Moonshine

Chapter 1 :: finding champagne supernovas in the sky

Sydney

I shuddered, stuffing my icy hands deep into my sweater. My gaze hovered on the silver plane in the fiery orange sky, leaving trails of blushing candyfloss over the bustling city of London.

I sighed, slipped my headphones over my ears and pressed play. Christmas had been and gone like a visitor that had outstayed their welcome. New Years was a blur of colours, of family dinners and fireworks. Only a few days later, and I felt the ominous anticipation of school hanging over me like the blade of a guillotine.

I tore my eyes away from the window, returning to the sprawled textbooks and lined notebooks, heavy with the ink of my effort.

I couldn't focus. My brain was lost inside the tangled mess of my mind, and my eyes drifted from the tired textbooks, finding peace in the sky. Tiny puffs of grey clouds looked like the pathetic blows of a fireless dragon, dying with the sun.

'Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky...'

I sighed and leaned back into my desk chair. The sky did look like a champagne supernova, true to the Oasis classic. But it wasn't the horizon that made me sigh. It was the huge city that was trapped beneath it. And it was me. Trapped in that city. It was almost like I could feel my arms stretching through the black, black bars of this cage. My fingertips would brush the wild feeling of being free, of being alive. My hands would clutch at it, scrabble for it, cry for it, and that was when the cold metal would dig into my arms and pull me back.

Three more years, I reassured myself, three more years of sick studying and strict teachers and judgemental friends. Then, I'm out.

I hated school. As a young preteen, I would look at each new term as a fresh start, a new impression, a new me. What I would always try to forget is that people would hold the person that I used to be against myself.

A car horn honked rudely in the city below, saving my mind from itself. The 18th-storey of this tall apartment block where I lived with my family floated above the crowded chaos of the city below us, almost like there was a barrier between the walls of my room and the bustle of London.

London... The only place that accepted me for who I really was and what I really wanted to do with my life. I couldn't say that I'd met any people like that. People were attention-seeking, judgemental creatures who always wanted to find and tear apart every negative that existed.

But at least not all humans were like that. I mean, my best friend since our mothers' hospital ward, Aaliyah, was the best person I knew. I would look at her and see clear-sky sunshine and empty beaches and perfect smiles. Then, I would look in the full-length mirror on the back of my door and see dull moonlight and shivering nights and icy eyes. It was so often so hard to be friends with someone like that, someone that seemed so perfect when you knew you weren't.

The song in my ears ended, and silence followed. Even though I could sense the world moving beneath me, it felt like my life had stopped, that I was still.

After a few moments, I removed my headphones, snatched the open packet off my bed and left my room, pulling the door closed behind me. The dog-eared corners crumpled as I stuffed them into the pocket of my skinny jeans.

Jake was in the kitchen making his late-afternoon coffee. "Oh, hey Sydney. It's about time you woke up. It's 5:30, you lazy ass!"