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  “Are you afraid of the police, Lennox?”

  Trust no one. I didn’t speak these words out loud but it made perfect sense to me. In order to survive, you needed to survive on your own.

  “Lennox?”

  This confused me. I told her so. I was moving too fast: flashback to here, there and back again. I didn’t know who I was.

  She nodded and wrote down a couple of words.

  “The others are dead,” she said. “The person screaming is you.”

  I stared at her. It had been a mistake taking her to the crime scene. I wouldn’t get out alive if I stuck around. She was slowing me down.

  “How do you know the man and woman are dead?” I asked, curious.

  “It don’t believe it was a warning shot,” she explained. “People don’t tend to survive a bullet through the head.”

  Spontaneous perfection, perhaps. First time lucky.

  I looked down at the ground, the grass in the park. Mrs Martel was right. There was no movement, no breathing now, no hope. No question, these people were definitely dead or if they weren’t now they soon would be, quietly dying without a sound.

  “What happened to the gun?” she asked.

  The ground disappeared and I refocused. The question was loaded like the weapon.

  “The gun?” I answered the question with a question, stalling for time.

  “The gun,” she repeated, like she had all the time in the world.

  She was one step ahead. I’m looking at dead bodies and she’s searching the scene for the weapon; evidence to be used in a court of law.

  I’m looking at the gun. I am screaming. I could almost feel the scratched roughness at the back of my throat as the overdriven vibrations kicked in. I had great lung capacity, free diving, deep breathing, which meant that I could keep on screaming when everyone else had stopped.

  This time she was more specific. “What did you do with the gun, Lennox?” She stared at me.

  I cheated and twisted the truth. “You’re asking the wrong person,” I replied, maintaining eye contact, like a true professional.

  Time, eventually, runs out, even in Mrs Martel’s office. The bell went. I stood up, pushed the chair back, made to leave. She didn’t attempt to stop me but insisted we schedule another session before I left the room.

  “We’re finally getting somewhere,” she said positively.

  I looked doubtful. Like this was a good thing? “I’m not sure I want to get there,” I joked. Lennox Jones was back in the building.

  “It gets easier,” she reassured me. “Exposure therapies work. You’ll become less afraid each time.”

  I bristled. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I would be,” she said. “I’m not sure I would know how to stop being afraid if two people were shot right in front of me.”

  I couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. As the door shut behind me, I inhaled hard through the nose and exhaled through the mouth. I did this a couple of times, reassuring, like I was back on the surface.

  It gets easier.

  It gets much worse.

  Angie interrupted the breathing exercises, standing in front of me, bonfire eyes blazing, lip curling.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded to know, gritted teeth almost tripping up the words. She didn’t wait for an answer. “I called you over the weekend. We were supposed to meet at the Electric. Your idea, remember, not mine. Then you don’t show. Better offer?”

  She was seething. I reached out to touch her but she knocked my hand away before I could make contact.

  “Angie,” I said, smiling to reassure her. “I’m here now.”

  “You’re here now, seriously?” she questioned. Furious, an understatement.

  I hoped a half-truth would save me. “I came off my board.” I pointed to my head. “Killed a few brain cells, lived to die another day.”

  Angie stepped right up to me, as though she was going to kiss me. She hissed at me instead. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I hit the deck, ended up in ER, in hospital,” I protested. Resorting to absolute truth this time.

  “You didn’t come off your board. I know you too well.”

  She was right. I should have left the board out of it. I could fool my parents and the doctors but Angie knew all my right moves. She knew I’d done my falling down days. I was too good now.

  “I went down,” I continued, hoping she’d realise that it was all she needed to know.

  She replied, “All I know is that you didn’t show.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Well I’m gone.” She backed off, shaking her head.

  “You’re going nowhere,” I warned in a voice I didn’t recognise.

  Angie stopped dead, looking at me as though she was seeing me for the first time.

  “What the hell did you say?” If she was startled, she didn’t show it.

  “I told you, I fell down.” I made this sentence sound like a warning too.

  “Like I care.” She stood her ground, defiant, undefeated.

  “I think you do care, Angie. You do care and it’s killing you.”

  “Who do you think you are?” She was seething now. “Speaking to me like that.”

  It was a regular expression but, somehow, I interpreted it as a question.

  “Alfie Harris,” a part of me replied.

  She bounced back on her heels as though I’d electrocuted her. It made me think of those warning signs that had run through my mind before; diamond shapes and triangles. I was a lightning strike. I was supposed to raise awareness about danger, high voltage, risk of death. I wasn’t supposed to deliver it.

  Yet here I was, the source, not the saviour.

  Shock, the symptoms: the blood doesn’t circulate as it should and the core temperature drops. I swear she almost turned blue in front of me.

  It wasn’t a pre-meditated take down; at that precise moment in time I had no idea who Alfie Harris was. No idea at all. But from her reaction I knew I was going to have a hard time convincing Angie otherwise.

  True fighter, back off the ropes, she recovered enough to get some words out. “Is this a sick joke?” she asked, almost stammered. “Is this how Lennox Jones gets his kicks?”

  The sound of my name brought me back. I wasn’t Alfie Harris, I was Lennox Jones. It gave me perspective and focus once more.

  Then she charged. She was fast off the back foot, I’ll give her that. Fast and strong, she put her head down and sprinted, bellowing, at full speed until the impact destroyed her momentum. The head, like a brick, will take you down unless you manage to dodge the blow. Too slow, for once, I didn’t have the neat footwork. I fell backwards this time, hitting the corridor floor. Not a concrete sidewalk but still a hard hit. I looked up and my eyes saw strip lighting not stars. I saw a lot more too. I was Alfie Harris once more. I was standing in the park, I saw people with bullet holes, heads leaking blood, turning the grass dark.

  They weren’t alone. I saw a pram I hadn’t seen before, although it had to have been there the whole time. Its quietness seemed louder than the screams; its presence greater than the carnage at my feet. It was an unnerving sight because all I could think was: people kill other people but monsters kill babies.

  I wasn’t a monster. I was screaming. Alfie Harris was screaming; shock, sheer fear or a shooter’s high, I had no idea. Like I said, it was hard to make sense of thoughts and feelings amidst all the noise.

  I felt the weight of the world on me, pressing the air out of my lungs, and then I realised it was Angie Anderson, the one person who was supposed to save me. She was sobbing, beating me with her fists, wild, misaimed blows around the head that sometimes hit the mark but mostly didn’t. She had her eyes shut tight so she didn’t have to look at me. I didn’t move, I kept very, very still. I was no longer screaming.

  I deliberately didn’t look at the pram again; I didn’t want to draw attention to it. Until now it hadn’t existed and I needed it to stay that way.
r />   No sudden movements, I brought my hands up, brain still scrambling to work out what was going on. I wasn’t going to run. I wasn’t going to go down a murderer. I’d take the secrets to the grave.

  Gunshots didn’t scare me. I’d spent my whole life telling myself not to feel a thing, I wasn’t about to start now.

  I became aware of Mrs Martel’s voice, she was reaching down, dragging Angie off me. She’d obviously heard the commotion outside her office door and was now trying to separate the two of us, turn a circus back into a school.

  I could feel the weight lifted from me and it was a relief. I exhaled, too deeply, becoming light again. The blood doesn’t circulate as it should when the core temperature drops. The truth doesn’t care who gets hurt. The truth doesn’t spare us. The truth told me I was cold because I was dying.

  17

  Angie: broken

  “I was just fooling around,” he said. “I would never hurt you,” he said. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Alfie Harris,” he said.

  Mrs Martel dragged me off him, fists still flailing, hitting out at her too. I was scratching and biting too at this stage. Lost in a furious disbelief. Another teacher pounded down the corridor and took immediate action, helping Lennox to his feet. I seized the moment and ran at Lennox again. The plan was to take him down, again and again until he couldn’t get up.

  Mrs Martel grabbed me, surprisingly strong, and I heard the material around the collar of my shirt protest under the pressure and rip all the way to the hemline.

  Then I could feel Mrs Martel’s hands grabbing frantically at cotton until she made contact with my arm. Once she locked on, she was hard to shake off. The ensuing tussle cost me valuable seconds and Lennox was quickly spirited into Mrs Martel’s office out of sight. Not out of mind. I was seething, breathing hard.

  I finally shook Mrs Martel’s hand off me. Maybe she let go.

  “Calm down,” she instructed.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” I hissed staring at the door.

  “This will have to be reported to the head teacher,” she said. “I have no choice.”

  “Bring it on.” I knew how to fight my corner.

  “It’s Angie, isn’t it?” she questioned, using a telltale therapist voice, marshmallow soft and gentle. “Angie Anderson?”

  I glared at her, breathing almost under control now.

  She added, “Lennox gave me the impression you meant a lot to him.”

  I laughed, a mocking, serrated-edged laugh. “I’m sure he did. Someone so messed-up in the head like him knows how to make an impression.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That was nothing?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Angie, whatever he said, I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  I took a step towards her; she narrowed her eyes. Good tactic: smaller surface area hides emotions. Show no fear.

  “He wanted to hurt me,” I whispered, barely trusting myself to speak. “No doubt about that.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Mrs Martel still fighting the prize pupil’s corner.

  “Alfie Harris.” I said. The name still had the strength to break my heart. It hurt to say the words. It hurt even more to hear them. Lennox Jones, knockout punch.

  Mrs Martel raised a questioning eyebrow as though she knew better than to say his name again. So I volunteered the information: “Alfie Harris was the drug addict who killed my parents.”

  The head teacher sent me home. Not exactly in disgrace, just to cool off, he reassured me. Just until I got temper, fists, the fireworks, under control.

  “Take time out, Angie,” he concluded. “Come back tomorrow. Make an appointment with Mrs Martel. Talk it through.”

  I said nothing. His speech was another reminder that I had a file not a past. I had rails while normal people had routine.

  Mrs Martel had brought him up to speed ending on a sympathetic finish. I wasn’t entirely to blame, she insisted. I stood next to her in the Head’s office but could have been a world away. It was like I was listening in on a conversation about someone else.

  The official line was that Lennox Jones had been teasing me. It had spiralled out of control. It happens. We all spiral at some point, according to Mrs Martel.

  The corridors had emptied out by the time I left the Head’s office, everyone safely in their lessons. All quiet now but I’m sure the story of our fight had been told throughout the school. Gossip spreads faster than bushfire in this place. I grabbed my bag from the locker room and sprinted to the main door, repeatedly hitting the exit button to deactivate the lock, desperate to speed up my departure.

  Teasing me? Tormenting me. I stormed down the street, raging. I ripped off my blazer, roughly stuffing it into my bag without breaking stride. I briefly considered chucking it straight into a builder’s skip at the side of the road because returning to that school held no appeal for me whatsoever. Instead, I reached for my phone and stared at the screen. No messages. In another life, I would have automatically sent a text to Viv to bring her up to speed on what just went down. In that other life, she would have messaged to ask. I hesitated. Counting back, 240 hours in real time since we last laughed together but it now seemed like centuries ago. The landscape had changed, nothing was familiar. I slowed to a walk. I had never felt so lost.

  “What are you doing home?” asked Louise as I slunk into the house, carefully closing the door behind me.

  She was stretched out on the sofa, plumper than cushions, watching a shouty, mid-morning talk show. The people in the television studio were screaming at each other and throwing aggressive hand shapes in the air. Louise had the volume up way too high.

  “I’m going up to my room,” I said. I suddenly felt exhausted. Adrenaline comedown.

  Louise scrabbled into a sitting position, lack of stomach muscles making the job much harder than it should have been.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “Mmm, I’ve got a headache,” I fibbed.

  Louise looked at me. I looked at the television screen. For someone who wasn’t in touch with her emotions, Louise had a special talent for spotting a lie.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” she pounced.

  “I doesn’t matter,” I responded.

  “What happened?” Louise pressed a button on the remote control and the television turned to black.

  I stared down the black hole on the screen and the silence screamed back at me.

  “Angie?”

  “We had a fight.” I shrugged, swallowing hard.

  Louise shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. I could tell that she knew this was the part where she was supposed to hug me, to reassure me, to tell me that everything was going to be okay. She knew it but she didn’t break the habit of my lifetime. She kept her distance.

  “You had a fight with this Lennox and you get sent home from school?” She managed to make his name sound like a bacterial virus and the event sound like a nuclear disaster.

  I nodded. She sighed. Even though her credentials as a substitute mother were questionable, she probably knew me better than anyone else.

  “He must have hurt you,” she said quietly.

  I barely managed a nod and left the room.

  Don’t let Louise catch you crying.

  I sat on the end of the bed and sent Viv a text: Have I told u lately that I <3 u?

  I watched the digital clock next to the bed. The neon numbers kept changing. No messages.

  I refused to go to school the following morning. Actually, no one tried to make me go so I suppose I simply chose not to go rather than refused. It was a quiet, uneventful decision. I checked my phone, no messages, pulled the covers back over my head, listened, still no messages.

  It seemed like only seconds later when Louise charged through the bedroom door, the handle thudding into the interior wall. I fixed one eye on the bedside clock as I sat up, shocked at the rude awakening. It was almost midday.r />
  “What the?” I blinked. Tiredness was blurring my vision. “Louise?”

  “He’s outside,” snapped Louise agitatedly, plump fingers jabbing in the direction of the front door. “He won’t leave.”

  I stared at her, pulling the duvet up to my chin. We didn’t need to confirm names.

  “He’s been shouting through the letterbox. Banging on the windows.”

  “Then call the police,” I said, sliding back down the bed, taking cover. “I’m not here.”

  Louise didn’t answer.

  I came up for air and questioned the silence. “Louise?”

  She edged further into the room. “Tell him to go.”

  We heard the window take another hammering. Feeling vulnerable in cotton pyjamas, I leapt out of bed and picked up yesterday’s clothes that had been dropped on the floor next to the bed.

  Louise wasn’t exactly filling me with confidence. She looked scared.

  “Me?” I said.

  “Don’t open the door,” instructed Louise in a stage whisper. “Tell him to get lost. He’ll get the message.”

  The persistent hammering was now threatening to break glass so I marched out of the room. Scared was the furthest emotion from my mind right now. I was furious, pure and simple, furious and going to do something about it. Keep moving.

  I pounded through the living room, down the hallway and flung open the front door, as wide as it would go.

  “I said, don’t open the door,” screamed Louise, panting as she hurried after me.

  He stood at the bottom of the steps, cut forehead, hair shaved close to his head. Those gemstone sapphires had no sparkle today, as Viv would say.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I questioned, hands on hips, feet planted apart. I looked down at him, body language sending out a clear message: I was no pushover.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said. He put his foot on the first step.

  “Don’t you DARE come closer,” shouted Louise, edging round me. She’d overcome her fear.