Page 59 of Star Struck

He was laughing, but it was a relieved laugh. ‘You left quite a trail. Bits have been falling off that costume all night; it was like Hansel and Gretel with fake jewels. But I’m surprised you managed to cover such a distance, we’re a good couple of miles from the motel. And you’ve still got no shoes on.’

‘It would have been easier in stilettos?’ I struggled into a half-sit with Jack’s assistance. ‘What happened last night? The explosion?’

‘The boys dressed as Skeel stole their gas canisters from a breaker’s yard near Reno; hadn’t realised that they were old welding cylinders half-full of oxy-acetylene that had been marked for disposal. Not the most stable of substances, and when our friend Felix went barging into them . . . boom!’ He pushed his hair away from his eyes. ‘But no-one died. Lots of cuts and bruises and broken bones, but no-one died, Skye.’ For a second shock clouded his eyes, as though he was seeing it all again. ‘No-one died,’ he half-whispered, again, then gave his head a tiny shake and his voice strengthened. ‘Even Felix got away with only two broken ribs and a head wound. Oh, and my fags got shredded.’ I felt his arm slide behind me. ‘The paramedics were treating you, they turned around to check on another casualty, and when they turned back, you’d gone. What was all that about?’

‘I don’t know. Shock.’

‘Figures. It was quite a night.’

I leaned against the wall of the gulley. Jack was so close that I could see the light flicker in his eyes when he blinked. ‘Yes.’

‘You want me to give you a hand up? We should get back, people are worried.’

‘I don’t think I can walk.’

‘No need. I borrowed Antonio’s car. He was too busy having hysterics to stop me.’ The smile burst onto his face again. ‘He has got such a hairdresser’s car!’

‘I thought you couldn’t drive.’ I remembered his anxiety when Felix and Lissa had gone off, his desperate impotence at not being able to follow them.

‘No. I don’t drive. Never said I couldn’t.’ And now he was avoiding looking at me, pushing hands into his pockets, coming up with a solitary, dog-eared cigarette. ‘Never said I couldn’t,’ he repeated, as though he’d slid off into a parallel world of thought. His lighter flared and he spent an unnecessary amount of time staring at the flame.

‘Can we just sit here a while longer?’

‘Okay.’ He still wasn’t looking at me. ‘So, while we’re here, want to give me the rest of the story?’ He shook his fringe out of his eyes. A sudden breeze was playing havoc with hair that had no natural settling point.

‘You’ll hate me.’

A direct look from those dark, dark eyes. ‘Will I, now?’

‘You heard Felix. I was horrible, Jack. And the only reason I changed is because I got on the wrong side of a windscreen at sixty miles an hour. Not because I realised the error of my ways or because I decided to change, but because I got hit on the head.’ I touched the side of his face. ‘And I don’t know now which is the real me. Am I nice now?’

His gaze deepened. ‘Yes. Yes, you are.’

‘No, I mean, is this who I really am now?’ I smacked myself in the chest. ‘Really? Or is it a personality aberration that could switch at any time?’

The wind twitched his hair again but he sat silent and unmoving. ‘Do you know what I think?’ He pushed his hair back now, impatient. ‘I think that the way you were was a defence. It was a learned behaviour, a way of coping with a situation that would have been unbearable otherwise, and I don’t know what that situation was but it must have been pretty catastrophic for you to build an entire personality just to keep yourself safe. The real you, the true you that was underneath all the time — that’s who I’m seeing now. So . . .’ A raised hand and a shrug. ‘I like you. But then, judge of character I’m not. Writer and creator, well, that’s a different matter.’

I looked at him, as he gazed out across the desert, jaw clenched as though underlining his words. ‘I like you too,’ I almost whispered. I didn’t think he’d hear me as the wind was beginning to whip across the dusty ground with a sound like a large brush being diligently applied, until he suddenly dropped his eyes to mine.

‘I guess it’s time we had that talk.’

There was something in his voice, something deeper and darker than had been there before, a set to his body that changed everything, that moved him over from the ‘friend’ category into uncharted regions. He was suddenly a stranger, with his defiant hair and decisive stare.

‘You don’t have to tell me anything, Jack.’

‘Skye.’ He moved slightly. ‘This is important. I’ve had times in my life . . . things I’ve done . . . that no-one knows about. I’m telling you so that you’ll know — at least I hope you will — that people change. They can change, no-one is set in any particular mould, not if they don’t want to be, okay?’ My expression must have said ‘oh yeah?’ because he shifted again and a blush crept up his face from his neck and the fingers of the hand not holding his cigarette hooked into that black leather lace around his throat.

I couldn’t look him in the eye now, so I focused instead on the ash-tipped end of his cigarette, poised between his fingers like a death-pencil.

A deep breath. ‘I’m an alcoholic. Was. Am . . . When the network guys brought me over here to work on North . . . before I started up the Fallen Skies team . . . I was pretty much out of control.’

I shook my head slowly and watched ash flutter down to the sand like shot birds. ‘I don’t need to know this, Jack.’ Or did I mean that I didn’t want to know?

Another inhalation. This one stuttered. ‘I think you do. Please, Skye, I want you to know. I want you to know what I’m like, what I’m capable of, how much of a complete shit I am. Y’see, all this thing with Geth,’ he drew deeply on the cigarette then threw his arms out wide, ‘it was all a sham, wasn’t it? Maybe because you lack definition for yourself you fell for an image, for the look, for the words, not the real man inside them all. He’s a troubled man, Gethryn, and some of that is because of me, and I want you to know that part of me that makes me behave like . . .’ He pulled his arms back in towards his body and wrapped one around his waist. ‘I don’t want you to have those false illusions about me.’

‘I don’t . . .’

‘Oh, I think you do.’ The bitterness of his tone made me glance up. ‘Gethryn is an illusion. Oh, he’d been good once, won an Emmy, once. But when I first met him he was about ten stone, pretty much selling his soul to anyone who’d got a part for him. When he got Lucas James, he hired a personal trainer to come and sort out the body.’ Jack’s eyes were darker than usual, a memory playing behind them in shadow. ‘His name isn’t even real. He’s built himself from bits and pieces of others, an accent here, a hairstyle there; he’s picked up and used anything from anyone that he thought might help him along.’ A sideways glance caught my eye and I found I couldn’t look away. ‘He’s a fabrication, Skye. A literal self-made man.’

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