10
My heart sinks.
Serena’s words hum in my mind, on a loop, and I can do nothing but stare at the brick wall opposite me.
The shock of those words has me rooted to the spot. Icy tendrils unravel through my veins—and I slowly lower the phone from my ear.
I turn my cheek and look at the parade, bursts of colour and confetti and sparklers dancing down the street.
A float passes, three tiered like a white wedding cake, textured with frosting, and the beauty queens stand primly on it, waving their hands in a curved, restrained motion.
And I think I might be sick.
I stagger back into the wall and slump.
Sal shouts something annoyed at me and strikes me on the head.
But it’s all so distant, like I’ve been plunged into an echo.
The plan, the plan, the plan.
I try to focus.
We have a plan for every place we go. Even motels we stop at along the way.
Here, the plan is to get the money from the apartment, then meet Serena—the one with the car—at the filling station on the edge of town.
She’s only ten minutes away.
She’ll be there before me.
She will wait.
I wonder—for a second—if I should leave Sal with someone. Someone I work with, someone I recognise from town maybe, and come back for him once I have our money.
But no, I can’t do that.
It’s harder with him, but I have to stick to the plan, Sal or no Sal.
I tug him off my shoulders.
A screech bounces off the walls before he lands in my cradling arms, and looks up at me with his wide brown eyes.
I force a horrible smile onto my face. “Remember the Sudden Game?”
The Sudden Game is when a call comes and, suddenly, we have to race to the next town, all without being noticed, and if we do that, Sal gets to order whatever he wants from all the sweet shops and all the diners, and in the car, he gets to play games on the tablet.
Sal blinks, once, twice, his face slack and startled.
The clash of the Sudden Game and his excitement around the parade, it comes together in the frown creasing his round face.
I don’t give him the chance to pick the parade.
I flip him upright, holding him to me, and rush up the lane.
It spills open into the carpark, so I come tumbling out to rows and rows of collector’s cars.
Sal knows the game, he knows the drill.
His arms loop tight around my neck. He drops his forehead to my collarbone, hiding his face, and holds on tight.
His role in the game is to be silent.
Be invisible.
I only wish we were.
Because across the lot, with rows of polished cars between us, standing by the old buggy that Sal loved for a hot minute is—
Dray Fucking Sinclair.
My insides lurch at the sight of him.
My illusioned face pales, all the blood in me rushing to my racing heart and twisting stomach.
Time stands still.
A second, a blip, a racing heartbeat—
I am unmoving.
The world freezes all around me.
The breeze pauses, sound stills, and I can do nothing but gape at him.
The blond of Dray’s hair is the muted shade of sawdust. Not gelled or combed, strands fall into his face, brushing over his darker eyebrows.
But not even the sawdust hue of his hair can soften those sharp diamonds he has for eyes. A blue so pale that they are glass and shallow waters. There’s something inherently cruel about them.
He stands out in the town.
Like he was wearing a suit and just discarded the jacket, his black shirt is a stark contrast to the pallor of his complexion—a paleness I haven’t seen on him before.
The years haven’t aged him, but there is a new seriousness in his demeanour.
One that jolts my heart back into motion, forces time to snap back into order, and I stagger back.
Dray hasn’t spotted me yet.
His chin is lifted, and he looks out in the direction of the markets.
I need to get out of here before he senses me.
Crowds are moving, smiling, laughing, waving and hollering. The parade is a burst of noise coming up the lane behind me.
Dray stills.
He pauses.
He senses.
I don’t give him the chance to even look this way before I throw myself back into the lane and go running towards the parade.
The panic swelling in me is both hot and cold. It’s the clamminess that spreads over my chest, my forehead, my cheeks, my hands, but it’s the ice creeping through my insides and tingling all the way down to my toes.
I don’t look where I’m going or even pause before I barrel into the crowd gathered on the street.
I knock into someone or something. I don’t stop to see what. I just throw myself between a father and a son to my left, hearing their shouts clash in the air as I run through the mob.
But I’m slow.
Too slow.
Blocked by people moving closer to the parade, reaching through the open space for beer cans being passed around.
In my fist, the phone vibrates, and I’d forgotten until now that I was even still holding it.
It buzzes over and over as I jolt and duck and turn and weave up Main Street.
Then I almost go tumbling over.
Not because I knock into anything.
Not because I trip.
Not because my boots suddenly plant on the hard pavement, suddenly unwilling to move another step—
Another step closer to Mr Younge.
My throat thickens.
I tighten my arms around Sal.
And slowly, I move. I walk closer to him, in his plain but tailored suit.
He moves towards me.
But his gaze isn’t on me.
He looks around, from face to face, person to person—then he stops right in front of me.
He stands in my way, turning towards the two women slumped against the wall, passing a chrome flask between them.
Both in their twenties, youthful smiles on their pretty faces—exactly the sort of illusion Mr Younge is looking for.
I step aside, then squeeze around his back.
I don’t stick around to hear what he says to them. I get out of the crowd, away from the parade, and dive into the market.
From here, I have a view of the carpark.
The buggy.
Dray isn’t there anymore.
He must have sensed me. Followed that instinct to the crowd along the parade.
Which means he might be right behind me.
That’s the least of my worries.
Because right there—two market stalls down from the steps leading up to Town Hall, at the very stall I bought the music sheets from—is my brother.
Oliver.
My insides constrict.
I suddenly can’t breathe.
If I had a fright when I saw Dray, and I had dread when I passed by Mr Younge, then the sight of my brother’s profile spreads a dense ache through my chest.
Heartache.
The urge to run at my twin and throw my arms around him is as strong as the sudden need to punch him on the mouth.
I do neither.
I tear my gaze away from the rich brown hair he runs his fingers through, and the glint of emerald from his eyes catching the sunlight.
And I look around him—to the other side of the Town Hall building, where another lane opens up, and leads away from Main Street.
Oliver moves—
And my heart lurches.
But he only places his hands on the edge of the stall and leans closer to the furrowed-face man.
My breath loosens, but it’s chopped and grated.
I walk between the stalls, deeper into the markets, because I have no other choice really.
I can’t turn around to Main Street, not with Dray and his sense back there.
But as I hold my composure, and walk casually, inconspicuous, behind Oliver at the stall, I catch some words he shouts over the racket of the parade.
“Two women! They would have arrived in town recently! Likely to keep to themselves—”
“The gay ones?” The man shouts back. “The ones with the kid?”
I walk faster.
I walk until I’m turning around the steps of Town Hall, the last row of stalls, and closer to the lane that cuts around the back of the hardware store.
It’s my only way out of here.
But when I’m about to turn the corner, I ruin everything.
I fuck up.
I make the mistake I avoided since spotting Dray.
I look back.
I pause at the mouth of the lane, and I look over my shoulder at the stall, at the furrowed-faced man pointing his finger right at me.
Oliver is angled my way, his expression stark, and the moment our gazes touch, a flash of recognition ignites his emerald eyes.
He pushes from the stall—
And that’s all he manages to do before I throw myself into the lane.
My boots come smacking down on the concrete ground.
Sal stiffens in my hold, rigid, but he keeps quiet, invisible for the game.
I know it in my gut, Oliver is chasing me.
Sal joggles in my iron embrace, side to side, up and down, but I can’t slow down. I can’t even pause to readjust my arms around him, just digging into his ribs.
I scramble down the lane, past the rear of the hardware store, then I swerve off onto another narrower, thinner lane.
The brick walls around the network of alleyways and lanes are tall. The smacking of my boots down on the hard ground echoes off the walls—and another running pair joins them.
The clack of Oliver’s expensive shoes striking the ground chases me.
I jerk off the second path into a claustrophobic alleyway, and I don’t stop to catch my breath or steady the dizzy waves churning through my gut.
I know the way.
I have learned these lanes and alleys like the slender keys of a piano, a shortcut to work. A ten-minute walk slashed down to just five minutes.
I come spilling out onto Stuart Street, just one over from Main Street, and without missing a beat, I rush across to the other side.
The lanes here cut behind the residential buildings, where all the bins are lined up. I stick to them. It keeps me off the roads where I might be spotted and recognised.
I don’t hear Oliver anymore behind me, chasing me, his shoes striking down on the hard concrete.
I can only hear my heart beating in my eardrums, deafening, as I stumble down the last lane.
We live just around the corner.
Maybe ten or eleven steps from the mouth of this lane.
And in that home, we have all our monies stashed.
Sal’s grip around my neck hasn’t eased. It’s firm enough to spring an ache up my spine. And the tears and slobber he’s getting all over my t-shirt is sending tiny flares of irritation through me.
But I know I’m just overwhelmed. That my instinct is to drop Sal and run, or to sit down right here—and brace myself for the wrath of my family.
At least then, I could go home…