The Graces (17 page)

On the first day of school, I turned into a corridor and caught sight of Summer leaning against my locker.

She was surrounded by people, crowding close, trying to share in her tragedy. Her long black hair was in a plait down her back. Black jeans. Buckled biker boots. Oversized checked shirt resting against the tops of her thighs, the sleeves turned up into thick cuffs that hung against her forearms.

She didn’t see me as I bolted back the way I’d come. That moment, the moment I was running away from, was supposed to be our big reunion after days and weeks of ‘no, it’s kind of weird right now’. We were supposed to be the only two people in the corridor who would understand what the other was going through. Everyone else would make a shell around us and we wouldn’t even notice them.

It was supposed to be like that.

But now that I was confronted with Summer for real, I felt like my body was turning inside out. What would happen to me when I saw Fenrin, or Thalia? How would my body betray me then?

Maybe I’d hoped I could slip back into school and everything would be the way it was before the holidays. I knew how stupid that idea was the moment I stepped through the gates. Never before had I got the distinct feeling that everyone I passed knew exactly who I was and had already heard a hundred different rumours about me. Their eyes assessed me like they were deciding which one they were going to believe.

First period was form room, orienting us to the new school year. I couldn’t get into the classroom fast enough. I was the first one there, leaving behind the crowds milling in the hallways as they squealed at each other and caught up on holiday gossip. A shocked whispering frenzy about what had happened to the Graces had already begun, rolling through the student body faster than a wave, though it seemed like everyone already knew everything there was to know about it.

Of course they did. This whole town was tuned to Radio Grace.

New year meant new rules and new seats, so I chose a desk right at the back in the corner. I kept my head down as people came in, which meant I wasn’t
sure if they were staring at me or not.

We were officially waiting for our new form teacher to show, but the buzzing in the room had nothing to do with his absence and everything to do with the fact that Summer hadn’t walked in yet. I tensed every time the door opened, but it was never her. I wondered if she’d try to sit next to me or go for her old friends again.

Like Lou, who was leaking tears noisily at her desk a couple of rows ahead of me. ‘What an amazing guy he was,’ she sniffled. ‘It’s just so tragic.’

‘Oh my god, did you know that guy who died?’ said someone else sympathetically. Several other people around Lou turned to look with curious faces.

‘Wolf?’ She said his name with a casual slant to her voice. ‘Oh yeah, I met him loads of times. We hung out together at parties. He was so great. Such a nice guy.’

My heart contracted painfully.

‘Where’s Summer?’

Lou sniffed. ‘She’s got a meeting with the headmaster and the counsellor.’

Disappointment flooded me. Relief crept up in its wake.

‘Wow. This must be so awful for her. He was their best friend, right?’

‘I think he grew up with them. He was practically a cousin or something,’ Lou said. ‘More like family
than friends.’

Gemma was lining her eyes in a compact mirror. ‘I don’t know why she’s even back in school.’

At that moment our new form teacher swept in, launching immediately into an eye-watering speech about how important this year was going to be for us all. He even mentioned Summer with a sorrowful, grave air, and told us all to be sympathetic to her needs at this difficult time.

I was close to choking myself just to be out of this sycophantic vomit show.

It went on like this until lunch. Stares and whispers. I caught words and phrases like ‘police’ and ‘that girl there, no
there
, walking past us,’ as I struggled my way through the morning. This was a nightmare. This was a horror film.

Weren’t you supposed to act like everything was normal when people were grieving, give them the comfort of a familiar routine? I wouldn’t have been able to stand it, people like packs of dogs around me, licking my heels. Teachers giving me sympathetic looks, those awful pity eyes.
You don’t have to do any work. Just take it easy, okay? You can leave class if you need to
. The ‘are you all right’ hand on the shoulder. Protective clumps of people surrounding them, closing in, shielding them from the outside world. Some people
cried, making sure to do it in public where everyone could see them. These people, I was absolutely sure, had barely ever met Wolf.

Tension always drew eyes, like we were designed to see it clutching at someone’s shoulders, the worst of us pointing it out, finding a way to exploit it. My whole body was rigid with it, and it only made me more noticeable at a time when all I wanted to do was disappear.

As the bell for lunch rang, I leapt up so fast out of my chair that it almost toppled over. I caught it just in time and skittered out of the classroom with my face heating, knowing everyone was watching me, and went straight to the library. It wasn’t hiding, I told myself. If Summer wanted to find me, she could, just like the first time. In the meantime, I could be alone.

Except I’d forgotten about the one person you could find in the library more regularly than me.

Marcus was by himself, while the rest of the school was stuffed into the cafeteria, the better to gossip freely, churning the same rumour mill that had cast him as some sort of sadly obsessive pervert. He was no such thing. He had snared Thalia.

That’s what someone spelled by a Grace looks like
, I thought.

I wondered if I was looking into a mirror.

I remembered what he’d said the night of the party. His shameful, desperate abandon. The knife in his hand.

In the library, Marcus looked up, and his eyes landed on me, and I felt a shiver going down my spine. His mouth opened as if to speak, but suddenly I just couldn’t face it.

He’d ask about Wolf, wouldn’t he? And what would I say?

I ducked my head, walked back out, and spent lunch in my empty form room instead.

Is something wrong? Why are you avoiding me?

I cupped my hand around the note.

I was afraid and glad at exactly the same time, the strangest sensation. She still wanted to be my friend. I still had her. I wasn’t alone.

I wrote on the back and folded the note up, sliding it onto the desk next to me. I could see it, just for a second, the barest hesitation as the girl there contemplated trying to read it.

Then she passed it to Summer, still folded.

Parental unit told me I couldn’t see you any more. Can’t be obvious.

I watched her read it, then scribble something back in tiny letters at the bottom.

Meet at the end of my lane, midnight tonight?

I waited until my mother’s bedroom door was closed and the tiny television in her room was pouring out a comfortable burr of canned laughter.

I crept down the stairs, every muscle creaking with effort, and slipped out the back door and through the communal garden we shared with the rest of the building. It had been raining a lot the past few days, and the garden’s concrete ground was dark with patches of wet, but tonight the air was clear and fresh. I breathed in deeply as I walked, feeling the tight band round my middle ease up. Air was good. Air cleaned. I felt like I was surfacing. Just the thought of the house, Summer, spells and secrets got me twitching and itching, nervous and afraid and excited all at once.

When I reached the top of their lane, I had to switch on a torch. It was pitch black around here – no street lamps. I kept it pointed downward just in front of me, hoping no one was around to catch me looking dodgy as hell. I checked my watch. Ten to midnight. I found a spot underneath the hedge, sat down and curled up, waiting, the torch dangling loosely from my hand, listening for noises.

It was so still and soft down this way, so sheltered. This place was like a bowl they couldn’t climb out of. Too much honey at the bottom to suck on to bother thinking about what might lie over the lip of that bowl.

As my eyes adjusted, the house made a black, brooding shape against the sky. It was clear, the stars full out. Sitting in the dark, listening to the cool rustle of the grass in the night wind, alone and still, I felt a kind of peace, the first in weeks. It felt natural. We were supposed to sit in the dark,
with
it, not ward it off with electric lights and buildings like cold, square cocoons. After a while I thought I could hear the sea, a rolling, perpetual murmur underneath life. A rolling that would go on long after I was dead.

A rolling that had claimed Wolf.

My heart shrivelled. My peace was gone. I felt cold and shit and small and scared and awful. The black pressed in on me. Where the hell was Summer?

I checked my watch under the torch. Half past twelve.

Should I go? Had it all been a lame kind of joke?

No. She wouldn’t do that to me. Not Summer.

I stood up, legs stiff and jerking, and made my way slowly down to the house. My feet made so much noise over the sandy gravel I was convinced the whole place would be flooded with light, everyone awake and calling the police to report burglars. But when I reached the front garden it was dark and still. I went through the wooden gate that took me down the side of the house. I remembered the last time I’d been here
in full daylight, sun streaking over my shoulders, lying with Wolf in the garden, his stomach muscles twisting as he talked to me in a low voice about secrets but didn’t tell me the one secret he should have, and I had to stop for a moment as my insides rippled; in a panic I thought I might be sick there and then. But it passed. I’d learned that every feeling passed, eventually; except love, and except hate.

I knew which window was Summer’s, but I was still terrified of getting it wrong. Picking up the smallest pebble my grasping hand found, I stood for the longest time, too nervous to throw. Twice my arm went up, and twice it came back down.

But I’d come all this way.

And then Wolf flashed in my head, and the pain took over, and my arm came up by itself and loosed. The pebble clacked against the bottom of Summer’s window.

The lights would come on. I’d be caught like a rabbit, crouching and cringing.

But nothing happened.

I waited.

Nothing.

I took another pebble and threw, quickly this time. It rattled against the pane and then fell on the window ledge and stayed there.

Please, Summer. Wake up
.

I waited. I couldn’t do it again. I waited under the moon as it bathed the back of the house in silvery light, and I closed my eyes and felt every bit of life drain out of me. They’d find me in the morning, curled up in the garden, comatose.

‘Hey.’

A sharp whisper.

I looked up, nerves dancing and jumping. She was at the back door.

She turned as soon as I was near, disappearing silently back into the darkness of the house. I followed, easing the door shut, taking my shoes off and carrying them for fear of making noise. We walked through the house, and I felt like it was breathing around me.

When we got to her room, Summer closed the door behind us. She switched a lamp on. The place was spotless. Another sign of the alternate reality we seemed to live in these days.

‘Sorry,’ she said in a low voice. She was fully dressed, her boots and coat on. ‘The parents are asleep and Fen’s not in, but I had to wait until Thalia went to bed. She’s usually out like a light by eleven, but she hasn’t been sleeping that well recently.’

I slid onto the end of her bed.

She seemed so normal. So Summer. Wasn’t she supposed to look different? Like a shadow of herself?
Shouldn’t some kind of pain be etched all over her in thick, sharp lines?

She perched on the bed next to me and started unzipping her boots. I felt an urgent itch between my shoulder blades, a feeling that made my stomach turn over uneasily. I shouldn’t be here.

We both waited.

‘How are you’ was so ridiculous it hurt.

‘This is so awful’ was redundant.

There was nothing, nothing to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Summer.

Except that.

I turned to look at her. It was the first close-up look I’d had in so long. She wasn’t quite the same. She seemed kind of hollow, like all her insides had been scooped out and replaced with something thin and collapsable.

‘I haven’t been around,’ she sighed, rubbed her neck. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to avoid you like that after what happened, but it was all just too much. And his parents, they’ve been basically living here the last few weeks. Everything is just so strange right now. I mean, he can’t be dead. He just can’t.’

I wanted to say how sorry I was, too. It had come out easily from her, but the word seemed so ridiculous in my mouth that it stuck in my throat and choked me.

‘How …’ I plunged ahead before I could stop myself. ‘How’s Fenrin?’

Summer’s face twisted. ‘Not good,’ she said quietly.

My tone was careful. ‘Yeah. I can imagine. I mean, I can’t. Not really. But it must be the worst for him.’

I felt her gaze on me like a heat lamp.

But she still didn’t say anything. She still didn’t trust me enough to tell me, and that hurt – so I told her instead. It was bravery, but it was also,
Look what you didn’t know I knew. And see, I kept this secret for you, from everyone, even though I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. See how loyal I am
.

‘Summer … I lied to the police,’ I said. ‘I remember something about that night.’

‘What?’

Not a ‘what do you remember?’ A ‘what’ of utter disbelief.

I ploughed on. My stomach was trying to climb up my throat.

‘I know why I wasn’t with you guys in the morning. You and Thalia. I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw Fenrin leaving. I didn’t realise Wolf was with him, he must have been ahead. Anyway, I saw him go and I wanted to know what he was doing. So I followed his torchlight down to the cove.’

I had still been drunk, and it had seemed to take
forever, watching that bobbing circle of light and trying not to let it get away. It wasn’t until we hit the dunes that I understood where we were going. There was only one torch, so I thought it was only him. Fenrin. Like the police, I supposed he’d gone down there to swim. And this was my chance.

No joking around this time. I’d ask him how he really felt about me. Maybe he’d just been awkward in the grove earlier because I’d taken him by surprise. He’d told me he liked me. Maybe he just needed time to work out what I was to him. Maybe we’d even sit on the beach together under the moonlight, and he’d pull me to his chest like he’d done on film night, and we’d talk about everything. He’d tell me secret things, and I’d tell him secret things, and he would lean in, his grin softened by desire, and he’d kiss me. Maybe more.

I knew it might not go the way I’d had it in my head for so long, but it would still be electric, even awkward electric. We’d have plenty of time to get better at it, and we wouldn’t be able to get enough of each other. We’d be that couple that everyone is loudly sick of and quietly jealous of, who are always touching in public, who have to be near each other at all times.

I was drunk. It had made sense in my head at the time. It had seemed like the only thing to do.

It must have taken me longer than I’d thought to
get down there. I know I stumbled once or twice. And it was lighter than I’d expected – the moon was full, low over the sea, and the sky was clear, which meant everything was grey and silver. It also meant there was enough light to see them by.

At first I thought they were fighting. I got closer and closer, and I was standing full up, out in the open, but they didn’t even see me.

They
were
fighting.

But they weren’t.

I saw Wolf’s curly black hair and Fenrin’s smooth arms. They were making the strangest noises, and I thought, it can’t be what I think it is because who the hell makes noises like that? But they were, and then I saw Wolf pin Fenrin to the sand, and Fenrin gave a kind of a snarl, and then Wolf dipped his head down and they were kissing like dogs ate, and it was kind of disgusting.

But I couldn’t stop watching.

Their jeans were dragged down almost past their hips and I saw the crouched Wolf press his thighs down and I heard Fenrin groan. Their arms tangled and Fenrin’s feet dug into the sand.

I saw them, and they didn’t see me.

To Summer, I said, ‘Fenrin and Wolf, they … I think they were seeing each other.’

She didn’t reply.

‘I saw them,’ I tried. ‘Um, they were kissing.’

‘That’s what you remember? That you saw them kissing?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘And then what?’

I swallowed. ‘I left. I ran back.’

You miserable coward
, said the coal-black and coal-bright voice inside me that I hated and loved.

But there was a point where I
had
run. I had run until I’d reached the grove, and then I must have collapsed because the next thing I remembered was waking up, morning light in my eyes. I was telling Summer the truth.

Telling part of the truth is not the same as telling the whole truth
.

Summer leaned back. ‘Man,’ she said, shaking her head.

I watched her.

She laughed, relieved. ‘Oh, god, you really scared me for a second there. I mean, River – I already knew about Fen and Wolf. We all did.’

‘Why didn’t …’ I tried not to sound as deeply wounded as I felt. ‘Why didn’t you guys tell me?’

‘I don’t know, really. I guess we thought you already knew. I mean, it was so obvious.’

Obvious.

It was so
obvious
.

Then why hadn’t I seen it?

Because you didn’t want to
.

‘It’s been that way for years,’ said Summer. ‘Thalia knew from the beginning. They didn’t tell me until later. And then they only admitted it because I threatened to scream the house down unless they did.’ She gave me a bitter smile. ‘It’s our natural instinct, you see, to lie. It’s hard to fight against.’

‘But … he’s always had all those girlfriends.’

‘He likes girls too, I think. Just never anyone the way he likes Wolf. He’s been in love with him since they were kids.’

No wonder my spell hadn’t worked. He was already in love with someone else. Could magic not fight against that? Couldn’t you change people’s minds? Otherwise, what was the point of it?

Why hadn’t it fucking
worked
?

If it had, none of this would have happened. If they’d just
told
me, none of this would have happened. Wolf would still be alive. We’d be the Graces, we’d be together, we’d be giggling and getting wasted, and everything would be beautiful and passionate and perfect.

I was so angry. I sat there and I was so angry I could have burst and killed everything in the universe right there and then.

She saw something in my face because she said, ‘What’s wrong?’

I could feel my arms trembling with the effort of holding in all my hate at the unfairness of the world, the exact set of circumstances, things that had to be timed in just such a way to make Wolf dead. There were so many ways it could have been prevented. We’d never even have known it as a possibility. We’d have just gone on with our lives, and death would have had to slink off by itself, utterly beaten.

‘What’s the point?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of magic and spells when it never turns out like it should?’

Summer drew back, ever so slightly.

‘Why do I get the feeling sometimes,’ she said all slow, as if testing the words out, ‘that you only like me because you think I’m a witch?’

I gaped at her. ‘I
think
you’re a witch? What does that mean?’

‘It means that I wonder if you even see me. Or if all you see is a Grace. I think it would straight up kill you if you realised how ordinary we are.’ Her eyes were curved in half moons of bitter amusement. ‘Wow, how disappointed in us you’d be.’

‘No. No. This is another test of yours. Magic exists. I know it does.
It has to
.’

Summer was shaking her head like I’d lost my mind.