‘Yep. And this one’s true. Means that this convention is going to be his last.’ Felix squinted out of the window and shifted himself from foot to foot, then turned to give me a manic grin. ‘So? How about it? Your last chance to actually meet the guy. Or you could, y’know, stay in your room, just absorb the atmosphere. Maybe see him out of the window.’
The house throbbed around me, one second too big, the next too small and pushing half my furniture onto the pavement. That poster shot into full focus, Gethryn becoming huge, those deep brown eyes seeming to smile straight into mine. There was a small worn patch over his mouth where I kissed the poster before bed every night, and I prayed that Felix didn’t know about that.
‘I need to think.’
‘Well, you’ve got until seven. I’ll drop by after work, and if the answer’s no then I’m putting these on eBay.’ Felix rotated once more then headed for the door, still standing open from his earlier entrance. He was just about to step out when he came back and yanked the ticket from my hand. It needed considerable force, and I think, in my shaken and shocked state, that I might have bitten him. ‘Want anything while I’m at the shop?’
‘When I’m short of oversized jeans and funky belts I’m sure you’ll be the first to tell me.’
‘Maybe. Maybe I’ll just let you fester in last year’s fashion.’ A short pause, and then he said, with his back to me. ‘It would be good for you, Skye, change of scenery and all that. You never know, it might help.’
A second of clamour in my head again, and then I touched the wall, the lovely, comforting, solid brick wall. ‘It won’t, Felix. You know it won’t.’
‘All right, maybe “help” was the wrong word. But getting away might give you a break from everything. Put things in a different perspective.’ A moment while he swayed his skinny body in the doorway, waiting for me to shoot him down, and then, ‘Okay, lover, I’m off then. See you tonight, yeah?’ There was the tap and slide of his boots on the stairs and then the definite bang of the front door.
The wall felt dusty under my fingers. My grandmother, who’d left me the place ‘to take care of’, must be absolutely rotating in her grave. I blew, and the dust motes took off, lazily swirled around and then resettled on different surfaces. I ought to clean, I knew. But somehow I didn’t have the energy; there were always other things to be done, other claims on my time. Like work. Even with the Internet down there was reading to do and notes to make.
My job these days was not as high-profile as Felix’s, which, as he worked in a shop at the sharp end of the gay clothing industry, involved the movement of more leather than a cattle drive. In fact, my work was so low-profile as to hardly stick up at all. But it paid and I didn’t have to mix with people who would stare, which was all I really asked of work these days. Gone were the hours spent poring over The Stage for open auditions, obsessing over whether I was too tall, too skinny, whether my nose needed trimming. Now I was a freelance research consultant – basically a fancy name for someone who looked up things that other people couldn’t be bothered to. Currently I was working on researching the life of an infamous pirate, the history of knitting patterns and had two outstanding commissions for a mustard company. No water-cooler gossip, no chance of a selection for stardom, but it was the only job I’d ever had where clothing was optional.
I sorted out my pile of books and prepared to continue work for the author who wrote piracy-porn, taking notes and making sketches of sixteenth-century fashion. I’d stuck Post-Its on the relevant texts and was poised to start skim reading when a new message pinged into my phone, with the characteristic chime that made me want to hide my mobile under something big and wet.
From: Fe Brand
Come on Skye, u no u want 2.
I typed straight back.
From: Skye
I told you I’m thinking about it. And stop using text speak, you’re not twelve.
From: Fe Brand
Yeh, yeh. Cme on, don’t u thnk its tme u got out of tht wheelchair?
From: Skye
You’ve got predictive text stuck on again. Wheelchair?!
From: Fe Brand
It’s a metaphorical wheelchair you pilchard. An emotional one. You don’t have the monopoly on grieving and all that crap, and if I can get on with my life after what happened, then so should you. So, what the fuck, let’s go to America!
Serious stuff. So serious that he’d abandoned his jokey, half-text-speak, and mentioned things we didn’t talk about in real life. Things so raw and overwhelming that we pretended they’d never happened. I dropped the phone and my fingers began twisting around one another, plucking at my nails. The skin around them was nearly healed, but ugly white scars streaked each fingertip.
From: Fe Brand
And stop doing that shit with your fingers.
I smiled without meaning to. Felix knew me so well. But then, we’d known each other for … how many years? Ten? More, maybe, by now, but I’d stopped counting. Stopped even thinking about him as a person, as a man. He was just Fe, irritating as an itchy bum. So much like Faith that I hadn’t been able to look at him for the first six months after the accident without seeing her looking back from behind those hazel eyes. I’d become so accustomed to the feeling that it had worn away without my noticing, until one day he was just Felix again.
From: Skye
Whereabouts in America?
Chapter Two
I awoke from disturbing dreams to grit between my teeth, a sun blazing through a windscreen and a seemingly endless rank of telephone poles marching beside the road. My feet were cold but my back prickled with dried sweat and I had never regretted letting Felix talk me into anything quite so much. Surely even Gethryn wasn’t worth this much discomfort? ‘Where are we?’ I twisted my head against the uncomfortable upholstery of the hired car.
Felix looked over his shoulder at me. He was concentrating ferociously on staying the right side of the road whilst juggling the map across his lap. ‘Bloody hell, Valium worn off already?’
I licked my lips. The sedative had left my mouth feeling as though it had been unscrupulously carpeted and my tongue was as heavy as a corpse. ‘’S okay. I feel … okay.’ This was a lie. Through the layer of Valium I felt displaced, anxious. The car was confining and yet not safe. Outside I could see a landscape scrolling past in a backdrop of dust; bare hills sketched against a white sky and some buildings that looked like aircraft hangars. There was nothing familiar to pin myself onto. ‘Fe –’
‘Nearly there, apparently. God, I wish you hadn’t talked me out of that GPS, there’s places here, actual places. They weren’t on the map.’ I’d wanted to hire a car with GPS, but he’d raised his eyebrows and pointed out that this was Nevada; once we got on the right road the motel was virtually the only thing of note in 200 miles, and that an extra seventy-five dollars for pin-point accuracy probably wasn’t necessary unless I wanted to nuke it. He was paying and I was hot and confused so I’d shut up. But I wasn’t going to be sympathetic if we were lost. Felix was driving without looking at the road, staring out of the window as we passed through a town that looked as though a missile strike would probably improve it. ‘Not a single Gap for miles – how do these people manage? Honestly, it’s just a patch of desert with two office blocks, ridiculously oversized houses, a school and a hospital … Where’s the fashion?’
I stuck my head out from under the blanket which covered me as I lay sprawled across the whole back seat, half-drugged. Felix insisted on running the air-con full blast despite the fact that this was pushing the fuel costs into the ‘ridiculous’ bracket, and yet he wouldn’t pay extra for the GPS. I suppose that’s men for you. ‘Maybe they don’t need fashion out here.’
‘Skye, this is America! Land of the free, or at least, the reasonably priced. Everyone needs fashion. Particularly that chap over there … that is th
e ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. Anyway. Soon be there, the Broken Hill Motel, Nevada. Sounds exotic, doesn’t it?’
‘No, it sounds tacky. Who holds conventions in Nevada? Apart from CSI fans.’ I clutched the blanket closer to me for the fake sense of security. ‘I want to go home.’ The panic was building, knocking against my temples like an old friend wanting to come in.
‘No, you don’t. I didn’t go through all that business getting you onto the plane and force-feeding you tranquilisers just for you to dip out on me.’ Felix swung the car’s weight into a minor curve. I rocked against the door and had to half-sit to balance myself. As I did, I caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, and the next thing I knew we were stationary, with the car slewed across the edge of the road, and Fe was half-in, half-out of the back seat, hanging through from the driver’s side to flap his hands in my face, encouraging a sluggish current of air to puff against my cheek.
‘What …’ I drew a breath. My throat ached and my eyes felt like they’d been thumbed.
‘Oh good, you’re back with me. I was a bit worried there, your eyes rolled right back in your head, which is not a good look, let me tell you. Nearly as hideous as Mr Shirt and his incredible diamante buttons back there.’ A half-sighed breath wobbled his words and made him sound more concerned than I’d ever heard him. ‘Skye, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be this bad, I just thought it would be good for you, a break from … everything, you know? I thought, away from York, from the memories of it all, you might …’ He flopped back into his seat, a passing motorcyclist distracting his attention.
I forced my fists to uncurl, and laid my head carefully back on the seat. ‘It’s okay. Really. No, you were right, Fe, I had to start living again sometime and if it took something like this to make it happen, then that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Isn’t it? ‘Besides, I am getting better, look, I got that Internet problem fixed, didn’t I? Talked to a strange man for ages to sort it out, and I was getting a bit sick of the same old places – home, library, supermarket … It will be good to see some new sights. Like …’ I waved at hand at the window, ‘that.’
‘It’s a chemist’s.’
I sighed, the tension in my shoulders barely allowing any air in. ‘But it’s not Boots. That’s what I mean, it’s different. A change of scenery, like you said.’ The slight wobble in my voice gave the lie to the words.
‘Just say the word and I’ll drive straight back to Vegas, we’ll get on a plane and you’ll never have to leave town again.’
I looked through the gap between the seats. His knuckles were a bluish-grey where his hands were clenched around the steering wheel, and his back was pressed right into the seat, as though he was somehow nervous about my reply. That’s right, Skye, run away when it gets difficult … ‘We’ll go on.’ My voice was so quiet he didn’t hear and I had to repeat myself. ‘To the motel.’ A half-hysterical laugh bubbled out with the words. ‘Might as well, since we’ve come this far.’
His body slumped a little in … what? Relief? ‘All right, if you say so. Better get going before the cops arrive, anyhow. Hey, do you think they wear those uniforms, like when they rock up on CSI? With the really tight trousers? Maybe we should hang around. Look, pop another Valium, that should tide you over till we get there.’ He flipped the glove box open and passed back the brown prescription container and a bottle of water. ‘Here. Take two.’
‘Two? Are you sure?’
‘Darling, I take more than that when I’m getting my feet done, you’ll be fine.’ He kept his head turned, watching me swallow. ‘There. You’ll be nice and calm for our arrival now.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention. What set you off, if you don’t mind me asking, and now that you’ve got a neck full of calmdown? You were doing so well up ’til now.’
‘Just … for one second it was … I haven’t been in a car since.’
Felix’s face seemed to ripple as various emotions struggled for expression. ‘Like a flashback? Yeah.’
We sat quietly for a moment, while my brain shuffled through the blankness that was all that was left where so many memories had once been, until it was caught in the soft edging between sleep and wakefulness. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get over it?’ I let the words trickle from my mouth, muffled by the blanket, and heard Felix’s reply likewise sieved through the wool.
‘I hope not. I really hope not. Now, go to sleep, we’ll be there very soon.’
Chapter Three
In an untidy room at the front of the motel, an equally untidy Jack fired up his laptop, waited until the Fallen Skies logo appeared and then began to work.
‘INT. SPACESHIP – DAY he typed, then leaned back and chewed his lip. Hell’s teeth, it never used to be this hard. Maybe I’ve lost it, maybe I’m not meant to do this any more. His fingers roamed the surface of the desk, subconsciously searching for the pack of cigarettes he knew he’d carefully hidden from his writing self, found a pencil sitting blamelessly on top of a sheaf of papers, and deliberately snapped it in half. The noise made him jump. Bugger. Must stop doing this, running out of pencils.
As he turned his attention back to the screen, which throbbed accusingly before him, his hand continued its unconscious movement, and the next thing he realised he was sucking on the broken pencil end, filling his mouth with the boxy taste of wood and tiny granules of graphite. He snatched the stub from between his teeth, spat ferociously, and hurled it onto the floor, where it sat damply between his bare feet.
I want to go home. The thought took him by surprise and he pulled a face at his reflection in the screen, where the words shone through his hair and INT and DAY formed double-images on the lenses of his glasses. I wake up dreaming that I can smell the moors, that the heather is flowering and the ground is damp and clingy underfoot. I’m walking out under the high sky with the birds like little full stops up between the clouds and there’s nothing for miles but me and the sky and those little purple bells of flower which smell like honey on toast. The expression which stared back at him twisted its mouth. Yeah, right. And Enid Blyton used to pop over for tea with Beatrix Potter and her talking bloody rabbits. Pull yourself together, you nutter. That was then, this is now, Iceman, and you’ve got work to do. Bills to pay, things to hold together and one hell of a lot of forgetting to do.
He blanked his mind and went back to the script, not even noticing when the other half of the pencil found its way between his lips, and he sucked on it with oblivious contentment.
Chapter Four
I jerked into a loose kind of wakefulness as the car drew up under a tree, dusty with leaves and ornamented with some kind of bird I didn’t recognise. My limbs were dull and unresponsive, my attempts to sit up made me look like a cadaver being poked. ‘Wha’?’
‘This is it.’ Felix’s voice was edgy, excited. ‘This is the convention. Look at it, Skye, all the cars! And there’s one of those great big van things, whatchacallems …’
‘Horse box.’
‘Winnebagos. Wow. How American. And look, there’s one of the Shadow Fighter craft.’
Sleepily I turned my head until I could see the black triangular ship, parked incongruously on a trailer behind a Volkswagen Beetle. Its swept-back wings looked a little the worse for wear in the white sunlight and part of the paintwork had peeled off near the pilot’s section, but that just added to the glamour in my eyes. It was real, it was used. It looked as though it genuinely had flown through the B’Ha sector with a Skeel warrior on its tail. Despite the Valium my heart beat a tiny bit faster.
Felix turned in his seat. ‘Okay, we’re going to have to get out now, Skye. Take a deep breath, lover, it’s not a long trip, I can see the foyer from here.’
I slumped back against the seat, unable even to rally the sense of terror I knew I should be feeling at the prospect of that overarching sky pressing o
nto my head. Felix opened the door and helped me to manoeuvre myself out onto the sandy concourse. ‘Here we go.’
The light burst upon me as the hot air hit. Air rattled into my lungs and yet the feeling of suffocation grew.
‘Look, I know you’re Valiumed up to the hilt, but is there any chance that you can walk?’ Felix panted, lugging my unresponsive body along the length of the car, propping me against the hot metalwork with blatant disregard for the potential for third-degree burns.
‘Can’t … feel my … feet,’ I mumbled, through numb lips. Life streamed past, dreamlike.
‘Oh, this is just bloody great. What am I going to do now, leave you here and hope that everyone thinks you’re a really convincing special effect?’
The air blew across my face, incendiary-hot and laced with grit. I could barely summon the strength to blink. Slowly and inevitably my legs gave way and I slithered down the car’s bodywork in a sweat-lubricated collapse, landing with my skirt bunched under my buttocks and my shirt rucked over my bare midriff. The smell of hot tyres made me feel slightly sick.
Footsteps approached, soft in the dust and I saw a pair of feet surrounded by the trailing hems of what looked like pyjama bottoms. ‘Hey. What’s up?’ The voice was unfamiliar. British. Northern English to be exact, the flat vowels reminding me of home. I tried to look up but could only waggle my head.
‘Just a little hitch, nothing to worry about.’ Felix bent his head to my ear. ‘Skye, you might want to get up here, this guy is a definite twelve on the ten-point scale.’
‘She looks pretty out of it,’ the considering voice went on. ‘You might have to carry her.’
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