Broken Ties (Prequel to The Mentalist Series)

by Kenechi Udogu

actually considered uprooting us to follow a woman he was in love with halfway across the world. A woman who probably had no idea how he felt. And now he was asking me to walk away from a friendship because I had a few disagreements with Cheung? What the hell was wrong with him?

  “I know, Dad.” I couldn’t look at him when I responded. “I’ll keep away from him from now on. It’s clearly not meant to be.”

  “Good.” He turned to go back into the living room where he’d dumped his box of tools. “I have to get ready. There’s a plate of food in the fridge for you, just in case you get hungry before I get back.”

  Despite my anger towards him, because I had no idea when next I’d see my father after he walked out of the room, I reached out and hugged him. It was an awkward embrace because he wasn’t quite facing me, but it was better that way. I was still mad enough not to want to look him in the eye.

  “Thanks for everything Dad,” I said, hoping he could tell I meant it, before I scurried away to my room, leaving him with no chance to reply.

  I knew he wasn’t good at handing emotional outbursts so there was no question of him coming after me to ask why I’d suddenly decided to turn into a sappy arse. I waited in my room until I heard the front door shut before rushing to my wardrobe and grabbing a duffel bag. Stuffing as many items into it as I could, I searched around in my underwear drawer for the rolled up sock which held all my money. It wasn’t a lot but we weren’t planning on staying away for too long. Besides, like Nora feared, the authorities would probably catch up with us before we made it out of the borough.

  Next, I went to Dad’s room and rifled through his wardrobe until I found the box where he kept our passports. I wasn’t planning on leaving the country but, other than my school card, it was the only form of ID I had. The passports weren’t the only things in the box; there was a wad of cash beside them. It was a hell of a lot more than what I had in my pocket and I briefly considered slipping a few notes out of the roll. Dad probably wouldn’t even notice they were gone.

  As I was still trying to convince myself it wouldn’t be stealing if I replaced the money when I got back, a small black pouch caught my eye. I’d seen it once before, many years ago when I came home and startled Dad as he sat staring into space with the pouch in his hand. Inside the soft fabric had been an Orb which he said belonged to my grandfather, a man I’d never met. All I’d heard about him was he’d died in a car accident not long after I had been born. One day, I would give his Orb to my son, just as mine would belong to someone else. That was the way things worked.

  I stared at the pouch for a few seconds, before stuffing it into my pocket. Technically I wasn’t stealing it; it was mine to take if it belonged to my offspring. I figured if anything happened to my Orb when I was away, it could be my backup. It wasn’t like I wasn’t going to return it when I got back. Taking both the Orb and Dad’s money seemed a bit excessive so I closed the box and left the room with only the pouch and my passport.

  There was one last thing to do before I headed back to Nora’s. It wouldn’t be right if I left without giving Cheung some form of an explanation. Even though I didn’t always act like it, our friendship was important to me and I didn’t want to destroy what we had. If I blindsided him by disappearing, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye when I returned.

  “What’s up, Pretty Boy,” he recognised my landline number because I didn’t own a mobile phone. Dad said there was no point wasting money on one until I was old enough to pay the bills. When I finally started making some money, I hadn’t bothered getting one because I’d only ever ring Cheung or Dad. The landline was good enough for that. “Are you finally ready to come over and get annihilated by the game master?”

  “I’m leaving town for a little while, Cheung.” No point easing him into it.

  The silence that followed wasn’t unexpected.

  “With Nora?”

  Now that was unexpected.

  “You knew?”

  I heard him shut a door behind him and I imagined he’d gone to his room to get some privacy. “Of course I knew. You guys are good, but not that good. I saw you at a street market a few weeks ago but I kind of already knew by then. You practically glowed whenever you were in the same room by the end of term.”

  “Oh.”

  It made sense that I wouldn’t have read anything off him since I was the one doing the lying. Damn it! Did that mean a lot more people knew about us? Had we just been kidding ourselves all summer?

  “Hey, if I was dating Nora Brice, I’d walk around with her face printed on all my shirts. But I reckoned you guys aren’t being public about it because she hasn’t got parental consent or something.”

  If only he knew the half of it.

  “Yeah, something like that. Sorry about not telling you, Cheung. I wanted to but…it’s complicated.” I felt worse knowing he’d known I was lying all along and hadn’t thrown a hissy fit. He was a much better friend than I was because I’d have been upset if the roles were reversed.

  “You’ll make it up to me someday, maybe when I need to do some sneaking around of my own.” I could hear the shrug in his voice. “I’m guessing your out of town plans aren’t sanctioned either. Do you want me to cover for you? How long will you be gone for? Where are you heading?” Helping plan a real life escapade was evidently more exciting than trashing people with a control pad.

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” I half joked. Truth was, even if I wanted to place that extra burden of knowledge on him, I had no clue where we were going.

  Cheung must have been disappointed by my answer because he sounded a little more subdued when he spoke again. “I still plan on making out with Sandra before I draw my last breath, so I’ll wait until you get back to hear all the details. And don’t worry about your Dad, I’ll check up on him. Who knows, I could finally start my transformation into becoming the new Pretty Boy. He won’t even notice you’re gone.”

  I was going to miss the joker, much more than he could ever imagine.

  “Thanks Cheung. There’ll have to be radio silence but I’ll see you in a few weeks, okay? Take care of your Mum and don’t do anything I won’t do.”

  “You mean don’t make out with hot girls in secret locations and then escape from the city for a few weeks? Got it. See you soon, Paul.”

  I left home shortly after and went back to Nora’s, pressing the buzzer to her flat like we’d discussed. There was no sign of the guy from the park but my senses were still on high alert. What if he’d somehow found a way to get into the building and had already carried out her Aversion. He could have posed as a delivery man or found an open door at the back of the building or…

  Get a grip, Paul.

  Chances were he’d done what most other Averters would have done under the same circumstances. Wait for her to leave the building. If Nora hadn’t decided to go on a short stroll within the last hour, she was safe. I would have to work on stopping myself from turning into a paranoid freak over the next few weeks.

  When Nora appeared in the lobby a few minutes later, she was towing a much bigger bag than mine. She’d also changed into jeans and a grey jumper, probably because the temperature had dropped considerably. After seeing her in dresses all summer, I couldn’t stop myself from gawking at the way the denim fabric clung to her hips. It occurred to me that running off with her would be one of the biggest tests of self-control I would ever face.

  “I think we should take a cab,” Nora announced with a notable measure of liveliness. She was clearly taking the prospects of our adventure better than I was. That might have been because she didn’t have the impending shadow of an Averter to worry about.

  “That’s a terrible idea,” I mumbled, forcing my eyes to meet hers as I took her bag and slung it over my shoulder.

  “Everyone will expect us to take a train or a bus. A cab could buy us some time if it drops us off at a train station where they won’t think to start searching from. And look what I packed for us.
” She reached over my shoulder, unzipped her bag and pulled out two black baseball caps. “The driver won’t see our faces.”

  Plus, I could fix it so he wouldn’t remember what he saw once he dropped us off.

  “Okay, I take that back, it’s not such a terrible idea.”

  “You forget I’ve done this before Mr I’ve-Got-A-Plan.” She snuggled up to me, not bothered at all by the porter who was intently watching us. Baseball cap or not, he’d have no problem identifying me when the questions started flowing, but that didn’t matter. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. Why am I not afraid? I should be totally freaked out, but I’m not.”

  For the second time that day, guilt ripped through me. It was frightening how much trust Nora had put in me. What if everything I was getting worked up about was in my head? What if the feeling I’d had at the park was a premonition about something else? The man I’d tagged as her Averter hadn’t worn a neon sign around his neck with explicit details of what he intended to do. He hadn’t even appeared to take any notice of us until just before we left.

  And if he turned out to really be her Averter, taking her away before he could plant corrective thoughts in her mind went against everything I’d been taught. Wasn’t I putting her in more danger just to gain a few more precious moments with her? If anything bad happened to her