The Fairest Stars

Chapter Twelve: 'Young men's love'

Isis got up, yawning. She’d been tossing and turning for the majority of the night, her thoughts spiralling round and round the same path. Kael.

What on earth was he up to? Was he really interested in her? And, most importantly, what did she think about that?

Part of her told herself to stop being so ridiculous. There was no chance that someone as rich and good looking as he was would fall for someone as poor and average looking as she was. 

The other part of her hung on to the way that he had looked at her, as if she was the only one he could see, and as if she was some sort of seductive goddess or as if she was Dido, sat enthroned, and he was Aeneas, struck by love on the spot. She rubbed her forehead. Now that was ridiculous.

She cut the bread for the sandwiches firmly, as if doing a domestic task would take her mind away from romance. You don’t have time for romance, she told herself, for what must have been the hundredth time. So why she found herself thinking up little romantic situations she and Kael could somehow be thrown together in was beyond her.

Instead, she went on cutting bread, cutting several slices too many in her great enthusiasm. Oh dear. Not much was going right today.

She was surprised she managed to get to school on time, in the end. Freya had kicked up yet another fuss, pleading her ill health to attempt to get the day off school, and she’d pretty much had to drag her to school, leaving her flustered and in a hurry as she half ran the distance to school.

Harry met her at the door. ‘Isis!’

‘Hi Harry,’ she panted breathlessly.

He grinned at her, taking her bag from her arm. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages! I thought I’d better lie here in wait to see if you had any new friends you’d betrayed me with.’

Isis reached up to ruffle his hair. ‘You silly boy,’ she told him, affectionately. ‘I do have new friends, but of course I wouldn’t neglect you.’

‘New friends?’ Harry looked interested. ‘Who are these new people? Are they in the play too?’

Isis nodded. ‘Yep. Lydia plays the Nurse, and she’s absolutely lovely.’ She had a feeling that she and Lydia would be friends for quite a while: they just clicked together, something Isis had only ever previously experienced with Harry.

‘Lydia Roper?’ Harry smiled. ‘She was talking to me about you, actually.’

‘Really? What did she say?’

‘How absolutely lovely you are too,’ he replied. ‘Any more friends?’

Kael, thought Isis, but for some reason, she didn’t want to mention it. Though at times the pair of them were friends, at times, it was insufferably awkward: like after he almost kissed her, and then she somehow aroused him. Now, that wasn’t friend like behaviour. What sort of behaviour was it, then? she asked herself.

‘All of the cast, really,’ she told him.

‘I feel jealous,’ Harry responded, with a mischievous smile at her.

Isis laughed. ‘Don’t be jealous!’ She nudged him. ‘What about the girl you like, anyway? Does she know yet?’

Harry shook his head. ‘Noooo. I can’t tell her!’

Isis gave him a stern look. ‘Now that,’ she began, ‘is just ridiculous. If you don’t tell her, I will!’

‘But you don’t know who she is,’ Harry pointed out, entirely unhelpfully.

‘You’ll just have to tell me then, won’t you?’ she told him, looking up into his face to meet his eyes with a pleading expression. ‘Come on, mister, spit it out.’