I can now feel each thud of my heart; each beat seems like it is going to break open my chest.
‘Besides I have a terrible memory. My mum’s always on at me about forgetting things. I’ll try to remember to tell her about seeing you but I’ve got a feeling it’ll slip my mind.’
‘I’m glad I’m forgettable,’ I mumble as I watch her school shoes, covered in red dust, swing into and out of view.
‘I’ve never forgotten you. I remember all the drawings you did, all the times you looked at me across the classroom.’
I almost fall off the escarpment. All the times?
‘How many times did I look across the classroom then?’
‘Twice on the first day.’
‘Twice?’ I know it was once. I can feel her eyes on me but I continue to watch her shoes.
‘You looked so … miserable.’
Great.
‘And sort of in pain.’
I blurt out a laugh. ‘Yeah well, that’s probably fairly accurate.’ It all seems like a long time ago.
‘Ten times on the second day,’ she says.
It was once and now I know she is teasing me.
‘But only twice on the third day, which was the day I sat next to you in art and even then you didn’t look at me, but kept on looking at that sparrow.’
‘It was a blackbird and I was drawing it.’
‘After that I thought we’d got over your shyness, but you still haven’t looked at me now.’ She stops swinging her feet and holds them up, knocks her shoes together and lets them fall.
‘I’m not shy and I have looked at you.’
‘This bit of me, I mean.’
I can tell she is pointing at her face but I am still staring at the space where her feet have been swinging. I turn and swallow. She is as beautiful as ever. White chocolate hair and clear honey skin, slightly tanned and slightly flushed. She isn’t smiling, though.
‘Do you know how amazing your eyes are?’ she asks.
No.
She nudges me with her shoulder. ‘Don’t be so glum when I’m saying nice things to you.’
She leans closer, peering into my eyes, and I look into hers, watching the silver glints tumble in the blue, some moving fast, some slow, some looking as if they’re moving towards me.
Annalise blinks and leans back saying, ‘Maybe not so shy.’ She pushes off the escarpment and lands softly on the ground below. It’s a long drop.
I follow her down and as I land she runs off like a gazelle and we chase around the hillside for too short a time before she says she has to go.
Alone, I lie back on the slab of sandstone and relive it all. And I try to work out what to say to her the next time. A compliment, like she has given me about my eyes: ‘Your eyes are like the sky in the morning,’ ‘Your skin looks like velvet,’ ‘I love the sunshine on your hair.’ They all sound so pathetic and I know that I could never say them.
We meet a week later and it’s Annalise’s turn to look glum and stare at her shoes.
I guess the problem. ‘Do they say lots of bad things about me?’
She doesn’t answer straight away, possibly counting all the things.
‘They say you’re a Black Witch.’
‘I’d be killed if that was true.’
‘Well, they say that you are more like your father than your mother.’
And that’s when it hits me how dangerous this is. ‘You should go. You shouldn’t see me.’
She catches me out, turning to look me straight in the eyes, saying, ‘I don’t care what they say. I don’t even care about your father. I care about you.’
I don’t know what to say. What can you say to that? But I do what I have wanted to do forever, and take her hand and kiss it.
From then on we meet every week and sit on the outcrop and talk. I tell her about my life, but only in part, the bits about Gran, Arran and Deborah. I never tell her about Wales and the trips I make there, even though I want to. But I’m afraid. And I hate that. Hate that I can’t be honest because of my sick, horrible fear that the less she knows, the safer it will be for her.
She tells me about her life. Her father and brothers sound like male versions of Jessica, while her mother is an unusually powerless White Witch. Annalise’s life sounds miserable and it makes my home life seem free and relaxed. She has never heard of Assessments and doesn’t believe me until I describe the blond Council member who sits on the left of the Council Leader. Annalise says that sounds like Soul O’Brien, her uncle.
I ask her one question that has always intrigued me. How many Half Codes are there? She doesn’t know, but will try to find out from her father, who works for the Council.
The following week she says his answer was, ‘Just the one.’
Another time she asks, ‘Has Deborah found her Gift yet?’