Aliens

 

 

“BOO!”

I jump. Literally. Right out of the doorway of the café.

My heart flutters frantically in my chest, as though I’ve been zapped by a stray bolt of lightning.

“And I thought a supervillain would be immune to being snuck up on and surprised,” Micky says, leaning in close and wearing a smile as bright as the midday sun.

I try and fix my gaze on something other than the sharpness of his teeth.

He’s all fox today. So alive and full of energy, even though his lips are blue and he’s bouncing on his toes, hugging his arms around his chest.

This time he’s wearing thin leggings that cling to his long legs and a long-sleeved T-shirt that’s so loose that the wind must bite at his skin beneath it. He’s surely colder than I am.

He’s so real it’s hard to breathe.

“What are you doing standing out here?” he asks with a puzzled smile. “You looked like you’d gone to sleep standing up.”

I shake my head. I wasn’t sleeping. What I was doing was standing in the doorway, spacing out. I have no money on me to buy anything from the café and my whole body is a trembling jumble of sleepless wreck. If I sat down in the doorway, the café manager would come out and glare at me until I moved off. She’s done it before. The best option was for me to stand here and look like I was waiting for someone. And now that someone’s here, looking more himself than any image my brain can manage to conjure up—and it’s conjured up a few.

I draw my eyebrows together, unable to stop myself wondering if Micky would feel as warm as Dytryk had, pressed against my side.

It’s as though all my thoughts are scattered today. Or maybe it’s my brain that’s been disconnected. From reality. Sleeplessness will do that.

I glance at the clock through the café window. It’s exactly noon.

Micky seems to know what I’m thinking and smiles. “Punctuality and sneaking up on people—they’re my superpowers.” He glances down at his falling-apart trainers. When he looks up, his smile makes him glow a little. “All the interesting superpowers were taken. I think the supervillains got there before me.”

He catches my eye and winks. I lose all coherent thought. My heart isn’t just beating fast, it’s beating loud and my blood is singing. Every part of my body has become alert: erect and paying attention.

I’m such a fucking loser. I hate my stupid hormones. If he knew, he’d be gone in a blink.

“Come on, I’ll buy you a hot drink. You look frozen,” he says, pushing open the café door.

A blissful wave of heat escapes. The smell of toast makes my mouth water, all salt and smoke.

I shake my head. “I haven’t fixed your phone,” I say.

“Oh, okay,” he says, letting the café door close. If I wasn’t watching him so closely, I wouldn’t notice it, but I am, and I can see he actually deflates a little. His shoulders sag and he doesn’t stand as tall.

Biting his lip, he pulls my Frankenstein out of some secret pocket under his top and holds it out. “You probably want this back, right?”

I push my phone back to him, making sure I only touch the phone and not his nail-bitten fingers. His hands look so pale with cold that I have the urge to take them in mine and warm them.

“Keep it for now.”

Micky frowns. He doesn’t put my phone back in his secret pocket—he just holds it. “You’re soaked,” he says, staring at my sleeve.

“I’m going to go get warm now.”

I feel bad that his bright happy grin of moments ago is gone, his glow vanished. I’ve burst his happy mood like a pin in a balloon. I want to tell him I’m sorry: I’m sorry for being a creep, I’m sorry for my stupid hormones, I’m sorry he makes my heart beat faster, and I’m sorry for breaking his phone.

“Tomorrow, then?” he says.

I nod, though I’ve no idea if I can find a replacement phone for him by tomorrow. And replacing his phone is what I need to do.

Before I left her kitchen this morning, Diana gave me a hot-water bottle. I pull it out from underneath my jumper. It’s still quite warm. “You need this more than I do,” I say.

Micky raises his eyebrow, and a faint amused smile flickers across his lips, though it vanishes pretty fast.

He dips his head to look at me beneath my hair. His eyes are the underwater colour of the blue tiles in my shell. “It’s keeping you warm,” he says. “I’m fine, really.”

I pull a face at my heavy boots. Micky’s legs are trembling. He’s not fine, really. He’s freezing.

“Give it to someone else if you don’t want it. I don’t want to carry it anymore.” I hold the hot-water bottle out. When he doesn’t take it, I bend down and lay it on the ground.

Micky picks it up even though he looks like he doesn’t want to.

With a frown he hugs it to his chest. I wish I could make him smile, not frown.

I’m sorry, I think.

 

 

THE WALK back to my shell is not one I remember. My feet are numb, my legs are numb, my fingers ache. I’m made entirely of half-set cement. All I can concentrate on is putting one foot in front of the other.

As soon as I’ve closed the door to the shower room, I strip. It’s hard going—my fingers don’t work and I can hardly feel what I’m doing. Sunshine flickers against the tiles and more than once I find myself distracted, mesmerised by the light. I kick my heavy boots off and throw my wet clothes in one of the sinks.

Then I stop and take a deep breath.

I like being naked. All loose and unweighted. Free somehow. What I’m free of, I don’t know—more than just my clothes, though. I stretch my arms out, tilt my head back, and close my eyes.

For the first time in hours, I relax.

I like to sleep naked and covered by enough warm blankets that I am never cold. The room is cold, though. When I open my eyes, I can see my breath in the air. For a second I’m so tired, I just stand there naked and swaying, little clouds of warm air puffing out of my mouth. My skin is paler than icy snow. Warming up is going to hurt.

Bending down, I grab a fleecy blanket to wrap around myself. I intend to boil some water on my stove to drink and help me warm up inside, but as soon as the blanket touches my shoulders, I can do nothing but fall into my nest, press my face into the softness, close my eyes, and sleep.

I dream of rain. I dream of a warm body pressed close, another heart beating in time with my own. I dream of blond hair and bitten nails.