‘But lots of people are different. So it must be more. Is it magic?’ I grin, as if I’m joking. ‘Or are you some kind of monster?’
The grin falls, my chest burns, and I guess we both wish I hadn’t asked that question. Because he isn’t saying no, and I knew that monsters existed. I just didn’t expect to be sitting next to someone who smelt like them, in my normal school day.
It brings it all back.
Makes it real.
They all said it couldn’t be real. They said it was all in my head.
I look at Bavar. He’s not in my head.
‘You’re not, are you?’ I whisper.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I’m not.’
Of course I lose him at lunchtime. I turn around to put my stuff in my bag, and when I look up he’s gone. And everybody’s staring, because I’m new and I don’t fit and man, I used to fit. Before that night.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I hold my head high as I stalk past them all, and then I take my lunch and sit under the staircase on the science corridor and I make myself eat it, looking at all the different kinds of shoes people wear to school, the way they all walk, and after a while I can breathe again and then there’s a shadow over me and when I look up Bavar is there, stooping down, head tilted.
‘Why are you eating your lunch here?’
I shrug.
‘Are you hiding?’
‘Maybe . . .’
‘Why do you need to hide?’
I sigh, staring at him. ‘Why do you think you’re the only one who wants to?’
He’s silent for a while and I think maybe he’ll leave, but he doesn’t. He just lingers there, making us both uncomfortable.
‘Just come and sit, or something; you’re making me nervous,’ I say in the end.
‘I thought it might help, if I was here,’ he grunts, trying to fold himself into a very small space beside me. ‘Stop people seeing you, or something.’ He stares at me, blows his cheeks out. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you never speak to a person before?’
‘Not here,’ he says. ‘I mean, not . . . not a person like you . . .’
‘You’re a bit hopeless at it.’
‘And yet here we are,’ he says, the hint of a smile on his face. ‘Speaking.’
‘Hey, new girl,’ comes a new voice. A girl, tilting her head to look into our hiding place. ‘Why you hiding in there?’
She ignores Bavar as he scrambles out, shifting to one side to let him pass, her eyes still fixed on me. She doesn’t seem to register him at all.
She definitely sees me though.
‘I was just having my lunch . . .’ I start.
‘There’s a cafeteria, you know,’ she says, her voice full of scorn. ‘With tables and chairs, and everything.’
I grab my stuff and scuttle out of my hiding place, standing to face her. Her eyes glint with malice and I fold my arms, wondering what she’s going to do next.
‘I was going to ask you,’ she says, looking me up and down. ‘What kind of name is Angel?’
It doesn’t sound as if she really likes the name Angel. It’s become something twisted and ridiculous, the way she says it.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice nice and light, despite the thump of my heart in my ears. I was kind of expecting trouble at some point, after my little lie-fest on day one. It’s taken a couple of days to build, and now here she is. Grace something, I think, ready to take me on. She has brown hair down to her waist, shiny and immaculate. She swishes it back over her shoulders in a practised move.
The funny thing is that I told her the truth. I lied to lots of people on that first day, but when she started up with the same old questions I got fed up of it all, so I told her exactly what happened, and that I was now living with foster parents. And I had a smile on my face at the time – I guess I was nervous – so she was the one who called me out as a liar. Which is ironic, really.
‘What kind of parents call their kid Angel?’ she asks now.
‘The kind that later orphan her,’ I say.
‘That kind of thing’s not funny,’ she whispers, leaning in to me. ‘You shouldn’t joke about it.’
‘I’m not joking,’ I tell her.
She advances on me, and then there’s a little blur to my left, and the world spins.
I’m outside, in front of the bike racks, and Bavar is standing before me, slightly out of breath. The school field behind him is misted with frost, and shadows stretch from the trees towards us. For a second it’s like the world is black and white, all angles and lurking things, and he’s the thing that stands between all of that and me.
The only thing.
I blink, and my head clears, the world starts to move again, kids jumbling past us, their heads down, laughing and battering at each other with bags and coats.
‘What was that?’ I whisper.
‘You looked sad.’
‘I was angry!’
‘Sad,’ he says, shaking his head obstinately.
‘So you’ve just propelled me out here? How did you do that? And what am I supposed to do now? Walk back in and pretend nothing happened?’
He shrugs. ‘She probably will. She’ll just think you ran off, or something.’
I stare at him.
‘People don’t like it,’ he says. ‘They pretend it isn’t happening. Most people, anyway – what’s different about you? Are you really called Angel?’
‘Yes, I really am,’ I say. ‘And I could ask you the same question – what’s different about you?’
He stands there looking at me, the shadows stretching around him. He seems to grow in that moment, and I tell myself he doesn’t frighten me, but all the little hairs on my arms are standing up because whatever that was, and however he did it, he did it. And it smelt of the monsters who came that night; it smelt of magic – dark and intoxicating.
‘Bavar . . .’
But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start. And while I’m struggling to find the words, he turns and walks away.
I saw her in danger.
An angel, in danger.
It was all I saw, and the thing I’ve been denying all my life reared up. The world got darker, and she was the only bright thing. She was in danger, so I took her and I got her out of there. It was a rush of energy, a rush of blood to the head, something, I don’t know. I never did anything like that before.
And now she’s angry, and I’m confused. I always knew I didn’t fit in this world, but I thought I was the only one. That only someone like me wouldn’t fit. She doesn’t fit either. She’s all the right things on the outside, but something on the inside is different, like it’s seen things that it shouldn’t have seen, and so now she doesn’t fit.
What did she see, that made her like that?
I can’t stop replaying it in my head. That look on her face. The twist in my gut, and that thing inside – the thing that knows how to fight and how to kill . . . that thing is no longer content to curl up silent and small. It doesn’t care about the promise I made.
It’s ready for a fight.