Free The Boundless Sublime by Lili Wilkinson Page A

been wrong about me? Or had it been the kiss? I felt sick with a wave of self-loathing.
    ‘Come with me,’ he said.
    I stared at him.
    ‘Come with me to the Institute. I just found you, Ruby. I don’t want to lose you already. I …’ He frowned, his eyes intense. ‘I don’t know what this is, between you and me. But I know it’s important. You feel it, don’t you?’
    I did feel it. So much I thought I would break apart.
    ‘Sure,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll come and visit you. Is it far?’
    Fox looked away, his frown deepening. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he said quietly. ‘The Institute is … things are different there. You can’t visit. You have to commit.’
    ‘You want me to move there?’
    He nodded. I could see tears in his eyes.
    ‘Fox, I can’t. I can’t run away . My mother … she needs me. She has no one else.’
    Aunty Cath didn’t count. She wasn’t going to stay forever, and when she left it’d just be me and Mum again. Alone in our cold, empty house.
    ‘I need you too,’ said Fox. ‘And you need me. I can’t let you sink down into the darkness again.’
    I swallowed, my grip already faltering. The black tide was chokingly close. I didn’t want to go back there. But I couldn’t leave.
    ‘So stay,’ I said. ‘Don’t go back. Stay with me.’
    ‘I’m not allowed.’
    ‘Says who?’ I demanded. ‘Your father? You can’t let him tell you what to do forever. Just walk away. We could …’ I trailed off. What was I suggesting? That Fox and I live together? I took his hand. ‘Don’t you want to see the world?’ I asked gently.
    I could see longing on Fox’s face, but it was quickly replaced with something else. It looked like fear.
    ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I have to go back. The Monkeys need me.’
    Monkeys?
    ‘Where is it?’ I asked. ‘How far?’
    ‘I don’t know. We go in a van, but only Lib and Stan know the way.’
    ‘And there are others who live there … like you?’
    Fox nodded. ‘There are twenty-two members of the Institute,’ he said. ‘Eight men and fourteen women. Plus some Monkeys.’
    Fox kept mentioning monkeys. Was the Institute some kind of research centre?
    ‘Do you want to go back?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course I do,’ said Fox, but I didn’t believe him.
    For a moment I imagined going with him. Really belonging somewhere, not just visiting. Being with Fox every day. After all, if I didn’t like it I could always leave, and maybe after a little while I could convince Fox to leave with me.
    The blackness reached for me, suffocating, familiar. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’
    Fox’s face crumpled. I couldn’t stand to see him looking so sad. If Fox was sad, nobody else in the world could feel happiness. The sun wouldn’t shine, and the birds would refuse to sing.
    ‘Then this is goodbye.’
    My chest filled with despair. ‘Already?’
    A tear rolled down Fox’s cheek. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’
    ‘Then don’t.’
    ‘I don’t have a choice.’
    He kissed me on the cheek and reached out to cup my chin in his hands. I drank him in – his cascade of sandy hair that fell into stormy eyes. His pale skin and rosy lips. I wasn’t sure if I could live without him.
    And then he was gone.

    I didn’t know where to go. To school? I hadn’t been for nearly a fortnight. I’d been deleting Helena’s voicemail messages from Mum’s phone. I knew I got a certain amount of leeway on attendance due to being a broken shell of a human, but a fortnight was stretching it. There would be questions, and meetings, and consequences, and I couldn’t face that. I couldn’t go home to Mum’s ashen emptiness and Aunty Cath’s fake cheer and false nails. I couldn’t go to the Red House, because Fox was leaving. I couldn’t go to the Wasteland, because I hated my friends.
    So I stayed in the park. I wandered around the perimeter. I stood by the pond and looked for the ducks, but they were nowhere to be seen. Everything was