Helen Douglas: Chasing Stars

We stood awkwardly in the centre of the room until she’d left.

‘So, what do you think?’ asked Ryan.

‘It’s great,’ I said, trying to ignore the big double bed that took up most of the room. My voice trembled. ‘Perfect.’

‘Hey,’ he said, closing the space between us. ‘What’s the matter?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

‘We’re safe here,’ he said, running his fingers through my hair. ‘The cleaner is back on the mainland dealing with Travis. She’ll be gone soon. There’s no need to be afraid.’

But it wasn’t the cleaner that I was scared of. It was every­thing else. Here we were. After months of wanting this, we were together. A room of our own. No adults conspiring to keep us apart. No friends to gossip and stare. No Fate to get in our way. Just Ryan and me.

And then we were kissing and all my fear floated away. I fell softly backwards on to the bed, Ryan beside me. My heart drummed against my ribs so hard that the bones ached. My limbs were tangled with his, my fingers in his hair. We were going to spend the whole night together. And then the whole of the next day. And then after that . . . for ever.

There was a knock at the door.

Ryan sighed. While he collected the towels, I jumped off the bed and walked through the doors on to the small patio, letting sunlight and warmth flood over me. The water was choppy; white foam sprayed and danced playfully above the waves. I breathed in deeply. The briny smell of the beach lingered in the air.

‘Where were we?’ he asked, as he pushed open the bathroom door and chucked the towels inside.

‘Let’s go and explore the island,’ I said. ‘Those paint fumes are still strong. I think we need to let the air clear.’

We hired bicycles from a shop overlooking the harbour beach. Dozens of boats were moored in the harbour, their masts clanging musically in the light breeze.

‘How come you never told me there were a bunch of subtropical islands a couple of hours away?’ Ryan said, as we set off along the seafront road.

‘It never came up,’ I said, wobbling as I tried to get the bike moving.

‘Eden, have you ever ridden a bicycle before?’

‘No.’

‘How can you get to sixteen without ever riding a bike?’

‘I don’t know. I just haven’t.’

‘The first few seconds are the hardest,’ he said, pulling alongside me. ‘Once you get going, it’s easy. Push down and start pedalling hard.’

I grimaced. ‘One day I’m going to discover something that I can do better than you.’

The bicycle gained momentum and I was off. The warm air blew my hair back from my face and I breathed in the scent of flowers and seaweed. We left the harbour behind and began climbing a steep hill, past a blur of tall, green hedgerows and fields of cows. My thighs burned with the effort.

‘You’re doing great,’ Ryan said, looking back over his shoulder at me.

‘Don’t patronise me,’ I yelled back at him.

It bothered me that I had no real skills. I wanted to be prepared for everything and anything. Ryan might be convinced that now that Travis was dead we were safe, but I wasn’t so sure. And if Lauren posed no danger to us, why had Ryan decided to run and hide until she’d left?

The narrow road that encircled the small island took us past farms and fields, a couple of duckponds and craggy beaches framed with brown granite. We were never very far from the sea and the gritty combination of salt and sand hung in the air, a constant reminder.

After a while we came across a sandy cove with a small slipway and a couple of sailing boats tied up above the high water line. Ryan pulled off to the side of the road. ‘Do you mind if we lie down and rest for a while?’ he asked, yawning. ‘I’m still suffering from time lag.’

I hopped off my bike and laid it carefully on the ground. ‘What’s time lag?’

Ryan rested his bike next to mine. ‘You know what jet lag feels like, right?’

I shook my head. ‘Sorry. I’ve never been further than Paris.’

‘You’re even more sheltered than I thought.’

‘It’s not like I don’t want to travel,’ I said.

Ryan held my hand in his and we walked down the slipway to the beach. It was a rare sunny day, the air hot.

‘I wasn’t judging you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you haven’t done much travelling. We’ll get to see the world for the first time together.’

‘Anyway, I know what jet lag is. So tell me about time lag?’

‘The human body isn’t designed for time travel. It throws your body clock completely out of whack. For the first few days, you get these sudden bouts of sleepiness. It’s a bit like narcolepsy. The best cure is to have a short nap.’ He yawned again as if to prove his point. ‘I’ll probably only need twenty minutes.’

We strolled along the shoreline, shoes in our hands, feet just in the water. The helicopter from the mainland buzzed across the sky. A mother and her two young children were walking across the wet sand, collecting shells in a bucket. We waited till we’d passed them before looking for a patch of dry sand to sit on.

I laid out my hoodie and sat down. Offshore lay two other islands, rising from the ocean like turtles just breaking the surface.

Ryan squinted out to sea. ‘These islands don’t look that far apart. I wonder if it’s possible to rent a sailboat for the day. We could go and explore the other islands. Maybe dive on some shipwrecks; I bet there’re loads of wrecks around here.’

‘So you can sail and scuba-dive?’ I said with a dramatic sigh.

‘I grew up by a lake,’ said Ryan as though that explained everything.

I didn’t remind him that I’d grown up by the sea, but still didn’t know how to dive or sail a boat.

‘And when I come from, the sea levels have risen,’ said Ryan. ‘Lots of towns are underwater. My friends and I liked to scuba-dive in the drowned cities. It’s eerie, swimming along what were once roads, seeing fish swim in and out of the windows of buildings that were once apartment blocks and offices.’

He scrunched up his hoodie to make a pillow and lay back, an arm over his eyes to block out the sun, his muscles bunching and lengthening beneath his skin. I wondered what it must be like to be able to do so many things, to feel strong and capable.

‘I want to learn something new,’ I said. ‘I feel like I’m not good at anything.’

‘You’re good at Scrabble,’ he said sleepily. ‘And chess.’

‘Great. Next time I come up against one of your cleaners I’ll challenge them to a game of chess.’

He rolled on his side and opened his eyes again, narrowing them slightly against the bright light. ‘You’re good at running.’

‘That’s just the problem. I don’t want to run away from things. I want to be able to fight back.’

Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘Like a ninja?’

‘Don’t make fun of me. It bothers me that if you hadn’t risked everything to travel back through time and rescue me I’d be dead. I should have been able to defend myself better. And now Lauren is here and once again I’m relying on you to protect me. I want to learn new things so I can take care of myself.’

Ryan smiled to himself. ‘You’re what – about a hundred and twenty pounds? Travis was about two hundred pounds of pure muscle. You could be a black belt in every martial art going and you still wouldn’t have had a chance against that sort of bulk. Running was the right thing to do. It’s what I would have done too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And you managed your encounter with Travis brilliantly. You outsmarted him. You understood when to play along with him and when to run. And you outran him! He was a trained killer, but you managed to drive away from him, outrun him and then you had the smarts to lead him to his death. You did ninety-nine per cent of the job – I just came in at the end to take the credit.’