by K T Bowes
Chapter Seven
The weekend passed in a haze. Sophia cleaned the house, changed the sheets on Matthew’s bed and tried to expunge the presence of Dane and his little family from her mind. Jackie from next door checked on her a couple of times, but Sophia faked joviality with such success the woman went away, not suspecting the girl hovered near breaking point.
Edgar returned on Sunday, tired and hungover. “I spent the whole weekend lying about where Sal was and pretending to ring home to see how she felt after her dreadful bout of flu,” he grumbled, reeking of alcohol.
“Is that a love bite on your neck?” Sophia opened her mouth in horror and Edgar covered it with his hand.
“I need to move on, Soph. She left us. We need to accept it.”
“You cheated on her!” Sophia’s chest hitched. “She might be lying in a hospital with amnesia or kidnapped. What will you do when she comes home? She’ll be so hurt.”
“She’s not coming home.” Edgar looked at his daughter with pity in his eyes. “She’s run off, Soph. Face facts. She doesn’t want to be found so stop grieving for her.” He staggered around the kitchen and then retired to his bedroom, sleeping from lunchtime to bedtime. Sophia stayed in her room, studying as though her life depended on it. A dreadful hardness crept into her soul, encasing its tender flesh in a jagged mould which made it impenetrable.
She used her mother’s car for school on Monday, leaving after Edgar. She relished the feeling of control but frightened herself when Sandra stepped off the pavement in front of her. “Just do it!” she hissed. “Squish the bitch!” She saw the moment of impact unfold in her mind’s eye like a film reel, alarmed by the exhilaration the sight gave her. She no longer recognised herself. “Who are you?” she asked herself in the rear view mirror, not expecting to hear an answer.
Dane was the last person she expected to see standing in the art room when she got there, talking to Mrs Simpson as though nothing happened. He glanced across as Sophia walked into the room, but didn’t speak. She felt her heart beating with such fury, she heard her pulse in her eardrums. “No,” she muttered to herself. “You’re a fool.” Squashing its ridiculous impulses once and for all, she got on with her work, logging her time and sitting down to paint. The outside of her painted building bore all the hallmarks of a horror movie set; dark, sinister colours filled with fear and dread. As a backdrop for the wonderful Christmassy interior, it made a fantastic contrast.
“That’s amazing,” Mrs Simpson crooned with pride. “You’ll need a very cheerful scene inside to offset it. Start that today or you’ll run out of time.”
Sophia nodded, knowing she possessed nothing she could draw from to make that happen.
Dane mucked around in a far room, mixing colours and getting his printing ready. Sophia tried to ignore him, manufacturing hate in her heart to counteract the other feelings threatening to undo her. She assumed he forgot her genuine offer of help as he pottered around on his own with occasional advice from the teacher. He still had the wonky plasters on his eyebrow, but the cut on his lip looked less angry. Sophia closed her eyes in pain at the thought of his expert kiss and pushed the memory away. He used her; so clear in the cold light of day.
Sophia’s hands shook without control as she tried to paint the wood grain base onto her dinner table. She experienced an overwhelming desire to tear the paper off the board, rip it into a million pieces and scatter it around the room like confetti. With every stroke of a brush loaded with happy colours full of light and hope, a bigger part of her gentle spirit crawled behind a concrete barrier around her soul and hid. Sophia felt like a dried up old cloth left in the sun too long, needing to be thrown away; all her softness and the lovely parts of her nature twisted out of shape and recognition.
As her paint tray tipped slightly, causing all the colours to bleed into one another, something snapped inside her. “No!” she hissed. Sophia watched the paints mangle and streak into a brown mess in the palette and realised with amazing clarity, she was done; with art, with life, with everything.
Sophia bent down, seized her rucksack and walked away, leaving her art and equipment on the table as though she meant to come back. Only she knew it wasn’t the plan. She felt everyone’s eyes on her retreating back and it filled her with a curious power.
“Sophia! Where’re you going?” Mrs Simpson’s voice cut through the silence and she ignored her. “You can’t leave the classroom without a permission slip and you need the toilet key from reception. Wait a minute and I’ll give you a slip, although you don’t have time to mess around.”
Sophia heard the teacher’s footsteps squeak across to her desk and kept walking. At the door, she grabbed the book hanging on a piece of string from a water pipe and snatched up the pen dangling from it. Instead of writing her finish time, Sophia used the ball point like a weapon, scratching through her name and all her hours, scribbling it into oblivion so hard the pen went right through the paper and onto the page behind. It felt like screaming into her pillow; a great idea until the screaming stopped and the pain remained. A gasp of horror escaped from the student nearest the door.
“Come back, Soph.” Libby’s crutches laboured across the floor towards her. “It’s okay, come back.”
“It’s over,” Sophia said out loud. “Everything’s over.” She heard the wobble in her voice and hated herself. The pretend world in which she acted the part of perfect daughter in a perfect family with wonderful, dutiful parents, seemed too hard to maintain. At the final curtain call, Sophia buckled under the weight of the illusion. She strode along the corridor towards the freedom of the sunlit doors, feeling the power of the car keys in her pocket and focussing on putting one foot in front of the other.
But she wasn’t the only person outside class when she shouldn’t be. A figure stepped out in front of her near the toilets, brandishing a toilet key and stinking of cigarettes. She blocked Sophia’s path.
“Sandra, Mr Baden wants you back in class.” Another student appeared behind the large girl, looking terrified at being forced to deliver the ultimatum. “He says you’ve been ages in the toilets and if you don’t come back now, he’ll keep you in after school.”
“Whatever!” Sandra flashed pure menace at the messenger, who fled in a slapping of sandals on the tiled floor and heading for the safety of the classroom. Sandra’s leering face moved close to Sophia’s, smelling of her illegal cigarette break. “Wagging off are you, Little Miss Perfect. I wonder what mummy and daddy will think of that!” Sandra circled Sophia, too dim to recognise the flash of danger which went off like a firework in the other girl’s eyes. So self-assured in her reign of terror, it never occurred to her that the object of her four-year campaign of misery might be capable of fighting back.
Sophia pulled her shoulders square and raised her head high, knowing she had nothing to lose. Sandra was taller than Sophia in Year 9, towering above her. In Sophia’s mental images, Sandra formed an enormous, powerful figure of pain-inducing awfulness. It came as a complete surprise to discover in Year 12 they were the same height.
A smile broke out on Sophia’s face, a freakish, nasty smirk which split her lips but didn’t reach her eyes. She held her ground, fearless in the face of the knife-carrying-ghoul.
“I know you fancy Dane,” Sandra hissed, edging closer, still without fear. “It’s written all over your pathetic little face. He wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole. Dane thinks you’re a joke. He’s using you!”
Sophia took in a huge breath. So much air passed through her lungs that her rucksack shifted on her shoulder. Pure hatred poured from her eyes, fuelled by the stinking muck in her broken, smouldering heart. Sandra got the message too late and by the time she tried to take a step backwards, it was over. Sophia used the lethal move Matthew taught her years before. His voice drifted back through time to his sister in the last few seconds of delivery. “It’s called the Glasgow Kiss,” he giggled like an echo, seconds before Sophia broke his nose using it. Their mother outlawed the mo
ve and her brother spent a month pretending he fell off his bike.
Sophia recalled the technique with awesome clarity as she snapped her head forward in exactly the right position, contacting her forehead across the top of Sandra’s nose. The girl screamed and plunged her ready switchblade hard into the top of Sophia’s leg. It sliced open her inner thigh and clattered to the floor, decorated with bloody residue. Skittering across the tiles, it came to rest against the skirting board on the opposite side of the corridor. Sandra sank to the ground, bleeding from her large, bulbous nose. “Argh!” she screamed as the blood flowed. “Argh!” It spurted down her blouse and showered her copious breasts, trickling onto the tiles and forming a sizeable puddle.
Sophia stepped over the prone girl like a model avoiding a fault on the catwalk. Her trance continued with her graceful glide along the corridor, the sunshine beckoning to her through the doors. “Sophia! Stop!” a voice shouted and she ran, the numbness receding to release terror into her heart.
“I’ll stab you again, bitch!” Sandra screamed, her shouts gargling over the blood. Sophia’s ears rang with the sound of her swearwords and the fire alarm peeled, a disembodied voice declaring the school in lock down. Once outside the main door she ran for her life, knowing the assault would summon the campus cops, only a few minutes away at their suburban site. Her leg felt strange but panic aided her progress as she loped across the grass with an awkward gait. Sophia unlocked the car with trembling fingers and drove across the grass and through the gates, knowing they’d assume she walked.
Sophia gunned the accelerator and heard the engine roar as she travelled down the road towards home. “Oh God, oh God!” she pleaded. Seeing the revolving blue and red lights up ahead on Discovery Drive, her heart rate increased and she released the throttle, forcing herself to slow enough to avoid suspicion. “What have I done?” she gasped behind her hand.
Two fast moving police cars sped past her and went towards the school, watched by Sophia’s frightened brown eyes in the rear view mirror. All the control and exhilaration of her small victory wilted away into nothing as the adrenaline melted from her bloodstream as quickly as it entered. Knowing she couldn’t go home, Sophia turned the car westward and headed for the coastal town of Raglan. The almost full petrol tank awaited the return of her mother; a mother who wasn’t dead or lost but who left them. Edgar said. Edgar, who slept with another woman and no longer cared about his decades old marriage. Sophia pushed the car through the city and out the other side, using up the precious petrol belonging to a woman who wasn’t coming home. She cried at times though her hour long journey through the winding foothills of Mount Pirongia. Cried, sobbed, prayed and planned.
At ten-thirty in the morning, the little seaside town looked sleepy and deserted, the shops still waking up for business. Sophia cruised through, seeking salvation and berating herself. “Why did you come here? You’re so dumb!” she raged. “There’s nothing here!” Opting for somewhere without human company, she pushed the car west and headed for the cliffs.
Reckless waves crashed onto the iron-rich, black sand with all the force of a hammer, displacing shells and rocks in their wake. Sophia parked at the top car park and looked down on the popular surfers’ beach from a great height, resting her head on the steering wheel and feeling wrung out and empty. The drive to the beach gave her time to think and calm down, processing her disastrous life with surprising clarity. She’d stay hidden and sneak home when Edgar went out, collect her passport and clothes and drive to Auckland airport. She thought she had enough for a one way ticket to England and would throw herself on the mercy of her English grandparents and start again, unfettered by recent events. “What a mess,” she said into the silence of the car. “I’ve really done it now.”
The fledgling plan gave her confidence and she allowed herself to sit and relax for a while. The sunshine superheated the windscreen and Sophia began to feel overly hot and uncomfortable. Checking nobody was around, she got out of the car and stowed her rucksack in the boot, locking up behind her. The long-drop toilet was unpleasant; the never ending pipe which carried waste into a hole in the ground covered with hungry buzzing flies. Sophia managed to take off her stockings and expose the stab wound in her leg. It looked deep, revealing the opened fatty layers, white and sickening. The flies showed an interest in the sticky blood pooled on her legs and beneath the back of her knee and she exited the small, dark space in a hurry, washing her hands in the sink outside.
“What?” Checking the driver’s seat of her car, Sophia stared at the large red stain, sure to attract passing attention, especially if the cops were looking for her.
Poking around in her rucksack for something to cover it, Sophia’s fingers closed around Dane’s old pullover, still in the bottom of her bag. Her resolve almost failed her as she pulled it out and pressed it to her face, smelling his deodorant still clinging to its fibres. A tear plopped onto its knitted surface, but she willed herself not to go there again as Sandra’s shrill voice hissed venom into her memory. “He’s using you!” In retrospect, it sounded so obvious. “You’re just a stupid girl with a crush,” Sophia admonished herself, feeling pathetic as the words sunk in. She took the pullover and laid it on the seat, as though discarded in the heat by a tourist. She made sure the school crest wasn’t visible, tucking the front underneath so it covered the stain. She locked the car and left her mobile phone in the boot, desperate for fresh air and peace.
The sand burned hot under her feet as she moved off the winding grass slope down to the beach. The iron absorbed the warmth and even though it was still early; the temperatures soared. Sophia untucked her white shirt and unbuttoned it a bit further, letting her blue tartan skirt flap about her knees in the breeze. She limped towards the water, seeking the coolness of the salty sea on her toes. Using it to wash her leg, she soaked her skirt in the process, forced to hold it out to dry while she meandered through the waves on the foreshore. The tide washing backwards and forwards disconcerted her, playing with her vision as the ground seemed to move. It messed with her head and a feeling of faintness wove around her brain.
The ocean made the sound of someone calling her name and Sophia stood, listening to its gentle lilt. She staggered from the water and looked up to the cliff, seeing a silhouette standing by her car. “Don’t touch my car,” she slurred, surprised by the sound of her own voice. The world felt surreal and Sophia peered harder, but the sun hurt her eyes and the figure didn’t look police-officer-shaped. Sophia turned and began to walk.
She wandered for ages; the car keys strung on her finger like an oversized ring. She ventured so far around the headland, she found herself back in Raglan on the other side of the long harbour bridge. Tourists and couples with young children seemed to be in abundance, unconstrained by the New Zealand school terms. Conscious of her uniform, Sophia shied away from contact with them. Anyone from Hamilton might recognise the pattern of her skirt and know she should be in school.
“Ooh sorry,” cried a father as he narrowly missed running into her, following a blonde toddler with pigtails who made a zig-zagged line towards the rolling waves. “Are you ok?” He stopped sharply at the sight of the blood trickling down the girl’s leg and she looked down in surprise.
“Yes, thanks. I just caught it on something sharp. It’s fine,” she reassured him. Her voice sounded hazy, like it belonged to someone else. Sophia walked back some way before sitting down at the water’s edge and looking at her leg. She’d done a great job of ignoring it, but couldn’t disregard the ache it sent to her brain, or the limp which got more and more pronounced the further she walked.
The possibility she might be in shock crossed her brain, disregarded because of the clarity of her thoughts. “I’m free,” she whispered to the rolling seascape. “They can all go to hell. I’m not from the right side of anyone’s tracks. In my life, there are no tracks, just roads and pathways to wherever I want to go.” Her head wobbled on her neck and a passing puppy stopped to lick her ch
in. “They can all bugger off,” Sophia slurred and the dog sniffed at her leg and lapped up some of the blood.
Its owner whistled it back and she watched as it bounded away, wishing she could borrow half its energy. The landscape pitched and rolled in her vision and the car park seemed too far away. Sophia used the salty sea water to wash her leg again, cleaning off the sticky blood and wincing with the smarting sensation it caused. Once all the mess washed away on the tide, Sophia convinced herself it didn’t look so bad. “She’ll be right,” she said out loud, laughing as she realised she sounded like a lunatic. It was the typical Kiwi phrase, used for anything from a burst pipe to bereavement.
Sophia poked at the wound, the oozing blood showing no sign of stopping. Sandra intended the illegal switchblade to do real damage and might have severed a major artery if given time to push it in further. Distracted by the head butt, she let go of the blade before it achieved its deadly aim. But it caused as much damage coming out as going in, widening the chasm in Sophia’s flesh. A deep gouge scarred her upper leg on the inside, the whiteness of the fatty layer parting to reveal muscle tissue and constantly oozing blood. It smarted and ached, but she mentally switched the pain off, telling her brain it wasn’t really there. “Saline’s good for open wounds,” she told herself. “Everyone knows that.” The presence of particles of black sand was a complication she would deal with later.
Sophia staggered back towards the car, willing the peace and tranquillity of the scene to stay with her. When another twenty minutes passed and the car park grew no nearer, she swooned with heat and dehydration and stood in the middle of the sparsely populated beach looking around in confusion. A single dog walker hogged the sand dunes, head down and deep in concentration. Sophia tried to move towards him, treacle keeping her feet in place. “Excuse me,” she called, her speech weak and without volume. The dog heard, bounding towards her at speed and attracting the attention of his owner.
“I’m so sorry,” the man shouted, running across to collect his disobedient terrier. “He’s usually obedient.” His brow furrowed and he tried to catch at the dog’s collar, noticing the blood on Sophia’s leg and picking up the distress of his hound. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I cut myself.” Sophia looked down at her legs, seeing herself grow two extra ones, two bleeding and two normal. She shook her head. “I left my car in the top car park and now I’m lost.”
The man nodded, taking in her dishevelled appearance. “Have you been drinking?”
“Yep.” Sophia nodded, her head not working right on her neck anymore. “But not enough. I need more.”
“Oh.” The man yanked his dog away by its collar, pointing a tanned arm in the opposite direction. “The car park’s back there. Cut up here through the bank on the path and you’ll get there quicker.” He frowned. “You’re not driving, are you?”
“Nope.” Sophia shook her head. “Nope.” She set off in the direction he indicated, her movements wooden and her gait slow.
As she walked, reality crowded in, reminding her she’d done wrong; she hurt another person and there would be consequences. Spotty Chelsea got detention. Sophia Armitage might get prison. A deep sense of mortification and shame struggled to surface, but she beat it down, distracting her conscience with thoughts of escape. New Zealander by birth, she didn’t think she’d return. The land called to her, pleading with her and wringing her out but she resisted it with everything she had. The police wouldn’t think to check the airports for a teenager but she’d be an exile abroad, ironic as she spent the last sixteen years feeling like an exile at home.
Dual citizenship ensured her a right to be in Britain and although she’d never flown so far in her life, the trip should be easy. “Can you grant me this one thing, God?” she pleaded. “Just give me safe passage to people who care about me. Please?”
She thought about her paternal grandparents with fondness. She imagined her granddad’s fluffy white hair which he combed backwards off of his forehead with a large flat brush every morning. Her grandma’s beautiful brown eyes and generous smile filled the screen of her mind. She wondered if she would be able to tell them the truth about everything and decided to deal with it when it came to it. If she looked too long at the big picture, it felt overwhelming. She remembered her grandma’s adage; ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ If she put one foot in front of the other and dealt with the smaller picture, she’d be okay.
Back at the car, Sophia retrieved the first aid kit from the boot and sat in the passenger seat to sort out her leg, flicking the central locking to keep herself safe. The black sand got everywhere, dusting her legs and invading the gap between the two severed layers of bleeding skin. She found a bottle of saline and broke the seal, pouring it between the edges of the cut and breathing out as it bit more deeply than the seawater. The sun dried it and the cut looked every bit as nasty as it was – a weeping, oozing stab wound.
Breathing out through pinched lips, Sophia used the white tape and scissors. She didn’t want to mess around with gauze or any of the other wrapped packs, sensing the best thing to do would be to try and seal the two sides of the cut together and hope for the best. She butterflied it together with the tape in the same way she did Dane’s eyebrow, her fingers shaking and refusing to do her bidding. “No, not him,” she wailed, deciding right then she would never allow herself to trust or become attracted to any man as long as she lived. A tear plopped onto her skirt and she gritted her teeth, leaning into the pain as she taped the wound together and hardened her fractured heart against all emotion.
When she finished, an unexpected feeling of nausea gripped her stomach. A peculiar unreality began to take hold of her and she dry retched as she tried to settle herself down in the car, figuring her four-hour walk in the sun was maybe too much. The blood on the driver’s seat dried into a wide, crusty patch and nothing came off on her fingers as she touched it. She lay Dane’s pullover back over it and sank into the passenger seat, leaning her seat back, cracking her window open an inch and closing her eyes.
In her dozing state, she thought someone tried the door handle. “Go away, leave me alone,” she slurred as her eyes closed and dumped her into a welcome sleep. By then she was too far gone to hear the frantic knocking on the window as someone tried desperately to get her attention.