The walk home felt longer than usual, weighed down by the silence between them and the threat of the fast-approaching morning. Wesley was too busy going over the words that made a mockery of his memories, forced him to piece the last few years of himself back into a new picture that didn’t make sense.
A maintenance train rumbled over the bridge as they reached the flats, startling pigeons out of a lineside tree.
‘You never see milk floats any more,’ said Jordan, apropos of nothing.
They stopped at the main entrance, Jordan’s beat-up red car parked lopsidedly against the kerb.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ said Wesley, blocking the door.
‘I’m not that thick. This isn’t one of those better to come clean situations. We’ll put his keys back and there’s no way they’ll think it was you.’
Tonight had changed something between them. The facts of their history hadn’t altered – it would never be as easy as that – but Wesley was able to read it all differently now. It felt as if they could both lay a grudge to rest. Maybe they could learn to be part of the same future.
They went inside, quietly up the concrete steps and along the parade of doorways. At their door, Jordan stopped him as he inserted the key.
‘The car,’ he said. ‘What was it for?’
Their relationship may have changed, but the truth would only make it harder to move forward from here. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
It was the only way to save Kat. The only way to save himself.
Inside, they returned the keys to Dave’s jacket, before Jordan retired to the sofa. Everybody else was still asleep, snores from the next room and groggy murmurings from his little sister. Wesley joined them almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Kat approached home, determined to get a few hours sleep before turning supernatural vigilante.
‘That would be a good TV show,’ she muttered to herself as she walked up the path to her front door.
The keys passed through her hand when she tried to grab them. She tried again, but there was only the slightest resistance, like a needle puncturing skin, before the metal fell through her palm and jangled against the path. Nor could she retrieve them or grab the door handle.
‘No, come on,’ she said.
She threw herself at the door, expecting to phase straight through, but she somehow lacked the necessary weight and seemed to flatten against it, like a vampire without an invite.
The sky was being diluted with the pale light of morning. Kat held up her arms to it. The night’s exertions had spread her too thin. Like butter over too much bread, she thought. It wasn’t a lack of substance that plagued her now. It was a lack of plain existence.
Kat hurried away from the house. There was no way she could save Tinker in this state. Even if she was successful piggybacking to wherever TrumourPixel took her, she would have no way of cutting her bonds or fighting them off to escape. She would be just as helpless.
If only she could warn somebody, call the police or even leave a message for Tinker. If only somebody would hear. The anger churning inside her, the impotent rage, wasn’t enough to bring back her physical form. It only made her feel more helpless.
The plan had to change. It should never have been left to her, and now it couldn’t be.
Morning arrived in earnest as she made her way to Wesley’s block of flats. With every step she expected to sink into the pavement, fall away into the Earth, and for the last of her pixels to be burned away to nothing.
She crossed the car park towards the front entrance, and as she did it clicked open. An older boy emerged, letting out a shivering breath in the cold. Kat hurried through the door behind him.
The boy fumbled in his pocket for some keys as he approached an old red car. As he found them, he seemed to think better of it and strode away towards the road instead.
Kat took the stairs up and found Wesley’s front door. Nobody would be coming out for hours yet, so she settled on the concrete floor with her back flattened against the wall, only registering the idea of the cold but not its bite.