Ignite

Chapter 29

It takes another two weeks for me to feel somewhat normal again — to want to talk and spend more time out of bed than in it.

I can see Sylvia's relief when I start eating again, can feel Jake calming, his body relaxing like a sigh when my smile comes back. Even Peter, the blank wall that he is, offers a grunt of approval when I sit next to him on Thursday night to watch the cricket.

I'm beginning to think Muhammad's eye movement thingy works too, because though I still dream of the fires, I no longer wake up screaming.

And when I do wake to nightmares, a steel vice gripping my chest, I can hear a calm, experienced voice whispering beneath the panic: you've felt like this before. It won't kill you. It feels like you can't breathe, but you're breathing. You think it'll never stop, but, it will.

On Friday, I wake with no dreams burning in the back of my mind, and I throw my school uniform on and jump downstairs with more energy than I've had in weeks.

"Morning," I say when I reach the kitchen.

Sylvia is standing by the sink, straining the coffee and sending rich wafts of cocoa through the room. She glances over her shoulder at me and smiles.

"Morning, Claude. You seem happy today."

"I am."

I sit down, pulling the toaster towards me and chucking some bread in it, my stomach rumbling.

The sun is streaming in through the window, fracturing as it hits the glass and scattering light and shadow in the shape of Sylvia's pot plants that sit on the sill. I take a moment to admire it, basking in the beauty that's returned to my world.

"I didn't have any nightmares last night," I say. "Not one."

Sylvia turns to me, and the relief that has been growing within her over the last few days is clear on her face.

"That's fantastic, darling! By the way, we have a visitor."

For the first time, I notice Aleisha standing in the doorway to Sylvia's studio, hovering and unsure.

"Hey Claude."

I stare at her, a small stab of guilt penetrating my good mood.

Even under the fog I'd been living in over the past weeks, I'd noticed Emmy and Aleisha's efforts to talk to me, to spend time with me or make me laugh. None of it had worked. And the longer I'd stayed expressionless, the more unsure they'd become.

I'd hated myself for it, but that had changed nothing.

Depression is funny in that way.

"Hey Aleisha," I say, letting an excessive amount of warm thread through my voice. "I didn't know you had a lesson this morning."

She moves forward, emboldened by my reception, and sits beside me. Her wild hair is pulled back into a bun and I can see a new spot of vitiligo creeping up her neck.