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The empty space around Skye wherever she went in the halls of Yeardley High made her feel like she’d bathed in shark repellent. Her new classmates were the sharks, happy to take hungry bites out of her family’s reputation, so long as they could keep far enough away to remain untainted by Sebastian weirdness.
When agreeing to attend Yeardley High, she must have been on a self-masochistic bent; apparently this was an idea she had embraced. Or so she’d been told. She couldn't imagine why she would ever have agreed to this.
The morning had been nothing short of excruciating, and she thought wistfully of her old school and the anonymity she’d known there. Could she persuade Mike to transfer there, and take her with him? But at once the hollow inside her, the certainty that part of her was missing, killed the thought of leaving Bannimor. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. Not without answers.
At least her unconscious grip on her midriff had earned her an early escape from PE. And weirdly, now that she thought about it, she was feeling a little...better.
“Are you in the queue?” She jumped when a girl leaned around from behind her.
“Uh...” Was she? She realised that a line had grown to where she stood awkwardly in the middle of the corridor. How had she got here?
“It’s fried chicken today,” the girl grinned, freckles dark against her pale skin.
“Um... Then yes?” Lunchtime. That explained at least part of the hollow under her ribcage. She looked around hopefully for Ethan. He’d promised to find her at lunchtime, and by sheer luck she was where he’d told her to wait.
“You’re new, right?”
Skye nodded, so much easier than explaining her history.
“I’m Emmie and this is Tash.” A tall girl with long hair pulled back in a braid gave Skye one of those non-smiles reserved for people you don’t expect to enjoy talking to.
“Hey. I’m Skye,” she replied, telling herself that the sudden sharpening of their attention and shared glance might mean nothing.
“There isn’t usually a queue,” Emmie waved at the line, “but this is, like, the single unhealthy meal option in the entire lunch menu now – new rules – and it’s only available on Fridays. And it’s good. I’m mean, bad, but gooood,” she drawled.
“Fried anything is not to be resisted,” Skye agreed.
“So jealous you got to skip PE,” her queue companion moaned, “my legs are going to kill me tomorrow!”
Did Skye imagine the microscopic nudge Emmie got from her friend?
“Umm... So, you’re from Bannimor village, right?” Emmie asked, looking self-conscious. Tash stepped closer. Skye inwardly sighed. So much for friendly.
“Lately.”
“Is it... Do you like it there?”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ve heard that some...strange things happen there. Around the water. You know? Like, a lot. I mean, even recently.”
Skye watched her levelly, and the silence grew awkward. At another minute nudge from Tash, Emmie darted her friend a look of annoyance. But taking a deep breath, she forged ahead. “Because, people say that you were...kind of...missing at sea for days...?”
Skye raised her eyebrows and Emmie turned crimson. To her surprise, Skye felt sorry for her obvious embarrassment. Maybe they were simply curious? And who could blame them – Skye was pretty damn curious herself. She shrugged, keeping her voice easy. “Wish I knew.”
“So it’s true? You lost your memory of...everything?”
“I can’t remember what I’ve forgotten, so...who knows?” she forced a grin.
Emmie’s eyes widened in fascination. At Skye’s grin, she giggled nervously. “Wow, how weird must that be? I mean...right?”
“Pretty weird,” Skye agreed, suddenly exhausted. Turning away from them, she saw Mike at the head of the queue, supervising the desperation for fried food. He’d been watching her and looked pleased. She guessed his approval was liberally laced with relief. To him, it probably looked like she was fitting in. Much as she liked him to think she was coping, the idea of food at the cost of her present company was fast losing its appeal.
She rummaged in her bag, preparing to excuse herself in search of a non-existent missing item, when she realised that the emptiness inside her had diminished even more. Not drastically, but enough to be noticeable. As if the edges of whatever was missing inside her were filling in. Huh. Her tight posture relaxed a little.
She looked around at the polished linoleum and pale green walls that despite being new to her were all too familiar. Posters about the environment and anti-bullying, and advertisements for events and competitions clogged a nearby noticeboard. Student art, some of it great, shared the walls with emergency notices and fire equipment. Teenagers jostled each other in close conversation, or wandered lost in whichever world their earbuds had taken them. And clearly not everybody was having fried chicken – crowds of students pushed in and out of the wide-open cafeteria doors that were still at least ten queued people away from her.
The emptiness inside lessened further, fractionally but exquisitely. She took a breath that didn’t hurt. Maybe this wasn’t so bad? Maybe Rowena had been right, and a return to crushing normality was the perfect prescription for crazy.
“You survived the morning!” a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.
It was easy to return Ethan’s warm smile, “So it would appear.”
“I can’t believe we have no classes together,” he complained, “I thought I’d be around more to take care of you.” He glanced at Emmie and Tash, hanging on the exchange. “Mind if I cut the line?” he asked, adding some extra wattage to his smile. He acknowledged their flustered permission with a complacency that suggested he expected it. Of course: Ethan would be popular, Skye thought dryly. Not to mention he was so cute. Pied Piper Armstrong.
“So, second morning down, half a day to go,” he resumed. “Counting the seconds, I bet. You’re lucky your first week is a two-day week.”
“Micro-seconds,” she agreed. “Yay for Saturday tomorrow. Actually...it’s not so bad. I mean, it’s horrendously bad, of course,” she joked, “but, maybe it’s not so bad.” She flinched at a sudden sharp pang that went through her, her words striking a discordant note. But Ethan looked delighted.
“Hey, a little hard labour never hurt anyone. And close confinement has its advantages,” he smiled. Skye felt her cheeks heat a little at his obvious enjoyment of the idea.
Ethan’s friends didn’t seem very curious about her, and lunch was not bad, both the food and the company. She was mostly silent, but she didn’t feel out of place. Only what she would expect sitting in a new school in the cafeteria with a bunch of strangers. She felt kind of normal. Better all the time. By the time lunch was over and she and Ethan parted company, she had begun to relax and feel sane. Perhaps it was all behind her.
Her next class was English. She’d had English the previous day, up on the first floor in E block. Navigating there again wouldn’t be a problem. She’d turned down Ethan’s verging-on-insistent offer to escort her, but as she doubled back on a wrong turn and entered the right corridor again, she acknowledged she could have used his help. She frowned. His attentions made her feel out of step, like they were on different pages. He’d saved her, hadn’t he? Shouldn’t that make him, like...her hero? She pushed the too-hard thoughts away. At the top of the second stairs she tried, she found her classroom, first door on the left, and suppressed a crow of victory.
But her self-congratulation was short-lived as she stared at empty desks in an empty room. She looked around the classroom. This was definitely the place, so what the...? She jumped with a ridiculous surge of panic when the bell rang. But large writing on the chalkboard caught her attention, and she read a repeat of Mr Zhang’s instructions given at the end of yesterday’s class: ‘we are meeting in the film room’. She’d managed to completely forget this. Great. So where in this revolting maze of corridors was that? She felt like an idiot.
Attempting to retrace her steps, she marvelled at how together she felt despite being both lost and late. Her surge of panic had abated, and as she strode along the empty halls, it was as if she knew exactly where to go. A clear instinct was leading her to where she needed to be, like an internal thread of super-navigation pulling her forward. At each step she felt better.
She descended a long two-level stairway to the ground floor. Pushing through double swinging doors at the bottom, she turned unerringly to her right and in a few steps found herself in the main entrance foyer. The two girls from the lunch queue approached from a hallway opposite. They exclaimed and waved to her. But she didn’t look at them. She couldn’t look anywhere but at the open entrance doors to her right, just yards away, at the tall figure framed in the doorway.
She’d only seem him once before, but she knew the shape of him by heart. It had been imprinted into her brain the moment he rose from the shallow tide that morning. She had seen him whenever she closed her eyes and let her mind escape her surroundings today. But she was fully present now.
She had remembered every detail of him in perfect accuracy. His features were arresting, like a tormented star from an ancient play, stepping onto the stage in faded denim. His long dark hair dishevelled like a surfer’s from the salty waves, as if he’d stepped straight out of the tide and come for her. Her heart pounded.
His dark eyes met hers. The depth of emotion in them, in the way he smiled at her, was a force-field that left her reeling.
Before either of them could move, a familiar figure appeared between them, intercepting the stranger just as the two girls reached Skye.
“Mr Zhang let us come find you, Skye,” Emmie explained, her attention divided between Skye and the exchange at the entrance. Her eyebrows rose at Skye’s expression and followed her gaze to the newcomer with deepening interest.
Mike stood in front of the young man, holding up a hand in the universal sign for stop. “Sorry mate, you’re in the wrong place,” he said politely. “I’ll show you where you’re supposed to be.”
With a swift glance back over his shoulder at Skye, Mike gestured to the newcomer to exit with one arm, the other almost going around him as he walked him back outside. It all took seconds. Skye barely had time to take in the visitor’s confused expression before Mike had hustled him out of sight down the steps. A blonde girl passing them on her way up paused, staring after the two men as they disappeared from sight.
“Hey, Mr Sebastian’s your uncle, right?” Emmie sounded fascinated. “So who was that? The guy with him?”
Bewildered, Skye shrugged, staring after the vanished boy, only partially noticing Amber enter by the door he had just exited, and cross the foyer to join them.
“Well, you know him, right? I mean – the way he was looking at you?” Emmie pressed, glancing at Amber perhaps for confirmation. Amber merely looked bored.
Skye tried to answer. He had asked her the same thing that morning. Do you know me? Once again, to say no felt wrong.
“I don’t know,” she muttered, embarrassed by the two girls’ exchanged glances, and conscious of Amber’s scrutiny despite her apparent disinterest.
“You sure about that?” Tash twitched her black braid off her shoulder. “You were really looking at him like...”
Skye swallowed. “Like what?” she asked huskily.
“Totally love-struck,” Tash replied dryly. Emmie giggled. Amber frowned and looked away.
