30

I don’t know where I am at first. There’s leather under my cheek, and a square shape right in front of my face, so I can’t be in my bedroom. I try to sit up, but I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I lie back down until my foggy head clears.

It takes ages for my brain to wake up and tell me I’m in Paul and Thom’s house. I must have fallen asleep on their couch. It’s still dark so I can’t have been asleep for long. I sit up with a spinning head. Instead of making me feel better the nap has annihilated me.

Wolfboy is asleep in the rocking chair with an open comic on his lap and his feet resting on the packing chest. One hand is clenched around something small, the lighter

I think, and he doesn’t make the barest of sounds.

I stand up and pad quietly to the window.

The gardens are greeny-grey and dark. There’s another dead lawn behind the cottage, dotted with empty flowerbeds. A gazebo on the far side, and then a patchy line of trees. Shadows everywhere; the moon tucked somewhere behind the house. I realise I could have been asleep for a long time: the darkness doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t notice the time when I turned my phone on. Another fairytale feeling creeps over me. Maybe I’m like the Japanese fisherman who parties on the bottom of the ocean with the beautiful princess for three nights, only to return to the surface and discover sixty years have passed.

I drink some water at the basin and then find my phone wedged into the back of the couch. 5:27 a.m. No new messages.

I sit on the couch with my bundle of possessions in my lap and watch Wolfboy sleep.

He’s a long way under. Only the rise and fall of his chest let me know he’s not dead. I notice for the first time how thick his eyebrows are. This is the first chance I’ve had to think beyond this night. What happens next? Wolfboy might think I’m great now, but how long will that last? It won’t take long for me to mess this up. I’m not so deluded that I think it’s all someone else’s fault I don’t have any friends at school. Wolfboy doesn’t know me at all.

As I watch him sleep, something slides inside me, a lens slips away and everything looks different. I don’t know him either. Take away the last seven and a half hours and he’s a stranger.

The cottage is small and there’s not enough air.

I realise that I can’t stay here. I have to leave. Better to quit while I’m ahead.

I find a Sharpie and a scrap of paper on the sideboard. Wolfboy doesn’t stir. I sit on the couch and write him a letter before I change my mind. At first I struggle for words, but then I just write whatever comes into my head. When the paper is full I fold it in four and leave it on the packing chest.

I examine Wolfboy’s sleeping face for the last time, searching for the part of me that wanted to hold his hand, touch his arm, his cheek, to know his mouth, but there’s nothing. It’s better this way.

I sling my ukulele around me and carry my boots in one hand. The door creaks loudly. I don’t look back. I step quickly down the cottage path and onto the main avenue, clutching my bundle against my stomach. When I’m a safe distance away I stop and pull my boots on. The temperature outside takes my breath away all over again. I follow a new path past a basketball court and a playground. Gravel paths slice the gardens into triangles and squares. One square is full of trees lying on their sides like toppled drunks. There’s a road beyond the playground. I wonder how far I’ll have to walk before I can get a cab.

When I reach it the road is dark and unpromising. I follow the edge of the gardens, walking until I cross another path. It takes me back towards the centre until I’m standing at the fountain again.

I’ve lost all sense of direction: up and down, as well as north, south, east and west. I look around me, at the horse rearing above the pond, and the gravel under my feet, and I don’t know what to see or feel. There is nowhere comfortable for me at this moment.

I sit on the edge of the pond and stare into the night. The trees are dark, silent giants. Dead but still standing, like stars extinguished thousands of years ago that still twinkle in our skies.

I was going to have to leave Shyness anyway. I test myself by trying to imagine Wolfboy taking the train across the city to Plexus in broad daylight. I try to imagine what he would look like sitting in our tiny apartment eating biscuits with Mum. No. Ridiculous.

I want to cry, but I’ve cried enough tonight. There are no answers in the still, black park. Are there monsters in these woods? Are there monsters out there in Shyness, or Plexus, or is it all in my head?

There’s a gentle snicker to my left. I glance across and realise I’m sharing the pond with a tarsier. It sits on the rim, a metre away, and looks ahead, unblinking. I click my tongue to get its attention.

Instead of turning towards me the tarsier swivels its head away from me, and keeps on turning it almost three hundred and sixty degrees, until its eyes look directly into mine. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, and unsettling as hell.

It’s enough to make me stand up and walk back towards the cottage. Each time my foot strikes the ground I hear the words not-afraid, not-afraid.