“Which Avenger would you be?”
But Lucas couldn’t answer for grinning.
Sunny thumped him on the chest. “I’m serious! It’s important.”
“Yes. Very important. You couldn’t possibly kiss me if I said the wrong one…” Except that she did kiss him. A little.
“Should I tell you which one I am?” she said.
“You’re Spider-Man,” Lucas said without hesitation. “Because you’re little and run into fights you didn’t start.”
“I’m not that little!” Sunny objected, even as she grinned that same soaring smile as before, all teeth and braces and no inhibitions.
“Compared to me you are,” Lucas said, kissing her nose.
“So what about you?”
“I’m the big guy who ends up in fights because I swing before I think.” A confession as much as an answer. “I’m the Hulk.”
An answer he’d worried might disappoint had the opposite effect, delight fizzing up and exploding out of her faster than Mentos dropped in Coke.
“Oh my God, would it be weird if I told you I had a major crush on Hulk?”
WIN
Win left it as long as seemed reasonable – long enough for Ryan to win his prize fiver and a Maoam, and for Sophie to find a little more energy for whatever came next. Inevitably, Win saw her sister and Lucas across the road, the two of them wrapped around each other tighter than a double helix.
“Not in front of the children!” Ryan bellowed loud enough to startle the gulls who’d been feasting on a discarded box of chips. As Lucas and Sunny sprang apart, Ryan flashed a complacent smirk at Win. “You’re welcome.”
“You’re a dick,” Sophie said, peeling away in the direction of the public loos and saying something about needing to put on sunscreen, Ryan and Sunny following suit, leaving Win with the perfect opportunity to intimidate Lucas.
“Upset my sister and I will destroy you.”
Lucas recoiled with such sincerity that Win thought she might have gone in a bit too hard. He might be a small mountain, but Lucas was soft.
“OK. I won’t.”
“She’s not as tough as she seems.”
“Neither am I.” A smile nudged the corner of his mouth, but when he saw the way Win was looking at him, it disappeared. She was thinking about last night, about the blood on Ryan’s face and the worry in Sunny’s eyes when she’d been standing on the driveway, looking back at what had happened in the house. Lucas might have been able to win Sunny over with a promise and a kiss, but Win was here to hold him to it.
“Last night she seemed to think you were going to talk to Kellan?”
“I am. I will. I promise. I’m not going to get into any more fights; not even going to risk breaking them up.” Lucas raised his hands as if surrendering to all the fights that ever would be, and Win grinned.
“Good to know that you won’t fight back in the you-upset-Sunny-and-I-destroy-you scenario.”
Lucas shrugged, like he only half thought this was a joke, then squinted out towards the sea, before twisting back to look at the clock that towered over the toilets behind them.
“How’s Sophie?”
“Sad? Confused? In quite a lot of pain?” All guesses, but Win suspected accurate ones.
“That was rough, about Freya leaving just before she got sick.”
Win didn’t correct him on the technicality – an illness like that didn’t spring into existence the day it was diagnosed. Sophie had been ill long before Freya left.
She sighed and glanced across and, as she had done every time she looked at Lucas, admired his hair. “I don’t feel like Freya owed me a goodbye, or even a letter. You?”
Lucas shook his head.
“But those two…”
They stood with their backs to the beach and watched the others emerge – the slouch of Ryan’s shoulders and the stiffness whenever Sophie put any weight on her left hand side.
“How about I see if Ryan wants to talk about it?” Lucas said, his voice low.
Win nodded, her hand resting on the solid little lump of Freya’s letter, still in the pocket of her jeans.
“I’ll talk to Sophie.”
The sand on the beach was soft and slippery and, next to her, Sophie lost her balance and flung a hand out to catch Win’s shoulder.
“Ow.” Sophie hissed the word out through her teeth, but when Win glanced at her, Sophie gave a tight little shake of her head to silence any concern. As soon as she regained her balance, she let go.
As they reached a band the tide had touched, Win watched Lucas scoop up a handful of sand and drop it down the back of Ryan’s shirt. He was already sprinting away towards the sea as Ryan yelled a swear-riddled promise of vengeance and set off in pursuit, Sunny immediately taking off with him, yelling that she’d race them to the water.
“They’re like dogs,” Win said mildly, looking from their friends to a couple of yapping, bouncing, joyful dogs who’d been riled up by all the action. The person with them looked more riled up by Ryan’s profanity.
“Puppies,” Sophie corrected her, eyes warm with good humour. Then she added, “I’m not up for running.”
The two of them walked in step over sea-soft pebbles that pressed through the rubber of Win’s shoes. She stayed silent, feeling the conversation hanging between them now that they were under wide open sky with space enough for scary truths and overwhelming feelings.
Sophie was the one to start it. “Freya and I went to the beach last summer. Just us. No Morgan and Georgia. No Kellan and his hangers-on.”
Win said nothing, letting her talk.
“We brought a rug and a windbreak and a picnic. Tried to make sandcastles with the empty yogurt pots.”
“Did it work?”
“They were very small sandcastles,” Sophie admitted. “After that we tried going in the water.”
Win looked at her then, eyebrows flashing up.
“I made it as far as my thighs.” Sophie peered ahead to where the water was folding over itself in crisp white waves. “Freya went right the way in. Dived into the surf like we were somewhere hot.”
Win’s mind conjured an image as clear as a snapshot, of Freya emerging from the surf – flesh goose-pimpled all over, water sparkling on her skin – before realising that she’d seen it on her Instagram: a shot staged by Freya and snapped by Sophie. Those two had seemed so close, lives knotted so tightly together that Win had felt sad that her best friend was a boy who lived a three hour drive away and could only hang out through the phone.
The shock of going from what Sophie had with Freya to having nothing at all – not even email – must have been devastating.
As they reached the sandbreak Win suggested they sit. She’d listened when Sophie’d said about going carefully and the tide was a long way out.
For a moment, Sophie looked like she might refuse on some kind of principle, but when Win perched down lightly – hoping the green algae that fuzzed the edges of the wood wouldn’t stain her jeans – Sophie did the same, both angled towards the sea. Down at the water’s edge there was a smudge of shoes left on the sand, then further along Sunny and Lucas and Ryan splashing around in the shallows, trousers and leggings rolled up above the knee. Sunny’s shrieks – louder than any of the gulls’ – kept time with the flow of the tide.