17 | faceted

ARCHER DOESN'T COME TO SPECIALS.

For the first period of two, it's not as noticeable. I keep my head down; focus all my attention and energy on a new painting. A myriad of colours stains my hands, down to the tips of my fingers, as I work in layer upon layer of colour amidst thick black strokes.

By the second period, my desk feels empty without his constant paper planes filled with his unintelligible scrawl about what he noticed going on outside, or his predictions for our English test next period. He usually adds a quick drawing for added measure, sometimes of me when I'm deep in thought and pretending to ignore him so we don't get in trouble.

I always add my own touch before sending the paper plane back, and usually it's enough to coax a grin out of his permanent frown.

Today, the harsh white lights overhead pools over every table, illuminating the stares of concentration on my peers' faces. Underneath their focused eyes, I can see a love for what they do that I don't possess. Not here; not in this art basement.

It's enough for me to shove all my paints aside, shoulder my bag and march out. I think I know where Archer will be.

In the chaotic spill before English begins, I hide my face in my locker, pretending to be preoccupied with locating something within the amassed contents lurking in the depths. Groups of boys and girls with their echoing laughter and tinny voices stroll past, treating me like I'm nothing more than a shard of blood-red metal.

My fingers fumble with the frangible spines of untouched books―curved and delicate like the skeletons of baby birds―and come away with feathers of dust pooling on my skin. A tapering point of rough paper descends from the puckered lips of my locker door, teetering on the precipice of safety and destruction.

I snatch it up and my chipped nails skid against the sketchbook paper, unmistakable with its fraying edges and loose threads, as I peel apart each fold of a hastily constructed paper airplane.

Ivory, it reads, in hasty 2H scrawl, like he wrote it with the first thing he found in the pocket of the blazer he never wears, If you can get out of english, wanna meet me at the Chain? I would have just taken you with me but I couldn't be in school today. Maybe I'll tell you about it.

Archer

I fold the paper back up, smooth perpendicular quarters cutting over imprinted triangles, and tuck it deep into my blazer pocket before slamming the locker door shut. It echoes in the silence of the corridors, in the ghosts of rushing footsteps, and the heel of my school shoe squeaks against the tile as I make a sharp turn.

Teachers engage in their raucous classes. Doors are shut; zipped closed. All is pooling quietude and emptiness and a solitude that pulsates in the weak fibres in the school's infrastructure. Intangible spirit eyes follow me down the corridor, glaring with hot beams of laser-red blaring into my skin and leaving bullet-holes, and they watch me bleed out on the white tile as I push through the double doors and don't look back.

The stairs skip, flowing away beneath weightless feet, and I discard my tie and roll my blazer into a bundle as I disappear from the sight of prying, unwanted eyes―the venom-black, snake gaze of Mr Rose, and all the places his eyes dart that don't seem to care about the age I look, or the words of protest hanging off my lips―and round a corner comprised of aged-brick and anger painted in dripping red spray-paint.

The train station is a short walk from the school, and though it's the middle of the day, the next train isn't scheduled for another twelve minutes, to my fortune.

Still, fear prickles my skin as I approach the edge of the platform, the toes of my shoes meeting double yellow lines. Looking both ways does nothing to appease my nerves as I drop into a crouch, surveying the tracks.

A gust of wind drives across the emptiness, scattering dust and stray pebbles in an almost mesmerising cloud of blood-bronze. Now is as good a time as any.

I glance over my shoulder a few times more for good measure before draping one leg over the edge of the platform. Blood hammers in my ears and my fingers grab its stony edge with a white-knuckled grip. I twist the stable side of my body with little more than a breathy grunt escaping my lips and roll all my weight forward, into my hands, then scuff my foot along the platform until my heel hangs off the edge. With a deep breath, I kick into the platform and drop down onto the track, scanning the sides for the opening to the Chain.

In my peripheral, headlights flare. The powerful surge of air from the train's steady approach nearly bowls me over, and its ear-splitting shriek and earthly rumble are deafening.

Panic shoots through me. My hands skimming the walls become frantic, and when the subtle decline of the wall becomes gaping, I throw myself in.

One knee bashes against the stone mouth and my elbows slam into the tunnel as though they're trying to dig through like jackhammers. The train comes by as soon as I'm tucked in the small opening, my body buckled and shaking in the claustrophobic space. I crawl, backwards, through the rattling tunnel, until my tights tear with the friction and the floor gives way beneath me.

"Holy―" A voice comes from behind me, and two strong arms snake around my waist. Archer pulls my back into his chest, before his hands fall to my hips, turning me around. "I heard the train."

"I'm fine," I answer the unspoken question hanging in the air. "I made it. Just in time, but I made it."

Archer drags a hand through his hair, frustrated. His eyes fall shut, and the time-space continuum in his irises goes silent.

Every drop of the galaxy dies and resurrects, simultaneously, a paradox of all the questions humanity asks but doesn't have the means or the intention to answer. "I didn't want―,"

"I know, Archer." I cut him off; let my voice drop to a whisper, because anything more poignant seems as though it will shatter us, two frangible human beings we are. "So, why am I here?"

"I wanted company." Archer grabs my hand and pulls me with him, the leather soles of my shoes scraping along the unfinished floor. Maybe he's the most frangible of us both, and I realise I want to see him as a prism: for cosmic rays to glitter beneath his surface and split into all the intangible colours, and bring out every one of his illustrious facets, because, truth be told, I've never met someone with so many dimensions. "And you came."

"I did." Traces of my footprints imprint themselves in the layer of dust caking the grotty tiles. Thick, ugly particles cling to the back of Archer's thighs and spike up like fur on his back. With an impulsive free hand, I dust away the thick layer of grime, and each ladder of Archer's spine coils, shuddering beneath my touch. "I'm sorry." My fingers dart away from him, prickling, but then Archer does the unthinkable and latches his other hand around mine.

We form a circle, like playing Ring a Ring o' Roses years too late, our arms marking out a circumference around the red leather-bound edition of the Communist Manifesto sitting on the floor.

Slipping my hands from Archer's, I crouch to pick it up, and it rests flat on my outstretched palms. "Why do you have this?" I crane my neck to meet Archer's gaze, aware of his lanky form towering over me. At normal vantage, my eyes come level with the wobble of his throat for every time he swallows, but down here, his onyx gaze is inescapable.

He shrugs a shoulder; it bobs up and down beneath the creasing folds of his maroon jumper. "It's...interesting. Reading about what people believe, I mean. It's, like, the passion, you know? People have these ways of thinking that they'll defend to the death, and they'll fight for it. I like it. Not the communism, but the passion. The want for change."

"I guess." I take the hand he drops for me, only then noticing what his head fails to obscure from my vision.

Dripping black spray-paint slashing REVOLUTION on the wall.

"I like your passion," I find myself saying, an afterthought to my afterthought, approaching the wall and touching my hand to the bone-chilled brick. "Never stop doing art."

"I won't, Ivory," Archer mutters, somewhere behind me, but we're so wholly on two different planes of existence I can't tell. "Promise."

I turn to face him after that, surprised to find him right behind me. The toes of his brush mine in our proximity. I cock my head to the side, and my hair spills out over one shoulder. "Why are you here, anyway?"

He reaches up to push a hand through his wavy dark hair. "You never opened the book."

"The book?" I cast a glance to the red and gold copy of the Communist Manifesto still in its original position on the floor. "That book?"

Archer doesn't respond. I make sure he can take in every curve of my confusion as I pad back over to the leather-bound volume and pick it up with two hands, cradling it like a newborn baby.

It's the appearance of a torn fragment of paper that jars me. Quicker, I flick through the aged pages until I find the culprit, smeared with charcoal that laces the print too and smudges it beyond coherency.

A drawing―undoubtedly one of Archer's―lies in fragments across the double page spread, hiding Russian-to-English translations beneath parts of a face; multi-coloured eyes melting into opalescent tears.

"Turn it over," comes Archer's voice.

Obliging, I flip it over between shaking fingers. A pentagram, in red lipstick, mars the back.

"The Witches." My voice is flat, hiding the shame festering deep in my organs and multiplying like binary fission. "They ripped up your work."

"Everly Reach," he confirms, crouching down beside me. Only then do I notice my knees, torn tights and all, digging into the ground with such force my skin even flushes a pale, sickly yellow from the pressure. "Marcus Dee and Tyler Brown were there too, of course, to laugh and spit in my face and hold me back when she started to rip it to shreds."

Before I ask, he rolls up his left sleeve to his elbow, revealing a black and yellow bruise, like a bumble-bee melting into his skin. His right arm is a perfect match, and I can envision the fingers digging into his skin like it was a show they put on just for me.

I was never really a Witch. I was just Rebel���s lap-dog.

Because Witches do this, and in the moment, I can only rest trembling fingers on the discoloured skin. I can't imagine being the person to inflict the hurt, not when I'm certain that, in the eyes of Rebel Montenero, I was born with a target on my back.

I tear away my touch when Archer rolls his sleeves back down, cuffing them so they overhang his palms.

Silence suspends silence, until he chooses to speak. "Why'd you come?" he asks, rolling back onto his feet.

I take the hand he offers me, and this time, we both linger.

"I wanted company," I echo, and my voice comes back to me.

☆☆☆