Freaks

19 • confession

"You always lie," I replied, trailing behind him as he led the way. Sometimes, I felt Cole knew my own home better than I did. Whereas I liked to find one place I liked and keep to it, he liked to wander. And over the three plus years we'd known each other, he'd wandered a lot.

Eventually, I was forced to ask, "Where are we going?"

"To get your bike."

"Then?"

He paused, turning to me with eyes gleaming. "On an adventure."

❧

: n o w

"What part of I don't remember anything do you not get?"

Cole twists his head in my direction, long enough to match the unimpressed look on my face with one of his own before going back to what he had been doing.

"Just—" I huff, "tell me, okay? Do you recognise it or not?" I yank my necklace off my neck and thrust it in his direction. "And could you stop doing that for a second? It's distracting."

"Doing what?" Cole replies impassively while I glare at the back of his head.

Again, he conjures an icicle out of thin air and throws it at a hand-drawn dartboard (or rather, dart paper?) stuck on the wall opposite his bed.

"That," I tell him. "Are you even allowed to have weapons in quarantine?"

"It's technically not a weapon. It's ice, it melts," he quips.

"Yeah, well..." I mutter, "tell that to the thirteen hundred people who get killed by ice stab wounds a year."

Cole snorts. "You made that up."

"Maybe."

He scoffs again. Then goes back to violently throwing ice darts at his wall.

Putting aside the part of me that was annoyed by his aloofness, a larger part marvelled at his actions. It was fascinating to watch— the way he seemed to command the air around him with a twist of his wrist, freezing it, forming the object in his palm, before finally deftly throwing it with all the aim and precision of an expert marksman.

I almost kick myself when the words fly out, "How do you even do that?" I murmur.

With a sigh, he finally ceases his ice dart tricks, and after rising to a sitting position, turns to me and says in a blunt tone, "Magic."

I cross my arms and roll my eyes at him. "Well aren't you hilarious."

"I'm not the only one being sarcastic here," Cole points out, quirking an eyebrow.

I open my mouth to retort but no words come out. Damn. Clearing my throat out, I disentangle my arms and present him with my necklace again. "Do you recognise it or not."

Cole's gaze drops down to the object in my right hand. He silently studies it for a couple seconds before saying, "Vaguely I guess," he shrugs.

I breath, relieved. At least I could confirm the necklace was real. Even if Cole didn't elaborate, him vouching for it confirmed my memories of its existence were real.