Charlie shrugged. “Stick ’em on our bedroom walls, mainly. I’m saving some for my uni applications, though. I want to go to UAL.”
Uni. So Charlie was one of those kids with plans . . . prospects, a future. Leo wanted to hate him. Couldn’t. “Is manga like that anime stuff?”
“God, no.” Charlie moved so fast he blurred across the room. He crouched down by his bed and rummaged underneath. “Anime is totally different. Look.”
Leo blinked, taken aback by Charlie’s sudden animation and the stacks of weird comic books he produced from under the bed. He stepped forward, curious, despite the heavy haze of apathy clouding his mind. “Which is which?”
“This one is manga . . . this one anime screenshot.” Charlie pointed between two images that appeared pretty similar to Leo. “See the difference in the detail? Anime uses loads of effects and music. Manga is all about the illustrations.”
Leo studied the drawings. He didn’t know jack about art, but the fiery gleam in Charlie’s dark eyes made him feel a little dizzy. “So manga is comics and anime is . . . like, um, animated stuff?”
“Something like that.” Charlie huffed out an irritated puff of air and shoved his boxes back under the bed. “I’m knackered. All right if I turn the light off?”
Leo swallowed. He’d noticed the single lamp by Charlie’s bed and fought the urge to swipe it. “Whatever. Are we allowed to use the shower at night?”
“Course we are.” Charlie shot Leo a strange look, turned off the light, and crawled into his bed. “But don’t leave wet towels on the floor. Mum goes mental when we do that.”
“She’s not my mum.” Leo backed away. In the murky dark of the room, he could just about see Charlie’s face, see him watching Leo like he was a stray dog, likely to turn at any moment. “Where are the towels?”
“In the airing cupboard, mate.”
Mate, sweetheart, darling, honey. Over the course of the evening, Leo had heard them all. “Don’t call me that.”
“Call you what?”
“Mate. It’s not my name.”
“Oh.” Charlie’s voice was hollow. “Sorry. It’s a habit. You want me to just call you Leo?”
“IamLeo. Why would you call me anything else?”
“Fair enough.”
Leo almost felt bad again, but it passed. The fire had taken everything—home, things, Wendy’s still-warm body. In this strange house, surrounded by strangers, Leo’s name was all he and Lila had left.
He retreated from Charlie’s dark room and went to the bathroom, peeking into Lila’s bedroom on his way. She was sound asleep, and didn’t stir as he rescued the hand she’d wedged between the wall and the bed, and tucked her favourite bear in beside her.
In the bathroom, he took a shower, slathered ointment on his scarred skin, and redressed his arm with the fresh bandages someone had left out. He didn’t look at the mangled flesh—never did, unless he felt like making himself retch—and then, despite an urge to leave a mess just for the hell of it, he dumped his wet towel in the washing basket.
Back on the landing, he noted that the house had stilled while he’d been in the shower, and the only sign of life now was the sliver of light filtering through Kate and Reg’s open bedroom door. He checked Lila one last time, then slunk back to his own room where the dark enveloped him. The silence was heavy—choking—and he wondered if Charlie was asleep.
Charlie.
A shiver passed through Leo. Charlie was as annoying as the rest of the world, but Leo felt somehow colder without his warm, earnest gaze following him, and disquiet gnawed in the pit of his stomach. His pulse quickened and his breath caught, like he’d played ninety minutes on a football pitch without moving a muscle. Sweat prickled his shower-damp skin. He bit down hard on his bottom lip and rummaged in his bag. Nights were often like this—a long, anxious wait for Lila to wake up, and then an even longer wait for morning to come, rocking her in his arms while she slept, hopefully comforted, for a while, from the bad dreams that plagued them both.
Only one thing ever calmed his own wayward nerves, and he found it hidden in a sock at the bottom of the bag that held his worldly possessions. He retrieved the small bag of weed and crawled out of his bedroom window and onto the porch roof.
He rolled a joint and lit up, blowing clouds of fragrant smoke to the sky, and letting the earthy scent seep into his bones, calming him from the inside out. He closed his eyes and thought of Wendy. Sometimes he imagined that he saw her behind the moon, giving him the look that made him squirm and do anything but meet her gaze. The frown that let him know he was in deep trouble. He’d hated that look before it had been gone forever.
Now he’d do anything to see it again.
It was still dark when Charlie woke the next day. Winter was like that: gloomy and misty, the fog swirling around the streetlight by the window. An orange glow filtered through the half-shut curtains. His eyes tracked the light down to the open door and found a bright-green gaze staring right back at him.
Charlie sat up. He’d forgotten about his new housemates, but it wasn’t Leo who waved at him, it was little Lila.
Startled, Charlie waved too and signed, “Morning.”
“Hello,” Lila signed back. “I’m hungry.”
