There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.
‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just… not let them matter.’
Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.
Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’
‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’
‘She’s not. It just… like I said. It doesn’t matter.’
Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’
‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’
He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.
He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’
People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.
She says, slowly, ‘You have to have something else you care about more. Something so you know that some geebags bitching aren’t the most important thing; you’re not the most important thing, even. Something enormous.’
It’s just words, sounds, it doesn’t come near what she means. This isn’t something you can tell.
Chris says, ‘What? Like
Selena considers that. ‘Probably that would work. Yeah.’
He’s open-mouthed. ‘Are you guys going to be, like,
Selena laughs out loud. ‘No! Can you see Julia being a nun?’
‘Then what…?’
The more she tries, the more she’s going to get it wrong. She says, ‘I just mean: maybe, depending, Carly could be fine just the way she is. Better than fine.’
Chris is looking at her, very close and very intent, and his eyes have warmed. He says, ‘You’re a once-off. You know that?’
Selena wants to say nothing at all. The thing finding its shape in the space between them is so new, so precious, the wrong touch could burst it like a bubble. ‘I’m not anything special,’ she says. ‘It just worked out this way.’
‘Yeah, you are. I never talk to people about stuff like this. But this, talking to you, this is… I’m glad we came out here. I’m really glad.’
Selena knows, like he’s reached out and dropped the knowledge into her lap, that he’s going to try to take her hand. The handprint on her arm burns, a painless gold fire. She wraps her fingers hard around the cold stone edge of the step.
The hall door flies open, and Miss Long points at them. ‘Your time’s up. Back inside. Don’t make me come out there and get you.’ And she slams the door.
Chris says, ‘I want to do this again.’
Selena is still working to breathe. She can’t tell if she’s grateful or something else to whatever sent Miss Long. She says, ‘Me too.’
‘When?’
‘Next week, after school? We can meet outside the Court and go for a walk.’
Chris shifts on the step, like the stone hurts him. He presses his thumbnail into the wood of the banister. ‘Everyone’d see us.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘They’d… you know. Like, they’d slag us. Both of us. They’d think we were going to…’
Selena says, ‘I don’t care.’
‘I know,’ Chris says, and there’s a wry laugh in his voice, like the joke’s on him. ‘I know you don’t. I do, though. I don’t want people thinking that.’ He hears himself. ‘No, I mean-
He’s knotting himself up. Selena says, laughing at him, ‘It’s OK. I know what you mean.’
Chris takes a breath. He says simply, ‘I don’t want it to be like that. Like me and Joanne going into the Field to… whatever. I want it to be like this.’
His hand going up. The hall, smoky gold. The small flutters of air in the darkness, far above their heads.
‘If we meet outside the Court after school, I’m going to make a balls of it. I’ll say something stupid to make the guys laugh, or else we’ll go somewhere to talk and everyone’ll watch us go and I’ll have, like, not one single thing to say. Or else the guys’ll slag me, afterwards, and I’ll say something… you know. Dirty. I wish I wouldn’t, but I will.’
Selena says, ‘Can you get out of school at night?’
She hears the hiss of caught breath in the air all around her. She wants to say back,
Chris’s eyebrows go up. ‘At night? No way. You can? Seriously?’
Selena says, ‘I’ll give you my number. If you find a way, text me.’
‘No,’ he says, instantly. ‘Maybe it’s different here, but the guys go through each other’s phones all the time, looking for… well. Stuff. The Brothers do it too. I’ll find a way to get in touch. Just not like that. OK?’
