Zenna’s forearm burned. That was good. That was why she’d chosen this outfit from the designs they’d pored over, with black velvet gloves up to her elbows – only the left, now; the right was still in her pocket with the razor, shoved in during a hasty retreat when a trio of gossips had entered the bathroom.


Maybe she’d known she would break her pledge. Blood didn’t show on black.


She swung her legs off the edge of the loading dock, imagining she was sitting on top of a tower, nothing but endless space below her instead of concrete four feet down. She wondered if the school ball was a poetic place to die. Tragic, certainly.


Too tragic. If she was going to slip away from this world, she would do it quietly. Slide into the night with the outgoing tide, no spectacle. A footnote in the daily news.

Footsteps sounded behind her. ‘Whatchya doin, Zen?’


‘Oh, hey, Yu.’ Yukio from drama class. Zenna had signed up for drama for the technical experience, but she joined in the stage warm-ups and exercises for fun.

Yukio was dapper in his black tie tuxedo, his dark hair styled. Classic. Elegant. Like Yukio. He was the lead in every school production because he had that thing, that charisma. Wherever he was on stage, whatever he was doing, he was art incarnate.


Zenna wished she was half as artful, half the time.


Yukio regarded her, eyebrows drawn together. ‘Are you okay?’


Zenna sniffed so her voice didn’t catch. ‘Sure.’


‘I thought you were coming with what’s-his-name.’ He sat beside her, swinging his legs in time with hers, clacking his heels on the brickwork. ‘Will.’


‘He …’ she trailed off. “He dumped me” sounded so pathetic. She lifted her chin, eyeing the night, daring the universe to swallow her. ‘I came on my own.’


Yukio sat for a moment, then put his arm around her shoulders. Zenna sniffed again as warmth spread through her chest.


‘His loss. Dance with me?’


‘Didn’t you come with Quona?’


Yukio’s eyes sparkled. ‘She’s here somewhere. Dancing with Todd, I think.’


Zenna raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’


‘You know Q. Everybody loves her, and she never says no to a dance.’


‘Still. Yuck.’


‘Come on, Zen. Todd can’t dance nearly as well as he plays footy, and he’s not as good at that as he thinks he is. Let’s show them how it’s done.’ Yukio climbed to his feet, brushed off his pants, then extended a hand to her, palm up.


Zenna stared at the night for one more moment, her heart swinging from yes to no like a trapeze, but before she could place her silver-tipped fingers in his, there was a clatter of giggles and high heels on pavement.


‘Zenna! We missed you!’ Cecelia cried, running around the side of the building and spotting Zenna in the light from the open door.


‘Sure,’ Zenna muttered under her breath, then was submerged in a wash of guilt. She knew Cecelia cared; Cecelia cared about everyone.


Gabby grinned. ‘Nancy’s taking us for ice cream.’ The twists of black fabric were gone from her’s and Cecelia’s wrists. No returning to the ball for them, then.

Zenna weighed it. She could go back inside, but for what? Without Gabby to talk to, she’d watch Yukio and Quona and the rest of the crowd, earning pity dances from people she wasn’t close to, except in the way working on productions every evening for a few weeks made you close. They would welcome her, but only if she joined in, and she wasn’t in the mood. But Gabby hadn’t asked her to join them either.


‘Ice cream,’ Gabby said again. She’d lost her shoes somewhere. ‘Hazelnuts. Chocolate sauce. Raspberry ripple and pretzels. Cecelia’s horrible sorbet. Come on.’

Raspberry ripple was Zenna’s favourite. She imagined the little salted pretzels sticking out of the gooey raspberry, the tang of sauce and salt combining with ice cream on her tongue, and her funk seemed movable. Dessert wouldn’t fix her, but maybe being packed into a booth with between two cheerful people with an overdose of sugar wouldn’t hurt. She stood, shooting an apologetic look at Yukio. ‘Raincheck?’


‘Of course,’ he said, smiling, although there was no raincheck. They only got one Year Twelve ball. Zenna felt she’d wasted it, somehow.


‘Go be brilliant, Yu.’


He nodded, sweeping them a dramatic bow before disappearing through the door. Zenna caught a whiff of smoke and burnt hair before he pulled it shut.


‘So,’ Cecelia said, linking arms with Zenna and Gabby as they walked across the car park. ‘How was it?’


‘How was what?’ Zenna asked.


‘The ball!’ Gabby said. ‘Did you sit on the loading dock all night?’


Zenna stopped. ‘You were there.’


Cecelia shot Zenna a worried look. ‘We went to the Blue Dog Dances premiere.’


Nancy pulled up in a white sedan. Cecelia and Gabby wrangled their dresses into the back seat, trading notes on the film’s plot and the possibility of a sequel. Zenna stood next to the car, twisting the shivery black fabric around and around her wrist, wondering if she’d slipped into a parallel dimension as she’d jumped off the dock. Maybe in another world, she was tumbling through the endless dark from the top of a tower.


Nancy rolled down her window. ‘Are you okay, sweetie?’


The fabric, finally pulled too far, unravelled and fell from Zenna’s fingers. She couldn’t quite recall why she was standing here, or what she’d been doing, or why she’d left the ball early.


Her forearm burned. So she’d done that.


‘Zenna!’ Gabby called from inside the car.


Zenna shivered and shook her head, attempting to clear the haze from her mind. Then she met Nancy’s eyes. ‘I’m fine.’


She climbed into the back, fumbling for her seatbelt buckle and accidentally elbowing Gabby in the ribs. ‘Sorry, Gabs. How was …?’ What had Gabby and Cecelia been doing?


‘So good,’ Gabby said. ‘Everything blew up at the end and the main guy died, but he solved the case. And Blue Dog survived.’


‘Huh.’ Zenna frowned. She still couldn’t place the evening. The ball. She’d been at the ball, then … perhaps she’d experienced some sort of blackout. Maybe she had spent the whole time sitting on the dock.


But she remembered Will. Just like that, the mystery of the night faded into bleak pain.


‘Rubbish, right?’ Cecelia said. ‘Next time, I’m picking the movie. Something with romance. Or zombies. Romance and zombies.’


‘Ew,’ Gabby said.


Zenna sat back, half listening to Gabby and Cecelia arguing over their preferences in films. She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling she’d missed more than just the dance that evening.