On the sofa of the hotel I wake up slowly, drifting in and out of sleep. When I am fully awake, I see Neave sitting on the bed with her knees to her chest. She looks well-rested.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I ask tiredly.

Her face twists into confusion. “You didn’t tell me to … to wake you up.” She raises her head a little.

“Yeah? Well next time wake me up.” I tell her.

“Hey, Oli,” She begins a little morbidly.

Oli. I smile at my nickname which she doesn’t notice I have picked up on. “Yeah?” I ask with a smirk.

“I’ve been thinking,” says Neave.

“About what?” I ask, not bothering getting up from the couch, running my fingers through my long, messy blond hair.

“You can help me, can’t you?” she asks expectantly.

“Help you do what?” I ask.

“Help me.” Neave repeats. I look at her. She’s hiding something.

“Help you with what?” I ask sternly.

“Well… The least you can do is help me find my friends.” She perks up. I am already helping you with shelter, I want to say.

“What if they’re dead?”

Her expression drops. She doesn’t think negatively, does she? “I don’t want to believe that they’re dead.” Neave says with a superior tone.

“But what if they are?” I ask, just as there’s a slight movement in the bowels of the earth. It’s not her. It’s a coincidence, surely. What I want to ask next is if she felt that. But I won’t.

“They aren’t dead.” Neave says darkly. “I don’t believe they’re dead. So they aren’t.”

I look at her unfathomably, “It doesn’t work that way. Just because you believe doesn’t mean it exists.”

Her blue eyes shoot up at me. “You don’t think so?” She hisses at me. Oh my gosh, calm down.

I shoot into a sitting position on the couch and run my hands over my face. Irritated and muffled, the words come out, “Do you not live in the real world?”

“What do you mean, Oliver?” Neave asks as she gets up from the bed. She looks like a dog– maybe slightly tamer– but poised to attack.

“Well,” I put on a sarcastically friendly face, “If you believe you have wings, does it mean you can fly?”

“Well no. bu–”

“Exactly. No. You can’t fly, Neave, you just can’t fly!”

“Some of us could.” She counters indifferently.

“None of you could! No one can fly! These are real world circumstances.” I bark at her.

Neave looks at me, as if amused by my argument. “We are in the real world. People could fly. You see, Oliver, That’s a normal person’s problem.” She begins.

I can’t take her seriously anymore, “What is a normal person’s problem? That we aren’t crazy, like you?” I snipe.

“No. Well–” She sounds as if she considers, “No. And I’m not crazy. I actually have power–”

“What is our problem?” I begin, as if reminding her.

“Your problem is that you don’t believe.”

“We believe.” I say, “We believe in myths.”

“Universally, I mean, Oliver. What does each and every one believe in?”

I ponder for a while… “We all have Gods. We all believe in our own God, right?” I say. This argument is pointless really.

Neave shakes her head so slightly, but her blond tousles still move. “Not everyone believes in a God, Oliver, unfortunately,” she says.

What are you trying to prove? That you’re more superior because your little society of crazy people all believe that they have superhuman qualities? Whatever.

I play along and think again. Longer this time. I look at her. Neave looks at me expectantly and smiles. She’s bound to die if she’s being this foolish. Maybe she’s already dead.

My eyes widen at the realization and so do hers.

“We all believe in death. Or at least an aspect of death.” I answer hastily before she can develop another unfortunate thought about humanity.

Neave smiles proudly and nods, “We do all believe in death, don’t we? But we all also believe in life… Or at least an aspect of it.” she says smiling.

“What’s the point of this?” I ask.

“Like I said, I’m showing you humanity’s common interests and stuff.” Neave says. And stuff. She probably knows it’s pointless too, since no one else will listen.

I take the opportunity to observe her in natural light. Neave’s nimble. She has healthy model stature. She’s also in possession of a small, beautiful face with high, sculpted cheek bones. She’s definitely pretty, despite bruises here and there and a few other imperfections.

Her multihued blond hair is snipped straight at the ends which she flawlessly manages to keep out of her face. Her eyes are so bright blue; they seem to be influenced by the weather. Right now they look as if they’re going to bring on a storm.

I shake my head, bringing myself back to earth. “So, what is your asylum’s number?” I joke for a brief second.

She stares at me blankly, “I really thought we got along for a second.”

“Yeah well, assumption is the mother of…”

“I really do have powers you know,” she says casually.

“I’m sure you do.” I mutter as I grab my phone, “What’s your name again? Ah, Neave!”

“I do have power!” She yells loud enough to be heard next door.

“Prove it.” I dare her. “Show me and I might let you tag along.” She’s quiet. “Well?” I ask expectantly.

“I can’t.”

“Oh okay. So you have two kinds of abilities, but can’t use even one.”

“I don’t want people to get hurt unnecessarily.” Neave objects.

“You’re delusional.” I say patronizingly, tempting her.

“Fine… What do you want me to do?” She asks eventually.

“Well, whatever you need to do to convince me to let you stay with me. And I’m not thinking about sex, just so you know.”

Her face twists, disgusted. She immediately gets up from the bed and positions herself in front of me.

I look at her and she looks out the window at the wide world. “Hurry up. It’s almost night time.” I say. It’s far from night time. I take a stance next to her.

“Give me a second.” Neave says, sounding in another world. Neave breathes deeply and closes her beautiful eyes, parts her lips and lets a shaky, cold, bated breath escape.

“Watch.” The blond places her hand on the window and I watch it bloom with frozen ferns. It grows and grows and grows until the whole window is rimy.

I am silenced by my astonishment. I fall to my knees and she touches me, fingertips as cold as ice. Instead of ice cubes, they feel like daggers stabbing me over and over in my shoulder as the room grows icier and I begin to shiver profusely.

She’s trying to kill me. I attempt to tell her to stop but all that is expelled is a splutter.

Neave’s eyes are vindictive, or so I make them to be.

“Stop.” I plead as I regain some of my breath. My arm may or may not be frostbitten, but she’s already on it. She gets a cloth doused in luke-warm water and places it on my shoulder.

“Enough proof?” She asks. “I told you, I hurt people– you unnecessarily.” She says and I grumble.

A few minutes pass as Neave tends to my cold shoulder and I watch her tentatively. We do nothing but stare into each other’s eyes.

We’re so damn close to each other, so I smile, and part my lips instead. “If you wanted to kiss me you could just have asked me.” I say.

She lets out a small giggle. “The kiss of death, maybe,” she says as she nurses my shoulder back to life.

“Anyone can do that, though. Freeze someone to death.”

“Can they?” she asks, “You just don’t want to believe me, do you?”

I don’t say anything because I am indeed very skeptical. But I do believe she knows my answer. I don’t want to believe her.

I look at her, deep into her eyes and say, teasingly, “I don’t believe you.”

She smiles charmingly– almost as charmingly as I do, “You’re a bloody liar.”

She fixes my arm. I stare into her eyes. Beautiful and blue. As blue as the sky. As blue as the ocean. As beautiful as the rarest orchid in the world.

“Where did you escape from again?” I ask.

“Uh,” She says, distracted as she wraps my arm in a warm bandage. After a while I figure she won’t reply.

“Neave,” I say again,

“Yeah, Hi?” She says. Still very preoccupied, but more alert– it’s not what I want.

I’m forced to reach for her chin. And tilt her head upward toward me. For a second she throws me off guard with her bold eyes. Before it gets too awkward she slaps my hand away so I blink away the eye contact and ask again, “Where did you escape from, Neave?”

She scrunches up her face in thought, “Didn’t I tell you?” She replies slowly with a question.

“No you didn’t tell me.” I reply in the same tone.

“Oh.” She says monotonously. “The Bureau of Superhuman Naturalism.”

I nod. “Who escaped with you?” I query again.

“Well, two of my friends escaped with me.”

“Isn’t a place like that heavily guarded?” I question. I can’t help but feel that she’s lying to me.

“Well,” She ignores my ice cold arm for a few seconds, “Yes, it is, like most secret organizations. But that place is also flawed.” She finishes and continues with my arm.

“Oh so it’s secret?” I widen my eyes in mockery.

“Of course it’s secret. The world would fear superhumans like us…” She begins, “Well, like me.”

“I’m super!” I exclaim humorously.

“A super jerk, maybe.” She says as she resumes her attention to my arm.

I look at Neave and smile. She looks at me and smiles just the same. “What?” She asks.

“You’re the worst.” I tell her. “You really are. Regardless of what anyone might say, you are the worst.”

“I’m sure I am,” she says dismissing me.

“Do you have any other clothes?” I ask. What she wears now is all that she seems to wear. Ever.

Neave looks down. “No. I left everything.” She looks up at me. “I had nothing to begin with.” She says.

“We’ll buy you new ones then.” I offer.

She looks up, stunned, basically, but I don’t give her time to speak. “Where did you get the money for cosmetics and clothes anyway?” I ask her.

Neave smiles coyly, “My friend stole money from an automatic teller machine.”

I twist my face in confusion “How?” I ask.

“Well he has an ability too.”

“He?” I ask.

“Yes. My friend, Mendes.” Her blue eyes are unmoving as they stare into me.

“Like, just your friend?” I ask.

“Yes, just my friend…” She says as she approaches me and takes a seat a few inches away on the hotel’s couch. “Would you be jealous if he was something more, Oli?” She asks teasingly.

I smile open mouthed and look at her. She raises her eyebrow expectantly, “Neave, I don’t care and I really don’t like you,” I say as nicely as possible. “So I’m going to ask once more. Do you want to go shopping or not?”

I do buy her clothes. She wears them, obviously. They’re modest but stylish. I must admit, for someone who has never been outside, Neave has some sense of style.

She buys a pair of boots as she reasons that they may be durable for running– not if, but when she is on the run again, as if she knows she will never be safe.

She wants to buy camouflage colored pants. I convince her to buy expensive and stylish grey jeggings and tell her she won’t ever be out in the woods and if she ever she was, she should cover them with mud and leaves to blend in.

I’m joking of course. I could never let that happen to her. I can’t let her out of my sight.

“What do you think, Oliver?” She asks me as she holds a striped ultramarine and white long-sleeved shirt in front of her.

“It’s pretty,” I say mindlessly as I sit like a child watching her.

“With my boots, huh?” She asks enthusiastically.

“How about a pair of heels?” I ask her and she scrunches her face, looking even more adorable– If she was actually really adorable.

She isn’t adorable. I convince myself. She’s trouble.

“I wouldn’t be able to run in high heels, would I?”

“Well maybe you should just get a pair in case you settle down– eventually.”

“With who?” She asks flirtatiously, “With you?”

I squint at her, “I’m beginning to think you like me…” I say.

“I’m beginning to think the same thing.”

“So you do like me?” I ask, my stomach filling with butterflies and my hands becoming shaky. I can’t be involved with trouble.

“You know what I mean… that I think you may be starting to like me too–”

“But I don’t.” I say too hotly.

She looks at me and smiles, “I’m sure not.”

“Listen, Neave. I don’t like you.” I say as sternly as possible. She turns her cheek and continues to the clothing rack.

She doesn’t say anything and things become awkwardly silent between us.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a low tone, but loud enough for the sound to travel from me to her. She ignores me– or maybe she didn’t hear me.

“Hey,” Neave eventually speaks up, still browsing through the blouses.

“Yeah, Neave?” I ask, feeling awful.

“How about we find that pair of heels?” I sense she’s embarrassed, too.

“Sure.” I let myself smile. “Let’s go.”

We leave the clothing section with a series of outfits. A black pants suit. A white one and a red one with a gold sparkling jersey. Another sparkling jersey made from white sheep’s wool intertwined with silver sequins, the half of a top with the bottom missing, leaving it looking more like a bra. One pair of jeggings with that ultramarine and white sweater and three trench coats. One black, one white, one beige.

Oh, and plain blue jeans. It’s more expensive than I expected– I mean what did I think anyway? That women’s clothing is cheaper than menswear? It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s nothing I can’t afford.

She buys half a dozen pairs of shoes. One pair of white open toes, a pair of red high heel pumps. Two pairs of combat boots. A black pair of high heeled pumps and a pair of sandals. I pay half a fortune for this, too.

She apologizes. I tell her it’s okay. She wants a dramatic hat and sunglasses, which I also purchase.

She apologizes again. I tell her to stop apologizing, and that it’s getting old. She laughs. I smile. She’s adorable. She’s trouble– and expensive. So, at the end of the day we have every style, every shoe in every color.

I also buy her a suitcase and a really expensive bag. Compelled by joy, she kisses me on my cheek. I blush. She blushes. We both blush really awkwardly.

In the end, we stuff everything in the suitcase– except the bag, hat and sunglasses, which she wears without a flaw or thread of embarrassment.

After the extreme makeover, we both call it a day. She offers to sleep on the couch this time– which I don’t object to because my back is slaughtering me to death a million times over and it feels like my shoulders are dying.

She sleeps on the couch. I look at her.

I like her.

I don’t like her. She’s trouble. How many times have I tried to convince myself of her being bad news, when really she is in trouble?

I keep that in mind. It is also my last thought before I fall into an easy sleep…

***

Tell us: Their shopping spree sounds fun. If you were taken on a surprise shopping spree, what would you buy?