Star Bright

By Maureen Crisp

Staying hidden is the price of survival.
Rachel’s dreams have come true.
She lives on a tropical island, has a music studio, school, and friends for the first time in her life.
Then she finds out the cost.
Can she escape or is she trapped by the power inside her?

Star Bright continues the story of the Fraser family, caught between worlds, hunted by aliens, and holding the key to the survival of Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marmac Media
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9780473593568

Maureen Crisp

Maureen Crisp lives in New Zealand where she dreams up stories to get her out of any boring things she has to do. She loves writing for children and has published plays and junior fiction in the New Zealand School Journal and for Penguin. Maureen is a primary school teacher by trade and a geek by inclination. She writes a mix of contemporary and science fiction stories to disguise the fact that she is overly fascinated by Mars, the robot landers and space exploration.Maureen is active in the New Zealand children’s writing community where she has planned and run two national conferences for children’s writers. She has been writing a weekly blog on publishing news from around the world along with writing and marketing tips for authors for over ten years. Maureen is a member of the FaBo collective of writers who write competition story prompts for children in New Zealand schools and the Convener of the Wellington Children’s Book Association.In 2017 her peers awarded her the Storylines Betty Gilderdale Award for outstanding services to Children’s Literature. In 2018 Maureen was on the judging panel for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Book preview

Transmission Logs

Transmission begins .

Scrambling codes initiated.

From: Third Leader EXLOR 221182119

To: First Leader CLMLE 221182119

Second Leader BXLOR 221182119

The trace on the father has been activated with the children making contact at the hospital. They are still accompanied by extra family members. We are endeavouring to separate them to make it easier to uplift the children.

Extra operatives are in place for immediate action when the children make the next contact.

From: Third Leader EXLOR 221182119

To: First Leader CLMLE 221182119

Second Leader BXLOR 221182119

We are initiating a track and trace procedure on the vehicles used.

From: Second Leader BXLOR 221182119

To: First Leader CLMLE 221182119

Third Leader EXLOR 221182119

Your operatives are sloppy. These children have slipped through our fingers twice.

From: Third Leader EXLOR 221182119

To: First Leader CLMLE 221182119

Second Leader BXLOR 221182119

It would be better for them to think they are safe first.Then we can start a search and capture mission.

From: First Leader CLMLE 221182119

To: Third Leader EXLOR 221182119

Good work. Keep me updated.

Scrambling codes initiated

Transmission ends

Chapter One

Rachel knelt on the hotel chair and looked out into the night. The neon lights flickered up and down the city street and played their colours onto groups of people who were still out.

‘What do I do now,’ she whispered to the glass, her breath making a small fog. She traced a circle and put two eyes in. Should she make a frowny mouth or a smiley mouth? As she tried to make up her mind, the face disappeared from the glass. The isolation of the farm had left its mark. She felt closed in and anxious, being around so many strangers.

Her days had been filled with looking after the boys. Her familiar world was gone. Now strange relations were telling her what to do when before she had always been in charge. The shock, that morning, of hearing a strange voice in her head telling her about Caleb and their rescue plans to get them away made her fearful of the future. She crept across the dark room and huddled on her bed.

Caleb, her brother, was lying fast asleep across his bed. He hadn’t even taken his shoes off. He had just fallen on the bed and was out like a light.

The lights of the city filtered in blue from the street outside, and across Caleb’s face. The shadows under his eyes looked black in their light. He looked other worldly, like an alien. She shivered, searching Caleb’s face for familiar signs of her brother, like the way his hair fell over his forehead and the shape of his ears.

Caleb had spoken into her mind. She still couldn’t quite believe it. But everything he had said had come true. She had taken the risk that Caleb hadn’t been going crazy mad and had followed his instructions, talking in her head as well. And she had been answered! That stranger’s voice in her head had told her things that he couldn’t have known unless he had talked to Caleb. How had Caleb got help from family she didn’t even know existed, who had strange abilities? She felt in the centre of a whirlwind.

The memory of the Elders from her father’s church who tried to hurt him because they had thought him possessed by a devil shuddered through her. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. She had held on to that belief, but underneath was a fear, bone deep, that maybe he was a devil. She could remember her father accusing her mother of hearing voices. And the fear in her father’s voice when he told them they were leaving school and going away. She curled up on her bed hugging her knees and stared at her sleeping brother as she tried to unpick the day and make sense of it.

The Elders from her father’s church had been scary. They had some sort of idea that she was to be protected, parcelled up, put in a box, because she was a girl and somehow less worthy in their eyes. She shivered and pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands, trying to get warm. Her ideas weren’t seemly. Her jeans weren’t seemly. She spoke when she should be silent.

She had tried to avoid Daniel Boorman ever since he and his father had shown up at the farm. They didn’t need looking after while their father was in hospital. They were being looked over. Daniel kept trying to corner her and ask her about being promised to anyone. Promised to marry, he meant. She wouldn’t marry him if he were the last guy left. Rachel had wanted to swear, to rage, but she swallowed it all down and began to plan how she could get away. She knew how to cover up what she thought.

Then they had attacked Caleb. They had burned all his possessions. The bone deep fear she had felt for her brother was also fear for herself. She had followed the instructions of the voices in her mind and they had been rescued. Now she was in a hotel room far away from the Boormans. It was like magic. The arrival of her mother’s relations with their strange abilities had shaken her. They must be good.

‘Oh God let them be good,’ she prayed, rocking a little on the bed. Rachel glanced over to Caleb, hoping she hadn’t woken him, but he didn’t move. These new relations had done everything they had promised. They had taken Caleb to the doctor and got him new clothes. But why did they need passports? Were they leaving the country? Where was Uncle Adam’s school? Rachel tried to hang on to all the positives from the day. Uncle Adam and Daniel had taken them to see her father in hospital, had fed them and now they were in a hotel.

But this magic was scary. Adam had talked to her in her mind as she was sitting next to her father’s hospital bed. Put the diamond on your father’s hand and hold it there. I want to talk to him.

She had done what he asked and had been shocked by the conversation. Who were these people? A group that had been on a mission from somewhere, and her mother had been part of the group. Did that mean her mother had had strange powers too? Was her death somehow mixed up with these abilities. And what did that mean for her children?

Rachel tried to squash down feelings of fear and anger at Caleb for shaking up her safe world. She pulled her pack over and started feeling through it for her pyjamas. The familiar routine of getting ready for bed did a lot to calm her mind. Finding the diamond had opened a box full of secrets, she thought. If Caleb had not found the diamond, things could have been worse. Their father’s accident had caused their existence to become known to the Elders of his church. They had been creepy: the way they had talked about their family, locked her in a room and burned Caleb’s things. But Adam and Daniel, her mother’s relations, were a different kind of creepy.

She needed her brother to be the same old Caleb. Rachel looked again at her brother, out like a light in the other bed. He was her rock. Together they had run the farm for their father. They were a great team. Caleb worked so hard and their father was so impossible to him. If only Caleb had cheated on the math’s test at school. If he had got them all wrong when he was nine, maybe they would have been able to have a normal life.

Rachel had seen what to do when she had got to school. Cover up your brain. Don’t have opinions. Keep your head down. Act dumb. Even when you knew that the teacher was wrong, just shut up and pretend to be like the other kids. She couldn’t wait to be grown up and free. Free to live her own life and blaze her own path.

Over the years they had been at the farm Caleb had become quieter, living for his books and the hours he spent lying on an old tarpaulin looking at the stars through binoculars. Losing himself in space, trying to escape the world.

She at least had music. Everything had a song. Music was constantly running through her head. The washing machine chugged along in G major. The washing line squeaked in F sharp. Sometimes for fun she twanged the fence wires into a song. Caleb had tightened each wire differently for her on the fence next to the orchard. Her father didn’t know she could play tunes on the fences. Rachel and Caleb had learned to keep secrets from their Father. Now, there were so many more secrets to keep.

Caleb stirred a little. He must be cold. There were extra blankets in the wardrobe. She hauled one out and onto her brother. He didn’t move. Carefully she untied his ragged sneakers.

She wasn’t in charge anymore. Making lists, worrying about the boys. This was her job. But she was tired. When do I get to be a kid? she thought. Responsible. Practical. Just like a mother. She hated those words. They were walls that kept her in. For a moment she let herself imagine a different life. Friends, laughing, food and clean laundry that appeared, without her having to touch it in any way. Someone else looking after the boys and leaving her to just be. That’s what I want, she thought. To not be responsible. To live my own life. To be in control of me.

Rachel climbed into bed. I’m tired of being a mother, she thought as she lay looking at the flickering shadows on the wall. I want to go to school and not have to worry about feeding people and doing laundry. I want to learn new things and have friends. A two-note sound tugged a memory. I wonder if this school they’re taking us to has a good music programme, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

When Rachel woke it was past eight o’clock, the latest she had ever slept in. She stretched and looking over at Caleb. He was still asleep. The shadows under his eyes had disappeared. She needed to get up, get to the bathroom and find out what the twins were doing. Moving quietly, she got her bag and headed out the door.

As she came into the main room, she saw Uncle Adam with the newspaper at the table.

‘Good morning,’ he said looking up and smiling at her. ‘I’ve left the twins watching TV in our suite. I needed some quiet.’ He was wearing a different shirt today. His tie was draped over a chair. ‘I’m glad you’re up. I have to check on a few things soon. The twins had a room service breakfast. If you can wait for Daniel to get up, he can take you to an all-day breakfast place. I’ll meet you later. We’ve got a lot of things to organise today.’ He reached for his tie and began putting it on. ‘We’ll go and see your father again this evening. He’s very sick, but the doctors think he will recover. If Daniel isn’t up by nine you have my permission to tell the twins to get him up.’ He winked at her. Rachel chuckled. Adam certainly knew that the twins wouldn’t wake Daniel up carefully.

‘However, if you don’t want to inflict your little brothers on him just wear the diamond in that scarf around your arm like yesterday and chant his name a few times telling him to get up. That’ll work, as good as an alarm clock.’

She nodded. She was still trying to find some normal sentence to say to him when he got up and folded his newspaper. In a few moments he had gone. Rachel made her way to the shower, thinking of how she was going to talk to Adam. With his suits and his manner it was hard to figure out what to say. After she had stared at the fancy shower for a few moments, figuring out how to turn it on, she thought her first words should be ‘Thank you’. All the hot water she could want. Luxury.

When she went back into the bedroom Caleb was awake and sitting up. He still looked sleepy.

‘They have a great shower here,’ said Rachel, looking at her brother critically. Caleb really looked grimy. ‘There’s even shampoo. That should be the first thing you do today. Adam said, before he left, that when Daniel is up, he can take us to an all-day breakfast place. He’s fed the bottomless pits and they’re watching a movie.’ Caleb swung his legs off the bed.

‘Here,’ Rachel tossed him a towel. ‘Don’t forget this.’

Caleb slung the towel over his shoulder with a grunt, picked up his small pack and went out to the bathroom. Rachel glanced at the clock. She had spent forty-five minutes in the bathroom. What was she thinking of? She raced next door to check on the twins.

She found Noah looking at the workings of the telephone. ‘What did you bring those for?’ said Rachel, scowling at Noah’s pack of mini-screwdrivers. ‘You’ll get into trouble pulling that apart.’

‘I was just looking at it. I haven’t done anything,’ he said waving a small screwdriver at her.

‘Did you bring all your tools?’ she sighed. Typical Noah behaviour. ‘What about clothes?’

‘He brought some clothes,’ said Tobias, looking up from the television. ‘They wrapped up his tools.’

Rachel made a mental note to check exactly what the twins had brought with them from the farm and make a list of what they had forgotten.

She sighed as she looked at her younger brothers. ‘Can’t you guys behave? Stop eating so much. Have some manners. You could be polite. Make a good impression! Play it safe, eh.’

‘Rachel, what can they do to us?’ said Noah. ‘They’re family, aren’t they?’

‘You said they were anyway,’ said Tobias, looking up from the television.

Rachel stopped the rant. She had told the twins that. But did she want to tell the twins anything more? They were both looking at her now. She ducked her head a little, not looking at