Gemini Rising

ELEANOR WOOD lives in Brighton, where she can mostly be found hanging around in cafes and record shops, running on the beach, pretending to be French and/or that it’s the ‘60s, and writing deep into the night. Her work has previously been published in magazines such as Time Out and The Face. Her erstwhile lo-fi fanzine, Shocking Blues and Mean Reds, won praise from the Independent, Lauren Laverne and Marmalade magazine, among others.

These days, you can read her personal and ill-thought-out ramblings on her blog, The Perfect Mixtape, or more succinctly on Twitter at @eleanor_wood.

www.CarinaUK.com

Huge gratitude to my brilliant and lovely agent, Caroline Hardman – who, luckily for me, is as tenacious as she is clever.

Massive thanks to my wonderful editor at Harlequin, Anna Baggaley – for being as enthusiastic about Gemini Rising as I am.

Thank you to the people I love most in this world – Mum, Dad, Jimmy, Katy, Nan and Lilly – for always being awesome and supportive. I’m so lucky you’re all on my team. Special mention to Jimmy for actually choosing to live with a crazy Gemini – 143.

Thanks to Vinod, James and the staff of Bright News for keeping me fed and entertained throughout the writing of this book.

Thank you to Joyce Lambert for astrological guidance – purely personal rather than conceptual, thus all schoolgirl errors are my own (and, of course, deliberate).

An appreciative salute to the people who made my life technicolour when I was seventeen, and continue to do so – Tom Allnutt, Rachael Ayres, Ali Bastian, Louise Chadbone and Neil Symons.

So many brilliant friends and family have helped and inspired me in too many ways to mention here – I hope that you know who you are and that I am grateful.

For my family – you know who you are

Cover

Author Bio

Title Page

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Epilogue

Endpages

Copyright Page

Have you ever met anyone who’s in technicolour? I mean, like really in glorious technicolour, so that they make the rest of the world look black and white, and you suddenly realise what you’ve been missing all your life?

It’s a bit like in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy gets to Oz and her shoes are all ruby red and sparkling, and she realises that Kansas was just shades of grey. OK, so even if you don’t think in these weird analogies and stupid old film images like I do, I bet you know what I mean.

Well, that’s what the twins were like. Full colour in a world of black and white. Times two. I’d been waiting so long just for something, anything, to happen, how was I to know that when it did, it would all go so wrong? I couldn’t possibly have known that maybe living in black and white is better than crashing into all the colours of the sun and getting burned.

But, back then, it was like I didn’t know anything. All I could see were the beautiful colours. I was blinded. It’s no excuse, I know, but it’s true.

It’s easy to forget that the twins ever existed, now all that’s left is the aftermath, the death and destruction they left behind. That’s not so easy to forget. At the time, it all seemed like so much fun, like something was finally happening – and that wasn’t so bad, was it?

‘Sorana! Come on! We’re late!’

I’m in my apocalyptically messy bedroom, my favourite band, Trouble Every Day, blasting on the stereo. I’m staring critically at myself in the mirror, peering within the nest of postcards and stickers that cover up the edges, wondering if the fact that my skirt is rolled over four times at the waist makes me look like an unfortunate teenage pregnancy victim, wishing I’d got up half an hour earlier to wash my stringy brown hair, and hoping my mum won’t notice the thick smearing of eyeliner hidden under my too-long fringe. If I keep my head down between now and school, I might just get away with it.

Seriously, I need something to make up for the fact that my life is spent in the purgatory of a burgundy school uniform. It’s the worst uniform I’ve ever seen; it actually involves a kilt and knee socks – no tights allowed. Let’s face it – at the age of nearly seventeen, it’s really pushing it to still be dressing us like some sort of deranged Lolita-themed strippers. Especially when they’re still locking us up in an all-girls’ school so that we allegedly won’t get ourselves into trouble – where’s the logic?

Yes, I did say nearly seventeen. I’m in the Lower Sixth – or Year Twelve as I believe they call it in some more modern institutions – not that you’d know it. After GCSEs, I begged my mum to let me go to the local community college instead – where I could do normal things like wear my own clothes and walk into town to go to Subway at lunchtime, not to mention actually learn how to talk to boys my own age – but she insisted that I stayed on for my school’s sixth form. She kept on so much about how proud of me she was for winning a scholarship and how she’d have killed to have had my advantages when she was my age – until eventually I decided it was best just to shut up and put up.