| 1 |

SYLVIA

Nothing can prepare you for the unexpected.

A handsome young man performed a perfect service ace on the TV screen. Tich swallowed, admiring his form in a moment of undisguised infatuation before she remembered where she was. She sat up straighter on the sofa, and glanced quickly at Sylvia to check whether her best friend had noticed. Fortunately Sylvia was distractedly rubbing her temples.

“Honestly, I fail to see the family resemblance,” Tich concluded, as if it was something Sylvia hadn’t heard a million times before. She squinted at her beautiful blonde friend, with her freckles and dimples and the baby fat in her chin, and then made a show of looking back at Sylvia’s brother - the famous Alan Holmes, a muscular Adonis, powerful and strong. The most powerful Sylvia had ever been was pushing Tich off the sofa in order to wrestle for the last chocolate bar. “How is he your brother? How is he such a superstar, when you’re like me? Positively normal?”

Sylvia laughed and threw a small cushion at Tich. “Don’t you ever get tired of asking that?”

Tich hugged the cushion tighter.

“Maybe I’ll believe it if I ever meet him - I’m still not convinced those family photos aren’t fake!” Sylvia shook her head, half way between exasperation and amusement. Tich was glad to have distracted her from the headache.

“Why would anyone fake that?” she snorted. “Trust me, he’s a lot more annoying in person.” But even though she said that, she beamed with pride at her brother on the TV.

Alan had been scouted when he was thirteen. He’d been given all the best training and every opportunity to succeed. Everyone knew he was going to make it big some day. Maybe he’d even manage to win Wimbledon! Sylvia couldn’t help but brag about him. Maybe that was part of why Tich had such a crush on him - because anyone Sylvia admired couldn’t be anything less than extraordinarily amazing.

“There are some real weirdos in the world,” Tich said seriously. “I wouldn’t put it past someone, somewhere to have done so.”

“Is this your way of confessing it to me?” Sylvia asked, suddenly aghast.

“What?” Tich blinked at her. Her best friend was crouched on the sofa staring at her suspiciously. “What?! No! I do not have any weird photos of your brother.”

“What about normal ones?” Sylvia checked, narrowing her eyes. Tich flushed a deep pink.

“Oh my God, Sylvie. No!” She buried her head in the cushion, as her friend cackled hysterically.

“Don’t pretend I didn’t see you with that magazine article about him last week!”

“Oh, really?” Tich threw the cushion to the side and jumped to her feet. Then wished she hadn’t. Sometimes she forgot how small she was. Even with Sylvia sat down, she was barely a foot higher than her. “Well, you’re one to talk, Sylvie. You’ve practically got a shrine to Mark Layton on your bedroom wall.”

“So what if I do? Mark’s not related to me,” Sylvia said, grinning mischievously up at Tich. “But I’m joking, Tich. Chill.” She waved Tich back down onto the sofa. “You know I think it’s cute you like him.” Tich flopped back down, puffing out her cheeks childishly.

“Don’t patronise me,” she grumbled, aware that she was being petulant. They watched the match for a few more points. “So, when do you think he’ll come home?”

“Honestly, Tich, I don’t know. His trainer keeps them on a pretty strict schedule. And he doesn’t like it when the team aren’t spending quality time together.”

“So he gets to go gallivanting around the world while you’re stuck here with me?” She grinned at her friend, but when she looked over at Sylvia her best friend was oddly serious.

“You know, I was jealous when he got scouted. Initially. But when I realised how hard he had to train I realised I was the lucky one. Besides,” she paused and then shot Tich a cheesy grin. “There are worst places than being stuck here with you.”

Tich laughed. Then whistled when Alan pulled up his shirt slightly to mop up the sweat from his brow, revealing toned abs beneath.

“Oh, gross.” Sylvia pushed her when she realised what Tich was doing. “You’re such a perv! Honestly, it’s bad enough when Marilyn does it.” Tich cackled. It was really for show. Sylvia always go so wound up over it.

“Only because Marilyn does it to every guy on the planet. She sets the bar low.” That was why she stepped right over it.

“So you’re saying you have better taste?” Sylvia asked, wrinkling up her nose. “Why is it that of everyone on the planet, you had to choose Alan to find attractive?” Tich pushed Sylvia’s arm off her with a laugh.

“Hey, I like lots of people.”

“Name one other person,” Sylvia said, sceptically.

“Well, I wouldn’t say Mark was unattractive,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at Sylvia suggestively. Sylvia rolled her eyes. “You and Marilyn should set up a club.”

“Who says we haven’t?”

“Tich, the idea of you actually having a fan club for anyone, even Al, is about as likely as you turning up at my door in a frilly pink dress and heels because to hell with gender stereotypes, you just want a guy to say you’re pretty.”

Tich grinned.

Of course, that kind of feminism was really more Sylvia’s thing. Tich wasn’t trying to make a point with her clothing choices. She just liked to be comfortable. She’d been running on the school athletics team for as long as she could remember. The idea of high heels, and what those could do to her feet was horrifying. She could fall and break something. She might never run again.The dress was laughable for other, less flattering reasons. Tich wouldn’t be able to fill out a bodice. People could complain about their weight all they liked, but Tich wished they’d have a little more compassion for the forever flat chested. She was aptly named. Skinny and no taller than the average twelve-year-old. That was what happened when your mother refused to believe being gluten intolerant was a thing. Between her physical stature and the crew cut, any kind of dress just didn’t suit her.

“Hey, I like pink,” she protested. Sylvia snorted.

“Well, on that note, I’m getting a refill.” Sylvia stretched and grabbed her glass off of the table before leaping to her feet. “Do you want anything?”

“Only for these ads to be over!” Tich exclaimed, snatching up the remote an flicking through the channels.

“You goose,” Sylvia laughed, shaking her head. Tich heard her footsteps going down the hall to the kitchen and flicked through the channels, trying to find something more interesting. News. An expose on chimpanzees. Soaps. A cooking show. A documentary about China. She heard a glass smash and shook her head. Sylvia was so clumsy.

“Are you alright?” she yelled. Sylvia didn’t reply. Tich sighed and reluctantly got to her feet, pocketing the remote out of habit. She might as well help clean up. That was when she heard Sylvia’s mother yelling for help.

---

There was a funeral.

Tich was still reeling over what had happened. Her dearest, most wonderful friend was gone. One moment everything was normal and the next...

She’d thought this shouldn’t be possible. Surely they had better medical knowledge these days to prevent this kind of thing? But Sylvia had shown no signs. She’d just passed out in the kitchen, and never woken up. No matter how much Tich had pleaded with her to open her eyes.

Sudden Unexplained Death. That was the technical term. As if having an official title for ‘we don’t have any idea what happened’ was helpful. Even after the autopsy. The brightest medical minds were clueless about what had happened to Sylvia. It was meant to be rarer in girls. It might be genetic. She kept replaying this scene in her head of the paramedics trying to get a case history and Sylvia’s mum just repeating ‘I don’t know’.

Possibly her grandfather had it, but Sylvia’s dad never talked about his family.

Sylvia’s heart had simply stopped, and Tich didn’t know how to live with that knowledge. She hadn’t gone to school. Her parents had taken her to grief counselling.

She’d cried a lot. But none of it had brought Sylvia back.

Now she stood with their friends at the wake; Marilyn, still dressed like a hooker because that was the only kind of clothing she owned – at least it was black, Helen, whose round red face was even redder from the tears and whose black frock made her look even dumpier than usual; and Camilla, who’d made the effort of not making the effort to look eccentric. A smart, plain suit, unadorned by her usual hats, bangles, feathers and sparkles. For once she looked neither confident, or deranged. She didn’t look like herself. None of them did.

Tich felt Sylvia’s absence dearly. How she would laugh if she could see them right now.

Alan Holmes and his team were standing with his parents.

She couldn’t even look at him. She wanted her best friend back. She wished she could replace all the famous people in the world, if she could only wake up from this nightmare.

But the priest said his words, and they lowered her coffin into the ground.

The earth took her.

At the wake their school friends came up to the four of them and said their condolences, and swept onto Sylvia’s parents to repeat the same empty words.

A few of the girls giggled when they saw Al and his friends. The guys made snide comments.

Tich didn’t even have the energy to get angry.

She hugged Sylvia’s mum and dad goodbye, and left without a word.

They’d asked her if she would speak. But she hadn’t been able to find the words. So, Camilla had said some lovely, eloquent things.

Everyone kept telling Tich what she should do. That it would make her feel better. That she would regret it if she didn’t. But how could she regret anything more than she did right now? They didn’t know. They couldn’t know what she felt.

---

It was a month before she went back to school.

She’d driven herself mad at home, looking at photos and gorging herself on her grief. It wasn’t healthy. At least school offered her some distractions. But walking in there was bad enough. Every corridor contained a memory of the two of them.

Then, walking around the corner like the mockery of a daydream, she spotted Alan Holmes and his friends heading to class. Her mouth dropped open as they passed her, barely looking. She supposed another gawping girl was nothing to them, but she couldn’t understand what they were doing there. There were only three of them: Alan, Victor and Jim. She remembered some rumour about Tony giving up school, and Mark Layton hadn’t been at the funeral. He wasn’t really a part of the team. They were muttering quietly to themselves as they rounded the corridor out of sight.

“Did you see them?” Marilyn asked, reapplying lip-gloss. “Totally hot, right?”

Tich looked at her in horror. Helen made a grunt of disapproval.

“You’re an idiot, Mar,” Helen said. “She doesn’t need that right now.”

She couldn’t believe Marilyn was interested in chasing boys right now. How could she be acting like this. Like this was months ago. Didn’t Sylvia matter to her at all?

“You’re loss, you’re missing out on serious eye-candy,” Marilyn said, leaning around the corner to stare at the boys’ arses, and making sounds of approval. If Sylvia was here, she would’ve feigned throwing up. Helen launched into a tirade about how thoughtless Marilyn was, which should have made Tich feel better. But she couldn’t feel much beyond the faint nausea churning in her stomach.

It kept hitting her.

That Sylvia was gone. That nothing would ever be the same again.

Everyone was trying too hard. To be normal. To be understanding. To act how they were supposed to be acting. No matter what they said, it didn’t feel right. Tich was unsettled. Standing in the middle of her friends, she’d never felt so alone.

Camilla wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gently pulled Tich aside.

“You know this is her way of coping, right?” Camilla checked. Tich nodded. “Being normal. I’ve never seen her reapplying makeup so much in a day as she has these last few weeks. It’s a mask, Tich. She’s not being deliberately insensitive...”

Tich stared at her. What was her reaction supposed to be? Was she meant to somehow validate her friends behaviour? Was that her job now?

Camilla must have seen something in her face, because she stopped trying to explain. Tich didn’t say anything. It was better that way.

“I heard he came home to support his parents,” Helen was saying conversationally to Marylin, scratching her cheek with a pudgy hand. “That was nice of him.”

“Say something?” Camilla asked quietly. But what was she supposed to say? She didn’t have the energy for an argument. Or even a conversation. So she settled for something more obvious.

“Everything’s different now,” she said. She’d wanted to meet Al before. Now that he was here, she was bitterly reminded of what could have been. What should have been. Sylvia shouldn’t have died for a start.

“I know,” Camilla said. It didn’t help. “And I’m just as sorry as you are.” Which somehow did. Tich was sorry. She’d wanted to help. She’d wanted to save Sylvia. She’d wanted Sylvia to live, and she was sorry she hadn’t been able to make any of that happen. She was sorry for herself. She felt so guilty, because she’d been there. Right there, with Sylvia before she died, and she hadn’t noticed anything. She should have been able to prevent it somehow, and the fact that she couldn’t. That she didn’t. That according to the doctors and therapists, there was nothing she could have done, didn’t made it better. It just made her angry. Furious at the ridiculous injustice in their pathetic excuse for a world. It was never meant to happen like this.

Camilla touched her arm, sympathetically.

Tich gritted her teeth. She was scaring her, she knew. If she didn’t control herself better, they’d pull her out of school again. She’d be sat alone with her thoughts. Spiralling. She couldn't stand it. She pulled a wobbly smile out of nowhere and didn’t say anything more until they headed for class.

---

Alan and Victor were seventeen, which placed them in the year above Tich and the girls, whilst Jim was fifteen, placing him in the year below. Tich barely saw them apart from when they walked past in the corridors, Jim loudly complaining that he hated all of his classes, and Victor promptly kicking him. Al didn’t say much of anything. The girls who had been giggling and swarming around them seemed to have drawn back a bit since the morning.

“I heard he shouted at Elaine,” Helen supplied as the four of them sat down to lunch. “She was trying to talk to him about tennis when he snapped, and yelled that he’d just lost his sister and wasn’t interested in flirting right now.”

“Ouch.” Camilla winced in sympathy for the girl. Tich smiled. It served them right. Empty headed idiots. They never thought about anyone else. Marilyn started fussing over a ladder in her school tights. Tich looked across to the three of them. As she watched, Victor grabbed the attention of Bethany and Paige and asked them something. Bethany pointed in their direction, and Tich looked away quickly. She caught Camilla waving.

“He probably wanted to know who we were,” Helen said, crossing her legs into a yoga position.

“Really?” Marilyn was intrigued, and craned her neck to glance at them over her shoulder. “How did we get his attention?”

“She means, he probably wanted to know who Sylvia’s friends were,” Camilla said slowly, enunciating clearly so that Marilyn couldn’t fail to understand.

“He’s not coming over here, is he?” Tich double-checked, not wanting to turn around and see for herself. Camilla studied her for a second before nodding. Tich could have guessed as much because Marilyn was rolling up her skirt. “I’m going for a run,” she said, pushing her jacket potato away. Camilla frowned at her, but Tich was already quick marching across the playground. Behind her she heard the others greeting Al and his friends.

She had a case of adrenaline as she got changed. There was a buzzing noise in her ears as she knelt down to do up her laces. She stretched out her quads in a practised way, and let her mind go blank. She and Sylvia sometimes used to play tennis. It was just for fun. Neither of them was very good, and somehow that made it even more fun because they ended up laughing at how ridiculously bad they were. Tich had always liked to run. Sylvia used to stand on the track when they were practising for meets and cheer her on. Sylvia used to dance, but there were never many opportunities for dance performances in their town. Tich had always wanted to support Sylvia in everything she did. Stupidly, she’d felt the same way for Al. Even though she didn’t really know him. Every time she’d seen him on TV she’d secretly prayed he would win, because she knew Sylvia was doing the same.

---

The field was empty, which was to be expected this lunchtime. There weren’t any scheduled practices. The season was over. No more till next summer. Tich didn’t bother to find a timer. She didn’t set off from the blocks, she simply started to jog. Slowly at first and then gradually picking up the pace, she ran and she ran and she ran until her lungs burned. The wind pricked at her eyes, and after several laps she started to get a stitch in her side. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to sprint once more around the track, to collapse, wheezing at the finish line. Her time away from school had made her a bit rusty.

She used to run in order to think. Now, she ran to do the opposite. She focused on the way her muscles felt. Focused on the rhythm of her breathing, and blocked everything else out.

“That was impressive.” She closed her eyes. Was it?

“Not really,” she whispered, still panting. She heard his footsteps getting closer, until he stopped and sat down nearby.

“It’s Tich, right?” She stared at the sky. She didn’t want to look at him. Surely he must know the answer to that, she didn’t need to tell him. “Are you avoiding me?” She closed her eyes again. She must’ve come across as very rude. That wasn’t her intention. She sat up and realised he’d positioned himself so that he was facing away from her, giving her space, and she smiled slightly.

“A little bit.” He nodded, stiffly.

“Mum and Dad said they’d like to see you again,” he explained, as if commenting on the weather. “Will you visit?” She shifted and wrapped her arms around her legs, hunching into her knees. She picked at her shoes, debating this internally. He turned his head to look at her, and she stared at the blueness of those eyes. Sylvia’s eyes.

“You look like her,” she said, and he looked away again. “Not very much, but it’s enough.”

“Is that a no?”

“I’ll come,” she said, and got to her feet. Time for another run. This time she headed to the start position, and crouched down, imagining the starting blocks. They were probably locked in the shed. He watched her. “Sylvie and I had this thing,” she explained, tightening the lace on her right shoe where she’d picked at it before settling back down again. “If I could beat four thirty for the fifteen hundred, she’d dance.” She turned her head to watch him. “Did you ever see her dance?” He shook his head. She smiled ironically and looked back at the track again. He hadn’t missed much, and at the same time, he’d missed everything. “She was like a petal on the wind.”

Tich launched herself forward, and forced herself to take this one seriously, breathing steadily, in, in, out, out, setting her sight on the track ahead as she ran the inside lane, arms swinging to propel her forward. She took the corners sharply, leaning in slightly to keep up her momentum. She ran as she had run many times before, pushing through the pain as the lactic acid built up, using the balls of her feet to spring her forward. She passed him six times at about three-quarters of her maximum speed, then half way through the sixth lap, she started to sprint, full tilt, a whole extra circuit before she stopped at the half way point, her finish line. It was a 200m circuit. Al walked over to her, checking his watch.

“Four forty nine,” he answered her unspoken question. She nodded, trying to breathe again. She never broke four thirty.

“I lied,” she gasped. “Sylvia was a terrible dancer. Absolutely dreadful. She had no sense of balance. But-” The wave of sadness washed over her as she struggled to reclaim control of her breathing. “Oh, she knew how to dance for fun, and I loved watching her pretend. I loved the way she lived. She was really happy.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t believe she’s gone.” He understood her longing. It matched his own.

“None of us can.”

---