The world was a lot to process again after all that time. Had the fresh air blowing through the window always smelt so rich? Had Kasper always smiled so widely? Felix almost couldn’t bear to look at him.
Rima flew in through the open window, glowing with energy too. “Someone new has arrived!” she yelped. “Get dressed, get dressed!”
“What year is it?” Felix asked her. It couldn’t have been that long since the cat. He had a brief memory of snow, fluttering in through his window. Winter had been and gone while they slept. Maybe it was already 2012.
“I have absolutely no idea! Have you seen Leah? Where has that girl got to? Let’s go! I need to find Cody!” She twirled, jumping into the air and running through the door.
Kasper looked at Felix, raising an eyebrow. “Business as usual with Rima, then.”
“I think we could be here for an eternity and she wouldn’t change,” Felix said. He took a deep breath, trying to control the deep wave of love that rolled over him. He’d missed them all – Kasper and Rima, Leah and Claudia. After so long starved of them, listening to their voices was like drinking rich cream.
While Kasper pulled on his shirt, Felix turned to examine himself in the mirror by the bedroom door. The glass had a crack down the centre. That hadn’t been there the last time he had been awake. Then, the vines on the windows had only been tendrils, creeping up the bottom of the glass pane. Now they covered the room in green foliage, flooding over the carpet.
Perhaps it had been longer than he’d thought. They could have been dreaming for decades, sleeping through the days as empty shells of their old selves. It was hard to tell when he still looked the same. He’d always be eighteen, just like the day he’d died.
Felix folded his crinkled collar back into place, then took off his glasses, rubbing them clean with the hem of his plaid shirt. He wasn’t entirely sure how they managed to get so many smudges, considering he was incorporeal. It was one of the eternal mysteries of ghosts – and glasses.
Kasper nudged up against Felix’s back and rested his chin on Felix’s shoulder as he rearranged his hair in the mirror. He licked a thumb and smoothed his eyebrows flat. “Ready, loser?”
Felix folded his hands over his cuffs. It was starting, then. The peace between them never lasted long. “If you’re done primping.”
He let himself look at Kasper, feeling that deep ache in the centre of his chest. Had he really had these kinds of emotions constantly, before he fell asleep? Surely not. He wouldn’t have been able to stand it.
Kasper walked through the door. “Let’s go see who brought us back from the brink, then.”
HARRIET
When Harriet woke up, the headphones around her neck were still blasting Janelle Monáe. She lay still for a moment, replaying the darkening sky, the sudden loss of balance as she tripped over something unseen, the flash of brightness as she fell, and then nothing.
She could hear voices. She was surrounded by people, talking quickly. Arguing.
She must be in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. The voices were paramedics discussing her injuries. It was likely she was seriously hurt. She might have broken her leg, or worse. She couldn’t feel anything, which had to be a bad sign.
She tuned in to their conversation, trying very hard not to panic.
“…can’t just leave her lying—”
“You would say that! You always think that—”
“Oh, because what you think is so much more—”
“Would you two just shut the hell up. It’s not—”
“Are we actually fighting about this right now? She’s not even cold yet!”
There were so many voices she couldn’t keep track of them; they were all talking over each other. She opened her eyes. For a moment, everything was blurry. She blinked, and her vision cleared. She was staring at a mouldy breeze-block wall. The voices around her went silent.
“H-heyyy…” someone said.
Harriet flicked her gaze around until she found the speaker – a short girl wearing a hijab and a nervous expression. There were three people huddled around her, none of whom were paramedics – in fact, they looked like students. They must have heard her fall and come to investigate. She relaxed. Maybe she wasn’t badly hurt, after all.
Clearing her throat around a lump of something dusty and thick, she asked, “What happened to me?”
They exchanged nervous glances with one another. A black boy in a neat plaid shirt said, “Are you – are you OK? You had an accident.”
Harriet rubbed her eyes. She knew she probably wasn’t fine. She ought to be in serious pain right now. But she didn’t have a single ache or pain. “I was … falling.”
“You remember?” The boy adjusted his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. There was a smudge on one of the lenses.
Another boy spoke. This one was white and much more muscular, with a rugby player’s shoulders and rakish blond hair. “Why wouldn’t she remember?”
“Well, I don’t remember when I di—” the other boy began, until his friend cleared her throat warningly. He cut himself off. “Di-di-ha. Uh – well, no, not as such…” He trailed off into silence.
While Harriet watched this display, feeling a little perplexed, the rugby player stared at him in disgust. “Chill out, Felix. Jeez.”
“You’re the one who needs to chill out!” Felix retorted.
Harriet didn’t have time for this. She struggled to her feet, feeling just a bit off balance rather than injured. She must have hit her head, because her bun had been knocked to the side, but there wasn’t the tender spot of a bruise.
“You fell from the top floor,” the girl said to Harriet, squaring her shoulders and looking determined. She was wearing a pyjama top that said HERE FOR
