“Oh. Right. You have to study.” Of course. I keep forgetting.
“Are you okay?” She must have seen a change in my face, or maybe my voice is different, because she’s looking into my eyes and trying to read them. “You know he’s already waiting outside, no?” She winks at me. “Maybe he couldn’t wait until ten either.”
“He is?”
My stomach flips.
Never mind scared, I think I’m actually terrified. And it’s not just the thought of going to Fallowmill that’s causing it.
“So? You should go.”
“I should. Should I? Or should I, you know, wait? It’s not even quarter to! He’ll think I’m weird or too keen or something. Won’t he?”
Mira gives me a withering look. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me towards the door (not exactly gently, either). “Go. Do the thing. Exercise your ghosts, or whatever you call it.”
“Exorcize, Mee. Exorcize.”
With all the running around my head they get to do, I think my ghosts are exercised enough.
There’s a finger smudge on the glass front door to the driveway, and as I step out from the lobby, I wonder, did Hal make that? Like a hair left on a pillow, a twist in the pile of a rug, a fingerprint on a door, we mark our way through the world in the traces we leave behind. Small and insignificant, maybe…
At least to anyone who doesn’t know any different.
He’s leaning against the side of his car waiting for me, face tilted up towards the sun and legs stretched out. He looks so confident, so sure of himself, and my breath catches in my throat. How can he be so together? Is this how life’s supposed to be; how I’m supposed to be?
Yeah, right.
Maybe that’s just the way things are in his world.
What would that world be like?
Is it the same world where I’m in the group photos at the Fallowmill party? In that world, if I was here and he was waiting for me, would I walk confidently out of the porch and across the drive? And when he heard my feet on the gravel maybe he’d look over at me and smile and take his sunglasses off, and then I’d go to him and I’d be looking into his eyes and he’d be looking back at me and slide his hand around my waist – fingers strong and warm against the small of my back – and he’d pull me close to him and…
Where did that come from?
Hal tilts his face down, cocks his head to one side – and looks straight over at the porch. At me.
Can he see me from there?
Maybe.
Can he see everything that just went through my head?
He can’t. That’s not possible.
Nobody can see into someone else’s head. There is no actual way to project thoughts. No one can tell.
Can they?
No, Flora. They can’t. He can’t. Now pull yourself together and stop standing here like a loser.
I try to think about something, anything, other than the way he looked just then, in reality and in my daydream.
Think about the flowers at the edge of the drive. The gravel.
Flights of ideas. That’s what Sanjay called them. That’s all this is – a flight of ideas. My brain skipping along so fast it actually lifts off.
Definitely not thinking about Hal, definitely not his hair and his eyes and the way he’s got his arms folded across his chest and…nope.
“Hey,” he says – and he pushes himself away from the car, standing upright as I leave the safety of the porch and cross the drive to him.
“Hey!” I say back. And that’s it. Just “hey”, and then standing there.
This is going well.
“You’re early.” He turns his car key around in his hand, twirling it and catching it in his palm over and over again, like he needs to do something with his fingers.
“I guess so. I didn’t want you to have to wait, but here you are.”
“Oh. Yeah, I was early too. I was…I didn’t…” He stops, bites his lip. “Shall we go?”
I can feel my heartbeat inside my head. Is that good?
In addition to racing thoughts, some patients display symptoms such as euphoric happiness and a sense of well-being.
I don’t think this counts as well-being. Does it?
I shift my weight from one foot to the other and back again.
And back again.
And again. And again.
However, those experiencing hypomania may also find it hard to stay still – moving around unnecessarily and fidgeting uncontrollably.
I stop hopping around.
I don’t think he’s noticed; he’s opening the car door. “I’m ready if you are.”
Why isn’t he getting in the car?
He’s opened the door. What’s he waiting for?
Has he changed his mind?
Did I do something wrong?
What did I do?
My mind races through the last thing I said, the last thing I thought, checking…double-checking…triple-checking…
It’s the passenger door.
He’s opened the passenger door.
For me.
Oh.
“Sorry. Yes. Sorry.” I shuffle up to the car, drop into the seat, and he closes the door gently after me.
Nobody’s ever opened a door for me before.
I mean, sure, they’ve opened a door when I’ve had my hands full of cleaning equipment or my arms full of towels – but that’s just what you do, right? This is different – more like how nobody’s ever pulled a chair back for me to sit on. Not before him.
Something under the car creaks alarmingly as he slides into the driver’s seat and slams his door. I raise my eyebrows pointedly at him and he waves a hand at the windscreen. “It’s fine, don’t worry. Just the…umm…Yeah. It’s fine. Let’s go then.”
The gravel crunches under the tyres, and as he turns the car around, I spot Philippe standing at the staff entrance, waving at me as we pass.
I smile back through the window at him and reach for my seat belt.
The engine of the squashed-frog car is noisier than I expected. Somehow I thought Hal’s car would be quiet and smooth inside, like his voice, like his clothes. There’s no radio or dock, so the only sound – apart from the growl and rattle of the engine – is the world whipping past the open window. The trees lining the drive down to the gate give way to the hedges, to the stone houses of the village…and then to the fields.
“The curator said she’d look through the archives and see if she could find anything that connected to Hopwood. She sounded pretty excited, right up till I told her it wasn’t for a TV show.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? It’s not like it’s your fault, is it?”
“No. It’s just…well, that must kind of suck.”
“It does. But I’ve got used to it. They normally at least wait to actually see me to be disappointed, though.” He slides his sunglasses down his nose and puts on a pinched-sounding voice. “‘Oh. Mr Waverley. You’re…younger than I expected.’” Hal snorts.
“Sorry.”
“Seriously, stop apologizing for them.”
“Sor—” I snap my mouth shut so quickly that my teeth click together.
“Now you’re getting it,” he laughs.