A shudder wracked Wesley’s body as he moved towards the door. Somebody walking over his grave. Probably guilt trying to hold him back, knowing the truth might spill out when he faced Mum. She was in the kitchen, packing a bag for Evie and lunch for herself.
‘Can you take her to nursery today?’ said Mum. ‘I’m running late after all this.’
‘Sure.’ He was going to meet the Lonely People – his friends – to go and confront Aaron’s little brother, but he could take her on the way.
‘And can you come straight home, just in case Jordan comes back?’
It was unclear if she wanted the chance to talk him into staying, or if she was scared he would loot the place in their absence.
‘I’m sorry, about your brother,’ Mum said, zipping up the Frozen rucksack. ‘I thought he’d . . .’ She trailed off into a sad smile.
The guilt seemed to nag at the back of Wesley’s brain, like voices on a radio turned too low. He felt open, his defences lowered. If he explained everything, maybe she would understand.
Except she was already gone, kissing him and Evie on the head on her way to the door.
The wind buffeted Kat, threatening to tear her fingers from the grimy, algae slick metal. The ocean, hulking grey and whipped white swelled on all sides, spray stinging her face. There was no sign of land, only the buoy to which she clung, swaying wildly in the onslaught.
The other part of her went with Wesley back into his bedroom, so calm on the surface, so different to the landscape she had discovered inside.
Below her, wedged onto a flat platform just above the seething water, she saw the same black box she had discovered sealed inside everybody else.
It was wide open.
A torrent of fear, loneliness and guilt poured from it, a storm that darkened the sky and riled the ocean. Every negative feeling that had been missing from her previous hosts took precedence here, swirling unchecked through Wesley’s being.
No, it had all been inside those other people too. It had merely been suppressed. Kat had felt the same doubt and self-consciousness leaking from the boxes, pushed away and ignored but always threatening to escape. Those people, who seemed so confident, so normal, so capable of handling anything, felt all these things too. They just knew how to hide it. How to pretend.
Here, it all threatened to drown him. The desolation was so strong Kat wanted to bail out. It was too familiar. If somebody inhabited her, stepped into her internal landscape, they might find exactly this.
She understood him now, better than ever.
‘Wesley,’ she shouted into the wind, trying to project it into his brain. ‘You have to hear me.’
Her other part watched him gather some of Evie’s toys into a Frozen rucksack, no sign at all that he’d heard her.
‘Help me! You’re the only person who can! There’s not enough of me left to stop them.’
Through the storm, a light blinked on the impossibly distant, shifting horizon. Some fragment of him had heard, but she still wasn’t breaking through to his consciousness.
Painstakingly, she climbed down the metal strut as it pitched side to side, until she reached the platform. The wind was growing stronger, and water sloshed around her feet, soaking her legs. She pushed her aching hands under the box and heaved it to the edge. Empty, it was surprisingly light, yet sank under the water with hardly a splash.
It wouldn’t change anything here. The wind was battering her now, trying to throw her into the waves. Where the box had been was an area of metal encrusted with hard, pale scum. She used her nails to scrape letters into it, a message she could leave behind inside him that might make him remember.
Kat was here.
As she carved the final letter, a sharp gust of wind swept her off her feet. She screamed as the grey water loomed, but by the time she landed it had become Wesley’s bedroom carpet.
Another involuntary shudder made Wesley drop his shoes. He turned, expecting to find somebody behind him – he could have sworn he’d heard somebody shout his name.
‘You all right in there, Eves?’ he called through to the front room.
‘Cartoons,’ she called back through a mouthful of cereal, half of which would no doubt now be down her front.
The times he had been in Kat’s bedroom felt like this – as if he was forgetting something right in front of his eyes, unable to find the solution to a puzzle that should be plain.
It was only his imagination, making up the world in a way he wanted to see. Nothing more.
Kat paced in front of Wesley while he sniffed some socks to determine their cleanliness and began to put on his shoes.
‘Why won’t you hear me?’ she said.
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Wesley shoved his feet into his trainers without untying the laces and checked his phone again.
‘You wanted to make a mark on the world at any cost, so you clung to the only community that would have you. Maybe you wouldn’t make real friends, but it was better than nothing, right?’ Kat said, anger overwhelming her. ‘Except it was all false. It’s nothing like real belonging. No community based on hatred or intolerance can offer that.’
There were no messages, and Wesley stood, zipping up the rucksack.
‘You can’t leave it up to me to stop them! It isn’t fair. You have to take responsibility for what you’ve done.’ She moved as close to him as she could stomach. ‘If you don’t hear me now, it’s all over.’
He walked past her, and out of the room.
Wesley waited for his little sister to slurp the last of the sugary milk from the bottom of the bowl, and then he helped her with her shoes.
‘You like going to nursery, right?’
She looked at him as if it was the stupidest question she had ever heard. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m just checking!’ He pushed the last Velcro strap closed. ‘I don’t want you to think we’re getting rid of you because you’re a nuisance.’
‘You’re a nuisance.’
‘Well you smell like a butt.’
Evie cackled, and let him put the rucksack on her back. He opened the front door, let her skip out onto the walkway, and closed it behind them.
Kat lay on the floor between the beds, wondering if she could stay there until it happened. Melt into the carpet like a stain. Maybe then Wesley would see her outline and remember everything that had happened.
No, she couldn’t give up. She still had to find a way to stop the attack. There had to be a way to make him see.
There were paints on the table at the end of his sister’s bed. What if it wasn’t her he needed to see? Maybe the only way to make Wesley remember her, to make him take responsibility, was to introduce him to himself.
The paints were simple but plentiful, deployed mainly for the finger drawings that were scattered across the table surface and pinned to the wall, but they would do the job. Kat delved her hands into the colours, and although they dripped through her flesh and skin, enough clung on that she could make it work. Kat turned to the blank canvas of wall beside the bedroom door and began to paint.