Star Struck (24 page)

‘Then why …?'

Even as I said it, I felt the huge plummeting in my stomach. Like my internal organs were in a lift with a snapped cable, like freefall. And a new understanding slammed me between the eyes, like a cashmere-wrapped anvil; the force nearly knocked me to the floor.
All those little whispers, that nasty, snidey voice in the back of my head, telling me how worthless I was all the time … I'd thought it was my subconscious. But they'd been memories … memories of Michael …

‘Now let me think …' Fe was still in my face. ‘You dated him. He took you out, gave you a good time and suddenly –
WHAM
– you're in love. You wouldn't leave him alone, you stalked him, turned up at his flat all suspenders and high heels … he
had
to date Faith without you knowing because we were all afraid of what you might do. To him, to them, to yourself.' Felix raked his eyes up and down me. ‘You were mental, Skye. Really mental.'

‘Easy.' Jack repeated. He'd stopped rubbing Felix's back now, but was still holding his hand.

Felix raised an eyebrow over a glacial stare. ‘I reckon you don't want to know the truth about your girlfriend's past life.'

‘We all have things to hide.' Jack was even, but cool.

‘Mike was … he kind of liked it. He'd lead her on, pretend they still had a relationship, that Skye could save it if she tried hard enough.' Felix shook his head. ‘But the night of the accident …' Now he looked at me directly. ‘You caught them. Found them snogging in the bathroom at the party. I'm not surprised you don't remember, even
I
tried to wipe that little image out of my head. We thought we'd have to call the police. But you passed out.' He looked up at Jack now. ‘I put her in the back of the car, but on the way home she came round. Saw them sitting there in the front, with Faith's hand on Mike's cock.' Felix gave me a look that nearly seared the flesh from my skeleton, a look so deep with cold that mammoths could have walked on it. ‘What did you think would happen, Skye?'

‘I didn't know,' I whispered. ‘I didn't know.' My skin was chilled but inside I felt a huge fire flame up. ‘I caused the accident?'

‘You tried to climb through. Just undid your seatbelt and started trying to get at Mike, going for him with your nails, all flailing and screaming … grabbing at the wheel … I got hold of you, tried to drag you off but then you went for my face … kicked Mike in the head. Your whole life was a fake, Skye. Even your grief is fake. You weren't Mike's real girlfriend, and
you killed my sister
.'

‘So all this … you used me to win you that part?' Shock had made my voice shake a little. Jack looked at me and his eyes were huge.

‘I didn't know what to do.' Felix hid his face again and all the anger seemed to have drained away. ‘I
liked
you. Yeah, you were batshit crazy but you … you were always nice to me, you know? Before. And I'd got no-one. My parents, oh, they love me all right but all they really want is Faith back, they can't
see
me any more. They used to be interested, involved, wanting to know how the auditions went, how my life was going … and now …' He held up empty hands. ‘I've lost them too, you know? And you were all I had. So I … And then, last year, at the convention they had the quiz. And I got to thinking … maybe, if they held it again you would … I
need
that part, Skye. I've got nothing else.'

‘Skye,' Jack's voice was calm. ‘Take it easy. You're shaking. And Felix, you need to calm down. Let's go back to the diner, then I reckon you ought to head to bed.' Those super-nova eyes met mine, crawled inside my head. ‘You'd better come, too. We need to talk.'

‘I don't know what to say to you.'

He got to his feet, pulling a reluctant Felix along with him, hands still joined. ‘Fuck, you smell good.' Fe's voice was stronger; he'd managed to work in a little bit of the old Felix's flirty tone. ‘But I don't know about these clothes.'

‘I'm a writer. I don't have to
look
good.' With barely a glance at me, Jack began helping Felix across the sand towards the lights of the motel and the noisy flickering that was the ball in full swing.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Skye's face had gone beyond pale and into moonstruck. Jack kept his eyes forward, concentrating on Felix, whose body was shuddering with something like repressed sobs. ‘Take it easy,' he muttered, but for a million pounds he couldn't have told anyone which one of them he was saying it to, or was it to himself?

Her face. Her pain. Oh God, her pain. He could see it, feel it and his arms ached with something like the desire to touch her. Was it only minutes ago that he'd kissed her? He felt so much older now, millennia settling in his bones, the weight of experience dragging at his feet as the new implications pulled at the edges of Skye's mouth and made her expression stretch.

‘I killed them,' he heard her whisper above the scratch and scrape of sand. ‘I killed them. It was me.'

She stumbled and it was all he could do not to drop Felix there on the dirt and catch her, wrap his arms around those frail shoulders and pull her close. Whisper into her hair that the agony would pass. It would never leave her, but it would pass, and life would take on a new sharpness as she realised she was living it not just for herself but for Faith and Michael as well. But Felix leaned in more heavily and he had to let Skye find her own feet, balance herself.

‘Take it easy,' he murmured again, for her this time. Was this why he felt the way he did? Had he seen it coming all this time?

‘They're dead because of me.'

No, he wanted to say. You might have been instrumental in their deaths, but their careless brutality was their real undoing. Your best friend, seeing the man you were convinced you were in love with, and him, teasing you, torturing you with thoughts of a life you'd never have. What kind of people
were
they?
What did they think would happen?

But he couldn't say any of it. Felix was holding his hand as if it was his anchor to sanity and it would be callous to disregard his feelings, even if it made her feel better. She was grieving all over again, not for the deaths of her friend and lover but for the death of the life she'd thought she had had.

Jack let his gaze brush over her and the sudden scalding of memory made him drop his eyes. All that emotion, everything he had denied himself, he could see it all on display in Skye. And now he was beginning to realise just how much he'd pushed away all these years, how he'd kept himself isolated just so that he didn't have to feel anything. It was no wonder they called him the Iceman. He'd always assumed it was some kind of compliment, that the name meant he was on top of it all, his head was cool enough to deal with life; not that they'd seen right through him to the lack of caring, that lack of connection with anyone, that he'd let run him for so long.

And was he better for it? Was Jack Whitaker really a nicer man for never allowing himself to cry? Did never really letting go make you a superior person? Or did it just allow you to feel superior to anyone who suffered? Jack shook his head.
Am I really heartless or am I just empty?

Chapter Twenty-Three

The party had reached that stage of drunkenness where people were coming and going and falling over all the time, in various permutations of sexuality, so Felix and Jack's hand-in-hand re-entry was largely ignored. I came in behind them. Although I knew it was hot in the diner, I was still chilled, even my stomach felt frozen.

‘Right,' Jack kept his voice low and even. ‘Think you'd better get upstairs.'

Felix shrugged. ‘Need my coat. It's over there.'

I rummaged around until I found the soft fur heaped in a careless pile in a corner. Went to pass it over to Felix but he snatched it from me, groped around inside it for a second then produced a little brown bottle. He grabbed it and upended it into his mouth, then pulled the coat up around his shoulders as though he was cold, too.

‘Was that Valium?' My voice sounded hoarse and strained, as though normal questions were just too banal to utter. ‘Fe?'

‘Yeah. Want to sleep, don't want to think. Don't want all this hanging all night.'

I was about to say something about ODing, but Jack caught my eye and gave his head a tiny shake. ‘Right. When those take effect you'd better get yourself into bed, okay? I'll go find Jared and get him to take care of you.'

Felix gave a grin which belied the streaked cheeks and desperate eyes. ‘Oh yeah? You up for a threesome, Mr Whitaker?' But there was a fake note in his voice, as though he was acting, badly. ‘Think I might just take you up on that.'

It hurt to see him trying to slip back into his old self, the carefree player of games. Now I knew what was running underneath it all, his contempt for me, the loss and grief that he carried. ‘Jack,' I whispered, ‘I need to talk to Felix alone.'

‘I don't know if that's …'

‘Please.'

‘Hey. As long as you know what you're doing. As long as you're prepared for the consequences.' A quick flash of some hidden emotion, not humour. ‘And we need to talk too. There are things … I think you need to know about me.'

‘Because of what Felix said?'

He stared down at his bare feet, now filthy with a mixture of dirt and sand. ‘Partly. And partly because of what happened earlier.'

My lips gave a kind of sympathetic throb. ‘Oh. That.'

‘Yes. That. It's not … straightforward.' He stood up. ‘Right. I'll catch up with you in a minute.' He slipped back out through the doors. I saw women turn to watch him go and my lips throbbed again.

‘Fingers,' Felix said, behind me.

‘Sorry.' It was automatic. ‘Fe … Why? Before … before the accident, why was I like that? Why was I so awful to be around?'

He shrugged. ‘Background, I guess.'

‘And why don't I know what I was like? Why does everything I
can
remember seem … I dunno, normal?'

‘Because it was normal. For you. That was how you always behaved, how you always were. Why should it stand out as being different? You were needy, difficult, a bitch who acted out … It was all just the Skye we knew and lo …
knew
.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Another shrug. ‘You say.'

‘I really don't remember. Everything is so … scattered. I can't make sense of any of the things I
can
remember, all just scenes and snapshots. You have to believe me.' I went quiet, looking down at my feet. ‘After the accident … why didn't you tell the police?'

An explosive laugh. ‘Is that what you're worried about? That I'll turn you in? Is that
really
what concerns you most at this moment, Skye, whether you're going to get into trouble?' He pushed his face close up against mine so that I could see the narrowness of his pupils and the shiny gleam of denied tears. ‘I'll never spend another Christmas with Faith. We'll never go to another audition, we'll never sing happy birthday to our mother, never sit in the little study shooting the crap. I'll never be an uncle. I'll never see her in white on her wedding day. My beautiful, wonderful sister is dead.' A slow tear escaped from under his lashes. ‘And all you're worried about is whether I'm going to tell the police.'

‘It's not all, not by a long way.'

‘Yeah?' Felix stared at me, his eyes tracing the outline of my face. ‘You've really changed, Skye, I mean, totally. Like you've been re-written from the inside. But I wonder …' he raised a hand and slack fingers held my chin, turning my face from side to side, ‘is it enough? Could it ever be enough?'

‘I think you should. Tell the police the real reason for the accident. Tell them what I did.'

‘Whoa, now
that
would never have come from the Skye I knew! What is it, atonement you're after, lover? You think if I make you suffer it'll make me feel better – well, sweetie, I'm here to tell you that
nothing
will make it better. Nothing will bring her back. So that's what I'm going to do – nothing. Because I want you to remember every day, you smashed something that you could never afford to pay for.'

‘She was my friend.' I put my hand up to touch his fingers where he held my face. ‘Whatever she and Michael did, she was still my friend, and I wouldn't have had it end like this for anything.'

For a second I saw the façade crack and a glimpse of the old Felix,
my
Felix, peeping out. ‘Oh, Skye …' His fingers brushed mine, twined, joined over the screaming ruin that was my heart. Then fell away. ‘But are you really different? Can anyone really change themselves that much?'

‘The old me is gone. Wiped out by going through a windscreen at sixty miles an hour.' I tried to make a joke of it. ‘It's amazing what it does for your personality, having your skull opened up on an operating table.'

He shrugged again and turned away, his shoulders lowering in tired defeat. ‘I dunno,' he said, rocking slightly. ‘It's just words, Skye. It's just words.'

I watched him ricochet through the crowd like a large-scale bagatelle game, making his way towards the exit. The party was beginning to break up now, the tighter knots were starting to move towards the bar for a night's solid drinking; I watched the Thulos contingent stagger arm-in-arm through the door out into the night, seeing Jack just beyond the circle of light, a shadow watching me.

I needed fresh air. Needed Jack. Surely he must have finished his cigarette by now? I moved towards the open doors to the outside, cannoning off the now somewhat deflated Dalek, whose eyepiece was drooping carpetwards. Saw, over near the band, Felix similarly bouncing off one of the pair of Skeel boys, catching him off balance and sending him toppling backwards under the weight of his ‘carbon dioxide' cylinder. It was so heavy that it pulled itself free from the harness that kept it on his back, performed two long bounces and then vanished into a corner. I had just begun to move towards Jack again when the whole place went mad.

First was the noise. A huge, deep sound like a giant sneeze followed so quickly by the blast that I nearly didn't have time to register it. The force was vast, like a hot fist in the chest. It was dark, then white light, then a red-toned blackness, with the silhouettes of chairs rising into the air as I fell backwards, caught and carried by the explosion, tumbling amid the debris. I was bowled along the floor with wood splintering around me; I couldn't breathe, the air was burning, too hot to swallow and my lungs felt like they'd been punched. A noise like rain falling and blows to my head and my back as I carried on rolling; felt something give way and then I was outside being scuffed by sand along the length of my body.

It went on forever and for no time, and then there was silence. My ears felt bulgy, as though the quiet air was full of feathers, and then the crying started. Distant, underwater crying, and the regular flick, flick as flames took hold and grew somewhere behind me. I clambered to my feet and took a step forward but my balance was gone and I fell, catching myself on something soft, which turned out to be one of the fur coats that the Shadow Planet people had been wearing.

It was wet, and when I pulled my hand away I saw the red smearing my palm and the sky above me rocked.

Breathe.
I pulled air in and blew it out, concentrating on keeping the rhythm steady, not letting the shakiness get the better of me. All the exercises I'd learned to help manage the stress cut in and took over,
count your breaths, concentrate on something, drop your shoulders, relax your muscles
.

‘For God's sake, someone, help me!'

The cry echoed through into the here and now, jolting me into reality. People were hurt.

I turned around slowly so as not to overbalance again.

The diner still stood, bulging into the desert as though the motel had suddenly acquired a pot-belly. The three standing walls were convex, the roof had partially collapsed, and the dusty sand in front now shone with millions of glass fragments. In the far corner a fire flicked lazy tongues from the wreckage of the kitchen, and the ground was littered with people lying or half-sitting amid the ruins of their clothing.
Breathe.

I fought the urge to be sick with fear and shock and the smell of hot wood and a sweet, unfamiliar gas. Two seconds more and I'd started to run. ‘Jack! Felix!' I clambered over the remains of the doorway I'd been blown through, with the velvet dress snagging on nails and splinters, and surveyed the wreckage inside. Called hopelessly into the dark, as around me others began to weave and sway to their feet, holding various parts of their anatomy. Knew that Jack had been outside, was probably behind me somewhere. Safe. But Felix had been inside.

I could smell the blood, the metal-sweet tang underneath the smell of burning wood, and had to fight the urge to run back out into the desert again. I bit my tongue and stumbled into a woman, bleeding from a deep scratch across her forehead. ‘Head this way,' I shouted at her, my voice sounding strained and unfamiliar. ‘You need to get out! The place is burning.' I grabbed her arm as she circled away from me and shoved her towards where the doors had been. A breeze was coming in from outside, bringing small showers of dust pattering into the shocked quiet. ‘Outside!'

Other figures began to follow her, sheeplike. ‘This way.' I pushed more of them into line, anyone I came across who was still upright. ‘Come on. Follow me.' I began to move around the room, collecting little knots of people who fell into step behind me like a giant, bloodstained game of Grandmother's Footsteps winding through the dark. Some stopped to help others to their feet. Two men formed a cat's cradle with their hands to carry a girl whose leg was so clearly broken that I had to look away. But I wasn't just being noble, leading survivors to safety. I was searching.

Two circuits of the room and the remains of the roof were beginning to swing over our heads. Flames had found their way from the kitchen, where small-scale eruptions indicated cans blowing behind the swing-doors, and mouths of fire were beginning to eat into the dust. I seized the man who'd been behind me. ‘Get everyone over that side. Step down through the rubble and get out into the desert. Make sure they all follow you.'

He nodded, a trickle of blood seeping from his nose and dripping down onto a ruined pilot costume. ‘This way,' I heard him call, as I stepped back into the ringing darkness closer to the door that led through to reception. This was where I'd last seen Felix. It was now a circus of smashed glass; spilled drink made the place smell like an alcoholic's armpit, but at least there were no bodies slumped in the mess. Felix must have moved just in time to avoid the worst of the blast. So where was he?

‘
Felix
,' I breathed. He lay, arms wide as though to push away the explosion, face down on the floor with part of the ruined ceiling on top of him. No reaction. No movement. I couldn't see if he was breathing under his fur coat, but the pelt was suspiciously spiked, as though a liquid was seeping through. I crouched down, ignoring the sudden heat as part of the wall behind us began to smoulder, worked my hand underneath him, found an area near his ribs and rested my palm against the bone.

Two short, shallow movements and I went weak with relief. He was breathing. I began to clear the debris from his shoulders, whilst being constantly knocked into by people, zombie-like, as they made their groping way towards the starlit outdoors, led by those brave enough to re-enter the building. One figure crashed into me, groped forward and grabbed me by the arm. ‘Go away, I have to get him free.'

‘Skye, it's me.' Jack raised his head and the moon caught his wicked eyes. ‘I was looking for you. Heard you shout but …' An arm wiped across his face. ‘Bloody blast was so bright it knocked my night vision right out.' He glanced down. ‘God, it's Felix. Is he … you know … because he's very quiet.'

‘Fuck … right off … and die, Whitaker.' The voice came from beneath the shards of plasterboard. It sounded slight and wheezy, but definitely Felix. ‘Ow. Ribs. What happened?'

Jack sniffed, then he moved his head tracking a scent, like a dog. ‘Acetylene. That sweet smell. Where did it come from?'