Storm

enjoying the weak winter sun, all its usual sounds felt muffled. Even the screaming gulls and jangling boat masts that provided a noisy soundtrack to every harbour visit were subdued. It felt like Cliffstones was holding its breath.
We went into the restaurant. The others were already sitting at a table by the window.
‘You made it!’ said Ivy, giving me a hug.
‘Course.’ Over Ivy’s shoulder, I gave Thea Thrubwell a big beaming smile, a real face-stretcher, and was rewarded by a baffled stare back. Not the cosy twosome you were expecting, Thrubwell?
‘Sorry it’s rather dark,’ said the waiter as he took our coats. ‘There’s just been a power cut.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mum.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he added. ‘Be up and running in a jiffy.’
‘Well, as long as the Prosecco doesn’t get dangerously warm,’ she said.
Outside, a small white terrier by the harbour wall began to bark.
‘Sea looks odd, doesn’t it?’ said Dad, settling himself into his chair.
The dog’s yapping grew more frantic. It kept turning around in frenzied circles, then snarling at the sea. The teenager holding its lead looked confused.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Thrubwell. ‘Glassy.’
‘Heard about the earthquake?’ said someone. ‘France, wasn’t it?’
‘Only saw the headlines,’ said Dad. ‘Didn’t realise it was—’
‘Yes. Not too far away from us either, as the crow flies.’
The little white dog was almost beside itself by now.
The teenager had stopped laughing at it in confusion and was trying to drag it away from the harbour wall. Some people were pointing at the horizon and their mouths were open and their eyes were wide.
‘What’s everyone looking at?’ muttered Mum, squinting into the sunshine.
‘Is it dolphins?’ gasped Birdie, jumping out of her seat. She had a thing about dolphins.
I looked.
         It
                  wasn’t
                           dolphins.

THERE’S BEEN AN accident.
My bed was wet. Oh no. That hadn’t happened in a while. Not since I was five, at least. I was soaking in it. And not just in my pyjama bottoms either. It was everywhere.
My cheeks. My hair.
My eyelashes. Wait – I had wee in my actual eyelashes? How is that even possible? I had literally sprayed myself with my own wee overnight. Did I drink too much hot chocolate last night, when we came back from …
For a scary, sucked-out moment, my brain went blank … The Crab Pot? Course. Must have drunk too much hot chocolate when we got home. Although – had we got home?
I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t scrape together any memory of saying goodbye, or walking back up Legkiller. What had we had for lunch, even? How had the cheesecake tasted? Nothing was there.
Wait.
No.
I did remember something. There had been a dog. Barking. Is that really the only thing you remember? said a voice inside my head.
I frowned and fidgeted uncomfortably in my puddle of wee. No. There were other bits and pieces. Not very nice.
Running?
‘Faster, faster.’ Mum’s voice, hollow, black.
Why had we been running? I waited, holding my breath, to see if anything else would unspool. But nothing. My mind felt like a field at dusk, filled with secrets I couldn’t see, things that rustled in the grasses.
I reached up to dab the wee out of my eyelashes. That’s when I noticed my hands. They were in a bad shape, badly scratched. All my fingernails had been ripped off.
I felt the first nudge of fear touch me then. Cold wet nose, sniffing me out, not in any rush. Hi there. Just wanted to let you know I’m around.
Fortunately, not everything was terrible. I could hear the reassuring sound of someone mowing the lawn. Nothing can ever be that bad when someone is mowing the lawn. This is a scientific fact.
Although why was Dad cutting the grass in January? Just before school? Also, since when had our lawnmower been that loud? And – an unrelated issue, but still worth considering – what was that gritty coating on my gums?
I stuck my finger into my mouth to investigate and it came out dusted in sand.
Wee in my eyelashes. Sand in my mouth.
That was when I first knew, I think. That something quite bad had happened. It jumped through those long grasses in my skull so quickly I couldn’t see its shape and didn’t know its name. But it was there all right.
‘Mum? Dad? Birdie? Anyone?’
I pushed myself to a sitting position on the bed. Another nasty surprise. I wasn’t in my pyjamas. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday. And they looked awful.
My blue jeans looked like they’d been put through the paper shredder in Mum’s office, and just hung off my legs in strips. One of my trainers was missing, while the other was hanging off my feet, barely clinging on. And my new sparkly Christmas jumper, the one I’d been so excited about wearing to lunch, was damp, stretched and shapeless, with rips across both arms.
How had that happened? Had I fallen out of bed? Had my clothes caught on something? Or could I have ripped them myself, in my sleep?
That hot chocolate must have been a bad batch.
A very bad batch.
Someone should write and complain.
Exhausted, I let my head droop, and stared in confusion at my lap.
There were lots of tiny white things sticking out of my thighs, visible through the rips in my jeans. With battered fingers I tried to pull one out, noticing my skin had gone all pale and rubbery, like old yoghurt.
But maybe that’s just what happens to your skin when you sleep in your own wee for a whole night?
After a few seconds of effort, one of the white things came out with a sucking pop and I held it in my hand.
It was a shell.


THERE WERE LOADS of them, embedded into my skin, sticking out from my thighs. My legs were like those oranges studded with cloves hanging from our Christmas tree downstairs. And you’d think something like that would hurt, but it didn’t.
That’s because I’m numb with shock though, right?
‘Mum? Dad? Birdie?’ I shouted.
There was no reply.
They must all be