white ones?â
I chose a fistful and munched as I lay. Felix sprawled himself at my feet and dipped idly between crisps. âSkye.â
âMmmm?â
âYouâre really into Fallen Skies , arenât you?â
âWhat do you mean?â Iâd found something that tasted exactly like Wotsits and was sucking the coating off.
âI mean, youâve been a fan since the beginning, but the series started just after the accident, right?â
âSix weeks after I came out of hospital.â
âYeah. So, you know, with the surgery and all that ⦠how much do you really remember about the early stuff? I mean, you had quite a bit of brain damage, didnât you?â
âThat was the operation.â
âYeah, but how much memory did you really lose?â
I stared at him. âFe, you know all this.â
I got a single raised-eyebrow comment. âHumour me.â
I found that I was rubbing my scar, feeling the warped skin on my fingertips against its puckered surface. âMy childhood is more or less intact. Everything from my teens onward is ⦠fuzzy. I can remember bits and pieces but nothing really clearly, and Iâve lost the whole of the year leading up to the accident completely.â I shrugged. âEverything I remember about Michael, about us, comes from photographs.â
âSo when you say you remember the early Fallen Skies stuff, are you really remembering, or half-remembering what people have told you about it?â By âpeopleâ Felix meant him. No-one else had my obsessive interest, although one of the library assistants and I had exchanged some speculation on the new series, but even he had gone a bit glazed-over when Iâd launched into my theories about the alien Skeel race and their motivations. Perhaps, on reflection, the queue at the counter should have been my clue that Iâd gone on a bit.
I used a finger to knock oily crumbs from my top lip. âNo. I remember.â The programme had saved my sanity, how could I have forgotten a single episode? My life had changed beyond recognition; Iâd lost Faith, Michael, all my hopes for the future, and along had come a science-fiction drama that had made me suspend everything, even the grieving, for the brief hour it lasted. Gethryn Tudor-Morgan had stormed into my Wednesday evenings and taken me over. âAll of it. Everything.â
âOkay. Just curious.â Felix dipped a moistened finger into a nearly empty packet. âWould you ⦠you know, if things had been different, would you have wanted to come over to the States and audition?â
I shook my head. âI dunno. Think my hair has always been a bit too much for American TV.â I smiled, but inside my heart had clenched into a ball. Iâd joke and Iâd smile and Felix would never know how I felt about my new life. How, deep down in the core of myself, in the place where I allowed introspection, I hated myself for losing any skills Iâd ever had, any looks, any confidence. âAnd Iâd never get a part now, even if I wanted one.â
âItâs really not that bad.â Feâs eyes ran over my scar. âBetter than it was, anyway.â
âNot televisual-friendly though, you have to admit. I could probably try out for War of the Killer Zombies, if anyoneâs casting for that.â
âYeah. No make-up needed.â Fe smirked, until I hit him with a pillow. âRight then, just for my own personal satisfaction, a little test. What was the name of the first ship that Lucas James flew?â
The answer was there, as soon as heâd finished speaking, as though my new post-operative recall system was all on some instant-access Rolodex. âEveryone thinks it was the Medusa , because that was the one he was flying across the Ice Nebula, but it was the BâHa Virgin . It was only in the pilot episode, which never got commercially