In the Shade of You

Chapter Five: Aster

Aster leaned back from the computer as the printer began to spit out pages. She rubbed her lower back as she smiled to herself. It was finished! Aster was more than a little smug about her ability to get things finished before other students. Mrs Jamieson had thought she had got her, but Aster had taken the challenge, finding it had been easy to place herself in the other person's shoes. It wasn't hard really. Aster could understand a lot of the motivations behind Hans Christian Anderson's life. In particular his loves, Aster knew all too well the desire that could hold a person so tight that to lose such a love was to lose your life itself; to turn the one who remained into a shadow, a shade... a ghost.

She shuddered and closed her eyes. She never wanted to be like that. Never wanted her heart to be so in need, so in love that the very idea of losing that love would break you.

She collected the papers, stapled them and put them in her school bag, already organised, work complete and ready to go in the morning.

She leaned on the table.

Normally by this time of night she was exhausted, her mind mush from the amount of work she did, but instead her thoughts whirled, her senses hummed. She glanced back at the computer whirring away and tried to catch one of the thoughts that went about her head.

"What if I wrote my own? What would I say? What can I say?" She actually whispered it and flushed guiltily. She didn't have anyone to talk to, and once, long ago, she had had imaginary friends who had played and talked with her where normal, everyday children did not. Before she could change her mind Aster sat at the computer, pulled up another blank document and began;

I've always been good at telling stories. For years I lived without a television and had only books for company so the idea of words linking together to tell an adventure is something I know well. But my stories I didn't write, or read. My stories came alive and I lived them.

One of my stories was about a boy name Henry. I can't remember why he was called Henry. I must have had a reason but to me he was Henry because he said he was. I can still see him now if I concentrate; he was small boned with long, thin hands and a long thin face. I liked him straight away because he seemed lost, more lost than I was. In his story I was his rescuer, his brave friend who knew everything and could make everything better. When I was in Henry's story I was so brave that I fought monsters and conquered wild beasts. Our ultimate quest was to find his parents. That was another way Henry worshipped me, he had no family whereas I had my mother and my father. We never did find Henry's parents, and I can't remember when I stopped being his hero, and his story slowly drifted into hers.

Her name was Tilly and where Henry was a friend that needed reassurance and rescuing, Tilly needed none. She was brash, she was outspoken. She was everything Henry wasn't. Tilly was also older than both Henry and I, tall with long blonde hair she wore in braids. Over time I spent less and less time being Henry's hero and spent more time with Tilly, listening to her talk, and watching her boldness. Tilly became my hero and Henry faded away. In a way I think I became Henry as by that time Dad was in hospital and he never came out again.

Aster's fingers rested on the keys and her mind swum with the faces of Henry and Tilly and her father. Her dad's face always dominated her thoughts in the end. She would lie in bed and deliberately remember everything she could about him. His hair, his eyes, and the dent in his nose – she smiled – the way his left hand had two crooked fingers and how he used to comb them through her hair after drying it with a towel.

Aster wiped the tears from her cheeks and re-read what she had written. For a moment her fingers lingered on the backspace key, threatening to undo her words, her memories. Instead she clicked a few bars and waited as the printer did its work. The paper, the words, would go into her diary, away with the rest of her secret thoughts and dreams; half considered stories that rewove her own existence into something other then what was. It was hidden deeply away, kept within a special satchel along with her favourite pens and sketching materials. It had to be hidden, if her mother read any of it, she would be devastated.

Aster finally allowed weariness to sweep through her. It was well past midnight, already she knew the consequences would be a sluggish head in the coming day, but there was no one to notice. Aster crawled into bed and allowed herself to cry. She allowed the loneliness to swallow her, allowed the dark shadow to dwell in her before sleep ended her tears.

But the face she saw in her dreams was not her father's, or Tilly's, or Henry's.