On reflection, Charlene didn’t know why she was surprised.  This kind of thing happened every time she stayed over at Luce’s.

It was three in the morning, and Charlene and Luce were standing around the fountain in the high street.  They were surrounded by closed-up shops and sinister-looking shadows, but the fountain was lit up from underneath and glowing a brilliant blue.  Just as well, or those photos Luce was taking would have been a total waste of time.  She wasn’t even taking them on her phone- she’d brought out one of her dad’s old Nikon cameras especially.  Luce believed in being thorough.

About four metres up, in the pool at the top of the fountain, Charlene’s sister Amber floated on her back, her hair fanning out in the water behind her and her hands crossed over her chest like a corpse in a coffin.  And it was still April.  Charlene just knew that her parents would blame her if her little sister got pneumonia.

“Do you think I’d get a better angle if I stood on that bench?” asked Luce.

Charlene shrugged.  She didn’t know much about camera angles.  She also didn’t know what would happen if a police officer or a security guard came along and saw what they were doing.  Most likely he’d just move them along and tell them that it was far too late for three nice young ladies to be out on their own, but there was just a chance that there was some obscure by-law that meant that mucking about in the fountain was something they could caution you over.  That was the sort of thing that Charlene often worried about when she was out with Luce.

At the top of the fountain, Amber turned slightly towards them.  “Sorry?”

“Don’t move your head, Amber!” Luce called back, “We want to keep your hair looking exactly like it does now.”  Luce turned her back and climbed on top of the bench.

Luce was right about Amber’s hair- it was spread out around her head in a shiny black semicircle, collecting the occasional petal as she floated from side to side.  She was wearing a lacy blue dress that Luce had sworn was hers rather than her mother’s (not that Charlene had ever seen Luce wear any dress, let alone a fancy lacy one), and her lips were painted a dark, wild-cherry shade of red.  Luce had spent most of the evening trying to get Amber’s clothes and make-up just right before they set out.

It had all started when Amber had mentioned the book she was reading.  Well, no- it had all started when Luce’s parents had decided to go away overnight and Luce had asked Charlene and Amber to stay over and keep her company.  But if Amber hadn’t mentioned the book, there was a chance that they would have spent the evening watching films and eating pizza in Luce’s living room.  Maybe not a huge chance, because this was still Luce we were talking about, but a chance.

The book was about a community of homeless kids living in a big city, and Amber loved it.  She’d spent ages telling Charlene and Luce about how exciting the plot was, how much she identified with the heroine, and how she though everyone should read it.  One scene that had particularly captured her imagination involved a character named Jessie, who’d been murdered by a gang of thugs working for the corrupt mayor.  Instead of quietly burying or cremating her, Jessie’s friends decided to break into a park in the rich part of town and float her body in the lily pond, so that she would be found first thing in the morning by some of the rich families who preferred to pretend that the homeless kids didn’t exist.  Amber’s eyes had lit up as she described Jessie’s body floating along like Ophelia, with lilies in her hair.  She’d wondered aloud if someone could try that with the fountain in the high street, which was basically one big oblong on top of a bigger one.  And when Luce was around, nothing stayed hypothetical for long, so here they were.

“You’re doing great, Amber!” called Luce, as the flash went off again and again.

Charlene wondered how long they’d been out here, and how long they were going to stay.  It probably wouldn’t be more than about half an hour.  Even if Luce didn’t get bored, Amber would probably start complaining about the cold before long.  It was just a matter of waiting it out.

Later on, Charlene felt a little guilty for thinking that.  If she’d been concentrating less on waiting and more on keeping an eye on her sister, she might have noticed that Amber was floating dangerously close to the edge.  As it was, she was looking down at the pavement when she heard Luce say, “Hey, Amber, you might want to…  Oh fuck!”

Charlene looked up just in time to see Amber float over the edge and fall, face-first, into the water below.

&&&

In the end, they were lucky.  Amber’s nose stopped bleeding after a minute or two, so they didn’t have to go to A&E.

“Well, we managed to get some good photos out of it…” said Luce by way of apology.  She’d spent most of the walk home delicately hovering around Charlene and Amber, as if she was worried that getting too close would lead to a kick in the shins.  Charlene hadn’t yet decided whether it would or not.

“It would have been OK if we’d had an anchor,” said Amber.  She was still wet through.  Luce had lent her her jacket for the walk home, at Charlene’s insistence.

“Hmm,” said Charlene.  In between checking her sister’s nose for signs of swelling (or anything else their parents might notice), she made a mental note to borrow Amber’s book at some point tonight.  If there were chapters later on where the heroine got tied to the railway tracks or set herself on fire, it was best to know while she still had a chance to tear some of the pages out.