Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood)

by Wendy Maddocks

  By the time Katie had showered, slapped a dressing on her arm and got her bag from her room, the others were banging around downstairs or in the garden. Life went on as normal in the house on Newton Street. Katie only allowed herself a minute to listen to everything before going downstairs, where she drank water and picked at fruit.

  “I’m going to the library,” yelled Leo and swung out the door, slamming it behind him. It seemed to be the first time he had left the house since she had got here. Was it really only a week ago that she had said goodbye to her family? It seemed so much longer.

  Jaye breezed into the kitchen, her nose buried in a textbook, got a pack of biscuits and headed back to her room without even seeing her. All second year students and above were expected to have kept up some kind of reading during the holidays and, with classes starting next week, it was a pretty good bet that cramming just enough to blag the first lesson was the order of the day. Dina was probably holed up in their room too – she hadn’t heard her. When her admittedly poor excuse for breakfast was over, Katie got a sheet of paper from her bag and scribbled down a few things she needed to get for dinner. It was going to be lasagne with salad and bread rolls. It might not be the most imaginative meal but she found it easy to make and she knew it was tasty. Well nobody ha ever died when she made it and that was good enough for Katie. She started writing her list and then her ears latched onto an angru conversation drifting through the closed lounge door.

  “What the hell did you do to that poor kid?” Lainy.

  “Yeah. Kid. Whatever you’re thinking, mate, she is a child. For the next year, she’s our child.” She had never heard Adam sound so angry. Calm and quiet but there was no mistaking that harsh edge of rage in his voice.

  “She has a mark, Jack, a whip mark. You’re doing, I’m guessing?”

  “Look, I never meant her to get hurt. I just didn’t know what else to do.” Jack? Was that the word smeared on her mirror?

  “You didn’t know. That one gets old so fast.”

  “I would never intentionally hurt her.”

  “You…”

  Adam must have made some noise to hush Lainy because she trailed off andhe took over. “Before we get to the blame – before, not instead of – tell us what happened to Katie. How did she get that slash?”

  Katie glanced down at the bandage on her arm and peeled a corner of it up to look at the ugly cut beneath. It made her shudder. Not because it hurt – it was a pleasantly numb area until she tried to move it – but because she was sure she had gotten the wound in some nightmarish other world. Certainly, there were no memories she could use to pin point it. Just – it was cold and wet and dark and there was screaming and then there wasn’t.

  “… deserves to know.” Jack finished. Katie felt guilty that she had missed what he said, then she remembering she really had no right to be hearing this in the first place. “I couldn’t just stand by and watch her stumble into trouble because she’s too young to be told.”

  “The rules are there for a reason, Jack. You knew what might happen and now she’s scared, hurt, God knows what else. Does she know why? Forget it, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that you did something incredibly stupid last night and you might have made an enemy out of Katie. Well done,” the sarcasm oozed through the door and Lainy began a slow handclap.

  “Who even let you in last night? It wasn’t me.”

  “Katie did. She didn’t know she was doing it either.” And then Katie had a sudden memory of being awake late last night and sitting by the window when she suddenly felt dizzy and breathless. Then there was a boy standing beside her, holding onto her hand as though he might fall away if he let go. With a start, Katie realised that was absolutely true.

  The conversation quieted to a series of mutters she couldn’t quite hear and, whilst she doubted any of them would bat an eyelid if she burst into the living room and started firing questions, she realised that she wasn’t that sure she wanted any answers. Not even if she had had any questions to ask. As it was,, there were important things to be getting on with. Like dinner.

  Even though she hadn’t really felt like it, Katie had jogged down to the corner shop she’d sat outside with Jaye, pretty sure they would have everything she needed and ended up with so much stuff that she’d had to take the bus back home. Home – it still made her smile. There was precisely one bus that ran in Northwood. It mostly ran along the main road and into a few of the streets where, she guessed, older or disabled people lived. There was another bus that ran down into Millford but it didn’t even stop in Northwood. Most places in town could easily be walked to, but it was handy to have the service when you needed it. There had only been a handful of people on the bus when she got on – she was sure she recognised one as the woman from the hospital that second night – and gave her a little smile and wave. The woman nodded back. It reminded Katie of another little job she had to do when she off-loaded. One she was not at all looking forward to.

  “How’s your son?” Katie asked, sliding into the seat behind her. The woman frowned and Katie tapped the side of her head to remind her.

  “From the hospital. Of course. Oh, he’s fine now. Tried to cadge the first day off school though.”

  “We all did it,” Katie replied. Dan still tried it every term.

  “As soon as he was through the gates he was off playing footy with his little friends.”

  “Football star in the making, hey. Maybe he’ll be training here at the academy in a few years.”

  “Oh no, I’d never send him to Levenson. Well, not if I didn’t have to. It’s much too… expensive.”

  The woman tried to make that last sentence as seamless as possible and managed it pretty well but Katie didn’t miss that fraction of a beat between the last two words. “Why wouldn’t you send him to college here at home?”

  “It’s just,” she started, looking nervously out the window and gathering and re-gathering her bags. “It’s just not the right place for him. Not Freddie. They promised.”

  “Who promised what and why? That he wasn’t good enough? I’m sure he’ll turn out great at football. If you start young, there’s plenty of time to get good.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for. And that’s why he can never go here.” She finally got her bags together and stood up, yanking the cord that told the driver to halt. “I need him to have that time. I want people to call him Magic Feet Freddie. ‘cos he is good. Much too good to have it all be wasted when he’s eighteen.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “This town, the people who live here, we’re all just waiting, you know. And you… I don’t know why they call kids in if they can’t tell them. They never rush to tell you anything.” A question was halfway out of Katie’s mouth when the brakes squealed on – she really wished her mouth had told her brain what it was. “Look, it’s my stop.” And she damn near ran down to the folding doors. Katie sat back and looked out the window as the bus rolled slowly on the one stop to Newton Street. Now, she was glad she had had to catch the bus from the shop. If she had even suspected Northwood was not the average small college town, the woman had more or less confirmed it. There was nothing overtly weird or creepy about the place – it was just this feeling of everything running a little too smoothly, the people being a little too nice.

  When Katie got back, she went straight to the kitchen to put her bags down on the table. And walked right into Dina repeating Jaye’s actions of the morning step for step. Only she dragged her eyes away from her textbook at the door, registering Katie and the carriers. “Food? Real food?”

  Katie nodded and Dina slammed her chemistry book down on the table, looking relieved. “I’ve been living off burgers all summer. I think that’s about all I ate in America. They had a lot of seafood but it made me puke one night.”

  Katie tried to grin but inside she felt sick herself. She really didn’t
need to know that. “Thanks for sharing.”

  “I’m the kind of cook who can get beans on toast wrong but I can help unpack.” Dina, with bones sticking out everywhere, was much stronger than she looked. She took a few things out of bags and then, after Katie had tried and failed, she set about getting the heavy pots and dishes out of random cupboards. They seemed random to Katie, anyway, but the housemates had probably developed some intricate system. “What is it, anyway? I’m praying you’re not stashing seafood somewhere.”

  “Lasagne with chicken instead of beef. Lean meat, full of protein. Pasta – carbs. Veg – obvious.”

  “Well thought out. Actually, it’s the first meal we’re all getting to eat together.” Dina sat on the sideboard and started swinging her legs so the backs of her feet drummed out a higgledy rhythm on a cupboard.

  Katie emptied her bag of tomatoes into a colander to wash when feet flew down the stairs and voices started shouting. “Stay the hell out of my room, Leo!” yelled Jaye.

  “It wasn’t your room.”

  “Fair enough. But when I’m in the bathroom, it’s temporarily mine. Meaning you can’t come in.”

  “That’s rich!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “You’re going to hell for that.”

  In the kitchen, Katie looked over at Dina who was already racing for the door. Katie left the tap running on her tomatoes and dashed to the door just in time to see Jaye giving him the middle finger.

  “Screw you and screw your precious fucking God too.”

  It looked as though Jaye – strong, happy Jaye – was crying, or about to start; her eyes sparkled. The pair were also so lost in their current battle that neither of them noticed they had an audience.

  “This was my house before you ever got here.”

  “It’s time to share then. I’m here now and I’m going nowhere,” he said, just low enough for it to sound like a threat but loud enough to be full of anger and danger. “Get used to it.”

  “You invaded my space!”

  “You cursed me and took God’s name in rage.”

  “Oooh, come on then big, bad God,” Jaye called up to the ceiling. “Strike me down or something.” Nothing happened. “See? No Lord Al-fucking-mighty. And if there is some beardy dude on a cloud, he obviously doesn’t give a crap about little old me. What happens to us when we’ve had enough?”

  “God forgives the good and the rest of you-“ he put a bit more emphasis than was strictly necessary on that word “-go to hell for the rest of eternity!”

  “Seriously, you need to learn some boundaries.” Jaye was standing as tall, as she could but Leo, Katie estimated, was touching six feet and towered at least seven inches over her. Jaye had managed to twist around until she was on the bottom of the stairs, still up against the wall but closer to his face.

  “And you need to back off bitch!”

  Katie saw in her head what was going to happen fractions of an instant before it did. Maybe the others did too. More likely, the next few seconds were so predictable that they should have all seen it coming. Shrugging off the tiny, scared voice that always crept into her mind – don’t do anything stupid, girly. Nothing that;s going to get us a smack in the face, right – and started forward to stop the argument. Dina laid a hand on her arm and shook her head vey slightly though her fae looked strained, as though she were having a hard time staying out of it too. Leo, angry, curled his hand into a fist and pulled his arm back. Why did everything descend into violence around Katie? She almost wished she could say that everything happened in slow motion or even so fast she barely saw it, it would just make it easier to watch if she could control it like the speed of a film, but it was normal speed. Achingly normal speed and no skipping the gross parts. So she watched as Leo brought hist fist thundering towards Jaye’s face. Jaye opened her eyes wide at the side and then closed them again, bracing for impact, unable to get away.

  And the fist never connected.

  Not with her face anyway.

  But it did make a lovely crunch against the wall, shaking plaster loose.

  For a second, Katie heard her brain repeating that Leo just missed, that’s all. Her eyes told a different story, at least for the instant it took Jaye to squirm her head back an inch or two. Leo had punched right through the girl. For some reason, the sight wasn’t nearly as surprising as it should have been but she still stood there, mouth hanging open. It was impossible. But it had happened right there. Leo had been ready to hit Jaye, she’d seen the punch coming, and her face had just – melted? – to allow his fist to pass right through.

  Dina snapped Katie’s jaw shut with a finger. “You’re catching flies.” She walked up to the pair, who looked in turn just angry and stunned enough to go straight back at it, and pulled them apart. She placed a hand on both of their chests and looked at Leo first. “You. Take a walk, whatever, as long as it’s outside. Chill.” Her voice had taken on a calm but commanding bass that nobody could seriously want to disagree with. Leo hesitated for a second, the urge to disobey shining bright in his eyes. On impulse, Katie threw a jacket at him, held the front door open and waved him out.

  “You heard her. Out. Or do I need to sign it for you?”

  He glared at her. Katie pointed at him and then outside and he slunk out after a minute. Dina and Jaye were mounting the top stair and vanishing into their room when Katie closed the door. She sank back against it. God, why had she just stood up to Leo like that? One part of her was oddly proud whilst another was just terrified that he’d stalk back later and decide she caused all the trouble. But, last night, he’d shown that he had some compassion for others. It was a long shot but maybe, just maybe, Leo would even apologise to Jaye later.

  And she didn’t even have time to process what she had just seen her friend do.

  Right, time was getting on.

  “Hi Mom.”

  “Sweetie! How lovely to hear from you! We’ve all missed…”

  Katie let her mother blather on, gushing about how much she was missed, how things just weren’t the same without her, and went on layering pasta sheets in a dish, trying to making the right noises at the right times. “I’m glad thing’s haven’t fallen to pieces without me.”

  “You sound distracted.”

  “Yeah. I’m making dinner.” She jammed the phone tighter between her chin and shoulder and went on the hunt for salt and pepper which she eventually found in a bunch of sachets swiped from some café. “It’s all pizza and pot noodles round here. I’m campaigning for proper food at least once a week.” That was doubtful unless she volunteered to cook once a week. Never.

  “You sound happy though?” Mom made the statement a question. She couldn’t know that her daughter had been faking her smiles all summer. Could she? But this grin was genuine. “Did you open your letter? Was it good news?”

  That really depended on which side of the fence you were sitting. “They’re dropping the case.”

  “Oh honey-“

  “It’s better this way really. New start and everything,” she cut her mother off before she could rush into another round of platitudes she had heard a hundred times before. Last night. “How’s Uncle Billy? I heard he lost a fight with a lamp post?” Katie phrased the question carefully.

  Not quite carefully enough as it tuned out. “He said it was on the way home. How did -?”

  “Small town. Stupidity travels fast.”

  “He’s doing fine. Got a black eye to be proud of. Honestly, men can pick fights with anything, can’t they?” Yeah, even 16 year old girls. “Hey, what can I hear back there?”

  Katie glanced up at the ceiling where Jaye and Dina sounded like they were thrashing out the row from earlier. “We’re at war,” she sighed. It seemed like she had walked straight from one fight this morning into another with Jaye and Leo and now yet another with the girls upstairs. “Nothing to worry about.” />
  “Sweetie, I do worry. We all do. You know that.”

  “I’ve made some friends. I’ve got a race coming up. Term starts in a week. If the world’s not ending tomorrow, I’m happy with what I’ve got.”

  “What a lovely attitude to have. It must be so hard for you. Out there all on your own.” Katie didn’t feel on her own. Okay, once or twice she’d had a wave of homesickness, of wanting to be looked after and wrapped in cotton wool so she never had to grow up, but she hadn’t felt alone. “How are you coping fending for yourself?”

  She could hear the worry in Moms voice and had to bite her tongue before she blurted everything out. Well, Mom… I nearly got raped last week, I nearly blinded my uncle, I freaked on my landlord, one of my housemates hates me, the next town is totally off limits, something weird’s going on with the people here but I don’t know what, these dream/nightmare things keep haunting m even when I think I’m awake, there’s a cute boy called Jack who wrote on my mirror this morning. And I think I’m losing my mind. Katie put her knife down and touched the bandage on her arm, having more or less forgotten about it all day, sending a fresh ripple of sparking pain down her arm and up into a shoulder. “That can’t have been a dream. Dreams don’t leave marks… at least, not on the outside.”

  "Katie, are you okay? If you want us to come up we can.”

  “No, I’m fine. Just –“ Oh God, what excuse could she use? Reading aloud? No, she hadn’t done that since she was six. Trying to have another conversation at the same time? The comment was way too random and sudden. Some combination of the two maybe? “Just running lines with a drama student. It’s all busy busy busy.”

  “Don’t push yourself too hard sweetie. Remember how much younger you are than most students.”

  As if she was likely to forget. “I have to get this in the oven now so send my love to Dad and tell Dan I’ll kill her if she steals any of my old clothes. I don’t care that they’re only marked for charity – they’re for the needy, not the tragic.”

  They said their goodbyes quickly, Katie itching to get her mother off the phone as soon as possible because she sounded close to tears. Wasn’t it Katie who should be sad? She snapped the phone shut, aimed in the general direction of the full ironing pile and was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t miss completely. It was a big target though. After the lasagne had been covered in foil and put in the oven for it’s first lot of cooking, Katie decided to set the ironing board up and try to get the pile down. She found her mp3 player and switched it on. The LOW BATTERY message flashed up so she found the mains charger and plugged it in, switching to the playlist of country and western tracks. The constant back and forth and flip and fold of the ironing mixed with the far away simplicity of songs that spoke of open lands and standing by your man took her away from this place. The arguing upstairs was a hundred years and ten thousand miles away. In front of her stood a boy with green eyes and a cowboy hat. He smiled at Katie, traced the bandage on her arm. “It wasn’t meant to happen like this.”

  Katie remembered the name written on her mirror – it wasn’t TACK, it was JACK – completely duh! – and put two and two together. This was the boy Adam and Lainy had been arguing with. Questions popped into her brain but all that came out of her mouth was an accusation. “But it did.”

  Jack looked sad for a moment and distant expression fell over his face. Katie frowned and wanted to reach out for him. But she didn’t. “This music, it reminds me of home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “A long time ago. A long way away.”

  “You’re Jack and I’m Lady Katie. We know each other. We like each other but we forget.” For some reason it felt important to say the words.

  “I never forget.”

  “But I do.”

  “Yes. That’s how it’s meant to be.”

  “Will I forget this?” Jack looked away from Katie but she moved her face and locked her gaze with his, the way he could do with her. Memories were flaring in the darks of her mind and she would retrieve them, process them when this was over. Answers were more important.

  “Rules are there for a reason.”

  “No, they’re not. Rules are there because someone thinks they’re God.”

  “They stop people gettin’ hurt.”

  Katie looked at him for a long moment, long enough for Jack to start feeling uncomfortable, and then she giggled. Jack frowned at the girl. He didn’t understand that Katie had to laugh because she’d cry if she didn’t. But he said nothing. Just stood and watched her. “Seriously?” Katie asked. “This is too messed up. What rules?”

  “The rules I broke by coming back here.”

  Katie glanced down and saw the iron in her hand, felt the warm glow coming from the humming oven, heard Johnny Cash growling about walking the line. This was all real, almost frighteningly real, and she had to remind herself that Jack was actually standing next to her. It was easy to pretend this was just a day dream. But nothing was ever easy, was it?

  “You got attacked and that wasn’t the plan. So, they sent me to see you. One time only, that was the deal. I tried to keep it. But I couldn’t stay away from you for long. And then all this bad shit kept happenin’ to you and I had to see you more and more. Just to make sure you were still you.”

  “Right. My turn. Who are they? What’s this plan? Why were you only supposed to-“ She shook her head and folded up one of Leo’s t-shirts – a yin yang symbol licked with flame – and added it to the growing pile. “Be honest with me, Jack, is this your fault?” She gestured to her injured arm.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” To his credit, Jack looked genuinely guilty. “I tried to show you who I used to be, what happened to me. I knew you might get hurt but… I knew.”

  “What’s the time?” A quick check of her player said it was almost five. The lasagne had been in the oven almost an hour. “Staying for dinner, right?” she threw at Jack as she quickly slid the ironing board away and the unsteady pile of clothes onto one arm to be taken upstairs. Without waiting for the dithering boy to answer she dashed off upstairs. Jack had never been invited for a meal in all the years he’d seen and didn’t really know what to say. It wasn’t like Katie had given him much of a choice anyway.

  “You’re talking to me about secrets!” Dina yelled inside the room she and Jaye shared. “What gives you that right? I’m not keeping the biggest secret of her life.”

  “And I’m not keeping the damn secret out of some misguided sense of self preservation.”

  “It’s the rules, right?”

  “Yeah. Look what happened last time we broke that rule.”

  “Come on, Jaye. She’s way stronger than he ever was. She can handle this.”

  “Whoa, whoa, horsey. This is not about us and the things we can’t say or do. This is about you, what you did.”

  “What I did? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You let her get groped all night, roofied her, then let her run off alone. Anything could have happened out there.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “It nearly did.”

  “Nearly, not quite. You know better than anyone, Katie is stronger than that. plus, she has Jack looking out for her. And when he’s not here, you’re sniffing around her heels.” Katie had been beginning to feel a bit guilty for listening in on their conversation but, now it seemed to be about her, she felt a little better about it. “like you used to do with me.”

  “Is that why you did it? Because…” There was a sudden sobbing from behind the closed door. Bedsprings squeaked and Katie could picture Jaye sitting next to a weeping Dina, holding the girl awkwardly. “Look, you’ve had an entire year to get used to the idea.”

  “But it’s all so different now. I know when and where. I’ve seen the place where it’s gonna happen. It makes it more real.”

  “Dina.” She drew the name out like parents did when they
were pretending to be angry with their kids. “We talked through this last night. She’s new here and we have to protect her from all this for now. But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking out for you, babe. You’re meant to be like me you know.”

  The sobbing continued but more muffled and less frequent. Katie waited a second before knocking the door. “I’ll leave your clothes out here. Dinner’s ready in fifteen.” She dropped everything in the bathroom and outside everyone else’s rooms before changing her food stained shirt and running back to the kitchen to finish off the dinner.

  Katie let her hands work on automatic and went over the things she had just heard upstairs. Dina had drugged her a few nights ago then left her to dash off, vulnerable. It kind of made sense actually. She hadn’t been exactly best friendly this week, unless Jaye had been with them obliging her to be pally, and she was obviously feeling guilty after their little chat last night. That must have been why she had sat down for a chat earlier. There was also something no-one was telling her. Keeping secrets around here was obviously second nature. If she could just figure out what it was…

  Dinner went well. Katie nodded and smiled at the compliments her housemates gave her – see if they say the same thing in an hour – but she barely even tasted her own. Even having Jack there wasn’t proving much of a distraction. There was tension crackling between everybody at the table. It hung heavy over the front room like an animal net; inescapable, no matter how hard the struggle.

  “What’s going on around here?” Adam asked. “I don’t think this house has ever been this quiet.”

  “Leo punched me in the face.”

  Adam frowned at her face, noted the absence of a bruise, then glanced over a Katie for an instant, hoping she didn’t see. Of course, she did and frowned back at him. He knew why Jaye didn’t have a bruise but not that Katie also knew. Even if she didn’t understand. Jaye stared back at him coolly and then shrugged.

  “Why?” he asked then.

  Jaye said nothing, perhaps having forgotten what their fight had been about. It didn’t seem likely though. He looked at Leo for an answer. It was not forthcoming.

  “Look, we’re in charge of all you guys and, since we don’t want a murder on our hands tonight, you’re gonna have to tell us what’s wrong.”

  Lainy put her fork down and rested her folded arms on the edge of the table. Her plate was one step away from being licked clean. She was not fat but she definitely liked her food. “Thank you, Katie, that was lovely. Now, to business. I will not have violence in this house. I will not have fear. And I will not have lies.”

  For just a second Katie wondered if that particular rule would apply if she asked why they were keeping things from her, and what those things were.

  “She was doing her make-up in the bathroom and I went in to get my towel. The door was open.” Leo sat back, a grin on his face as if his story was over. “And then she went all psycho-bitch on me. Starts yelling at me about boundaries and all that.”

  “He told me God would never forgive me and I‘d go to hell.” She waved her knife between her thumb and fore finger, watching it as if there were more interesting things she could be doing with it. “Sometimes, I think hell might be easier.”

  Dina put her handover her friends’, stilling the thrumming cutlery.

  Katie looked up. “Why did you do that?”

  A moments silence fell again, deep and eternal. She wished Kaye would start drumming her knife again, anything to break this horrible deathly hush. It probably wasn’t as long or total or awkward as Katie felt. “I’m no threat to you, Dina.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  Dina sounded honestly confused and Katie wondered if she had simply imagined her and Jaye arguing an hour ago. A lot of things that seemed real were either not real at all, half real or had no right to be real in the first place.

  “You…” she could not finish that sentence, could not bring herself to make that accusation. She, instead, started stacking plates to wash. “There’s no point. Not tonight. I’m too tired to be angry right now.”

  She took the plates out and clattered them into the sink, tears threatening to spill over once more. Not the crying again. She didn’t see the way Adam nodded at Jack and then after Katie, the way Leo threw his chair back and flopped down in front of the TV, or hear the hushed murmurs of a student house desperately trying to keep itself together. Until Jack walked into the kitchen and felt her stiff body relax into his, Katie was aware of absolutely nothing. Katie turned to him, glad once more she was wearing pumps – she’d tower about three inches over him in heels – and let herself get lost in his eyes, letting them make everything okay for a few minutes. She leaned in to kiss him, to taste him, to breathe him in, because things were just better when they were together, and stared at him in surprise when he pushed her back. Maybe with a touch of disappointment. And a whole splodge of rejection.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just can’t.” Okay, where the hell did he think this was leading? It was kiss, not a dare to jump off a cliff. “I just don’t want you to forget me.”

  Katie nodded like it made perfect sense.

  CHAPTER TEN