Between the Lives - By Jessica Shirvington Page 0,7

and yep … it was mad. This was exactly the type of thing I worked obsessively every day to avoid, and here I was slipping right into the kind of behaviour that earned me crazy stares.

Shit.

I was about to tell Miriam to forget it when she swerved into a parking spot out the front of the shop.

‘If you’re going on a fruit diet, there’s no way you’re doing it without me.’

‘Oh.’ I opened my mouth to explain that wasn’t what I was doing and then realised I’d been thrown a safety net. I stopped fidgeting and raised an eyebrow. ‘Party season is upon us, Miriam,’ I said, with a tone that told her she should have already been prepared.

She nodded solemnly. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having.’

I took my chance and jumped out of her SUV.

Inside the shop, everything was demoralisingly normal. No sign that anything was any different from how it had always been. Then, through the multi-coloured plastic strips hanging from the internal doorway, came fruit shop guy. Tubby, balding, wearing oversized jeans and flashing an unwelcome glimpse of his butt-crack when he bent over a stack of apples. The same guy who’d owned the store for as long as I could remember.

‘Can I get you something, missy?’ he asked, casting me a quick glance before returning to his apple pyramid.

‘Oh, um, yeah. Just, um, just some apples and strawberries, please.’

He grabbed a paper bag. ‘How many of each?’

I felt sick. ‘Two apples and two punnets of strawberries, thanks.’

He had them bagged within a few seconds and was at the register.

As I paid him, I cleared my throat. ‘I’m … I think I saw you yesterday. Coming out of the subway … in Boston.’

He glanced at me briefly. A crazy-stare. ‘Not me, missy.’

‘Um, oh, well, it looked like you and I was just wondering if you saw me too. You were, um, you were in a light-brown suit coming up the stairs. You, um, you walked right by me.’

Fruit shop guy passed me the bag and gave me another crazy-stare on the house. ‘Not me. I don’t even own a suit and I haven’t been in the city for, oh …’ He thought about it. ‘At least a month since my last visit. Must’ve been someone else.’

I nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, yeah. I was probably … It was getting dark and I couldn’t see clearly.’

‘Young girl like you shouldn’t be in the city late like that. You should be careful.’

I nodded again, backing out of the shop.

Shit.

I never should’ve gone in.

‘Yeah.’ I held up the brown bag. ‘Thanks, I better get to school.’

My heart pounded in my ears; the dry bitter taste in my mouth was the familiar flavour of disappointment.

Whoever I’d seen, whether it had been him or not, he had no idea. He wasn’t like me.

No one was.

CHAPTER THREE

Wellesley, Friday

‘One more week and freedom is ours!’ Miriam proclaimed as we walked down the hall. We’d been counting down for the past twelve weeks. For me, it had been twice as long, so there were smiles all round.

‘I for one intend to make the most of the break,’ I said with a cheeky bite of my lip.

‘You and Dex?’ Miriam asked, raising a well-manicured eyebrow. Miriam had long blonde hair, which she’d worked into a stylishly messy up-do. She had a thing for obscure clips and today she was sporting at least a dozen embedded in her hair, all varying pastel shades. Combined with her pale complexion, ice-blue eyes, and today’s outfit of a soft-pink pencil skirt and a cream off-the-shoulder T-shirt, she looked like a fashion goddess.

I shrugged. Miriam had already travelled the ‘first time’ road with her boyfriend Brett, and I’d been trying to pull her out of the back seat of his BMW at every party since.

‘I think he’s waited long enough. It would be an appropriate graduation marker,’ I bluffed, holding my smirk and not letting my dry mouth give me away. It’s not that Dex wasn’t paper-perfect. And it’s not as if paper-perfect wasn’t exactly what I wanted in this life. It worked for me, made it easier to be who I was. It was just … when he kissed me I could feel … everything. And not in a good way. The shape of his lips, which didn’t quite melt into mine the way I’d dreamed about, the rough grating of his stubble against my skin, the way he leaned in so close I couldn’t breathe and held me behind my head so