Watercolour Smile (18 page)

An intense feeling flooded into me, drowning out the panic, the itching, the internal war of my heart and my bond, until all that remained was an intense thrum… and then I drew on the electricity.

It was a different way of channelling the valcrick to when I attacked people. This was more like casting out a line—something that was still tethered to me—whereas the valcrick I used to hurt someone was an expulsion of what was inside me. It was a reaction, a backlash, an answer to whatever threat I could sense.
This
valcrick was simply a way of extending myself, of reaching out and draping my power over people.

Cabe grunted. “Ugh, Seph… not what I was expecting.”

I refocussed my thoughts, worried that I had somehow gotten off-track. Cabe’s fingers had tightened on my legs, sliding me forward along the bench. I blinked at him, and he jolted me suddenly all the way to the edge, parting my legs. The material of my skirt caught, since there was a tighter underskirt beneath the flare of my funeral dress, and he pushed harder. I felt a bite of pain and heard a rip, and then he was stepping between my legs, his hands travelling further up my thighs. His head fell onto my shoulder and I realised that his breathing was deep and uneven. I clamped a fist down on my reaction, not daring to feel the panic that threatened, or the scratching that demanded to be acknowledged. The valcrick was still holding onto him, and I couldn’t chance hurting him… or hurting him even more, if that was what had happened. I widened my eyes at Noah, who shrugged, his attention straying to my ripped skirt and then quickly snapping back to my eyes, confused. Cabe’s fingers were almost bruising.

“Lucifer?”

He groaned something incoherent, so I tried again.

“Cabe?”

He lifted his head and I froze, because his warm, toffee-glazed eyes had darkened to a smoky bronze.

“Stop me,” he said.

I opened my mouth to ask what he had meant, but he dipped forward and caught my lips. I gasped as the valcrick grew immediately static, rebelling against the sudden shock of the contact. Pain wracked up my spine and darkness threatened to consume my sanctuary. My hands curled against the edges of the wooden bench, ready to push off, or brace myself against passing out. The contact lasted barely a second before Cabe was wrenched away. I stared at the two of them, my lips tingling and my stomach aching with a painful yearning that was more alien to me than usual.

“Would you two stop
doing
that?” I managed.

Cabe’s eyes were unfocused, and Noah had pulled him back so roughly that he had been slammed against the opposite counter lining the garage. He rubbed his side as an empty jar toppled from the counter, smashing against the ground. He was shaking his head.

“
What the hell, man
?” Noah grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Give me a minute,” Cabe grumbled, turning away from us both and placing his hands against the counter, like he needed it to hold himself up. “She… um… you felt happiness right?”

“
So
?” Noah looked ready to explode, and I wasn’t sure if it was jealousy, or he was incensed on behalf of me. Somehow, I doubted that it was the latter.

Cabe laughed, but the sound ended on a embarrassed curse. “Yeah, well, I think she gave me the wrong kind of happiness.”

I made to draw in a horrified gasp, but it got caught, and I ended up choking on it. I tumbled from the bench, briefly managing to catch myself before I fell over. “Oh my god,” I recovered, doubling over as I coughed, tears blinking in my eyes. My face was bright red, and I could feel the burn all the way to my ears. “I’m so sorry!” I croaked.

Noah laughed and slapped a hand down hard against the bench Cabe was leaning on. “Seraph!”

I buried my face in my hands, my groan muffled. “I can’t believe this,” I muttered into my palms.

“What was that?” Noah moved in front of me and pulled my hands away from my face, still laughing.

I just shook my head, too embarrassed to speak, and pulled my hands back to hide my face again.

“Well,” Cabe turned around again, his usual humour glinting behind the
other
emotion that marked his face. “Now we know how you distracted Silas.”

“Cabe!” I wailed.

Settling Tariq into Hollow Ground College turned out to be surprisingly easy. He rose through the popularity ranks absurdly fast, and only sat at our table in the centre of the cafeteria for one day before moving off to sit with the rest of the football team.

I watched the process uneasily, only now finding his extreme adaptability to be suspicious. He was absurdly good at hiding what was really going on in his head. I had always thought him to be simple. Instead, he was…secretive. I wasn’t distrustful of
him
so much as I was of that vault of a brain he boasted. It made me want to grab him by his shoulders and shake him until the contents of his head tumbled out and I could begin to piece things together. But I couldn’t do that, because I was a coward. I didn’t want to pressure him after everything that he had already been through, and I was guilty for leaving him behind, thinking that he would be safer separated from me. It was a very egoistical outlook, assuming that the messenger only had his sights set on
me
, and hadn’t even glanced at my family.

My guilt-ridden revelations aside, I was glad that Tariq was the way he was, even if only for the fact that his initiation into Hollow Ground hadn’t been as rocky as my own. I didn’t have a particular interest in involving myself with any of the school clubs or teams, but I did occasionally trail Tariq to the sports center after classes finished. That’s what I was doing a few weeks after we got back, when my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.

How’s it going?

I blinked at the screen and then typed out a reply, keeping my head down as I pushed through the weights room and on through the door that led to the gymnasium.

Who is this?
I waited nervously for the reply, some part of my mind ringing a warning. I hadn’t gone on any more dates since the dolls had been left at the house, and the messenger had once again fallen into eerie silence.

Mike. Poison’s friend
.

I wasn’t sure what Mike wanted. The only people I ever texted were the guys, Tariq, or Poison. Occasionally I’d text Clarin, but not often. Eventually, I shoved the phone into my book bag and forgot about the message, storing my bag in the one locker that always seemed to be empty… probably because the lock was broken.

“Going to join us today, Stephanie?”

I startled, slamming the locker door closed. It trembled, threatening to dislodge from its frame before slowly crawling open again. I turned to face the school’s gymnastics coach.

“Ah,” I replied.

Her smile was somewhat impish, and she wore it well as she turned on her heel and sauntered out of the room.

I trailed her with my head down, slipping into the gymnasium and hurrying up the ladder right beside the entrance door. I landed in an open gallery that looked down over the area below. It was cast in shadow and dust, with bulky misshapen silhouettes lurking around the edges. Upon closer inspection, it was easy to make out the discarded furniture stacked high to the ceiling, but I liked to think of them as silent, hulking monsters; outcasts of society, imprisoned to always look down from their tower room, but cursed to never join the ranks of those below. I was a little bit like that, but I felt—at least—that I had chosen my position. I could have obeyed the messenger. I could have run from Noah and Cabe, and later, Silas and Quillan. I could have gathered my meagre possessions, packed them into my mother’s old car and taken Tariq far away from it all.

We might have failed, but it could have been an option. It was my own choice that landed me here in this town of hidden mountain retreats and hilltop mansions; in this school of undercover
not
-aliens. It was even my own choice that kept me with the discarded furniture, looking down on the others instead of joining in.

I leaned against the railing, memorising every word that Coach Tesley chanted, committing the exercises to memory with an odd concentration that I usually reserved for painting. Practise dragged on a little longer than usual, and the cheerleading team swam into the gymnasium on their way to the locker-room, leaving me with the unpleasant task of having to make eye-contact with Amber. Her blue eyes were cold as she pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and tilted her head in my direction. She always did this. She never mentioned to anyone else that I was there, or pointed me out, but she always made a point of staring at me. Just long enough for us both to realise that I was escaping attention only by the grace of her silence.

She laughed at something her friend said and dismissed me with a flick of her hair, heading into the locker-room after some of the gymnastics girls. I backed away from the railing and sat with my back against one of the furniture-monsters, waiting until the very last footfalls faded from the polished wooden floor below and the very last hint of excited chatter fluttered out of the building on a cool afternoon breeze. Coach Tesley pretended to accidently drop her keys on her way out of the building. With uncomfortable analogies of vermin in the night swimming around my head, I scampered down the ladder, swiped up the keys and made my way into the locker-room.

There was now a leotard hanging in my broken locker, and I quickly swapped it for my clothes. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep it—since Coach Tesley never directly handed it to me—but it was undoubtedly meant for me to use. It smelt as though it had been washed. I bundled my clothes up into the locker and then padded out to the gymnastics mat.

My eyes travelled over the different apparatuses: the trampolines, the giant mat, the rings, the vault, the uneven bars; until, as always, I paused at the balance beam. I moved towards it, remembering the routine of the girl who had been standing on it only twenty minutes prior. I put my hands on the leather surface, feeling the remnants of chalk on my skin. I pulled myself up and stood in the middle, staring down the short distance to the other side. It had been typically difficult, at first.

Now, however
…

I performed a perfect handstand, holding it for a minute before my muscles began to strain. It seemed that my body could copy the movements of the gymnasts as easily as my fingers could copy the songs Noah played on the piano—however, my muscles simply weren’t accustomed to the strain, and in some cases, it felt as though my body were at war with itself. It wanted to disregard my physical limitations to replicate what I had seen. In the end, that alien part of me would win: there would be an almost unbearable amount of pain, and then I would suddenly be in the desired position. In those moments, euphoria would fill me with all the effects of an actual anaesthesia, driving all of the pain away. It was my only drawback, after a bare minimum amount of practise, and that frightened me. I jumped off the beam, placing my hands on it once again and then I lifted myself into something that Coach Tesley called an
L straddle hold
. Using my arms, I lifted my legs up and over the beam, holding them apart in an L-shape. A sudden image of the routine I had been watching earlier popped into my head, and then my body was moving. My hips lifted with my legs still in the saddle position, until I was balanced in a saddle handstand, and then I slowly, excruciatingly, brought my legs together into a proper handstand. There was sweat beading my brow but the screaming pain in my limbs was fading already.

Something sounded behind me and just like that, the spell was broken. My body decided to remember that I wasn’t supposed to be able to perform such gymnastics feats without the proper practise, my arms buckled, and my body was slamming into the mat below in a matter of seconds. A spasm of pain ricocheted from my side, spreading out to my ribcage and bouncing around my insides, bruising me in places I hadn’t thought it possible to bruise. This time, it didn’t fade.

I groaned, turning on my side and coughing into the mat before I struggled to my feet. There was nobody there. Storing away the odd feeling for later examination, I limped to the locker-room and pulled open the broken locker. It was empty. Confused, I did a quick search of the locker-room—checking the other open lockers and under the benches. My book bag and my clothes had all disappeared.

I went back out into the gymnasium and searched there too, before resolutely turning to face the weights room. My skin was pebbled with goosebumps, and the cold settled even more resolutely unto my bones now that the option of adequate clothing had been taken away from me. I had no phone to call Tariq with, so I hunched my shoulders and stuck my chin to my chest, walking to the door. I located where Tariq was before I pushed the door open, and then I fixed my eyes on the ground and weaved through the equipment to get to him. Somebody wolf-whistled and I heard a howling sound just behind me, but I still didn’t look up.