I smiled. ‘I like the sound of that.’ SuperSky.

He grinned. He hadn’t guessed my thoughts, had he?

‘But what scares me the most is that there’s so much riding on our relationship and you don’t even know it.’

I huffed out a sigh. ‘OK, Zed, try and explain it to me again. I’l listen this time.’

He nodded. ‘I guess you don’t know anything about savants?’

‘I know more about soccer.’

He laughed at that. ‘I’l just give you a little information now then, just to get us started. Let’s sit here for a moment.’ He boosted me up so I could perch on a fal en tree trunk, putting my eyes on a level with his as he leaned against it. It was the closest we’d been to each other since the raft and I was suddenly very aware of his eyes drifting over my features. It almost felt as if his fingers, not his gaze, were caressing my skin. ‘Sure you want to hear?

’Cause if I tel you, I’ve got to ask you to keep it a secret for the sake of the rest of my family.’

‘Who would I tel ?’ I sounded oddly breathless.

‘I dunno. The National Enquirer maybe. Oprah. A congressional committee.’ His expression was wry.

‘Er, no, no and definitely not,’ I laughed, counting them off on my fingers.

‘OK then.’ He smiled and brushed a tendril of hair off my brow. There was a quivering intensity to him, as though he was holding himself in check, afraid to let go of the reins. A little nervous, I groped for one of my usual distancing techniques, trying to recast this encounter as one of my comic strip imaginings, but found that I couldn’t. He made me stay right here and now, completely in focus. The colours—his hair, eyes, clothes—weren’t brash, but subtle, sparkling, multi-toned. High definition had switched on in my head.

‘Savants: I’m one. Al my family are, but I’ve got a heavy dose being the seventh son. My mom’s a seventh child too.’

‘And that makes it worse?’

I could count every single lash framing his spectacular eyes.

‘Yeah, there’s a multiplier effect. Savants have this gift; it’s like an extra shift in a car, makes us go a little bit faster and further than normal people.’

‘Right. OK.’

He rubbed his hand gently in circles on my knee, calming me. ‘It means we can talk telepathical y to each other. With people who don’t have the savant gene, they would feel an impression, an impulse, not hear the voice. That’s what I thought would happen when I spoke to you on the soccer pitch. I was pretty surprised when you understood me—blown away, in fact.’

‘Because?’

‘Because it meant that you are a telepath too. And when a soulfinder speaks telepathical y to her partner, it’s like al the lights coming on in a building.

You lit me up like Vegas.’

‘I see.’ I didn’t want to believe any of this but I remembered hearing his voice tel ing me to float when I’d fal en out of the raft. But it had to be a coincidence—I wouldn’t al ow it to be anything else.

He rested his head against mine. I made a subtle move to retreat but he curled his fingers around my nape, holding me gently to him. ‘No, you don’t. Not yet. There’s more.’

The warmth of his hand seeped through to relax my tense neck muscles. ‘I thought there might be.’

‘When’s your birthday?’

What possible relevance did that have? ‘Um …

first of March. Why?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s not right.’

‘It’s the day of my adoption.’

‘Ah, I see. That’s why.’ He flicked his fingers lightly over the curve of my shoulder then let his hand drop to cover mine which I’d clasped on my lap. We stayed like that in silence for a while. I sensed a shadow—a presence in my mind.

‘Yeah, that’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m just checking.’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m imagining this.’

He gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘I’m just checking my facts. I can’t make a mistake about something like a soulfinder.’ He moved away, the sense of him being with me receding, leaving me lonely. ‘I understand now. You’ve come from a dark place, haven’t you?’

What could I say to that?

‘You don’t know who your biological parents are?’

‘No.’ My nerves returned, coiling horribly inside me like maggots swarming out of a rotten apple. He was finding out too much. Letting people close hurt—this had to stop.

‘So you never knew that you had a gift.’

‘Wel , that’s because I don’t. I’m ordinary. No extra shifts in here.’ I tapped my head.

‘Not that you’ve found. But they’re there. You see, Sky, when a savant is born, his or her counterpart also arrives about the same time somewhere on the earth. It could be next door, or maybe thousands of miles away.’ He linked his fingers with mine. ‘You have half our gifts, I the other. Together we make a whole. Together we are much more powerful.’

I rol ed my eyes. ‘It sounds sweet, a nice fairy tale, but it can’t possibly be true.’

‘Not sweet. Think about it: the chances of meeting your other half are tiny. Most of us are doomed to knowing there’s something better out there but we can’t discover it. My parents were two of the lucky ones; they have each other thanks to a wise man of my dad’s people with a gift for finding. None of my brothers have yet located their partner and each of them struggles with it. It’s a kil er, knowing things could be so much more. That’s why I rushed. I was a starving man facing a banquet.’

‘And if they never meet their soulfinder?’

‘It

can

go

many

ways—despair,

anger,

acceptance. It gets worse as the years tick by. It hadn’t real y begun to worry me yet. I’m incredibly lucky to escape al that angst.’

I refused to believe this yarn he was spinning and took refuge in flippancy. ‘Seems simple to me. Can’t they run a savant match-making service on Facebook or something? Problem solved.’

He smiled wryly. ‘Like we haven’t thought of that.

But it’s not about your birthday exactly, but when you were conceived—that gives quite a lot of variation nine months on. Think how many people in the world were born on or around your birthday. Then factor in the premature babies, the ones overdue. You’d be trawling through thousands. Savants are rare—

there’s only one in every ten thousand or so. And not every savant lives in a country like ours with computers at home. Or even speaks the same language.’

‘Yeah, I see that.’ Sort of, if I was going to buy this whole thing, which I didn’t.

He cupped my chin gently in his palm. ‘But against the odds, I’ve discovered you. On a soccer pitch of al places. Sky Bright from Richmond, England.’

This was so strange. ‘What does this al mean?’

‘It means that’s it for us. For life.’

‘Joking?’

He shook his head.

‘But I’m only here for, like, a year.’

‘Just a year?’

‘That’s the plan.’

‘And you do what then? Go back to England?’

I shrugged, assuming a calm I didn’t feel. ‘I don’t know. It depends on Sal y and Simon. It’s going to be hard because I’l have done a year here and the course is completely different back in the UK. I don’t want to start al over again.’

‘Then we’l find a way for you to stay. Or I’l fol ow you to England.’

‘You wil ?’ I was hyper conscious that his fingers had once more entwined with mine. I’d never imagined what it would be like just to hold hands with a boy. It was nice but a bit scary at the same time.

‘Hel , yeah. This is serious.’ He squeezed my fingers, taking a better grip. ‘So she doesn’t run for the hil s.’

‘Meaning?’

He lifted one of my hands and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He kept his fingers stil locked around mine as he leant beside me, looking out on the same view.

‘I thought you might be a bit wary of me at first, until you got used to me. The nice me, not the jerk me.’

‘Wary?’