The Lighter That Shone Like A Star (Story of The South) (2 page)

Matthew and Russell were late, again. They had not been on time once this week, which meant that Max was also late. On Monday it had slightly annoyed him, but today was Friday and he was furious. 

Max had always been punctual; he woke up when his alarm sounded, ate breakfast, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, carefully moulded his blonde hair into a tidy mess, and grabbed a red apple as he left his door at eight-fifteen sharp. It was eight twenty-three and Max was pacing his living room.

He would not let his two best friends see that he was angry, though. They already found him annoying, Max was sure of that. Whenever they were all together, Max felt like the odd-one-out. Matthew and Russell had private jokes, they had stopped inviting him out in the evenings, they rolled their eyes in unison when Max said anything, and they always kept him waiting. Max spent every minute of every school day with his two best friends and yet he had never felt more alone.

When he had told his mother of his worries, she said, “True friends don’t bring you down, they lift you up. During times of self-doubt, they believe in you. When you frown, they alone know how to make you smile. But true friends can also
cause you more pain and upset than any enemy ever could. Talk to them about it; tell them how you feel. They’ll understand.” Max, however, was not convinced.

It did not help matters that Matthew and Russell were more popular than Max, especially when it came to girls. They were both taller than Max, with dark hair and handsome faces. Matthew could pierce any girl’s heart with his emerald-green eyes and when Russell smiled, girls forgot how to talk. Girls tended to refer to Russell as the ‘cute’ one and Matthew as the ‘hunky’ one. Max was only ever ‘the-cute-one-and-hunky-one’s-short-blonde-friend’.

Max was not necessarily bad-looking but he was constantly compared against his two handsome comrades.

There was one boy in the school who girls loved more than anyone else, a million times more than Matthew and Russell. His feathery blonde hair, electric blue eyes, and rugged good looks made Freddie Vassallo the boy next door.

Max hated him.

Freddie’s twin sister, Sofia, was the most beautiful girl in all The South, Max was sure. With fiery red hair, the same dazzling blue eyes as her brother and a soft, pretty face, Sofia was the girl who every boy wanted to be with and who every girl wanted to be.

Max loved her.

Sometimes he saw her gazing at Matthew and Russell and each time he liked his friends a little bit less. He wished more than anything that she would look in his direction, just once. One glance might be enough for him to steal her heart.

It was eight-thirty when the doorbell finally rang.
The same time as the school bell, then
, Max thought as he answered the door.

“Hi Max,” Matthew beamed at him. “No apple this morning?”

Russell coughed, no doubt covering a snigger.

“No,” Max replied with an edge to his voice. “I ate it while I was waiting for you two.” His friends rolled their eyes as Max stepped out of his front door to join them. They walked to school in silence, Max steaming ahead of the other two. He peered over his shoulder to see his friends dawdling, faces buried in their ScribblePads.

There were two reasons why Max did not like ScribblePads: the first was that everyone at school was always fixed to theirs, the second was that he did not own one.

“You two, we’re already late, hurry up!” Max urged them.

“Oh, just run on ahead if you’re so worried,” Russell snapped.

“If you two just put your ScribblePads away, we’d be there in five seconds.”

“Fine! We’ll put them away,” Matthew sighed. “But, y’know, when you eventually get one you’ll be exactly the same as us.”

Max resented the way he drew out the word ‘eventually’.

The three boys remained in silence until they arrived at their first class, history, and had to explain why they were late, again. Max looked at Matthew and Russell and could see that they were sorry. Not because they had made Max late but because they had all been given detention.

As they were late, there was not a table left for them all to sit together. So, Matthew and Russell sat together at the table in front of the teacher’s desk, leaving Max to search for a spare seat.

There were only two remaining: one next to a boy who Max hated for a reason that he had since forgotten (
loner
, Max sneered in his mind), and another at the back of the room, next to Sofia.
Anne-Alicia must be away,
Max thought as he nervously made his way towards the rear of the classroom.

Sofia had not realised that Max was coming to sit next to her, only acknowledging him once he had clumsily flung his jacket on the back of the chair. She smiled at him quickly and turned back to face the blackboard.

Max plonked himself down onto the uncomfortable plastic chair and retrieved his books and pencil case from his bag. He opened his copybook to the next blank page, rushing to scrawl notes from the board before Mr. Dyre erased them. Max’s pen wrote half the date and stopped working. He shook it and tried again but still it refused to share its ink with paper.

Huffing, Max rummaged desperately through his pencil case but he already knew that he did not have a replacement. He looked at Sofia, who was focused on her own work, filling her book with beautiful calligraphic handwriting. He guessed she had learnt to write like that from her Terexian parents – people in Hurburt could not hold a pen so perfectly and produce such elegant words.

“Umm, Sofia?” he whispered, so quietly that there was no way she had heard him. He blushed anyway.

As Max prepared himself to speak again, he stopped himself. What if she
had
heard him but was simply choosing to ignore him? That would be it. Of course she had pretended not to hear him; Sofia Vassallo would never acknowledge Max Myers, especially with other people around.

So he sat there in silence, filled with an all too familiar self-loathing. Eventually deciding he could not ask Sofia and be at risk of humiliating himself, he extracted a green felt-tip from his pencil case and began to write. He was unsure what he was writing about, his thoughts too occupied with the beautiful girl sitting beside him. Inadvertently, Max’s eyes drifted away from his copybook and once again settled on Sofia. Flames seemed to be dancing around her, illuminating her face. She radiated beauty. He was transfixed by her every feature from her fiery hair to her shimmering lips.

“Hi, Maxance,” Sofia whispered, bemused. Max jumped out of his distant daze and hurriedly returned to copying from the board. He was lost, he realised as he squinted at the board, trying to find the sentence he was midway through scrawling in thick green ink.

“Hey, Maxance, are you ignoring me now?” she asked, sounding upset. Max looked up at her and was relieved to see she was feigning her annoyance.

“Umm… no, of course not… Sorry Sofia.” He smiled apologetically and looked back at his book.

“Why were you staring at me?”

Max continued gazing down at his book, caught off-guard by her blunt question.

“I wasn’t… I… umm…” he stuttered, finally admitting defeat with a sigh. Sofia giggled softly.

“I just thought maybe you wanted to borrow a pen? Or are you okay with your green felt-tip?” She laughed again. Max joined her, mentally shaking himself before he next spoke.

“Yes, that is what I was going to ask. I don’t suppose you have a pen I could borrow, please?” he asked, much too formally.

“Why, of course I do. I shall just retrieve one from my pencil case.” She was treating the whole exchange as humorous. Sofia must have known that Max was gawping at her, but she was not making him feel at all embarrassed. He fell even more in love with her.

Max thanked Sofia for the pen and got back to scrawling meaningless words onto paper.

The next time his eyes moved from his copybook was when the classroom door flew open and an out-of-breath girl threw herself into the classroom.

“Sorry… I’m… Late…” Anne-Alicia huffed. The teacher ushered her into the classroom, muttering at her to sit down quickly and catch up. Anne-Alicia’s gaze sought Sofia. Upon seeing that Max had taken her seat, she glared at him through her small eyes, looked at Sofia, shook her head, and went to sit next to the loner, who had pulled out the seat next to him ready for his new neighbour.

“Sorry,” Max muttered, “I thought she was ill or something today. I should have sat by someone else. Sorry.”

Sofia giggled, Max was unsure why. “Maxance,” she said, gently, “I’m glad you sat next to me.”

Max was stunned. “Glad?” he blurted.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” She giggled but Max was unsure what was so funny. “We’ve been going to this school for twelve years and this is the first time we’ve properly spoken to each other. You’re like a mystery man to me.” She smiled at him, her eyes twinkling. He was certain that she was only joking, but he blushed nonetheless.

“So,” she continued, closing her copybook. “Why is it that I know you detest your full name, but you haven’t corrected me yet?” Words failed Max yet again. He turned back to his book. “If you want to keep writing about The End then that’s fine with me, but I’m pretty bored of it and we all already know what happened.
So
,” she shuffled in her seat so her whole body was facing him, “Why haven’t you told me off for calling you Maxance?”

Because when you say it, it doesn’t sound so
bad,
Max thought. He knew if he ever wanted to have the tiniest hope with Sofia, he needed to stop being himself for just the next forty minutes.

“Because… I didn’t want to seem rude. I
really
needed to borrow a pen, see.”

Sofia giggled. “Oh, I see. Yeah, it all makes sense now. So now you have my pen, should I call you Max?”

We’ll probably never speak to each other again, so what does it matter?

“Yeah, I think I prefer Max.”

“Not Maxxie?” Sofia suggested.

“Maybe Maxxie, just let’s stay away from Maxance.”

“Okay, Maxxie.” She smiled at him. He noticed for the first time how she gently bit her bottom lip when she smiled. “So, Maxxie, how do you fancy skipping history?” she asked, with a mischievous smirk.

“But we’re already in history,” Max stated the obvious.

“Oh, really? I thought this was drama!” Sofia replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Silly, I mean let’s get out of here.”

“How?”

The teacher roared with shock as his desk was suddenly submerged in flames. “Everybody, OUT!” he shrieked, slamming his hand on a fire alarm and throwing open the classroom door.

Sofia grabbed Max’s hand and whispered, “That’s how, Max.” She led him to the nearest window and they made their getaway while the rest of the class ran towards the exit in a frenzy. Max landed unsteadily on the grass. When he found his balance and stood up straight, he was met with a soft kiss on the cheek.

“You know, I think I prefer Max.” Sofia said.

Freddie knew that it was Sofia who had started the fire; he just had no idea why she had done it. It was no great secret that he and his sister were from Terexe but never before had they used their magic without good reason.

Freddie stayed behind in the classroom to put out the flames whilst the teachers attempted to organise the rest of the pupils on the school field. There was no way the fire was still a risk, as Freddie had doused the entire classroom in water. When he walked towards the field five minutes after the rest of the school, it was clear to everyone why he was late.

There was only one family in Pipton that was not from Hurburt, and that was the Vassallos. The Vassallos were Terexian and if ever smoke could be seen, Freddie and Sofia were there quicker than the fire brigade.

Freddie was ready to yell at Sofia for her stupidity, but as he strolled towards his class he could see that his twin was not amongst them.
What an idiot,
he thought.
She could not have made this more obvious.

Mr. Dyre began to reel off his pupils’ names to check that everyone had safely exited the building. He reached ‘Max Myers’ but there was no reply. Instinctively, and unsure exactly why, Freddie made his voice slightly deeper and called ‘here!’ He nudged Anne-Alicia, who did the same favour for Sofia.

Freddie did not know what his sister was up to, or why she had taken Max with her, but she owed him. They both did.

The headmaster collected all the registers just as a fire engine whizzed onto the playground, and began his long, dreary speech about fire safety. Just as he reached the part about making sure to leave all belongings behind, Freddie opened his backpack and found his ScribblePad. He looked at his sister’s Scribbler but she had not scribbled since before school.

He sent her a private message, ‘Why did you do that?! Where have you gone? You owe me.’ He was definitely glad of the new private message feature, able to contact Sofia without his words being visible to everyone.

That was the one thing Freddie had always disliked about ScribblePads: the lack of privacy. Every Scribble could potentially be seen by any user, whether you had subscribed to their Scribbler or not. Freddie had once scribbled to his favourite singer from Terexe and much to his delight, he had replied. Before he could thank the celebrity, hundreds of other Scribbler users subscribed to him and scribbled their congratulations, causing his ScribblePad to crash. His excitement had been tarnished with frustration.

Freddie scrolled through his friends’ recent Scribbles, but nothing much had changed. There were several Scribbles about the fire and, sure enough, when Freddie looked around everyone had their ScribblePads out.

He scanned the field for his girlfriend but a stampede of teenagers had starting pushing its way back inside the building, so he clicked onto Lornea’s Scribbler page and scribbled ‘big tree’.
Now I’m outside I may as well stay here,
he reasoned.

While the rest of the school was filed disruptively back into the building by stressed teachers, Freddie strolled nonchalantly towards the tall oak tree at the far end of the field. He took off his jumper, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and bathed in the sun’s warm beams.

He closed his eyes, blocking out the bright afternoon sun, so did not see Lornea approach. She knelt down next to him and kissed his forehead.

“Hey,” he said sleepily, opening his eyes.

“Hey,” she replied, settling next to him.

“Sofia started the fire,” Freddie told his girlfriend, “and left school with Max.”

“Max Myers?” Lornea replied, shocked.

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t even know she knew him.”

“Oh come on, Fred, everyone knows who Max Myers is,” she replied, chuckling.

“That was a long time ago; you’d think everyone would have forgotten about it by now.” Freddie was disappointed, his tone not hiding it too well from Lornea. 

“It
was
funny though,” she responded, testing him.

“Meh.
It was a long time ago.”

It was clear that Freddie wanted to drop the subject. After all, it
was
a long time ago.

From what Freddie remembered, it had happened on the tenth anniversary of Bernard Harding’s disappearance, which was incidentally Max’s tenth birthday. Every year, Mary Harding and her daughter, Emma, had got the town together for a firework display. They had done this on the night of Bernard’s disappearance in the desperate hope that he was merely lost and could not find his way home. It was mainly for Emma, as she had been young.

As the years passed, the firework display became somewhat of a tradition and the town gradually began to celebrate Bernard’s life, rather than simply mourn his absence. People from all over would come – fans of his work, people inspired by the author.

The guests would eat piles of food prepared by Jill and a small party committee, drink wines and ales and fizzy pop, and watch the impressive fireworks. Afterwards, the children would sit around a big fire while Emma read to them a selection of her father’s many stories.

As the tenth anniversary of Bernard’s disappearance neared, Mary approached Harvey and Kerry Myers and suggested they celebrate Max’s tenth birthday rather than Bernard’s life.

“Why must we spend so much of our lives living in the past when we have such a bright future ahead of us?” she had reasoned with Max’s parents.

Eventually, they agreed that it would be a good idea. After all, everyone’s tenth birthday should be an event to remember; reaching double figures was a hugely celebrated event in any Hurburtan’s life. It would not be right if Max did not have a party.

The sixth of June soon rolled around and everyone was excited, especially Max – the biggest party in
all the town was now all for him. He got dressed early and lay carefully on his bed, not wanting to crease his smart suit, reading the fairytales of Naegis while he waited for his parents to get ready.

His friends all mocked him because he read the fairytales, so he had started to insist that he most certainly did not read them anymore. Any time he had a friend over for dinner, he hid the heavy book under his bed. He was infatuated with Naegis and its magical stories and remained confident that they were more than merely fictional tales.

Max’s belief in Naegis never once wavered, even when some children at school had him pinned to the ground because he talked about the fairytales too loudly. Freddie witnessed the whole thing and had been the one to stop the attack. Those were the days when he could threaten them with fire and they would run away. Do that now and he was sure to get a kick in the shins. Max had scrambled to his feet, thanked Freddie, and ran inside to hide.

Max had just finished his favourite Naegean tale when his father knocked on his door.

“Ready, son?” he asked, beaming down at his little boy.

“Ready, dad.”
Harvey picked up his son and ruffled his hair. “Dad, I’m ten now! You shouldn’t carry me anymore.”

Harvey put his son down and looked down at him. “Should I stop tucking you in at night, too?” he asked. He could see the cogs turning in Max’s head.

“No, you still have to tuck me in to bed!”

Harvey laughed, but Max did not know why.

Day turned into evening and the Myers family headed towards the town centre where the roads had been blocked off and shop windows decorated with colourful bunting. The whole town was waiting for the birthday boy.

As he turned into the square, everyone shouted “Happy birthday!” while string, confetti and balloons of all colours flew into the air.

Max had a wonderful evening, as did the rest of the town. As it got late, the adults were either singing or snoring and Emma Harding was sitting around a fire in the town’s square with the children. Max noticed that none of his classmates were there this year. When he asked Emma why, she had replied that they were a bit older and no longer wanted to listen to stories. When Max looked upset, she told him that he could still listen if he wanted.

“Maybe I should
read
the stories, instead,” he suggested. Emma was an English teacher in the town’s school and so thought this was an excellent idea.

“Why don’t you pop to my parents’ house, just round the corner, and find a book?”

Chest puffed with responsibility, Max sprinted to the Hardings’ house without another word and returned five minutes later with a large, leather-bound book. He strutted back to Emma and the other children but Mary Harding had caught up with him, clutching a microphone.

“Here you are dear,” she said, offering him the mike. Max did not hear the people shouting for him to make a speech. He thought they had wanted to hear him read. He stood on a chair, opened the book to page one, and began to read the first Naegean fairytale to the whole town.

Not wanting to interrupt and embarrass him, the town remained silent and listened to the story. That was until an older boy, Kyle Pratt, crept up behind Max and pulled down his trousers. Max stood there, in shock, with his trousers down by his ankles. The town’s children erupted in hysterical laughter. He quickly covered himself up with the book and began to cry. Harvey dashed to his son’s aid, helped him back into his trousers and whispered something into his son’s ear.

Max smiled and walked into his father’s outstretched arms. Harvey Myers carried his son home and tucked him into bed.

“You know what, dad?” Max said.

“What, son?”

“I think tomorrow night I’ll tuck myself in. I’m ten now, I’m not a kid anymore.”

Harvey bent down and kissed his son on the cheek. “Okay, son,” he replied, and left his son to sleep. Max never read a Naegean fairytale again after that night, nor did his father tuck him into bed.

Unfortunately for Max, he was reminded of it every day at school until the summer holidays began, and even after then he was often teased and mocked in the street. Freddie was the only one who had stood up for Max, but that had all been forgotten now.

Freddie opened his eyes and looked at Lornea basking in the sun. Whenever he looked at her, he felt like the luckiest man in the world. In his eyes, she was the most perfect girl in all the lands. Her head rested on his chest and slowly moved up and down in rhythm with his rhythmic breathing. Freddie’s hand found hers and their fingers intertwined. Even after being together for over a year, when Freddie was with Lornea he always felt overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed by her presence, how softly her words landed upon his ears, how deeply he fell into her entrancing green eyes. He loved her, he was sure of that. She loved him too, but it was impossible for Lornea’s feelings to outweigh his own.
Love isn’t a competition
, thought Freddie,
but if it were then I would win.

“What are you thinking, Fred?” Lornea asked quietly, her eyes still closed. She was the only person that had been granted permission to shorten Freddie’s name.

“I’m thinking about how amazing my girlfriend is,” he replied. Lornea smiled, as she always did when he answered her questions that way. “And about how I could stay here for ever.”

“Aww, how cute,” mocked Lornea sarcastically. Freddie poked out his tongue. “Besides,” she continued, “You don’t want to stay here for ever, Fred. What a waste of life that would be.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Spending time with you is a bit of a waste,” he joked, earning himself a sharp prod in his side from Lornea. “Kidding, kidding! Not a second I spend with you is wasted, in fact it’s quite the opposite,” he said, pressing his lips against her ear.

“We should do something,” Lornea chirped, sitting up suddenly.

“What?” Freddie asked curiously.

“I don’t know. Waste more time together or something,” she suggested, rising to her feet. Freddie stood too, finding this change in behaviour rather peculiar.

“But we have all the time in the world. Can’t we just waste our lives here for a bit? Besides, we’ll have to go back to lessons soon,” he reasoned.

Freddie looked into Lornea’s eyes only to see that tears had gathered, creating small oases. He had never seen his girlfriend cry before and Freddie struggled to know what to do. Trying to shake away his sudden sense of awkwardness and panic, he stepped forward and gently dabbed away her tears.

“What’s the matter?” Freddie asked, confused. He could not see what he had done to make Lornea cry. “Have I said something wrong?”

“No, no it’s not you,” she replied, tears now streaming down both her rosy cheeks, “It’s my dad. He got a new job”

“Well that’s good news, isn’t it? Your dad’s always moaning about work.” It was true, whenever Freddie made small talk with Lornea’s father it always ended up with him ranting about his job; the morons that worked beneath him and the fools in charge.

“It’s in Salmont. We have to leave Pipton. We have to leave Hurburt. I have to leave you.”

Freddie stood in a stunned silence. He felt as though his heart was slowly being torn in two.

“
Wh-When?” he choked, his own eyes now becoming seas of sadness.

“In two weeks,” Lornea answered. The couple fell silent, Lornea sobbing whilst Freddie fought back a waterfall of tears. Tears could come later, not in front of his girlfriend.