Soul Beach

his eyes is more powerful than ever. ‘What kind of idiot dead guy falls for someone they can never have? I must be the biggest numbskull ever.’
    ‘Two numbskulls,’ I whisper.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘If you’re a numbskull, then so am I.’
    I look into his eyes again and I wonder if the mirror he talks about is reflecting the longing I’m feeling. ‘I think maybe I’m falling for you too, Danny. Love. Like . Whichever it is. But . . . it migh t be love.’
    My screen freezes. What have I done? Something against the law of the Beach? A breach of the rule book I’ve never been allowed to read?
    I hear my own breathing, rapid and shallow, and my bedroom spins around me.
    And then the picture returns, pixel by pixel. Danny is in front of me, a shocked expression on his face.
    ‘Did something happen?’ I ask.
    ‘I thought it was just me,’ he says.
    ‘What happened just now, or . . . the other thing?’ I say, and then I add. ‘The, well, the falling-for-me thing.’
    ‘Both.’ He’s frowning, half amused, half confused.
    ‘I’ve never said that to anyone before, Danny.’
    ‘Me, either.’
    The image of the girl he kissed in that news report, is in my head. ‘I don’t believe that,’ I laugh. ‘An eligible bachelor like you.’
    ‘It’s true,’ he says simply. ‘Never said it before. Never felt it before.’
    ‘Why me?’
    Danny shakes his head. ‘Why anyone? Mom believed in horoscopes, despite being a Catholic. Dad believed in rationalism and working out what you wanted and then maximising the possibilities to find it. Jeez, I’ve wanted a few things on the Beach. A video game or two. An exit door. But a Visitor to fall in love with . . . that was never going to make this better for me, was it?’
    ‘No.’ I’m suddenly aware of the distance between us. When I imagined my first love telling me how he felt, I’d pictured kisses and orchestral choruses and a tingling wonderfulness that would change everything about the world.
    Yet we sit here, so close that if we were in the same plane it would take only the slightest movement from one of us for a kiss to be inevitable.
    What I’d do to be on the same plane . . .
    ‘I’m sorry, Alice.’
    ‘Don’t be sorry. Be anything but sorry. I’m not sorry.’
    Silence, still, except for the waves. The sun must have set completely while we were talking, and now the sky is a deep purple and the moon is so huge it looks like a hot air balloon drifting just above us.
    ‘It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it? I wish I was here for real, sometimes.’
    ‘No!’ He pulls away.
    ‘Why not? If I told you about my life in the so-called real world, you might understand that it wouldn’t be the worst tragedy in the world.’
    Danny stands up, his hands gripping his skull as he shakes his head. ‘NO! That’s not what I want. No way. If I’d have thought for a second that you’d want to give up life for . . . for a nothing like me, I’d never have said anything. Shit . Is there a backspace key anywhere?’
    He’s shouting now, and shaking his fist at the virtual heavens.
    ‘Calm down, Danny, I didn’t mean—’
    He turns to me, his tanned face black-and-white in the moonlight. ‘Never, ever think like that. I promise you that if you do anything, anything at all to join me here properly, I will not speak to you, I will not touch you, I will not even recognise your existence, OK? It’s how it has to be. I cannot run the risk. I do not deserve you.’
    My brain can’t keep up. One moment we’re soul-mates and the next he’s turning on me.
    But then I realise that what he’s said is greater proof that this guy really cares for me – because he would give up everything for me, even his one chance of happiness.
    ‘I understand,’ I say.
    ‘Do you?’
    I nod. We stand, facing each other. I tingle from head to toe, and everything about this moment will stay with me for ever. The scent of mint and lime and barbecues. The sound of the sea and, only just audible beneath it, a blues melody played on a sax.
    Amazing Grace . . .
    I will remember those eyes, no longer haunted but blazing. And those lips, that promise so much but will only ever be able to offer me words.
    A long, long way off, my phone twitches with a new text.
    ‘What was that?’ he says, sensing that I’m distracted.
    ‘Nothing important. Nothing as important as this.’ But then I hear something else: a soft whimper, like an injured animal.
    He looks to his left, towards the