Paradise: Birds Fly at Sunrise

Chapter Five: A new Student

CHAPTER FIVE: A New Student 

            Kaston dropped me off back at home. The sky was dark now, and we flew high enough for the night to disguise us as a bird if anyone happened to glimpse us. He set me down on my doorstep and landed next to me.

“I’ll go and see Mama Namu tomorrow,” he told me. “Then I’ll come and see you on Monday.”

“Okay.” I said, and then I remembered reality. “I do have school on Monday, you know.”

He smiled at me, maybe a little too much. “I know.”

I was about to ask what he was grinning about, but I blinked and he was gone, leaving behind a sudden upwards breeze that spiralled around me for a quick second before vanishing. I let the cool air that lingered wash over me and sink in, along with every other impossible thing that Kaston had left me with today.

            For a while, I perched on the top step with my chin resting on my arms and looked up at the sky. The evening grew cooler, and I pulled my jumper over my head.  It was almost a clear night, with just a few slivery wisps of cloud morphing in with the velvety indigo, making it look like dark marble. The stars were bright and uncountable. I was sure that the brightest was Jupiter, or maybe I was just sure good things were coming.

 Something felt different about the sky tonight; it seemed more real and more infinite to me now. The stars seemed further away, but I felt like I could reach out and touch them. I took one last look at the moon, cream and ghostly, before I rose and entered my house.

 “Dad, I’m home!” I called out.

“In here.”

I traced his voice to the kitchen. My step-mum, Steph, was stirring a pan over the oven with her long blonde hair tied up and a pink flowery apron over her jeans and blouse. She always cooked with her hair tied back ever since she bent over a pan to examine her food and it caught in the flames of the hob. It took weeks to get rid of the smell of burning hair, but at least she’d escaped any serious injury.

“Just in time for tea,” said my Dad. It was around 8 o’clock, but we always had tea late on a Saturday. “We’re having pasta and tomato sauce.” As though he needed to tell me – the smell was strong and delicious. Steph may have been blonder than her hair, but she sure could cook. I set the table and called Freddie down from his lair to join us.

“Where’ve you been all day?” Dad asked as we sat around the polished oak.  

“Just out with a friend. He’s called Kaston Ma- Robin. Kaston Robin. He lives in Réale but he’s home schooled, so I only just met him.”

I wasn’t keeping anything from my dad. I never did and I never would. If he asked if he was from a different universe, I’d probably tell him yes, but it seemed unlikely.

“Robin? Oh, is he Penny’s son? I’ve only met her once. She visited with a homemade lasagne after your mother passed away. Her husband died of the same thing. We had a good chat. It was a good lasagne too, come to think of it.”

And that’s all that was said on the matter; Steph started up a conversation about Freddie’s collage options, and he ate his pasta and fled before I’d even had three bites. I left my parents to finish the conversation while I ate quietly, lost in my own thoughts.               

***

Sunday seemed particularly uneventful after the previous day. The only memorable antics where Freddie and Steph rowing about collage and the fact that there were no birds riding the breeze this morning with the sunrise. Monday may not have come fast enough, but it was here eventually.