‘Hmm, if you have to.’
She says the words so softly I have to lean forward to hear them. At least that’s my excuse. Honestly, the room is dead quiet except for the hammer pounding away in my chest. I lean down even further, our faces mere centimetres apart. My eyes drop to her mouth. The timing is perfect. If I don’t do it now, I doubt I’ll ever have the guts again. If anything, other than clumsy, I’m also a coward. I don’t know what’s come over me. I just know I have to give it one shot. So I lean into her face before my nerve deserts me completely. I can almost taste her lips, they’re so close.
Maybe I really am cursed. I feel myself falling, and instead of the sensual kiss I imagined, I land, long bony limbs and all, directly in her lap! ‘God, Kate,’ I mutter, my face heating up like a Bunsen burner on full flame. ‘Sorry. What a mess. I hope I didn’t hurt you.’ Being careful where I put my hands, I climb awkwardly out of her lap, catch my foot on the corner of a rug I never even noticed before, eventually stumbling to my knees somewhere near the door. ‘Damn.’
‘Are you all right?’
She isn’t laughing but it can’t be far. I decide I don’t want to hang around when it happens. So I nod, not trusting myself to make intelligent conversation and mumble, ‘Yeah … Fine … Gotta go … See myself out …’
She escorts me to the front door anyway, probably just to make sure I don’t crash into anything on the way through the shop. But I don’t hang around. I tear down the road as if I truly am cursed. By the devil himself.
A shiver rips up my spine causing every fine body hair to stand on end. OK, it’s cold and eerie considering it’s late and dark and isolated around here, but somehow I know it has nothing to do with all this. It has to do with Kate. Just how, and in what way, I have no idea. I just know it.
Kate
We make the city papers and the national news. Unbelievable. The earthquake at the Icehouse Cafe didn’t register apparently on any Richter scale, and this is causing a huge amount of confusion; but the destruction is real, as are the many eyewitnesses. The whole town is crawling with official-looking people and news crews. It’s Saturday morning and through the night the newshounds have been coming in from all over the country. Several theories have been put forward by scientific professionals but witnesses disagree. It was no bomb, or freak storm, like the one that hit the local high school a week earlier. Most swear it was an earthquake.
It’s Sunday before two investigating police officers make their way to the Crystal Forest. They introduce themselves, briefly flashing ID. It’s just routine by now. I’m probably last on their interview list. Their faces tell me they’re not expecting I have anything new to tell them. I don’t disappoint, describing the tremor as it swept through the place with just the right amount of anxious excitement. I wonder how Jarrod handled the questioning. His recollections, though vague, are probably enough to satisfy the investigators. Any lack of memory could surely be excused as trauma, I assume, without suspicion.
The police leave, apparently satisfied, though no wiser; and I decide I’d better do a little homework. But my mind isn’t on it. I’m expecting Jarrod, who doesn’t show. He mentioned coming over with his father’s heritage book but I guess he’s changed his mind, probably deciding to stay well away from all the officials, police and investigative scientists lurking around.
I see him at school on Monday, but he ignores me. He’s sitting at a table in the quadrangle outside the canteen with his usual crowd – Pecs and Jessica, and of course Her Highness, Tasha Daniels. It hurts, but I’m not about to let him know this. Realisation hits me, and makes me want to cringe. Jarrod may be incredibly gifted, but inside his soul, where it really matters, he’s nothing but a coward – pathetic and spineless. He would sooner hide than confront anything he doesn’t understand, or makes him uneasy, or doesn’t conform to his stupid set of rules.
He continues to avoid me all week. At least nothing else crazy happens. I cop some cheap remarks from Pecs, who reckons it was witchcraft that caused the destruction at the Icehouse, but after a few days of this most people get bored with the idea and leave me alone. So I’m surprised to see Jarrod in the Crystal Forest the following Saturday. As usual on the weekends I help Jillian out, giving her time to do other things. Jarrod’s mother is with him. I watch quietly from my spot on the floor where I’m restocking a bottom shelf, as she lays a handful of unusually beaded and decorated skirts and jackets over the counter. There’s some jewellery too – dangle earrings, colourful matching necklets and bracelets. Jillian examines them with genuine interest. Some of the garments are denim, some linen or silk, but all have distinctive decorative trims of beads, rhinestones, or simply coloured gems and fringes. They’re not bad if you’re into country and western stuff, or just looking for something different. They’ve got style, but I don’t think they suit Jillian’s New Age line. She caters to the tourists with mostly novelty items. But she decides to give the trinkets and clothes a go, saying she will display samples on a rack near the front window.