Gone

"So you're Sylva?" Tom asks.

"Way to state the obvious, Tom," Olivia murmurs, but I smile and nod slightly. He studies me for a moment, then grins. "You're prettier than Olivia said you were."

"You're pretty, too," I say generously, and he laughs.

Marcus leans across the gap between our seats and lightly punches Tom's shoulder. "Hey, no hitting on Sylva." He's smiling to take the harshness from his words, and Tom laughs.

"It takes two," he says.

"But I can't hit Syl," Marc says.

Olive smiles. "And if you did, I'd have to beat you up."

"If I did, I'd have to beat myself up," Marc says, and Tom laughs. Marc looks at me with that gentle look of his, and I blush and look away. Tom looks between the two of us and settles back in the seat, an arm behind Olivia.

"So, you two are just friends, right?" he asks.

"Since we were born," I say, and this leads to Olivia giving Tom a shortened version of our friendship history. I settle back, already weary, and listen to Olivia's chatter, soothing to my ears.

After a while, Marc gently eases me forwards and slips his arm behind my shoulders. "You alright?" he asks quietly.

I nod and rest my head against his shoulder. "Just tired," I admit, because I don't need to hide that from him.

He winds a curl of my hair around a finger and looks at it wonderingly; you would think he'd be used to it by now, but he still gets this awed look on his face whenever he looks at my silvery hair, and the occasional exclamation of wonder isn't that odd, either.

"You look amazing, Syl," he whispers. "But I think I like you better without makeup, in your pyjamas." I laugh a little, incredulous, knowing I look like a corpse on any other day.

"Why is that?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I like you just the way you are. You don't need a dress and makeup to look beautiful." I blush a little and he smiles, and we listen to Olivia's voice for the rest of the ride.

When we get to the reception, Marc climbs from the limo and then reaches in, gathering me and the petal-folds of my dress into his arms. I link my arms around his neck despite the ache in my bones, and smile even though the small curve of my lips gives me pain.

Tom climbs out, leaving Olivia to get out on her own. "Hey! I want special treatment, too!" she calls out indignantly.

Tom grins and leans into the car, scooping her into his arms. She laughs, and even when her head bumps the car she is still smiling beneath her scowl, because Tom kisses the pain away before putting her down in the entrance, where she fixes her dress. They walk in, palms pressed together.

"Do you want to walk?" Marcus asks me, as the limo begins the slow drive out of the lot.

I consider how it will look if I am carried in, and then don't care: the only people who matter to me here are Marc and Olivia, and maybe even Tom, because he seems nice. Everyone else can keep their opinions to themselves. I shake my head, and then regret it, staring dizzily up at him as six eyes look down at me in concern, spinning round and round and round. "You alright?" he asks.

"Just dizzy. And tired." Always tired. It never leaves me. Bone deep, ingrained in what I am.

"Do you want anything? Do you want to go home?" he asks, the first question referring to the tablets in his pocket.

I smile slightly. "No. I'd prefer not to be drugged up tonight." He smiles worriedly and shifts me against his chest. "Why? Am I too heavy for you?" I tease.

"You're skin and bones, Syl." He smiles, but it is sad.

He walks inside and I hold my breath for a moment, frightened all of a sudden. "Do I look ok?" I ask, my voice shaking.

Marc looks down at me, his stride long and even as he walks so as not to jar me. "You look amazing," he says.

"Not better than pyjamas," I remind him, and he laughs. And then we are inside.

It is a typical reception centre, just as I imagined it would look. Simple white-clothed tables and chairs with bows on the back, a dance floor in the centre of the room. People mill around, talking and laughing. Boys hold the hands of their girlfriends, or talk with their friends while their dates give them irritated looks. People who have come in groups chatter in small circles. Tonight, somone will be broken up with. Someone else will be kissed for the first time. I will go home and sleep with either Marc or mum or dad in the bed beside me, with them scared that they're going to roll over and crush my fragile body beneath theirs as they sleep. No one else will live with that fear. Only those who array themselves around me. I pity them for my own existence.

I look around from Marc's arms, drinking in this taste of normalcy, because I know it will be gone by tomorrow.

"Do you want to talk to some people?" Marc asks.

I jolt from my stupor and smile at him wearily, knowing he wants to talk to his friends. "You can put me down at a table or something," I tell him.

He looks down at me unsurely. "I'm not tired or anything. They all want to meet you." I know they don't. I know he has a whole lot of friends who he doesn't go out with because he's with me. I'm sick of being a burden.

"I'll be fine, Marc. I just want to rest for a while. I'll say hi later." He frowns down at me before carrying me to the table where Olivia holds court. Tom looks at her adoringly, hanging off her every word, as do about two other boys, one of whom has a date who is considering ditching him, I can tell.

Marcus sets me in the chair beside Tom, careful with my dress. I can feel people staring at me. I don't care.

Marc speaks to Olivia for a second, and she looks at me with a wide smile. And then he is gone, brushing my shoulder as he goes off to find his friends.

"You ok, Syl?" Olivia asks.

"Fine." I try to give her a reassuring smile, but I'm not sure if I succeed. She looks at me for a moment, lips pursed, before continuing to talk. She engages the girl who was about to leave, and the blonde looks pleased at the attention.

Tom turns to me as I start to slowly rise, wanting nothing more than to curl up on the chair. "Do you want some help?" he asks, in a way that doesn't make it seem like he pities me, as if it is simply a fact. I like him, I think.

I smile and nod as he rises to help me. "Thanks," I say.

"No problem." He puts his arm around my waist, steadying me. "What is it, exactly, that you're trying to do?" he asks, looking adorably bewildered.

I smile. "Pick me up, please."

He does, as carefully as if I were made of china. I curl my legs up beneath my dress and orient myself so I am sideways on the chair. "Down," I say, and he laughs.

"Bossy little thing," he says fondly, and I smile as he sets me down, sighing at the more comfortable position.

"You're the one who offered to help," I point out, though my tone is friendly.

He scratches the back of his neck, looking sheepish. "Only because you're so cute," he says.

I laugh softly: it's the only way I am able to without being in pain. "I should use my looks to get what I want more often."

He smiles and looks out into the small crowd of people. "Oh, I don't think you need to," he says, and I follow his eyes to see what he's looking at.

Marcus jogs towards us, a worried look on his face. He grips the back of my chair as he stops. "Is everything ok?" he asks.

I put my hand over his on the chair, smiling slightly. "I'm fine. Tom was just helping me to get comfortable."

"Stop fussing over her, Marc. I'm taking care of her," Olivia says, before launching back into conversation with the girl.

Marc narrows his eyes, but Tom claps him on the shoulder, and I take my hand back, fold them in my lap. "I'll take care of her while Liv speaks to her subjects," he says, rolling his eyes. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted that I need to be taken care of, and then I remind myself that I do need to be taken care of, and sigh.

"I'll be fine," I stress, and Marcus looks at me closely for a moment.

"Well... call me if anything is wrong. If you want to go home or anything." I nod with a tired smile, and he goes reluctantly.

When he's gone, Tom raises an eyebrow at me. "That boy's like an attack dog around you."

"He thinks I need to be protected," I say, bored.

"Don't you?" Tom asks.

I sigh as heavily as I can in my weak, ravaged body. "Tom, the only thing in here really capable of hurting me is him." My rare moment of honesty startles me slightly, as it does him.

He looks between us, from Marc with his friends to me, alone at a table full of people. "Does he know that?" he asks.

Marcus hugs a girl as she flits over to him, tall and thin and red-haired and strong. Alive. More alive than I'll ever be.

I shake my head slowly as I look down, at my hands in my lap. I don't want to see him with her.

A flower drifts from my hair to the ground, and Tom reaches down and picks it up, tucking it carefully back into my hair. "He's an idiot, then," he says, brushing a curl from my face.

I smile at him. "Olivia's lucky to have you, Tom," I say.

He grins a little foolishly as he turns his eyes to her. "I think it's the other way around."

I smile to myself at the look on his face. Because, either way, they're lucky.

The first dance of the night is a slow one, where couples hold onto each other and sway from side to side. Two by two, people go up to dance. And then Marc is there, rescuing me from being alone. "Milady," he says, bowing exaggeratedly. Olivia sighs in relief and drags Tom away, and I smile sadly. "May I have this dance?"

"You may," I say, holding my hand out to him. He takes it in his, and mine looks so small and frail and pale compared to his long, strong, slim fingers. He bends down and kisses my knuckles and looks up at me with a wild grin that makes my heart beat faster. And then he sweeps me into his arms, carefully, cradling me against his chest, and walks onto the dance floor. I link my hands around his neck though it hurts to lift my arms so high, and I rest my cheek against his chest, so I can hear his heart beating til it lines up with the music, with the rhythmic sway of our movement.

Some couples look at us strangely, but people whisper, and people know. One girl looks at me with disgust, another with jealousy in her eyes, but I know it is only for Marc. One boy I know, from math class two years ago, smiles his easygoing smile and lifts his partner into his arms: she squeals but holds onto him, and a few more do the same, and I am smiling so that my face hurts but I don't care, because he remembered me, and that small kindness is worth everything.

"You're quite inspirational," Marc says to me, speaking into my hair.

"I'm small and sickly and pale," I say. "The only inspiring thing about me is that being so small and sickly and pale shows other people what they have, and they appreciate it better because of all I'm not." It was not meant to be bitter, but it is.

Marc shakes his head. "You're everything, Sylva. And don't let anyone tell you any differently." The savageness of the way he says the words takes me off guard, and for a second I think that my heart is beating too fast, that this is bad bad this is very bad. But then I breathe and it slows and everything is fine everything is perfect I am in Marcus' arms I am ok.

We are quiet until the music slows, and Marc says, "May I have the last dance of the night?" his voice playful.

"Of course," I say. And he kisses my cheek before setting me in my chair beside Tom, who has returned while Olivia has not. And Marcus goes off as the next song starts, and it is loud and manic and I am glad that he put me down, but I wish I was normal, that I could partake in the mania.

I catch a glance of Olivia, dancing like a madwoman, and then I see Marc and the redhead girl. I tell myself I don't care. Then I look away from them, because I've always been a bad liar.

"This music not to your taste?" I ask, running my fingers over the dark silk of my dress.

Tom shakes his head, light brown hair fanning across his forehead as he watches Olivia dance crazily with her friends. A smile curves his lips, and then he turns to me. "Too crazy for me. And you?"

"Fragile bones," I say emphatically, and he grins.

"Never would I have guessed that you, of all people, were fragile," he says, and I hit him softly but I have to smile.

"Olivia likes it," I say, and he looks for her but she has danced out of sight between the writhing bodies dressed in finery.

He looks back at me. His eyes are a light brown, almost the same colour as his hair, but richer. "But she loves you," he says. "And, despite myself, I sort of like you, too. Strange creature that you are."

I laugh. "Oh, you're perfect. You sound just like Marc when you speak."

He smiles slightly. "And Marc sounds just like you."

"I did teach him all he knows," I tell him.

And I see the next question before he asks it. "So, on the topic of teaching and learning and geniuses..." I laugh at the jump, and he grins. "How old were you when you finished school?"

"Fifteen," I say, and I can't help but be a little proud.

"Fifteen!" he crows. "We have a child genius on our hands!"

I shake my head carefully, so as not to make myself dizzy again, laughing quietly. And then I feel a hand on my bare shoulder. Not a soft, gentle hand, but a hard, heavy one. I wince and know it will be bruised tomorrow.

"Tom," the voice belonging to the hand says. "Who's this pretty thing?"

Tom's amiable face has turned to rock. "Get your hand off her, Greaves. You know who she is."

I am still as stone as Tom's face as the chair beneath me. Pain shoots through me from my shoulder and down my arm. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't," Greaves answers, his words slurred.

"You're drunk," Tom says, and he sounds disgusted. He stands and takes a step towards the other boy, who is, when I look to see, at least two of Tom put together. "She's sick. And you're hurting her."

"No I'm not. She'd tell me if I was hurtin' her, wouldn't you?" He leans down to press a kiss to my cheek, and I flinch away. He falls to the floor, flat on his face. Slowly, I start to climb from my chair. Careful. Slow. Too careful. Too slow.

Tom's eyes widen as the boy on the ground grabs my leg to pull himself up. And I tumble to the ground, the scream tearing from my throat just as painful as the snap I hear when I fall to the floor, elbows in front of me to break my fall, because elbows are not as frail as hands and they are easier to fix.

The music is cut off with a jerk. I am pain pain pain incarnate. Greaves is being pulled away by the boy from my past math class and he kicks him and he kicks him hard and Greaves's nose is bleeding but it can't hurt as much as I do it cannot.

There are people all around me and Tom clears a circle while Olivia crouches by my side and she is calling for Marcus with tears in her eyes because Marcus was taught the doctor showed Marcus just like he showed mum and dad he showed them how to feel for breaks and what it was best to do and how to move me and when to not and Marcus I need him I need him I can't.

Olivia carefully folds my fingers in her own and leans close. "He's coming, Syl," she says. And she is brushing my hair back and straightening my dress over my legs and screaming at people to call an ambulance, to please call an ambulance. And Tom is wrapping his arms around her as he crouches next to Olivia on her knees and she is holding my hand and crying into his shoulder and then Marcus is there and I can breathe.

He drops to his knees at my side and he is serious and he is angry but he is careful, first, doing what the doctor taught him. "Syl, where does it hurt?" he asks.

I can't speak I can't cannot.

"I saw him grab her leg," the boy from math says. There is blood on his fists as he crouches nearby, but not so close because Marcus looks like he's about to kill someone.

Marc's fingers are gentle as he carefully folds my dress to my knees as I lie on the ground and his fingers are soft on my skin. Probing. Feeling. And I scream as he finds the break because I can feel it I can feel the shattered bone and the fragments of it and I was not pain incarnate before but I am now.

"Shhh, Syl," he says softly. He leans close to me, kneeling with his hands gently cradling my face. "Is that the only place? I need you to tell me. Once for yes and twice for no." I blink once because if I open my mouth I will scream again and I can hear Olivia sobbing and I won't do that to her I can't.

He sighs but there is anger beneath the pain in his eyes and he leans back. "Someone get me some fabric and something that's flat and hard." His voice is unbending. Fix me with your voice, I think. Speak away the pain.

"Is this alright?" someone asks, and it is the math boy, because everyone else is incomprehensible and silent and watching me just watching.

He holds up a plank of wood, and I wonder where he got it til I see the sweat slicking his brow and remember the wooden fence outside and I almost laugh but I don't because it will be a scream.

Marc nods. Olivia stands and tears the cloth from the nearest table before taking Tom's house keys from his pocket and she stabs them viciously into the fabric and tears off a strip.

"You'll have to pay for that," I hear someone yell, presumably a waiter.

But I can hear sirens now and she gives the fabric to Marc and on her face is a savage snarl when she says, "Well you can tell the police about how a teenager got alcohol on your premises." And someone laughs while Tom smiles worriedly and wraps her back in his arms.

"That's my girl," he says quietly, and I read the words from his lips. And then Marc is asking someone to help him and Olivia is sobbing now and Tom is holding her and he yells for help and the math boy kneels and asks what he has to do.

And Marc tells him to hold my leg in place even if I scream even if I scream in pain because more movement means more damage and Tom is there with one arm around Olivia and the other hand is pushing my hair from my face and he says, "The ambulance is here, ok, they're here." And I can hear them but not see them.

And then Marc lifts my leg slightly and I hold back a scream and he puts the plank beneath my leg and then math boy helps to wrap the fabric tight but not too tight around and around and around.

And then the paramedics are there and they are telling Marcus that he did well but he should step away and Marcus is telling them what is wrong with me with the utmost authority but it is everything in front of everyone and I care I care I shouldn't.

They are lifting me and the pain is overwhelming but the last thing I see is the inside of the ambulance and I feel Olivia's hand holding mine and Marcus' eyes on me and then I am gone.