by Nikki Ashton
Adam took my hand in his, and just as he’d done for the last hour or so, didn’t leave my side until we were finally allowed to go home with our parents three hours later.
21
Adam
I sat upright in bed. My skin slipped with sweat and my breath came as harsh gasps. I’d had a nightmare and was back in the shop, only this time I didn’t tackle him and bring him down, and it was Sarah who was shot in the chest. Her lifeless body was propped up against mine with her hand still on my bicep, but no matter how much I shook her or shouted in her face, she wouldn’t wake up. It had been terrifying and felt so fucking real, I’d even called out her name when I’d woken, thrashing the bedcovers as I fought for her to wake.
I scrubbed an open hand down my face and flopped back against my pillows as I tried to banish the images from my head. I’d been able to hold it together at the station when we were giving our statements, but the minute I’d got into the house after Mum and Roger brought me home, I’d run up to my room and locked the door. Roger had knocked quietly a few minutes later, but I ignored him and pretended to be sleeping. I knew he only wanted to check on me, but I preferred to deal with everything that had happened alone.
It wasn’t long after that I heard Mum crying and telling Roger that she shouldn’t have sent me for the shopping, that it could easily have waited until the morning. I was glad I’d been there though. If I hadn’t been, I wasn’t sure Sarah would have held it together and the bloke robbing the place was so erratic I knew in my heart that he’d have shot her – just like in my dream.
As I lay in my bed, the house felt too quiet. I knew it was early, but I couldn’t hear anything, no creaks or groans, not even the sound of Lori’s soft snoring drifted as far as my room. I felt agitated by it and couldn’t wait for the sun to come up and for the usual breakfast noises to sound out. I snatched my phone from the chest of drawers next to my bed and looked at the time; 4 am. I wondered whether Sarah would be awake, whether images of last night were disrupting her sleep too. I had her number; I’d sent it to my phone when I’d used Alannah’s, acting like mine was dead. At the time I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever use it, but I’d never even considered that if I did, it would be to check she was okay after almost being shot dead.
Near the end, when he’d pointed that gun at us, I’d kept my stare on him the whole time. If he was going to shoot me, he was going to look me in the eyes while he did it, but there was no doubt where his gun was pointed, and it wasn’t on me. He was going to kill Sarah and make me watch, just to prove a point in some sort of fucking pissing contest. I just couldn’t sit there and watch that, so I’d lunged for him. Thank fuck he was wacked out on something because for all he was erratic, his reflexes were slow, and he hadn’t seen me coming when I’d headbutted him right in the dick and sent him flying. It hadn’t taken much to wrestle his aim from Sarah’s chest to his own and with all the jostling he’d squeezed the trigger and – bang he was dead.
“Fuck,” I muttered into the darkness as everything began to play over in my head again.
I couldn’t handle it, I needed to get out of the house, or at least check on Sarah. I dialled her number and was surprised when she answered on the third ring.
“Hello,” she whispered. “Adam is that you?”
I let out a relieved breath and moved to a sitting position. “How did you know?”
“Not sure who else would be calling me at four a.m. I guess you got my number from Alannah’s phone?”
I smiled. “Yeah. Too obvious?”
“A little.” She paused for a few seconds, but I could still hear her breathing. “You can’t sleep either?” she finally asked.
“I did, but had a nightmare, but I guess being held up in a Tesco Express when getting milk will do that to you.”
“I suppose. Did the officer taking your statement at the station tell you the man was a drug addict?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Said he was homeless too. All the best people come to Maddison Edge.”
Sarah giggled softly on the other end of the line and it was a great sound, mainly for the fact that she was actually still here to make it.
“There’ll be no come back on you will there?” she asked.
“No, apparently the CCTV recorded it all. It was clear I was trying to…” I paused, thinking carefully about my words, not wanting to say I was trying to save her life. I didn’t want her thinking any more about what might have happened. “I was trying to resolve the situation.”
“That’s good,” she said quietly. “It wouldn’t be fair. You saved us.”
“Yeah, main thing is we’re safe,” I replied. “Anyway, how’s your mum? This had to have been doubly hard on her.”
“She’s okay. She cried a lot and I had to stop her from sleeping in the chair next to my bed, but mostly she’s angry. Apart from me being in danger, it’s resurrected a lot of hatred for the man who shot my dad too. It brought it all back and dredged up some shitty memories and feelings for her.”
I shifted again and changed the position of my pillows, I wanted to be comfy while I talked to Sarah because I didn’t want anything to distract me from having a long conversation with her. On the way home, Roger had begged me to talk to him and Mum about it, but I’d clammed up, the only person that I’d wanted to discuss it with was now on the other end of the line.
“I totally get that,” I replied. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t decided to lock you in the house for the rest of your life.”
Sarah made a soft whimpering noise and I thought maybe she was going to cry, but she carried on talking, her voice full of resignation.
“He was going to shoot me.”
Her statement surprised me. I’d thought I’d have to always keep that fact from her, but someone must have told her.
“Did someone say something?” I asked.
“No,” she sighed out. “I just felt it. When he was waving the gun between us and I closed my eyes, I knew it would be me.” She blew out a breath and I got a sense that she was trying to gather her thoughts, so I stayed silent and waited until she was ready. “I want you to know something, something important.”
“Okay,” I replied tentatively. “But you don’t have to tell me, we’re not even friends remember.”
Sarah huffed out a laugh. “I think you can safely say after tonight and how you helped me, we are friends. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you.”
I didn’t want to lie to her and deny it. I had no problem lying to most people but somehow it didn’t seem right to do it to her. Whether she meant to or not, in a matter of weeks Sarah Danes had started to change me and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. I also wasn’t sure whether I could change totally or whether it was just for Sarah, the girl with the golden hair who tried to act brave every single day.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell everyone?” I asked, closing my eyes and hoping that she saw some light in me. “You know I’m not a good person, Sarah.”
I wanted to be able to tell her that I would take her secret to the grave, but what if the black hatred inside of me meant I used it against her? I didn’t want to do that to her, but what if I had no choice?
“I happen to think you’re a better person than you think you are.” Her voice pitched low. “And, I’m not scared if you do. I’ve realised after tonight that life is too short to have secrets, particularly those that hold you down, the ones that make you drown in misery. All you do is spend your time hiding from life and trying to make sure no one finds out the real you. It’s time consuming and tiring.”
She had a point. I’d spent the last nine years keeping a secret that I thought would make people, my friends, think less of me. Yet to keep that secret I’d become the sort of person no one liked or gave a shit about anyway.
“If you tell me, I’ll give you a secret of mine, in return,” I offered as I pulled up the duvet against the cool chill in my room.
“You don’t have to,” Sarah responded.
“But if you want to then I’ll be happy to make a pact with you.”
“Oh yeah,” I laughed. “What’s that?”
“You tell anyone my secret and I’ll tell yours.”
My first instinct was to tell her to fuck off, I couldn’t be blackmailed, but then sense kicked in. This was Sarah, she wasn’t like that, she was trying to make light of the fact that we were both about to tell the other something that could potentially break us.
“That’s a deal. So, you want me to go first.” I was more than willing to do that to prove to her that I could be trusted.
“No,” she breathed out. “I need to say it now before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay, so tell me.”
Sarah cleared her throat. “I-I, shit I thought this would be easier.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” My heart twisted for her; it was obvious that whatever it was caused her a lot of pain. Pain that she had to endure on top of that she felt for the loss of her dad.
“I do, I want to,” she continued, and I heard her take a deep breath. “I tried to kill myself three months ago.”
Her words hit me like a head on collision with a juggernaut. She’d wanted to die.
“Sarah,” I whispered her name into the darkness. My throat felt thick with worry and regret at every fucking awful thing I’d said to her; the fucking shit stunt the lads had played on her. “Why?”
I felt the bile rise in my throat at the thought that it might have been someone like me who’d pressed her into making such a heart-breaking decision; a decision that would probably kill her mum in turn.
“Sarah, what happened? Why? Was it losing your dad?”
“Not as such, but,” she sighed, “that’s another secret, but I guess I can’t give one without the other.”
Something slammed inside my brain. Whatever it was had to be too big to tell a stupid fucking dick who relished in bullying girls and making them feel like shit. “No, Sarah, you don’t have to tell me. I don’t want you to tell me.”
I closed my eyes against the words that I knew were coming. She’d gone this far and if I’d learned anything about Sarah in the last few weeks, it was that she was brave, and she would see not telling me as being cowardly.
“I was raped,” she said softly. “There was a teacher at my last school and when my dad was killed, he saw that I was lonely.”
I heard her draw in a breath and I could imagine her rubbing her wrist or wrapping an arm around her waist. The tells were all there now I knew. She was battling to overcome the most hideous of things that could ever happen to a woman, all the time she was grieving too. This girl, this tiny girl with the golden hair, was braver than I’d given her fucking credit for.
“He preyed on me, Adam. He saw that my mum wasn’t coping and had mentally left me, and he made me think he was looking out for me, but he wasn’t. He exploited my unhappiness and raped me. And then,” she said with a light laugh, “he tried to tell me that I loved him, that we loved each other and that I was just scared at the depth of my emotions.”
“The fucking bastard.” I drew my knees to my stomach as a sharp pain hit me. “Tell me he’s fucking dead, Sarah, or at the very least in prison.”
I started to breath heavily as I waited for her to tell me what I needed to hear, because although I barely knew her, I had a bone crushing need to protect her. From the minute I’d seen her she’d fascinated me to the point of wanting her more than any girl before. I’d treated her like a piece of shit because I couldn’t express my own feelings without hurting those around me. I was a maelstrom of anger and pain. Everyone got caught in the tornado of my life and was thrashed around to the point of pain because of me. Sarah had been one of those people and yet she’d tried so hard to stand up to me, to keep away from the vortex, while all the time dealing with something so monstrous it had driven her to attempt to take her own life.
“I- I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “How did you survive it all? How do you get through each day?”
“I just do, I have to. I know we barely know each other, but I just wanted to share my secret, finally.”
“How fucking ironic you wanted to share it with me, the arsehole who has been making your life shit since you got here.”
There was silence on the line, and I wondered whether Sarah had realised that she’d made a bad choice in telling me, but then I heard something on the other end of the line.
“Sarah, you still there?”
“Yes, sorry, I heard my mum going to the bathroom, I thought she might come in and check on me.”
I looked up at the ceiling not able to see anything in the darkness except flickering pictures of Sarah in pain from grief, from fear and from desperation.
“What happened to that bastard, Sarah?” I whispered.
“The jury didn’t believe me,” she replied, and my insides began to burn with anger. “It was my mum in the end who found out what was going on and called the police. He was arrested and I had to testify.” Her words were rushed but clear like she needed to get them out before they poisoned her. “It was an anonymous testimony I was Miss A. and he told everyone that we were lovers and I’d got angry when he’d ended our affair. The jury believed him, they believed it when he said I’d kept the underwear that he’d torn from my body as a memento of our first time and they believed him that I was just a vindictive little bitch.”
Sarah sounded defeated and I wished I’d gone with my gut and actually gone around there to talk. How could I hold her and comfort her from two damn miles away?
“Shit I’m sorry, Sarah.”
“It gets worse,” she said on a shaky breath.
“Worse?” I asked incredulously. “How much worse can it get?”
“For me it did. He lost his job, so he left town and I went back to school.”
“That’s good though, isn’t it?”
“Not when almost every single person in the school hated me and made sure I knew it. He was a really popular teacher; one of those cool, easy going ones, you know the sort.”
“Yeah, but even so, he fucking raped you,” I hissed.
“According to them I’d ruined his life, so they were determined to ruin mine.”
“What did the teachers do about it?”
“Not much,” Sarah said her voice flat and deflated. “The head just told my mum it’d die down eventually. Some of the parents of the GCSE kids even complained about me, saying that if their kids didn’t pass their art exam without him, it would be my fault.”
“Fucking cunts.”
Sarah laughed. “Yeah well, that’s one word for them.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“No idea, but I know he’s back in town.”
“Where you used to live?”
My heart thudded in my throat because my first thought was that she meant Maddison Edge.
I heard her breathing heavily and not for the first time wished I’d just fucking gone around there to see her.
“Yeah, where I used to live. The town I had to leave.”
“Bastard.”
Silence fell between us. I wanted to fill it but wasn’t sure what to say. What words were there for something so awful. It wasn’t like we were really close and I knew how to support her, apart from which I was a fucking seventeen year old who had no idea how to treat people, never mind beautiful, tortured girls.
Finally, Sarah started to speak. “I hate him, Adam. I hate that he gets to carry on with his life, more or less, and I had to move away. I had to watch my mum break down all over again and I hate that I’ll live with those fucking shit memories for the rest of my life.”
“I can’t believe he’s allowed to go back there.”
“As far as the law is concerned, he did nothing wrong, except, according to him, have a sexual relationship with a pupil.”
“I’d fucking kill him for you if I could.” Shit, I’d never heard anything so gut wrenching in all my life. She’d been through enough and the sick basta
rd had preyed on that. “I’m so fucking glad you didn’t succeed in killing yourself though, because that would have meant he’d won.”
“Yeah well,” she replied. “I’m trying to be stronger to prove he didn’t. It was a moment of weakness and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“When?” I asked screwing up my eyes and wincing. “When did you try, you know, to kill yourself?”
“After the trial...” She cleared her throat. “When my friends and most of the school, turned against me. When they all accused me of lying and believed his version of events. It was supposed to be a secret, it wasn’t reported on or added to my records, so I don’t know how, but someone at school found out and thought it their duty to tell everyone.”
How she’d broken down in the corridors last week came back to me. Tyler, Kirk and Ellis had forced a replay of all the shit she’d gone through at her other school. I wasn’t innocent in that. I’d been the one to bring her to their attention. I’d been the one who’d put a target on her back, and I’d been the one who’d singled her out from the minute she set foot in school.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Sarah,” I groaned. “More than you will ever know.”
“It happened I-.”
“No,” I butted in. “I mean for everything I’ve put you through. You should really fucking hate me and I would understand if you did.”
“I told you, I think you’re a better person than you actually know, Adam, and you kind of saved my life, so I think I owe you.”
“I just did what I thought was best.”
“Yes and that was to save me and everyone else in that shop.”
We stayed silent for a while, neither of us spoke but we didn’t hang up either. I think we were both just happy to have someone else on the end of the line. Someone in the room to share our inner thoughts with.
“I guess it’s my turn now,” I eventually said.
“Only if you want to,” Sarah replied. “But I’ve got to say Adam, I doubt you’ll beat that one.”
The sound of her amusement lightened my darkness a little and within seconds I joined her in laughter and then began to tell her my secret