Charcoal Tears

by Jane Washington

  I flinched. “Yes, my name is Seraph, and no, my parents weren’t on drugs.” I muttered the last part under my breath, not in the mood for anyone to make fun of my name today.

  His smile widened. “I like it. If they weren’t on drugs then…” he trailed off, waiting for me to fill in the gaps.

  “Blame it on whimsy.”

  I kept my eyes fixed to the floor out of habit, and my hair sipped over my shoulder. The sleepy curls were tangled, forming an intricate, dark curtain to separate us. I didn’t push the barrier away, instead relieved that I could no longer feel his stare, as gentle and amused as it was. There was something different about this boy and his brother, and I had more than enough experience with different to know that it wasn’t always a good thing. He didn’t speak all the way to my next class, and it took that long for me to realise that he had pulled me out of the way of a moving car, and taken the brunt himself. I glanced sideways, slowing down with the door to my class in sight. He paused, and I risked a peek at his face.

  “You’re not hurt.” It was more a statement, but I asked it like I feared the answer anyway.

  He hesitated, and then brushed the hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. My face flamed bright despite the strange scratchy feeling that accompanied his touch, and he turned to face me fully. Other students were passing behind his back, slowing down as we had, peering at the two of us curiously. He seemed to be angling his broad shoulders in just the right way to hide me from them.

  “No, the car had almost stopped by the time it hit us.”

  I nodded, focussing on his feet. “Thank you.”

  The hallway cleared. He backed off me a little bit and I found myself meeting his eyes.

  “Knew you had it in you somewhere, Seraph. You’re welcome.” He smiled and spun on his heel, walking away with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a whistle floating casually down the hallway after him.

  I watched as he disappeared around the corner before I ducked into my class. I barely heard anything through the next two classes, and soon found myself curled onto a bench on the outskirts of the cafeteria, my stomach grumbling. My tablemate was a younger boy with freckles and sandy blond hair. He didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to him. It was the way we worked. I knew that his name was Matthew, because it was scrawled on his notebook.

  Cabe and his brother weren’t hard to spot; they were sitting centre stage, surrounded by the popular kids. I knew, realistically, that the whole cafeteria floor was one giant, level slab, but my eyes seemed to be tricking me into seeing them elevated in the centre of the room. Even the dim Seattle sunlight was spilling in from the cafeteria windows at just the right angle to bathe them in a natural halo of golden superiority. Lilly—one of the cheerleaders—was perched on the arm of the driver’s chair, while another girl framed Cabe on the other side. Cabe was entertaining everyone within hearing distance, easily, casually, like he didn’t know what out-of-your-element even meant. Everyone seemed to hang off his every word—laughing uproariously in all the right places—except his brother, who just looked bored. I watched as Cabe told another apparent joke, causing one of the football guys to lose control and fall out of his chair, knocking over a passing girl. I wasn’t entirely sure how, but his hands found their way up her skirt and then her chocolate milk found its way into his face. Cabe laughed at the spectacle, but his brother watched it all without blinking an eye.

  I tried to shrink back into myself, hoping that my clothing would suddenly grow several sizes and swallow me up, but it wasn’t long until Cabe found me, and somehow I knew that he would. He smiled at me the way you would smile at a crazy person that you didn’t want to frighten away, and then leaned over and said something to his brother, who flicked his eyes up and found me, automatically. Immediately. Like he had a stupid homing beacon or something. I flinched back with the suddenness of the movement and focussed on the table in front of me.

  Matthew glanced up from his iPad before nudging something into the centre of the table: an untouched peanut butter sandwich. All thoughts of Cabe and his brother were swept from my mind, and I stared at the sandwich, my stomach cramping up almost violently.

  “Go on,” Matthew said casually, like it was no big deal. He did this sometimes, but I’d never hesitated before now.

  I muttered my thanks and reached for it, barely tasting it before it was gone. My stomach knotted painfully, either from how hungry the sandwich had made me, or the fact that I hadn’t eaten in days… I didn’t know. I pressed a hand against the pain, waiting for nausea to roll through me. Every few months I went so long without eating that my first meal for days would make me nauseous.

  The bell rang and students dragged their feet, prolonging their conversations like they actually had important things that needed to be discussed. I stared at the tabletop as Matthew left quietly and the cafeteria gradually emptied. I heard Tariq’s laugh somewhere and it lifted me and stabbed me all at once. Once I was sure that I wasn’t going to be sick, I gathered my stuff and started to slide out of the booth seat. Or at least I tried to.

  There was a person blocking the exit.

  Stormy blue eyes arrested me, and I paused, half-raised from the seat. On some level I recognised that Cabe was standing next to his brother, but I was too focussed on the boy standing before me. I didn’t understand how they were related; Cabe was an angel dressed in devilish features, and his brother was the very opposite. He brimmed with the kind of roiling emotion that possessed enough force to hint at imminent explosive action—even though I suspected that he was usually in perfect control. Maybe it was the very harsh styling of his hair: the pure and untarnished gold was pulled back and forced into streamlined compliance, darker or lighter in some places, giving the impression that it would shift tint in different lights. His skin was pale, a smooth and unblemished canvas to frame the splash of blue vibrancy held in his gaze. He was similar in build to Cabe, but a few inches shorter and a little wider at the shoulders. I narrowed my eyes on the shirtfront before me, and then dropped my eyes to the accompanying pants. They were dressed more formally than the other students, and much much nicer. I didn’t exactly have an eye for quality, but even I knew that I could have probably traded in my mum’s old car for one of their outfits.

  No wonder the other kids idolised them already. People this good-looking shouldn’t be walking around in daylight like they had nothing better to do than pretend to be normal like the rest of us.

  “You’re right,” the brother said. “She doesn’t talk much. Is she still in shock?”

  I raised myself further out of the seat and shuffled to the end, stepping out. This brought me almost chest-to-chest with the brother, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out what they wanted. I slung my bag over my shoulder, shot Cabe a defiant look—because he wasn’t so scary to look at—and started to move off. Cabe stepped forward, blocking me.

  “Her name is Seraph, and she’s right there. All…” he cocked his head “five feet of her. Ask her yourself.”

  I made to go the other way, but the brother shot a hand forward, anchoring it against the back of the bench seat. I was boxed in.

  “Seraph?” the brother questioned, his eyes on me.

  I didn’t know if he was questioning my name, or questioning me.

  “Yes?” I tried to stare at my feet, but the brother was too close to me. I ended up staring at his stomach.

  His fingers caught my chin, lifting my head up. I jumped at the touch, and he blinked, surprised. The same feeling that had assuaged me at Cabe’s touch now radiated from his brother’s fingers, spreading over my neck and heating my cheeks.

  Cabe chuckled. “You idiot, Noah. You scared her again.”

  “Can’t help it.” Noah sounded angry. “I almost ran you over his morning.” He directed this at me, his eyes flicking over my face, and then lower, cataloguing all of me.

  “Yes.” I lifted my chin, forcing his eyes back to my face.

  “And you didn’t
move.” There was something compelling about his eyes. They drew me in until the storm surrounded me on all sides, his influence closing in on me like an actual physical force, tossing around my thoughts before they turned to words and fell across my lips, extracting things from me that I hadn’t even admitted to myself yet.

  “I have no idea what came over me.” My voice was breathless. “I’m sorry. I—ah, I hope… there’s no damage?”

  He grunted. “I think your self-preservation mechanism is damaged.”

  Cabe punched him, and I glanced over into the warmer eyes, some of the tension draining away.

  “Ignore him.” Cabe smiled. “He wanted to make sure I didn’t break you when I fell on you. He’s a hard-ass, but he cares.”

  Noah stepped back, turned and thumped his brother in the stomach. “Shut up, man.”

  Cabe sucked in a breath and rubbed at his stomach. I used the moment to my advantage, slipping away from both of them. Cabe turned to the side as I passed, but caught my elbow again.

  “Let me walk you,” he said, still rubbing the spot where Noah had punched him.

  “Okay.” I didn’t pause, and he fell into step beside me. Surprisingly, Noah shadowed my other side.

  “Keep walking,” Noah barked at a group of lingering students who were leaning against the wall outside the cafeteria, whispering to each other and staring at us.

  I jumped and slowed my walk as the other kids snapped to attention and scrambled away. Cabe and Noah slowed on either side of me, and confusion descended like a heavy fog in my brain. This wasn’t normal, was it?

  “You seem to be settling in easily,” I finally said, not aiming the statement at either of them in particular. “Be careful. They might make thrones for you.”

  Cabe snorted. “High school. Always the same.”

  “Right.”

  “Who was your friend?” Noah asked.

  “What friend?” I searched my brain, trying to think of anyone that I might consider a friend other than Tariq. There was the girl that I sometimes sat with on the bus when we didn’t have enough money to put petrol in the car, or the boy at the corner store close to the school who made terrible coffee but always smiled at me, or—

  “The boy you were sitting with at lunch.” Noah threaded me a look, arching his brows.

  “Ah, Matthew. I don’t know. Today was the first time we’ve actually spoken.”

  Cabe started to laugh, but Noah’s head snapped up, and they shared a look over my head. Cabe quietened.

  We neared my art class and I opened the door, trying to act casual when they followed me inside. Quillan glanced up from his desk, tilting his head to the side. He seemed to be expecting the new boys, but his eyes narrowed fractionally when he spotted me standing between them. It wasn’t a look I was used to from my art teacher, so I quickly slipped away from Noah and Cabe to find my easel in the back of the classroom. The rest of the students were all setting up and chatting happily. Art class was pretty relaxed.

  The boys approached Quillan and I watched them from behind my blank canvas. Quillan had his long legs propped up on the desk in front of him, his black hair waved back from his forehead, styled to perfection as always. Quillan smiled easily and often, but the mirth never reached the darkness of his eyes. He was always approachable, always gentle, and yet he seemed so far out of reach that I sometimes wondered if he existed on a separate wavelength to the rest of us. We could see him, and interact with him, but he was only half here. Though Cabe and Noah were certainly visually impressive, Quillan’s looks bordered on unnatural perfection. He was lean, but towered over anyone in the vicinity, and there was always something commanding about his presence, a powerful influence that simmered in the soft black velvet of his eyes. His eyes were actually blue—he had told the class once—but I only ever saw the black. Most of the girls harboured secret crushes on him, but I had never held an attraction to him. Yes, he was beautiful, but he had become a guardian, of sorts, in the time that I had known him. He was always watching over me, his gaze protective, always checking up on me, his questions kind.

  They were talking softly with each other now, and Quillan slid a look to me, his squared jaw flexing with a half-smile. Shocked, I retreated behind my canvas again and blindly picked up a paintbrush. I arranged my paints, embraced the racing thunder of my heartbeat, and began to paint.

  2

  Down Will Come Baby

  I started with blue, outlining a raging ocean shore, violent with the foam of churning force, with the promise of deep and dangerous depths beyond the reach of human senses, and then I began on the sun. The sky wasn’t normal, not in this painting. It was warm and soft and everything that makes a person smile. The rays were golden, and they dipped beneath the ocean to shimmer in dancing patterns across the water, drawing the two opposite forces together. I felt people moving around me, but I ignored them, until I heard Quillan’s surprised voice at my ear.

  “You’re painting again.”

  I dropped my paintbrush and he swooped down, collecting it.

  “Y-yes,” I stuttered, my eyes averted from the painting.

  Behind Quillan, Cabe had set up an easel beside me. He hadn’t painted anything, but his eyes were fixed on my canvas and he was smirking. Quillan looked at my painting, and I had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what had motivated me to paint it. His eyes flicked over my shoulder and narrowed again. I looked behind me. Noah was sitting on a bench against the wall on my other side, his legs propped onto a stool in front of him, his eyes fixed to my canvas. That’s all he had been doing, apparently. Sitting there. Watching me paint.

  “It’s good, Seph.” Quillan turned his attention back to my work. “It’s very good. Stay behind after class, I’ve a few things to discuss with you.”

  He gave me back my paintbrush and smiled a little. I nodded. I would do anything that Quillan asked me to do, and it wasn’t because I was a model student. It was the voice he used. Quillan asked things of people and they reacted without thinking, without considering, and certainly without arguing. His voice had a pleasant husk, deepening everything he said to a command that tolerated no second-guessing. Some people possessed a natural authority in the way they held themselves, but for Quillan, it was in the way he spoke to people, like he knew what was best for them, like he knew what was best for the world. For a minute neither of us moved, and then he went back to his desk. I began to paint again, and when I had finished, dark cavernous mountains framed either side of the ocean, peaking into the sky. They towered over everything, keeping it all contained, controlled, wrapped in black influence. I finished before the bell rang and simply stood there as it dried, staring at what I had done. I was confused, and my heart was still beating too fast. At the end of the class, I tore the painting from its clips and rolled it up, stuffing it into my bag. Cabe and Noah left without a word to me and I peeked behind Cabe’s easel, feeling an insane urge to laugh at the sloppy smiley face that he had drawn. Cabe wasn’t an artist.

  I approached Quillan’s desk and he motioned for me to sit. I pulled up one of the art stools, setting it before his desk. I wasn’t simply familiar with his routine check-ups; I actually looked forward to them. It wasn’t that I ever really told him anything consequential, but Quillan was the only person other than Tariq who ever asked about me. Sometimes I wished that we could have lived with Quillan instead of… but that was silly.

  Impossible.

  Borderline weird.

  “How are you feeling, Seph?”

  “Good.” I managed to offer him a smile. “How are you, Mr. Quillan?”

  He laughed softly and didn’t answer my question, as usual. “I’m glad you’re painting again. Are you ready to tell me about it yet?”

  He was referring to the reason that I had stopped painting in the first place. He didn’t know about the strangle coldness that seized up my fingers, or the tingling premonition that teased the base of my skull, and I wasn’t ever going to tell him. I shook my head.
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br />   With a sigh, he settled his palms against his desk and pushed up until he was standing. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

  I focussed my eyes on his tie; forest green with silver accents, gently contrasting with his white shirt and black pants. The sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, and I noticed for the first time that he wore expensive clothes, just like Cabe and Noah.

  “Define trouble?” I asked his tie.

  He tapped my chin, once, and my head snapped up. He forced me to look up all the time, but he usually did it with a pencil or ruler against my chin, like he wasn’t allowed to actually touch me in any way.

  “You’d tell me if someone hurt you, Seph?” he pressed.

  I stared at him, and then slowly got off the stool. He stepped back to give me room, and I was grateful for it.

  “Thank you for checking up on me, Mr. Quillan.” I paused with my hand on the door as his sigh drifted after me. It was the first time he had ever pressed me to talk to him, usually he just made gentle enquiries and offered his assistance.

  I left quickly, but still ended up being late to my next class. As usual, nobody noticed me enter, and I was just fine with that. As the school day ended, the usual dread settled into the pit of my stomach and I took the fire stairs down to the first floor of the building, not wanting to run into anyone. The sound of voices floating up to me from the landing below made me pause.

  “Did you see anything?” I recognised Cabe’s voice, and I froze, ready to turn back.

  “No,” Noah replied, “I didn’t. Her wrists were clear, nothing on her neck, or her ankles. I checked all the usual places.”

  “And she didn’t notice you checking?”

  “Are you serious?” Noah sounded amused.

  “Right.” Cabe breathed out a laugh. “But you felt it too, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Noah answered after a pause.

  Not wanting them to catch me eavesdropping, I slipped out of the stairwell and braved the swell of students spilling down the corridors. I found Tariq leaning against my car, his goofy grin gone. We shared a grim look, and both got into the car.