3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream (16 page)

‘Well, you’re very welcome to come along to ours some
time,’ I say politely. ‘We have beach parties now and then. You’d like it.’

‘Thanks!’ he says, puppy-dog keen.

‘Any more punch, Anthony?’ Honey calls, and while he bounds off to fetch her a drink, my big sister pulls JJ close for a big smoochy kiss.

‘Is she going out with JJ?’ Alfie asks. ‘Only Anthony’s pretty smitten, isn’t he? And I thought she fancied Marty from the crew field. They were pretty flirty at the beach party the other weekend …’

‘That’s Honey,’ I shrug. ‘She’s kind of hard to pin down.’

There’s a whoop of laughter from the doorway as Chris, Marty and a bunch of younger people from the crew field spill out across the grass, drinks in hand. Honey pulls them into her circle, and they clump round her like planets orbiting the sun.

I spot Finch with his arm round Skye’s shoulder, whispering into her hair. I wave them over, but they just smile, their eyes sliding away from me. Nobody much exists for them right now except each other, and dark resentment bubbles inside me. I am happy for Skye, and I like Finch, but I can’t
help thinking he’s taking my twin away from me, just when I need her most.

On my other side, Shay and Cherry are laughing and Millie and Tia are chatting up a couple of high school boys. I try to join in with the chat, but they are talking about last weekend’s filming, days at the beach I haven’t shared, shopping trips to town I’ve missed out on. Ballet practice has eaten up my days lately, my life, left me stranded on the edge of things with nothing to say.

I watch my little sister Coco with her friends, looking very grown-up for just-turned twelve. I am so used to Coco looking small and young for her age that it’s a shock to notice that she’s not a little girl any more. She’s wearing lipgloss and sparkly eyeshadow, and blushes furiously every time a good-looking boy walks past. I must be some kind of freak because I don’t think I want anything to do with boys, not ever again.

It’s as if growing up is a sickness, spreading faster and faster like a flu bug in winter, turning everything upside down. Right now, I feel immune to it, an outsider looking in, slightly horrified at the chaos it can cause. Sometimes I think I’d like to freeze myself in time, or pedal backwards
a little to when I was nine or ten and things weren’t quite so complicated.

‘Is that a trampoline down at the bottom of the garden?’ Alfie asks brightly, tugging me back to reality. ‘Didn’t have you down as a gymnast, Anthony?’

‘It’s my sister’s,’ he shrugs. ‘She never uses it any more. She grew out of it.’

‘Cool,’ says Alfie. ‘Like I grew out of practical jokes and jelly and ice cream and pedal cars.’

But I can’t help thinking it’s not cool at all that we have to grow out of the things we love.

22

I slip away from the crowded patio and down through the apple trees, through the cool grass to the trampoline. I look at it and smile, thinking of long ago times in Tia’s garden, laughing, jumping, reaching for the sky.

I clamber up and get my balance, bouncing experimentally. Then I am jumping, big joyful leaps, stretching and curling, making my own rhythm, letting the trampoline take me higher and higher. The jumping becomes a dance, a meditation, as natural as breathing.

The light around me fades and darkens, and someone changes the R & B soundtrack for something indie. Through the apple trees I can see tea-light lanterns glinting. If I tilt back my head and stretch my arms up high, I could almost snatch a star out of the sky.

‘Room for one more?’ a voice asks, and Alfie Anderson hauls himself up beside me. He starts to jump and straight away the rhythm changes, throwing me off balance. Alfie crashes into me, howling, and I push him to arm’s length, laughing in spite of myself. This is how it used to be in Tia’s garden when we were little – me and Skye and Tia and Millie all jumping together, a mess of bodies colliding and crashing into each other, screams of laughter, fun.

‘Alfie!’ I screech. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’

‘Can’t!’ he yelps. ‘Can’t even see! This is crazy!’

His hand latches on to mine in the dark and finally we are jumping in time, mouths stretched wide with laughter, my long hair snaking out to brush his face as we jump. And then the rhythm collapses into chaos and we stagger and yell and fall down in a heap, breathless. I try to scramble up, but Alfie pulls me down.

‘Leave it, Summer,’ he says. ‘Let go. You’ve been exercising for ages … you must be tired.’

Never enough
, the voice in my head insists.
Lazy, lazy, lazy. Push harder!

I try again to get up, but Alfie holds on tightly to my hand.

‘It’s OK, Summer,’ he says. ‘Really. It’s OK.’

And part of me believes him, so I stop struggling and lie back, catching my breath, feeling the ache of tiredness in my muscles, the springy stretch of the trampoline beneath my back. My fingers seem to burn where they are touching Alfie’s. I sit up abruptly, breaking away, moving to the edge of the trampoline so I can let my legs dangle. Alfie crawls over to join me.

‘That was fun,’ he says, still breathless.

‘Yeah.’ I rake a hand through my hair and rescue the flower clip which has slipped down behind one ear, fixing it back in place.

‘I like the flower,’ Alfie says.

‘I like the flower too,’ I echo. ‘Aaron gave it to me, before we were going out. It was a Christmas present – he left it in my locker at school with an unsigned card. Romantic, right?’

‘Are you sure it was him?’ Alfie asks.

‘Had to be,’ I shrug. ‘He never talked about it, but … who else would it be?’

‘Who else?’ he echoes sadly. ‘Obviously …’

‘Anyhow, I’m through with romance,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to concentrate on my career instead. I mean … it’s
just hormones, shaking us all up, causing trouble, wrecking everything. Girls want love and stuff, boys want … well, boys want something else.’

‘Not always,’ Alfie argues. ‘Not all boys are like Aaron. And not all girls are looking for love either.’

I think of Honey, who flutters from one boy to the next like a butterfly moving from flower to flower. I think she might be looking for love actually. She’s just looking in all the wrong places.

‘Whichever way you look at it, growing up sucks,’ I say. ‘It’s like some joke nature plays on us, the whole stupid mess of it.’

Through the trees we can see kids dancing in the flickering lantern light. We can hear the bass beat of the music, laughter, squeals, chat.

‘It might seem that way sometimes,’ Alfie says. ‘Anthony is mad about your sister, isn’t he? And she just sees him as a friend. Smart, useful … but just a friend. That’s gotta hurt.’

‘Surely he can see she’s not interested, though? He needs to accept that.’

‘Not easy, when you’re mad about someone,’ Alfie points out.

‘I suppose. How about you then? Are you crushing on anyone?’ I ask. ‘Millie maybe?’

‘No way!’ he protests.

‘You seemed to like her back in February, at the birthday party Skye and I had?’

Alfie is indignant. ‘She jumped me!’ he argues. ‘One minute I was walking across the dance floor, the next she had me in a headlock. Well, a lip-lock actually. She’s fiercer than she looks!’

I laugh.

‘Millie is great, don’t get me wrong,’ Alfie says. ‘But I like someone else …’

I bite my lip. ‘Is it … is it Skye?’ I ask. ‘Because you’ve been spending a lot of time with her lately. Until Finch arrived on the scene anyhow.’

‘It’s not Skye,’ he says.

‘Tia?’ I guess. ‘Am I warm?’

Alfie shakes his head. ‘Stone cold,’ he sighs. ‘Miles out.’

‘Well, who then?’

Silence falls between us like a curtain, a wall.

‘C’mon, spill!’ I tease, elbowing him in the ribs, but Alfie just shrugs and stares out across the garden, refusing to meet
my gaze. Something like fear begins to unfurl inside me. Suddenly, I don’t want to know the answer. I really don’t.

‘She doesn’t know,’ Alfie whispers. ‘She has no idea.’

Maybe she is just starting to work it out.

‘What if she doesn’t feel the same way about you?’ I whisper. ‘What if she’s not looking for a relationship?’

‘I’ll wait,’ he answers. ‘I want her to know that. I’ll wait, for as long as it takes.’

My face floods with colour in the darkness.

‘Maybe … maybe she just sees you as a friend?’

‘Maybe,’ Alfie shrugs. ‘Maybe she just doesn’t see me at all.’

He jumps down from the trampoline and walks away through the trees, leaving me shell-shocked. I think back to that time in the school dinner queue, aged five, when Alfie asked me to be his girlfriend and then spoiled it all by blowing a raspberry in my ear. What if he really did like me? What if he still does?

Skye comes out of the darkness, hand in hand with Finch. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. It’s nearly eleven, and that’s our curfew. Coco went a
while ago, she’s staying at Linzi’s in the village, and Shay’s walked Cherry home already …’

My twin leaves something unspoken. ‘So … what’s up?’ I ask, sliding down from the trampoline.

‘Honey is what’s up,’ Skye says. ‘She won’t come home … she says Grandma Kate won’t mind if she stays over. I’ve told her she has to come, but she won’t listen to me. We promised Mum, Summer – Honey promised!’

Of course Skye doesn’t know the half of it. I’m certain Honey has been sneaking out after curfew, probably to be with JJ. I lie awake at night and I hear every movement, every squeak of the floorboards. My big sister is kicking over the traces again.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ I sigh.

Honey is holding court beneath an apple tree hung with tea-light lanterns, JJ’s arm twined round her waist. I tug at her sleeve. ‘Honey – it’s almost eleven, time to go!’

‘Go?’ she echoes. ‘Why? Will I turn into a pumpkin?’

‘It’s our curfew,’ I remind her. ‘Grandma Kate’s expecting us back, and Mum made us promise …’

Honey untangles herself from JJ and pulls me into the shadows. ‘Look, Summer, I’m not going home yet,’ she says.
‘I was grounded for months … I’m going to make the most of my freedom now! We’re not little kids, you know! Make an excuse for me. Tell Grandma Kate I’m staying with a friend.’

I frown. ‘What friend?’ I ask, and Honey rolls her eyes.

‘I’m staying here, stupid,’ she says. ‘The party’s just starting! I’ll sleep on the sofa. Anthony won’t mind …’

Just like he doesn’t mind her using his house as party central while she flirts with every cute boy in a five-mile radius, I think, but I daren’t say the words out loud. Sometimes I think my sister has a cruel streak.

‘Honey,’ I plead. ‘Grandma Kate will worry …’

‘Not if you tell her I’m staying at a friend’s,’ Honey says crisply. ‘Coco’s sleeping at a mate’s house, why not me? Just don’t tell her it’s a boy-mate!’

I bite my lip. ‘Please don’t make me lie for you!’

‘Don’t think of it as lying,’ she says smoothly. ‘More as doing me a favour. And in return … well, I won’t mention how you’re on some kind of starvation diet. Seriously, Summer, did you think nobody would notice? What are you playing at?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘I bet you don’t,’ Honey says, grabbing on to my wrist to stop me walking away. ‘Well, fine. We’ll talk about it with Grandma Kate instead …’

‘Don’t tell her,’ I beg. ‘Honey, please … it’s just for another week, until the audition.’

‘It had better be,’ my sister says. ‘Or I’ll be ringing Mum in Peru to tell her what you’re doing. You’re crazy, Summer! You don’t need to lose weight – you’re a twig already. You’ll make yourself ill!’

‘You don’t understand!’

Honey’s face is cold. ‘No, I don’t,’ she says. ‘Summer, I’m not going to stay quiet about this for long, so get your act together. I won’t mention your stupid diet and you’ll tell Grandma Kate I’m staying with a friend. Deal?’

Her fingers dig into my wrist, but I break away and run through the darkened garden towards Skye and Finch.

‘Is she coming?’ my twin asks.

I shake my head, and Skye bites her lip. Honey is skidding off the rails again, and there’s nothing we can do about it. My big sister has led me into a trap, one I can’t wriggle out of.