And in the middle of them, another face. A guy, maybe the most gorgeous I have ever seen. Hair all swept to one side, golden brown. Shirt with the collar twisted up. He’s not whispering to the others, at least, but he’s watching Julius and he’s watching me.
‘C’mon,’ I beg Julius. ‘It doesn’t hurt that much. Everyone’s looking. Can’t you just be quiet?’
Next thing, another figure appears. She’s slight and pinched with the same red-brown curls as mine. I recognise her even though I’ve never seen her before.
Mum.
She hugs Julius to her.
‘What were you thinking?’ she says to me in this prenice way.
‘I’m sorry, I just …’
I flick a glance at Julius, then another at the guy. Back and forth, like I can’t quite decide who’s more important.
Mum makes this clicking sound and pulls Julius out of my arms. And it takes a while – like, a long while, because I’m telling you, these sobs are powerful – but slowly the crying stops as she closes her arms around his little body, tight.
09
MY EYES ARE open so I snap them shut. Open, shut, open, shut. I want to be sure that the dream, or whatever it was, is totally finished. Not that I can stop thinking about it, even once I’m sure it’s over. I mean, it’s hardly been half a day since the last time.
It takes me a moment to realise where I am. I’m inside my hut, stretched out on my bed. Right there beside me, of all people in creation, is Blaze. You know, with his solid chest and muscled thighs and knotty hair and everything.
On top of that though (and excuse me if this sounds prenormal), it’s like there’s all this extra detail to Blaze I never noticed before. His eyes, for one. The circles in the middle are smaller than they’re supposed to be, and the coloured brown bits are way bigger. Everything about Blaze is sharper too. As in, I can see every one of the little hairs bristling on his jawbone. I can see the actual texture of his skin.
It’s the same thing all over my hut. Even from the bed I can make out every little hole in the butterfly design punched into my open shutters. I can see the wood grain on each one of the slats. Outside, the individual leaves on the trees stand out from each other. Since the blurry eye thing started, I guess I’d got used to trees looking like green smudges against the sky. But now that seems to have stopped. Everything’s sharp and clear and glittering as broken glass.
The whole time I’m looking around my hut, Blaze is looking at me. All intense and everything, the way he does.
‘Sore?’ he asks.
I don’t feel sore. Sort of the opposite. I’m awake, but somehow I’m even more awake than usual, if that makes any kind of sense.
But I tell Blaze, ‘Um, I guess.’ He seems to be expecting I will be sore.
‘Big bruise coming up.’ Blaze rubs his own forehead. ‘Right there.’
There’s a couple of butterflies circling the fan on the ceiling. The wind comes in through the shutters and turns the blades. I keep thinking the butterflies are going to get all tangled up or mashed or something, but you know what? They never, ever do. It’s like they know how to keep out of the way. They go on swooping down, flapping around my head and everything. For whatever reason, the butterflies won’t leave me alone.
‘Wait …’
I’m remembering the dream. I saw all that prenormal stuff, the park. Before though, what was I doing before?
‘Did I fall or something?’
‘Rolled out of your hammock.’
A fall. A knock on the head. That’s what made me see all that stuff, this time anyway. It makes sense. As much sense as anything else.
‘Has that ever happened to you?’
I notice my hands are skittering across the top of my sheet. I take one hand in the other and lace my fingers together. On and on and on. My fingers are moving all by themselves and I can’t seem to stop them. But I’ve spoken to Dot about the dreams. I need to remember I have complete and total faith and she has everything under control.
Blaze answers, ‘Once or twice.’
‘What was it like?’
Now he looks at me with those prenormally brown eyes of his.
‘What’s it like for you?’
I’m getting the feeling Blaze means more than falling. And now I’m wondering if he’s talking about the things I saw. Stop, I tell myself. Blaze can’t see the contents of my head. Anyway, none of this is real. There are no screaming mini-people. Parks with gorgeous guys in them do not exist.
Blaze is waiting for me to answer. So I do what I’d normally do, which is laugh.
‘How would I know? I was out of it, remember?’
‘Your eyes were moving. You were looking at something.’
‘Oh my Dot. You were watching me?’
‘You fell. I came to help.’
I can’t stop myself. ‘Even if you were watching me, it still doesn’t mean you have one single clue –’
‘Yeah I do.’
Then, I swear it, I snort. The sound is like something an animal would make. It’s so un-Wren. As in, it’s a totally prehappy sound.
‘Yeah, um, that’s impossible. There’s no way you could ever know what I see when my eyes are closed.’
Blaze’s eyebrows go up.
I blurt, ‘Not that I see anything prenormal or anything. I mean …’
That’s when Blaze starts to smile. An actual grin, maybe the first one I’ve ever seen from him.
‘So there is another you,’ he says. ‘A real you.’
He runs his hand over his chin and I can hear the little hairs there crackling under his calloused fingers. Mostly the hairs on his chin are brown but there’s the odd glimmery gold one too.
I try another laugh. ‘There’s only one me.’
‘Happy, fun, bubbly Wren.’
He goes on stroking his chin.
‘Can you not do that?’
‘You don’t like stubble?’
I smile like Blaze has made some hilarious joke. Snorting, prehappy Wren is gone. I force her to disappear.
‘Dot created it, so why wouldn’t I?’
The ceiling fan turns lazy circles above our heads. The butterflies dip and hover in front of my eyes.
Then, out of nowhere, Blaze goes, ‘We’re the same, you know.’
Underneath me the bed’s kind of tipping and lurching, but I manage to act like it isn’t.
‘Last time I looked, I don’t have stubble. No chub. So no, we’re nothing alike.’
Blaze’s shoulders draw together and he sighs, ‘It happens to me.’
‘Seriously, I don’t know –’
‘You’ve seen outside. Places. People. Words you shouldn’t know.’
Straightaway, I hear those screams in the park again. The feel of that little body in its fuzzy red sungarb. Completely imagined, wispy little nothings. They’re things Dot chose to put in my head for reasons only she understands. Not worthwhile talking about, which is why I’m not even going to admit to Blaze that they exist.
‘Um, try no? I do not see anything outside because there’s no such thing.’
Blaze’s chin-stroking goes from thoughtful to all determined and focused, like his entire existence hinges on it.
‘I don’t know what it is or why it happens. I don’t know why it’s only you and me.’
That’s when a wild, pure, raw prehappiness surges up inside me. Somehow, we’re talking about stuff that isn’t real as though it is. Thinking about things that should be left to Dot.
Then Blaze veers off again.
‘Did you like climbing the rocks by the lagoon?’
I prop myself up on my elbow.
‘I loved it.’
‘You looked prehappy.’
‘When?’
‘When you froze.’
How does he know what I felt when that happened, the squeezing of my insides, my hands all wet and clammy? And how much does he know about the other part, the part where I wondered whether or not I would really mee
t Dot?
‘Are you kidding me? I was absolutely fine.’
‘Not precalm about falling?’
He slams his hands together and makes this huge crashing noise.
‘Wham! That’s it. Gone.’
Blaze’s hands drops to his knees. He’s kind of rubbing them or kneading them or something. I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it, same as the thing I’ve been doing with my fingers.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
I’m so ready to stop this conversation.
‘You knew you’d meet Dot if you went beyond? You were sure?’
‘Definitely.’
Blaze leaves another gap and I end up plunging on with this conversation, even though another part of me is begging myself not to say what comes out next.
‘What else is there to think?’
‘I want to find out.’
Blaze watches the butterflies up by the ceiling fan, flitting around the blades, never once getting caught.
Very softly he says, ‘What if the places we see are real?’
That’s it, right there. That’s why me and Blaze are nothing alike and never will be. It sounds like he sees stuff too, prenormal dreams or visions he thinks are real. Even worse, he’s all desperate to talk about it and find out more. Whereas I know there’s no way in creation any of it can exist.
I mean, if it did, then there’d have to be something outside the fringe of trees, in the beyond, where there’s only Dot. That would mean the Books are wrong, and not just a tiny bit wrong either. I’m talking majorly, completely, totally wrong. And if they can be so far out about that, then it could be that none of the other stuff in there’s right either. Everything would be upside-down and that’s just not possible.
‘I don’t know how many ways I can tell you this. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Forget it, can you?’
Then I do the only thing I can think of, which is to pull my sheet up over my face. Hidden there in my own private pearly bubble, it’s easier to act like I don’t know what Blaze means. I groan.
‘This conversation’s messing with my head. Seriously. There are parts of me that weren’t prehealthy before you got here and now they are.’
‘If you don’t want to talk about it …’
‘I really don’t. In so many different ways.’
Blaze peels back the corner of the sheet and peers in so I can just see a little bit of hazel eye and a square of bristly skin.
‘When you do, come to my hut. Any time.’
Okay, so now we’re back to a place I’m familiar with. A way out, it seems.
‘You want to hook up. Is that what you’ve been trying to tell me this entire time?’
Oh my Dot, you should see Blaze’s face then. His cheeks are like dragonfruit red. Raspberry red. Raspberries and dragonfruit all mooshed together. Totally, totally red.
‘You do! Why didn’t you just say so, instead of all that prenormal stuff you were going on about? My head’s fine. I’m fine. I could hook up now, if that’s what you want.’
I reach my arm out towards him. His hand is right there, grabbing the edge of my sheet still. It’s the easiest thing in creation to put my hand on top of his and mesh our fingers together. It would be, if Blaze hadn’t whipped his hand away instantly. The sheet drops over my face again and from underneath it I see his shadow rippling across my bed as he stands up to leave.
‘So that would be a no then?’
I’m pretty glad to be under the sheet. I have no urge to look at Blaze right now, none whatsoever.
He stops still. ‘I just …’
Then he sort of goes all fumbly. ‘Not everything’s about … you know. Hooking up.’
‘Hooking up is no big deal. It’s what people do. It’s dotly.’
Even as I’m saying this I can’t believe I’m bothering. It’s not even like Blaze is my type of guy. In no way is he entertaining like Jasper or Drake. He isn’t fun to be around, at least not my version of fun. And I know he’s beautiful according to the Books, but in my opinion his hair’s too twisted and his skin’s too weathered to be the kind you want to brush up against. Maybe there was a moment back at the rocks … but it’s over now.
Very, very over. I swear to Dot, I’m not even sure that moment happened at all.
‘If that’s what you believe.’
From underneath my sheet I say, ‘I don’t believe it. I know it.’
Then I pull it back just a little bit to look at Blaze. He’s sort of staring at nothing, or maybe it’s the dust mites.
‘See you later.’
‘Right. Whatever.’
Does that sound enough like I don’t care? Because I don’t care. Really. Not even when he backs away, opens the door and leaves.
I pull the sheet off my face completely and lie there for ages. Outside my hut I can hear people talking. Who’s coming to the lagoon for an afternoon swim, who’s down at the orchard, who was slowest to finish filling their newfruit bag.
Only the thin wooden walls of my hut separate me from them. But you know what? That’s really not the way it feels. From where I’m lying, those people and their light, delicious conversations suddenly seem impossibly far away. Or it feels like I’m impossibly far away from them. Like I’m somewhere else, somewhere that shouldn’t exist.
I think of that small creature with the curls. I think of his soft round tummy.
‘Julius.’
It comes out suddenly. I realise I’ve only thought the word before. This is the first time I’ve ever said it aloud. For a simple collection of letters, it has a powerful effect. I am shaking. I don’t want to say the word again. But at the same time, I can’t stop myself.
‘Julius.’
There’s a loose thread on my sheet and I start flicking it back and forth with my fingertip as I lie there. Gradually, the thread works itself looser and looser until a whole row of the weave starts coming undone.
I know what I should do. Get up and stop being so prenormal. Stop talking to myself. Go hang out with Fern, maybe hook up with Drake or Jasper or whoever. Whatever would help me erase this whole little scene with Blaze, that’s what I should do. That would be dotly.
But guess what?
I just go on fiddling with that loose thread in my sheet, thinking things I don’t even want to put into words because once I do they’ll be out there in the air and I won’t ever be able to take them back. And the whole time I keep tugging at the thread even though I know if I don’t stop right now pretty soon the entire thing will unravel.
10
IT’S THE PERFECT late afternoon, the kind only Dot could create. Everyone’s either swimming or lazing in the huts or maybe, like Fern, picking flowers. Everyone except for me. The only place I want to be right now is in the gazebo, talking to Dot. You know, just watching my thoughts float away in a bubble the way they always have before.
When I arrive at the gazebo it’s not empty like I expected. Gil’s already there.
‘I didn’t know you came here twice a day,’ I say.
I’m working really hard to keep my voice all frothy light. There’s no way I want Gil asking me why I’m here for the second time (which, incidentally, would be a totally Gil-like thing to do).
If he did, I wouldn’t know how to answer. I mean, I’m here because I want to forget about the prenormal conversation I had with Blaze before. I want to stop thinking about the way it made me feel to say the word Julius. I’m here because I have to keep reminding myself Julius isn’t real and that Dot has her reasons for making me see him, which aren’t for me to know. There’s no way in creation I’m explaining all that to Gil. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could.
But it ends up being beside the point because Gil never even turns around. There’s a whole lot of silver hair flopping over his eye, the one with the dotmark. He’s kneeling on a cushion staring up at the portrait of Dot on one lattice wall of the gazebo. And even though I kneel down right beside him, it does
n’t seem like he notices me.
‘So you’re pretty much going to ignore me. Am I right?’
Gil’s eyelids flutter. His lips close and he starts to hum. Not in time with the dottrack that’s playing in the gazebo or anything like that. No, Gil’s hum is one long, low continuous stream.
‘Ha! Okay. I’m going to take that as a yes.’
Underneath my knees, the cushion shivers. That would be because Gil’s entire body has started shaking. His silver hair falls across his face again but he doesn’t scoop it out of the way. All he does is kneel there while his shaking turns into rocking. Forwards and backwards, side-to-side, Gil lurches all over the place. His arms are circling now, his mouth drawn back in a sort of snarl.
Next Gil starts up this high-pitched moaning. His arms stop circling. Instead they rise up and reach out for Dot’s portrait like he’s not even controlling them, like Dot’s literally pulling him to her. In the middle of his moaning he starts to talk but not in words I’ve ever heard before. It’s just a whole lot of garbled letters.
I want to ask him what’s happening but when I say Gil’s name it just gets lost in all the noise. Then his eyelids open. It’s like Gil can’t see me even though I’m right there next to him. His eyes are blank white. As in, no coloured parts whatsover. His head tips back. He’s really shrieking now, jerking and rolling and sweating and everything else. It’s like Dot’s portrait is watching him and only him, like Dot and Gil are joined by some invisible, unbreakable thread.
Then he says, ‘Yes, Dot, I understand.’
And suddenly, without any kind of warning, the whole thing is over. Gil flops sideways, all limp and wrung out. His head’s on the cushion, his hair’s brushing my leg and he’s breathing hard. I touch his forehead, brush away the damp silver ropes of his hair until he opens his eyes and gazes up at me.
‘Okay. Oh my Dot. Are you alright?’
Gil’s eyes are back in the proper place, pale as a wolf ’s with huge black circles in the centre.
‘No-one’s ever seen me like that, except Brook.’
‘Are you, like, prehealthy or something?’
‘No,’ Gil smiles, ‘the opposite. That’s just what happens when Dot’s inside me.’
State of Grace Page 5
