Free What You Become by C. J. Flood Page A

you want some tissue?’
    I nodded, and he reached into his back pocket to take out a soft bundle of the stuff the way he did when I was covered in gravy, and I decided he was the sweetest boy in the world.
    ‘I’m sorry, I was really getting into it. I was trying . . . I just . . .’
    Blowing my nose was such a relief that I did it right there, then wished I hadn’t.
    ‘God, sorry. I’m not usually this disgusting.’
    ‘You’re not disgusting,’ Kiaru said matter-of-factly. ‘You just worry too much. Do you need more tissue? Do you want to go back outside?’
    ‘I want to finish the meditation.’
    Resuming the position, I listened to Kiaru’s soft voice, and I thought how odd it was to be here, with him, doing this, and then he reminded me to focus on my breathing, and I did, and then I thought about the way he’d said I wasn’t disgusting, and wondered if it meant anything, and I couldn’t resist opening my eyes again. I admired his angular face, and narrow boned nose, and then he brought me back to my breathing, and round and round we went like that.
    ‘Okay, last breaths,’ he said. ‘You’re meant to have a little bell that you ring, to come out of meditation, but I don’t have one, so you can just open your eyes.’
    I blinked, as though I had opened mine at the same time as him.
    ‘It doesn’t work straight away. You have to build it, like a muscle. If you keep practising, you’ll see. But do you feel more relaxed? I feel more relaxed.’
    Kiaru lifted his knees up, looping his arms round them, and his fingers slotted against each other, long and slim, and he was preparing to ask me his question.
    ‘Rosie?’
    I nodded, and my face had that oversensitive feeling, and I knew the slightest thing would send it blooming, when every blood vessel seemed to tingle with anticipation of looming embarrassment.
    ‘Okay, so . . . the question . . . Alisha hasn’t really got food poisoning . . .’
    There was a kind of pressure building in the room, and my stomach dipped like I’d gone over a bump in the car.
    ‘And this might sound dumb.’ He was looking at me very intensely, and my blood pumped at an alarming rate. Mum and Ti were right!
    ‘But . . . she really likes you.’
    My heart did a double take.
    ‘I mean, she’s sort of
in love
with you.’
    She was sort of
in love
with me.
She
was sort of
in love
with
me
?
    Kiaru looked at me, excited to hear what I would say, but I was pre-language.
    ‘So . . . ?’ he said, in the same tone I’d heard dozens of times in the dinner hall as kids confessed their friends’ feelings to each other.
    Disappointment was like gaining a hundred stone. I was heavy enough to fall through the attic floor.
    His brown eyes were so pretty.
    ‘So you and Alisha
aren’t
a couple,’ I said, almost to myself.
    ‘No. And you aren’t . . . Ti really wasn’t . . . You weren’t . . .’
    I wanted to twist down into the earth like a drill, and never be seen again.
    ‘She was
so
sure you were in the closet.’
    ‘Is that why you wanted to be friends?
She
wanted to be friends,’ I corrected, and I couldn’t keep the sadness from my voice.
    Kiaru said no, but he didn’t meet my eye. Silence yawned around us, and now it was awkward, deeply awkward, because how much had my disappointment shown? It must have been all over my face when he was telling me. I fiddled with a splinter sticking up from the floor for a few seconds, then stood, realizing Kiaru wasn’t going to say anything else. For him, the point of the day, and me being there, was over.
    ‘Tell her I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t lead her on,’ I said, and then I did what I was best at.
    I ran away.

Seventeen
    Sunday afternoon Joey begged me to go with him and Dad to the aquarium, but I couldn’t face it. All those creatures in their tanks, what was the point? I went upstairs to lie with Mum instead. She had new music to play me, so we spent hours listening together.
    Thinking over the time I’d spent