‘Calum’s right. You shouldn’t push yourself so hard,’ I tell Allie. ‘Don’t make it worse than it has to be.’
‘I know, I know. It’s just hard. I don’t want to miss out on a minute of Teacake.’ Her free hand sweeps across the room, over all the instruments and art supplies and sports equipment. ‘All this . . . it was fun, but since the transplant I don’t really care about being good at something. I’d rather just be good. Do good.’
I remember the first time I saw her and Calum, outside the restaurant with her leaflets and the homemade placard. I think back to all the hours she spent in Shona’s flat painstakingly sewing feathers on to Teacake’s wings. I remember her telling us to talk to Teacake, not about her, and her list of the Beings’ names.
Allie is exceptional. So exceptional. I want to tell her that. I just don’t know how to say it.
But maybe I don’t need to, because now she’s tilting her head towards mine. She’s looking at my lips, the way that only Leah and a handful of boys at parties have before, and part of me is thinking this shouldn’t be happening, not right now, when she’s not well, but a larger part of me doesn’t think it matters, and now I’m leaning ever so slightly closer, and I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, and then –
And then my phone starts to ring.
‘Shit. Sorry.’ My cheeks burn. I grab my phone from my pocket. ‘That’ll be my dad.’
I go to turn it off, but then I see the caller ID and pause. It’s an unknown number, an Edinburgh one. I don’t know anyone who’d be calling me from a landline. Unless –
‘I have to take this.’
I hurry out of her room and into the corridor, leaving Allie blinking behind me. My fingers tremble as I slide the green button over the screen.
‘Hello? Hello?’
There’s a long pause. There’s static on the line, and behind it, car horns and a pedestrian crossing beeping – it’s someone calling from a phone box.
‘Hello?’ I’m clutching the phone so tightly, my fingers start to cramp. Then I hear her voice, and everything inside me starts to somersault.
‘Jaya.’ Another pause. I can hear her breathing, quick and shallow. ‘It’s me. It’s Leah.’
TWENTY-ONE
Calton Hill is heaving with people. The Fringe has spread, like a sea creature stretching its tentacles, out of the Old Town and towards the monuments overlooking the city: there are dancers in orange leotards leaping over the grass, a choir singing ‘Oh Happy Day’, an actor performing a one-man Hamlet to a crowd of silver-haired tourists. As I hurry up the steps, I realize that’s why Leah told me to meet her here. Among the tour groups and performers, the laughter and camera flashes, she can hide.
She’s sitting at the foot of the National Monument, a towering line of Greek-style stone columns. A group of foreign-exchange students buzzes around her, almost shielding her from view, but she stands up as she sees me coming. It’s like watching someone you know acting in a play: it’s undeniably Leah, but not the way I knew her. Her shoulders are hunched, and she tugs anxiously at the hem of her hoody. As I move closer, I can see how ill she looks. Her cheeks curve inwards, and there are scabs around the corners of her mouth.
Still. She’s here.
We meet in the middle of the path. For a moment, we just stare: me at Leah; Leah at the ground.
‘You came,’ I say, stupidly, as if I’m the one who called her here.
Her eyes dart from my shoulder to the blue sky above us to a man walking his dog. Anywhere but my face. My arms twitch forward, but I hold back from hugging her. I may not know exactly what the Standing Fallen believe in, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t approve of our sort of relationship. Leah had enough trouble accepting it before she left; I doubt four months in a religious cult has helped.
Then a thought hits me: maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe she’s trying to save me.
‘If you’re here to convert me, you’re wasting your time,’ I say. ‘I’m not interested in all that redemption crap.’
She flinches; I blink. Both of us are taken aback by the venom in my voice. For months I’ve been rehearsing what I’d say to Leah if I ever saw her again. That wasn’t it.
‘No, of course not.’ Her teeth are a sickly yellow. Leah, the girl who’d get her toothbrush out in the toilets at lunchtime. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’
‘Why, then? How did you even know I was in Edinburgh?’
She looks up towards a couple posing for a selfie. ‘I saw some photos you posted on Instagram. One of you and Perry, about three weeks ago.’
‘And you couldn’t have sent me a message?’ I try to stop myself from shouting, but anger is pulsing through me: anger at her leaving; anger at being left. ‘I’ve called you about a thousand times. I sent you all those emails. I went to your house—’
‘Jaya, please.’ Leah cringes and shakes her head, tresses of greasy hair falling across her face. ‘Seeing you . . . it’s the only thing that’s kept me going.’
I take a step closer. She cowers back, shrinking into herself. ‘Tell me, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me how this happened.’
For a moment, I think she’s going to cry – her lip wobbles and she tilts her head back, blinking rapidly – but she takes a breath and carries on in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t think I can. I don’t even know how it happened.’
The foreign-exchange students begin to pour past us, matching red backpacks bumping against our arms. We move away from them and find a free bench overlooking the Old Town. Leah’s hands are shaking; she presses them between her knees to hold them still. For a few minutes, she doesn’t say anything. She keeps glancing over her shoulder, scanning the hillside for some invisible threat.
‘Remember the first time the Standing Fallen were on the news?’ she says at last. ‘We were coming out of school, and Sam showed us the video?’
I’d forgotten all about that, but the moment comes back to me: Sam pushing through a crowd of first years, muffled audio leaking out of his phone. On the screen, six or seven people were standing on top of a building somewhere in the United States. Most of their speech was drowned out by sirens and chatter, but you could make out a few words: ‘destiny’, ‘mankind’, ‘dragons’ . . . Leah made a joke about it, saying the guy must have picked up Game of Thrones instead of his Bible.
‘Mum wasn’t well. She’d had a few bad episodes in the past, but nothing like this. The Falls . . . they messed with her head,’ Leah says. ‘When I got home that day, she was watching the video on repeat. Dad said something about them being a bunch of nutters and told her to turn it off. She did as he said, but I noticed her watching it again the next morning. She seemed . . . enthralled by it.
‘Remember how fast it spread? Videos starting popping up from Tokyo, Moscow, Paris . . . then suddenly the London chapter was on the news, and then Manchester and Edinburgh and Glasgow. She was careful not to let Dad find out, but I kept catching her watching them, or looking at their website or forums. I think she liked that they were taking the Falls seriously, as a message from God. Most people had started shrugging them off or ignoring them, like my dad. She thought the Standing Fallen could give her answers, or a purpose. Whatever she was lacking.’
I think of Dad, lost in his labyrinth of notes and hopes and theories. For once, I feel grateful that his obsession wasn’t something darker.
‘Then one night, I woke up to hear Dad shouting,’ Leah says. ‘Mum was packing her stuff. She’d decided we were all going to sign up, all three of us. Dad wasn’t having any of it, obviously, but I told Mum that if she waited until the end of the week, I’d go with her. I managed to get her to agree to that, to give us more time to sort things out.