Wesley could not stop staring at Kat in the rear mirror. There was something so unreal about her, the worn pattern of the backseat criss-crossing through her body. And yet with his memories unlocked he knew she had been there all along. So close to being forgotten, but not quite.
‘The traffic’s going to be a nightmare,’ said Jordan.
‘Just keep going,’ said Wesley.
There had been no complaints from Jordan any step of the way, despite him being told almost nothing about what was happening. He was helping his brother without question. Wesley would remember it.
There was so much he wanted to say to Kat, but her eyes were glued to the window. Even if it felt like the right moment to talk, he didn’t want to freak Jordan out any more by speaking to an apparently empty back seat.
Quickly, Wesley checked Twitter on his phone. ‘The police found Tinker,’ he said, so they both would hear. ‘And it says they have three people in custody.’
Behind them, Kat blinked, but her eyes never left the window.
Five minutes from the centre of town, they hit traffic. Roadworks filled the air with noise and dust, and a long line of traffic snaked past in a fugue of exhaust fumes. Wesley opened his door and stepped out for a better view. ‘It’s solid all the way down.’
Jordan slumped down in his seat. ‘We’ll be here for hours.’
Wesley was about to sit back down when Kat spoke for the first time during the ride.
‘Let me out.’
‘Don’t you want—?’
She scrabbled at the door, but her hands couldn’t grasp the handle. ‘Let me out!’
Wesley opened the door, and Kat ghosted past him. He watched her run into the traffic, and after a moment she was lost in the smoke.
The high street was busy, afternoon shoppers out in force. Kat knew exactly where Safa would be, and she fought her way through the crowds to reach the Greek restaurant near the end of the street.
At first she saw nobody outside, only passers-by. What if she was too late? Safa might have gone before Kat had a final chance to stop her. Just the thought of it made Kat feel like she would break apart like a dandelion in the wind.
She fixed Safa in her mind and looked again – properly looked – and the shape of a girl became clear. Safa stood opposite the restaurant in the middle of the street, eyes fixed on the people inside. Kat, oddly nervous, went to her.
‘Hey,’ she said.
Safa turned, smiled. ‘You made it.’
For a long moment they simply gazed at what remained of each other. Kat held an image of Safa in her mind from the first day they met, the other girl rescuing her from exile in a school toilet, and it made her easier to see now.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I was busy stopping a terror attack.’
‘You did it?’
Kat could hardly believe it herself. ‘I did it.’
‘My dude.’ Safa’s smile, fragile but true, quickly died. ‘You’re still faded.’
‘That’s because I need you to stay.’
‘I think it’s clear you don’t need me.’ Safa pointed inside the restaurant, where her chosen Cradle was at the same table as before, books spread across its surface. ‘But I need her.’
‘You don’t,’ said Kat, furious that she wasn’t able to take the other girl’s hands inside her own. ‘You think you do. You think you’re broken, but you’re not. I realised what I was feeling whenever I was inside those other people. They look like they’re living perfect lives, but it’s a cover. Everybody is trying their best not to fuck everything up. They’re all just as scared as you are. It takes everything they have to hide it.’
The girl inside the restaurant looked up from her work, talking to a man who was busy wiping down the counter. Kat wondered what landscape lay inside her; how well that distended black box would be hidden beneath it.
‘It’s not about being broken, or being bad, or not fitting in,’ said Kat. ‘You just have to find the people who allow you to be you.’
Safa shook her head. ‘I never thought I would.’
Kat’s whole body felt charged, every particle of her being humming with energy. If she could cling on hard enough, maybe she could force Safa back. She felt more real than she ever had, and she willed the other girl to feel it too.
‘You did. You found me. And I found you.’ Kat was beginning to cry, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t wipe the tears away. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever felt I could be myself with, without hiding anything. Without being ashamed. You made me happy to be me. We don’t need to become anybody else – if we’re together we can be us.’
There was hardly a face left to see, but she somehow sensed that Safa was smiling. ‘Look,’ she said.
Kat lifted her hands. They were solid again. Complete. She turned them over, saw the lines and blemishes and whorls of fingerprints she thought she had lost. She rubbed her fingers together, astounded by her skin’s friction. Rubbed them up her arms, along her legs, pressed her fingertips to her face and laughed.
‘I’m back,’ she said. She was so glad. To stand here as herself, happy inside her reimbursed skin, was liberating beyond belief. She had fought to save herself, fought to like herself, and been rewarded.
Still that air of a smile. ‘You sexy cow.’
‘Now you.’
A tear traced the curve of her jaw, her skin fizzing in its path, and Safa lifted the idea of a hand to dry it. ‘I want to.’
Kat’s heart leapt. ‘I want you to.’
‘You mean it? You would have me?’
Kat tried to find her eyes. ‘If you want to stay with me, then stay.’
‘I don’t know if I can hold on.’ Safa’s body momentarily flickered out of existence, before sputtering back with frightened eyes as clear as day. She reached for Kat’s hands, desperate to cling onto the world, but could find no grip. ‘I’m scared, Kat. I can feel myself coming apart. I’m going and I can’t stop it.’
‘No!’ Everybody else on the street could see her now, and the passing shoppers regarded her curiously or rushed their children past. She didn’t care. ‘You’re too stubborn to let it happen if it’s not what you want. You told me to fight for myself. Now you have to do it too. Fight.’
When they had first learned to step inside the lives of other people, it had been fuelled by thoughts of everything they felt they had got wrong in their lives. All the reasons they should be excused to leave themselves behind. Now Kat held tight to all the reasons she had discovered to stay.
‘Remember singing “Mr Pretzel”?’ she said.
Safa’s form sputtered, reformed. ‘And messing with Miss Jalloh’s precious bell.’
‘You put your thumb inside my mouth when I had brain freeze.’
‘You dance like you’re getting attacked by bees.’
A tear rolled down Kat’s cheek as she smiled. ‘Only with you.’ A steadying breath, before she lifted her hands in a final bid to reach for Safa’s fingers . . .
And felt them graze her palm.
They both cried out in delight. Kat fumbled for a better hold, clutching Safa’s hands inside her own. They grew firmer, friction seeming to throw sparks between their skin.
Kat held her eyes. ‘Now come back to me.’
She pulled gently, as if guiding her back through a rent in the universe, and Safa coalesced in front of her. Colour rushed back into her skin, filled her lines and rounded her features, until she was complete again, emancipated from the void.
‘It’s good to see you,’ said Kat.
They squeezed each other’s hands – strong, unequivocal – as tightly as they could. In that embrace was a promise: that they would be there for each other, hold each other up, and never let the other forget they were wanted.
‘You’re stuck with me now, my dude,’ said Safa.
Kat grinned. ‘We’re stuck with ourselves.’