Moon and Stars

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  MOON AND STARS

  Hiya!

  Lots of readers have been asking for a story from Jamie Finch’s point of view … this mysterious dream boy who first appeared in Marshmallow Skye has a lot of fans! When I began thinking about his story, I realized it might turn out a little differently to the way my readers imagined, but that seemed even more exciting somehow!

  Finch’s story has a few twists and turns and a little bit of mystery too … I think you’ll like it! Finch is a bit of a charmer … but in Moon and Stars he has a real dilemma. There’s even a little Halloween magic mixed into the story … Curl up with a hot chocolate and treat yourself to this extra-cool Chocolate Box Girls story …

  Keep dreaming,

  Books by Cathy Cassidy

  The Chocolate Box Girls

  CHERRY CRUSH

  MARSHMALLOW SKYE

  SUMMER’S DREAM

  BITTERSWEET

  COCO CARAMEL

  SWEET HONEY

  CHOCOLATES AND FLOWERS: ALFIE’S STORY

  HOPES AND DREAMS: JODIE’S STORY

  MOON AND STARS: FINCH’S STORY

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  GINGERSNAPS

  ANGEL CAKE

  LETTERS TO CATHY

  For younger readers

  SHINE ON, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR AND THE PINK GUITAR

  STRIKE A POSE, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR, OOH LA LA!

  1

  After a few warm-up exercises, Fitz gets us all to sit in a circle while he gives us some background on the character study he wants us to work on. It’s an improvisation, a two-person piece with one of us acting the part of a polite but exasperated shopkeeper, the other an angry customer with a grudge against the world.

  ‘If you are playing the role of the customer, I want you to get under his or her skin,’ Fitz is saying. ‘Imagine that life has dealt you some very bad cards … and now you always expect the worst. Your outlook on life is grim and grey and dismal. Be gloomy, be grumpy … imagine your life is a disaster, like you have your own personal raincloud following you around …’

  Fitz moves on to the other character in his improvisation set up, but I’ve stopped listening. My gaze drifts up to the ceiling, as if a passing raincloud might be somehow visible, but all I can see are the fancy drama-studio stage lights pointing over towards the stage area. No rainclouds, and even if there was one, I bet I’d be able to find a silver lining.

  Or at least – the old Finch would have … Once upon a time my world outlook was rainbow bright. I always thought I was the luckiest boy alive.

  Some people see a glass as half full, some half empty; I usually feel like the glass is overflowing, full of fizz and fun. I look on the bright side and good stuff happens, and my life is mostly pretty awesome. I live in a tall Victorian terraced house in Islington, London, and my mum is a TV producer, which means we get to mix with some pretty cool people and do some pretty cool things. I have two older sisters, Talia and Lara, who are both at uni, and although my dad doesn’t live with us any more he is still a brilliant dad, and he and my mum get on great.

  I go to a good school, get good grades and have a whole bunch of amazing friends, and the summer before last I had a bit part in a TV film and fell head-over-heels with the coolest, cutest girl in the whole of Somerset.

  See what I mean? Luckiest boy alive.

  It drives my mates crazy.

  They think I lead a charmed life. ‘It’s uncanny. I swear, Jamie Finch,’ one said just last week. ‘If you fell right off the top of the London Eye you’d probably land on a feather mattress that just happened to be being driven past on the back of a flatbed truck. Being driven by … I dunno, Taylor Swift or someone. And she’d fall for you and the two of you would run off to Hollywood and you’d end up with a new career as a movie stuntman. You just always land on your feet. Lucky, lucky, lucky.’

  I’d laugh and roll my eyes, but I liked being lucky. I’d got used to it. I actually thought it might last forever.

  Then something happened, a small thing, an accidental thing … three or four months ago, now.

  It was a mistake, and anyone can make a mistake, right? I didn’t plan it, I didn’t mean it, but I could tell right away that it was one of those things there is no going back from, one of those things that changes everything.

  And that’s a problem, because I don’t want things to change. I’ve been trying my hardest to pretend that nothing happened, that life’s just the way it’s always been, but I can’t do it. Like the imaginary character in Fitz’s drama scenario, nowadays my own personal raincloud is never far away, threatening to rain on my parade.

  I go to school, I go to drama club, I chill out with friends and go to parties and watch the new bands that play in the Camden clubs. I do the things I’ve always done, but all the time it feels like the raincloud is just waiting, and when the time is right it will pour down its icy cold rain all over me, drenching me to the skin.

  ‘Are you OK?’ the girl next to me asks, nudging me in the ribs. ‘Are you even listening?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ I say. ‘Just thinking about … stuff. Y’know. Nothing much.’

  She rolls her eyes. Her name is Ellie Powell and she is one of those infuriatingly enthusiastic, dedicated girls who expects everyone else to be just about as perfect as she is. I used to be enthusiastic and dedicated too, about my drama class at any rate, but that was before my raincloud appeared, squeezing the joy out of everything. Lately, I am just going through the motions, and Ellie has noticed.

  ‘Want to partner up?’ she asks. ‘I can fill you in on what you missed, because I know you weren’t listening. You never do, these days. It kind of lets the whole team down when you obviously don’t care, Jamie.’

  I grit my teeth. ‘I do care,’ I insist. ‘I just have a lot on my mind.’

  ‘So, partner up?’

  ‘No thanks, Ellie,’ I say, casting my eyes around for another option. Any other option. I spot a small Year Seven boy who usually does the scenery painting, and breathe a sigh of relief. ‘I’m going to work with Kevin here. I’m going to be the mild-mannered shopkeeper and he’s going to be the raging customer. Right, Kev?’

  ‘It’s Kenneth, actually,’ the Year Seven boy scowls.

  See what I mean? I cannot get anything right lately. I drag the unwilling Kenneth off to plan our drama piece, leaving Ellie laughing at my discomfort. I do not like Ellie Powell at all. She has a way of looking at me as though she knows exactly what’s going on behind the confident, self-assured mask I show to the world. Ellie’s dark green eyes seem to have X-ray vision; the ability to sear right through several layers of skin and scrutinize what’s going on inside.

  It’s not a quality I admire.

  In the end, Kenneth and I manage a reasonable improvisation piece, but only because he insists on being the mild-mannered shopkeeper. I pretend he is Ellie Powell and blast him with all of the bottled-up anger I have been holding in for the last few months.

  Fitz, watching from the sidelines, comes over to intervene just at the point where I grab Kenneth by the collar and pretend to shove him up against the wall, growling a long litany of abuse right into his face. Kenneth is actually shaking. Maybe his acting skills are better than I thought?

  ‘Enough!’ Fitz says. ‘Drop him! Are you OK, Kenneth?’

  ‘Sure,’ the kid says, but it comes out kind o
f strangled and sad.

  ‘I was acting,’ I argue, but a little bit of me knows that I took things too far. ‘I … maybe I got carried away. Sorry, Kenneth. Sorry, Fitz.’

  I can sense Ellie Powell watching from the other side of the drama studio, where she’d just done a brilliant improv with Fitz’s little sister, who wasn’t a drama student at all but just came along to help out and make hot chocolate after the session. I bristle with annoyance at Ellie’s glance, my fists clenching.

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’ Fitz is saying, and I know I’ve tuned out again and missed his sermon on why it’s not a good plan to grab a small, scene-painting student by the scruff of the neck during drama club.

  ‘Sorry, Fitz,’ I mumble.

  ‘Finch, your heart’s just not in this right now,’ he says. ‘I need to find out why. See me after the class, OK? We need to talk.’

  After class, Fitz asks me if there’s anything bothering me; if anything’s wrong at home. My acting has been way off for weeks, he says.

  ‘You have masses of potential,’ he tells me. ‘But you’re an instinctive actor. If stuff is going on in your life, you need to get it sorted or it will spill over into your acting. I may have to rethink our casting for the end of year play unless you can get yourself on an even keel. I can’t have a lead actor who’s distracted and moody all the time.’

  The drama club is putting on a musical production of Bugsy Malone later in the year, and though the cast list hasn’t yet gone up, Fitz has mentioned a few times that I’d make a great Bugsy. Now he’s backtracking. I don’t even have to look up to glimpse my raincloud … it’s blotting out every bit of light right now.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I insist. ‘I’ll get it sorted, Fitz, I swear I will. It’s a blip.’

  ‘Hope so,’ he says. ‘I can’t cast you as Bugsy if your heart’s not in it. I need someone reliable.’

  ‘I know, I know. Leave it with me.’

  I used to be reliable; the most reliable kid in class. Not any more. I can feel Fitz’s disappointment soaking through me, but I don’t know how to find my way back to the boy I used to be.

  I promise myself I will try.

  Everybody’s gone by the time I walk out of the studio; everyone but Ellie. She’s sitting on the wall in the fading light, swinging her legs and sipping an iced mango smoothie from the coffee shop along the road.

  My jaw sets; I’m angry all over again.

  ‘What did Fitz say?’ she wants to know. ‘He mentioned last week that you were off your game – losing the plot. He kind of hinted that he wasn’t sure you’d be the right choice for the lead role in Bugsy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel better,’ she says. ‘Just get a grip. Sort your life out!’

  I cannot think of one single polite answer to that, so I turn around and stalk off along the street, leaving her behind.

  Ellie Powell is everything I despise in a girl. She seems harmless enough, but that chirpy, enthusiastic exterior hides a deeply irritating personality; Ellie is like a bouncy puppy that never gives up, even when all the signs are clear that nobody wants them around. As a last resort, she will turn her dark green eyes on you, piercing, pleading, and you’ll end up feeling like you’re somehow the one in the wrong.

  ‘We could go out sometime,’ Ellie said to me once, a while ago. ‘You and me, we’d be good together.’

  She’s wrong about that, of course. We’d be bad together; all kinds of bad.

  My girlfriend, Skye Tanberry, is nothing like Ellie. She’s sweet, kind, daydreamy, a country girl who dresses in vintage cool. She has blonde ringlet-waves and blue-grey eyes a boy could drown in. Skye is my perfect match in every way, except for one thing; she lives in Somerset and I live in London.

  Still, we have managed OK since last year with scribbled postcards, text messages, SpiderWeb posts and occasional phone calls. On Valentine’s Day, we had a day out at the ballet in Covent Garden, although I admit my mate Alfie (one of the kids I met in Somerset) was the mastermind behind that. He’s dating Skye’s twin sister, and he set up the whole thing as a joint Valentine’s/birthday treat.

  I am not the kind of boy who is good at grand gestures, but I do my best. Sometimes, alas, it’s not good enough.

  I am halfway along the street by the time Ellie catches up with me. She’s ditched her smoothie and her cheeks are pink from running, her chestnut hair mussed up. I want to stretch out a hand to smooth it down, but I don’t. Ellie’s eyes are still filled with exasperation, challenge, fire.

  ‘Don’t give me a hard time, Ellie,’ I tell her. ‘I am not in the mood for this right now, OK?’

  She pulls her jacket around her in the fading light.

  ‘What are you in the mood for, Jamie Finch?’ she asks.

  I hate myself, I really do, but I can’t seem to help it. I snake an arm around her waist and pull her close, and then we’re kissing, and her lips taste of mango smoothie and danger, and I don’t even care.

  2

  I walk Ellie home and we don’t talk about how impossible it all is; we don’t talk about anything at all. We just walk slowly through the London streets and kiss for one last time in a pool of lamplight at the end of her street, and I wonder how anything so wrong can possibly feel so right.

  It does, though. When I kiss Ellie Powell, the rest of the world disappears and nothing matters at all except that she’s here, now, in my arms.

  And then we say goodnight and I walk home, and the guilt floods in again, the raincloud hovering right at my shoulder, ready to pour its scorn all over me.

  Guilt? Scorn? That’s the very least I deserve.

  I have a girlfriend already; the perfect girlfriend. And I also have Ellie.

  Long-distance romance … it’s not easy, obviously. I remember my mates joking about it right at the start, telling me I could have the best of both worlds; an adoring girlfriend in Somerset and a free run here in London to flirt with anyone I please. Or more than flirt, in fact.

  I told them that wasn’t my style, but maybe they’d been right all along.

  ‘A girlfriend in Somerset?’ Ellie huffed when I first told her about Skye. ‘That’s hundreds of miles away. Bad planning, Jamie.’

  ‘Bad planning indeed,’ I’d agreed.

  ‘Most people let go of holiday romances,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re not supposed to be forever.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I told her.

  Ellie had laughed and rolled her eyes, and I knew that she did understand, better than I did. Things were over with Skye, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

  To be honest, I’d known things were cooling off even before Alfie’s London trip, way before I’d even met Ellie. I’d been getting lazy, calling less, forgetting to reply to texts. The shine had gone off it all, but even so, that didn’t seem like a reason to finish. We’d planned for me to head down to Somerset for a week in the holidays; I was pretty sure some sunshine and a beach party or two would revive the flagging romance.

  Then I met Ellie.

  She joined my drama group after Easter, and right away her personality started to grate on me. She tried too hard, caused too much trouble, said what she thought even if it wasn’t what people wanted to hear. I thought she was annoying. Then one day in July, Fitz put us on set-painting duty, finishing a piece of scenery that was meant to represent a forested hillside, and I was stuck with her. Ellie started telling me that I wasn’t quite convincing enough when I was acting, as if I was always aware that there was someone watching, an invisible audience I wanted to impress.

  Was that a bad thing? The barb stung.

  ‘You never quite get into character because you’re always hamming it up, flashing a cheesy grin at your adoring fans,’ she said. ‘You need to forget who’s watching and lose yourself in the role.’

  ‘Says who?’ I’d argued. ‘Fitz doesn’t have a problem with the way I work, and he’s the e
xpert, right?’

  ‘Just trying to help,’ Ellie shrugged.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ I snapped.

  ‘You’re too theatrical,’ she said, as though she was doing me a favour. ‘Too full of fire and passion.’

  And then she kissed me, without warning, and I was full of fire and passion then all right. By the time we managed to pull apart, she had green paint smudged across her nose and her dark hair was all mussed up and I couldn’t find the words to be angry. I was already lost.

  I’ve been lost ever since, and my life has gone from sunshiny to dark. I’m stuck in the shadows, wandering around with no map.

  I didn’t think the thing with Ellie would last, but it would have felt all wrong turning up at Tanglewood when I was sort of seeing someone in London. I took a summer job as a runner for the TV company Mum works for and told Skye I just couldn’t get away; the coward’s way out. I should have finished things there and then, but admitting you’re a two-timing worm is not easy. I didn’t see myself that way, and I didn’t want to hurt Skye over something I was pretty sure was no more than a fling.

  Besides, Skye had a lot on her plate; her twin sister Summer is fighting an eating disorder, her big sister Honey lurches from one disaster to the next and her mum and stepdad are working seven day weeks to try to make a go of their luxury chocolate business and keep the whole family afloat. I rang a few times over the summer with the idea of breaking up, but the timing was never right. Summer was going through a wobbly patch, or Honey was in a major meltdown, or everyone was working flat out in the chocolate workshop on some important order.

  It was all kind of stressful. How could I add to Skye’s troubles by ditching her long distance? I decided to wait until I could do it face to face, and that’s a problem because it could be ages before I get to see her again. I will be patient. I have to wait for the right moment, tread carefully, find the right words. If there are any ‘right words’ for a thing like that, which I doubt.