Double Trouble (Zodiac Girls) Read online

  Zodiac Girls –

  Double Trouble

  Cathy Hopkins

  Copyright © 2008, Cathy Hopkins

  ISBN number: 9781908426901

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: Prizes

  Chapter Two: Zodiac Girl

  Chapter Three: Moving House

  Chapter Four: Spook Night

  Chapter Five: PJ?

  Chapter Six: New House

  Chapter Seven: Guardian

  Chapter Eight: First Night

  Chapter Nine: A Visit

  Chapter Ten: Makeover Magic

  Chapter Eleven: Motorbike Messenger Boy

  Chapter Twelve: Secrets Out

  Chapter Thirteen: Second Zodiac Week

  Chapter Fourteen: Zodiac Week Three

  Chapter Fifteen: Zodiac Week Four

  Chapter Sixteen: Last Secrets

  Chapter One

  Prizes

  I have three secrets. Nobody but me knows what they are, not even my twin sister, Lilith. It would be awful if she found out. And not only her; just thinking about how other people might react made me feel as if tiny butterflies were flapping inside my stomach, trying to get out.

  I glanced over at Lilith who was standing next to me in line at our school assembly. She was my perfect reflection, well, almost – same dark hair, oval face, wide mouth, brown eyes – but if you looked closely you’d see that her forehead is a little higher and that I have a tiny birthmark on the back of my neck. But apart from that, it’s like looking at myself. It’s like I am me but there are two of me.

  ‘Good luck,’ we whispered to each other at exactly the same time. We often said things in unison. It’s a twin thing.

  ‘Same to you,’ we both whispered back as Mr Williams sprang up on to the stage, stood behind the podium and took the envelope that Miss Regan, our English teacher, had handed him. He made a big fuss of putting his glasses on then peered over them at the sea of pupils gathered before him. ‘And the winner of this half term’s poetry competition for Year Eight goes to … ’ He opened the envelope then paused, in that annoying way that the judges on Saturday night TV talent shows do when they announce who’s still in and who’s out. It’s an exaggerated pause to build the suspense and all the contestants have to stand there trying to look as if they’re not bothered either way, but you can see them sweating or gritting their teeth. At our house, we yell, ‘Get on with it!’ at the telly, but that wouldn’t be appropriate here seeing as we’re at school and Mr Williams is the headmaster. All our teachers have adopted the same manner whenever they announce anything in school these days. It’s so boring.

  Up at the front, Mr Williams smirked at the rest of the staff to the left of the stage and they smirked back as if acknowledging how cool and modern he was being. All I could think was, I hope it’s me, I hope it’s me. Lilith had won the competition three terms on the trot and, like the Oscars in Hollywood, I reckoned it was someone else’s go for a change – like mine. Not that I begrudged Lilith winning. How could I? She’s my best friend in the world, my sister, my twin. And she writes amazing poetry, like, really intense and dark. It pours out of her like water, or, as my obnoxious elder brother Adam says, like pus out of a zit. He really is disgusting.

  I have to work harder at writing and this time I’d tried my best to match Lilith. I’d rewritten and rewritten it until it was as good as I felt it could be. I glanced over at Lilith again. She was dressed in our school uniform which, luckily for us, is black (with a white shirt). I say lucky for us because we’re goths. We have been since Christmas in Year Seven when we took a trip to London and saw a bunch of them slouch past looking like extras in a Dracula movie. We thought they were the coolest people we’d ever seen, like totally from another era, and we immediately copied the style. Lilith loves it because she says that dressing like a goth is a statement because it is the negation of fashion. She often comes out with stuff like that. God knows what she’s on about sometimes. She’s very clever. Personally I like dressing that way because the fingerless black lace gloves and the silver jewellery are so pretty – though obviously we can’t wear those at school. I have a fab diamanté cross and Lilith has a ring with a skull on it, and whenever we can get away with it we wear black kohl round our eyes to make ourselves look mysterious. Some know-it-alls at our school say that goth is long over, but Lilith tells them that we dress like we do because we want to, not because we’re being dictated to like other saddos who are slaves to the latest trend shown in a magazine.

  As Mr Williams continued to scan his audience, Lilith appeared to be relaxed, apart from a tiny vein in her temple that was throbbing – that gave her away. Only I knew that it happened when she was stressed. I bite my nails when I’m anxious. They’re bitten right down at the moment. Mum and Dad tried to stop me biting them by painting on some bitter-tasting stuff to put me off, but I grew to like it. As a last resort, they’ve booked me a session with a counsellor in the hope that she will get to the root of why I bite them. I have to see her in the half-term break, which is next week. Just thinking about someone trying to find out my secrets and make me talk about them only makes me doubly anxious and so I bite my nails even more.

  Mr Williams coughed. ‘And the winner is … [another long pause. Yawn, yawn] Lilith Palumbo.’

  I put on my best Oscar loser face (forced smile, clenched jaw) and clapped along with the others. Lilith grinned, squeezed my arm as if to say, sorry you didn’t win, then set off for the stage to get her prize. I felt jealous. I couldn’t help it. Lilith again. Lilith, Lilith, Lilith. Everything always happens for Lilith. She’s often top of the class. She’s already had the science prize and it’s only the beginning of October. Now the poetry as well, and she’s always picked to be on everyone’s team in hockey and netball. She’s everyone’s first choice. I’m like an afterthought: ‘Oh, and there’s Eve, Lilith’s twin, better not leave her out.’ It’s like I’m her shadow, hardly a person in my own right. Even though I love her loads, sometimes it’s hard always being in second place. I was born second and have been ever since. Mum and Dad gave Lilith her name because it means the first woman. (It also means night demon. I found that out when I was looking up our names on the Internet once. I’m saving that juicy bit of information for some day when it comes in handy – like when she brings her first boyfriend home. Tee hee.) Mum and Dad named my brother Adam because he was the first boy and Adam means first man. And they called me Eve because she was the second person and they thought they were being clever. Second twin, second person.

  ‘And I am sure everyone would love to hear our prize winner’s poem,’ said Mr Williams as Lilith looked coyly at the floor.

  ‘Not really, poetry’s so boring,’ said our mate, Mary Stewart, from behind me and I had to suppress a giggle.

  Up on the stage, Lilith had got out her poem. She coughed to let us all know that she was about to start.

  ‘It’s called “Dark Betrayal”,’ she said, then she began to read in her put-on posh dramatic voice, which always makes me want to fall over laughing. ‘Around, all around, storm clouds gather. My dread grows as the angry hand of heaven falls against my naked soul. It crushes me and my life’s blood drips to the barren land. In pain, I try to run but Death’s shadow hovers close. I cry out but my cascade of tears falls upon blind eyes. This is my hell, my fury.’

  Whamakazoo! Where does she get it from? I wondered in awe as I listened. She’s almost thirteen, but what she writes is so grown up and sophisticated. Mum says it’s because Lilith is an old soul. I’d written a goth poem too with a blood-dripping vampire, a pale moon and a tragic heroine, but I knew it was nowhere near as good as Lilith’s.

  ‘Blooming rubbish,’
Mary whispered behind me while Lilith looked modestly at the floor as people clapped. ‘She needs to cheer up, does your sister.’ Instead of joining in the applause, she got out her lip salve and the air immediately smelt of strawberries.

  Although Mary is friends with both of us, sometimes I think she might be more my friend than Lilith’s. Of course, I would never say that to Lilith in case she decided that we weren’t to hang out with Mary any more. Lilith makes most of the decisions about who we see and what we do, and I always go along with it. That’s always how it’s been. Although part of me was disappointed that I hadn’t won, another part sighed with relief. Lilith isn’t used to being in second place like I am.

  Chapter Two

  Zodiac Girl

  In the break, Lilith went off to call Mum and Dad and give them the news about her prize while I went to the library. It was Year Eight’s time for using the computers and Mrs Andrews, our Marge Simpson look-a-like librarian, let us surf the Internet and look up what we wanted as long as it was vaguely connected to some project work.

  Mary Stewart walked along with me. We made a funny-looking pair because I’m five foot seven and from an Italian background and Mary’s a tiny blonde, four foot something and a typical English rose. She looks young for her age, a fact that drives her mad, especially when a bunch of us are trying to get in a 12A or 15 rated movie.

  The girls in our class are all sizes, some girls are tall beanstalks, like Ginette Bailey – she’s the tallest at six foot – and then there are the little ones like Mary. Lilith says that Mary is like a small dog in that she makes a lot of noise to make up for her short stature. Whatever. She makes me laugh. I like her. She’s funny and irreverent and is the only person I know who stands up to Lilith when she’s being bossy.

  As we made our way down the corridor, we chatted about Lilith and all her achievements.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said as she linked arms with me, ‘is that seeing as Lilith and I are twins, both Scorpios with the same horoscope, born on the same days, in the same place, how comes our destinies are turning out so different? Like Lilith is a winner and I’m not even a loser. I’m just invisible.’

  ‘No you’re not – you’re just different,’ said Mary, ‘and there may be a reason for that.’

  ‘Like what? Mum brought the wrong twin home from the hospital?’ I joked.

  ‘No. You probably have different rising signs.’

  ‘Rising signs? What are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Have you ever had your birth chart done?’

  ‘What, like in astrology?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I look at our horoscopes in my City Girl mag each week; it’s always the same for both of us. Both of us were born on October the twenty-sixth so we’re Scorpios.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s more to it than that. My sister Jane is really into it and she explained it to me. To get an accurate birth chart, you need your date of birth, place of birth and time of birth.’

  ‘Why? What difference does that make?’

  ‘A lot,’ said Mary. ‘Apparently there’s a whole lot more to astrology than your sun sign, which is like your main sign, and then of course there’s the horoscope you read in the paper. Like, you’re Scorpio, yeah? And I’m Aquarius. Well, that’s only part of it. There are twelve sun signs. One for roughly each month.’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘So, there are also other planets that affect your chart, like the moon, Mars, Venus and so on, I think Jane said that there are ten of them. As the sun changes signs every month, the moon changes signs every two days – so a whole bunch of Scorpio people will all have their moons in different places, you know what I mean? If you do your maths, in one month, thirty days, that means that the moon will change signs—’

  ‘About fifteen times.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, according to our Jane, the moon in a chart determines how you are emotionally. Like someone with their moon in Aries will be quick and sometimes blunt in expressing their emotions because Aries is the sign that leaps before it looks. Someone with their moon in Pisces would be more sensitive because that’s how Pisces is.’

  ‘Wow. I never knew that. I wonder where my moon is? And Lilith’s?’

  ‘We can find that out as well as your rising sign.’

  ‘So, what’s a rising sign, then?’

  ‘That’s the bit of your chart that determines a lot about your outer personality, like your sun sign is who you really are on the inside, but your rising sign, or ascendant as it is sometimes known, is how you are perceived by others.’

  ‘Like your public face?’ I asked as we reached the library. Inside, it smelt of cheese-and-onion crisps and stale air on account of the fact that there weren’t any windows that opened and the radiators were usually on full blast so it always stank of whatever anyone had eaten in there last.

  ‘Yeah, and the sun changes from one sign to the next every two hours.’

  ‘Every two hours? Then … ohmigod … I see, so that’s why you’re saying that Lilith and I might have different rising signs?’

  ‘It’s possible, yeah. Unless you were born at exactly the same time. And you might have the same rising sign if you were born within the same two-hour slot, but say she was born just before one sign changed to the next and you were born just after, then you’d have different rising signs. I reckon you have because you really are so different.’

  The idea that Lilith and I may be different after all was intriguing. ‘B-but this is awesome. How do I find out?’

  Mary beckoned me over to the computer area, which was behind a glass partition to the right of the main area. ‘Website. I know the one my sister uses. Do you know your time of birth?’

  ‘I was born twenty minutes after Lilith.’

  ‘Let’s do it. Jot down your details for me.’

  I glanced over at the librarian who was talking to a pupil from behind her desk. ‘But will Mrs Andrews mind? It’s not exactly course work.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll blag it if she asks. She rarely does, though.’

  We bagged a computer in the corner and I wrote out the details of my and Lilith’s birth while Mary opened the computer and accessed the website. Moments later, a web page floated on to the screen and a form asking for personal details appeared. The computer began to play some kind of astral harp floaty music.

  ‘Shhhh,’ hushed a girl sitting next to us, and she pointed to the notice on the wall asking people to be quiet.

  Mary clicked on SOUND OFF and the music ceased. I put the paper with our details where she could see it and she began to fill in the form.

  ‘I’ll do mine first so that you can see how it works,’ she whispered.

  I watched as she filled in answers to the questions, then clicked on SUBMIT. Seconds later, a page appeared with a drawing of a circle with lines through it and little squiggly symbols all over it.

  ‘That’s my chart,’ said Mary, and she pointed at the screen. ‘See the circle is divided into twelve? Like pieces of a pie? Those are the twelve houses. They represent different aspects of your life – like your career, your goals, your home, stuff like that. And see the little symbols?’ I strained to look closer. ‘Those are the planets. And that tiny circle with the dot in the middle of it is the symbol for the sun. And this piece of the circle with the two wavy lines across it at the top of the section – that’s the symbol for Aquarius.’

  ‘So that means your sun is in Aquarius?’

  ‘That’s it. Now see the little crescent moon?’

  I searched the screen and found a tiny moon. ‘Yeah. I see it.’

  ‘Well, the moon is in the piece of the pie with the symbol that looks like a bull’s head above it – the symbol for Taurus – so I know my moon is in Taurus. There’s a symbol for each of the planets. I don’t know all of them yet. I’m still learning.’

  ‘Do the rest of the planets move around in a few days or do they all take a month li
ke the sun?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘All different. Let me see if I can remember. Mmm. Sun takes thirty days. Moon two days. Mars about six weeks, er … Jupiter twelve years, Saturn twenty-eight years—’

  ‘Twenty-eight years!’

  ‘Yeah. I remember that because some of them are really slow moving; Neptune is fourteen years. I forget the others but they’re all different.’

  ‘Wow. So that must mean a lot of us were born when Saturn was in the same place.’

  ‘Exactly, and probably Neptune as well.’

  ‘So where’s your rising sign?’

  ‘See there –’ Mary pointed at the screen – ‘that squiggle there? That shows what my rising sign is: Gemini. But you don’t need to understand any of this, not really. You just punch in your details and the computer does it for you, like magic, and then tells you what it means.’

  ‘Thank goodness, because I don’t think I’d ever get it. It sounds complicated.’

  ‘You would get it. It’s like anything – you have to learn the rules first and then you can interpret a chart at a glance. My sister’s really good at it. I’m still a beginner. I can do sun signs – that’s easy peasy. Anyone can do that. And I can do moon signs and I can do rising signs. In fact, I think I might be an astrologer when I grow up. Either that or a brain surgeon or a dancer on a cruise ship; I can’t decide. So do you want to do Lilith’s or yours first?’

  I was about to say do mine first, but then I thought it would be good to know what Lilith’s rising sign was first so I’d know immediately if mine was different when we did my chart. ‘Lilith,’ I said, and pointed at her details.

  Mary cleared the screen of her chart and punched in Lilith’s details. Her chart appeared in seconds.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Impressive. That’s so fast. So what’s her rising sign?’

  Mary scrutinized the screen then scrolled on to the next page. ‘Aries,’ said Mary.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac so—’