Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  Unpacking, sorting through all the old boxes and memories that had returned to me, was all I managed to get done that first day before I collapsed on the twin bed and fell into a coma-like sleep.

  Day two of my incarceration saw a visit with the local cops. They had to report the incident on the road and ask what had caused my accident: whether it was just the weather or something more.

  I was still in my PJs at the time, and had been interviewed in my bed. I had to say that was a first – the bedside interview, not the run in with the cops. I’d had far too many occurrences with our boys in blue.

  Luckily, these guys hadn’t read my casefile before coming here. I could tell because they treated me like a poor seventeen-year-old girl who’d just been through a terrible accident, and not one to be wary of and instantly distrustful of anything I said.

  I mentioned the man appearing in the middle of the road, but there were no cameras on that stretch and no other person had been found at the site.

  The people who had called the ambulance for me said they didn’t know how long I’d been alone, bleeding out on the road. The only comment they’d had was that the rain had made it look like a river of blood had poured out from me. So much so that they’d been certain I wasn’t going to be able to survive it since I had been drained like a halal animal ready for cooking. What a delightful image. I wasn’t sure if they were racist or just really shit at similes.

  Maybelle and Ken had just stood by my bedroom door the entire time, hovering. Honestly, I was a little pissed they hadn’t mentioned the police would be coming over; I would have planned on showering, and doing my hair up a little. First impressions were everything, and considering my track record, I would likely be seeing these guys a fair few times over the next year. It didn’t hurt for me to look my best.

  The police officer who came to question me turned out to be the dad of some kid attending my new school. Maybelle and Officer Barnett had chatted for a while about her whilst his partner wrote down the notes on what I’d answered.

  ‘You don’t get many girls riding on motorbikes,’ Officer Barnett commented.

  ‘Not many people in general ride bikes,’ I retorted, not liking to be singled out because of my gender.

  ‘I can understand that. Especially around here. The roads aren’t really safe for riding with no protection.’

  I’d been wearing my helmet, knee-high leather boots and a leather jacket. I’d hardly been unprotected.

  ‘And it’s a long drive from…’ he looked down on his notes, relaying Brianna’s address.

  Maybelle worried on the spot, pacing and nibbling on the skin around her thumb, like a child. Ken spotted her doing it and tapped her on the hip. Immediately she stopped and apologised for her unladylike habit, then continued to apologise.

  ‘It’s my fault. I really shouldn’t have let her drive herself here. Ken and I have always picked up our foster children before, but Olivia was so adamant that she drive herself and now all this has happened-’

  ‘May,’ Officer Barnett said, ‘it’s not your fault.’

  ‘But if I had-’

  I interrupted her. ‘It was a man in the road,’ I reminded her. ‘It wasn’t an accident specifically because I was riding on my own. If you’d been driving in the car with me and he’d stepped out into the road, then you would have been injured, too. Or that man squashed to the high heavens.’ Though I wouldn’t mind whoever it was being mildly injured considering what his presence had done to me.

  The other officer capped his pen and put away his notebook. Officer Barnett told me they didn’t think they’d need a follow up or any more of my time. Maybelle and Ken led them down the stairs.

  ‘That’s your new kid, huh?’ Officer Barnett commented at the door. ‘Do you think she’s going to be much trouble?’

  ‘No,’ Maybelle said, her voice all positive smiles though I couldn’t see her face from where I was lurking and listening from the top landing.

  She was lying. She’d read my file and known how much trouble I got into. But I kind of felt some sort of appreciation I’d hereunto not felt for her. It wouldn’t exactly have been a good start for me to not only have a run in with the police, but also have someone they conversed with on the regular telling them I was a bad egg and needed to watch out for me.

  ‘How’s Richard doing?’

  ‘Off to college now,’ Maybelle said, pride evident in her voice.

  ‘Em told me he got a full scholarship,’ Officer Barnett said.

  ‘He did indeed. You know how good he was at football.’

  ‘NRHS will definitely miss him. But a few of the new kids at school are apparently on his level. Might be another chance for us to go to state.’

  They talked for a while longer about “Richard”, who I assumed was Maybelle’s old foster kid. She was a rare carer, offering her home up to kids who were about to age out of the system. Apparently, she always chose well: academically or athletically gifted kids.

  I really hoped she wasn’t expecting any sort of greatness from me. Sports had never been my thing since I could hardly work in a team without Death wanting to join in, and studying, college… the rest of it – had never been my thing. My parents had had a steady 9-5, college graduate, 401k life and had still died before they got to their forties. It didn’t seem like I should bother wasting my life on something that didn’t interest me just because it was what society dictated a good member do. Screw contributing to society and capitalism. My plan was to travel until I dropped dead. See the world my parents never got to until Death finally caught up with me.

  After the officers left, Maybelle brought me brunch in bed – since I’d missed breakfast by sleeping in. I thanked her, and ate in silence, not quite sure what she expected from me as she watched me eat from the doorway. She just hovered there, to make sure I finished it all or didn’t choke or just to keep me company, I wasn’t sure.

  When I finished, she took my plate away and told me to call down if I needed anything. I attempted to hobble around the top floor of the house and get ready before I settled into my desk chair and read until my next meal.

  And that was the first week of my new life. Eat, read, sleep, repeat.

  Oh, yes, Brianna, I’m really living the high life now.

  2

  The house was a small brownstone in New York. A wrought iron fence at the perimeter. A small mailbox by the front door. There was nothing special about it.

  The occupants of the house were ordinary people, with ordinary lives. Time worked in a cyclical manner for them, each day the same.

  At eight thirty, the man of the house would leave for work: he worked a nine to five at an insurance company several blocks from his home. Twenty minutes later, a woman would emerge with a girl, taking her to school.

  The school uniform was a new thing – before it had been casual clothes for pre-school. But the uniform gave more routine to their routine little lives and it fit nicely, so it stayed.

  At two, the woman would return. She usually had with her extra files to complete her work after-hours when the man was watching television and the girl was put to sleep upstairs.

  Half an hour later, the girl would be dropped off by a woman with blonde hair. Three more hours and the man would return.

  It was a nice, normal life. And they were nice normal people. Everyone on the street said so. And everyone said that it was a tragedy what had happened. They could have never seen it happen to such innocent, normal people. They didn’t seem the sort that bad things would happen to. It wasn’t routine, you see.

  No one routinely broke in. No one routinely killed the man. No one routinely tortured the woman. And no one routinely lost the girl for several hours after the man and the woman had been un-routinely killed.

  It was so out of the ordinary, that one would think it hadn’t happened at all. That it was all simply a dream.

  I woke up in a beautiful room thinking about the little brown house.

  Since I was five
years old, my nightmares had always begun the same way. I was standing on the street opposite the house I grew up in. I saw the ordinary life I had once lived pass in a speeded view of time. And whilst my parents lived their painfully normal life, I screamed until my throat went dry. Because I knew what was coming and they didn’t.

  Something had stopped the dream before it turned darker. Before I was no longer just outside the little brown house, but I was inside. I was me again. And I was watching what had happened that night all play out in front of me.

  It took only a second for me to realise what it was. The sound of a crow cawing in the tree outside the front of the house. It was like an airhorn in my ear. Unnaturally, impossibly loud.

  My CAM boot was propped up beside the bottom of my bed – I’d taken it off in the night to air out my foot over the duvet – but I ignored it for the time being. I simply swung myself up, using the crutches Maybelle had leaned across the bedside table, and hobbled over to the window to shut it tight. It managed to muffle the sound a little, but I could still hear the damn bird.

  Probably some odd auditory hallucination from the painkillers that I was on. I tried to ignore the cawing and focus on the day ahead.

  My last first day of school. It was a milestone. I should be proud. Having already missed the first week of the start of the school year, it meant I was only a hundred and forty something days off graduation.

  There would be no college applications or stressing over tuition fees for me this year. After a lifetime of being trapped by my circumstances, I was out of here. I had no idea where I was heading, but it was as far away from Washington as I could get. Maybe even out of the US… though I’d need to get a passport for that.

  ‘Olivia! Are you ready honey? Do you need any help?!’ Maybelle called up the stairs.

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute!’

  Since I didn’t have my bike, Maybelle had offered to drive me to school in the morning; she didn’t think public transport would be good for me “in my current state”. I agreed, mainly because I hated the school bus. The only thing worse than high school was putting high school in a tiny tin can.

  ‘Do you need us to go into the admin office with you?’ Maybelle asked as she drove.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘May, we’ll be late for work if we-’

  ‘I know, but it’s her first day, Ken and she’s still recovering-’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s fine, really.’

  ‘She says it’s fine, May.’

  Maybelle nodded along. I wasn’t just saying it to save myself the embarrassment of having my foster parents walk me into school in my senior year. I was an old hat at this game by the age of seventeen. I’d changed schools almost as many times as I’d changed foster homes.

  I wasn’t sure why Ken was stressing so much. Both Ken and Maybelle were self-employed. Ken worked as some local historian (not quite sure what he did, but he spent all his time at the university library), and Maybelle ran a non-profit. It wasn’t like they had bosses to report to if they were a few minutes late. But they seemed very Type A and into schedule and control, so being late was probably high up there in things that must be avoided.

  ‘I’ll pick you up here tonight,’ Maybelle said. ‘Have a nice day.’

  ‘You, too,’ I nodded. I awkwardly waved them off as well as I could with my crutches and hobbled my way up the main steps into the school.

  NR High School was a large building, and not entirely like the ones I was used to attending. Being in the nicer part of the neighbourhood, the metal detectors I was used to seeing were missing. There were no campus security patrolling and the kids didn’t look the type of be concealing any weapons or hard drugs. It would probably surprise me if these kids even partook in the occasional joint.

  The main building was several floors high, a large brick structure with steel banner posts (featuring the high school mascot and the name of the baseball and football teams) leading right up to the main steps and large front doors. I would find out from the map I would get in the introductory speech, along with my class list, that the gym was in a separate building along with the theatre. This place had a bloody theatre. This was not the type of school I was used to.

  If being the new kid drew the eye, being the new kid with a cast on your leg, red stitches across your hands (I’d managed to cover my arms with a long-sleeved black shirt) and a cut across your eyebrow sure sent a beacon shouting: look at me!

  Whispers followed me down the halls. At the admissions office I had to hear fourth-hand how my own accident had happened and the shock this small town had taken with the damage my bike and myself had done to the road. I couldn’t apologise enough for the scrapes on the old tarmac and blood stains my baby’s demise and my own injuries had caused. I think they missed my sarcasm.

  I’d missed homeroom by the time I’d made it out of the office.

  Holding my paper class schedule, the map of the school and my crutches was a task and a half, but the student populace seemed to believe I could manage as none of them offered to help. Just like the guy who walked into my English room before me and let the door slam in my face. Really, the hospitality here was overwhelming. Money clearly couldn’t buy class these days.

  I pushed open the door with as much sarcasm and distain in a gesture as a person could manage (yes, you can put sarcasm within a gesture, just watch me). The classroom’s eyes swivelled towards me, looking me up and down. Then, the whispers began. It was cliché for a reason, but god was it boring.

  The teacher gave me a moments introduction, but thankfully skipped the awkward: please tell the class a little about yourself.

  Once class began and we started working from our textbooks, the teacher called me over.

  ‘So… Olivia. This year’s going to be pretty difficult for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  The teacher paused for a moment, probably trying to assess what sort of new kid I was going to be. The one who would like the helpful guidance from a teacher as I navigated the unchartered waters of a new school, or one who wanted to be left to my own devices. I would leave that for her to figure out. It no doubt wouldn’t take long.

  ‘You’ve transferred in your final year, which is a difficult time for most kids without having to start a new school, too. Your PSAT score…’ the teacher looked up from my record on her computer. ‘It’s not… positive,’ she said, hedging her bets. ‘You’ll probably need a lot of extra help, extra credits and hard work if you want to graduate this year. It can be done, but it’ll mean a lot of dedication on your end.’

  I tried to look like I was paying attention to what she was saying and really absorbing it, but I wasn’t. I’d taken my PSATs around the time of Christian’s sentencing. I don’t think I’d even bothered trying. I certainly hadn’t revised for anything.

  As soon as I turned eighteen, I didn’t very much care what scores I left behind. Being a high school dropout didn’t bother me, and there was no way I was repeating a year. But I nodded along and pretended to be compliant to the teacher’s offer to help me. That was easier than telling her the truth and the ridiculous argument that would follow. It wasn’t my idea of a good time trying to defend my choices to some stranger whose job it was to tell me education was the be all and end all of my existence and the foundation to the rest of my life.

  The rest of class proceeded as you’d expect. I paid about as much attention to the teacher droning on as I did the view of the parking lot from the window seat I’d chosen.

  A few guys showed some mild interest in me, trying to engage me in conversation that lasted a few sentences, before they realised I wasn’t going to fawn for their attention. I knew the novelty of my newness would ware off eventually, but the first couple of weeks was always a nightmare. Most of the girls they now dated they’d seen grow up awkwardly from pre-teens to teens. They had embarrassing middle school memories of each other and had probably known each other’s families since kindergarten. It made sense that
as the new girl I was an interesting alternative to the known menu. At least until they figured out I wasn’t as tasty a treat as they’d hoped.

  The girls, like usual, ignored me. I wasn’t the approachable type and women seemed to just be more intuitive to that. I rode a motorcycle. I dressed in dark colours. I hadn’t had a haircut in the past four – five? – years. I had a tattoo on my lower back of two raven wings in flight with the words: “it is not length of life, but depth of life” in cursive script between them. And I un-ironically liked Hardy, Dickinson, Wilde and Waugh. My every action and word screamed “loner”. It was the easiest way to be.

  The bell rang and the class emptied out. I was busy packing away my things that I didn’t notice the shadow hovering over me until it spoke.

  ‘Would you like some help finding your next class?’

  A girl with large wirerimmed round glasses stood before me. Her skin was olive brown, and her hair had a unique red tint to it for her American-Asian descent. She wore it up in two French braids, a white ribbon on each end. Despite the weather, she was in a dress. “Cute” wouldn’t exactly be the right word to describe her, because whilst she dressed like a kindergartner, she was distinctively beautiful behind the frames like only a woman could be. She had the exact sort of natural beauty that was coveted by models and shamefully ridiculed in high school.

  ‘I’m Gi,’ she said, undeterred by my lack of an answer.

  ‘Liv,’ I finally said, because she was still hovering.

  ‘You’ve got gym next – so have I!’ She had peaked shamelessly at my timetable I’d left on my desk with the rest of my strewn papers. ‘I can show you the way. Though, you’ll probably be sitting it out, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’ll probably be able to get a lap in or so,’ I said. ‘I’d certainly be a shoo-in for the three-legged race.’

  She laughed. ‘Funny,’ she said.

  ‘What’s with gym being during the school day?’ I asked. Every school I’d ever been to had sports after classes finished for the day, not in the middle.