The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Thirty-Four

I don't tell my friends what happened.

I go back to my room and gather up Boots's small body. Sonny fetches me one of his jumpers to wear – it's much too big for me, but it means I can hide Boots inside it. I couldn't have done when he was still alive, but now . . .

I ask my friends to leave me alone while I bury him. Maybe that's selfish – they loved him too – but I'll have to do it in my little spot down by the fence, where the cameras can't see, and Roan will already be there, and I'm still too afraid for my friends to find out anything, especially after everything that Cole has told me.

My footsteps feel impossibly heavy as I make my way to the spot that has become such a source of happiness for me, and will now always be tainted by Boots's death.

His body presses against me, and I feel like I'm carved from ice. His fur is still soft, but he's gone cold, and I can't ever warm him up.

He'll never sit in my lap again, or rub his face against mine.

He'll never share my pillow or curl up my stomach.

I'll never hear the sound of his purring.

He's gone, completely and always.

Grief is building and building inside me, and I'm trying to hold it back, but when I push through the bushes and find Roan pacing on the other side, I can't. I collapse, and he catches me before I fall, holding me tightly in his arms.

"Caia? What's wrong?"

I can't speak. I carefully pull Boots from under Sonny's baggy jumper and hug him against my chest. I can't believe I'll never be able to do this again.

"We have to bury him," I sob.

"What happened?" Roan asks.

I tell him. Everything.

While I speak, Roan picks a spot at the base of one of the trees and begins to dig, using his bare hands to pull up chunks of soil. Roots and small stones scratch his fingers, and more than once I see him wincing, but he doesn't stop.

I don't know how long it takes to dig the little grave; I'm frozen in place, holding Boots. My head is a storm.

Everything that Cole told me is a tangle of fear and horror and disbelief, and I haven't forgotten any of it, but as Roan digs, all I can think about Boots, and my complete failure to protect him.

"Caia," Roan says, and I realise he's stopped.

He's sitting back on his heels, his filthy hands resting on his thighs.

"Do you want to –" He gestures to the grave.

"I can't," I whisper.

I cannot put my darling cat in that cold hole in the ground.

Roan nods. He holds out his hands.

I kiss Boots's furry head one more time. "I love you," I whisper.

Then Roan takes him from me, and gently places him in the ground.

My heart breaks because he shouldn't be here, he should be curled up in my bed, waiting for me, not lying in a dirty hole, cold and still and lifeless.

"I should've protected him," I whisper.

Roan starts to cover him up, and when the first handful of dirt hits his fur, I flinch.

"There's nothing you could have done. No one could have predicted Cole doing something like this," he says.

I watch him fill in the grave through tear-blurred eyes, and then he puts his arms around me, holding me tightly against his chest.