Wild Hearts

The Spaces Between

I like to think I'm some revolutionary. Maybe even a clever kid. Well I'm not. I'm not brave either. I just have these moments of strength, but they aren't my own. They're Ryder's. He deserves them.

Sitting with a resounding sigh on my bed, I dig into my pockets, already wanting to hear his voice. I just need a friend now, more than anything.

It's not there. Strange.

I try the other pocket. OK...

I check both hoodie pockets, and then my back pockets. Then my face flushes over, and a chill runs through my spine like an icy dagger drawn down it.

"Oh, crap..."

Throwing myself up, I flail about wildly, sure the world's gone mad.

But maybe... maybe I just dropped it in my room. Yes. That makes perfect sense.

I begin to tear at my duvet, my sheets, my pillow, and then I'm knocking aside jars of butterflies, not caring at all for their quiet fluttering fury. I am not their admirer; I am a destroyer.

Shit. This was... Aaargh! This was proof! The bloody photo! I could have flaunted the selfie in their faces last night. Look, I'm not making him up! He's goddamn real! And... It's gone. Like it was never there. A dream, fading with the morning.

It's as I trip on my lamp for the second time that I fall to the ground and begin to weep. No. This was my one lifeline—my anchor to Ryder and his world. I was furious—livid to the point of nausea at the realisation of my relationship with him up until this point. A series of fleeting moments, random and lacking in the spaces between.

He held me at a knife's edge—it was exhilarating and so so terrifying, but mostly it was exhilarating. And when the knife was pulled away, there was only a hollowness, a prickling on the skin where once that promise of danger lay.

It was a lie. And I don't want to live that lie anymore.

I needed that phone. To end that lie and claim the friendship that would change everything. Change how mum and dad see me, change how I feel—weak and unable to defend myself from Sam and his words. I needed that phone so I could have some semblance of a normal life. I needed...

This isn't fair!

Burying my face in my hands, I sob quietly, hating myself more than anything. Just when I get a good thing, of course, I have to lose it. I have to...

Something lands with a flickering, a silent beating in the air, onto my head. I move only slightly, but it's enough to unsettle the intruder. Scurrying about in the air, it begins to calm and settles on my knee. It has beautiful wings. A gorgeous deep lavender, melting into blue flecks and the radiance of a golden sun. It was peppered with paint splats of black and white. A butterfly after my own heart. Well, they all were anyway. But this one, in particular, was truly spectacular.

I hold out a finger, and after a lot of patience, and willing to the little guy, finally it carves a path through the air, settling on my finger, in a graceful demonstration that most surely must have ended with a bow.

"Hey little guy," I chuckle, wiping at my eyes with my other sleeve. "how'd you get out of your house?"

I scan the madness, a jungle of stray shirts, bags and even one of those magic eight balls that you shook and it told you some BS until you shook it enough times that it wasn't really worth it by that point. I found it in someone's driveway, rolling away from their bin like an escaped convict.

It was a pretty thing, chipped but otherwise a fully functioning hunk of magic lies. So many broken things discarded because of one little flaw. Imagine if we treated humans that way. Maybe we already do.