Thyla - Kate Gordon [33]
‘Okay, okay,’ said Rhiannah. ‘Thanks, Sara.’
She turned again to Harriet, clamped a hand firmly on her shoulder and looked intently into her eyes. ‘Are you with us, Harry?’ she asked.
Harriet sighed, loudly. ‘Yeah, of course I’m with you,’ she said. ‘You’re my clan. It’s just … I can almost smell them, you know?
‘Me too,’ said Sara, scrunching up her nose. ‘Rin, do you think they’re close?’
Rin shook her head. ‘I can smell them too, but you know their scent lingers. They can’t mask it like the Diemens can. They must have been here sometime earlier on. I’ve been smelling them around here heaps the past couple of days. They must be upping their patrols, like we are, and increasing their numbers. The scent would be much stronger if there was a group of them patrolling.’
‘Maybe there’s just one,’ Harriet said, her voice shaking. ‘Maybe there’s just one out there, watching us.’
The girls looked around, and I was worried for a moment that they would see me. I ducked down low behind the tree.
‘Harriet, your sense of smell isn’t strong enough yet to detect just one of them. Maybe in a hundred years. Don’t flatter yourself,’ Rhiannah said. ‘We should go.’
The three girls turned around and began sprinting towards the high, spike-topped walls. They weren’t heading for the gate and the black box that lets you in and out. They were heading straight for the wall – straight for the hard, rough rocks. Maybe they couldn’t see like I could. Maybe, in the dark, they couldn’t tell that they were about to slam into the wall.
I nearly screamed out to them, ‘No! You’re going to hurt yourself!’
But then, as I gasped in awe and horror, the three girls arrived at the foot of the wall, crouched low to the ground and leapt right over the top.
I stood for what felt like eternity, staring at the empty space left by the three girls.
It was impossible.
I hadn’t seen it.
I was imagining things. It wasn’t … it couldn’t have been … real.
When I fell before, after the jolt, back in my room, I must have bumped my head. That must be it. What I had just ‘seen’ was not possible.
‘Hey, Tessa?’ The voice shocked me so much I nearly fell over. I stumbled as I turned around.
With my strange night-time vision, I could make out quite clearly the owner of the voice and the girl standing beside her.
Laurel and Erin.
They were walking towards me, hugging their woollen jumpers around themselves. On their bottom halves, they wore flannel pyjamas. Laurel’s were decorated with pigs, and Erin’s had hundreds of tiny yellow baby chickens. Laurel’s red curls were wild and messy. As they got closer, I saw that Erin’s lips were pressed back in a wicked grin and her dark eyes were sparkling.
‘Whatcha doing out here?’ asked Erin.
‘Yeah, I thought you were sick,’ Laurel said.
‘I am much better,’ I lied, quickly.
I wondered what Laurel and Erin had seen. I wondered how well they could see in the dark.
This was an opportunity to make sure I had simply been hallucinating. If Laurel and Erin had seen nothing, then I must have injured my head. Or I was mad.
‘Did you see anything … strange just then?’ I asked.
Laurel thought for a moment, a finger tapping on her chin. ‘Well, we did see Inga Koch running down the hall, yelling, “Okay, who stole my L’Oréal moisturiser? Whoever it was is going to die”!’ Laurel waggled her fingers in my face and made a voice that sounded like a witch’s. Then she grinned from ear to ear as she pulled a white tube from her pocket.
The label on the tube read, ‘Advanced Perfect Night Cream.’
‘Why did you steal Inga’s night cream?’ I asked distractedly. Inside my head, the words were repeating: You’re mad, you’re mad, you’re mad.
Laurel shrugged. ‘Partly for you. Those girls are being total bitches to you. But mostly for fun. You should have seen her, running down the hallway