Free Letting You Go by Anouska Knight

when they’re being chased and The Fear has gotten a hold of them. She’d nearly got to him, but they were both giggling too much to effectively chase or flee from the other. Alex made a final lunge when something cumbersome, a black and tan furred lump of warmth scuttled beneath her knees sending her reeling into the grasses with a clumsy thud. Rodolfo whimpered. Dill looked on for about half a second beforeerupting into the same breathless laughter he was holding onto from his toddlerhood.
    Rodolfo whimpered again. Alex whimpered too. ‘Bad dog, Rodolfo.’ She lifted an arm up to examine it and grimaced.
    ‘Hold on, don’t move!’ Finn was beating back the thicket of nettles with Dill’s bow. He looked kinda clumsy about it, Alex thought, but it felt sort of
romantic.
Totally worth the stings.
    ‘Don’t, Finn, you’ll get stung too!’ Like she meant that.
    Finn slipped an arm beneath her back. Alex let him. Finn lifted her out of the nettle patch. Alex breathed in a hit of his warm skin and the body spray she didn’t think suited him but said she liked just the same because he was Finn, marvellously gorgeous, artistic, Finn.
    ‘You’re not going to snog now, are you?’ Dill drew one of his arrows from their sheath and held it out to them feathers first. ‘Cos if you are, can one of you please shoot me first? Don’t bother with the apple.’
    Alex jolted awake to a short, sharp, unpleasant sound at her truck window. Dill disappeared from her mind leaving behind him only a dull echo of the stinging sensation Alex had felt creeping through her legs. More tapping at the passenger window pushed away those last wisps of Finn too.
    Alex blinked. Kerring General loomed in the near distance. She pieced it together, remembered her mum, Jem’s call, the journey home. Alex rubbed the tiredness fromher head.
Finn.
On the roadside. That bit hadn’t been a trippy dream. Alex shifted a little and felt an uncomfortable fuzziness sear through one of her calf muscles. Her legs were locked together awkwardly in the foot well, a tingling sensation raging all the way down into her feet.
    Pins and needles, loony. Not nettle-rash.
She tried to flex against it.
    ‘I knew you wouldn’t wait until morning.’ The voice was dampened by glass. Alex checked for drool at the corner of her lips and tried to see around the hand softly rapping fingers adorned with pretty rings against her passenger window. Jem had been a sandy blonde last Christmas, sporting a victory roll if memory served. The girl standing the other side of the glass was all long layers and choppy fringe in a shade much closer to the deep red Blythe had passed on to both of them. Dill had taken more of their dad’s features, their mum had said. More angular and fair. But mostly he hadn’t reminded Alex of either of their parents in particular.
    Alex smiled through the glass. It regularly caught her off-guard how attractive Jem had become since emerging from her tomboy chrysalis. Without Dill, Alex’s theory couldn’t be properly measured, but she’d long suspected theirs was one of those families where the children had become progressively more beautiful as they’d come along. This morning though, Jem looked even more the butterfly than usual, striking and fragile all at once.
    Alex reached across the passenger seat and pulled on the door handle. ‘Hey, stranger. What time is it?’ The car parkhad filled up since Alex had pulled into one of the far bays and dozed off.
    Jem crouched down in the truck doorway. ‘Time you stopped sleeping with your mouth open? It’s eight-thirty, how long have you been here? Or shouldn’t I ask?’ She reached lithely over the passenger seat and pulled Alex’s head in for a kiss. The question was on Jem’s face before she could ask it. ‘Alex, have you been swimming?’
    ‘Not exactly.’ She wouldn’t call it
swimming.
Alex gave in to another yawn. ‘I haven’t been here that long, I don’t think. Couple of