Page 4 of Star Struck

I awoke from disturbing dreams to grit between my teeth, a sun blazing through a windscreen and a seemingly endless rank of telephone poles marching beside the road. My feet were cold but my back prickled with dried sweat and I had never regretted letting Felix talk me into anything quite so much. Surely even Gethryn wasn’t worth this much discomfort? ‘Where are we?’ I twisted my head against the uncomfortable upholstery of the hired car.

Felix looked over his shoulder at me. He was concentrating ferociously on staying the right side of the road whilst juggling the map across his lap. ‘Bloody hell, Valium worn off already?’

I licked my lips. The sedative had left my mouth feeling as though it had been unscrupulously carpeted and my tongue was as heavy as a corpse. ‘’S okay. I feel . . . okay.’ This was a lie. Through the layer of Valium I felt displaced, anxious. The car was confining and yet not safe. Outside I could see a landscape scrolling past in a backdrop of dust; bare hills sketched against a white sky and some buildings that looked like aircraft hangars. There was nothing familiar to pin myself onto. ‘Fe–’

‘Nearly there, apparently. God, I wish you hadn’t talked me out of that GPS, there’s places here, actual places. They weren’t on the map.’ I’d wanted to hire a car with GPS, but he’d raised his eyebrows and pointed out that this was Nevada; once we got on the right road the motel was virtually the only thing of note in 200 miles, and that an extra seventy-five dollars for pin-point accuracy probably wasn’t necessary unless I wanted to nuke it. He was paying and I was hot and confused so I’d shut up. But I wasn’t going to be sympathetic if we were lost. Felix was driving without looking at the road, staring out of the window as we passed through a town that looked as though a missile strike would probably improve it. ‘Not a single Gap for miles — how do these people manage? Honestly, it’s just a patch of desert with two office blocks, ridiculously oversized houses, a school and a hospital . . . Where’s the fashion?’

I stuck my head out from under the blanket which covered me as I lay sprawled across the whole back seat, half-drugged. Felix insisted on running the air con full blast despite the fact that this was pushing the fuel costs into the ‘ridiculous’ bracket, and yet he wouldn’t pay extra for the GPS. I suppose that’s men for you. ‘Maybe they don’t need fashion out here.’

‘Skye, this is America! Land of the free, or at least, the reasonably priced. Everyone needs fashion. Particularly that chap over there . . . that is the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. Anyway. Soon be there, the Broken Hill Motel, Nevada. Sounds exotic, doesn’t it?’

‘No, it sounds tacky. Who holds conventions in Nevada? Apart from CSI fans.’ I clutched the blanket closer to me for the fake sense of security. ‘I want to go home.’ The panic was building, knocking against my temples like an old friend wanting to come in.

‘No, you don’t. I didn’t go through all that business getting you onto the plane and force-feeding you tranquilisers just for you to dip out on me.’ Felix swung the car’s weight into a minor curve. I rocked against the door and had to half-sit to balance myself. As I did, I caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, and the next thing I knew we were stationary, with the car slewed across the edge of the road, and Fe was half-in, half-out of the back seat, hanging through from the driver’s side to flap his hands in my face, encouraging a sluggish current of air to puff against my cheek.

‘What . . .’ I drew a breath. My throat ached and my eyes felt like they’d been thumbed.

‘Oh good, you’re back with me. I was a bit worried there, your eyes rolled right back in your head, which is not a good look, let me tell you. Nearly as hideous as Mr Shirt and his incredible diamante buttons back there.’ A half-sighed breath wobbled his words and made him sound more concerned than I’d ever heard him. ‘Skye, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be this bad, I just thought it would be good for you, a break from . . . everything, you know? I thought, away from York, from the memories of it all, you might . . .’ He flopped back into his seat, a passing motorcyclist distracting his attention.

I forced my fists to uncurl, and laid my head carefully back on the seat. ‘It’s okay. Really. No, you were right, Fe, I had to start living again sometime and if it took something like this to make it happen, then that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Isn’t it? ‘Besides, I am getting better, look, I got that Internet problem fixed, didn’t I? Talked to a strange man for ages to sort it out, and I was getting a bit sick of the same old places — home, library, supermarket . . . It will be good to see some new sights. Like . . .’ I waved at hand at the window, ‘that.’

‘It’s a chemist’s.’

I sighed, the tension in my shoulders barely allowing any air in. ‘But it’s not Boots. That’s what I mean, it’s different. A change of scenery, like you said.’ The slight wobble in my voice gave the lie to the words.

‘Just say the word and I’ll drive straight back to Vegas, we’ll get on a plane and you’ll never have to leave town again.’

I looked through the gap between the seats. His knuckles were a bluish-grey where his hands were clenched around the steering wheel, and his back was pressed right into the seat, as though he was somehow nervous about my reply. That’s right, Skye, run away when it gets difficult . . . ‘We’ll go on.’ My voice was so quiet he didn’t hear and I had to repeat myself. ‘To the motel.’ A half-hysterical laugh bubbled out with the words. ‘Might as well, since we’ve come this far.’

His body slumped a little in . . . what? Relief? ‘All right, if you say so. Better get going before the cops arrive, anyhow. Hey, do you think they wear those uniforms, like when they rock up on CSI? With the really tight trousers? Maybe we should hang around. Look, pop another Valium, that should tide you over till we get there.’ He flipped the glove box open and passed back the brown prescription container and a bottle of water. ‘Here. Take two.’

‘Two? Are you sure?’

‘Darling, I take more than that when I’m getting my feet done, you’ll be fine.’ He kept his head turned, watching me swallow. ‘There. You’ll be nice and calm for our arrival now.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention. What set you off, if you don’t mind me asking, and now that you’ve got a neck full of calm down? You were doing so well up ’til now.’

‘Just . . . for one second it was . . . I haven’t been in a car since.’

Felix’s face seemed to ripple as various emotions struggled for expression. ‘Like a flashback? Yeah.’

We sat quietly for a moment, while my brain shuffled through the blankness that was all that was left where so many memories had once been, until it was caught in the soft edging between sleep and wakefulness. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get over it?’ I let the words trickle from my mouth, muffled by the blanket, and heard Felix’s reply likewise sieved through the wool.

‘I hope not. I really hope not. Now, go to sleep, we’ll be there very soon.’

Chapter Three

In an untidy room at the front of the motel, an equally untidy Jack fired up his laptop, waited until the Fallen Skies logo appeared and then began to work.

INT. SPACESHIP — DAY, he typed, then leaned back and chewed his lip. Hell’s teeth, it never used to be this hard. Maybe I’ve lost it, maybe I’m not meant to do this any more. His fingers roamed the surface of the desk, subconsciously searching for the pack of cigarettes he knew he’d carefully hidden from his writing self, found a pencil sitting blamelessly on top of a sheaf of papers, and deliberately snapped it in half. The noise made him jump. Bugger. Must stop doing this, running out of pencils.

As he turned his attention back to the screen, which throbbed accusingly before him, his hand continued its unconscious movement, and the next thing he realised he was sucking on the broken pencil end, filling his mouth with the boxy taste of wood and tiny granules of graphite. He snatched the stub from between his teeth, spat ferociously, and hurled it onto the floor, where it sat damply between his bare feet.

I want to go home. The thought took him by surprise and he pulled a face at his reflection in the screen, where the words shone through his hair and INT and DAY formed double-images on the lenses of his glasses. I wake up dreaming that I can smell the moors, that the heather is flowering and the ground is damp and clingy underfoot. I’m walking out under the high sky with the birds like little full stops up between the clouds and there’s nothing for miles but me and the sky and those little purple bells of flower which smell like honey on toast. The expression which stared back at him twisted its mouth. Yeah, right. And Enid Blyton used to pop over for tea with Beatrix Potter and her talking bloody rabbits. Pull yourself together, you nutter. That was then, this is now, Iceman, and you’ve got work to do. Bills to pay, things to hold together and one hell of a lot of forgetting to do.

He blanked his mind and went back to the script, not even noticing when the other half of the pencil found its way between his lips, and he sucked on it with oblivious contentment.

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