And then Sarah told me that she just wanted to be friends. We were in Starbucks, where we’d had our first ever date.

“I think you’re really nice,” Sarah said. I knew straight away that everything was wrong. She said some other things, but the blood was beating in my ears and I couldn’t take it in. My hands were on the table, balled up into fists. I remember her putting her hand on top of mine. The feel of it – cool and dry. And her perfect nails, not like my bitten stumps.

“What did I do?” I said, or something like that. Meaning, What did I do wrong?

“Nothing,” Sarah said.

“Then why?”

“There’s not always a good reason why. Sometimes it just is.”

I couldn’t look at her. I stared at my fists. She took her hand off them. In the three months we’d been going out, I’d got better at talking about my feelings. But now that was all over.

“I hate you,” I said.

“No you don’t,” Sarah said.

Then no one said anything for a while, and when I looked up, she was gone.

Fourteen

Fourteen

Could I have fallen asleep down here? No, not quite asleep. But in a weird trance – remembering and thinking. Not properly asleep. It was too cold to sleep.

I’d been lying on a slab of rock a few centimetres above the level of the stream and back from it, out of the spray. But something looked different now. Felt different. Sounded different. The water was closer. No, not just closer. I was in it. Almost.

I didn’t understand. In my daze, had I rolled towards the water? No, that wasn’t it. I hadn’t moved. Couldn’t move. The river had. It was growing. All this rain and snow. And here in the gorge, the river had nowhere to go but up. I tried to drag myself back from the edge. There was still half a metre of dry stone under the cliff. Getting there hurt so much I screamed again, higher than last time. The scream rasped at my throat with its claws. It felt as if someone was pulling a great bramble bush out of me.

And now I felt a whole new type of fear. The water was going to continue to rise in the gorge. I couldn’t escape, not with my messed‑up legs. The river was going to creep up and take me in its cold arms and pull me into its black guts.