Blackfin Sky (7 page)

5

Sky was still mulling over the basic impossibility of asking Sean for confirmation of her mortifying kiss-fail when she walked into school on Monday morning.

Her stomach knotted when she got the same stunned-silent response to her arrival at school as she had three days earlier, but she kept her expression neutral. Heads turned in her direction and rubber soles squeaked to a halt on the tiled floor, one ogler even dropping her book-bag for extra drama. Sky rolled her eyes and tried to ignore them, even the Swivellers – those creepy brothers with their jointless necks, following her with their black stares right along the hallway to her classroom. She took the seat between Cam and Bo, rolling her eyes for their benefit.

‘Looks like I’m still the freak du jour.’

Bo laughed flatly. ‘When were you not?’ At Sky’s raised eyebrow, Bo’s look became as flat as her laughter. ‘Really, Sky? I know you never exactly asked for the attention, but the staring is hardly new. You flit around, being all
Skylar Rousseau,
and then act uncomfortable when people stop what they’re doing to stare at you. You can’t be remarkable without being remarked upon.’

‘But I’m
not
remarkable.’ Sky squirmed, and both her friends watched her.

‘It’s like watching someone trying to saddle a cat,’ Cam chirped, and Bo nodded appreciatively.

‘Nice analogy.’

Cam frowned. ‘Doesn’t an analogy have something to do with your bum?’

‘Minus one million points. And she was doing so well!’

Despite the fact that her friends were making fun of her, Sky was starting to feel a little better. After all, this was all perfectly normal.

It didn’t last long.

‘But, Sky – is it true, what they’re saying? Were you actually dead the whole time you were gone? Because you can tell us, you know, if you
were
.’

Sky was spared having to answer Cam’s earnest question as the final bell rang, and Mr Hiatt glared at the students until they stopped talking. Their eyes never left Sky the whole time.

Just as Mr Hiatt opened his mouth to begin taking the register, the door slammed open again and Sean hurried in. Sky watched him mutter an apology to Mr Hiatt as he passed and took his seat near the front.

‘Is Sean okay?’ Sky whispered to Cam, who shrugged.

‘He hasn’t said anything, but I know he’s not been sleeping well the last few nights.’

‘He freaked out when you died, and now he’s freaking out because you’re back,’ Bo explained, a waft of the minty gum she was chewing to hide her ashtray breath crossing between their desks. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘Why would Sean be freaking out about that?’ At Bo’s withering look, she added, ‘More than anyone else is, I mean.’

Cam answered before Bo could. ‘When you died, it hit Sean really hard. And then there was all that stuff with Miss Schwarz and Aunt Holly…’

‘Whoa,
what stuff
?’ Sky’s sharp hitch in tone caught Mr Hiatt’s attention, and he turned to glare at her before his eyes widened in surprise.

‘
Skylar Rousseau
?’

Bo sat back, crossing her ankles lazily in front of her desk. ‘Looks like somebody didn’t get the memo.’

‘But – but
how,
I mean – how are you
here
?’

Sky swallowed before answering. ‘My mum did call Mrs Hemlock to check it was okay for me to come in.’

But Mr Hiatt was already backing toward the door. ‘The headteacher – yes, I need to see the headteacher…’

As the door closed behind him, Mr Hiatt’s footsteps could clearly be heard racing along the gleaming tiled hallway towards Mrs Hemlock’s office. Once again, Sky felt all eyes turn towards her – not least those of Randy Swiveller. She had managed to avoid speaking with him at all since her birthday, but reliving the memory of how he had behaved at the party brought a hot lump of anger to her throat.

‘What do you want, Randy?’

He smiled his creepy smile, all the gummy spaces between his teeth glistening with spit as he leaned in. ‘Freak, that’s what you are. I know you aren’t real like the rest of us – he said so.’

Bo’s eyelids had lowered to half-mast. ‘Seriously? One of the Swivellers calling
anyone
a freak is just too hilarious. Ha.’ She laughed her dead laugh, and Sky marvelled at how levelly Bo held the black stare Randy had aimed at her.

But
everyone
was staring at her now, even though Randy’s words had been too low for them to overhear. Sky could feel their eyes on her, like needles on her skin.

‘Our dad says you were probably kidnapped by a pedo,’ Randy whispered, moistening his lower lip with his tongue. ‘He said it would have to be a pedo, not a normal raper, ’cause you haven’t got any tits.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ Sky shot back, but couldn’t hold his ugly stare. Her cheeks felt hot enough to melt, and her treacherous eyes were trying to leak. She wouldn’t cry, though. Not in front of them.

Why are they acting like this?

Bo’s droll tone banished any thought of tears. ‘It says a lot that your dad thinks
any
kind of rapist is normal.’

Sky saw Bo’s faint smile and thought her friend had managed to put an end to the snide remarks. That was until Randy’s brother Felix turned to face her from the row in front, forcing her to look at him. He gurned at her, his teeth oddly spaced like broken piano keys.

‘Do you reckon the worms got to her when she was in the ground? Do you think under all them skirts they’ve started eating her, burrowing their way in?’

This was not normal, even for a Swiveller. Felix had been held back a year, and was, Sky suspected, an unfortunate example of the effects of inbreeding.

He had never actually spoken a word to Sky before today. Granted, he wasn’t speaking directly
to
her now, but this was still an unwelcome change in behaviour. He panted at Randy as though the idea of the worms filled him with glee, and Sky’s stomach lurched.

‘If we open her up, will she be filled with maggots?’

Sky’s chair screeched backward across the floor as she fled the classroom. She ran without thinking and soon found herself in the hallway leading towards the gym. That was the last place she wanted to be, and she looked around frantically for somewhere where nobody would stare at her and imagine her insides crawling and
rotten.

The caretaker’s storeroom door was usually locked, but Old Moley must have gone for a cigarette break and forgotten to shut it this time. Sky ducked inside, the faint tang of chemicals forcing her to breathe shallowly once the door was closed. It was dark in the small storeroom, but Sky had never been bothered by darkness. She leaned back carefully against a shelf and sighed.

Why had those two idiots bothered her so much? If their prying eyes had been bad, the scrutiny she’d be facing when she went back to class would be a hundred times worse after she’d rushed out like that.

‘There you are.’

Sean’s face appeared briefly in the strip of light as he opened the door, then disappeared again as he closed it behind him. Suddenly the small space felt ten degrees warmer, and half the size.

Something rustled, and then the space between her and Sean lit up with a white glow from his phone.

‘It has a torch app,’ he explained with a crooked smile. ‘Are you all right? Cam and Bo went to check the girls’ toilets.’

Sky nodded stiffly, very much aware that there were only a few inches separating her from Sean in the cramped space. ‘Yep. Fine.’

‘What set those creeps off like that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone upset you like that before.’

A shake of her head sent strands of her pale hair whipping against Sean’s cheek. He reached up and tucked the strand behind her ear, and Sky forgot how to breathe.

Ask him!

Sky had been so resolved to ask last night, after realising Sean was the only one who could say for certain what had happened at her party, and she refused to let the Swiveller brothers and their gross ideas get in the way.

‘Sean, did I … did I kiss you at my birthday party?’

They were plunged into blackness as Sean dropped his phone and the light died. He muttered a curse and they butted heads as they stooped at the same time to try to find it. Then they were both laughing, Sky clutching the sleeves of Sean’s cardigan so she wouldn’t topple over from her crouched position, and one of Sean’s hands on her hip to help steady her. He loosened his grip once he realised where his hand was, but didn’t withdraw it entirely.

‘I think my bum’s stuck in a mop bucket,’ he whispered, and they both started laughing again.

‘Sky?’ His tone grew serious a moment later. ‘Why did you just ask that, about whether you kissed me?’

Sky cleared her throat. ‘Because I thought … I thought that I kissed you, and you were like,
WHOA
, and I kind of … well, I left and went down to the pier to get my head together, but then I…’ Sky frowned, shaking her head even though there was no way he could see her in the dark.

‘Sky.’

‘But then I woke up in my own bed, and I knew it must have been a dream. The next day everyone said we’d just gone back inside after your fight with Randy and everyone went home early, so I really started to believe I’d dreamed it. When you hear the same thing over and over, it’s like it becomes what you remember, even if you really
don’t,
and I … I suppose I don’t know what to believe any more—’

‘
Sky
.’ Finally, she shut up. ‘You’ve got no idea how many times I’ve gone over that night, wishing it had ended differently, wishing I hadn’t upset you like that. When you kissed me, I … well, I thought you felt obligated or something, because of what happened with Randy. I didn’t want that to be the reason, because I knew you’d regret it and things would be weird between us. And I mean, you’re
Skylar.’
He stopped for a moment, as though expecting this last statement to make some kind of sense to her. ‘I went after you that night to try to explain, but it … but I was too late.’

In truth, Sean really
did
sound as though he’d given it a lot of thought.

‘Oh.’ She swallowed, and her tongue felt two sizes too big. She
had
kissed him. It hadn’t been a dream at all. Her heart pounded as she realised what she needed to say if she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life wondering
what if
, like she’d been wondering for the past three months while the people she cared about thought she was rotting in the cemetery. ‘That wasn’t why I kissed you. I kissed you because I wanted to. I’ve wanted to for months.’
But there’s probably no chance of that now, because everyone here thinks I’m some kind of zombie.

The light went out on Sean’s phone, and Sky had the impression he’d let it go out because he didn’t want her to see his face.

‘Good.’ He cleared his throat. ‘That’s good. I just thought, after I’d been dropping hints that could have made craters, and you acted like I had to be joking, well … I thought you were just letting me down gently.’ They were close enough that she could feel the movement when he shrugged.

‘Uh, no. I had no idea you were being serious.’ Somehow, silence in the dark stretched quickly to several eons, and Sky scrabbled for something to fill it with. ‘What did you mean just now, when you said I’m
Skylar,
like that’s something … well,
something
?’

Again, Sean hesitated, but it was like he, too, dreaded the chasm of silence. ‘You know how all the guys look at you – how
everyone
in this town looks at you. I think if you actually started dating me, they’d come after me with pitchforks.’

Now Sky was glad he’d let the display fade out on his phone. She’d grown used to the long looks, the weird degree of attention she got from the people she’d grown up with. But like all things Blackfinite, it was simply something she lived with. All the quirks, the odd happenings of the town, were just a part of its make-up. Stare at those things too long, try to fathom out the mechanics of the mystery, and the whole thing would unravel.

Maybe that’s what happened to me,
she thought.
They stared too long, and I unravelled.

But she didn’t want Sean to see her that way.

‘It’s just this town, you know. All the staring, the whispering … it’s this Blackfin weirdness that gets into people’s heads. There’s nothing special about me, Sean.’

‘Except you drowned, then came back.’

And what she’d believed was a dream had actually happened – the failed kiss, her running down to the pier and taking a swan dive off the end of it.
How
precisely she’d come to fall from the pier was another matter, but for now Sky was left with a more pressing question.

‘Where the hell
have
I been for the last three months?’