Hurt Read Free

on the third swing screams in anticipation of the inevitable launch into the water. But Isabel has come to her rescue, dragging Hugo backwards, and suddenly everyone is flailing about in the mud and the wet, yells and shrieks piercing the somnolence of the afternoon.
    Brushing the tousled hair back from his face and rolling up the clammy sleeves of his drenched shirt, Mathéo climbs the bank. He sits down in the shade of a large tree, its long branches heavy with thick green leaves, creating shadows across his body, dancing to the trilling of birds’ joyous disharmonies. Leaning back on his hands and stretching out his mud-streaked legs, he looks back at the others tussling at the pond’s rim, splashing and screaming and laughing, their voices echoing in the trees. But mostly he watches Lola, her long brown hair glinting in the sun.
    It’s hard to believe that it was nearly two years ago that he met her. Here, in this park, after the first day of the new school year. Hugo and Isabel were locked in a friendly argument about the merits of Dexter versus Homeland – a conversation that as usual he had no part in, his intensive training rarely giving him a chance to watch TV. As he leaned comfortably back on his hands, blinking rapidly while his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the sun hanging low in the sky and casting a golden glow across the grass, he allowed his gaze to travel casually across the few remaining clusters of pupils, past the game of Frisbee and beyond, to the grassy slope. And there she was, sitting slightly apart from the other pupils, close to the foot of the hill. Her head was turned away, legs pulled up, arms resting on her knees, torso limp as she gazed at an indefinable point on the horizon.
    Mathéo was used to a lot more than his fair share of female attention. He had been out with a couple of girls before – even one from the year above – but quickly lost interest when they began to make demands on his time, preferring instead to spend his rare free moments with Hugo. But for some inexplicable reason, this girl-in-the-distance captivated him. There was something different about her. She appeared lost in thought, elsewhere, only switching on the automatic smile and slapping on a superficial gloss when forced to engage with the other girls sitting nearby. The difference was so slight as to be barely noticeable, but once he had detected these hairline cracks between her and the rest of the group, he could not turn his eyes away. He found himself studying her as if she were a figure in a painting. She was tall and slender, pretty – no, beautiful – in a long-legged, coltish kind of way. A loose-fitting white shirt hung over the regulation grey school skirt, cuffs undone, flapping around her wrists. Unlike the others in her group her face was devoid of make-up and tanned from the long summer. Her hair was the colour of conkers and hung loose to her waist, long and dishevelled, cloaking her legs as she sat. At rest, her face wore a wistful, slightly dreamy expression, and her wide green eyes gazed far off into the distance, as if indulging in the fantasy of another possible life. There was a look on her face that captivated Mathéo in a way he couldn’t quite define.
    Knowing she could not see him, he watched for as long as he dared and found himself unable to take his eyes off her. Why exactly, he could not tell. In some indefinable way he felt drawn to her, as if he already knew her, as if they had been close friends, soulmates even, somewhere in a previous existence. Her mere presence seemed to calm his thoughts, saving him from the vicissitudes of his mind. She appeared before him as familiar, a kindred spirit. Perhaps it was something in her face, her eyes. She seemed to know . . . what, exactly, he was not sure. She seemed to understand. Or rather, he had detected in her the capacity to understand.
    With a little smile, he raised his hand.
    She returned the gesture, her face igniting for a