Authors: Holly Smale

All That Glitters (48 page)

From the glow of the sparklers, I can see five of the people I love best, lit up and laughing.

Along with my number one dog.

“
Toby
,” Nat snaps irritably, waving her firework in the air ferociously, “you’re supposed to be making an A, you idiot. Not another T.”

“Oh.” Toby frowns. “So who’s making the T?”

“Who
is
making the tea?” Dad asks. “I’ll have one. Four sugars, just a drop of milk.” I can’t help noticing he has a big black moustache stuck on and is wearing a chef’s hat.

Tabby’s in her lobster pot, staring in awe at the lights.

Hugo races towards me: paws in my stomach before I’ve even closed the door.

“No offence, but I am
nailing
this letter
R,
” India says coolly. “Seriously. Step your game up, people. It’s blatantly the trickiest one.”

Then I glance behind them.

In the middle of the garden is an enormous, seven-foot sculpture of a white angel with gold wings. I turn in confusion to Annabel and she winks at me knowingly: it was obviously hand-delivered while I was at my so-called party.

OK, maybe she didn’t have cameras at school after all.

Slowly, I walk towards it.

It’s incredibly beautiful. The face is delicately shaped, the plaster is smooth and the enormous wings have been covered in tiny gold-painted feathers and attached to the sculpture with a knot of thick white string over the shoulders.

Stuck to the left wing is a little piece of paper.

It’s not an angel at all, I realise, as I turn the note over.

It’s Icarus.

And I can feel the light starting to shine out of me, brighter than it ever has before.

Because I know a few things about space.

I know it’s big and dark and lonely. I know that all stars are moving away from each other and 99.9999 per cent of the universe is made up of nothing, including us.

But I also know that there are a lot of things about it we still don’t understand.

Scientists discovered very recently that ninety per cent of the universe’s light source is inexplicably missing. They can see it, they can measure it, but they don’t know where it’s coming from.

For just a second, I think maybe I do.

As I watch the people I love, drawing my name in the sky with glitter – as I think about the people I love and miss, all over the world – I wonder briefly if some of that light is coming from us.

If with every act of kindness, we shine a little brighter and the darkness gets a little lighter. With every type of friendship, space gets a little smaller and we get a little closer.

Making our own stars so we’re never really alone.

Because however fast the universe pulls apart – however much distance there is between us – these are the ties that will hold us together.

The connections that will never break.

This is how we shine.