Free The Dying of the Light by Derek Landy Page A

other like that.”
    It had been a long day. All Scapegrace wanted to do was have a shower and go to bed. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    They stood there and blinked at him.
    “You’re sorry?” Thrasher asked.
    Irritation flared in the back of Scapegrace’s mind, then sputtered out. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
    “You … you’ve never said that to me before,” Thrasher said, tears in his eyes. Dear lord, he was going to cry.
    “Then I’m not sorry,” Scapegrace said hastily, in an effort to hold off an embarrassing display of emotion. “Does that make you feel better?”
    Thrasher’s hands went to his mouth as tears spilled down his perfect cheekbones. “You’ve never cared about how I feel before.”
    Scapegrace went to roll his eyes, but lost his enthusiasm halfway through and ended up looking at the ceiling.
    “Are you feeling OK?” Clarabelle asked.
    For the second time in the last few minutes, Scapegrace sighed. “I’m fine.”
    “But are you
really
?”
    “Of course. The pub is doing good business. We have a loyal customer base. Most of them are in every night. What’s to complain about?”
    “I don’t know,” said Clarabelle. With natural grace, she sprang on to the kitchen table and sat there, cross-legged, while the dishes she’d knocked off crashed to the floor around her. “You tell me.”
    Scapegrace hesitated. He’d always viewed himself as an old-fashioned type of guy, not the kind to talk about whatever was troubling him. But circumstances, he supposed, had changed. One glance at his reflection in the window proved that.
    “I always wanted to do something important,” he said. “I wanted to be someone important. I wanted to make a difference.”
    “You make a difference to me,” said Thrasher.
    The old Scapegrace would have thrown something at him for that. The new Scapegrace didn’t bother.
    “I never wanted to be normal,” he continued. “But here, normal is all I am. In Roarhaven, I’m … unexceptional.”
    Clarabelle frowned. “Do you want to leave?”
    “No. Nothing like that …”
    “But if you do leave,” Clarabelle said, “do you promise to take me with you?”
    “I’m not leaving.”
    “OK,” Clarabelle said happily. “Just don’t decide to leave one morning before I get up. Then I’ll get up and you’ll be gone and Gerald will be gone and I’ll be all alone in this house and I’ll have no friends.”
    Thrasher wrapped his gigantic arm round her shoulders. “We’re not going anywhere.”
    She nodded. “Because I have trouble making friends. People think I’m weird, just because sometimes I see things that aren’t really there, and just because I say things they don’t understand. They don’t want to be my friends. But you guys don’t care about things like that. You two are really nice.”
    “I’m not leaving,” Scapegrace said. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know, I … I suppose I can just see myself living out the rest of my life as an ordinary person.”
    “You’re not ordinary,” Clarabelle said. “None of us are.”
    “I get sad, too,” Thrasher said. “I don’t like to bother anyone with it, but … I mean, my new body is very nice. It really is. But every time I look in the mirror, I see someone that isn’t me. I don’t think that feeling is ever going to go away.”
    Scapegrace nodded. “You’re always looking into the face of a stranger.”
    “That gets to you,” said Thrasher. “After a while, the novelty wears off and you just want to see your own face again.”
    “You forget where you came from,” Scapegrace said softly. “You forget who you are.”
    Clarabelle leaned forward. “Would it make you feel better to remember?”
    “It would.”
    She smiled. “Then the news I have is
good
news. I went exploring today. I’ve never been to the left side of the Medical Wing before because, when I walk in the door, I always turn to the