Page 33 of Out of the Blue
‘You have to know that,’ I say. ‘You couldn’t have done anything. So don’t feel guilty, OK? Don’t blame yourself.’
The wings twitch. Teacake takes one of my hands in both of hers; it feels like sand brushing over my skin. She opens her mouth, and starts to speak: an advert for the Bank of Scotland, and the chorus of ‘Call Me Maybe’.
I laugh. I laugh until tears roll down my cheeks. Teacake joins in, a weirdly musical noise that sounds a bit like water pouring out of a bottle. There are a billion songs that she could have quoted from, that I could have read something into – ‘Nothing Compares to You’, maybe, or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – but not ‘Call Me fricking Maybe’. It doesn’t matter though. Like everything she does, it’s kind of perfect in its own weird way.
We’re both still laughing when the door opens. I look around, still grinning, expecting to see Allie or Calum walking towards us. Instead a blast of shock makes my head spin.
‘Rani?’
My sister is standing in the doorway staring right at Teacake. I swear under my breath: in all my panic about her following me, I must have left the door unlocked. Teacake yelps and falls off the back of the wooden barrier; with a beat of her wings, she freezes in the air just a metre above the floor. My sister’s jaw drops. In an instant, my shock turns to anger.
‘What are you doing here?’ My footsteps echo as I storm across the hall. Rani shrinks back, her hands pressed against the door. ‘How did you find us?’
‘I took your phone – you were in the bathroom. I saw your messages . . .’ She trails off. Her eyes are fixed on Teacake, who’s scrambling to her feet, a half-eaten Tunnock’s teacake still in one hand. ‘That’s a Being. That’s aBeing, Jaya.’
My throat is tight. ‘I know, genius.’
This is it. This is the end. She’s going to tell Dad. He’ll march right over here, snatch Teacake from us and sell her to the highest bidder. She’ll be paraded around the country like a circus freak, or experimented on in some awful lab. She’ll never be free again, not even to hang out with us, eating biscuits and listening to the radio. She’ll never get to fly.
‘Ran, youcan’ttell him,’ I blurt out. ‘You have to keep this a secret, OK?’
But Rani looks like she’s actually frozen, her eyes buglike behind her glasses. Teacake’s wings finally give out and she lands on the tiles with a bump.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Rani stammers. ‘Where did – Jaya, how is this . . .’
I’m scared she might pass out from the shock, like she did when the policewoman told her what had happened to Mum. My anger evaporates. I take her hand and lead her to a seat, then make her eat a biscuit and drink some water. Teacake comes to join us. Her head swerves from Rani to me and back again, as if connecting the dark brown eyes we got from Mum, the long noses we got from Dad.
‘This is my sister,’ I tell Teacake. ‘Rani.’
Her fingers shaking, Rani holds up one hand in a wave. Teacake blinks at it for a second, then slaps her own hand against it. I burst out laughing; she’s finally figured out how to high five. Rani’s mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, but it’s a full minute before she can speak again.
‘Where did you find her?’
I tell her everything. I don’t hold anything back. I don’t think I could – I didn’t realize how much this secret had been weighing on me. The story bursts past the dam and comes pouring out, details and plot points getting all tangled up in the rush. For once, Rani doesn’t interrupt. She listens to the whole unbelievable tale, her eyes growing wider by the minute, until I reach the point where we are now: hiding in McEwan Hall, with no real idea as to where we’ll take Teacake next.
Rani bites her lip. ‘We have to tell Dad,’ she says.
I knew she’d say that. But instead of making me mad it just hurts. I wish she’d take my side for once. It was different when Mum was still here. If she and Dad wouldn’t let Rani do something, I’d always back Rani up. When our parents were arguing, she’d come to my room and we’d make a duvet fort and watch stupid YouTube videos to take our minds off it. Us against them. We were a united front.
‘This isn’t about Dad,’ I tell her now. ‘We have to do what’s best for Teacake, and that’s helping her get home. You should have seen her when she fell – her wing was a total mess; she couldn’t stay in the air for more than a few seconds. Allie hasn’t even finished fixing it, and she’s already so much better.’
As if to demonstrate this, Teacake springs off the barrier. She floats towards the skylight, spins through the dusty shafts of light, then swoops past us. The edge of her left wing brushes Rani’s cheek. My sister gasps and lets out a nervous giggle.
She hasn’t given up yet, though. ‘But Dad could help,’ she says. ‘He knows more about the Beings than anybody, probably.’
‘No, Rani!’ I run my hands through my hair, tugging at the roots. ‘Sorry, but it’s not your secret to tell. Or mine, even.’
She argues, of course – Rani can never take no for an answer. Even when she realizes that I’m not going to give in this time, she doesn’t let it go. She’s like Dad that way.
‘How about this?’ she says. ‘If she can fly back before the end of the holidays, we won’t tell Dad. But if she can’t, or if anything goes wrong, we’ll ask him for help.’
Crap.I hadn’t even thought about what we’ll do when we have to go back to school. I don’t even know if Dad’s planning on taking us home – I suppose he is, seeing as he thinks his Being will have landed and made him his fortune by then. Either way, we’ll need to think of a more long-term solution for when the holidays end.
‘Fine,’ I say, just to get Rani to shut up. ‘If it comes to that, I’ll tell Dad. But not until I say so, OK?’
Reluctantly she shakes on it. I spend the rest of the morning filling her in on the little we’ve learned about Teacake, trading thoughts on where she might have come from. It actually feels good to share all this with her. Now one part of my secret has been removed, I can breathe a little easier.
By the time two o’clock comes around, Rani’s nerves around Teacake have worn off. Calum comes in for his shift to find her skidding left and right across the stone floor, giggling and trying to follow Teacake’s bursts of flight around the room. His eyebrows rise when he sees her, but he doesn’t react with the anger I’d expected.
