Between your heart and mine (Cai, Zoe)

[itsajesusthing.insanejournal.com]

Three weeks of school to go, Cai thought. Three weeks, then exams.

It was Thursday, and Cai sat upstairs in the Year 12 common room that overlooked the quad. He was lost in thought, staring out the window which had fogged up, and was covered in finger drawings of tits and dicks.

He was sitting with his old friends, because he’d had his last class with Syed and had ended up following him up here. Funny how it felt like following, now, funny that it didn’t feel like walking side by side.

He was sitting with his old friends and thinking about the term ‘old friends’ and how people usually used it synonymously with ‘true friends’, ‘real friends’; it implied a kind of dignity, a kind of loyalty. Cai thought: if any of these guys asks me what I’m thinking about right now, I won’t be able to answer them. How do you explain that you’re thinking about the meaning of words?

Lucky, really, that his friends weren’t going to ask. Their attention was across the common room, where a group of girls were lounging across the couches. Alex Tai was over there, and Indigo-Hope, and Jamaica, who was a year older. There was a lot of text messaging going on between his group and theirs; Syed kept snapchatting obscene drawings to Jamaica, who outdid him every time.

The boys kept hooting whenever another picture came through. “Shit she’s got a good eye for dick,” Syed said, showing his phone around.

“Nah, she’s just seen more of them than any other girl at this school.” That was Parker. “Can draw ‘em in her sleep, most like. Can do other shit to ‘em too.”

“Cut it out,” said Cai, tuning his face away from the window.

“Cai’s jealous!” Syed shoved him, because all of Syed’s punchlines ended in a shove.

Cai shoved back, the contact too brief to be a worry. "Rack off."

“He’s after my cock!” Syed yelled, loud enough for the whole common room to hear, as he fell dramatically to the floor. All the girls were watching, Jamaica looked entertained, Indigo looked unimpressed, and Alex looked furiously embarrassed. Cai shot Alex an apologetic look.

“Haven’t you heard?” Indigo’s voice was clear over the din, like a fishhook snagging the boys attention. “Cai’s dating Zoe Kemp, now.”

There was more hooting and shoving.

“No, I’m not,” Cai insisted.

“Mate, that’s messed up,” Syed slung an arm around Cai’s shoulder. “Dating the girl whose friend shot you?”

“Yeah, how?” Cai pulled away from Syed, hitting him with a look. “How is that messed up?”

“Holy shit, he’s not denying it!” Parker laughed.

“I just did,” Cai glared at the lot of them. “And I still want to know why it’s messed up?”

“I dunno man,” Syed wasn’t used to being called out on his bullshit. “It’s just dark.”

“No.” Cai stood, gathering the last of his lunch back into his bag. “No, it is not dark.”

Harry poked Syed with his ruler. “Maybe he’s dating Danny.”

“He’s my brother,” Cai snapped.

“That’s fucking incest!” Harry burst out laughing. “That’s fucked up!”

I will not punch him. I will not punch him. Cai clenched his gloved hands into fists as the classroom erupted with disgusted laughter. I will walk away.

There were three weeks left of school. So why was he bothering with these guys? There were much bigger things in the world. Much bigger, much more important. Cai huffed air out his nose in the sudden realisation that he honestly could just walk away. He had that freedom. What an amazingly basic realisation. He unclenched his fists.

“See you later guys,” he said, swinging his bag onto his shoulder. “Although honestly? Hopefully not.”

Cai left the room to sounds of protest, but mocking protest.

He found Zoe in the library, and sat down beside her. "Alright," he said, peeling off his blazer and the stupid gloves as she closed her chemistry textbook and said hi. "Where's Danny and Rachel?"

"They went home for lunch together," Zoe said. "She said she got kicked out of class again."

"Aw, crap," Cai said. Rachel had been away for half the week. "She alright?"

Zoe shrugged and sighed, sinking her head down onto her hands. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not sure what's going on with her."

Cai held the wrist of his glove in one hand and patted her hand lightly with the fingertips, which made her twist up the corner of her mouth and swat it away. "That tickles."

He let go of the glove as Zoe swatted it, and it flew halfway across the table before it fell. Cai sighed and dropped his chin onto his hands, mirroring Zoe. "So I broke up with my old friends just now," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they just kept being dicks." Cai blew a lock of hair off his forehead, but it fell right back into place. "Which I'm used to, I guess. But then they started in on you and Danny and I wasn't going to just sit there and listen any more."

Zoe looked unimpressed with the world in general. "What were they saying?"

"Stuff," Cai said. "That we were dating. But they said it less, uh, politely."

"I can imagine," Zoe sighed. "What did they say about Danny?"

"The same."

"That me and Danny were dating?"

"No," said Cai, and let her work out the rest on her own. She took a moment, then screwed up her face.

"Yeah, you're better off without them."

"Yeah," Cai did agree with her, with the rational part of his brain. The irrational part said that the guys he'd spent the last few years of high school with should be better than that, and maybe they would be better to him if he could just start acting the way he used to, before he and Alex broke up. Before all the gay rumours started, and they exposed themselves for the narrow-minded sods they were.

But it was really hard to fit back into the old mould of who you were once someone like Zoe had burst you out of it. And he shouldn't have to, either. He'd been feeling suffocated in his old world; he liked Zoe's world much better.

"Ah well," he said, testing to see if his face would be able to handle a casual smile. It seemed to work. "Only three weeks left of school and after exams we're all out of here for good."

Zoe nodded her chin against her hand. It was going to be good - well, it was going to be different. There were a lot of things about school she was not going to miss. "Are you not coming back for your last year?"

"Contentious." Cai huffed the hair from his face again, and again it didn't work. "Dom wants me to finish school. I don't. No point. I'm not getting into academia." He sat up, pushing his hair back with his hands. Nonnie wanted him to get a hair cut but he liked it a bit longer. "I'll get an apprenticeship somewhere, I reckon. Not easy to get but there's heaps of people at church who would put in a good word for me with friends. I'll find something; land on my feet somewhere."

Zoe had her almost-smile on, a nearly imperceptible lifting of the corners of her mouth. "Hope so," she said.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence!" Cai laughed, tipping his chair back to balance on two legs. "I really feel your belief for me, right here, real deep." Both hands were crossed over his chest.

"Shut up," said Zoe, kicking out at one of the airborne legs of his chair. Cai pretended to be pushed off balance, flailing wildly in the air for a moment before tipping himself back to earth.

"Could'a killed me," he said.

"I didn't make you misuse the chair," Zoe pointed out.

"Damn, you're right," Cai slumped forward onto the table, his arms stretched right out in front of him. His hands looked oddly naked, without the gloves, Zoe thought. "What 'bout you?" he asked, resting his head against one arm, facing her. "University?"

"Yeah, London." Zoe answered, almost automatically. Cai had noticed a lot of senior students doing this, even students in his own level. They'd picked a path for the future and were sticking to it, so all the answers to all the obvious questions tumbled right out of their mouth in a second. He'd heard Alex answer it a dozen times, Electrical engineering, Sheffield. Always said with a bubble of excitement for the future.

"Doing something clever, I bet."

Zoe hesitated. "Forensic stuff," she said.

"Forensic stuff?" Cai asked, reaching out and poking her elbow - her clothed elbow. "How come you don't seem more excited?"

Zoe shrugged and shook her head at the same time. "I could be excited. You don't know."

"Yeah, maybe you could be," Cai admitted. "Though you seemed more excited to change some shoes in our vision than you do about the next few years of your life, which just seemed a bit weird."

Zoe shrugged again, looking down at her chemistry book. Cai watched her, wondering if there was more she wanted to say, or if she wanted him to shut up. Nonnie said (Nonnie had a saying for everything) that there were two reasons why people didn't talk about something; because they didn't mean anything to them, or because they meant everything.

"Are you worried your marks might not be high enough to get in?"

"Hah," Zoe shook her head. "I am not worried about my marks." She'd already received her offer to study at London University, and the grades she was expecting should meet the requirements. If she got an A in chem and at least a B in everything else, she'd get in. And Zoe knew she could get those kind of marks. Unless something drastic happened - and Zoe was internally braced for drastic, always, she was braced for drastic - then she should be starting at London University in September. "Do you want to work on the visions again after school?" She changed the subject.

Cai speared the dead glove with one finger. "Yup," he said. "Do you want to go back to the church again?"

Zoe nodded, and a little while after that the bell rang, and they went their separate ways till they met again in the carpark, and Cai drove Zoe down to his church one more time.

I am right, Zoe thought, as they sat on the bench in the rose garden, and she put her bare hands into his. His hands look obscenely naked without gloves.

She swallowed hard and cast her eyes over to the arch door of the church, then closed them, trying to concentrate.

She didn't know what went wrong.

Maybe she was tired, maybe she was distracted. Maybe the gods of fate were cruel or maybe her luck had just been too good lately.

She didn't see the church in her vision. This time, she was dragged through a period of weeks - weeks! - over last winter.

It was back when she had been working on university applications; Zoe saw her chemistry teacher pull her past self aside to ask her which universities she was applying for. "Just London," she'd said.

"That's a pretty good school for sciences," he'd said, though she heard disapproval in his voice. Zoe-in-the-present could feel herself watching this again, and tried to pull away, but she didn't know how. "I'm sure you'll do well there. It's top twenty, but I expect you to aim for higher than top twenty."

Zoe-in-the-past had shrugged. He'd kept her there for a few minutes more, while he pulled up a few different university websites. "Really," Zoe said. "It's fine." But he'd sent the links to her school email address anyway, and against her better judgement she'd looked at them.

Against her better judgement, she'd applied to some of them.

It was a fantasy, really. It had been last winter, before she knew Rachel too well. London had been flooded by all the rain. There'd been appeal in leaving, even when she knew she wasn't going to go anywhere.

The vision twisted and time shifted and now she was in her bedroom, reliving again how it had almost been a relief when she got rejection letters for Oxford and Cambridge. Those were the best two for chemistry, and Jude was at Cambridge. Zoe told herself it had just been a bit of a game, just to see what would happen. She was relieved, after all. You could totally be disappointed and relieved at the same time.

Then one day - the vision changed again and she was in her driveway - there'd been a much fatter envelope from Durham University waiting for her in the letterbox. She'd torn it open and the contents hit her like a brick in a sock.

Her mind raced as she read: She needed to get an A in chemistry, of course. Preferably she'd get all As, but she could afford one B. That would probably be art, because it was very hard to know exactly what examiners wanted in art. Zoe hoped she'd make at least a B. As well as an excellent ("world class" and "cutting edge" were the more accurate words) chemistry department they also had a great reputation for sports, and Zoe was the fastest girl at London College...

Durham was listed third for their chemistry courses where London University wasn't even top ten. Top twenty, yeah, but not third.

But Zoe couldn't leave London, and Liz. She couldn't live with people who didn't understand her seizure visions, could she? No it was too dangerous. Besides, the Templar thought she was the Antichrist's niece. Sure, it would be amazing, leaving the shadow of Gloria half a country behind her, but... She couldn't leave. She was a seer. She was needed here.

Zoe hadn't felt trapped by that, not till she was holding the letter in her hand. Escape, that's what this was. Legitimate escape to a legitimate new life.

A new life of her own choosing.

The novelty of that.

Zoe stormed up to her bedroom and slammed the door shut and had wept in frustration.

Something snapped Zoe-in-the-past back together with Zoe-in-the-present, so hard she was left with a spinning head and the will to throw up. The sunlight in the rose garden felt too bright.

"You weren't supposed to see that!" Zoe shouted, struggling off the bench.

"I'm sorry!" Cai gasped. He tried to stand as well, but the ground began to rush up to meet him and he sat quickly down again. For a moment his vision started to grow dark.

"You weren't supposed to see that," Zoe repeated, her arms wrapped around her ribs. Her eyes felt like she'd just been crying. "That's mine."

"Zoe I am so sorry," Cai insisted. "I didn't mean to - I can't control what I see." He could barely see anything now, as it was. He took a slow breath in and let a slow breath out, and the darkness began to recede. He could see Zoe again, starting to pace back and forth like she couldn't decide where to go, what to do.

"You are not," she said, "allowed to tell anyone anything. I don't even care any more. That was months ago. That was months ago and it doesn't even matter."

"Okay, Zoe," Cai said, slowly standing up and by that action, finding he could. "Zoe I'm not going to tell anyone. I know it's private."

"You don't even talk to me about it," Zoe made him promise, pointing at him with a shaking finger. "Okay? I'm so over it I don't want to talk about it."

"I won't say a thing," Cai promised hastily. "Okay? Not a word."

Zoe breathed deep and shook himself out. She nodded, and eventually sat down again because her head was still spinning and next to Cai was the closest seat.

A few long minutes of silent recovery passed between them.

"Want me to drive you home?" Cai asked, eventually. "I mean, I need a few more minutes and a sandwich, but I think I'll be alright."

Zoe blinked slowly. It was hard to open her eyes again. They were comfortable closed. "Alright."

She watched carefully as he put his gloves back on, but out of the corner of her eye, so she could pretend to herself she wasn't watching at all.

There are two reasons why people don't talk about something Cai thought again, when he finally did start to drive home. Because they don't mean anything to them, or because they mean everything.