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Luke had to smile a bit more now. “Even her parents?”
“Especially her parents.” Rhys grinned, a pirate’s smile. “You have no idea. But you’ll find out.”
He did.
Not right away, not with all the excitement over the rooms. Isaiah’s, first, which was painted like the night sky. The colors glowed nearly purple in some places, and for some reason, Nyree’s friend Victoria, who was dating Luke’s brother Kane, was playing the cello for this, something soaring, poignant, and powerful. Russian, Luke would bet that was. It sounded Russian, like every pleasure came with the promise of pain. Like life was beautiful, and it hurt.
Luke listened to the aching melody, looked at the swirling purple clouds and the dots of silver stars above, and thought of the first time he’d seen the Aurora Australis. On a school trip, that had been. There’d been a boy named Quentin Furman on that trip, and Luke had longed for Quentin, a skinny, brainy, quick-witted kid with a flashing smile, with every hopeless fiber of his fifteen-year-old being.
Quentin would never feature on any rugby squad. He’d never even feature on any soccer squad, because, he said, sport was boring. He was brilliant at maths, though, and Luke, who wasn’t too bad at maths himself, could only watch in fascinated wonder as Quentin grasped the concepts and found the solutions almost without need of a calculator.
The way he’d smiled, too, when the teacher, Mr. Hereford, had asked him to show his work.
“I can’t show my work,” Quentin had shot back, bold as brass. “My work’s in my head.”
“Step by step,” Mr. Hereford said. “That’s how we do it. Shows that you understand the concepts.”
“I don’t even know step by step,” Quentin tried to explain.
“Then find a way to know it,” Mr. Hereford said.
Luke never talked in class if he could help it, but somehow, he was saying, “If his hand knows what to put down, isn’t that the same way your feet know what to do in rugby?” Because Mr. Hereford was also his rugby coach. “They know what to do because you’ve trained them, but you can’t break it down and say how you know. You just know.”
“Was I speaking to you, Armstrong?” Mr. Hereford asked.
“No, sir,” Luke said. “But—”
“Then why does this concern you?”
“Because he’s right,” Quentin said. “Do you stop him out on the paddock and tell him to diagram his moves? Ask him how many kgs per square meter of force he’s exerting in the scrum?”
“That’s enough from both of you,” Mr. Hereford said. “Let’s move on.”
Luke had felt himself flushing, but Quentin had looked back at him and grinned, his floppy hair hanging over his forehead, his eyes dancing, and Luke had been so confused.
On that weekend, outside their hut on that school trip to the rugged coastline of the Catlins, where they were meant to be recording their sightings of sea lions and yellow-eyed penguins, the cold Southland night had swirled with light. A vivid neon green near the dark horizon, shading to hot pink, to purple, and then the colors fading to the deepest blue, the pinpricks of stars showing through in the thin air down here at the bottom of the world. The boys laughed and joked around him, and beside Luke, somebody said, “We should walk down a bit farther, get a better look without these arseholes. Take it in, maybe.”
Luke didn’t have to look to know it was Quentin. His heart was beating so fast, he thought it must be visible even in the dark. “Sure,” he managed to say.
The dark. The cold. Sitting on a rock, feeling Quentin’s warmth beside him, even though they weren’t touching. Not wanting to breathe, not wanting to move, for fear he’d break the spell and it would be over. Staring at those glowing, pulsing lights and wishing for courage.
Finally, Quentin spoke. Not in his usual quick, sure fashion, his voice moving up and down the register, lively as a bird’s, in a way Luke never managed. In a voice Luke hadn’t heard before. “Thanks for coming to my rescue the way you did.”
“Uh … when?” Now, Luke was sure Quentin could tell. Panic. Desire. Confusion.
“In maths class.” Luke felt Quentin shift, saw his arm move, heard the plink of a small stone hitting a bigger one. “Nobody’s done anything like that for me before. Not a rugby player, especially.”
“Oh.” Luke wasn’t sure what to say. “It wasn’t fair,” he finally decided on. “You can’t help being brilliant, I reckon.”
“Neither can you.”
“I’m not brilliant. Last thing from it.”
“You’re good at everything,” Quentin said. “Sport, and maths, and history. Probably the rest as well, but I don’t know. I haven’t seen.”
“I just work hard.” Luke knew it was lame. He didn’t have anything else, though. “I don’t have … talent. Not the fizzing kind. Not like you.”
“Luke.” Luke jumped at hearing his name. “You do have that. What, you think it’s all quick feet, quick talking? That’s what the world thinks is brilliant. What if they’re wrong?”
