Innocence (19 page)

“You know how to flirt, right?”

His name is Cass. He has a thick white scar down his face that cuts into his lip. The only reason I’m with him is because something in his eyes reminds me of Jay and it comforts me.

He makes me stand still in the alley outside the club as he borrows some eyeliner from a girl in the queue and carefully puts it on me, trying to control his shaking hand.

He’s seventeen. Sometimes I sleep on the floor of his room. Sometimes he sleeps there with me, curled round my back. His mum doesn’t care. Her boyfriends beat him sometimes, I think.

I can’t work out what he wants from me.

“You flirt, and they buy you drinks. If they want to fuck, get the money up front.”

I stare at him blankly. I need to be much drunker to do this.

There isn’t much of a queue. I’m not sure what to expect inside, but the gloomy dimness and grimy black walls mean nothing against the music that blasts from the tall dirty speakers making talking thankfully impossible. Bass vibrates through me, the sensation almost painful, but not quite. I lose myself in it, ignoring the occasional touch or word in my ear. And for a brief time, the world is only me on the dance floor, forgetting.

When I’m tired and sobering, I look for Cass amongst the throng at the bar. With his shock of white-blond hair, he should be easy to pick out.

Instead it’s easy to see he’s not there.

I search the crowded toilets, beginning to feel dizzy. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything.

I told myself I wasn’t going to care, but he told me never to leave with anyone else, and it nags at me that he would take his own advice.

I grab a half-empty bottle of cider off a table and drink it as I scan the room again. Cass warned me about spiked drinks, but when you just want to get out of your head, any drug will do.

I make my way outside, through the fire doors. Cool morning air hits my skin, making me shiver.

Two boys are leaning over the fire escape watching some kid getting beaten or assaulted in the mouth of the dark alley below. It’s difficult to tell what’s going on at this distance. Looking closer, I notice with an overwhelming feeling of dread the blond hair of the kid lying on the ground, and without thinking I grip the neck of the bottle in my hand and jump gracelessly down the fire escape.

Cass is either unconscious or just playing that way. One of the guys leaning over him looks up when he hears me coming. Some instinct I never knew I had takes over. Without stopping I smash the bottle on the wall at my side and walk at them, my arms outstretched, broken glass in my fist.

“You best fucking
run
,” I yell, shocking myself with the force my voice carries.

And just like that, they’re gone.

“Cass?” I say, kneeling down and helping him up. “What happened? You okay?”

He looks up at me with a startled expression on his face.

“That’s the most you’ve ever said to me,” he says quietly.

Trying to be subtle about it, I check him over. His face is a mess, but he’ll be all right. They just beat him, his clothing is all intact.

We go out to the bridge, not too close to the edge. Tonight I’ve sobered enough for it to be off-limits.

“You coming back with me?” he asks, his expression hopeful.

I get the sense he wants something from me I can’t give him.

I shake my head. Not tonight.

Lying back on the wall by the riverbank, I search for the stars I know are up there. I like how insignificant the great curve of darkness makes me feel.

When Cass has gone, I doze to the sounds of drunken shouting, cars hooting their horns. I dream a boat drifts past me, Dad in the wheelhouse beckoning me to catch up, jump aboard. Homesickness twists like barbs inside me, and I run and run, but the boat just drifts farther away. And when I look down, all I see is dark water and Malachi’s face, pale and still, staring up at me.

J
UST
BEFORE
dawn, I get up and walk to the hospital, slipping along the corridors until I get to Jay’s ward. I ask the nurse manning the reception desk how Jay is, if there has been any change, and when he shakes his head, I leave again without seeing Jay, my chest hollow and a little more dead inside.

A
WEEK
has passed now, maybe two.

I’m starting to see Jay everywhere I look. I don’t tell Cass. I think I’m losing my hold on reality.

Every night we go to clubs. Cass gets us in for free, he’s not pretty but he has an innocence a certain type go for. The way they look at him makes me wary. It’s the look of a predator, the look of someone working out how far they can push someone before they break.

They don’t look at me. Maybe because I’m already broken.

Now when guys push their bodies against me on the dance floor, when they grind their dicks against my arse, I barely notice. I don’t feel anything anymore, I’ve frozen inside, my numbness like a second, impenetrable skin. I haven’t had an erection since the afternoon my life collapsed. The way I feel, I can’t imagine having one ever again.

I’m drunker than normal when Cass grabs me off the dance floor. I try and focus on his face, but my vision is doubling and I can hardly stand, and for a second all I see is Jay’s sweet smile.

My knees turn to water.

“Everyone that’s hit on you tonight has fucked off, right?” he shouts into my ear.

I shrug. I’m going to collapse in a minute.

“Over there, on his own, in black,” he hisses, covering me so I can look over his thin shoulder. “Every guy that’s approached you, he’s scared off.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I look over his shoulder anyway.

All the air is sucked out of my lungs with such force it leaves me bent double.

Malachi.

He stands, leaning over the rail above the dance floor, watching us.

I think about how far it is to the fire door, how quickly I can leave.

“What’s the matter?” Cass frowns worriedly, his hands on my arms.

Shoving him away, I shake my head. “I’ve got to go.”

I push my way across the dance floor. The fire door is on the other side, just a few meters away. But I don’t make it. A hand grasps my arm. Instinctively I know it’s Malachi’s. Fear makes me reckless, and with drunken grace I spin round, wrong-footing him and forcing him against a steel pillar at the edge of the dance floor.

I just want him to go away, so I do the only thing I think will make him leave, I force his legs apart with my thigh—this is a gay club, and he’s so fucking straight he should be uncomfortable anyway—and grind myself against him.

Heart pounding, I half expect Malachi to hit me. He has thirty pounds on me, maybe more now my muscles have wasted to nothing through lack of sustenance. Though I realize with a slight thrill, I am now taller. Just an inch—he could still floor me if he wanted to.

But he doesn’t. I don’t flinch from his gaze, but the world around me fades. The feel of his body unresisting, compliant even, against mine, shocks me. He makes no move to push me away.

“Stop running,” he mouths, his hand brushing against my ribcage, his eyes full of pain.

“Do I look like I’m running?” I slur, pressing against him harder, my hands gripping his shirt, wanting to hurt him.

If I was running, I’d be gone, not pinning him here with my weight. It takes me a drunken moment to realize I’m not numb anymore. There is a fire inside me, an anger burning brightly through my veins, not just at Malachi, but at everything.

I want him to hit me. The air between us has an electric charge. Looking into his eyes is as painful as a static shock. I want to fight him. I want that bright electric connection to start a fire.

“You’re better than this. Don’t be like your mother, Christopher. Don’t run from everything like she did.”

His words send me reeling. I let go of his shirt, the fabric slipping through my fingers like water, and I step backward, dazed as though he’s slapped me. The dance floor spins sickly, and I stumble away from it and out through the fire escape into the night, unaware whether Malachi is following me or not, the fire inside me extinguished.

I’m not like her. I feel myself fracturing, shattering into nothing, into the dark. I’m not running. “I’m not doing what she did,” I want to shout.

But I can’t. I can’t deny it because, oh God, I
am
, and the realization is killing me.

On my knees in the cold alley, I fall apart.

I don’t remember anything after that.

I
WAKE
in a soft bed that smells clean as sunlight. For as long as I can, I ignore the bright edge of pain my hangover is threatening to give me.

There is someone else in the room. They’re drinking coffee.

“Cass?” I murmur.

But Cass doesn’t drink coffee, and his bed doesn’t smell clean like this. I try and recall what happened last night.

Someone sighs.

I open my eyes.

“You’re a restless sleeper,” Malachi says.

There are dark rings around his eyes as though he hasn’t slept at all.

We’re not in his caravan. We’re in a light, clean room—even though the curtains are still closed, the room is filled with hazy sunlight—with fresh flowers on the dresser, a kettle, and some sachets of sugar and coffee on a table next to the window, the decor soothing and muted. It must be a bed-and-breakfast or a hotel.

My head throbs as I pull myself up and rub my eyes. “Where’s Cass?”

He raises an eyebrow. “We took him home. You don’t remember?”

I shake my head. “Where are we?”

Getting up out of the upright armchair he looks like he’s spent the night in, Malachi throws me a set of keys. “Your room.”

“My what?” I feel as though I’ve woken up in an alternate reality.

Carefully he places his coffee cup down on the dresser and picks up his coat off the back of the chair. “Bathroom’s through there,” he says, pushing open a door opposite the huge bed.

I watch perplexed as he walks towards the only other door. He’s leaving me here.

“Where are you going?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay. The room is paid for until Friday.” He hesitates. “The hospital is a five-minute walk from here. Just… I don’t know… just think about it.”

His hand is on the door handle.

“Wait!” I shove back the blankets and get out of bed, squinting to stop my head exploding and trying not to sway as I stand in front of him.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. All at once I’m on the verge of tears.

“I know,” he says.

With sudden tenderness, he cups my jaw. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what’s going on. With me, with him, with any of it. My tears spill over onto his palm, and I do nothing to stop them.

“I’ve left you some money on the dresser. It’s what I owe you for the work you did for me. You know where to find me if you need to. You’ve got to figure this out somehow, Christopher, okay? I’ll come back later. I’ll bring you some food.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Roughly, he pulls me into a hug. It’s not an answer, but I cling on as if my life depends on it.

Maybe it does.

And then he leaves.

A
FTER
M
ALACHI
has left, I sink down, my back against the door, my head in my hands. I hardly make a sound, my breath coming quick and fast, tiny gasps of pain, my tears making dark spots on the carpet.

But I’m not going to fall apart, not this time—I’m better than that, better than
her
. I have to be.

Eventually the pain in my chest and throat dulls to a deep ache as though I’ve swallowed a sharp, heavy stone, but I tell myself I can bear it. I will bear it.

I look round, somehow perplexed to find myself still here in this quiet room, this place I don’t quite fit.

Even at Cass’s I felt like that, though his room was smaller and messier, papered with posters and smelling of damp, and I was always drunk and quick to pass out. Still I felt too far away from the wind and stars, too far away from the whisper of the world as it turns.

And this room is so clean and neat, even with the fading wildflowers Malachi picked and placed in a glass. It’s like something from television, like a fictional room—the room of someone with no real personality. The room of someone who doesn’t exist.

The bathroom is tiny. I step inside and close the door.

A heater high up on the wall rattles to life, blowing out warm air when I pull the wrong cord to turn on the light. I leave it on, liking the feel of its warm breeze against my skin as I strip off my dirty clothes and turn the shower on.

There is a kind of stillness that comes when you’ve sobbed your heart out, a clarity that makes me think I’m standing in the eye of the storm and not quite through it yet, but still, I think I’m starting to understand something—whether it’s what Malachi had in mind, I don’t know.

All I do know is I’ve lost myself a little. And I’ve got to fight against this desire to be gone. I can’t run from my own skin. However far I go, my heart is still going to hurt as though it’s filled with broken glass. And running takes me farther from the only things that ease it. From the only people who can ease it.

Leaning back against the checkerboard of white-and-silver tiles covering the walls, I let the warm spray wash over me. Let it wash everything away.

T
HE
BLINDS
are half-closed over the two large windows at the end of the ward, blocking out the sunlight. From the nurse’s station, I can just about make out Dad’s solid bulk sitting in the chair next to Jay’s bed.

My heart sinks.

I’m here. I’ve come at last. But I just don’t want this to start and end in an argument with Dad. I want to see Jay, that’s all. And he’s there, just there, at the end of the ward, a painfully short distance away.

I’m so close to giving up, giving in, running away as fast as the wind, but Malachi’s words—
don’t run from everything like she did
—hold me steady, and I know I’m not going anywhere this time.