2013

-Chapter 1-

My brother Joey's dropping things off the side of the balcony again. Cigarette in one hand, the last of a flat beer in the other, he holds the rim of the bottle over the edge and waits. As if he can hear the countdown in his head.

"One of these days you're gonna really hurt someone," I say, swigging cheap wine, flicking ash from my cigarette onto the tiled floor.

He just smiles as the countdown hits zero and drops the glass. We listen for the sound of shattering but it never comes.

Just a dull thud. Followed by another.

And then there's only the roar of traffic, sirens in the distance and the sound of kids out drinking White Lightning on a street corner nearby.

"Oh shit!"

Joey leans over the balcony, craning his neck to get a view of the pavement below us and I knew it, I always knew it. However the desire to say 'I told you so' disappears pretty quickly when I look too.

There's not much of a view from our flat; with the river Thames obscured from view behind a wall of other high rises. It's mostly other people's windows and porches, rusting push chairs propped up against doors, battered lawn furniture and rudies sprawled along the spindly metal balustrades blowing out the musky scent of weed into the night air. Above all of that, you can see the chimneys of Battersea power station- the ugliest building, I swear to god; those four turrets piercing the sky like four hands giving us the finger.

On the street below, we see a boy lying face down on the tarmac, bottle beside his head.

Leaping over fairy lights and fag ends and all the rest of our rubbish just as soon as I spot him, I race through the flat and down the communal staircase. My phone is pressed to my ear and the minute I get downstairs I hit the number for the emergency services and the call button. But Joey is close behind me, plucking the phone from my fingers.

"What are you doing? He needs an ambulance! I can't even, Joey...you bloody moron ,you..."

"H-He'll be fine. He'll probably just walk it off."

"Yeah he looks about ready to go walking," I snap, gesturing to the prone figure. Never mind the fact that for some reason he hasn't got shoes on.

There's a large mental ward not far from our flat, I reason, thinking about how sometimes the residents escape to wander confused around the basketball courts on the estate until someone brings them back.

"Well then we could just take him back to the flat til he feels better and give him a cup of tea?"

I give him a look that could curdle milk.

"Tish, do you want me to got to prison?"

Sighing heavily, I reach out for the phone. "I won't say anything, obviously, and you can make yourself scarce but I'm calling an ambulance right now."

All I'd wanted to do tonight was watch Eastenders and drink a little cheap wine while my Mum's out. My little brother killing a mental patient was not really part of that plan.

Bending over before I dial, I check to see if the boy's still breathing and try to roll him onto his side. I saw an advert for CPR once on the telly and figure I can probably give it a go. Something about pressing down on the chest to the beat of Staying Alive?

However, upon turning him, I discover that he is indeed still breathing as well as three other pretty startling things;

A) That this boy is wearing nothing but a grey trench coat.

B) That this trench coat is open.

C) Also, I'm pretty sure this boy is mop-headed, One Direction superstar Harry Styles.

Points A and B seem to resonate a little more with Joey as he snaps his head away so fast the cheap fabric of his jacket crinkles like crisp packets before sniggering, "Siiiick."

"God Joey, Chantelle is going to kill you," I murmur.

"What?"

"Actually I think a lot of people are going to kill you. Like, I think now technically Simon Cowell owns your soul. Unless this works like the Santa Claus movies, you kill one and you have to replace him."

Joey still hasn't quite grasped it though, so I point to Harry Styles' face. Nothing. "X factor. Boy band. Remember?"

Still nothing.

I point harder and hum the tune to 'What Makes You Beautiful' . And immediately begin to feel like the biggest tit in all of the world, so I stop that pretty quickly.

"Are you okay, Tish?"

"He's in One Direction! Harry Styles. Jesus Christ do you live in a cave? No wait, what am I saying, of course you do. You think throwing glass bottles at popstars is a good idea!"

"No way," whispers Joey. "No way. He's just a look alike or something."

And then because it seems like the universe is getting it's kicks proving my little brother wrong tonight (and don't get me wrong, that's normally something I would be all for) we hear the sounds of car doors slamming and someone calling out, "Harry!" into the night. My mind immediately goes to one thing.

Paparazzi.

"We've got to get him inside right now," I say quickly, sliding my arms underneath his shoulders. I keep my head turned as much as I can because it feels like the polite thing to do and I feel a little bit guilty. Not just because Joey almost killed him. But because in a weird way I feel like this experience is sort of wasted on me. I always preferred Mumford and Sons.

Not the time, Tish.

"I thought we weren't taking him up to the flat. You said you was calling an ambulance?" he's sceptical, but he still grabs Harry Styles by the ankles and together we haul him up. Those skinny jeans and sweaters you see on the tv are deceptive, he's heavier than he looks.

"Use your brain," I say, staggering backwards, pushing open the door to the stairwell with my bum. "You're a world famous popstar who, for whatever reason, is running around South London with your knob out when some idiot glasses you and you pass out. I think the last thing I would want is for my little friend to end up on the front of every paper from here to outer space. This right here , Joey- given the circumstances- is the least we can do." It is. But it doesn't stop me from sighing as I get a look at all of the stairs leading up to our flat.

"Okay. I get all that, Tish. But why do I have to be at the arse end?"

*

Our flat looked awful when we first moved- way before the company Mum worked for went under, so you can imagine the state of the place right now. The fridge can't decide whether it wants to work or not (though sometimes it's just the electric company turning us off again) but on it- under a mountain of old school forms, beneath layers of football stickers and smeared on dirt and old food is a fridge magnet that reads, 'boring women have tidy kitchens' . I guess we must be the most exciting family in England then.

As I try and make a space for him on the sofa, I see his green eyes flicker open and I legitimately have no clue what to say. It looks pretty bad, doesn't it? One minute you're walking down the street, you get a knock on the head and the next thing you're being carried to a place that could quite realistically pass as a crack den.

But then again, I'm not the weirdo running around South London with no pants on. No one comes out of this situation looking that great.

I try and smile a non-threatening sort of smile, awkwardly pulling my lips up over my teeth.

"You need to keep Chantalle occupied," I tell Joey.

Our sister is ten years old and cute as a button. If buttons had big fluffy pig tails and is so over Justin Bieber. It's all about One Direction for that kid. I know this because she wanted the lunch box and we couldn't afford it so I had to make one, spending one entire evening looking for pictures of Zayn's head when I messed up cutting out a picture to stick on a cheaper lunchbox and accidentally decapitated him.

"If she sees him, she'll scream. If she screams she'll wake the whole high rise. Just make sure she stays in her room."

"Diwiwwww," Harry Styles mumbles as we set him down.

"What?"

"Diwwiwiwww?"

"Oh god I've given him brain damage!" Joey says as he runs hand over his face.

"Did we win?" Harry finally manages to choke out, before his head lolls to the side and he passes out again. I'm one hundred percent sure now that this ambulance is long overdue.

Stepping out onto the balcony because the reception in the flat is for shit, I peer down to see if the paparazzi has any idea we're in here or if it's just moved on. Looking down with a curl of annoyance, I do see that there is now a van parked a little way up the street from our high rise and there is a man walking towards our building.

He doesn't look how I imagined a paparazzo would. I thought they all wore jeans and t-shirts but this one is in a dark suit. It's hard to tell from way up here, but he seems very tall and slender with a shock of white hair on top of his head. As he walks, there's a strange playful bent to his steps and for a minute I'm reminded of a child playing hide and seek.

"Haaaaarrry?" the words rise, in a stretching high pitched whine over the high rise and send an involuntary shiver down my spine. "Haaaarrrrrryyyyy? Come out, come out where ever you are."

He doesn't even have a camera.

"Hey blud! You shut the hell up! You looking for some boy wizard or some bullshit? He aint here."

One of the rudies from the tower block has obviously had enough, sliding his window open to hurl abuse down onto the street. Just another day in our high rise. What's abnormal is that the man walks a little closer to the open window. For one stupid moment, I think he's reaching for his camera. But before I know what's happening I hear a small click and the sound of something metal hitting the floor.

The rudie falls forward, out of his window, down four stories onto the street below.

His skull hits the pavement first, the crack of splintered bone echoing around the housing estate and through me.

"You're through. Which emergency service do you require?"

The phone drops out of my hands with a clatter as I back away quickly inside of the flat again. From Chantalle's bedroom, Joey yells out for me and I bunch my fist into a tight white ball.

"Those guys weren't paparazzi," I whisper to Joey as I get in the room.

"You need to see this." His face is paler than the white pillows on Chantelle's bed. My sister, as perceptive as ever, sits up in bed- her twiggy thin legs sticking out of the bottom of her pjs, hand shoved into her mouth as she watches the telly on her little pink screen even though she should have been in bed ages ago. Joey points to it, and my eyes follow.

A familiar tune begins, while Joey pushes up the volume a little louder.

You're insecure,

Don't know what for,

You're turning heads when you walk through the door,

The room suddenly feels very cold. The word LIVE sits in the corner of the screen and swirls about in my mind. There are palm trees around the stage, everyone is wearing shorts, t-shirts and bikinis in the audience. It doesn't much look like South London. I scramble for the remote to bring up the menu, and find out that it's Los Angeles. About as far from our high-rise tower block as you can get.

Don't need make-up,

To cover up,

Being the way that you are is enough,

The man in the dark suit was calling out Harry Styles' name. I know what I heard. But the camera zooms in and there he is. Same mop of brown hair, same green eyes and jawline, all of it freakishly identical to the boy passed out on our sofa. But he can't be here and in Los Angeles. Does he have a twin?

....a twin with the same name....

Everyone else in the room can see it,

Everyone else but you,

Joey is as freaked out as I am. I can tell by the way he sits down onto the bed next to Chantelle and wraps his arm around her, despite her protestation.

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,

But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,

"Tish?" whispers Joey quietly. "Who the hell is in our living room?"

From behind me, I hear the creak of a floor tile and the click of the safety on a gun being switched off. I whip my head around, my stomach twisting up into knots. He's standing there, in the doorway the coat pulled tightly around himself, wearing an ice cold expression and pointing a gun right between my eyes.

"I'm the original," he says quietly, taking a step towards us, the gun still raised.

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

A/N: You are not prepared for what's coming...

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