A Sea of Stars by Kate Maryon

dangerous. Get back in. There’s a good girl.”
    I can’t be bothered to argue. I shut the window and slump back down in my seat. It’s like I have two mums nagging at me now, going on and on and on. Two scared people tying me down. I stare at the seagulls circling and swooping through the sky and wonder what my life would be like if I’d chosen to be a seagull or a beautiful yellow butterfly.
    â€œI hope you like your room,” I say to Cat, because I need to say something that will just go smoothly, like a normal friendly conversation, like normal sisters. “It’s next to mine and looks right out over the bay. You can hear seagulls in the morning and see stars from your window at night. It’s a really nice room. We’ve made it special for you.”
    Cat twitches and twiddles and blinks. She faces the window and starts nibble-nibble-nibbling on a nail. I’m walking on eggshells as my tummy ties itself up in knots. She doesn’t answer me.
    I think it’s a game she plays, freezing people out,making them feel clunky. A normal person would say, “Oh that’s nice, I’m looking forward to seeing my new room,” or “I love seagulls,” or even, “I hate seagulls and wish they were all dead,” but she doesn’t say anything at all. It’s really annoying; it makes me feel stupid.
    Cat is just weird and that’s a fact. I don’t know if she’s going to scream in my face or nibble-nibble-nibble, or stare right through me as if I don’t exist. Susannah, the social worker, told Mum and Dad that Cat was really troubled inside and I need to remember that. She’s been severely neglected and traumatised, so Susannah said her behaviour might sometimes be unpredictable. I thought unpredictable would be OK; I thought it might be fun, like she might play mad games and stuff. I didn’t know it would be like this. It’s like waiting for a dud firework to go off, wondering if it’ll shoot up in the air and burst into colourful sparkles or explode and burn up your face. I want a sister, but deep down I kind of wish we could drop Cat back off at Tania’s and pretend we never thoughtof having her in the first place. It would have been better if Mum had read an article about travelling to Australia and got all excited about that instead.
    Then I notice Cat’s socks are all baggy and frayed around the top and that she has a great big scab on her knee. And my anger melts and I really, really want to hold her hand. The bedroom doesn’t matter.
    Â 
    It’s kind of strange that Nana and Pops buy shrubs for Alfie’s birthday. Dad says it’s symbolic; we can’t watch Alfie grow as a boy, but we can see him grow through the shrub. When I was younger, I’d look at the shrubs for hours, trying to find Alfie’s face. I sometimes wonder what he’d look like now as a seven-year-old boy. I wonder if he’d love surfing as much as me.
    I don’t know how to explain all this to Cat – how to tell her that every year, on Alfie’s dying day, Mum spends most of the day meditating in silence while Dad and I snuggle down and watch films.
    I mean how do you even start explaining yourfamily to a new person in a way they’ll understand? It’s like trying to unpick a spider’s web or count each grain of sand on the beach.
    It’s not really the big things; it’s more the little things. Like, we always have a star on our Christmas tree rather than a fairy because my dad loves stars. Like, Mum always has to let the phone ring three times before answering it – for no reason at all. Like, I always put the cap back on the toothpaste before I clean my teeth, whereas Dad does it after. The patterns our family makes are complicated and it’s going to be too tricky to weave Cat in.

O ur house is perched on the cliff and, from a distance, is a grey-white seagull ready to open its wings