Control (Shift) (22 page)

“It’s been nice meeting you,” Ella said, plucking a bud from the climbing rose.

“Oh, sure. It’s been nice meeting you, too. I guess.” There was still something about this girl I couldn’t work out. Something so cold. So distant.

She stood up and walked towards me, holding the flower to her nose. “I’ve never met someone else like me. Someone who can remember. It’s good to have someone who understands.” She took another step forward and I could smell her perfume. Strong and floral. It stung my throat.

I sidestepped and walked over to the other side of the grotto. It suddenly felt really small. “Yeah, it’s hard when other people don’t get it.”

“Like Aubrey? Does she get it?” She approached me again.

Aubrey? “Aubrey!” Her name was like glass of water in the face. “What am I doing here?” I said, looking around at the glittering walls, which felt like they were closing in on me.

Ella gasped, running forward and grabbing me by my shoulders. She pressed her chest into mine, pushing me backwards. I took a stumbling step and ended up falling onto the bench behind me. Ella sat on my lap.

“I have to go,” I said, trying to push her away. For someone so small, she seemed unnaturally heavy.

“I thought you liked me,” she said, her face uncomfortably close, her perfume choking me now.

“I do… It’s just…” Her hand was curling in my hair and I slapped it away.

“I won’t tell anyone. It’s OK.”

But it really wasn’t OK. I couldn’t move my legs and I was pinned to the seat.

“What’s going…?” I didn’t have a chance to finish before Ella’s lips silenced me. I felt her tongue pushing into my mouth and her teeth scraping against mine. I could taste her perfume, sour and bitter and foul.

“Stop!” I shouted into her mouth, but I still couldn’t push her away. I was gagging. Her tongue felt too large. Too heavy.

“Scott!”

Ella finally released me and we both looked to the small doorway of the grotto.

Aubrey was standing there, her eyes wide in shock, her perfect cupid lips open and wobbling.

“So, I don’t give you what you want and this is what you do?”

I’ve done terrible things. I’ve seen terrible things. But the look on Aubrey’s face before she turned away was the worst ever.

I shoved Ella off me and she landed heavily on the floor. I looked down at her, filled with rage and hatred and I wanted to hit her. I wanted to smash her stupid grindy teeth in for what she’d done.

“I’m sorry,” she said, holding one of her frail hands up to her mouth. “She made me do it. She couldn’t control Aubrey, so she made me…” She couldn’t speak for sobs.

“What have you done?” I said. “What have I done?”

I ran out of the grotto, tripping on the steps and tumbling into a bramble bush. It grabbed at my shirt and I struggled to get free of it. Then I stopped, angry at myself for being so slow. It was OK. I could change all of this. I was a Shifter. I slapped myself in the forehead, annoyed at my own stupidity. I just had to Shift and then none of this would have happened. I played back the last hour, looking for that pivot point that I could tip. Saying “yes” to the second cup of coffee. Agreeing to go for a walk with Ella. I pushed at each in turn, expecting that flip of reality.

But it didn’t come.

I untangled myself from the brambles and stood up, staring into the dark wood to where Aubrey had run. I stayed there for at least a minute trying harder and harder to find something to undo. But nothing changed.

I didn’t have time to work out what was going on. I had to catch up with Aubrey and explain, and then when I was thinking clearly again, I could sort the mess out. I raced down the path through the woods, leaping over stumps and ducking low branches before finally coming back to the playing field. I skidded around the front of the house just in time to see the van speeding away, Aubrey in the driving seat.

“Aubrey!” I screamed after her. But it was too late. She was gone and it felt as if she’d wrenched my heart out and taken it with her. I stood in a daze, not knowing what had happened or what I could do about it. I had to get back to Aubrey and explain everything.

I heard a crunch behind me. Frankie stood with her arm around Ella’s shoulder. Ella was looking at the ground, her hair falling in front of her face so that only the tip of her chin could be seen.

And now I knew where I’d seen her before. Why she looked so familiar. She was the girl from the picture with the original Prime Minister’s daughter. The one who’d been with Charlotte Vine the day she’d had her accident. The day that, in one reality, she’d died.

I was frozen to the spot, realisation sinking in.

“You should go home, Scott,” Frankie said. “Now.” She turned, leading Ella inside and shutting the door behind her with a heavy thud.

And I started running for home.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

I ran.

Stones crunched under my feet as I left the house behind and hit the dirt track outside. My feet sunk into the mud, clinging to me and trying to slow me down. But I pushed on. Even when one of my shoes got stuck in the mud and almost came off. When I hit the main road, I got into my stride, picking up speed. The white lines cutting up the tarmac blurred past and cars honked and drivers shouted at me to get out of the way. But I barely heard them. I could only hear one thing: Frankie’s voice telling me to go home. Without knowing how, I knew I was headed in the right direction, each pounding step bringing me closer to home. I ran up walls, vaulted off fences, threw myself over cars, all without really seeing them. They were just obstacles that stood between me and home. Once I was there, everything would be OK. Mum and Dad and Katie would all be waiting for me. I could see their smiling faces now, welcoming me home. There would be food waiting on the table and a hug from Katie and everything would be OK. I should never have been here in the first place. Once I got there, I’d never leave home again. The more I thought about it, the more frantic I became to get there. I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life. So fast I felt the rain sting my face like tiny blades.

After the first hour, time ceased to mean anything. Instead of being divided up into fractions of time, my life was defined by space. Inches. Feet. Miles. Each fragment bringing me closer to my only goal.

The siren call of home became deafening, drowning out all other thoughts. Aubrey and the mess I had made there, Ella and what she had to do with the Prime Minister’s daughter, the President. None of it mattered. Only home.

Looking back, I realise I must have been running for six, maybe seven hours. The sky was getting darker and the streetlights had started to come on one after the other. I remember wondering if I was somehow turning the lights on just by passing them.

I tried to distract myself from the pain that was burning through my chest and legs by playing memories from home. When Mum and Dad came home with Katie, when she was just a little baby, and the first thing she’d done was throw up on me. When we used to play together in the tree house. How we’d curl up in bed at night with Mum and Dad and they’d read to us. Before all the shouting began.

And then there were the other memories. The ones people kept telling me to forget. To let go. Katie’s limp, broken body under the truck. My mother’s torn face as she screamed “murderer”. And the deeper, darker things. The pain I’d caused them. The nightmares that wouldn’t go away because they hadn’t been dreams. They had been me.

By the time I reached my road, my feet had become balls of pain at the end of my legs, and my legs themselves were numb. I’d broken the wall ten miles back and was running on pure… pure what? Willpower? I didn’t know what was driving me. All I knew was that I had to get home. I stumbled on a hole in the pavement and fell, crashing to the ground, both my knees making loud crunching noises. But still I had to press on. I dragged myself the last hundred yards, clawing at the tarmac till my nails snapped. When I touched the rough bristles of our welcome mat I collapsed, everything spent.

I lay there, jagged breaths slicing at my lungs. But while I was physically broken, my mind felt free. Like a great weight had been lifted from it.

“Frankie,” I gasped. Frankie had done this to me. She’d done everything to me.

I managed to pull myself into a sitting position and leant against my front door, trying to stop my head from spinning. She’d put these ideas in my head. Made me stay when I’d wanted to leave. Made me run when I’d wanted to stay.

“Oh, Aubrey.” I covered my face with my hands. Everything was a mess.

I heard a rattling behind me and before I could stop myself I fell backwards hitting my head on the wooden floorboards of our hallway. I removed my hands enough to see Katie standing over me.

“What have you done now?”

“Help!” I croaked.

Her annoyed expression changed and she seemed properly concerned. I must have looked a real mess to have inspired that in her. She bent over me and helped me sit up, propping me up against the wall.

“Scott, what’s happened? What’s wrong?” Katie said.

“Everything,” I said. I wanted to cry, but there wasn’t enough liquid left in my body to even produce tears.

“We have to get you upstairs before Mum sees you.” She glanced over her shoulder at the closed door of the kitchen, before scooping one of my arms over her small shoulder and helping me to my feet. Every step was agony.

“I have to see Aubrey,” I said, everything spinning.

“Shut up, Scott. You’re not going anywhere. What have you been doing?”

“Running.”

“Running? How far?” she said.

“About thirty miles, I think.”

“What, are you mental?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” I said.

Each step of our stairs was like someone stabbing me in the thighs.

“You’re freaking me out, Scott,” Katie said when we finally reached the top.

“I know.”

I just needed to sit down and think. To let the pain subside enough so that I could focus on a Shift that could make all of this go away. I needed to plot it, or else I could just make it all worse.

Katie helped me into my room and I collapsed on the bed. It felt like my ankles and knees had been ground into dust.

“It’s OK, Katie,” I said seeing her chew on her thumbnail, which she only did when she was really worried. “Give me a second and I’ll be fine.”

A second is all I needed to wipe everything away. I closed my eyes and started going over the day in my mind. It had started as one of the best days of my life – waking up next to Aubrey – and ended as one of the worst. I kept seeing Aubrey’s face over and over; her open mouth and the hurt in her eyes. I shook my head. I had to focus on my decisions and find the lever points.

I decided to do the evaluation. That made Aubrey angry. If I hadn’t done that she wouldn’t have gone off and I wouldn’t have been left with Frankie or Ella for that matter. Bile rose in my throat as I thought about Ella. The evaluation. That was the decision to unmake.

I focused on that point. The echo of Frankie’s voice, “Why don’t you do the evaluation, Scott?” It became clear in my mind and I pushed, willing myself to make the opposite decision. Nothing happened. OK, maybe that wasn’t a real decision. I’d been flattered and excited and so I hadn’t thought through my options. A rookie mistake. But I could beat myself up about that later. For now, I just had to find another way around.

How about when I agreed to stay longer? I knew I’d been hesitant about it and when it came to Shifting, hesitation is your friend. Again I pushed. And again nothing. I flicked back through moments like sorting through a deck of cards; I was getting increasingly frantic as nothing was working. I went back further, the day before, the night before. I was even willing to sacrifice that night with Aubrey to have a chance to be with her again. Anything that would bring her back.

Nothing.

I sat up so fast it made my head spin. “I can’t Shift!”

“What?”

I’d forgotten about Katie, who’d been sat on my bedroom floor all this time watching me mumbling to myself. But I was so panicked I didn’t care. “I can’t change anything. None of my decisions!”

I tried other decisions, stupid little stuff like what I’d had for breakfast three days ago, or which shoes I’d worn last week. Everything felt heavy and permanent. As though it was carved in stone.

“I’m stuck.”

“Calm down,” Katie scooted forward on her knees and rested her hand on my shoulder. “You’re not making any sense. I’m going to get Mum.”

“No!” I grabbed her T-shirt. “No… I just need…” I didn’t know what I needed to do.

Was this it? Had entropy got me after all? I thought it was supposed to creep up on you slowly over years, like puberty. But this felt like a portcullis smashing down on me, cutting me off from everything that mattered in my life. Something had caused this.

Words echoed in my head.

“I like you, Scott. Do something for me. Don’t ever change.”
 

“She did it. She’s stopped me Shifting!”

“Who did what now?” Katie said, leaning away from me. I didn’t blame her. I was sounding like a madman. Like Aubrey’s father. I should have listened to him, should have paid more attention to his warnings. Frankie was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous person I’d ever met.

“She must be like me, Katie,” I said. “She can make people do things. Like make me run, and Ella, and the PM’s daughter. Oh, God.”

The realisation hit harder than the pain. I slumped back onto the bed. I was pinned, like one of Frankie’s butterflies in a frame.

“Just one choice. Let me change just one choice. I can make this alright.” I was muttering now, not even making sense to myself.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I can change my choices!” I snapped at Katie. “Change any decision I’ve ever made.”