‘Here, boy. Check this one out,’ Noah tempted. ‘It’s smaller but very tasty. Like a teeny, tiny little kitten.’
A tail swished, and it definitely wasn’t mine.
When the tennis ball bounced right under its nose, the animal’s canine consciousness couldn’t resist. It flicked its eyes away from me for just a second, and I shuffled back. Noah caught the tennis ball again and threw it as hard as he could along the riverbank. The Staffy took off after it, its muscles bunching with far too much power for its short strides. When it captured its prey the dog kept running, off into the bushland.
Dusting off my sundress, I watched it disappear, shaking my head in disdain at its cowardice.
My friend acknowledged my fierce bravery with a slap across the back of my head. ‘What was that all about?’
It was a very good question. While I’d been messing around with the guys, pretending to have far more energy than I really did, I’d been thinking about Kolsom, and our farm, my home, and how easy it could be for them to start mining wherever they wanted, and how I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to kick them out. Then the dog had bounded in and stolen the footy and my surge of possessiveness may have gotten a little out of hand.
Instead of answering Noah, I picked up the liberated ball and cradled it to my chest, growling at him with one lip raised when he reached for it, which made him laugh.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked, crouching as he prepared to tackle the ball from my grip.
I tossed it to him. ‘Not really. I’m kind of stuffed,’ I admitted. ‘I’m going to get changed.’
He kicked the footy back to Emma, its real owner. ‘Good plan. I’ll just go and apologise to Matt for losing his tennis ball and then I’ll join you.’
It was now late enough in the afternoon that the thirsty wind gusts had begun to settle and most of our classmates had long since gone home to get ready for the evening’s festivities. My legs trembled as I trudged up the hill to the bridge, where I saw Jake whistling for his dog. I pointed vaguely in the direction I had last seen it, and then crossed the street towards Noah’s ute where I had packed my clothes for the evening along with a bag of frozen oranges—not that they would still be frozen after an afternoon in a hot car. I needed a dose of … whatever it was that I needed. Of course, I made it most of the way there before realising I would need the car keys. Noah never used to bother locking his car until Nicole had taken to driving off in it while no one was looking. I turned back and whistled to him, the sound cutting across the noise of the river. One of the other guys heard me and tapped him on the shoulder, so I tried to signal that I needed his keys. All I got in response was a frantic waving of his arms. Did he really expect me to walk all the way back down again to get them?
The heartbreaking sound of a poor abused engine being over-revved intruded on our game of charades, and I twisted around to see where it was coming from. A faded blue sedan spun out of a side street and swerved into the main road, the angry squeal of its tyres sounding alien in the quiet afternoon. Stupid bogan drivers. In disbelief I watched it straighten and aim straight for me. I dodged to the right. It swerved the same way. So I stumbled left, and it followed me. It was like one of those awkward moments with an oncoming person in a busy shopping centre, only the sedan was travelling a heck of a lot faster than I was.
Snarling violence filled my ears.
Blue metal filled my vision.
The snarling sound grew into vicious growl inside my head as the mechanical blue beast charged for my throat and I felt something tug at my arm, but all my attention was focused on the death machine coming for me as I scrambled backwards, tripping over my own feet.
The car skimmed past me, its metal skin hot where it brushed against my shoulder as I fell.
An interrupted yelp and sickening crunch sounded simultaneously in my stunned ears, and I rolled back up to my knees just in time to see Jake’s poor dog slide across the bitumen. Screaming brakes didn’t quite save the sedan from mounting the kerb and hitting a street bin with a horrible metallic crunch.
Everything froze, and for a crystalline moment all I could see was the motionless form of the poor dog lying on the road, its limbs sticking out like spider’s legs and its neck bent backwards. When I found the courage to look away, the sedan driver was stumbling out.
Bane.
Somehow he managed to look furious and terrified at the same time. Wearing old shabby jeans and a ripped T-shirt, he was sweat-soaked and shaking. He didn’t even glance at the dog as he slammed his door shut and strode towards me.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ I yelled. Any residual sympathy I’d had for him leaving school flew out the window with his apparent total lack of concern for what he’d just done. Finally forcing my limbs to move, I stood unsteadily and turned my back on him. I needed to see if the dog was alive.
Jake got there first and keened his grief-stricken conclusion. I stammered out something that sounded consoling, although I was too shaken to make much sense.
‘Are you all right, Lainie?’ Distress filled Jake’s eyes as he looked up at me. His skinny arms lifted the heavy animal and I could see fresh blood smear across the half unbuttoned white shirt he’d worn for graduation. ‘I don’t know what got into him. He used to be so gentle. A bit of a boofhead and all, but always gentle. Lately he’s been acting so weird, and it’s not like him, I promise.’ He held the beast’s head on his lap, rocking back and forth. ‘Bane, mate.’ His voice cracked as he looked up. ‘I tried to catch him but he was too quick, I’m so sorry!’ Jake cringed away from the crazed dropout as he approached.
‘Don’t you dare apologise to him, Jake. He came out of nowhere! Seriously, Bane, what were you thinking?’
The shaken driver staggered towards us, sweat dripping from his hair and every muscle tense. ‘I don’t know. I had to … I don’t know …’
He sounded confused and very angry. Maybe he’d hit his head?
Like some kind of raving animal he pinned me with his gaze and I froze. His voice became manic, hysterical, soaked in violence, with a depth to it that cut into my chest.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t understand why I can’t leave. I don’t understand why I just can’t leave you alone. I can’t stand you. I can’t stand to be around you!’ As he ranted he kept stumbling towards me, his expression terrifying.
Held motionless by his outspoken hatred, I couldn’t even make myself step away. ‘Why? Why me?’ I yelled back. ‘What have I ever done to you? Why do you hate me so much?’ My own voice quivered with righteous pent-up anger for all his years of unsolicited abuse.
‘Because I hate who I am when I’m around you!’ he screamed, his voice splintering, echoing around the quiet street.
Silent seconds passed.
Mere inches from my face, he froze, looking even more baffled than I was. His pale grey eyes were locked on mine, tortured and intense. He smelled like strong alcohol.
‘Stay away from me then,’ I whispered. He was seriously frightening me now. It looked like every muscle in his body was seizing up as he took a deep breath in and reached for my left wrist. Blood dripped from a gory looking wound on my forearm that I hadn’t even noticed. Had Jake’s Staffy bitten me? Wincing from the suddenly noticed pain, I tried to pull away but his grip was too firm.
‘I can’t, Lainie,’ he snapped. He placed both his hands right on to the gash and I felt a flash of intense heat, as if my arm had just caught fire. It went beyond pain, like an electric shock that rearranged each one of my molecules. A split second before I could scream, the burning eased to a tingling warmth. He exhaled and all the tension drained out his body with his breath.
‘Holey. Frickin. Swiss cheese,’ Jake said into the silent aftermath.
Looking down, I saw the smooth skin of my arm beneath a leftover smear of blood. The woun
d itself had vanished. Not a trace of a cut or even a graze. As my legs gave way, both boys grabbed me and lowered me to the ground just as Noah blew in like a cyclone.
‘Lainie, are you all right?’ he cried, shoving the others out of the way and kneeling down in front of me. His face was ashen and he was breathing hard.
‘Apparently so. Why is everyone asking about me? Jake’s the one who just lost his dog because of this maniac.’
‘Thank God Bane arrived when he did! A split second later and you would have been dog meat.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Did you seriously not notice the savage beast about to take you down like a bloody orphaned lamb? I tried to warn you and you just waved back at me like an idiot.’ The obvious worry in his eyes softened the harshness of his words. ‘Jake, do you never lock your gate?’ he panted, still breathless from his sprint up the hill.
Jake tore his gaze away from my arm, his expression guilty. ‘Of course I do, but somehow he always still gets out. I mean, got out. I am so sorry, Lainie.’
‘Wait,’ said Bane. ‘Are you absolutely sure the dog was attacking her? I didn’t just hit it for no reason?’ His face was white and clammy and he looked like he was about to faint. It made no sense. Did he think he’d hit the dog for no reason?
‘Yeah, mate, I know you saw it attack. What I don’t understand is how you predicted it from so far away,’ Noah said.
‘We haven’t told you the freaky bit yet,’ Jake muttered, staring at my arm again.
‘Okay. No. Time out,’ I said, shaking them all away from me. ‘I can’t … I’m sorry. I need to go home now. Bane, sit down before you fall down. I can’t talk to you. I don’t know what you just did or whether I should be thanking you, apologising to you or suing you.’
He slumped down to the kerb, holding his head in his hands. ‘Just stay the hell away from me,’ he snarled.
Jake looked like he wanted to argue but Noah silenced him with a look and then held his hand out to me.
‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’ He hauled me to my feet. ‘You can tell me the rest later. We’ll leave these two to deal with the dog.’ He winced at the blue sedan that was cuddling a rubbish bin. ‘And the car. At least no one else is involved.’
The familiar feel of his arms steadied my trembling as I climbed into to his ute.
As soon as we were on the road out of town I started swallowing down tears. At the end of such an exhausting and confusing week, including all the drama of graduation, my emotions were about as manageable as a broken shopping trolley.
‘He healed me, Noah,’ I eventually articulated, rubbing at my wrist to feel for some evidence of the injury. ‘I mean, healed. He laid his hands on my arm and the wound disappeared.’
Noah grabbed my hand to stop me scratching, but didn’t say anything. I kept staring at where the wound had been, almost wishing it would reappear.
‘I don’t understand. How did he do that? And why? First he tries to run me over, then he yells at me, and then he pulls some freakin’ superpower on me in the middle of the street. What the hell?’
Noah still didn’t reply, and continued to drive one-handed, his other still gripping mine as if he was worried about what I might do if he let it go. Perhaps he thought I was having some sort of an episode. Which I guess I was.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
It took a few moments for him to answer. ‘I believe you,’ he said finally, although his jaw was tight. ‘I saw you with a Staffy hanging off your arm and now you have nothing to show for it. I wish I could offer you something better than this crazy theory I had a while back.
‘Theory?’ I asked.
‘It’ll only upset you.’
‘Too late to worry about that.’
‘It’s really stupid.’
‘Then make me laugh. I could use a laugh.’
He let go of my hand. ‘Do you remember that day at soccer training when he bit me?’
‘Yeah, he’s totally barmy, and—’
‘No, Lainie.’ He cut me off before I could launch into my usual guess-what-else-Bane-did rant. ‘I don’t think he’s insane. I think he’s … compelled.’
I raised one eyebrow at him.
‘After a whole season of being one of our best team players, the one time you were there he went berko. The thing is, the player he tackled was in the process of kicking that ball directly towards you. I only noticed because I flinched, thinking you were about to get taken out by a ball in the face.’
Entirely possible. I’d been entangled in a daydream about a tree and would have made a prime candidate for Funniest Home Videos.
‘Somehow, I think Bane can tell when you’re in danger and he’s compelled to do something about it. I don’t think he even realises what he’s doing.’
I chewed over that for a few seconds and then shook my head. ‘That’s ridiculous, Noah. He’s a psycho and he hates me. Did you forget that he pulled a knife on me?’
‘Well, what would have happened if he hadn’t?’
I shrugged.
‘You would have caught up with me outside,’ he said. ‘Maybe just in time for Jake to reverse into you in the car park.’
As much as I wanted to refute that possibility, I couldn’t. I stopped scraping at my arm and took out an orange from my bag, rolling it around like a stress ball while I tried to untangle my thoughts. My mind kept circling around the dead dog, the soccer incident, the knife attack, and the intense look in Bane’s eyes when he’d grabbed my arm. The idea of Bane as some sort of guardian angel was ludicrous, and yet there had to be some of explanation for his insane behaviour. Did all this have something to do with being a Cherub? I needed to find out what else Aunt Lily knew.
As Noah pulled up to the front gate, I turned to him. ‘I don’t know if you’re right about Bane,’ I said, still fiddling with the orange, ‘but I do know that you’re the one I rely on to have my back. If it wasn’t for you I would never have made it through this week. And I really am sorry that I was such a pest about Claudia.’
He smiled, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes. ‘I get it, Lainie, I do. Things were a lot less complicated when we were younger, weren’t they?’ He looked almost nostalgic. ‘Get an early night maybe. Or did you still want to come to the after-party?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t think I could handle that. You go ahead.’
‘What about tomorrow night? You’ll still come to that, right?’ Great big green puppy-dog eyes filled his face, melting my sombre mood. The next night was our formal graduation dance. Aunt Lily had followed through on her promise to buy me a new dress and I’d been looking forward to wearing it.
‘Of course. I wouldn’t miss it. And if you’re very nice to me, I might even help you find a new Claudia. Pick me up at seven?’ I asked, getting out of the car. He nodded, but didn’t laugh like I expected. ‘And, Noah?’
‘Hmm?’
It was there. Right on the tip of my tongue. Those words. I don’t want you to go away next year. But I was not that selfish, so instead I found safer ones. ‘Thanks for believing me.’
He gave me his most melting smile and I knew we were okay again as I shut the door and watched him drive away. Just before he turned onto the road, he glanced back at me, and for just a moment his eyes were full of worry.
A moment before he turned onto the road, he glanced back at me. He looked kind of sad.
Aunt Lily was peeling an apple when I entered the kitchen. Wasting all the good bits.
‘We need to talk,’ I declared as I snagged a length of apple skin. As reluctant as I was to tell her about what had happened with Bane, there were things I needed to understand.
She started peeling an apple for me. ‘What’s happened? Hit me. I’m good to go. I had a great nap while your principal was droning on.’
‘Fi
rst tell me about my parents. Was your brother really human?’ I sat down and placed my palms flat against the table to steady myself. Bane had healed me. Something supernatural was undeniably going on. Most likely because I was a Cherub. There was simply no longer any point in denying that I was not, actually, a human being. As if the hideous ‘birds-and-bees’ talk hadn’t been bad enough, now I had to somehow ask her if I was even human enough to have a normal relationship. Was Lucas Gracewood really my father? Harry was just a few years older than my mother and I wasn’t stupid. They were both Cherubim and so was I. Or was my mother supposed to be with Harry but fell in love with a human instead? Was that why Harry had remained alone all these years?
Aunt Lily looked at me for a stretched out moment. Assessing how much to tell me. Eventually she nodded and handed me the apple. ‘My brother was human, just like I am. It was when he met Annie that he became … something more, and everything changed for him. You’re destined for a particular partner, Lainie, and when you find him, neither of you will care about being compelled to stay in Nalong.’
I raised my eyebrows. I had expected her to say I was destined to be alone, that I was the last of my kind and had a divinely appointed job to do and wasn’t allowed to become involved with anyone who might jeopardise my task. Forbidden love was a tragedy that would have slotted seamlessly into my tragic life story.
Then the last part of what she’d said clicked into place and I felt the blood drain from my face.
‘Compelled?’ I spluttered. ‘Bane … destined?’
Because who else would it be? I had no idea how his ‘compulsion’ fit into the scheme of things—only that I was supposed to guard the way to Eden but was apparently not able to protect myself from even the most mundane of dangers.
‘Do you mean I’m destined to fall in love with him? That’s more insane than anything else you’ve come up with so far. You have no idea how much he hates me. What happened to the whole idea of free will? You just can’t play with people’s emotions like this!’ I was shouting and furious and ranting like an overexcited televangelist. My anger needed to go somewhere, and the apple was handy, so I threw it as hard as I could at the wall where it exploded into smooshy pulp.
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