“You think you’re the first person to smash things up?”
“No.”
“Well then. It must be that they can’t see us. Or else the ordinary world would be full of poltergeists.” Farah frowns thoughtfully. “Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly,” I reply.
But we go in search of food anyway.
The canteen has a sad, deserted feel to it that probably isn’t that different to how it feels in the ordinary world. Moulded plastic chairs like in the waiting areas, a station with a shelf for sandwiches and a salad bar, some kind of heated counter, a windowed fridge, a rack with crisps and chocolate bars. I hope briefly that I’ll find a packet of Liquorice Allsorts … but no luck.
“No fresh food but they have sandwiches and chocolate bars,” Farah says.
“No people but chairs and buildings and beds,” I remark.
“It makes no sense.”
“It makes sense,” I say. “The rules are different, that’s all.”
We gather a stash of whatever food we can find and lay it out on the table between us.
I don’t remember the last time I ate. I should be ravenous. But I stare at the food with a sense of dismay.
“I don’t think our bodies need food here,” Farah says.
“No,” I agree.
She picks idly at a bag of crisps. “Have you had a dump since you got here?”
I’m caught off guard and I snort into my can of Coke. I collect myself. “Nope. I haven’t urinated either.”
Farah laughs now. “Oh, oh, right, you haven’t urinated?” She speaks in a haughty voice, waving her crisp in the air as she talks. “Have you been to the boudoir to powder your nose?”
“Shut up,” I mutter, smiling.
Farah turns more serious. “I think that might be another thing we don’t need here.”
“What?”
“Food. Drink. Anything.”
I push my plate away. I’ve been enjoying hanging out with Farah and I don’t like being reminded how wrong things are.
Farah seems to have the same thought. “Some last meal, huh?”
We fall silent. In the ordinary world, people come and go, load their trays, make phone calls while they wait for their sick relatives. But they’re not here. It’s just the building and the chairs and tables that somehow inhabit both worlds.
“I’m sorry I was such a cow in swimming lessons,” Farah says.
I swallow and look away. I’m surprised by how anxious she seems, the catch in her voice like there’s something irritating the back of her throat.
“You’re OK, Kyle,” she continues. “That’s all I was trying to say when I mentioned it earlier. I didn’t mean to make a joke of it, I do that sometimes, it’s stupid.”
“Forget it,” I say. “It’s no big deal.” I smile thinly and hope that she realizes what I say next is a joke. “I’d actually kind of forgotten until you mentioned it.”
Farah smiles. “That’s what I thought. I mean, I bet you ask girls out all the time, right?”
“All the time,” I say, loftily.
“So how many girls have you asked out? That you can remember, I mean.”
“Oh … hundreds.”
“Have any of them ever said yes?”
“Not one of them,” I reply, deadpan.
Farah laughs and I laugh with her. It feels so easy here I don’t understand how it always used to feel so hard in the ordinary world.
“I do wish we’d got to know each other back then though,” she says.
“Swimming lessons would have been less crap,” I agree.
“I had a bit of a thing going on,” Farah says. “It wasn’t personal. I wasn’t very nice to anybody.” She looks pained. “Was I really horrible?”
“Only to teachers.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t like people who put themselves in positions of authority.”
