Nobody believed Billy about Cassie.
It had started in September, the first week back, when Billy had announced to the group that he’d spent the summer with his new best friend. The questions came fast.
“Where does she live?”
“Near the park. You wouldn’t know her.”
“Bring her in.”
“She hates crowds.”
“Tell her to wave at us.”
“She’s shy.”
Ryan folded his arms. “She sounds made-up.”
“She’s not made-up.”
“Prove it.”
Billy couldn’t, of course. Over the weeks that followed, the excuses mounted — Cassie was busy, Cassie was tired, Cassie wouldn’t answer to people she hadn’t chosen. The group drifted away, one by one, bored by his claims.
Mike was the last to go. He lingered, not out of kindness, but because something about Billy’s certainty irritated him.
“There is no Cassie,” he said, finally.
“Yes, there is,” Billy smiled.
“You’re a liar.”
Billy shrugged. “I’m going to play with her now. You think what you like.”
He walked away without looking back. Mike watched him go and made a decision.
He’d follow him. He’d catch Billy talking to thin air and that would be the end of it.
The park was quiet that afternoon. Mike hung back behind the hedge line, moving in the half-crouch of someone who’d watched too many spy films. Billy sat cross-legged in the long grass beneath the oak tree, his back to the path.
He was talking.
Mike crept closer, close enough to hear. Billy’s voice was bright and easy. Something about a film he’d watched, something about the neighbour’s cat. Normal things, directed at the empty grass in front of him.
Then Billy went quiet.
The stillness lasted a few seconds, and Mike had almost convinced himself to stand up, to walk over, to end this whole stupid business — when Billy’s posture changed. His shoulders dropped. His head tilted to one side. Mike stayed very still.
A sparrow landed in the grass two feet away.
The hand moved. It happened faster than Mike’s eyes could follow. One moment the bird was there; the next, it wasn’t. The fingers were closed, and something small was struggling between them.
Mike’s mouth opened.
“Cassie!” Billy’s voice was easy, almost parental. “I told you. We don’t … eat … the birds.”
The giggle came from Billy’s throat, Mike was certain of that. But it didn’t travel through his face the way a laugh should — it arrived somewhere else first, lit something up behind the eyes before the mouth caught up. Not quite a child’s giggle. Too pleased with itself. Too old.
The fingers opened. The sparrow burst upward in a clatter of wings and was gone.
Billy turned around.
It was Billy’s face. The same face Mike had sat next to for three years in class 4B. But the eyes were still finishing something — still holding an expression that had no business on that face. Too still. Too amused. The look of something that had examined Mike a long time before he’d had the chance even to register it.
Then the face blinked. And, after the briefest pause, arranged itself into mild puzzlement, the way it might when a door blew open by itself.
“Oh,” Billy said. “Hi, Mike.”
Mike ran.
On Monday morning, Ryan started with a sneer: “Still hanging around with Billy and his imaginary girlfriend?”
Mike picked up his bag. “Just leave those guys alone.”
“Those guys?” Ryan sniggered. “You mean… leave Billy alone. Right?”
Mike didn’t answer. He walked to his seat, eyes on his desk, and didn’t look across the playground to where he knew Billy was sitting under the tree, talking happily to the empty space beside him. Or to whatever occupied it.
Leave a comment