Gravity: The Gravity Series #1

by A. B. Bloom

  "Oh, thank the moon." The voice moved forward and leaned in close. "I'd never leave you, Bron. I know you think I will, but remember, I can't." This made no sense. I wondered when the voice had realised its mistake and discovered my name was Bron and not Tara.

  "I can see you." I said simply.

  "That's always good." Humour lifted the voice into a tone I hadn't heard it express before. It mingled with relief that echoed in my ears as sweet as a lullaby.

  "No, I mean I can really see you. You're violet and brilliant."

  My words met silence and I wondered if there was an alarm going off somewhere, calling for a physiatrist. "That's my soul." The words were a whisper.

  "It's beautiful." I whispered back.

  "Get some more sleep, Bron. Next time you wake up you will be able to see everything."

  I was going to have to ask, otherwise it could be embarrassing when I woke up and the voice was still there. "Who are you?"

  Sadness pitched the voice to a depth that made my heart hurt. "I'm someone who is always watching for you."

  That was the last time I heard the voice speak.

  My eyes blinked and took in the harsh fluorescent strip lights overhead. A curtain the colour of puke pulled close around the hospital bed I was on. Hospital. That's where I was. Not heaven or hell, but instead in hospital. I wish I could remember what had brought me there, but try as I might, my memories were as black as night. The buzzing noise, which I’d thought was a swarm of angry bees, turned out to be a monitor at my side. It screamed when I woke up, setting off alarm bells that made footsteps run.

  "Thank goodness." I turned to the voice. Mum was at my side, her face pinched with lines of worry.

  "Mum, when did you get here?" I croaked. It felt so good to talk and to see after the endless darkness, I didn't mind the pain it caused my throat. I looked closer at mum my eyes adjusting. I blinked a few times just to make sure. An orange glow clung to her body. That was something new. My mind tracked back to the violet light and his explanation I could see his soul. He'd been here since, but had never spoken again. I peered again at my mum.Yep, she was surrounded by orange. There was no denying it. I should have been scared, but a strange calm washed over me, almost like I'd never not seen others surrounded by vibrant coloured light.

  "I've been here all the time, Bron." She leaned in close and kissed my forehead, the tip of my nose, my forehead again. "I've been so worried, baby, you've been in a coma for a week."

  "A coma?" This time my throat rebelled against my vocal chords. Splinters of glass scratched the inside of my neck. I pushed through the pain. "A coma?" I asked again. "I thought I'd just gone blind." The blindness seemed less concerning than the coma.

  "No, lovely, you've just been sleeping." Tears sprung into my eyes. If I'd been asleep then that meant that I'd been dreaming. It meant the violet light and the voice it belonged to wasn't real. It was just a figment of my imagination. "I know it's scary, Bron, but we will take care of you. I will teach you at home, you won't have to worry about pushing yourself anymore."

  "Mum," I looked up into her warm eyes. "I don't want to stay home, I want to have my life."

  "It's not a life, Bron, if you keep collapsing. The doctors still don't know what's wrong. They've been testing you all week and still can't find any answers. As far as they can see, you should be as fit as a fiddle." Her forehead creased and tiredness ebbed out of her. I pushed up against the bed, the tube plastered into the vein in the crease of my arm stung in protest.

  "I'm feeling better." I really was. My head felt crystal clear with a clarity I hadn't experienced in a long time.

  "No, Bron, it's not up for discussion. I won't let you go through this again." Her expression set.

  "Fine." I knew I would wear her down eventually. Well, I would give it a damn good try. I glared at the ceiling. "I want to go home." An intense aching sensation made my stomach swish. I felt like I’d forgotten to turn the iron off, or had left the bath tap running—there was something I had to do or had to get to.

  "The doctors are coming and then we will see."

  "Okay." Tears slipped down my cheeks and I twisted my face away. A single sprig of heather lay on the beech coloured bedside locker. It looked like it was still and covered in fresh dew. "That's pretty," I said.

  "I think Lauren's been bringing it in for you." Mum fussed around the bed straightening up the sheets. It didn't sound like Lauren to go tramping over the moor to get fresh flowers.

  My shoulders raised in a shrug. "Okay."

  Mum poured me a glass of lukewarm water. "I will go and tell them you've woken up."

  "What time is it?" The sky outside looked on the cusp of dusk.

  "Three thirty." Mum frowned out of the window. "It's getting darker and darker."

  Three thirty? "Wow, anything in the news about what's happening?" The growing darkness was ringing a tiny bell in the back of my mind. I tried to chase after it, to see where it would lead me but it jangled, its intention unclear.

  After mum had left the room, I reached for the heather. It was vibrant and beautiful and it bought a tear to my eyes. All this coma business had left me an emotional wreck. I dashed at the droplets of water gathering on my lashes. If I was going to convince mum I didn't need to be a prisoner inside our family home, I would need to stop crying and show everyone I was better.

  I was better. I was sure of it. For the first time in a long time, I felt like my body was working at full capacity. It may have been working too well considering the fact I was seeing a spectrum of light that had never been there before. I wondered what colour Lauren would be, or Aaron. I distracted myself with these thoughts as I waited for mum to come back with a nurse. I fidgeted with the neckline of the washed out grey hospital gown. My fingers brushed against a cool strand around my neck and pulled it out. It wasn't a necklace I ever remembered wearing but it felt familiar, comforting almost. Running my fingers along the chain, I tried to find a pendant or some clue what it was, but it was just plain and spider web thin. Shoes squeaked on the hallway floor. For an inexplicable reason, I felt protective of the chain around my neck and instinctively hid it. I laid still, just in time for mum to walk back in with a doctor surrounded by indigo blue, and a nurse who was on the puce end of the pink spectrum. I reeled in surprise when I saw them.

  This colour malarkey would take some getting used to.

  I wanted to get home and get on. I was itching to do something. I just didn't have a clue what it was.

  "So, tell me again?" I tucked my legs up on the sofa and pulled the blanket closer. I didn't need the blanket. I wasn't cold in the slightest. In fact, I felt oddly temperate, considering the dark evening had drawn in two hours earlier at an incredible three in the afternoon. The blanket was making mum feel better though, as was the hot chocolate steaming in my hand. I'd taken a sip expecting it to be the usual dreaminess mum created using cocoa, double cream and lashings of sugar. But it had tasted bland. The hospital food of the previous day must have spoiled my taste buds. The indigo surrounded doctor hadn't been keen to let me go, but as technically there wasn't anything wrong with me, he wasn't able to make me stay.

  "Tell you what?" Lauren took a sip of her own hot chocolate and looked like she'd died and gone to heaven. "Mm, this is amazing. Come on, drink up."

  A lime green haze surrounded Lauren. it reminded me of Limeade—the kind that stained your tongue. I wondered if I should tell her she was green? I gulped some of the tasteless warmth down, even though it was the last thing I wanted. "Tell me what I've missed."

  Vibrant green light pulsed with what I assumed was excitement. I’d been watching mum and the doctors closely, and the light that surrounded them seemed to react to their emotions. It was interesting. Crazy, but interesting. "Well, Celeste almost had a smack down with Eleanor in the quad yesterday lunch. That was until Connor came along and literally carried Celeste away. She was kicking and shouting, it was so funny." She took another thoughtful deep sip of the steaming
, dark chocolate. "Although, saying that, I don't reckon Eleanor found it funny. I think there will be definite repercussions.

  I enjoyed the thought of someone trying to take Eleanor down. I was still determined that I would be the one to do it, but if someone wanted to take a shot in the meantime I wasn't opposed. I just had one problem. "Who's Celeste and Connor? I've never heard those names before in my life."

  Lauren looked at me like I was mad. "Course you have, divvy! Celeste is in your home room and has been since she moved here with her brothers, Connor and Nick a year ago." She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Did they mention you having amnesia when they checked you over at the hospital?"

  My lips pursed as I tried to remember all the speculative conclusions the doctors drew the day before. "No, I don't think so."

  Lauren frowned, and lime vibrant light flickered close to her body. "That's strange."

  "What? That I don't know who you're talking about?"

  "No, that they didn't tell you about the amnesia." She grinned and the lime exploded, shimmering as bright as a laser light display. "Although, maybe you've forgotten about it already."

  "Maybe." I laughed.

  Lauren reached over and squeezed my hand. "You scared me, Bron."

  "I know. I scared myself." This wasn't true but I figured it was the response people would expect. I hadn’t really scared myself because I wasn't sure what had happened. I monitored Lauren’s lime haze from over the top of my untouched mug. When she was happy or laughing, it spread out of her like a cloud. When she worried, or was upset, like now, it dipped close to her body, wrapping tight like a protective blanket. This was interesting. Clearly, I was bat shit crazy, but it was interesting all the same.

  "So, do you think your mum will give in and let you come back to school tomorrow?" Lauren lowered her voice so mum who'd been hovering like a dust cloud since I'd got home would not hear.

  "It's not about letting me,” I stated, my teeth grinding a little. “I'm coming back to school. I feel fine." I felt better than fine. My gums didn’t hurt or bleed. My teeth were no longer wobbling. My hair hadn't wound it's way around the brush in excessive clumps when I'd brushed it that morning and I had more energy than I'd had in months. Maybe having a nice snooze in a coma was all I needed?

  "Good luck with that." She sniggered a little and drained her mug of chocolate. "I'd better get home, this curfew thing is ridiculous."

  While I'd been in the land of nod, the school principal had encouraged all the parents to adopt Aaron's curfew. I was sure that if I made it back to school tomorrow, I wouldn't be popular. Not that popularity was something that concerned me on a daily basis.

  As if on cue, Aaron walked in. He saw Lauren and jangled his keys at her. "It's too dark for you to walk, I'll drop you."

  "It's okay, you've just got home." Lauren leapt off the sofa and grabbed her stuff. I laughed. She'd never turned down a lift in her life. If there was the choice between a car and exercise, the car always won. "But if you insist."

  Aaron laughed, "Come on then." He turned his dark eyes on me. "You okay, tiger?"

  "Yeah. I'm going to sleep, I've got school tomorrow."

  Aaron's lips turned down. "Bron, you know your mum . . ."

  "She's going to be fine. Go drop Lauren, I'll catch you later."

  After they'd left, I went to find mum in the kitchen. She stood at the sink washing dishes, her shoulders slumped and her back curved. Her tangerine light dipped and flickered low like a stove burner about to run out of gas. “Hey." I jumped on the counter and swung my legs.

  "Hey, you." She gave me a wane smile that reminded me of washed out denim. "Lauren gone home?"

  "Aaron's given her a lift." I grabbed a tea towel and reached for a wet mug.

  "You're tired, mum, I'm sorry I've put you through so much."

  Sighing, she rolled her neck, stretching her shoulders, lifting them high and rotating them back. "You've got nothing to apologise for." Her bottom lip trembled. "I wish they could tell me what's wrong with you."

  "There's nothing wrong with me, mum. I'm positive that everything will be better now." I wished I could tell her how I was feeling, the strength I felt coursing through me. I hadn't felt like this even before my sixteenth birthday when things went wrong.

  I started with a jolt. The thought of my birthday jangled another bell in my memory. What was that?

  "I'm sorry, Bron, but I can't let you go back to school."

  "Who said that's what I was asking?"

  She snickered a little and nodded her head to the plate I'd absently picked up off the draining board. "You're helping with the dishes, you want something." Although she smiled, I noticed her tangerine glow remained dipped—fake smiling.

  "Listen, can we make a deal?"

  "No deals." Voice firm.

  "Wait, okay," I took a deep breath, "I know this has been hard on you." The evidence of this was written in the lines on her face. "But it's been hard on me, too. Do you know what it's like to be the freak at school? The girl who's always falling down, always in plaster, when most other girls are blooming into adulthood?"

  Mum's face scrunched and pinched into a scowl. "Exactly, and tomorrow, when something happens again, how are you going to feel then?"

  "It's not. Please let me try. If I'm willing to take the chance, you should, too."

  For a terrible moment I thought she would not agree, her hands clenched together, grasping the dishcloth. "Two days, if I think you're not fit enough, that's it. No second chances, no ‘one more’ tries."

  Bouncing off the counter, I flung my arms around her shoulders. Her bones felt sharp and angled beneath my touch. "I promise, mum, I won't let you down."

  She grabbed my hand as I turned for the door. I was eager to go and sort my outfit for tomorrow. "I know it's not you, Bron. I'm never frustrated with you."

  I raised an eyebrow, which made her laugh despite herself. "Okay, I'm rarely frustrated with you." This time, the orange light danced a little and I breathed a sigh of relief—we could get through this, I knew we could.

  "Night, Mum."

  "Night, Bronte."

  Leaping up the stairs two at a time, I bounded into my room with renewed vigor, where I found a sprig of heather on my pillow. I stared at it for a long moment. There was no way Lauren had left it. She hadn’t come upstairs all evening. So who had? And what did it mean? It meant something to someone, possibly me, I just didn’t know what.

  "Any sign of a headache, you call immediately."

  With a dramatic sigh, I banged my head back against the headrest. Aaron's unmarked police car went fast, apart from on the school run, when he liked to keep to around nineteen miles an hour. I could have walked it quicker. I could have walked it quicker when I was sick and weak. With this unrestrained power surging through my limbs, I could have beaten the car in half the time. I reckoned if I tried to run, I would streak like a bolt of lightning. I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d tried to run. I especially couldn’t remember the last time I’d tried to run and it hadn’t ended with my face in the dirt, and grazed knees.

  "Yes, yes, yes." I said, before adding, "for the thirteenth time," under my breath.

  Aaron peered out of the window. "I think Lauren's waiting for you." He chuckled as I turned my attention towards Lauren, who was bouncing up and down and gesturing for me to get out of the car.

  I leant over and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Thanks for the ride."

  "You're welcome. Hey, Bron," he called me back. "You really are feeling better, aren't you?" He looked confused, which was an emotion I was down with at the moment. Down with, but not willing to argue with.

  "Yeah, I am." I jumped out the car and slammed the door shut.

  "It's shut," he shouted. I gave him a cheery wave and skipped my way over to Lauren. Her eyes widened as she watched me approach.

  "Were you waiting for me to fall down?" I asked, as I landed at her side. The vibrant green glowing around her body pulsed as it saw
me arrive.

  "I was expecting you to suck the pavement." She shrugged. "Nice hair. Have you changed shampoo?" I pulled a few strands around and gave a sniff.

  "Nope. Same stuff, I think." Glancing around, I breathed out a sigh of relief. No one was staring at me. "Shall we get goin?, I don't want to be late, I think I've missed enough."

  "Sure, just waiting for Celeste." Lauren didn't move even though I'd walked towards home room. "Wait, Bron. We can't leave without her," she called after me.

  "Okay." I wavered a little. This would prove interesting. I'd lain in the dark the previous night trying to work through everything that had happened to me the last week. There were huge blank spaces in my memory I just couldn't fill. I'd thought over Lauren mentioning the new kids. I didn't know who they were. It wasn't even the fact I couldn’t remember them that was alarming for me. It was that every time I tried to remember them, or think about them, my brain went blank. Black hole, blank.

  It wasn't amnesia. If it was amnesia then wouldn’t there would be a whole heap of things I'd be unable to remember? I just couldn't recall the students at school who'd apparently been there a year. And also, some rather spectacular blanks leading up to my insertion into an annoying coma.

  I knew when Celeste was approaching. It was hard not to know. She was willowy tall and as slim as a reed. Her skin was as pale as the moon, with fair hair, that glimmered in the dim light. Watching her move towards us was like watching a ballet dancer perform a solo in Swan Lake. A ballet dancer who's coloured glow was the shade of a perfect, delicate, pale, pink rose.

  I also knew I'd never seen her before in my life. Someone that stunning I would have remembered—unless I’d forgotten purely because I was as jealous as sin.

  "Bronte," she said. Clutching her arms onto my shoulders, she pulled me in for a tight hug that left me a little breathless. The rose glow enveloped me and I was surprise not to smell roses, the colour was that intense. I stared at it, my eyes drawn to its mesmerising beauty. "I'm so glad to see you, I've been so worried."