Page 37 of Out of the Blue
We meet in the middle of the path. For a moment, we just stare: me at Leah; Leah at the ground.
‘You came,’ I say, stupidly, as if I’m the one who called her here.
Her eyes dart from my shoulder to the blue sky above us to a man walking his dog. Anywhere but my face. My arms twitch forward, but I hold back from hugging her. I may not know exactly what the Standing Fallen believe in, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t approve of our sort of relationship. Leah had enough trouble accepting it before she left; I doubt four months in a religious cult has helped.
Then a thought hits me: maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe she’s trying to save me.
‘If you’re here to convert me, you’re wasting your time,’ I say. ‘I’m not interested in all that redemption crap.’
She flinches; I blink. Both of us are taken aback by the venom in my voice. For months I’ve been rehearsing what I’d say to Leah if I ever saw her again. That wasn’t it.
‘No, of course not.’ Her teeth are a sickly yellow. Leah, the girl who’d get her toothbrush out in the toilets at lunchtime. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’
‘Why, then? How did you even know I was in Edinburgh?’
She looks up towards a couple posing for a selfie. ‘I saw some photos you posted on Instagram. One of you and Perry, about three weeks ago.’
‘And you couldn’t have sent me a message?’ I try to stop myself from shouting, but anger is pulsing through me: anger at her leaving; anger at being left. ‘I’ve called you about a thousand times. I sent you all those emails. I went to your house—’
‘Jaya,please.’ Leah cringes and shakes her head, tresses of greasy hair falling across her face. ‘Seeing you . . . it’s the only thing that’s kept me going.’
I take a step closer. She cowers back, shrinking into herself. ‘Tell me, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me how this happened.’
For a moment, I think she’s going to cry – her lip wobbles and she tilts her head back, blinking rapidly – but she takes a breath and carries on in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t think I can. I don’t even know how it happened.’
The foreign-exchange students begin to pour past us, matching red backpacks bumping against our arms. We move away from them and find a free bench overlooking the Old Town. Leah’s hands are shaking; she presses them between her knees to hold them still. For a few minutes, she doesn’t say anything. She keeps glancing over her shoulder, scanning the hillside for some invisible threat.
‘Remember the first time the Standing Fallen were on the news?’ she says at last. ‘We were coming out of school, and Sam showed us the video?’
I’d forgotten all about that, but the moment comes back to me: Sam pushing through a crowd of first years, muffled audio leaking out of his phone. On the screen, six or seven people were standing on top of a building somewhere in the United States. Most of their speech was drowned out by sirens and chatter, but you could make out a few words: ‘destiny’, ‘mankind’, ‘dragons’ . . . Leah made a joke about it, saying the guy must have picked upGame of Thronesinstead of his Bible.
‘Mum wasn’t well. She’d had a few bad episodes in the past, but nothing like this. The Falls . . . they messed with her head,’ Leah says. ‘When I got home that day, she was watching the video on repeat. Dad said something about them being a bunch of nutters and told her to turn it off. She did as he said, but I noticed her watching it again the next morning. She seemed . . . enthralled by it.
‘Remember how fast it spread? Videos starting popping up from Tokyo, Moscow, Paris . . . then suddenly the London chapter was on the news, and then Manchester and Edinburgh and Glasgow. She was careful not to let Dad find out, but I kept catching her watching them, or looking at their website or forums. I think she liked that they were taking the Falls seriously, as a message from God. Most people had started shrugging them off or ignoring them, like my dad. She thought the Standing Fallen could give her answers, or a purpose. Whatever she was lacking.’
I think of Dad, lost in his labyrinth of notes and hopes and theories. For once, I feel grateful that his obsession wasn’t something darker.
‘Then one night, I woke up to hear Dad shouting,’ Leah says. ‘Mum was packing her stuff. She’d decided we were all going to sign up, all three of us. Dad wasn’t having any of it, obviously, but I told Mum that if she waited until the end of the week, I’d go with her. I managed to get her to agree to that, to give us more time to sort things out.
‘I was hoping she’d calm down after a few days, realize what a mistake she was making. It might have worked, but a few days later Dad tried to talk her into going to hospital to get some help. Mum panicked and ran out of the house – I didn’t want to let her go on her own, so I got in the car with her. I didn’t even take a change of clothes.’
A man dressed as a Hobbit wanders past, talking loudly on his phone. Leah and I fall silent, watching the traffic crawl through the city below. It’s strange how much Leah’s voice has changed. It still has the same high pitch, the same light Highlands accent, but all the confidence that made it hers has gone.
‘So you joined the Edinburgh chapter?’ I ask, once the Hobbit has left.
Leah shakes her head. ‘Glasgow.’
My stomach flips as I remember the video of the Glasgow display I saw on the BBC website a few weeks ago, the same night Teacake fell. If my phone hadn’t cut out, I might have spotted Leah on the roof with the rest of them.
‘What was it like?’ I ask.
‘It was . . . tough. Boring too. We were staying in an old farmhouse outside the city, thirteen of us sharing a room. The food is really basic, just soup and bread. We only get to wash once a week. They don’t let us have any entertainment, no laptops or phones – I had to steal one every time I wanted to check up on you or my dad. Regretted it when I got caught, mind.’
I wait for her to elaborate. Instead, she pushes the sleeves of her hoody up. I let out a gasp. Her fingers are red and calloused, the edges of the nails black with dirt, and there are bruises all over her arms: some fresh purple, others yellow with tinges of pink.
The anger feels like hot coals at the back of my throat. I want names, I want to call the police, I want to storm over to the cult’s base and kick the crap out of whoever did this – but I can tell from the way Leah’s anxiously tugging her sleeves over her fingers that she’s already regretting showing me. Instead, I close my eyes and take a breath.
‘What are you doing in Edinburgh?’ I ask, trying to clean those purplish stains from my memory.
