She Danced under the Stars ✔

5

A warm wave spreads within me. The harmonious fusion between my body and the night begins. I enjoy that blissful feeling of peace among silence again, far from a lump of fear or a cold shiver . . . I close my eyes. Alas, it only lasts a few seconds. Lily's squeak rouses me from my trance.

'What? What's going on?' I stammer. 'Don't tell me that –'

'Here, the fir tree! There's – something moving at the foot. I'm sure.'

As all my senses are hanging on the edge of a drop, I stare at the lower branches on the tree that she points to. My breath catches in my chest. Panic-stricken, Lily grabs my wrist and sticks her nails in my flesh. The branches quiver. I give a gasp. Don't tell me, don't you tell me that last night's guy is going to come out from under there . . . Don't tell me that he's up to something shady and he's going to spot us . . . Don't tell me that –

A little shape springs out from under the fir tree. Slim and grey. Four-legged. My fear pops off like a champagne cork. The bubbles evaporate.

'Phew! It's Milo!' Lily cries.

Drunk with relief, I breathe a sigh. We watch my cat as it walks away in the grass. I turn toward Lily. 'Well done! I nearly had a heart attack for nothing.'

She gives a sheepish pout. Then she exaggerates it, until she puckers up her lips like a big drooling baby. I burst into nervous laughter. She got me.

Lily trots off along the ridge and I chase after her. We challenge each other through tickles, dodges, counterattacks and tasteless jokes, until we go back down to the edge of the left slope.

I position myself with my back to the emptiness and I crouch down, ready to lean on my forearms with all my weight so that I can slide to the garage below. My knee slips on a hole. I collapse on the gutter that cuts into my stomach; I reach out with a gasp. My heart is crushed against my ribs. My sweaty hand holds on tight to the gutter, as the brackets let out a sinister creak.

Lily secures her position in front of me, standing flat against the slope with her feet apart. She stretches out her arms toward me. 'Take my hands!' she yelps.

I reach up for Lily but I feel sucked into the emptiness. My heart freezes as I fall and I drag the gutter off with me and I scrape the wall hard; I sprawl on a flat surface. Pain in my hip. I am shaking all over as I clasp a piece of the gutter to my breast. Everything is whirling around me. I remain huddled up on the concrete, panting, paying close attention to the twinges in my hip, until Lily lands beside me.

'Anything broken?' she asks worriedly, feeling my arms and legs. She takes the metal piece out of my hands gently.

I pick myself up clinging on to her. I stagger for a few seconds. My head is spinning. The stars blur before my eyes. 'I'm fine, I'm fine,' I mumble.

Lily heaves a sigh of relief. I rub my hip: the pain is far from being a firebomb. No reason for me to fear a broken bone, I'll get away with a big bruise. We walk slowly across the roof when a light shines through the darkness on our left. A porch lamp. Then a couple of windows light up above us. A swearword bursts out on the other side of the courtyard.

Lily and I exchange a look. And that is only when I realize how loud was the crash I've just been the cause of, the noise still echoing in the air between the buildings.

'Let's get out of here,' we whisper in unison.

We run to the edge of the roof and catch sight of a garbage can below; we jump onto it one after the other, landing in the neighbors' courtyard. We make a dash for a little gate to the furious barking of a dog, which has been woken by the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel. Other squares light up on the checkerboard of windows. My heart is racing.

I leap the little gate and, with Lily close on my heels, I cut across the lawns toward the tall fir tree where my cat had been hiding. We roll in the grass under the lower branches and take cover there. I clap my hand over my mouth. I can't hear anything now; my blood pulses so fast in my temples that it muffles the murmur of the night.

I stare at the little gate that leads to the courtyard. No family man shows up in his pajamas with a flashlight in his hand. No shrew threatens out loud to call the police. Only the raging dog barks in the back of a garden.

I had barely begun to breathe again when Lily tugs at my sleeve. 'Up there, up there!' she whines in my ear.

I look up at the building she points to. The tall, dark figure stands still against the moon, evoking a statue among the chimneys. But statues don't have a gaze that's piercing like a blade and cold like a grave—and they sure don't have a cloak whose folds ripple in the breeze.