Free Misty Falls by Joss Stirling

about the party.’
    I started walking, getting out my camera. ‘Let’s not go there.’
    ‘But I want to say something. I didn’t mean my comment the way it came out.’ His footsteps were keeping up with mine.
    My teeth ached. ‘Don’t do that please.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Lie to me. It hurts.’ I meant it literally but he took it in the more ordinary sense of hurt feelings.
    ‘I just—’
    Then I did something few people dared do to Eloquent Alex: I interrupted him. ‘You don’t want to talk about it any more than I do, so, moving swiftly on … ’ I swept my arm towards the seascape. ‘Tourism.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Buts are for nanny goats, or archery.’ Do not mention what’s on the tip of your tongue, Misty; do not! ‘Or … um … smokers.’ Phew—butt emergency avoided. ‘Let’s just enjoy the penguins, OK?’ I tried to think up a peace offering as he still looked like he wanted a heart-to-heart about the party. ‘Can you take my photo? I want to show my family what I’ve been doing today.’
    ‘Sure.’ Relieved to be given a task, he took my camera, our fingers touching briefly. I had that twitch of static shock, as at the party. What were the physics of that? He was the positive and I the negative charged object. That figured. We were poles apart in the way we came over to other people: me, the Screw-Up; him, the Boy Wonder.
    ‘Smile,’ said Alex, holding up the camera.
    I wished his voice didn’t make my stomach quiver in that first-night-nerves sensation. He probably wasn’t even using his gift but something about his tone just rang all my bells. Not that I ever had a starring role in the school play. I couldn’t speak lines I didn’t mean. Being unable to escape the truth often stopped me in my tracks. Crystal teased me that I was like that old joke of one of the original Daleks facing a flight of stairs. Plans for world domination scuppered. Just like those Dr Who characters, I couldn’t do ordinary stuff other people found dead simple.
    ‘Misty? Are you listening?’ Alex was getting testy.
    ‘Um … ’ No.
    ‘Can you do it then?’
    What had he asked? Oh yes: smile. I did my best, though it felt false, all teeth and no humour. He checked the image on the little screen, shading it from the sun.
    ‘Another one. That one didn’t come out well.’ He held up the camera again.
    ‘We’ll be here all day if you’re waiting for a good photo of me.’
    He thought I was joking. ‘That’s much better. Your family will like that last shot.’ He handed my camera back.
    ‘Let me take one of you—to show the folks back home.’
    ‘They won’t be interested in me.’
    ‘Wanna bet?’
    Alex shrugged and scanned the walkway, looking for a good backdrop. ‘Will this do?’ He chose a spot where there was a break between the rocks showing the sea and a scattering of sunbathing birds. ‘You get a sense of how close we are to the ocean here.’
    ‘Perfect.’ And he was. Again. The natural world loved him. If I didn’t already know his gift was persuasion, I’d say he had the ability to arrange the world to show him off to advantage. Dark brown hair rippling in the breeze, glinting mahogany where the light touched the lighter strands, tanned skin, mesmerizing eyes, tight T-shirt that hinted at his muscle definition (I’d seen him strip off his top after his football game and the memory was etched on my visual cortex for all time). He might have the superior attitude of a boy who knew he was destined from birth to join the world’s elite, leader-of-men material, but I couldn’t help my gut reaction to him, a desire to press my face to his chest and just, sigh, enjoy .
    Click. I had to face up to reality. He was in the year above me and so out of my reach that if we were planets, he would be mighty Mars or Jupiter and I one like Pluto, recently demoted to dwarf-planet status by astronomers. That was the natural hierarchy of things.
    But this humble planetoid could have