The Graces Read Free

other would have been too much for me. I sat back down next to her, buried my face in my book and waited for my pulse to stop its erratic drumming.
    When the bell rang, I shouldered my bag, and then and there made my bold ploy. Without thinking about it I walked up to Fenrin, as if I were going to talk to him. I felt his eyes on me as I approached, his curiosity. Instead of following it up with words, though, I kept walking past. At the last moment my eyes lifted to his, and before my face could start its tragic burn, I gave him an eyebrow raise. It meant, what can you do? It meant, yeah I see you, and so? It meant, I’m not too bothered about talking to you, but I’m not ignoring you either because that would be just a little bit too studied.
    I lowered my gaze and carried on.
    ‘Hey,’ he called behind me.
    I stopped. My heart beat its fists furiously against my ribs. He was a few feet away.
    ‘Defender of the weak,’ he said with a grin. His first ever words to me.
    ‘I just don’t like bullies so much,’ I replied.
    ‘You can be our resident superhero. Save the innocent. Wear a cape.’
    I offered him a smile, a wry twist of the mouth. ‘I’m not nice enough to be a superhero.’
    ‘No? Are you trying to tell me you’re the villain?’
    I paused, wondering how to answer. ‘I don’t think anyone is as black and white as that. Including you.’
    His grin widened. ‘Me?’
    ‘Yeah. I think sometimes you must get bored of how much everyone worships you, when maybe they don’t even know the real you. Maybe the real you is darker than the one you show the world.’
    The set of his mouth froze. Another me from another time recoiled in horror at my recklessness. People didn’t like it when I said things like this.
    ‘Huh,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Not out to make friends, are you.’
    Inside, I shrivelled. I’d blown it. ‘I guess … I’m just looking for the right ones,’ I said. ‘The ones who feel like I do. That’s all.’
    I’d told myself I wouldn’t do this any more. They didn’t know me here – I could be a new me, the 2.0 version, now with improved social skills.
    Stop talking. Stop talking. Walk away before you make it worse.
    ‘And how do you feel?’ he asked me. His voice wasn’t teasing. He seemed curious.
    Well, I might as well go out with a bang.
    ‘Like I need to find the truth of the world,’ I said. ‘Like there’s more than this.’ I raised a hand helplessly to the grey school building looming over us. ‘More than just … this , this life, every day, on and on, until I’m dead. There’s got to be. I want to find it. I need to find it.’
    His eyes had clouded over. I thought I knew that look – it was the careful face you made around crazy people.
    I sighed. ‘I have to go. Sorry if I offended you.’
    He said nothing as I walked away.
    I’d just exposed my soul to the most popular boy in school, and in return he’d given me silence.
    Maybe I could persuade my mother to move towns again.
    *
    It was raining the next day, so I ate my lunch in the library. I was alone – the friendly girls I’d hung out with when I’d first arrived never asked me to sit with them in the cafeteria any more, and I was glad to have the time to read more of my book before class. It wastoo cold to go outside, and Mr Jarvis, the librarian, was nowhere to be seen, so I put my bag on the table and opened my Tupperware behind it. Cold beans on toast with melted cheese on top. A bit slimy, but cheap to buy and easy to make, two important factors in my house.
    I took out my lunch fork, the only one in our cutlery drawer that didn’t look as though it came from a plastic picnic set. It was a thick kind of creamy-coloured silver and had this flattened plate of scrollwork on the handle bottom. I washed it every night and took it back to school with me every day. It made me feel a bit more special when I used it, like I wasn’t just some scruff, and my mother never noticed it was