Evelina

"Why don't you come home?" Mum had tried.

"Why should I come home?" Eve had retorted.

That's how it had started, but it had ended, more or less, with Eve glaring out the window. This wasn't really about her health, which was back to normal. A hungry haunter was a good excuse, that's all. She didn't want to look at her any more. The room overlooked a quiet residential street, lined with palm trees along the grass verges. There were some surfers heading back from the beach, looking tired and exhilarated, damn them. She wished she'd been surfing this morning.

"I don't need looking after!" Eve reiterated for the sake of it.

"Maybe I should just go, then," Mum said, sounding sad and defeated. "Since I'm clearly not wanted here."

"Maybe you should."

Eve refused to turn around. In the tense atmosphere she could hear the door opening and closing with crystal clarity. The latch snicked back sharply.

"That wasn't called for," Aunt Immey said.

Yeah, well, I don't appreciate the 'poor me' tactics, Auntie.

"You ought to apologise for that."

It took a moment for Eve to register that one. "You're taking her side now?" she demanded disbelievingly, finally turning round.

"That was silly and childish," Imogen said bluntly. She sighed, and have her a disappointed look. "Whether you believe it or not your mother has only your best interests at heart."

Eve looked away angrily, and caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. For a moment she wanted to slam the bathroom door shut.

"I never get this kind of nettling bollocks from Josh," she karped.

"That's because he'll never really challenge you on anything important," Imogen said. "You do what we all do: make it too dangerous a subject. What do you argue about, hmm? Beachcombing bullshit."

"Whatever."

"Have it your way, hun," she said. "I'm going to find your mother."

Eve, my girl, time to get the hell out of this hospital. She fished around in her gilet, looking for her phone. And found out Josh's number, still high on her frequent contacts list.

"Hullo, Eevee," he answered.

"What are you up to, sweetling?"

"I'm a-down on the beach – sixty-five? For a brand-new Silph compact? One hundred, and not a shilling less."

"I'm busting out. There's no point hanging around this hospital."

"So you're feeling ok, then?"

"I need to be out. In the sun, in the sea breeze, y'know?" Eve said. "I'm going to challenge the Cianwood Gym, too."

"Do you want me to meet you there?"

"You're not too busy? Sounds like you've got momentum."

"I can fence the load later," he teased.

"Stop that," she admonished half-heartedly. "I've got to go by the Centre first. I'll text you."

The only indication the building was a Gym at all was the Poké Ball symbol above the gate. Eve had never seen such a discreet Gym. From the outside you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an austere mansion, enclosed with a high wall with a suggestion of gardens beyond. There wasn't any indication of which way challengers should go, either. From somewhere inside Eve could hear the sound of someone bellowing. It seemed like as good a direction to go as any.

Inside there was an open set of double doors leading to a battlefield. Five or six Gym trainers were observing their peers fighting a practice battle. Their machop were sparring doggedly – it looked like they'd been at it for a while. The Gym Leader was watching them all with a paternal air. Even by Gym Leader standards he stood out, an ursaring of a man, powerfully built even if he was running to fat. Wild tufts of whiskers sprouted from his craggy cheeks like lichen.

"Ah! Challengers!" he roared happily.

"Challenger!" Eve insisted, resisting the urge to roar herself.

"Cedar, Antonio, clear the field. Come on up, sport, you can fight your qualifier here."

"Qualifier?" Eve raged. "I have four Badges and I'm Tigerlily Champion, damn the qualifier!"

Gym Leader Chuck just laughed, as if she were terribly precocious. "Confident, eh? Better hope that's not false confidence!"

"I -" Eve began, but Chuck wasn't listening.

"Battlefield 2! You, go grab my third team. Edmund, you're refereeing."

Battlefield 2 was an open-air field within the mansion grounds, sited on a hill with the exuberant noise of the beach filtering up on the wind. Nothing special, nothing clever, just a basic rectangle of hard-packed dirt in the midst of a lawn. The Gym trainers strung out along the sideline to watch the battle.

Josh caught hold of her arm. "You sure you're ok?"

Eve stared at him for a moment, trying out responses in her head. "Don't ask again," she said as gently as she could.

Well why the hell not? She'd endured the pressure of the Tigerlily finals. No damn Gym battle was going to faze her. Chuck grinned at her across the battlefield. Far cry from the ice queen of Unova.

"This will be an official Gym battle between the challenger Evelina Joy, and the Gym Leader Chuck of the Cianwood City Gym! Each trainer will use three pokémon! The challenger will release first and only she may make substitutions! A Storm Badge is at stake!"

"You ready, sport?" Chuck barked.

"Why, do you need a minute?" Eve taunted. There was no doubt as to who to lead with. Not because of her double resistance, not because of her Flying-type attack, but because she was the ace. "Lyra! You have the honour!"

"Get out there, Heracross!"

Lyra seemed unusually serious, manifesting without her usual flair. She alighted near centre field and clacked her wing cases belligerently. Heracross firmly planted his feet on the dirt and leaned forward, flexing his muscles methodically.

"Begin!"

The battle opened with a blur of competing orders.

"Double Team!"

"Air Cutter!"

It was a sharp Double Team, but Lyra was conversant with this tactic – Meowth liked it, and was good at it. Her attack destroyed a clone, the other four heracross moving in four different directions. Lyra furiously cut another two apart in a ripple of wing beats, her flurry of missed attacks carving up the dirt. The remaining pair of heracross split left and right in a pincer manoeuvre.

Eve looked over her shoulder to make sure Josh was still there.

"Bring the fight to them with Seismic Toss!" Chuck hollered.

"What?" Eve said, and the remembered what she was supposed to be doing. She spun round in time to see Heracross fly low over the ground, seize Lyra and hurl her to the dirt. She flailed to her feet, cursing, as Heracross droned over her head and landed heavily.

"Lyra, stay sharp -" Eve started. Forget that, she knows. "Circle and attack!"

"Keep it cool and wait for your moment!"

"You beat a fucking eelektross!" Eve yelled. "Circle and attack!"

There was a savage little glint in her eye as Lyra took flight, snarling incoherently. She circled Heracross in quick, tight little orbits, impatiently hunting for an opening. Maybe it was fighting another bug that was bringing out her atavistic side. Heracross didn't try to chase her, pivoting back and forth to keep himself guarded. He suddenly lashed out with his horn – Lyra threw herself into reverse and clipped him around the head with a Thunderpunch.

[Too slow, you bastard!]

The wind picked up, pushing a ripple across the lawn. Long acres of green meadows, rippling in the breeze, blended into wildwood marching up to evergreen highlands. The land was wild, and it was beautiful, and it was empty, empty all the way to the horizon. At her back was a strange country where she had the wrong name. It was so very lonely, lost on the edge between worlds.

"Eevee?"

Through blurred vision Eve saw the ledian hammered aside with Mega Punch. This land wasn't empty. This was Cianwood City. A forlorn hollowness lingering in her chest.

"Uh," she called, trying to blink away the welling tears, "uh, Protect! Break off!"

Where were you? Why didn't you call? she thought, and didn't know why. The ledian – Lyra – Protected herself from being overwhelmed by an explosion of Fury Attack. She circled round, hooking out with a Drain Punch even as Heracross spun and blocked it with surprising grace.

The wind gusted again. She could see for miles and miles with wonderful clarity. She was alone. From blue mountains at the furthest reach of sight, to sun-drenched meadowland, it was beautiful, but achingly empty. Not a tumbledown stone or brick was there to say 'people had been here'. There was no sound but the wind, whistling about the tower.

[Oh, fucking hell!] Lyra shrieked breathlessly. Heracross' Counter tumbled her the length of the field, like a kicked pebble.

The first thing Eve thought was: this was Cianwood City. The second thing she thought was: that just happened because I wasn't paying attention.

She realised she was in the middle of a circle of judgemental attention. Half a dozen Gym trainers all watching her and wondering how a Tigerlily Champion could be so obviously incompetent. The Gym Leader was watching her, after she'd insisted so stubbornly on waiving a qualifier battle. Lyra had taken another hit because of her.

"Lyra, return!" she blurted. She realised she was fleeing the field, as if running could somehow erase that moment from history, through the main courtyard and into the gardens lining the Gym walls. She stopped at random in what appeared to be a secluded corner, shaded by a thick cypress hedge.

"Eevee?" Josh said, appearing from around the corner. Eve turned her back to him, tears welling inexorably in her eyes. She gritted her teeth, willing herself to keep it together.

"Go away, Joshua Cook!" she commanded.

The voice didn't work. "Why?"

"Because!"

"Because why," he persisted.

Eve rounded on him like a pouncing luxio.

"This is what you love! Isn't it!" she screamed, her composure collapsing in a flood of tears. "Evelina Joy! Supremely confident! Bulletproof! Not some nutcase who can't even finish a battle!"

She subsided, cheeks burning with a mélange of embarrassment and fury. "There! Satisfied?"

That's it. That's it, you've done it this time Eve, he's not going to stick around, and why should he? But Josh just sighed, and gently pulled her into a hug, saying nothing while she sobbed onto his shoulder.

"You don't have to prove anything to me."

"So I'm still awesome?" she mumbled.

"So awesome I still don't quite understand why you're hanging out with me," he said. Eve wasn't sure whether he was joking or not. She giggled weakly, but squeezed him a bit tighter as the sea breeze grew stronger.

"Let's go back to the Centre," she said. "You can push your pickings, Daddy-o."

"Er. I can dig it?"

Eve spent the rest of the day with her pokémon. Not training or battling, just being with them. How long had it been since they'd last done this? Lyra tried to spar anyway, but Eve overruled her – Lyra's pride was goading her to irrational aggression. She tended to forget or ignore that she was really nocturnal now. It would be good for her to spend some time under the stars. She'd insisted that Josh head back down to the beach to carry on selling off his 'salvage'. She was pretty sure he was calmer when he was chiselling someone.

Later on she went for an evening walk. Josh said on the Rose that seaside towns have a moment of human slack tide at about this time. She could see what he meant now – the families had packed up for the day, but it was still too early for the nightly piss-up. And so, slack tide, when only the wingull were still ebullient, and the streets were unassailably peaceful.

Eve hadn't intended to go anywhere in particular, but her subconscious had other ideas. There was the Gym gate, for the second time that day. She padded through the gate, enjoying the silence.

"Couldn't keep away, eh, sport?"

For such a big man, Chuck could be surprisingly stealthy when he wanted to be. Eve hadn't noticed him at all, cross-legged by a rhododendron bush.

"Eve," she corrected.

"You know, there's something I've been trying to figure out. What happens for a champion, a real go-getter, to tap out in the middle of a Gym battle?"

Careful fat man – Eve started thinking. She might have said something like that, but she was too tired for sass. Besides, there was a compliment in there. "It's complicated."

"Well, suit yourself," Chuck said. "But you know, this is a Gym. We improve trainer's minds as well as pokémon bodies."

Eve slumped down against a tree, sighing. She was too tired to dissemble, either. " A couple of days ago. Capital-N Nightmare. They said it would recur but I didn't really believe it till the battle."

"What are you going to do now?" he said. There was something about the quiet way he said it. He had a reputation for being an archetypal Fighting-type master: incurably loud, boisterous to the point of boorish. Calls everyone 'sport' with a blithe disregard for gender. But then … she'd read magazine articles claiming he'd break into bouts of sentimental tears post-battle, whether he'd won or not. What really went on behind those wild moustachios?

"Recuperate, whatever the hell that means," she said. "I can hardly fight a damn Gym battle anyway …"

"I have another proposal," Chuck said. "Come to train at my Gym."

"At a Fighting-type Gym? When I have no Fighting-type pokémon?"

"Weren't you listening? It's as much about the mind as it is the body," he said abruptly. "Just you, mind. The other one will have to make his own arrangements."

"What will you teach me"

"Depends what you're willing to learn. But it would be a terrible thing for your skills to go to waste, champion."

Eve never liked being alone on a beach at sunset. Sunset was for walking on the beach as a couple. There were a few of them now, wandering along by the foaming surf of the incoming tide. Islands of cumulus cloud hovered out to sea, and as the sun set behind them they turned to shades of copper and rose.

But sitting on the beach with a best friend was a sweet substitute. "You had a good day, then," she said.

"It's always a good afternoon when you make some dollar," he replied, just a bit smugly. "Delicious, nutritious money."

Eve threw him a subtly disapproving look. She still wasn't convinced that glorified piracy was legal, but it wasn't worth an argument.

"So what did Madison say?" Eve asked.

"I've got to win five Badges before September," Josh said. "In order to apply to the Academy."

"Oh, you're halfway there!"

"Five Johto League Badges," he clarified.

"Is that all she said?"

"Most of it. She did have one other piece of advice. 'Open your eyes, then open them again'."

"What?

"I don't know either."

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment.

"She thinks I'm latently psychic," he said.

"Madison?"

"She thinks that's why I'm psychosensitive. Why I could see Haunter. Why I saw through Ninetales."

"Do you suppose that's why she supported your application?"

"I don't know. All I know is for the first time I can remember, I know exactly what I want to do."

Eve tried to tuck a hair back into place that had been loosened by the sea breeze. She kept feeling lonely, and didn't know why. Josh suddenly put his arm around her. She wondered whether he was reacting to her mood.

"I've decided to take a break," she admitted. "I'm not well, yet. And, um, Chuck's offered me some training at the Gym."

"Well," Josh said resignedly. "Maybe they haven't found that container yet. I could at least earn a Badge here. And there's that Gym on Red Rock Isle, now."

Eve picked at a crispy piece of seaweed. Josh had every reason to keep going without her. But he wasn't contemplating it. She realised they hadn't talked about the I love yous. She wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to react, now. Usually, she expressed affection, well, physically and enthusiastically. It had been a different kind of I love you.

She compromised with a kiss on the cheek.

Five Badges before September.

"Sweetling. I've made a decision," Eve announced. "Go to the Whirl Islands. Without me."

Josh gave her an almost startled look. "… why?"

"You can't put your whole life on hold for me. Not when I could be here for … I don't know how long."

"Are you trying to say goodbye?"

"No! No. This isn't forever."

"Eevee, are you sure about this?"

"Yeah. Yeah, this is the right thing."

"Oh …" He went quiet, staring at the sea. "I guess I'll find a ferry in the morning."