"Best friends forever" - It's been a long road for the two teens but their friendship has only grown stronger through the years. However, when other hidden feelings come to surface will they be able to save their friendship or will they have to face...
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My eyes were open but somehow I just couldn't see anything. The rush hour traffic on the roads was horrendous, the radio was going on and on about some accident on junction 25, May-Li was tutting and sighing, her hands had run through her hair a dozen times...
And yet I was incapable of a reaction.
It's not that I was even thinking of him, on the flight meant for us both, the trip of a lifetime I'd snubbed for grubby old Salford. I wasn't thinking of golden sands and waves lapping against the shore, nor was I thinking of home and the warmth of the family who'd had my back. The fact was, I couldn't hold onto any thought.
All I had left was questions.
"At this rate, we'll be home by 10!"
The speech came muffled like someone had shoved wool over my ears, and my chest and throat were so sore and cold that it was as though I'd just taken a shower in ice. I was numb.
Numb to everything and everyone. All my tears were cried out.
Unable to close my eyes with the exhaustion of emotions, I took to staring out at a field. Counting the sheep. A technique that was apparently guaranteed to make you fall asleep but one which had always failed me. No, I'd grown up sleeping under tables instead.
I'd grown up afraid of still water, of Mum pushing my head under and grabbing my hair in her fists, her nails scratching against my scalp, the water heavy against my heart... at least until Tracy Beaker introduced me to bubble baths.
Strange. Right now, drowning almost sounded appealing.
May-Li pressed a button switching off the news station and changing it to a song. It was a song I hadn't really heard before, something that was both simple and beautiful. The instruments and language sounded foreign and ethereal to me. Somewhere in the background, I'd discovered that it was in Mandarin. A lullaby, which PoPo used to sing to May-Li as a baby.
My mind slowly began to wake up when I realised we were driving again. It was an unfamiliar route, somewhere May-Li had exited the traffic and now we were travelling down quiet, green paths which weren't particularly smooth. Sloping vales and smells of damp grass and hay wafted in through the window. This wasn't the way home.
"Where are we going?" I heard myself saying.
May-Li didn't take her eyes off the road.
"Home. The long way round."
May-Li POV
She was an enigma to me. A girl who looked utterly devastated and lost. And strangely, familiar. It was no secret that ever since I'd met Jody, I'd seen some of myself reflected in her. She was someone who had a lot of determination, who fought her own corner, who never failed to make her feelings known...
