...No matter how long I sit here, staring at my monitor, I'll still be left with this blank page and reality as it is... as strange as it is, at this moment.

I'll start with Aiden. Aiden, looking at me over his rum and coke, and wearing that crooked, sardonic Aiden smile.

Exams were over, Lily was there. It had been a week since the rain. We were in an incredibly loud club, and the music was giving me a headache. The lights were purple, and pulsing. It made me feel lightheaded, strange. Like I was underwater.

Aiden grinned at me, his teeth flashing in the ultraviolet light, and held out his hand. A few small pills were nestled in the centre. On his lifeline. Not that I believe in superstitious stuff like that. I guess once the world dissolves in front of you a few times, though, you begin to relax your perspective a little.

I looked down at the pills, then around nervously in case any security guards were about to swoop down and arrest us all.

"Put those away!" I hissed.

Lily, who had been watching the ice cubes clinking in her glass and giggling to herself - she gets drunk at the sniff of a wine-cork - abruptly sobered up. "Aiden, not here!"

He unhurriedly slipped them in his pocket. "Does that mean 'yes' elsewhere?"

"Um -" I said.

"No" answered Lily decisively.

"You guys are such old ladies." Aiden complained, draining his drink and propping his feet up on the booth opposite him, meaning right next to my leg.

He looked me, and I realised he'd picked up on my hesitation, because that's what Aiden does. He might be a whirlpool of destructive behaviour, but he's even more perceptive than Lily, and that's saying something. He notices everything, all the time. And he uses it.

He quirked his eyebrow at me, asking me silently if I was interested in partaking in whatever his mystery drug was later, and I pretended not to notice. I didn't want to engage in wordless conversations with Aiden, not now. Not after what had happened.

Tipsy Lily was oblivious to the undercurrents swirling around our little booth, which was good, because she'd probably interrogate me later if she picked up on the weird tension between me and Aiden. I didn't want to think about that weird tension. I wanted to forget the reason for it and move on.

Besides, I really didn't want the drugs. Maybe for a just a moment, it had been tempting. An escape from my strangely permeable reality into a world of pure fantasy, of heightened feeling. Into a world different to this one. But, as I reminded myself at the time, doing that is too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Stupid. It would be stupid to let go like that.

When we were leaving the club later, disappointingly (for Aiden) not high, he grabbed my bag and rifled through it. Maybe for money, maybe for my phone - I'm not sure, but he came across my weird piece of ferry.

He laughed and held it up to me.

"Nana.... What the fuck's this?" Aiden only calls me Nana when he's drunk so I didn't feel too bad about reaching to snatch it off him.

"Nothing!"

Unfortunately for me, Aiden's much taller than me. He held it above his head and inspected it through squinted eyes.

"Looks like a piece of... I don't know. What did you do? Attack construction equipment?"

I hopped up and down, trying to reach it. Lily just laughed, distracted by some graffiti on the side of the road. A couple of people staggering past on high heels or inebriated legs (or both) gave us funny looks, but no one intervened.

"It's so cold." Aiden mused, running his hand along the metal. "It feels strange."

He waved the rod in the air. "Abracadabra!" He rapped it sharply on the alley wall and I felt the world drop out from under me when the bricks wavered as though they were under water.

"Don't!" I grabbed the piece of metal off Aiden, feeling ill, and he didn't resist, staring at the bricks.

A chill seeped through me, and I stepped up next to him, tucking my fragment securely in my bag.

"Aiden, are you all right?" He was still staring at the wall. I reached out and touched his arm. "Aiden, did you... What do you see?"

He turned to look at me, his tanned, long face bleached of colour for once.

"Nana..." he said. Then he bent over and vomited all over my shoes.

Since I was wearing strappy heels, the experience was a billion times more disgusting than you can possibly ever, ever imagine.

I ended up sneaking back into the club to try to wash my feet off in the bathroom sink, which is actually quite difficult to do after three standard drinks. Lily stayed outside babysitting Aiden, something we do pretty regularly.

I couldn't make myself put my shoes on just yet - despite their rinsed state, they definitely weren't clean. One close encounter with the contents of Aiden's stomach was quite enough for me, thank you. I held them by the straps and tried not to think of my journey home if I refused to put them on - dodging glass on the pavement - and I tried even harder not to think about what it meant that Aiden had maybe seen the wall move, too. About what it meant that the bricks had rippled - like a curtain with something hidden on the other side.

I stepped out of the bathroom in my bare feet, and walked straight into Jake.

^^^

Author's Note:

Thank you everyone for reading! Let me know how you found the chapter, please vote or comment if you enjoyed! :)

For more Anna check out the tumblr (there's fan art there now?!): http://annawakes.tumblr.com/

Or the (super awesome) soundtracks: http://8tracks.com/annawakes