What You Become by C. J. Flood Page A

sneak a text to Dad; it was his turn to collect Joey, but he’d worry if I wasn’t back by four. Right now I wanted to seem free and easy, and so I just cruised along beside them, as if I often hung out at other kids’ houses, rather than going straight home to make sure my mum and brother were okay.
    As we walked out the back of the school, seeds and grass stuck to my tights, which still smelled of gravy, and the long grass at the edge of the common whipped my legs. Alisha’s breathing was heavy as we marched, but that didn’t stop her talking. She laughed at her own jokes, without waiting to see if anyone else found them funny, and I wondered if she didn’t notice our lack of response, or didn’t care.
    Kiaru didn’t laugh out loud once, and I realized I hadn’t ever seen him do that. Maybe laughing out loud was deeply uncool. I’d have to keep a check on it.
    When Alisha ran out of chatter, she sang. She was so uninhibited she reminded me of Ti, except her voice was husky and lovely, while Ti sounded like a punk who’d smoked too many cigarettes. Alisha sang a melancholy Pulp song that Mum played to death up in the attic, and I felt sad, but I didn’t want her to stop. Not that she would have, the impression I was getting.
    We walked out of town to Castle Road, to where Kiaru, it turned out, lived in the huge white pillared house next door to Charlie Fielding’s. I wondered when he’d moved in, and if they bumped into each other a lot, and what he thought of her. He didn’t like her enough to give her his granny tissue at least. It was still balled up in my bag, like a memento from a concert, which even I knew was embarrassing.
    He led us from the drive round to the back of his house to a huge sloped garden edged with a row of tall Scots pines, through which you could see the ocean. His gate opened out near the cliff path down to Durgan, the same as Charlie’s did, and I felt a pang of envy.
    Ti thought the Castle Roaders believed the beach belonged more to them than it did to the rest of us because of their gates, and if you saw the Fieldings’ summer set-up with deckchairs, Dalmatians, inflatables and barbecues, you might agree. Mum said Ti was jealous, but I’d heard her call Sophie obnoxious when she’d complained about how much money they had to spend maintaining their vintage speedboat.
    In the bottom right-hand corner of the lawn, adjacent to the boundary of Charlie’s garden, a shed with a glass front overlooked the sea.
    ‘Summer house,’ Kiaru said, standing aside so we could enter.
    ‘Can we not just go in the house? It’s cold,’ Alisha said, but Kiaru ignored her. He put his hair behind his ears.
    ‘Welcome,’ he said stiffly when we were all crammed inside.
    The walls were covered in drawings of mountains, all peeling at the edges and sun bleached like they’d been up for a hundred years, and the sofa was red faded gingham with patches on the arms, and a patchwork quilt draped over the back. Lowering herself to sit on it, Alisha sent up a puff of dust.
    Kiaru gestured for me to take the other side of the sofa, and pulled a beanbag from a corner. It took a while for him to find a dignified position – his legs were too long, and he seemed spiderish in his tight black school trousers and baggy white shirt – and he adjusted the colourful woven bracelets on his left wrist as Alisha teased him for his longness.
    Laughing beside me, she was hot as a radiator, and I tried to relax and join in, but I was worried that as soon as she asked me her question my face would go bright red. Her sweet perfume smelt musty from being sprayed and resprayed on to her coat and scarf, and it joined the dust to make my nose itch, and I hoped my first impression wouldn’t be blowing snot everywhere in an unprecedentedly powerful sneeze.
    ‘So, Rosie,’ Alisha said finally, ‘Did your girlfriend really try to kill Ms Chase? And is she due in court for breaking the rules of her injunction?’
    My mood