“Do you not want to talk about it?” he asked.
“I’ll never want to talk about it.”
A child ran under our arms.
“You know, sometimes it helps, talking about it?”
“Don’t get all American on me.”
“I am American.”
We dropped hands once more, my body entirely unhappy about this.
“Yes, well, rein it in, Prom King. British people have been successfully repressing our emotions since before your country was even a thing.”
We were split up by children galloping around us.
The group of unsorted was dwindling. There were only about ten children left. I calculated that meant a maximum of ten times I would get to hold Kyle’s hands again. Half of me wanted them all to get sorted into Dumbledore’s Army so I could touch him. Because something weird inside of me really wanted to touch him. But the other half didn’t.
I don’t like questions about my mum. Mainly because I don’t know any of the answers to all of the “whys?” no matter how I’ve tried to figure her out.
The other groups had copied our whooping and circle dancing.
“Everyone is copying us,” I huffed at Whinnie, who was struggling from the physical exertion. Her face was wet, her glasses a little misted from the sweat behind them.
“Because we’re the most fun.”
Two children were left, looking sad and embarrassed and left-out. One was so clinically obese he could be in a documentary.
“Calvin?”
The boy wobbled up to Mum, pulling his stretched T-shirt down over his vast expanse of stomach.
“I hope he doesn’t get into our group,” Hank whispered loudly. All the kids laughed.
“Shh.” Kyle’s voice was so sharp I almost didn’t recognize it. “If you talk like that again, I’ll get you transferred straight out of Dumbledore’s Army.”
Our group did a sharp intake of breath, and Hank’s face dropped in horror. Kyle glared at him, and then glared at the rest of us.
Calvin was oblivious to the whispers, or maybe he’d just learned to block them out. Suddenly I really wanted him to get into our group. So I could look after him, make his summer the best it could be. I’d been that kid – the one everyone looked at and whispered about. But I’d learned to deal with it, so I could teach him.
Mum hung the hat over his head.
Please please please please please.
“Dumbledore’s Army.”
And I found myself jumping and screaming, “Go, Calvin!”
I was so excited I grabbed Kyle’s hands first to make the arch. He gave me a look involving a lot of his eyebrow.
“We got Calvin,” I said, breathless with excitement.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “We did.”
Russ and Whinnie drummed up cheers as he lurched towards our arch, beaming at our reaction. I bet nobody had ever cheered for Calvin his entire life. I cheered louder.
“You have a lot of emotions,” Kyle said to me underneath the arch. “They change all the time, I can see it. But you like pretending they’re not there.”
“Whaaat?” I stuttered. “You’ve only known me three days!” The force of what he’d said had a two-second delay as I computed. Calvin was almost at our arch, his slow run not much more than a walk.
“What’s going on with your mom? Why is she living in America and not in Britain with you?”
“I thought I asked you to rein it in, Mr Therapy? I don’t want to talk about it.”
Calvin ran under us and I cheered the hardest I had all evening, before dropping Kyle’s hands. “I don’t get why you want to talk about it.”
Kyle gave a half-shrug. “Because you seem sad, I guess.”
Did I seem sad? How? I’d been laughing and cheering and dancing and doing all the things I never usually do.
Was I sad?
I was knackered – the most tired I’d ever been. But it was summer, and I was in a forest with new friends, and the sun was hotter than anything in the UK…and Mum was here. Finally we were together again.
… And, yes, I was sad. I was so sad that I barely had room left in my lungs to let oxygen in.
Mum wasn’t the fantasy version I’d been so excited to see on the plane over. She wasn’t letting me in, she wasn’t giving me answers. She wasn’t even the good bits of Mum I distantly remembered from before the day she came back from the hospital crying and clutching her stomach. This woman was still the shitty replacement that woke up the morning after that day. The one who ran away from what happened, and shut you out if you tried to talk about it, and made Dad…go to Penny, and then left me with them once Kevin and his supersonic bumchin rescued her from herself…abandoning me.
I stopped dancing and wilted, staggering to the edge of our circle. Everyone was oblivious, and continued celebrating without me.
Everyone but Kyle. He gently put his arm around me and steered me away a little.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Now you look REALLY sad.”
“I’m fine.” But my voice choked.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you. I guess I just got really angry on your behalf today, in the art room. It didn’t help I got a strike.”
“She’s…she’s…complicated.”
“I can see that.”
“I…I…” I looked up at him, into his eyes that I’d never seen until the other day, but that already felt familiar. Every girl feels a connection with Kyle… “I’m exhausted,” I admitted.
I was. I really was.
Kyle broke into a grin. “First day with the kids is a killer. And yet, here I am, pressing you about your private life. Just what you need when you’re exhausted.”
I gave him a small smile. “In England we call it knackered.”
“Knackered?”
“Yeah, for exhausted. We say knackered.”
“I like that.”
I really was tired, now I’d let myself think it. Kyle steadied me on my feet. I tried to find the strength to stay upright, but leaned back into him. He was so tall, he made me feel almost dainty.
“Yeah, me too. It’s one of my favourites.”
Over his shoulder, I caught Mum’s eye. She was staring right at us – her face unreadable, but noticing. Definitely noticing.
My knackeredness evaporated. I felt myself bristle under Kyle’s arms.
“Whoa, Amber. What is it?”
She hadn’t put me in Gryffindor. My own mother… She’d put Melody in Gryffindor. And she’d given Kyle a strike when he was only helping me because she had left me.
She had left me again.
Because that’s what she does.
But it’s never her fault.
Only everyone else’s but hers.
The anger slammed through my bloodstream, reaching peaks and crescendos.
“When is it bedtime?” I asked.
I so needed it to be bedtime.
So I could yell at her.
So I could tell her what I thought.
About her.
About that dipshit photo of me not in the main room.
He lowered his face so our eyes were level, which is not something short boys were ever able to do – not that they’d ever wanted to.
“After this. It will take an age to get them to sleep though. You’re helping Whinnie, right? First night. Homesickness, the excitement of it all. I’ll be on midnight feast watch all night.”
I smiled weakly as a passing, whooping child nudged into me mid-gallop. Kyle and I were the only two not moving, not celebrating. “Why oh why did I come here again?”
He searched my eyes again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to ask you all evening.”
Bumface Kevin yanked out his megaphone and announced it was “OFFICIALLY THE START OF CAMP”. The excitement levels broke and everyone ran towards the fire, merging with each other again, and showing off about who got put in Gryffindor. I jogged feebly behind them – so tired, so angry.
“You okay?” Whinnie was right next to me. There was so much sweat on her fringe that it was plastered to her forehead.
“Just tired.”