Free Six by Karen Tayleur

mascara or did I dent the car while I was having a driving lesson are all yes or no answers to her. But life isn’t like that. The world is full of shades of grey — and green and blue and purple, depending on whose aura I’m looking at.
    Did you or did you not find a body in The Woods and fail to alert the police about it? Yes or no?
    She can never find out about what we’d done. She just wouldn’t understand.
    It’s not like I can see auras all the time. It’s usually when a person is really happy or sad or angry that I notice the colours.
    It’s how I first noticed my boyfriend, Nico.
    Nico was just another face in the crowd, another jock on the footy field, until one day, during summer holidays, when I took a short cut across Batesford Park. I was late. I’d met up with Sarah in the city after her summer school session and we’d wasted our time on a stupid movie that even I thought was pointless. Then Sarah decided she definitely needed to visit Maddison’s boutique, just in case they’d decided to have a sale, even though their idea of a sale is our idea of a splurge. So I spent way too long in the city, then I remembered I’d promised Mum that I’d be home in time to mind my little sister, Leah, so that Mum and Carl could go out to an early dinner.
    My sisters Kayla and Leah are both younger than me and Carl is their dad, not mine. Carl is boring. He works in real estate and has a standout car and perfect white teeth, although some of them haven’t always been his. The first time I met him, I could tell he was anxious. A thin line of red aura was a feeble light around his body. People with red auras live in the physical reality. They are straight down the line, living in the moment people, and I knew he wouldn’t understand about my Power. The good thing about Carl is that he makes my mum happy. For that I can forgive him almost anything. Almost. The thing I hate most about Carl is when he tries to be my dad. I mean, even though I don’t see him much, I already have a dad.
    Carl, I regret to announce that position is filled.
    Thanks for your application.
    Better luck next time, Bucko.
    Mum had forbidden me to use Batesford Park as a shortcut. Of course, Carl backed her all the way, another family conference. Carl standing, Mum and I and the girls sitting at the dining table.
    ‘Batesford Park is off limits,’ he began. ‘In fact, I don’t know why they don’t revamp the whole thing. Cut down The Woods, and open it up a bit. Make it safer for the whole community. I mean what are we paying taxes for if the government can’t keep us safe?’
    I knew Carl was thinking real estate rather than social concern. I could just see the dollar signs shining in his pupils. Also, he talked about his taxes a lot, although I know for a fact that he had an accountant to make sure he paid the least amount of tax possible.
    Before Carl could get a chance to launch into an hour-long blah blah fest about what was wrong with this community today, his mobile phone barked like a dog and he had to leave to take the call. The rest of us broke open a family block of chocolate and discussed Leah’s history assignment. All in all, one of our better family conferences.

    SO I WAS late. And I was cutting through Batesford Park, which can shorten my trip from The Mall by at least fifteen minutes, staying clear of The Woods of course, when a football landed at my feet. I stopped to pick it up and watched as Jacob Nicolson ran towards me. At least, I thought it was Jacob. I knew him from school, but it was a little hard to tell because his orange aura was pulsing off him like a neon sign and it was quite distracting.
    I usually stay away from orange auras. They are the thrill seekers of the aura spectrum — addicted to physical danger — which has never sat well with my own personality aura, which is yellow.
    But then he smiled, a warm, dazzling smile that was a little bit forward and a little bit shy all at the same time, and he