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by Tanya Paterson

Pete sat at Alex’s desk and opened the laptop, then he swivelled the computer so that we could see the screen.

  “Dave Matthews has been outed, so to speak.”

  Pete had logged onto Dave’s Facebook page where the latest posting was titled ‘my confession’. It briefly stated, to paraphrase, that he was a raping bastard who couldn’t get it up around girls unless he drugged them first. Next to the posting was a new profile picture of Dave holding up a bag of pills.

  What the…?

  “How did you get him to do this?” asked Alex.

  “I wrote it myself, last night. As for the photo….I can be pretty intimidating when provoked and last night I was provoked. It wasn’t hard to convince Dave to give me his password after I gave him a little beating,” admitted Pete, holding up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to illustrate. Pete’s tone gave me the impression that the beating would have been anything but ‘little’. My surprise must have shown on my face.

  “I wasn’t going to just let it go this time, sweet pea,” Pete was unrepentant. “Dave deserved a lot – lot – worse than what I did. He’s lucky he only ended up arrested and not in intensive care.”

  “Arrested?!” Alex and I said at the same time.

  “Jeez….didn’t you look at all the photos?” Dave clicked on a photos folder and enlarged the first shot. It was grainy and obviously taken on a camera phone from a distance but you could still clearly make out Dave in handcuffs being led through a crowd by two uniformed officers. There were other photos: Dave being put into the back of the paddy wagon, Dave glaring through the wagon’s rear window.

  “I couldn’t take the chance you wouldn’t report him, Hay, and Alex was right – one way or another Dave had to pay,” Pete said calmly. “So after you left, I called the police and told them I’d seen a boy assaulting a girl and when they got there they found the drugs on him. Of course, that’s not enough to get him charged with assault but at the very least he’ll be done for possession.”

  I couldn’t believe Pete had thought of this. It was ingenious. The only the only downside was that Dave had been arrested for possession, but not attempted rape.

  Would that be enough to stop Dave and to stop him from attacking some other girl? And could I live with it if it wasn’t?

  A few minutes later I had the answer.

  CHAPTER 48

  ALEX

  Word of Dave’s arrest spread fast once he was charged with a multitude of crimes including possession of a controlled substance and attempted rape. Dave was released on bail pending trial but as far as everyone at school was concerned, he’d already been convicted. He was immediately expelled, ostracised by the town and dumped by Krista. I heard his father kicked him out, packed up and left town.

  The following week, police raided several clubs at Airlie Beach after the Sunday newspaper ran a feature highlighting ‘the dark side of paradise’ and the dangers of date rape. The local council went into damage control. There was a burst of activity: the high school held meetings for concerned parents and counselling sessions were organised for girls and, on Pete’s insistence, boys who suspected they’d been drugged or raped. There was a sense of the town rallying together although cynically I wondered if local politicians were more worried about the effect on tourism than public safety.

  Throughout it all, Hayley was extraordinarily brave, if not fearless. The three of us went to the police the morning after the show and reported Dave. Hayley tested positive for Rohypnol. She then went home and told her mother and brother everything that had happened at the show. They were obviously very upset which is why Hayley said that she couldn’t tell them about the night Gary assaulted her or how her father let it happen. Hayley insisted some wounds weren’t meant to be reopened and regardless of what Pete or I thought, it was her story to tell so we had to respect her decision. Unfortunately that meant Gary Matthews was still a free man. But what Hayley didn’t know was that Pete and I had secretly made a pact that one day Gary Matthews was also going to get what he deserved, with or without Hayley’s knowledge or blessing. Gary would be made accountable for his actions – it was only a matter of time.

  The email to my parents had the effect I’d hoped for. My mother and father replied they were pleased I was ‘back on track’ and ‘focused on my future’. Little did they know it wasn’t the future they planned. In the unflinching heat and humidity; in the absolute middle of nowhere; in exile; I’d found a new purpose in life – I’d found myself.

  The end of the term arrived and on the first day of the holidays I was sitting on a sunny bench by the lagoon at Airlie Beach, waiting for a girl with flame-coloured hair to finish her shift at Juicy Bits. I can’t believe I survived all these years without her. We had two weeks of the holidays ahead of us and I wasn’t planning on letting Hayley out of my sight. Maybe it was a side-effect of the attack but I didn’t like being apart from her. It’s a good thing she enjoyed having me around or she might have called me a stalker.

  My mobile rang.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  “Hey,” she said. “I see you.”

  I turned in my seat and searched the gardens surrounding the lagoon. Hayley was walking towards me, her emerald eyes shining as brightly as the greenstone necklace at her neck.

  A wide grin stretched across my face as my heart exploded in my chest.

  “I see you too.”

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

 

 

 


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