Cold Tomorrow

[11]

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sarah grabs me in the morning, tearing me from my sleep with a hand on my arm. "I'm ready to tell you now. I'm ready to tell you about the lie."

I look up at her wearily, not completing comprehending. Beside my bed, the clock reads 06:02. "Jesus, it's only six am. Go back to sleep."

"I've been sleeping since midday yesterday. I need to move. I need to speak." Her voice is overly loud in the quiet bedroom and I can practically feel the restless energy radiating off her skin. Still, I'm glad she's awake – glad she's okay.

"Sarah, please," I say. "Not now. I have school today. Don't make it harder than it already is by spilling all your secrets."

"But I have to tell you. You have to know."

I look at her then – really look at her. Her eyes are shadowed, her hair is mess, her bottom lip looks swollen from biting it too much. Her hands quiver and fidget around by her sides. How long has she been awake?

I exhale loudly. "You can tell me this– actually, no, you will tell me this afternoon, when school is done for the day. I can't deal with this right now."

She looks confused, maybe even angry. She leans back. "You've been bugging me for days about telling you and now that I'm finally ready you don't want to hear it? Don't you want to find out? What the hell happened?"

I sit up, knowing that I have no chance of getting back to sleep now. "You did, Sarah. You happened. My father happened. Caden happened."

"That's a lot of generalisation," she says.

"Yeah, well, I don't have the energy or the emotional capability right now to get into the details."

I sigh, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I should want to know what she has to say – she did after all tell me that all I know about her is a lie – but suddenly I don't feel I can face up to it. We may not be on great terms as of now – what with the occasional arguing and uneasiness that hangs around our conversations – but I'm afraid that once she tells me the truth our friendship will fall apart entirely. At least now I can look at her in the eye, ignorant of the secrets she keeps locked up in her mind, and get on with life. What if once she's told me I don't want to speak to her anymore? What if these are the last friendly conversations we ever have?

"This afternoon," I repeat, following a minute of silence. "When I get back from school this afternoon, we'll speak, okay?"

"Okay," she says, nodding.

"Swear on it?" I ask. "That way neither of us can get out of it."

"I swear," she says, crossing her heart.

"I swear." There's silence for a moment. "How was your sleep, by the way?" I ask.

She looks at the floor, backing away from my bed and sitting down on her own. "Fine," she says, trying to act casual. Her eyes shift to the wall, then back to the ground, then to the left.

I take a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "I don't want to skirt around this," I say. "I'm sick of tip-toeing around tricky subjects. You fell unconscious because you were tired, and you were tired because your powers drained some of your life-force. As far as anyone knows, that only happens to people affected by the Limit – to Anarkks – but you say you're on our side. So what does that make you? Are you an Avexyr or an Anarkk?"

Sarah wraps her arms around her waist, tapping her foot slightly as she looks off to her right. When she does look back at me, she says only, "Come on, Melissa. It's six am."