Young Writers Society

Note: Part seven was really long so after it had been up for a few days I chopped it. If you want the *crucially important* piece that bridges the gap between P7 and P8 then I'll have it up soon, or you can PM me in the meantime =]

Endless Descent [Part 8]

'I hope you two got along alright while I was gone,' Lan said.

'Swimmingly,' Luci lied. He smirked at me and I couldn't help smiling back. Not because I was happy, or because I was willing to abandon my grudges against him, but because he had kissed me and that smirk on his face reminded me every time of a secret shared only between the two of us.

Sometimes it seems stupid. I mean, was I so fickle that one kiss from a boy made my principles quiver and my allegiances fall? It wasn't a love story, not even close. It was just two kids home alone with nothing to do but argue and make up.

Half the time I was playing the arguments out over and over in my head before they ever happened, planning on what I would say when he said this and how I would respond, piecing together sentences so carefully until the times when I was just waiting to spew one of them out. They never turned out nearly as eloquent as I wanted them to.

Then, other times, I was dreaming of some childish romance, when my heart ran away with me into some secret world that was only just opening up to me, where I imagined how we might walk down the road holding hands and steer off into some field when nobody was looking, like in some old seventeenth century novel.

I swear, that kiss was like a trigger for a whole bombardment of thoughts I'd barely ever considered before. It hovered in my mind and in the air and in every glance it buzzed between us. The night he'd wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. The night I'd let him. The silence that hovered in the ar and the feeling of another person sitting next to me.

If you're young, you should wait a long time before you kiss someone. Not so long that you never get to taste the passion of youth, but longer than you have to. That first touch is like a drug. Once you've felt it, you never stop craving it.

After the first time you sleep in the same bed as someone else you never get used to sleeping alone. I doubt there is a man or woman alive who hasn't at some point done something stupid to quench that need for skinship.

He teased me on purpose, I'm sure he did. Sammy had told me he was a flirt and we'd spent so much time arguing that I had never seen it before until then. It was awful.

'It was only going to be a matter of time till he got you,' she told me when I briefly asked what she'd meant. Leila, Sammy's thinner, green-eyed duplicate, nodded in agreement. She was the only other girl in the family and was in Luci's class. When they were together Sammy spoke enough for the two of them. 'Sometimes he stands close behind you and speaks quietly into your ear, or he'll brush his hand against yours, and it will be like an accident except he'll catch your eye so you know it's on purpose. He only does it to the girls. We all know what he's like, so it doesn't mean anything, it's like a game.'

It was awful. Others joined in to add to the list the things that he did when it was just the two of us, and regardless of what they said I still let every fleeting glance play on my mind.

'It's ere, I can't say whether it's a good thing or bad.' Lan said, seemingly to himself, when we stood over the sink washing dishes. When his eyes were focused on the laptop screen in front of him, its pale blue light making his features look flat, Luci waited until I put one dish down to lean in when our arms crossed over.

'What, Uncle?' He asked.

'You two being so quiet.'

'I'm always quiet, it's her who argues.'

The noise escaped my lips before I could stop it, and couldn't have been more patronising. 'Hah!'

He retaliated almost instantly with a flicker of soapy, greasy water in my face. I took a full scoop of it that he only half dodged. The other half splattered in shiny white suds across the floor. He laughed as he threw the drying towel at me and tried to dodge another rain of suds.

We went a few rounds before I realised that Lan was staring at us in some kind of bemused confusion. I coughed and returned to washing. Luci took one last swipe at me and we returned to sensibility.

But then there were those moments. One day we were walking to school, he latched his little finger onto my index and we walked in an awkward silence, when he wouldn't look at me at all.

And just as expected he let go when we started the slow bend towards the bus stop where everybody would be waiting.

One day Valeo put his arm around me and Luci fell still, eyes on mine even though part of him didn't seem quite there. The grinning creases beneath his eyes faded and his white toothed smile faded to a whisper of wonder, like he was staring at some distant daydream.

It felt like no matter how much I tried, he had so much brightly coloured armour around him that every layer shed just revealed another. Somewhere beneath it was a skinny boy with a heart that made sense to someone, but only heaven knows what went through his mind.