The Moonlight Dreamers

by Siobhan Curham

  Sky nodded. “Truce.”

  “Yay!” Maali exclaimed. “The moonstone is working already.”

  They all looked at her questioningly.

  “It’s brought calm and peace,” she explained shyly.

  “I guess it has,” Rose said.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “The idea is you cut out the pictures that appeal to you,” Sky explained. “The ones that in some way symbolize your dreams and desires.” She watched as the others started leafing through their magazines. She particularly watched Rose for any sign that she hadn’t meant what she said before about the truce. But Rose was tearing out a picture already, her lips pursed in concentration. Sky was relieved. She’d felt awful when Amber got upset. And, much as she didn’t like Rose, there was no way she was going to let the tension between them ruin the Moonlight Dreamers. She watched as Amber tore a picture from her magazine. What had she meant about one of her dads making her life hell? And why did no one at school like her? Amber was definitely different, but different in a really interesting and unique way. Sky couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t like her. As for Maali, nothing seemed to faze her.

  Sky started flicking through her own magazine. There was a picture of the Eiffel Tower in the Travel section. She carefully tore it out and passed it to Amber. “I thought you might like this one – you know, for your Oscar Wilde dream.”

  Amber smiled, and again her entire face softened. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got one for you,” Rose said gruffly, passing Sky a picture, but barely making eye contact. Sky’s throat tightened. What if it was a joke? She looked at the picture. It was of a microphone stand. What was that supposed to mean?

  “It’s meant to symbolize the poetry slam,” Rose muttered. “I can take it back if you don’t like it.”

  “No! I really like it,” Sky said quickly. “Thank you.”

  Rose carried on flicking through her magazine. “Yo, Maali, I got the perfect one for you.”

  “What is it?”

  Rose held up a picture of a huge red love heart. Sky wondered whether Rose was making fun of Maali. But Maali grabbed the picture eagerly. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  How come Rose got on so well with the others? Sky kept flicking through her magazine and tore out a picture of a book to symbolize her poems. “OK, once you’ve got a picture for each of your dreams put them in the middle of the circle,” she said. She put down her picture of a microphone stand and book. Amber put down the picture of the Eiffel Tower and a photo of a laptop.

  “The laptop symbolizes my blog,” she explained.

  Maali put down the love heart, a picture of a dark-haired guy and a picture of a horse.

  “Aha, is that the guy?” Rose said with a knowing grin.

  Maali nodded.

  “So what’s the deal with the horse?” Rose said. “Is he a cowboy?”

  “No!” Maali exclaimed. “He works on a farm.”

  “For real?” Rose asked.

  Maali nodded shyly.

  Sky tried really hard not to look surprised. Of all the things she could have anticipated hearing tonight, Maali having the hots for a farmer was way down at the very bottom.

  Rose put a photo of a chocolate cake and a picture of a guy on a motorbike into the circle. “I couldn’t find one of a Harley,” she said, “so this’ll have to do. I don’t want the guy on it, though – just the bike.”

  “That’s fine,” Sky said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not exactly like your dream, as long as it’s symbolic of the dream in some way.”

  Rose nodded and almost appeared to smile. Their truce was definitely holding.

  A breeze drifted across the roof garden, ruffling the pictures.

  “Let’s use the candles to hold them down.” Amber took the candle by her chair and placed it over the edge of her pictures. The others followed suit.

  “Shall I put Chandra down there with them?” Maali asked. “You know, for good luck.”

  “Sure,” Sky said.

  “I’ll put the moonstone down too,” Amber said, placing the stone next to the picture of Chandra.

  “Now what do we do?” Rose looked around the circle.

  The truth was, Sky wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do next. On the internet it had suggested pinning the pictures onto a vision board. But they didn’t have a board and, anyway, they needed to come up with something unique – something just for the Moonlight Dreamers.

  “We need to focus on our photos for a moment,” Sky said, “and get a really clear picture of our dreams in our minds.”

  Rose nodded. “And we need to bring the moon into it too, right?”

  “Yes.” Sky glanced at Amber for inspiration.

  Amber looked thoughtful. “I think we should ask the moon to help us make our dreams come true.”

  “Yes, just like when I pray to Lakshmi,” Maali said.

  “But this definitely isn’t a religious thing,” Rose said.

  “I know, I know.” Maali smiled.

  “OK, let’s all look at our pictures and really imagine our dreams coming true,” Sky said. She gazed down at the microphone stand. Then she closed her eyes and pictured standing at the front of a packed Poetry Café, holding the microphone as effortlessly as a pop star. Hello, my name’s Halo, she imagined saying before performing her poem. And for a moment she was actually there: she could actually hear herself performing the poem and a ripple of applause afterwards. She opened her eyes. The others seemed to be lost in their dreams too. Sky watched as one by one they opened their eyes.

  “That was amazing,” Maali whispered.

  “Yeah, well, I hope you and Old MacDonald didn’t get too X-rated down on the farm,” Rose said with a grin.

  Maali giggled. “Of course not.”

  Amber was smiling softly. “I felt as if I was actually in Paris,” she said.

  “Tell me about it!” Rose exclaimed. “I could practically smell the gasoline. I dreamt I was riding to the cake shop where I worked. It was epic!” She looked at Sky. “Now what?”

  “Shall we take it in turns to say something to the moon? Give thanks or something?” Amber suggested.

  Sky nodded.

  “Let’s hold hands again,” Maali said. “To, you know, link up.”

  Sky took hold of Maali’s and Amber’s hands. It didn’t feel so weird this time. In fact, it felt nice. Safe.

  “Why don’t we take it in turns to ask the moon to help us,” Sky said. She looked up into the dark night sky. “Please help me find the confidence to perform in the poetry slam.” She turned to Amber.

  “Please give me the patience to deal with the imbeciles at my school and my slangwhanger of a father,” Amber said.

  Rose looked at her. “Your what?”

  “Slangwhanger,” Amber said. “It means a loud, obnoxious person.”

  “Cool!” Rose chuckled.

  Amber nodded at her. “Your turn.”

  Rose looked momentarily stumped, then she looked up too. “Oh – uh – please help me make my dreams come true and – uh – if you could also help out with the other issue, that would be awesome.”

  Sky bristled. What “other issue”? Was Rose talking about her? Rose opened her eyes and nodded at Maali.

  “Dear Chandra,” Maali began, “please help me make my dreams come true and help me overcome my shyness. Thank you.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  “Now what do we do?” Rose asked.

  “We should release our dreams into the cosmos,” Maali said.

  “And once again, in English?”

  “We need to let them go, to let Chandra – the moon – do its magic.”

  “Yes,” Sky agreed. She was sure she’d read about this somewhere: that once you’d made a wish you were supposed to let it go. “But how?”

  Another breeze drifted across the roof garden.

  “Easy,” Rose replied, looki
ng around. “We fold up the pictures and throw them into the wind.”

  “Good idea,” said Amber.

  Rose smiled. “Thanks.”

  They picked up their pictures and folded them tightly.

  “Come on.” Amber led them over to the wall without the trellis.

  Sky looked down to the street below. It was completely obscured by the gauzy mist. It was perfect.

  “Should we say something as we let them go?” Maali asked.

  “The quote,” Sky and Rose said together.

  “Jinx,” Rose muttered.

  “ ‘Yes: I am a dreamer…’ ” Amber chanted, throwing her dreams into the mist.

  “ ‘For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight…’ ” Sky said, releasing hers.

  “ ‘…and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world,’ ” Maali and Rose chanted together as they threw their dreams from the roof.

  They all watched as the paper disappeared into the mist.

  “Now what?” Maali said, her eyes wide and sparkling.

  “Now it’s my turn to share something moon-related,” Rose said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I – uh – I made you some cakes.”

  ROSE’S RECIPE FOR MOONLIGHT DREAMER CUPCAKES

  Ingredients

  175g butter, at room temperature

  175g caster sugar

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  3 eggs

  Juice and zest of 1 lemon

  200g self-raising flour

  1 pinch salt

  • Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla.

  • Stir in the eggs, one by one.

  • Then stir in the lemon juice and zest. (Don’t be put off if it looks a bit gross at this point!)

  • Mix the flour and salt together, then slowly add to the batter. (Don’t worry about the lumps, just keep on mixing and they will eventually go.)

  • Spoon the mixture into cake cases. (You will need 15–24, depending on how big you like your cakes and how much mixture ends up flying out of the bowl…)

  • Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180ºC (which is apparently gas mark 4) for about 15 mins.

  • To test if the cake is ready, stick a cocktail stick into the middle. If it comes out clean it’s done, if it’s covered in gooey stuff, it isn’t.

  Frosting

  For an awesome cream cheese frosting, mix 450g cream cheese with 125g of softened butter. Then add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 250g icing sugar. (Make sure you sieve the icing sugar or you’ll live to regret it!)

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  As Maali turned on the fairy lights around her shrine she felt weightless with joy, as if she were a giant, heart-shaped helium balloon. Tonight had been brilliant. She hadn’t felt as self-conscious as before, and visualizing her dream coming true had been way more powerful than any of her daydreams about Ash – and she’d been having a lot! Plus Rose had made them the most amazing moon-inspired cupcakes. Fluffy lemon and vanilla sponge, topped with a cream cheese frosting because, as Rose had said, the moon was supposed to be made from cheese.

  “Thank you, Lakshmi, for bringing the Moonlight Dreamers into my life,” Maali whispered to the statuette of the goddess. “And thank you for helping Rose get her work experience.”

  As they’d sat eating the cakes and drinking tea from Amber’s flask, Rose told them how she’d got the work experience at a French cake shop in Camden: she’d simply asked if she could help out. “You have to do stuff to make your dreams come true, right? You can’t just sit around and wish,” Rose had said. Maali needed to be bold, like Rose. She needed to do something. But what? She looked back at Lakshmi.

  “What should I do?” she asked. She waited for inspiration, but all she could hear was the low hum of her parents talking downstairs. She said a quick prayer, then pulled her laptop from her desk and flipped it open. If Lakshmi couldn’t help, then maybe Google could. How do I talk to boys? she typed into the search engine and hit ENTER.

  Rose cracked an egg on the side of the mixing bowl and watched as the glistening yolk plopped into the cake mix like a splosh of yellow paint. It was Wednesday afternoon. Sky and her dad had gone to see an exhibition in the West End as part of her home-schooling and Savannah was in meetings with the cosmetics company she was “the face” of.

  Rose wasn’t sure why, but school was making her feel edgy. Her uniform felt too tight, the lessons too regimented, the noise too loud. She’d spent all morning dreaming of being alone in the kitchen baking cakes, so when the bell for lunch break rang she’d told Jasmine and the others she wasn’t feeling too well and got the train home. She took the bowl into the crook of her arm the way she’d seen Francesca do it, and started to beat the egg into the mixture with a wooden spoon.

  A new track began playing on her laptop. She’d picked a playlist on Spotify called Parisian Walkways, figuring it would help her imagine being back in the patisserie. She glanced at the title of the track. “Non, Je ne regrette rien”; No, I regret nothing. Rose started beating the mixture in time to the song. As if on cue, a shaft of pale sunlight burst through the clouds and poured into the kitchen. Even though it was pretty old and crackly, there was no denying it was a kick-ass tune. Rose started singing along. That’s how she wanted to live her life – never regretting a thing. And she didn’t regret a thing, apart from sending Matt that photo.

  To stop herself from stressing, Rose closed her eyes and imagined she was back in the patisserie. She’d gone there on Sunday, inspired by her visit to Maali’s mom’s shop, and asked Francesca if she could do some work experience. Francesca had given her a breathtaking smile and grabbed her in a hug. She’d smelled of a delicious mix of vanilla and cocoa.

  Rose felt a strange shivery sensation in the pit of her stomach. She quickly opened her eyes and carried on stirring. Francesca was chronically short-staffed so she’d been overjoyed at Rose’s offer and told her to come in after school whenever she liked. Rose went back to the counter and tipped some flour into the mixture. Francesca didn’t use scales when she baked. “Eet is all about the feeling and knowing,” she’d told Rose. Rose wasn’t exactly sure what she’d meant, but she had made a careful note of the consistency of the cake batter when they’d put it into the cases. She tipped in some more flour and stirred. Little puffs erupted from the bowl as the song started building to a crescendo and Rose stirred more vigorously in time. “Non, Je ne regrette rien!” she sang along, louder and louder as she stirred faster and faster. Everything was going to be OK. She had work experience doing something she loved, with someone she … she really liked. She and Sky were carefully choreographing their movements around the house to make sure they never met, and tonight she was seeing Matt and she would sneak his phone and delete the photo. She started dancing round the kitchen with the mixing bowl as she thought of finally being free from Matt and his wandering hands and his creepy text messages. “Je ne regrette ri—”

  “What’s going on?” Savannah’s voice cut through the music like a scalpel.

  Rose put the bowl on the counter and her spirits crashed back down to earth. The usually immaculate work surface was covered in splatters of cake mix and flour. She slowly turned round. Savannah was standing in the doorway, hands on hips. There were black mascara smudges under her eyes, as if she’d been crying. Shit. Something was badly wrong. Savannah was as anal about her make-up being immaculate as she was about the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Savannah said in the tight little voice she always used right before going nuts.

  “I’m baking,” Rose muttered, glancing at the clock. Damn. It was only just gone two-thirty. She was well and truly busted.

  “Baking?” Savannah spat the word out like it tasted bad.

  “Yes.” Rose felt her hackles start to rise. What the hell was her problem? Surely it wasn’t a crime.

  Savannah marched in and shuddered. “And what is that?” She pointed to the mess on the counter.

  “It’s flour, M
other.”

  “Flour?” Savannah’s mouth fell open. They hadn’t had flour in the house since she’d developed a wheat allergy right after being dropped by Victoria’s Secret.

  “It’s OK, you don’t have to eat any of them,” Rose muttered.

  “Any of what?”

  “My cakes.”

  “Cakes?” Savannah looked at the bag of sugar on the counter and gulped. “You’re making cakes?”

  A new song started playing. Something bouncy and loud and very French. Rose squirmed. What had seemed fun and relaxing now seemed embarrassing and stupid under the filter of her mom’s glare. Savannah marched over to the oven and switched it off. Then she snapped the laptop shut. The sudden silence threatened to swallow Rose whole. But she couldn’t weaken now. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, apart from skipping school, but Savannah hadn’t even noticed that.

  Savannah sighed and shook her head as she looked around the kitchen. “I want you to clean up this mess and then go to your room,” she said. “I cannot deal with this right now.”

  “But my cakes…”

  “You’re not making cakes.”

  Rose felt her temples start to throb. “But I’ve made the mixture. I bought the ingredients.” She gestured at the mixing bowl. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Throw it out. All of it. Right now. I can’t believe you would do this to me.”

  Rose stepped back, shocked. “Do what to you?”

  “Make cakes. Bring that into my house.” Savannah marched over to the bag of sugar and threw it into the bin.

  Rose stared at her. “Are you for real?”

  Savannah slung the flour into the bin. “Don’t back-chat me, Rose. After the day I’ve had I’m so not in the mood.”

  This was insane. Rose thought of all the things Savannah could have caught her doing and she was getting busted for baking some freaking cakes.

  “I want this place cleaned and back to normal right now,” Savannah said.

  “Oh, really.” Rose’s heart was pounding so hard she could hear the thump-thump in her ears. She held the mixing bowl out in front of her, then very slowly and deliberately tipped it over. The gloopy cake mixture splattered onto the floor.