State of Grace by Hilary Badger Read Free Book Online Page B

watching Julius and he’s watching me.
    ‘C’mon,’ I beg Julius. ‘It doesn’t hurt that much. Everyone’s looking. Can’t you just be quiet?’
    Next thing, another figure appears. She’s slight and pinched with the same red-brown curls as mine. I recognise her even though I’ve never seen her before.
    Mum.
    She hugs Julius to her.
    ‘What were you thinking?’ she says to me in this prenice way.
    ‘I’m sorry, I just …’
    I flick a glance at Julius, then another at the guy. Back and forth, like I can’t quite decide who’s more important.
    Mum makes this clicking sound and pulls Julius out of my arms. And it takes a while – like, a long while, because I’m telling you, these sobs are powerful – but slowly the crying stops as she closes her arms around his little body, tight.

09
    M Y EYES ARE open so I snap them shut. Open, shut, open, shut. I want to be sure that the dream, or whatever it was, is totally finished. Not that I can stop thinking about it, even once I’m sure it’s over. I mean, it’s hardly been half a day since the last time.
    It takes me a moment to realise where I am. I’m inside my hut, stretched out on my bed. Right there beside me, of all people in creation, is Blaze. You know, with his solid chest and muscled thighs and knotty hair and everything.
    On top of that though (and excuse me if this sounds prenormal), it’s like there’s all this extra detail to Blaze I never noticed before. His eyes, for one. The circles in the middle are smaller than they’re supposed to be, and the coloured brown bits are way bigger. Everything about Blaze is sharper too. As in, I can see every one of the little hairs bristling on his jawbone. I can see the actual texture of his skin.
    It’s the same thing all over my hut. Even from the bed I can make out every little hole in the butterfly design punched into my open shutters. I can see the wood grain on each one of the slats. Outside, the individual leaves on the trees stand out from each other. Since the blurry eye thing started, I guess I’d got used to trees looking like green smudges against the sky. But now that seems to have stopped. Everything’s sharp and clear and glittering as broken glass.
    The whole time I’m looking around my hut, Blaze is looking at me. All intense and everything, the way he does.
    ‘Sore?’ he asks.
    I don’t feel sore. Sort of the opposite. I’m awake, but somehow I’m even more awake than usual, if that makes any kind of sense.
    But I tell Blaze, ‘Um, I guess.’ He seems to be expecting I will be sore.
    ‘Big bruise coming up.’ Blaze rubs his own forehead. ‘Right there.’
    There’s a couple of butterflies circling the fan on the ceiling. The wind comes in through the shutters and turns the blades. I keep thinking the butterflies are going to get all tangled up or mashed or something, but you know what? They never, ever do. It’s like they know how to keep out of the way. They go on swooping down, flapping around my head and everything. For whatever reason, the butterflies won’t leave me alone.
    ‘Wait …’
    I’m remembering the dream. I saw all that prenormal stuff, the park . Before though, what was I doing before?
    ‘Did I fall or something?’
    ‘Rolled out of your hammock.’
    A fall. A knock on the head. That’s what made me see all that stuff, this time anyway. It makes sense. As much sense as anything else.
    ‘Has that ever happened to you?’
    I notice my hands are skittering across the top of my sheet. I take one hand in the other and lace my fingers together. On and on and on. My fingers are moving all by themselves and I can’t seem to stop them. But I’ve spoken to Dot about the dreams. I need to remember I have complete and total faith and she has everything under control.
    Blaze answers, ‘Once or twice.’
    ‘What was it like?’
    Now he looks at me with those prenormally brown eyes of his.
    ‘What’s it like for you?’
    I’m getting the feeling Blaze means