Like Stars At Night

One

I know you opened this book thinking it's a love story, well that's where you'd be wrong.

It is not a love story, it is a ruination.

We were two glass marbles on an incline called life, destined to collide, destined to shatter each other.

While, yes, it does have the typical markings of a love story — two individuals different in many ways but similar in many more, an attraction so intense it's almost sickening, among other things — do not let that throw you off. That is not what this is.

It is a slow and steady descent into an abyss of destruction and ruin.

But I've said too much. I don't want to prejudice you before you enter, I don't want to scare you off either.

I'll just leave you to make your own decision about what kind of story this really is.

• • •

It all started on a cool Sunday in January.

As usual, I was on my bed with my pink binder plotting out how my Monday would go.

School was beginning the next day and I was more than excited to finally begin SS2. I'd been reading up on the coursework throughout the holiday and I couldn't wait to finally learn it in class.

Don't get me wrong, I hated school just as much as the next person but I enjoyed learning.

“Hello!” came a shrill voice.

Snapping out of my thoughts I looked down at the laptop sitting beside me on my blanket covered with pictures of tiny strawberries and locked eyes with the girl I was video chatting with. She had her eyebrows drawn into a frustrated look.

“I'm sorry, Auggie. What were you saying?” I closed the book and kept it beside me giving my cousin my full attention.

“Are you ok, sha? It's like you're in another world,” Augustine stopped rummaging through her closet and fixed me with a stern yet concerned look.

I chuckled and lifted my laptop, cradling it on my lap. “I'm fine, now where were we?”

“Last party before I get shipped off to school next week,” she held up a sliver blouse and after making a disgusted face threw it away. I watched it land on the growing heap of clothes around her.

She scratched her untidy black braids, threw her hands up and turned to the screen, planting them on her hips. “Jesus, Amara, you're supposed to be helping, for Christ's sake.”

“I am! You're just extra judgy today.” I shrugged.

She sighed and pulled a chair to sit in front of her laptop. “I know. It's just, you're going back to your prison tomorrow and I'm not going back to mine for another week and I'm going to miss you. Who's going to bore me with details of that telenovela? What was the name again? Iron Rose abi what?” She pouted her plump lips and I laughed.

Augustine was the only one in my family I could really talk to. We were closer in age and both shared the sentiment that our family was wack.

While she was every bit the definition of black beauty — with her chocolate skin and oval face — I showed more of our mixed-race origins. My skin was lighter, tending towards a honey colour, my eyes were caramel and my black hair was unnaturally long and straight.