5. Starling
CHAPTER FIVE
STARLING
I have an obsession with the criminal mind.
Any true crime podcast, I’ve listened to it. Any new documentary, I’ve watched it.
Which is why I’m especially excited about what we’ve done.
Last night feels forbidden, a dream devastating to wake up from that was somehow real.
I am still buzzing with the energy of it, a hum against my skin.
Looking at me, there would be no indication, except for perhaps a more cheerful demeanor.
I’m not usually so bright in the morning, prefer to stay bundled in sheets as long as possible.
Instead I am wide awake and always on the verge of a smile.
Murmurs of clues, if anyone cared to study me close enough.
A group of starlings is called a murmuration.
They travel around in packs and create art in the sky with their movements.
I can pick them out, watch them with fascination as they fly over.
Starling is also the surname of one of my favorite characters ever, the kind of investigator who would have anyone scared.
We got away with it, the five of us.
I wonder if this is how criminals get their start. A chance happening, the exhilaration as a result. Like a drug. They reach for that high again, even though they know it’s wrong. Is this what makes a killer strike twice, three times, four?
Starlings and serial killers: my two main loves.
I quite like the idea of combining them.
When I become a top journalist, Starling is going to be my pen name.
I’ll be one-word famous. On true crime Netflix documentaries, I’ll be invited to speak, and underneath my image in large capital letters, there it’ll be: starling, crime journalist. Or whatever the job title actually is. The details can come later.
I have a natural affinity for figuring things out.
Seeing the clues that no one else does. I love language.
I adore the construction of sentences, the careful arrangement of words that an author has decided to place one after the other.
The use of this adjective over that one, delicate prose or brusque declaratives.
I pore over newspaper articles and imagine I am their writer.
When it’s me, I’ll consider every word, every punctuation mark. There won’t be anything wasted.
A girl went missing in our area a few years ago.
She didn’t go to our school, but she was still doing her A levels, so we had an assembly with a police detective who gave us a talk on safety.
Which, I was quick to put my hand up and point out, seemed rather like victim-blaming to me.
Especially when this girl hadn’t been found, and she was last seen at around five o’clock on a Tuesday evening.
Hardly three in the morning in a dark alley, the way everyone wants to pretend girls go missing.
The detective blustered a bit at that, but he was really good.
Answered all our questions, told us what it was like doing his job.
I guess that’s where my obsession really went into overdrive.
Because I was local, I always had the most upvoted posts on the subreddit for the missing girl.
People wanted to hear what I had to say.
It was brilliant. We discussed all sorts of theories and suspects: It was a runaway, a kidnapping, a murder, the boyfriend, the dad, the best friend.
In the end, her handbag was found in the harbor, and they decided her body must be in there too.
An accident, they claimed, as the river is so fast flowing, but the subreddit disagreed, sure it was a cover-up.
The detective came in again afterward, but I didn’t listen to him, not when he was trying to make out we should be careful around water.
He’d sold out, accepted the easiest option.
That’s not something I’ll ever do. Better to have the truth out there, however much it hurts, than swallow a lie.
Plenty of killers are still on the loose. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to lie low, credit unclaimed. I’d have to send letters, leak clues, anything to get the notoriety. There is no use in being a killer if no one is going to do a podcast about you.
It’s easy to long for the macabre in this house.
Mum and Dad are total softies. They volunteer on weekends at the community center to offer counseling sessions to those who can’t afford them.
Mum and Dad aren’t actually counselors, though Mum is a nurse and Dad is a care worker.
They rescued a chicken from someone’s farm and it now lives in our tiny house and we can’t even eat its eggs.
There are also more dogs than people, and that’s saying something with three siblings.
Jessie and Jack are twins, both ten, both terrible, and Arthur is fifteen and has helpfully decided he wants to be a drummer when he grows up.
Mum and Dad adore the drumming, obviously.
He’s got a new drum kit that cost a fortune, when I have to beg for more crime biographies because according to them I should get a creative hobby.
They don’t want me to be a journalist; they see it as joining the “other side,” whatever that means.
They insist we eat every meal together, and on the weekend we have Family Time, which mainly consists of long walks and me trying not to keel over from all the vomit-inducing activities.
Lockdown has been a dream come true for them, while I’m so suffocated I think I might explode.
I’m up early because Mum and Dad insist the day is never to be wasted.
At least they didn’t go for an impromptu sunrise watch.
Mum doesn’t notice I haven’t slept because she never really looks at me properly.
I sneak a glance at my phone, despite the ban on them at the kitchen table, hopeful that someone will have messaged the group chat with a firm date on when to sneak out next.
Next time, next time. No question, we’re doing it.
No message.
My fingers hesitate, desperate to type.
“Hey, no phones at the table!” Jessie screams, snatching it from my hands.
“Give it back!”
“Why is your background a picture of Zac Efron? Ew!”
It’s Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy, actually, but I won’t correct her as that’ll make things worse.
Mum takes the phone from Jessie, doing her mock-fierce face that’ll crumble in two seconds. “What have we told you about electronic devices when we are eating?”
“I know. I was checking something important—”
“She’s lying!” Jack declares. “You should confiscate it all day!”
What if someone messages saying what a great time they had last night? It’s in Mum’s hand; the text will pop up on the screen.
Oh God.
I have to get it off her.
“I’ll put it in my room, okay?” I say. “I’m sorry. I was checking the news for updates, you know.” Might as well go for the sympathy angle. “Hoping there might be some changes. That I might get my last few weeks at school after all.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Jackpot. Mum is soft as butter, and Dad hasn’t even glanced up from The Guardian. “In your room, then back in here to finish your breakfast. I’m thinking we’ll do some family yoga in the park for our daily exercise this morning.”
Oh man. But I beam at her, clasp my phone to my chest, and ignore the daggers Jessie and Jack are staring at me.
Arthur, predictably, has stayed out of it, drumming his fingers with one hand and spooning granola into his mouth with the other.
If I was ever going to have a real sibling connection, it would be with him.
I saved his life once, so the story goes.
I was eleven and he was eight and he had just eaten four grapes on a trot when that fourth one decided to stick in his throat.
Mum and Dad were in the garden setting up for a barbecue we were having; Jessie and Jack were out there with them, trapped in an outdoor playpen.
Arthur started turning purple and spluttering, and I had just seen, a week before, a demonstration on television of what to do.
So I thumped his back and did my attempt at the Heimlich maneuver, and somehow, miraculously, it worked.
The half-eaten grape came firing out of his mouth, and he was breathing again.
Shame we have absolutely nothing in common beyond a vague disdain for the people around us.
I reach my bedroom without a moment to spare, my phone vibrating with a new message. I can’t believe how much I’m trembling as I open it.
Cuckoo:
When next, bitches?
This is it then. We’re really doing it. Making sneaking out a regular thing.
People are right; it feels good to be bad.
And there’s no harm, really, is there? It’s only the five of us. It’s only sneaking out. We’re not doing anything. Just having fun.
I should wait a decent amount of time before responding, try not to look so eager. But I can’t help it, I reply straight away with a series of emojis and demand that it be as soon as possible. Cuckoo replies with a laughing face, frustratingly vague.
My eyes drift to the state of my room. Mum and Dad never come in here.
It’s my “safe space,” and the door being shut is the only message they need to not intrude.
Maybe I wish they would, because then they’d see what a mess it is.
I have mountains of books, covers with tea-stained rims, three mugs of which are still in various states of being drunk in here.
My desk is littered with revision guides and notebooks, useless now.
Returning home last night via the window, which I’d left ajar, I saw it in a whole new light.
Not my sanctuary, but an embarrassment. Unsuited to this new, daring me.
Childish. I have Barbie dolls next to books about murderers.
I change into a tracksuit, the kind Cuckoo likes to wear, tie my hair into a tight ponytail. My fingers itch for my phone, but I keep them busy, rubbing sun cream onto my skin. The mirror has my fingerprints all over it. Between the marks, I watch my lips stretch into a smile.
I can’t tell the others how thrilled sneaking out made me, how desperate I am for the same feeling, that illicit high.