Friday Never Leaving by Vikki Wakefield

Author:Vikki Wakefield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I FOUND A PRISTINE PATCH of footpath outside parliament house. I turned my back to the morning sun, chose a purple stump of chalk and honed it to a point on the curb. A man in a suit gave me a dollar for nothing but being there.

I lifted my face to catch something of the morning, a sound or a feeling, just a couple of words to start, but I got stuck on Silence’s desperation. It was catching, I should have known. When he grabbed at me like I was some kind of savior, I saw Vivienne. Her last clutch at life, and my retreat, scrabbling backward in horror, in case she took me with her. It had leeched into me anyway and it was stuck to my hair and my clothes and my skin.

He was fine, I thought. Snoring still, probably. He was better off with them. Safety in numbers and all that.

I tilted my chin, closed my eyes. Spring. The cool breath of it, the damp edges. I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think was that Silence had said he liked autumn best, when the leaves let go. He’d liked to cover himself in fallen leaves in the Botanic Park, then leap out at tourists.

I smiled to myself.

A flurry of pedestrian traffic. A woman pushing a pram invaded my space and I ducked left. My head thumped against a man’s leg. A piece of chalk was crushed and dragged, then thrown out from behind a heel like a hit-and-run victim. I was invisible. It must have been so much worse for Silence, without his voice.

The thought of leaving without telling him why I had to go was more than I could bear. Maybe this time I could stand a little desperation.

I packed up, leaving the footpath unmarked.

I hopped on the free loop tram but the driver kicked me off because I wasn’t wearing shoes, so I jogged the rest of the way.

At the top of Jacaranda Lane, I realized that something was happening. My mind had been elsewhere and there were signs I had failed to notice.

People were walking in the same direction as I was. More than I could consider a fluke. Dozens. Shielding their eyes against the sun and looking up. Murmuring in low, shocked voices and shaking their heads in disbelief, like a scene from the apocalypse. Two police cars flashed past, lights strobing, sirens switched off, followed by a fire engine that scattered the crowd with a booming honk.

I was caught in the current, blending with onlookers. Running scared, but not away from the terrible thing, toward it. The air was acrid, a warm, dense layer. My throat was full of it. One man had a handkerchief pressed over his nose and mouth like a surgical mask. I was shaking with terror so swift it arrived minutes before comprehension.

The squat was burning, exhaling twin plumes of smoke up into the sky. Dragon’s breath.

I knew it was deliberate. I didn’t know if anyone was still inside.

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