone! They're supposed to be asleep!

My mum's eyes are red raw; silver tears are trailing
down her face. I didn't mean to cause trouble. I just needed an adventure – a secret from Cat.

Dad's making us hot chocolate, but the smell of the warm milk makes me feel sick. I need to lie down. I need them all to go back to bed and leave me alone. Cat's lying on the sofa under a cover, nibbling and nibbling her nails. Her eyes are thin emerald slits; sharp dark jewels, ready to cut me open. Why is she even up? Why is anyone up?

“You've been in the sea!” shrieks Mum, noticing my wet hair. She grabs a towel and starts rubbing my head like crazy. “I don't believe it, Maya!” She looks at Cat then back at me. “The pair of you are as bad as one another. Why do you do this to me? Anything could've happened to you down there, Maya, and we'd never have known. You could have drowned!”

“What were you doing down there, anyway?” says Dad. “That's what I don't understand. Why were you even out of bed in the middle of the night, let alone down on the beach? Mum's right, anything could have happened.”

He rubs his eyes and stares at me, waiting for an answer.

“But nothing did happen,” I say. “I'm back and I'm OK. And I wasn't doing anything to you Mum. This wasn't even about you. It was about me. I needed to do something on my own.”

Mum throws her arms in the air.

“I can't believe you're saying this, Maya!” she shrieks. “You've been out on your own loads lately. We really started to trust you and then you go and do this!”

“Luckily, Cat woke us up,” says Dad, stirring the hot chocolates and handing them around. “She had one of her dreams and then she started panicking about you – some dream she'd had. She made us check your room. If it wasn't for Cat, we'd never have known.”

I glare at Cat. She twiddles her hair, winding it round and round and round, filling the end of her finger with blood.

“We were going crazy with worry,” cries Mum. “We thought you'd been abducted. What were you
even thinking of, going off like that?”

Anger and panic swell inside me. My legs are whirring like mad.

“But nothing did happen, Mum!” I say. “I told you! I'm OK! I'm alive!”

“That's not the point!” shrieks Mum. “You can't just go out like that, Maya. I was worried sick!”

And then I overflow.

“I'm sorry!” I shout. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll never go out again! Not in my whole life! OK?”

And then I crack open and tears spill over my cheeks. I feel so bad – like I've committed some terrible crime and the police are going to come and handcuff me, or something. I huddle over and my shoulders shake and shake and shake with crying. It's not fair. Cat gets away with so much.

“Oh, come here, sweetie,” says Mum, bursting into tears too and pulling me into her arms. “I'm not angry with you, darling. I was just so worried. We all were. It's so unlike you to do something like this!”

“I said I'm sorry, didn't I?” I shout in her face.

I barge out of the kitchen, slam the door and stomp up the stairs to my room. I throw myself on my bed and bash my pillow as hard as I can with my fists. Peaches Paradise claws my cover. She purrs in my ear. She winds her tail round and round and round.

Why did Cat have to say anything? Why can't she leave me alone? No one shouted at her when she ran off. No one made her feel like a bad person. She got a rabbit – a rabbit and a brand new friend. I just get shouted at. It's nothing to do with her; my life is nothing to do with her. I wish she'd never come to live with us in the first place. I wish she would just go back to Tania's and wait for another family to have her. I look down at the sea of stars twinkling below. It was all so lovely on the beach with Luca and now it's been ruined. And I didn't even do anything wrong! I kept myself safe! I am twelve!

I look out of my window at the dark night sky and I think about Alfie. I wish someone could tell
me if he knew he was going to die. Because if he did, I wonder if he was scared or if he just slipped back to the place where he'd come from before he was born. To a soft gentle place that already felt like home. Did I really choose Cat to be my sister? Did she really choose me? Because, if we did choose each other, I can't see why. There's nothing great about this. Cat can do anything she likes. She could burn the house down and no one would get cross with her. She could run away to the other side of the earth. Why did she have to tell on me? Why did she have to wake them up with her stupid screaming and ruin it all?

After a while, Mum and Dad come into my room.

“Maya,” Mum whispers, “are you awake?”

I hold my breath. I keep my eyes shut tight to stop my tears making my pillow wet.

“Hey,” says Dad, pulling my duvet up to my ears. “Sleep well, sweetie.”

I ball my hands and dig my nails into my flesh until it hurts.

Even though it's the last thing I want to think about, the big-red-bus day floods into my mind. It's imprinted on my brain in huge neon letters.

I was seven and we were still living in London. We'd just had dinner at our favourite place and I came out holding a big red helium balloon because they always give you one there. And that was all. If you were a seagull looking down on my life you would've been quite bored with watching. Everyone was just wandering along as usual. But then the balloon slipped out of my hand and I didn't want to lose it so I started running. My eyes were pinned to it, but it was floating and floating up and up into the sky and I didn't even think about the road. I didn't even think to look for cars. Then Mum's scream shredded the sky into a thousand little pieces. And the big red bus screeched its brakes so loud in my face. And I was a feather away from being as dead as Alfie.

 

When I go downstairs in the morning, the damselflies are whirring like mad. Mum's sitting
on the kitchen sofa, huddled up with a big mug of coffee and her trauma books. She keeps flicking between them, reading a bit of one and then skipping on to the next, trying to weave a safety blanket out of words that she can wrap around Cat and me. I feel nervous. As if someone might be standing behind the door, waiting with a big silver axe to chop off my head.

“Morning, sweetie,” says Dad. He's stirring his coffee and watching the toast, keeping his eyes away from mine.

I don't know what to say. I don't want to talk about last night. The whole thing has burnt right into my skin and I just want to forget about it. There are some things that Cat will never have to talk about, so why should I? I've said ‘sorry' and that should be enough.

Peaches Paradise starts winding herself round my legs like crazy, so I feed her some chicken snibbles. I have this huge lump in my throat, like a big slippery fish that I have to keep on swallowing down. Tears are bubbling under my eyelids, but I'm not going
to let them out. Not in front of Cat, anyway. She's sitting on the sofa next to Mum, colouring in. Her legs are drawn up under her. Everyone is holding their breath.

“So…” says Mum, looking up from her books.

And I wish I could just run away and hide.

“T
hat's just how it's going to be from now on,” says Mum, placing her book on the arm of the sofa and taking a sip of her coffee. “Well, at least for a while. We trusted you, Maya, and you broke our trust and now you have to face the consequences.”

I can't believe my ears. I thought I'd get told off about going out at night and stuff, but I didn't imagine this! I didn't imagine ever getting grounded by my mum. I didn't even think she knew it existed.

“It's not so much a punishment,” says Dad, buttering the toast. “We don't want you to see it like that. It's more about creating boundaries, creating a
safer space. It's been a rollercoaster of a few weeks and you both need to calm down before going back to school.”

I'm like a seagull in a cage. I don't want safe, stupid boundaries. I want freedom. I hate Mum's stupid trauma books. I look at her little bear on the table and think he feels like a tornado about to whirl.

“But what about the surf competition?” I say. “It's next week. What about that?”

“I'm sorry,” says Mum, “that's just how it is for now, Maya. What you did last night, after all the freedom we've given you lately, was dangerous and irresponsible. And if you have to miss the surf competition because of it, so be it. I'm really sorry, and I know it's going to sting, but that's how it is. No arguments. Same for Cat. No going to Chloe's or wandering off. No having Chloe back here. Once we get a sense that you're both a little more trustworthy then we'll revisit the topic of freedom again.”

I'm a volcano now with hot red lava shooting
through my veins. Cat's been way more trouble than me over the past few weeks, and now we get the same punishment? It's so not fair. Just because they're grown-ups, they think they can just boss us around. Cat nibbles on a nail until her finger starts to bleed. She spits the little grey splinter on the floor. Mum glares at her. Cat glares back. I glare at Dad. I hate this. It's stupid.

 

Cat and I have been grounded for one whole week already and it's totally boring. I've read three books already and done loads of weeding in the garden with Dad. Cat's been busy making pots and mermaids and colouring in. She ignores me, mostly. Like, even when we were sitting in the car on the way to Falmouth, she turned her face away and squished herself up near the door. Even when I asked her about the dream she'd had that night when I went out with Luca she wouldn't say one word.

“You didn't need to panic and dream about me and stuff, Cat,” I said. “I can look after myself
without you butting your nose in.”

I look down at the bay and the beach looks amazing. It's so clean and glassy out there and Anna's coming back from her holiday and I'm stuck here at home. I kind of wish I could turn the clock back. The night out with Luca was fun and everything, but I'd much rather have missed it than be grounded for the rest of my life. I wish I could make Mum change her mind. But the more she reads those stupid trauma and adoption books, the worse it gets.

This lumpy package thingy plops on the doormat addressed to Mum. It's full of tiny doll things wearing really stupid, stripy clothes. They look like miniature shepherds in a school nativity play. Mum calls Cat and me into the kitchen and she's standing there with the dolls in her hand. She sits us down, pours herself a coffee and us some juice, and starts leafing through her books.

“Right,” she says, handing a pile of stupid little dolls to me and another pile to Cat. “Just for fun, imagine these are people you know.”

Then she goes into this whole big description thingy. So, for instance, I have to imagine one doll is Mum, one is Dad and so on until all the people close to me are here on the table in doll size. Cat has a bigger pile than me because she has her birth family and us and Tania and all the other foster people and kids and Chloe and her social worker and stuff. My pile looks quite tiny compared to hers. I've just got Mum and Dad and Nana and Pops and Alfie and Cat and Anna.

Mum tells us we have to position them on the table where we think everyone should be. I start off with me and have Dad really close by and then Mum next to Dad, and then Anna. I put Nana and Pops close-ish to us all and Alfie right on the edge on his own. I'm a bit worried about him there, but when I try to put him closer it just doesn't feel right. The little doll of Cat is burning the palm of my hand. I can't feel where she should be. I try her out in all sorts of places, close to me and far away, next to Mum or Dad or near to Alfie. If I was brave enough, I'd like to throw her off the table or
stuff her into the bin and pretend she never even existed, but that seems really, really mean. I take a sip of juice and stare at the spaces, then put her somewhere in the middle between Alfie and me. But she looks so lonely on her own with no one to huddle close to. I try her out in other places, but wherever I put her she looks so sad and alone.

I close my eyes and hold my breath and put her next to me. So she's really close but not touching. And it kind of feels right, but I wouldn't mind if the wind blew her off the table by accident.

Cat does the weirdest thing with her dolls. She puts herself right in the middle and then a Jordan doll and a Chloe doll virtually on top of her. She tips a big pile of little dolls on the floor and kicks them away with her foot. Then she sits there for ages staring at the three dolls left in her hand. She nibble-nibble-nibbles on a nail. She twiddles her hair round her finger until it's glowing red like a lollipop. Then she puts Dad and Mum just a tiny little bit away from her, but close enough that, if they stretched out their little dolly arms, they'd
easily be able to catch her if she fell. And then she's left holding me in her fist, so tight I can hardly breathe. The damselflies start whirring in my legs. I feel a little bit sick, just waiting. Mum makes a cough with the hint of a song. She sips her coffee. And I know how Cat feels. She doesn't want me in her life any more than I want her. But we're stuck with each other.

“Nearly done then?” says Mum.

“I'm just thinking,” says Cat, nibbling.

I kind of wish she'd put me really close to her. I don't know why, but I do. But then another part of me wants to be far, far, far away. Suddenly her eyes flash bright. She jumps up, finds some scissors and bit of old card and makes a little surfboard shape, just the right size for the doll. She fills a bowl with water, floats the surfboard in it and sits me on the top. Then she rummages in her pocket, finds a mini blue mermaid she made and puts her in the water with me.

“There,” she says, nibbling. “Done.”

I take a breath and soft warm butterfly wings flip
and flap in my heart.

Cat looks at Mum. Her eyes narrow to thin green slits. “You're mean for not letting her do the surf competition,” she says. “Really, really mean. My mum let me do anything I liked. Anything. She wouldn't have been mean and stopped Maya.”

Mum sighs; she fiddles with the adoption book.

“I know it feels hard right now,” says Mum, “for both of you. But this is how it is and you just have to accept it, I'm afraid. It's non-negotiable.”

The phone rings and it's Anna asking if I'm free yet from being grounded. Her and Luca are going surfing. She wants me to go with them too.

“I don't know what to wear, Maya,” she squeals. “I don't know what to do! He actually texted me and invited me, for real. And then he said maybe we could get the bus to Penzance to see a film. Can you believe it?”

I can believe it and that's the problem. And now I feel even more like a stupid fat baby because Anna's getting the bus to Penzance as well.

“Pleeeaasssee, let me go!” I beg Mum. “Everyone's
going to think I'm such a baby! This is so not fair; you can't keep me trapped in here like a prisoner forever.”

“I'm not trapping you, Maya,” Mum snaps. “You put your life in real danger and Cat keeps drifting off to goodness knows where and it needs to stop. We need to come to a place where Dad and I can really trust you both. It's our job to keep you safe. Why don't the pair of you play a nice game or something? Or make some more paper cranes or mermaids. There's plenty to do here.”

I don't want to play a game with Cat. Anna doesn't have to stay at home and play with her sister, so why should I? The thought of Anna going to Penzance on the bus with Luca makes the damselflies whir. It fills my tummy with this big green jealous monster that has a thousand arms swirling about inside me. Anna'll go on and on and on about how brilliant surfing was and on and on and on about the bus trip and the cinema for days. And what've I got to talk about? Just stupid reading and weeding and Mum's pathetic little dolls.