“She’s fine.” Jamie turns me so my back is to the cheerleaders and moves me away from Angelo. I swivel to get another look at the girl, mentally cataloguing the details for future reference. “No one’s being taken out tonight.” He turns my face in his hands and holds it there. “You can’t possibly believe I’m interested in her?”

A living picture blooms in my mind, obscuring the Great Hall. I see myself in a dim room, Kitty’s room, moonlight filtering through a gap in the curtain. Underwear, tousled hair, dilated pupils. I see the vision from Jamie’s point of view. I recognise it’s the night after his mom accidentally shot me in the arm. His Kinetic Memory Transfer fills me, allowing me to feel what he felt, his hands moving over warm skin, looping through silky hair. My body floods with the sensation, overriding hostility with desire.

The picture disappears and I’m back in the Great Hall, still pinned between his hands, music blaring, bodies writhing around us. “Can I let go?” he asks.

I nod.

“I suppose we lasted fifteen minutes.” He lowers his hands slowly like he might need to grab me again. He gives a choked, humourless laugh. “You jumped a table, Everton. A bloody table. In front of everyone.”

“It’s not like I planned it.” All my linear focus and ability to stand upright evaporate. I can’t tell if I’m more intoxicated by alcohol, adrenaline or KMT. Groaning, I lean my forehead on his chest. “Take me home, Jamie. I can’t feel my face.”

VIRGIN

Jamie tips the driver and the taxi pulls away. We stand in the dark, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, eyeing the rustic clapboard house as though it’s riddled with booby traps. Miriam isn’t back yet but she will be in an hour or so, and when she sees I’ve come home early she’ll figure it out and it’ll be on. The third degree. The overreaction. The guilt. I blow white breath through my lips and turn half-formed arguments in my muddy brain. “Can we just stay out here?”

Jamie chuckles, the brief, heavy sound of the condemned. Miriam will find some way to use my mistakes against him, fuel for her argument: Synergist Coding is dangerous.

Jamie peers down the drive. “I guess we’ve got a little time to come up with an alibi.”

“She won’t stay late at Emilie’s and miss the chance to play curfew cop.”

“Mmph.”

Columbia Avenue becomes a slowly balding forest in late October. The dry rustling of dead leaves overhead and the squelch of damp ones underfoot. Out in the forest, the Border River rushes, deep, wide and wild. I picture flying down its bank, the leap I’d make to cross it and the mountains beyond. “We could go for a run?”

“We could join the circus.” He squeezes my hand. “Wouldn’t make a difference. She’d find us eventually.”

I sigh.

He sighs.

Neither of us moves.

The narrow house looks warm and inviting from the cold shadow of the sidewalk. Light filters through a gap in the living room curtains. Miriam’s studio on the right sits in darkness. Upstairs, a lamp glows behind the study blinds, always on. I’ve loved this house my whole life but since the truth came out about who and what everybody was and wasn’t, moms, twins, fate, futility and mutant DNA, the atmosphere of the place exhausts me. It’s all a bit too My Life as a Greek Tragedy and I don’t want to talk about or “process” anything. April wasn’t my real mom. Miriam is. It hurts too much to think about it and I’m sick to death of feeling like an exposed nerve ending. Miriam tries to give me space, let me deal with things my own way, but she’s a fixer and sometimes it gets the better of her and, inevitably, things end in yelling and tears. Mostly, I stay quiet and avoid being in the same room as her, the strategy of a coward.

“Come on,” Jamie says, tugging my hand.

We make our way down the sloping drive, Jamie holding my arm to keep me from skidding on the gravel. We clamber up the steep back steps to the landing and Jamie takes the key from my fumbling hands and lets us into the dizzying light and clamour of the kitchen.

Brightness momentarily blinds me. I stumble over to turn the stereo off, flicking the switch, then the small TV on the counter. Miriam always leaves things on, like she’s out of time, fleeing a burning building. Buffy pads up the hall, meowing in greeting. I lean against the cupboards to keep from losing balance in the uncommon hush and hold my head. “I think I need to lie down.” I don’t feel bad. It’s just the endless rotation of everything around me that makes it hard to stand.

Jamie dumps our things on the long wooden table. “Go ahead. I’ll get you something to eat.”

Buffy meows and follows Jamie to the counter, purring, twining herself around his legs. I know just how she feels. “I’ll be upstairs, then.”

The corner of his mouth forms a wry curve. “Miriam will be home soon.”

I grin, bumping my way out of the kitchen like a slow-moving and badly aimed pinball. I pause in the hall where Miriam’s eclectic artefacts cramp the bookshelves by the stairs. The light on the answering machine blinks and I press play. Miriam’s voice crackles from the speaker. “Hey, kiddo. Wasn’t sure you’d check your cell. I’m gonna stay at Emilie’s tonight. We’re doing the final edit tomorrow and it will save me backtracking. Hope the dance was fun. I’ll keep my phone on – if you need to get hold of me. Night.”

I frown at the blinking light. Is it some kind of test? Some reverse-psychological get-me-onside thing? But a more interesting thought presents itself. I have the house to myself till morning - an unprecedented gift of time, circumstance and opportunity. My mind reels with the possibilities and I blink at Nan’s statue of the Mother of God where she sits on her shelf above the phone, her plaintive eyes. “Don’t be like that,” I whisper, turning the Holy Virgin to face the wall. I call over my shoulder, “Miriam’s not coming home.”

A snort comes from the kitchen. “I heard.”

I’m not sure my feet touch the stairs before I burst through the door of my bedroom, not feeling the pop of the doorhandle. It lies crushed in my hand. “Oops.” I hide it in my desk and turn to face the carnage of at least three days’ worth of neglected laundry that litters the floor. I stumble, off axis, as I bend to scoop up wrinkled clothes, bruising myself against bedpost, doorjamb and wall before dumping the lot in the bottom of the wardrobe. A quick scurry for scattered shoes and it’s tidier than it has been in weeks. Miriam won’t believe it.

I smooth the quilt then turn to the dresser mirror to look myself over. Dilated pupils, opal black, and blood-red lips in the lamplight. My heart stamps like it’s wearing heavy boots. With numb fingers, I fumble the elastic band from the end of my braid and shake out the folds of my hair. I teeter, overbalance and catch myself on the bed end. Not good. The inability to remain upright could undermine my whole seduction sales pitch and I need to pull it together. I’m not an expert and we haven’t gone far in our physical relationship, what with my tendency to faint “mid-snog”, but I’m pretty sure falling on my ass won’t be much of a turn-on.

We’ve never talked about sex. Not directly. Jamie never pressures me for anything, never complains. I’m the complainer – the one always wanting more. But how much more? What do I really want?

Everything. I want everything. The jealous intensity of wanting him grips me. I want him completely. Possession. Knowledge. Wholeness. Belonging. Things I’ve never thought to name. I want more than signals connecting us; I want a physical, irrefutable link, something tangible that can never be erased whatever happens. It’s wrong. Selfish. Jamie’s cure waits in Germany. Helena. The Affinity Project with their rules about “unsanctioned relationships” will come for me any day now and it’ll all be over. That’s where the choking sense of urgency comes from – the threat of the unbearable end.