City of the Falling Sky (28 page)

That evening, the first thing Seckry did when
they got back to the flat was an internet search for the word
chlorocalm.

“
Eiya,” he said, devastated.
“Look at this.”

There was a brief explanation on an online
encyclopaedia.

Chlorocalm

A substance that was injected, for a short
period of time, into prison inmates who were deemed especially
dangerous to staff and others. Its purpose was to temporarily calm
the subject down and make them less likely to have violent
outbursts, but the substance also had permanent side effects. It
would cause the subject to become completely disjointed from
reality and to appear as though they had lost their mind. The only
known cure for this was the antidote Sanium, which had to be
administered every time the Chlorocalm’s side effects became
active.

Chlorocalm was eventually deemed dangerous
and extremely unproductive and was banned from use. The substance
was only ever injected into approximately two hundred inmates
around the world and only on those convicted of murder. Those that
were injected with Chlorocalm still suffer the side effects
today.

Seckry and Eiya’s mouths were hanging
open.

“
Gobbledee . . . . was in
prison
?” Eiya said.

“
For
murder?
” Seckry
added.

Two days later an assembly was called, and
Mrs Furrowfog announced that the headmaster would not be returning
to the school and that she would be acting as headmistress until
the school decided on a suitable replacement.

Seckry saw Cutson licking her lips. She was
clearly aiming to take that role.

With all the drama with the headmaster,
Seckry had completely forgotten about the ball. He couldn’t
understand how Mr Gobbledee could have been capable of murder, but
he just had to accept it.

“
Seck, who are you taking?”
Tippian asked him one lunchtime, while Eiya was off handing in some
theatre studies coursework.

Tenk rolled his eyes. “Who do you think he’s
gonna take, Tipp?”

“
Well I haven’t actually
asked her yet,” Seckry said.

“
I’m going with Curly
Hetchings now,” Tippian said triumphantly.

“
Curly Hetchings!” exclaimed
Tenk. “Tipp, you
do
realise that Curly Hetchings, otherwise
known as The Giant of Skyfall, is six foot three, don’t
you?”

“
Well . . . she was the only
one that said yes.”

“
I mean . . . how are you
gonna kiss her when they play
With Me Tonight?
You won’t be
able to reach.”

Tippian shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll jump or
something.”

“
What’s
With Me
Tonight?
” Seckry asked them.

“
It’s this song that they
always play at the ball, guaranteed. And it’s like an unwritten
rule that you have to kiss your date when they sing the line,
‘never knew how much I’d miss you, I close my eyes and kiss
you.’
”

“
It’s a stupid rule,” said
Tippian, suddenly looking quite solemn.

“
Tippers had a bad
experience last time,” Tenk explained.

“
I don’t want to talk about
it,” Tippian said stubbornly.

“
Come on, it wasn’t your
fault that you grabbed Mrs Flimbergloop. It was
really
dark
in there.”

“
Alissen Himsworth never
spoke to me again after that.”

“
Yeah . . . well I suppose
it’s not great to be mistaken for a sixty seven year old with a
wonky toupee.”

Tippian said nothing.

“
You made Margarat’s night,
you know,” Tenk said matter-of-factly.

Tippian shuddered. “Tenk . . . please . . .
do not call her by her first name. Let’s just change the
topic.”

“
Okay. The topic is on
Seckry. When are you gonna ask Eiya?”

“
You’re the experts, when is
best?”

Tenk thought for a moment.

“
Tomorrow. I don’t think you
can leave it any longer, there’s only a week left.”

Seckry’s stomach lurched. The thought of
actually asking Eiya on a date filled him with incredible
excitement but also insurmountable nerves.

“
If only they’d let me
invite someone outside of school,” said Tenk. “I’d invite
Fewgy,”

“
Who’s Fewgy?” Seckry
asked.

“
It’s what Tenk’s decided to
call the Friction emporium welcome girl,” explained Tippian.
“F,E,W,G.”

“
Fewgy,” Seckry said.
“What’s the Y stand for?”

“
It doesn’t stand for
anything,” Tenk said. “But you can’t just call someone Fewg.
Doesn’t sound right.”

Tippian laughed mockingly.

“
She’s probably, like,
twenty eight or something. She’d never come to a school
ball.”

“
I bet you she would for
me.”

“
Why?”

“
Because we’ve got something
going on,” Tenk said proudly.

“
Have you ever even spoken
to her?”

“
Of course I have. Loads of
times.”

“
What, an actual
conversation?” Tippian pressed.

“
Well . . . I’ve said ‘Hi,’
and she’s said ‘Hi’ back.”

Tippian shook his head.

“
She’s the Friction emporium
welcome girl. That’s what she does. She says ‘Hi’ to me every time
I go in there too.”

“
Yeah, but Tipps, you don’t
understand. When she says ‘Hi’ to me there’s like this whole unsaid
conversation going on silently. I’m telling you, it’s like we’ve
got this unspoken connection.”

“
Man,” said Tippain,
dreamily. “If I could take anyone in the world to the ball I’d take
. . . Alesia Tamari.”

“
Who’s that?” Seckry asked,
though he was drowned out by Tenk’s sudden burst of hysterical
laughter.

“
Sorry, Tipps,” Tenk said.
“I just can’t imagine you standing next to Princess Tamari. I mean.
She’s a
princess
.”

“
I’m not talking about in
real life!” Tippian said defensively. “I’m just
saying
, if I
could take anyone in the world, you know, in a fantasy situation,
then yeah, I’d want to take Princess Tamari – she’s princess of
Arivel, to answer your question, Seck. Anyway, what about you,
Seck, who would you like to take, in a perfect world where you
could take anyone?”

“
Uh . . .” Seckry said
meekly. “Maybe that singer Cinthya Blayke, or . . . that actress
Lawra Seaport . . . or someone like that.”

But Seckry wasn’t telling the truth. If he
had the choice to take anyone in the world to the ball, there was
only one person he’d want to take. And that was Eiya.

For the whole of the next day, Seckry felt
sick. He was so excited about finally asking Eiya to the ball and
finally letting her know how he felt about her that his stomach
seemed to be staging a revolt.

Eiya seemed to avoid him for the second half
of the day, which he found a little strange, though it made it
easier for him to psyche himself up in order to ask her when they
were at home.

When it came to the evening, Seckry could put
it off no longer. After having a dinner around the table in the
kitchen at which Seckry and Eiya neither spoke to one another, and
Coralle and Leena looked slightly perplexed as to why, Seckry
followed Eiya into the bedroom and said shakily, “Eiya, I was . . .
I was wondering if . . .”

Seckry stopped as he realised Eiya was
crying.

“
What’s wrong?” he asked,
not expecting it.

“
It’s nothing,” she said,
and smiled. “I just need to be alone at the moment, if that’s
okay.”

Seckry stammered a few times but eventually
turned around to leave. What was he going to do now? He’d spent all
his energy on psyching himself up for this moment. And what had
upset Eiya?

“
I’m going to the ball with
Thom Malerk, by the way,” Eiya said as he was about to close the
door behind him. “He’s a year above us.”

Seckry felt as though someone had punched him
in the stomach. He almost keeled over.

“
What? Um . . . I mean . . .
oh,” he said, his voice cracking.

“
Yeah, he asked me earlier
today.”

It was like all Seckry’s blood had drained
out of his body. He felt like a dead weight, like a heavy, empty
body with no life force inside of it. “I’m glad . . . you’ve got
someone sorted,” he said, and he knew he couldn’t mask the sadness
in his voice.

The next few days seemed like the longest
days in Seckry’s life. He had no idea who this Thom Malerk was, and
no idea how Eiya knew him. Was this who she had been talking about
at Tenk’s sleepover when she said she fancied someone at
school?

It was only when Seckry was washing his hands
in the men’s toilets one day that he heard two boys enter and one
said, “Hey, Malerk, what’s she like then, this date of yours?”

They continued to talk as they positioned
themselves at the urinals.

“
Mate, she’s really young
looking, and her . . .” he cupped the air in front of his chest.
“They’re pretty small, but I bet she’s a right animal in the
bedroom. These little ones always are. They got something to prove,
you know?”

The other one laughed. “I bet she’s never
done it before, either.”

Seckry felt like vomiting. How could he talk
like that about Eiya? It was like she wasn’t even a person. This
Thom Malerk didn’t have a clue. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know
that her favourite colour was baby blue, he didn’t know that when
she slept she liked to hug a pillow in her arms, he didn’t know
that her favourite thing in the world was eating candyfloss and
letting it melt on her tongue, and he didn’t even know that she
–

Seckry realised his eyes were wet and he
rubbed them furiously with his sleeve before leaving the
toilets.

Seckry spent the next few days feeling
utterly miserable and trying to avoid Eiya as much as he could.
Eiya looked just as sullen herself.

After dinner each evening, Seckry would
excuse himself and head to the arcade. He would go and sit in one
of the Friction pods and let Atoria load itself around him, while
he just sat and watched the digital birds fly across the sky.

“
Don’t you want to play?”
Henrei asked one time.

“
I just like to sit in
here,” Seckry said.

Henrei gave him a concerned and somewhat
confused look, and went back to eating his selection of assorted
fruit jam sandwiches.

Seckry tried listening to The Broken Motion,
but even their songs now reminded him of Eiya and the time they’d
spent together at the concert. He kept thinking of all the nights
they had listened to music in the middle of the night, huddled in
their blankets on his bedroom floor.

Seckry couldn’t work out what had made Eiya
want to go to the ball with that guy, and neither did Tenk, Tippian
or Loca.

“
Maybe you just left it too
late to ask,” Tenk said.

Since that day, Seckry had found it hard to
sleep at all, but when he did, he no longer dreamed about Eiya.
When he finally drifted off on the Wednesday of that week, he found
himself in a field that he had visited many times before.

“
Dad?” Seckry said, and the
man with blonde hair, picking berries, turned around to give him a
big, warm smile.

“
Dad, where are you?” he
said. “I need you. I need you to tell me everything’s gonna be
okay.”

“
Seckry, Seckry, come here,”
he said, and opened his arms.

Seckry ran to him but he wasn’t getting any
closer. His legs were moving and the ground underneath him was
moving, but he was still the same distance away.

“
I can’t get to you,” Seckry
said, and tried to run faster. As he did so, he tripped over
something in the grass. He stumbled to his feet and saw that he had
tripped over some kind of watch, one with a large circular face
that was glowing deep red.

“
What is this?” Seckry
asked.

“
Don’t you remember?” his
father said.

Seckry woke up with an intense feeling of
dread and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His thoughts
immediately returned to the watch. Somewhere deep inside him that
watch meant something. Some long forgotten memory had just
resurfaced, something important. Something powerful.

After he got up, he sat at the kitchen table
stirring some cereal his mum had made him.

“
Are you still feeling ill?”
Coralle asked him.

“
I just . . . can’t seem to
eat anything at the moment,” Seckry said, continuing to
stir.

“
Mum . . . did dad . . . did
dad always wear a watch?”

Coralle stopped what she was doing and put
down the dishes.

“
You know I don’t like to
talk about him, my love,” she said apologetically.

“
I know, I’m sorry,” Seckry
said. “I just keep having these dreams, that’s all.”

Coralle joined him at the table. After a
while she said, “You deserve to be able to talk about your father.
Yes, he did have a watch that he used to wear all the time. Every
day in fact. Every single day that I knew him he wore that watch,
and he used to get really funny about it. He’d even begrudge taking
it off to get in the shower.”