Once

Eleven

"It's beautiful here."

Elle, a little surprised, said, "Er - yeah, I suppose it is."

She looked up into the canopy of intertwining branches overhead, the light glimmering through in such a way that most of them looked pale yellow rather than green. Around her the thick grass lolled over into the pathway, brushing at their ankles and the rolling wheels of David's bike. The undergrowth of ferns and bracken further off was dense and leafy, clawing up the trunks of the trees, spreading like a blanket over everything in sight.

He was right. It was beautiful. But it wasn't quite the sort of thing she'd have expected to come out of the mouth of someone like David.

She said:

"Didn't you have anywhere like this where you lived last?"

"No, nothing like this. Everywhere I've lived before has been built-up - urban. This is the first place we've moved to with proper woods and fields and stuff."

Elle, frowning slightly, said, "Weird. Didn't you say your dad works from the agriculture board or something?"

He grinned and rubbed at the back of his neck.

"Yeah, he does. But he mostly gets assigned boring jobs about, like, polluted canals. This is the first time he's had a job out in the countryside."

"What job?"

"Oh, god knows. Something to do with maize farming. I don't really listen, to be honest." He gave a little laugh, then said quickly, "Anyway, you don't want to hear about that. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about you."

Elle felt herself bristle all over. Those were four words always guaranteed to make her feel sick to her stomach.

"Me? What would you want to know about me?"

David smiled, as if what she'd said had been a joke. She certainly didn't mean it to be.

"Well, let's start with your friends, I suppose. Have you all been friends for a long time?"

"Yeah, ages. Me, Russell and Jax were friends in primary school. Jax knew Maggie back then - they live sort of near each other, you see - but we weren't really friends with her until we started at Farway High. And then we didn't know Sellan until Year 8. He moved to Farway when he was twelve. But we've been friends with him ever since he came here. He and Maggie have been dating for about two years now."

"Oh." David had a surprised frown on his face. "I didn't realise they were dating."

"Yeah, that's understandable. They're not exactly a very touchy-feely couple. To be honest we were all surprised when they told us they were dating - we'd always thought they were more like brother and sister. I mean, they literally only communicate with each other through cat memes and Star Wars quotes."

David shrugged.

"Takes all sorts, I suppose. How about Russell? You say you've known him since primary school?"

"Oh, yeah. We met just about as soon as I moved here. I remember my dad had taken me for a walk along the edge of Farway woods and we just saw this boy, sitting in a huge patch of flowers, making daisy chains."

She smiled to herself at the memory of it. That little boy making daisy chains had been the first thing to make her properly smile since they'd moved here.

Lots had changed since then, of course. But she could still easily imagine Russell sitting happily in the middle of the woods making daisy chains.

David said: