CHAPTER TWO

SIXTEEN CANDLES

“You’re sixteen today,” Alice Grey told the girl in the mirror, who smiled back at her in reply. Dressed in a pair of faded Hello Kitty! pyjamas and holding a hairbrush in her hand, she was not beautiful in any conventional sense of the word. Her eyes were grey and slightly dreamy; her hair fell dark and straight around her face; her lips had a secretive dimple at their one corner.

“This year is going to be very different for you,” she continued, gesturing with her hairbrush for emphasis, “You are going to stop walking around with your head in the clouds and start living your own life.”

She smiled ruefully at her reflection. She knew what people in her class said about her. She was Alice the Dreamer who stepped into her own world and shut the door on everything and everyone else. While everyone else was sitting in class and listening to the teacher, she might have been with them in body, but she was further from them than the stars in imagination. She was a pirate-queen who sailed the seven seas; a disdainful princess who rejected her thousand suitors; a brave knight who found the Holy Grail; a sorceress who enchanted the eyes of men. She could understand why that drove her friends insane. No-one liked to be excluded.

But it was so easy and so tempting to slip into an imaginary world where she was beautiful and strong and beloved. In that world, she never was at a loss for words when she met the popular kids, or tripped in front of the entire school at a prize-giving, or sat on the side at dances until one of the guys in her group of friends took pity on her.

She sighed as she set her hairbrush down on the table. It would be hard to close the door on that world forever, but it was something that she had to do for own good. As angry with her as Alice had been at the time, Lily had been right when she had said that she would never have a real life until she stopped living a fantasy.

“Alice? Are you ever coming through for breakfast?” her mother’s voice called from the kitchen.

“I’ll be there in a sec, mom.”

Turning from the girl in the mirror, she hastily changed out of her pyjamas and into a red vest and a pair of jeans. Wriggling her feet into a pair of comfortable but battered sneakers, she hurried through to the kitchen. Her mother was standing at the stove, humming to herself and flipping a pancake. A small mountain of them were stacked on the plate beside her.

When she saw Alice enter, she smiled at her, “I made your favourite, birthday girl.”

“Thanks,” she kissed her mother on the cheek. It was cool and soft, and smelt cleanly of face-cream, “They smell delicious.”

“Well, don’t let them get cold,” she admonished her, “Get a plate and dig into them. Then, we’ll see about your presents.”

Alice nodded and took two plates from the cupboard over the sink. She put a couple of pancakes on one of them, leaving the other for her mother, and sat down at the table.

She knew it was ridiculous, but she always felt vaguely guilty about having birthdays and Christmasses. Ever since her parents had gotten divorced, she knew her mother had battled financially. Her job as a secretary at one of the schools did not pay well, and, even though her father was good about keeping up with maintenance, he was an electrician by trade and didn’t earn a wonderful salary either. As a result, they weren’t exactly poor, but she knew her mother could have done without any extra expenses like buying presents for her.

Sugaring and rolling her last pancake, her mother put it on her plate and added a few others to it. She came to sit opposite Alice at the table.

“So, what are your birthday plans?”

Alice swallowed the bite she was chewing before she replied, “Lily’s throwing me a surprise party.”

“A surprise party that you know about?” her mother raised an amused eyebrow, “How can that be?”

“It’s Lily, remember,” Alice grinned wryly, “She’s never been able to keep a secret for longer than it takes to tell it.”

Laughing, her mother speared a piece of pancake and put it into her mouth, “That’s true. Bearing that in mind, what has she bought you for your birthday?”

“Strangely for her, she’s been completely mysterious about that. She keeps making these comments about how she’s read me like a book and knows exactly what to get me.”

“I’m sure you’ll know soon enough,” her mother said, “When is the party?”

“This evening. I hope dad isn’t planning to phone me then.”

“That’s fine. I told your . . . your father it would be best to phone you when you got back from school today.”

“Yeah, that’s the best.”

Her mother’s pale-blue eyes had grown sad at the mention of her ex-husband, and she toyed with the pancake on her plate with her fork. Alice wondered if she still loved him, but pushed the thought away from her. When her parents had told her they were getting a divorce, she had been determined not to become one of those kids who spent all their time wishing they would get back together. However, try as she might, there was a part of her that couldn’t help but hope. She caught herself looking for signs sometimes - a significant intonation in her mother’ss voice, a look in her father’s eyes - and stopped herself immediately. It was futile. They had been divorced for five years now; they would not get back together.

The rest of the meal passed with only the clinking of forks on porcelain to break the silence.

“Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Alice! Happy Birthday to you!” Lily trilled as she came through from the kitchen carrying an enormous cake in her hands that would not have looked out of place at a wedding. It had three layers, all of them smothered in white icing, and was decorated with pink, sugared rosebuds. Looking at the size of it, Alice found that it was not as hard to seem surprised as she had been afraid it would be.

“Happy birthday, Alice, and better watch your back for the next couple of weeks! There’s got to be one angry bride looking for her cake about now,” Julia quipped with a little laugh, echoing Alice’s own thoughts. She was a clever, sarcastic girl with black hair cut in a blunt bob and a look of perpetual amusement in her brown eyes. Lily shot her a furious look, as she put the cake down on the coffee table in the middle of the room.

“Happy birthday, Alice. And I think it’s beautiful, Lil,” Natsuko said, slipping into her usual role of peacemaker between Lily and Julia. Tiny and delicate-looking, Hayashi Natsuko had moved from Japan at the age of three when her father had been transferred. She was the musician of the group too, as gifted a violinist as she was a vocalist. Julia sniffed contemptuously in reply, while Lily beamed.

“So, where are the boys?” Alice asked, thinking it a good idea to change the subject, “We should wait for them before we cut my beautiful cake.”

With another triumphant glance for Julia who just rolled her eyes, Lily replied, “Craig was picking up Scott. You know what that means.”

Alice laughed. It was a standing joke among their group that Craig had been two weeks late for his own birth and had carried on that way for the rest of his life. He lived in detention because he was always late for classes. However, no matter how their principal threatened and punished, nothing seemed to serve to make him punctual.

“Scott must be going insane.”

A smile coming to her face, Lily nodded. She and Scott had been dating from the time when they had been old enough to play spin-the-bottle and giggle when it ended up pointing at them. Sometimes, Alice felt jealous of her friend’s relationship with him. It wasn’t only the fact that Scott was as tall, dark and handsome as the stranger in the fortune tellers’ well-worn prediction, but it was the fact that she herself had no one. If she were honest with herself, she had never even had a boy interested in her, unless she counted Miles Graham who had left insects in her pencil-bag and had kept flicking bits of paper at her during class when they had both been young.

“Well, we can open your presents while we wait,” Julia suggested, “I’m sure the boys won’t mind. Here’s mine. . . .”

With an ironic flourish, Julia handed her a small parcel covered in glittery, silver paper. There was a purple bow tied

around it, elaborately curled. Alice carefully unwrapped it, smoothing the paper flat and setting it to one side. Inside, there was a white, cardboard box.

Lily groaned, “Could you open your presents any more slowly, Alice?”

“Ignore Hurricane Lily,” Julia said.

“Hey!” Lily exclaimed indignantly.

Alice stifled a giggle at her friend’s comment. When Lily finished unwrapping her presents, the room always did look like a disaster area. Bits of torn paper covered the floor, and ribbons dangled from every available surface.

She lifted the lid off the box, and looked across at Julia in shock, “Julia Hernandez! You didn’t!”

“Hey, what’s money if you don’t spend it on your best friends?”

“What did she get you?” Natsuko asked curiously.

“This,” Alice carefully took out a delicate crystal carving and set it on the table in front of them, where it glimmered prismatically in the light. It was off a dragon taking flight from the peak of a mountain, his wings spread wide above him, his muscles bunched in readiness. His mouth was open in a roar and a jet of crystal flame spiralled from it.

“It’s beautiful!” Natsuko breathed, “There’s no way my present can compete with that. I just got you a bunch of j-rock CDs. Big surprise.”

“Nor can mine,” Lily said slightly grudgingly.

“Julia, thank you,” Alice said, “It’ll take pride of place on my desk.”

She smiled and nodded, “My pleasure. I knew you’d love it.”

“Well, you might as well open mine next,” Lily shrugged, walking to the bookcase and retrieving the present from behind the set of encyclopaedias. Hers was wrapped in hot-pink paper with an orange ribbon around it. She presented it to Alice, “Ta da!”

“I know I’ll love it, Lil,” she said, unwrapping it and wondering what weird present her best friend had gotten her this year. Last year, it had been sky-diving lessons that she still hadn’t had the courage to take; the year before that, a certificate informing her that she had adopted an elephant at the zoo. Inside, however, there was a book. Alice was surprised. By anyone’s standards, this was a normal gift.

Stark and black, the cover only had five, silver words printed on it: A Story for Alice Grey.

She looked up at Lily, who was watching her in nervous expectation, “A personalised book?”

“You hate it, don’t you?” her friend sighed, “After I paid for it and got home, I realised what a cheesy idea it was, but

it was too late to cancel the order. Sorry. I should have changed it for something better.”

“No, no,” she laughed, “It’s awesome. I love it. I never expected anything like it, but I love it.”

“Read us the first page,” Natsuko urged, tucking her feet beneath her and making herself more comfortable.

“Why not?” Julia agreed, “Knowing Craig, we’ve got some time to kill before the boys get here.”

Lily nodded, “Go on. It only arrived this morning, and I didn’t have a chance to look at it in the rush to get everything ready. I just hope it’s okay.”

Looking around at her friends, Alice shrugged and opened the book on her lap. She flipped past the end-papers and the title page, then frowned, “It’s blank. There’s nothing written in it.”

“You’re joking,” Lily exclaimed as she sat on the couch next to her, “Did that woman at the shop rip me off?”

“Perhaps you’re meant to write your own story, Alice,” Natsuko suggested, coming to lean on the back of the couch and peering over her shoulder.

“Yeah, it might just be an expensive diary,” Julia said wryly, joining the others, “Anyway, I’d ask for your money back, Lily.”

“Wait,” Alice said in confusion, as she looked back at the book, “There’s something printed in the middle of this page, but I could have sworn it was blank a second ago. . . .”

“What does it say?” Lily asked, “I’m not wearing my glasses.”

Quietly, “The story begins.”

As the words left her lips, Alice felt strangely dizzy. The O’Neill’s comfortable living-room began to spin crazily around her, as if she were a butterfly caught in the middle of a hurricane. Lights, chairs, tables, walls, bookcase, television, her friends all blurred into one terrible, shifting chaos. Then, everything went white . . . .