Page 137 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

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Idon’t remember the taxi arriving and I don’t remember entering it. Vision swimming and legs sprawled over the back seat, I realize that the world is moving, passing by us in an amber blitz, a streak, of burning lights.

“Fireflies,” I whisper, and I notice my lips are slanted, adjacent to Rory’s smooth cheek and brushing it ever so slightly. He casts me a sidelong glance, an amused quirk to his lower lip.

We’re a tangle of bodies in the back seat, and none of us are wearing any seatbelts. At some point, Danny acquired a giant helium thirtieth birthday balloon, which bobs around the roof of the taxi as though trying to escape into the sky. Beside me, Finlay lies slumped at a diagonal against the cab door, his aviator glasses lopsided across the bridge of his nose and one of his legs curled around mine.

I try to pull my leg free and onto the floor, but after a moment of tugging at my thigh, I discover I’ve somehow tucked my calf beneath the weight of my own body. I laugh, because it’s somehow the funniest thing in the world, even though my body’s too hot, everything is too hot, and I lean into Rory in a bid to settle myself.

“What do you feel?” he whispers curiously down to me, as my head rolls down his chest and tumbles into his lap, my hair spilling across his thighs. His voice sounds bell-like and beautiful, and looking up at Rory is like admiring the world’s most powerful angel.

He’s all I see when I concentrate on his eyes, a pale iridescent gray. The world slips into nothing, like a reversal of the big bang, a sudden implosion leading to a resultant nothingness. Just me and Rory and gray, gray eyes.

“I feel…” I hesitate and examine myself, wondering how to select the ideal adjective, then I realize with a start that what I’ve already spoken is answer enough. Not just enough, but the perfect answer. Themot juste— the favored phrase of a teacher once, long ago, across an ocean.I feelis a complete sentence, two small words, but with enough power to be consistently unattainable for me.

I feel.

I feel, and it’s incredible.

I feel everything, pain and pleasure and fear and hope. The world and its sensations are magnified. All of it swirls around me in a writhing, contorting mass, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get to sleep again, not when the peaks of the world are so high and so freely available to climb, not when there are so many bright lights in the sky to absorb and stare at in the night.

I laugh and I feel, and it’s a miracle.

Rory strokes my hair gently.

Danny’s voice penetrates my mind, giddy and chatty as he discusses the lines on Luke’s palm, touching and caressing Luke’s hand like it’s a map of the world he wants to explore. Luke lets him, idly extending his arm so that Danny can trace patterns along his skin, shooting me a bemused look in the process.

I laugh at them, at how cute they are, and nestle my head back on Rory’s lap, my feet resting across Finlay. It’s so comfortable, it feels like belonging.

The taxi — or the world — rocks over cobblestones, and I screw my eyes shut to brace myself for the impact. My insides judder, and for a sharp, sudden moment, I’m me again, roiling with liquid and chemicals. But then the road smooths out into tarmac, and the sudden flash of worry, the creep of inhibitions, lessen, until I’m buoyed, floating high into the air once again.

I’m rolling my head across Rory’s lap like a happy, contented kitten. I note with detached interest that, beneath me, Rory’s erection stirs.

“I want,” I whisper huskily, gazing up at Rory’s perfect face. I reach up and card my fingers through strands of his gleaming hair. “I want you.”

Desire flashes brightly in Rory’s expression, but he glances across to the side, out the window, checking our whereabouts, as though determining how long he can hold out for. I wait, anticipating an answer, but it doesn’t come from Rory.

“Road’s blocked,” the driver says in a gruff voice, and I’m tugged swiftly back to reality again, like a child yanking at the string of a kite. The driver wasn’t meant to be there, he wasn’t supposed to impose on this scene, on my innermost fantasies.

“What do you mean?” Rory asks sharply, still with his wits even at his most intoxicated. He toys with my hair fanned across his lap like it soothes him.

The scent of burned things and smoke seeps inside through the partially opened windows, clinging to the cab. I wrinkle my nose in dismay, burying my face close to Rory’s groin. His cock leaps beside me, straining beneath the fabric of his pants.

“Protest in the square. Seems like a sit-in. Can’t get in or out, I’d have to drop you off here.”

“Fin, check what’s happening,” Rory orders, losing none of his authority. But despite the coolness of his voice, there’s tension in his legs, a tautness that wasn’t there before. He meets Luke’s eyes in apprehension. “Why the fuck are they camped outside our house?”

Finlay’s already on his phone before Rory finishes speaking. The blue light of the screen illuminates his face prettily, and he slides his plastic aviator glasses up over his forehead to read. “It’s no’ whit ye think,” he instantly reassures. “Apparently Tilda Raleigh, the author, made a statement at the book festival,” he explains, eyes quickly scanning the screen. “Said something about the public debate gettin’ toxic. From what I can make oot, it doesnae even look that bad a speech? But Antiro’s descended, anyway, I guess tae teach her a lesson.”

Luke twists in his seat, the better to see what lies ahead. “Mow the fuckers down,” he drawls to the driver, and I laugh.

“Wait here,” Rory instructs the driver, with all the agency and self-assurance of someone at least twice his age. He gently nudges my head from his lap. For a moment, I’m bereft by Rory’s absence, but as soon as he leaves the taxi, Finlay grabs my arm and helps guide me out from his side of the vehicle. I stumble past the big thirtieth birthday balloon on my way outside.

As we approach, the first thing we see is thick black smoke rising into the sky, ascending, like a tribal warning sign, in fat python-like billows. Finlay’s arm curls around my waist, holding me in place, and together the three of us take in the scene in front of us.

Hundreds of protesters surround the wrought-iron fence around the perimeter of the small garden square, the large white marquees inside growing shadowed by the intense smoke that curls and drifts from a source close by. The protesters drink and laugh and chatter merrily, sitting on the cobbled ground or on top of parked cars. Some appear to have brought and pitched their own tents for the occasion.

Just like every time before, Antiro flags and placards dot the area. One of the most prominent signs reads,DEATH OF THE AUTHOR? I FUCKING WISH!!!

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