Chapter One: September 8th, 2015

Twelve years have passed since Lenore Kayani disappeared. Now her daughter lives without memory of her.

There’s a retaining wall behind Greywatch Island’s only school, and on this wall there sits a girl. She has Lenore Kayani’s red hair and green eyes, and Amar Kayani’s dark skin, smattered with Lenore’s freckles. Alone she sits, staring down at the people in the schoolyard below and smoking a cigarette.

                Lily Kayani, named for her mother’s favourite flower, far from delicate. There are people who glance up to where she’s sitting on the wall, but no one pays too much attention to her. Just Lily, off by herself again. That’s hardly out of the ordinary.

                It’s only the first day of school, and her knuckles are already bruised and bloodied, and not all of the blood is her own. The teachers probably won’t notice. They don’t care all that much about kids like her anyways. Kids like her are nothing more than wastes of a teacher’s time, she knows that. She’s the sort of kid who would rather scrap than sit in a desk all day. Trying to keep her in a desk is like trying to keep a wild animal in a cage. It never really works.

                Normally this is the part where she’d get up and leave, and not come back to school until tomorrow. But since it’s the first day, she knows it would be stupider to leave than to stay. So she sits there, the smoke from her cigarette hanging in the air.

                Below, a group of boys are laughing and jeering about something, although Lily’s not sure what. One of them points at another boy, who’s standing alone not far from the bottom of the wall. Now she knows what they’re jeering at. A bunch of white boys and a lone native boy are not a good combination, especially when the native boy is literally backed up against the wall.

                The native boy knows what’s coming, at least. He doesn’t even try to run. He’s just standing there, arms crossed, watching the other boys walk towards him. And they do walk towards him, wearing the smiles of bullies at play. Five of them, and one of him. Hardly a fair fight.

                Lily can’t just stand by and watch as a boy gets beat up by five others. Abandoning her cigarette, she leaps from the wall, and lands in the dirt with a thud that distracts all the boys for a moment. She walks over to them, and puts herself right in between the native boy and the gang of white boys.

                “Screw off,” she says. “He didn’t do nothing. Leave him alone.”

                Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. All of the boys are quite a bit taller, bigger, and stronger than Lily is. The only thing she has is her reputation for being tougher than she looks. That and the fact that her dad’s a cop. Everybody knows not to mess around with Lily Kayani, because you might end up with Amar Kayani on your doorstep, police badge in hand. Whether or not that’s actually happened to anyone is up for debate.

                The white boys don’t say anything, they just stare down at her, taking note of her bloody knuckles. The native boy doesn’t say anything either, although it’s surprising that he hasn’t done anything yet.

                Finally, one of the white boys speaks. “Ugh. Let’s go. It ain’t worth it. Next time, Stone, you better be ready. Little Lily won’t be there to protect you.”

                They leave, shooting Lily and the native boy glares, and grumbling about how stupid the whole thing was. Lily spits on the ground and turns to speak to the native boy, whose eyes are glued to the white boys’ backs.

                “You’re welcome,” she says, almost snidely.

                “Thanks. I couldn’t have handled that myself.” The boy’s voice is deep and booming.

                “Well, of course you couldn’t have. There were five of them and one of you. You would’ve bitten the dust in no time at all.”

                He sighs and shifts his feet. He’s very tall and thin, and his coarse black hair hangs down to his chest. “Again, thanks.”

                Lily stares up at him. She knows she’s seen him before, of course she has, there’s a little less than five hundred kids in the school, it’s impossible not to see everybody at least once. But his name doesn’t come to mind. Has she not met him? Maybe he’s a new student and he just looks like some other kid. That explanation could work, except for the fact that nobody new ever moves to Greywatch Island.

                “What’s your name?” she asks.

                The corners of his mouth turn up. “I’m Gabriel. You’re Lily Kayani, obviously.”

                “And how do you know that?”

                “For one, people talk, and a name like that’s not easy to forget. And you’ve been in some of my classes before.”

                “Fair enough.” A smile creeps onto Lily’s face. She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. “Want a light?”

                “Sure,” Gabriel says.

                “Well in that case, follow me. I hope you can climb.”

                Climbing up the wall is no easy task, and that’s why nobody ever bothers Lily when she sits up there. As far as Lily knows, she’s the only one who’s figured out a way to climb it. There’s little footholds here and there, but you have to be very clever regarding where you put your feet.

                She reaches the top of the wall in no time, but Gabriel still hasn’t moved. He’s watched her climb, and now it seems like he’s trying to figure out the exact path that she took. Slowly, carefully, methodically, he begins to climb. Lily almost can’t bear how slow he’s going.

                “Took you long enough,” says Lily when he reaches the top of the wall. Her old cigarette is still there, but it’s gotten soggy. What a waste. She crushes it into ashes with the heel of her shoe.

                Gabriel sits down, and she sits down next to him. She passes him a cigarette, and is about to offer him a light when he pulls his own lighter out of his coat pocket and lights it.

                He pops it into his mouth and exhales a cloud of grey smoke. “Thanks.”

                “No problem. What did those morons want with you, anyways?”

                “I don’t know. I guess they wanted to pick on a native kid. Most of the others travel in packs. I don’t, so I’m an easy target.” He sighs, and a puff of smoke escapes his lips.

                “So the same sort of guys who make terrorist jokes,” Lily says.

                Gabriel chuckles. “You’ve got to love racists.”

                Then the bell for class rings, and both of them groan. Lily extinguishes her cigarette and hops off the wall with a great deal of grace. Gabriel, however, doesn’t seem quite so tactful, and decides to climb. Halfway down he loses his footing, and he falls with a great lack of grace, landing hard on his left wrist.

                Lily, who’s already started to head for the school doors, turns around at the sound of Gabriel hitting the dirt. “You alright?”

                He gets back up, but moving his wrist seems to be hurting him. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says.

                Then they head off to class, not noticing the strange looks people are giving them. Lily Kayani is almost always alone, and when she’s not alone, she’s with her twin brother. Who’s this twig of a boy who’s walking with her to class now? Doesn’t he know that she’s not very friendly? The native kids know Gabriel Stone as a recluse, a lone wolf, the one who hardly ever speaks at social gatherings. Why is he walking to class with Lily Kayani, of all people? Doesn’t she know that he’s not very friendly?

*****

Years and years ago, there was a boy and a girl who were very much like Gabriel and Lily. Jonah, a loner like Gabriel, too absorbed in other things to pay attention to people. Lenore, who was just a little too strange to have many friends. They were friends, once upon a time.

                It doesn’t matter much now. Both Lenore and Jonah are long dead. Their descendants, however, are not, and when people don’t learn from history, it tends to repeat itself.

Author's Note

Anything goes.