“If she did, she’d be freaking out by now, wouldn’t she?” I say. “Maybe she feels us.”
“Blindsight,” Chiu says, sagely.
“Maybe she can’t understand why she’s feeling so irritated,” Farah says.
We laugh at this, without really knowing why. It feels like a delicious sort of mischief to haunt a posh old woman when she’s trying to relax at her fancy pool.
“Interdimensional trespassers,” I say, dramatically.
At which Chiu and Farah lose themselves for a while in silent, heaving laughs. After we’ve calmed down, Farah says, “You’ve got to admit, this is better than the hospital library, right?” I smile and refuse to answer and she leans forward, her face suddenly determined. “Oh come on!” she taunts me. “Admit it … Farah was right. Go on … I want to hear you say it.”
“Fine, if it makes you happy,” I say. “This is cool. But it’s all just some messed-up coma dream anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
Farah’s manner shifts and she moves towards me. Provocative, magnetic. Like she has a secret and she’s deciding whether or not to share it. She pushes off from the side of the pool and comes closer and places her hands on my chest.
A rush of warmth floods my face. I can feel the heat of her hands even over the heat of the spa. Close, the lower part of her forearms grazing my skin. She allows the bubble and fizz of the water to nudge her closer, much closer, so that our wet faces are nearly touching and I can see the tiny lines and vessels in the domed whiteness of her eyes. I can feel my heart thudding under the pressure of her palms and I’m desperately embarrassed by the knowledge that she can feel it too. She waits a moment, that slight, knowing smile lingering on her face. She looks like she’s going to kiss me and I’m desperately scared I’m going to make a mess of it.
Then she smirks and slides backwards, reaching out with one lazy arm to drench me.
“You need to get a better imagination, my friend,” she says.
We dry off and relocate to the bar, where we claim a vast leather armchair each and bathe in the warm glow of a log fire that doesn’t exist in our world. Instinctively, we sit as far from the window as we can. There are no curtains and the blackness outside presses against the glass like a weight. It has a presence to it. A heft. Darkness, in this world, is not just the absence of light. It has an irksome quality: a brooding intent, a vast, breath-freezing emptiness.
“It’s worse at night,” Farah remarks.
“People have always been scared of the dark,” I say.
“But we’re closer to it now,” Chiu agrees.
We fall into uncomfortable silence, trying and failing to avoid looking at the blackness beyond the windows.
A jittery, paranoid feeling spreads inside me. I’m scared that leaving the hospital was a mistake, that we’ve left the one place that felt safe and now there’s no going back. But then Chiu rummages in his pocket and pulls out his deck of Uno cards with a flourish.
“Game?” he says.
“Hell yes,” Farah says, sighing with relief.
We fall gratefully into a game. I imagine that we’re lost in deep space and somehow that feels better. If we’re lost in space, then it’s because we built this ship and so we have some control over it.
“You know, we could be here for eternity,” I say, perhaps a little wishfully. “This could actually be the afterlife.”
“Oh. My. God,” Farah says, dramatically. “My dad was right all along… There is an afterlife! I’m in Muslim hell. Playing Uno for eternity with an atheist and a … a … what even are you, Chiu?”
Chiu looks confused. “I’m a … boy?”
Which, for some reason, we find unbearably funny.
Later, Chiu has fallen asleep. Farah and I are lying on neighbouring sofas. I listen to her breathing as it becomes slower and I wonder what falling asleep feels like for her. Does her mind roam, as mine does, down side alleys and back streets of thought that seem to make complete sense … until, suddenly, they don’t?
“It was weird being in the pool with you today,” I say.
Farah gives a quiet snort. “Don’t tell my dad, please.”
“Are you not supposed to?”
“I’m not really a rule follower, Kyle, you know that.” Her voice is slow, on the edge of sleep. “Besides … you’re different … special…”
My heart starts to beat more heavily in anticipation. “Oh?”
“You and Chiu,” Farah drawls sleepily. “You’re like my brothers.”
EIGHTEEN
Brothers?
It was inevitable, I suppose, that I would develop a crush on Farah again. I mean, why not? It’s not as if our lives aren’t messed up enough already.
It’s petty and it’s childish, but … brothers? Seriously?
I don’t sleep. My thoughts turn over and over. I always liked Farah, in spite of the sneering and bad attitude. And now I know a different Farah as well. We’re on the underside of the universe, the stitching behind the embroidery, and we’re starting to see the stitching behind each other as well. There’s the Farah everyone knows and there’s the Farah I know. A glowing core of kindness that she tries to hide. A clarity, a strength, a certainty that takes my breath away.
Stop it, I think.
By the time I look up and realize that I haven’t slept, the sky has turned to the colour of wet rock – a colour that makes me think of sheer cliff edges and sudden, cold, jagged death.
I’ve had enough of lying here.
