Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (11 page)

Katie could
hear voices, faint and hushed. There was something sharp in her arm
and a warmth spread all over her body – one she wanted to just curl
up in and refuse to crawl out from.

“Thank God
someone found her.”

“I wonder what
she was doing down there in the first place.”

“It’s weird but
nothing seemed wrong earlier. She looked okay.”

“She freaked
when you got too handsie right?”

There was a
pause. Had anyone got too friendly with her? All Katie remembered
was sitting on something really high, then there was music and
voices, so many voices, and then things got all blurry. It felt
important that she should force herself to remember recent events
but her brain just flat refused to put any detail into the night.
If it was still night. It had been dark, and then there had been a
bright light so harsh it hurt to look at it.

Katie dreaded
having to open her eyes in case she only saw that endless sky and
this lovely glow inside turned raw and itchy under her skin but she
would have to wake up, rejoin the land of the living. But not
yet.

“Maybe we
should call her parents. They’d want to know about this.”

“Bad idea,
Adam. We can’t risk her leaving town, her education, her new life
just because some psycho roofied her. I won’t.”

“I don’t want
to either. But she’s just a kid. I’d kill anyone if who didn’t tell
me about my daughter.”

“I’ll bear that
in mind. You saw her when she came in. Doped out but otherwise
fine.”

Katie felt
better than fine and probably would until this injection of
sedative wore off. She dragged her eyes open a crack. Above was a
tiled ceiling with a couple of halogens set into it, turned down to
a dim glow. There were curtains drawn around her bed though hers
was the only bed in the room that was occupied. Even breathing was
an effort. Sitting up, which she desperately wanted to do to
stretch her stiff and acid-heavy muscles, would be a big no-no for
a few hours at least. There was a person slumped in the chair
beside her bed. Being frightened was not even an option, - she had
been so scared of so much for so long that some combination of that
and the drugs had simply erased the word
fear
from her
vocabulary. At least for now. She tried to swivel her head and
succeeded in moving a whole millimetre. Instead, she inched a hand
across the bed and let it swing down, hoping to touch the figures
own hand or knee. And then her hand touched another. It did not
feel right, as though it were solid but somehow not – Katie thought
of candyfloss, fluffy and pink to see and then dissolving into
sugar and air as soon as it touched your lips. The figure twined
his fingers into hers and they stayed like that for a few minutes,
both half-asleep but neither wishing to wake the other. Katie felt
sure the hand she was holding should have been scuffed and scarred
where it was smooth and soft… and it belonged to a boy, not one she
needed to be wary of but not one that she knew either.. That was a
paradox if there ever was one.

“Hey,” he
murmured. “You’re okay now. This is a safe place.”

She wanted to
tell him that she knew that but never got the chance. The next
moment chased the words away. The boy lifted his head and leaned
forward. Shiny green circles shone out of his shaded face. They
were so beautiful that Katie really didn’t want to look away from
then – not even when Dr de Rossa came in and inspected some medical
equipment she couldn’t be bothered to look at. None of it mattered.
Not the tubes or the injections or this hospital room – she felt
safe and wanted and that was the best feeling.

“We must stop
meeting this way, Miss Cartwright. People will talk.”

“Let them.”

“Very well. I
took blood and it’s being tested but you were so out of it when you
were brought in that I’m pretty sure you were slipped Rohypnol at
some point. That’s the name for –“

“The date rape
drug.” Katie felt tears drowning her eyeballs and turned to the
side to let them fall, soaking the pillow but everything seemed to
dry up when those striking green eyes found hers. “No-one did
anything.”

“I don’t think
so but you wouldn’t remember if they did.”

“I just know,
okay. Nothing happened, no one tried to screw me.”

“How can you be
sure?”

Because it
doesn’t feel like it did last time.
But she just shrugged.

“Please just
rest here and be sure to let Lainy know if you have any headaches
or nausea. People use all sorts to make the drug go further,” He
left an old magazine on the rolling table and strode out with a
smile back at his patient that made the doctor seem like the
friendliest medic she’d ever met. The last lot had been all poking
and prodding and photographing every mark on her body, new and old.
It was doubt and questions and making her feel like a victim who
should be ashamed of herself. Or a criminal for daring to make the
complaint.

“Sorry.”

“For?” the boy
asked. “Somethin’s making you cry. I hope it’s not me.”

“A bit.” Her
throat was hurting and the boy loosed his grip just long enough to
pour some water and help her sit long enough to sip at it. But
Katie found even that tiny movement exhausting and had to lie
straight back down. “You’re sitting here with me when everyone else
is just out there talking about me.” That was strangely worse than
anything else. Worse than people talking to her, telling her what
she had been through, what she should be feeling.

“You looked so
tiny and young lying here all alone. It feels wrong to leave
you.”

“You don’t even
know me.”

“Strike one,
Lady Katie. I’ve known you for weeks, you just don’t remember
me.”

“I remember
your eyes.” It must be impossible to forget eyes like that, just
like it must be impossible not to remember the round, soft face
that surrounded them, or the name that personified them. Impossible
but there it was. She had forgotten. Had she ever known? Everything
seemed to be getting far-off in her head and she surrendered to a
deep, dreamless sleep crashing over her.

Just after noon
the following day, after a nice nurse called Sam had sat with her
to chat about her new classes and hobbies – though Katie knew she
was only making sure she ate something substantial and kept it down
– Dr de Rossa fetched in some papers to sign and let Adam walk her
home. The day was bright again but there was a bit of a breeze in
the air. Not many people had decided to go out but there was the
obligatory group of kids kicking a ball around a patch of grass.
She watched them for a minute, then looked over at her escort. The
journey might have been uncomfortable if they had not been on
speaking terms but the pair had kept up a steady stream of inane
chatter since leaving the medical centre. Not that Katie even knew
half of what she was saying. She was bouncing up and down on the
balls of her feet, suddenly full of energy and knowing only one way
to get rid of it. Wanting just the one way. “Race you home?”

“Seriously? You
want to race?”

“Afraid you
can’t keep up?”

“There is no
challenge I will not except if it involves competition. But you’ve
still got drugs in your system. It’d be taking advantage. I’d win.
You’d strop. Lainy’d kill me.” His voice withdrew into itself and
his eyes flicked from side to side, clearly weighing up his
options. “Worth the risk.” They started running and kept pace with
each other for a minute and then Adam went haring off down the
street. “Too easy.” And then he disappeared around a corner and
left Katie jogging slowly behind him.

If Katie had
gauged the distance between her house and the student medical
centre well enough from the other nights’ drive well enough, Adam
would be out of puff and ready to drop about a third of a mile from
home while she was still going strong. This urge to run had been
building, almost unnoticeably, for a couple of days and had just
spilled over into activity today. The thought of running through a
town she hardly knew should have made her wary but she hardly
noticed the buildings passing her by; concentrating on the steady
thump of her scruffy trainers on the uneven waste ground and smooth
tarmac, listening to her own controlled breathing, feeling the
jarring impact of the hard ground vibrating up her long legs. It
was all so familiar. Changing gear after a few hundred metres was
just automatic. Keeping going took a little bit of effort but she
grinned, proud of herself, that she had forced herself to keep
going. It was only another half-mile home.
Out of practice.
The dregs of sedative in her system filled her still stiff and sore
muscles with lactic acid and Katie ached to stop but no. Stopping
now would be horrible for who knew when she would feel this way
again. Better just to keep running until she crashed through the
front door and pray that she would never stop feeling this good.
Because it had been so easy just to decide never to run again I
case something bad happened. Better just to keep up the pretence
and then run away to a strange town and try to live a normal
student life where bad things still happened. There was no one
thing that caused people to be so cruel to each other – no single
activity that must be avoided in order to be safe. Katie decided
firmly, and with just a touch of determination that se had been
missing, that she enjoyed running, was good at it and sod anyone
who made her think otherwise.

At the end of
Newton Street, where the house was, she caught up with Adam who was
crouched low and holding a fence post whilst gasping for air.
“Don’t… challenge… me again,” he wheezed.

“You took the
dare.”

“I’m a bloke. I
can’t let… a girl… beat me this… way.”

“Come on. Let’s
get you up.” Kate watched him claw his way up to a standing
position, jogged on the spot while Adam took a few gulps of air
then took his hand and towed him home.

Once through
the front door he crumbled to the ground and Katie sat near the
bottom of the stairs watching him and struggling not to laugh. “I
have a confession.”

“You’re Wonder
Woman on steroids.”

“I’m a pro
distance runner.”

“Cheater.”

“Not entirely.
See, I haven’t run in months… not really, so I thought this would
kill me you know. But it was so easy. It just all came back to
me.”

“Why did you
stop? You seem to enjoy beating the boys.”

She shrugged.
“Things happen. I lost an important race and my confidence was
shot. Then there was the move out here which just about took
forever.”

“Noting but
time now.”

“Yeah. I’ll get
back into it soon. I guess I just felt like doing not much of
anything lately.”

“Well no-one
expects you to run as soon as you get here. It’s been too hot
anyway. Tell you what, we’ll go down and speak to Roy tomorrow, see
if there’s a charity run or something before term starts. That way
you can run and just drop out if it’s too much. No harm done.”

“Why wait?”
Though she knew really that Adam was not going to let her out of
this house today. If she had still been living with her parents
Katie was sure she would have thrown the mother of all hissy fits,
yelled that they were treating her like a china doll and stormed
off upstairs. She smiled at the scene in her head. Today, she was
more than happy to do exactly as she was told and be taken care of
by her handsome guardian who was definitely
not
too old to
be having delicious fantasies about. Here – in her home, she
grinned again – no-one was tiptoeing around her on eggshells, she
didn’t have to pretend to be over it and fine in case anyone
worried.

“So what was
this big race” Adam asked, having finally managed to crawl from the
front door to the settee in the front room. “I don’t know much
about … much.”

Katie chucked a
cushion at him and he neatly blocked it with a kung fu move. That
made Adams previous statement redundant. They both knew it.
“Where’s Lainy? The others?”

Adam appeared
not to notice the change in subject. “She’s introducing them to the
supermarket I think. I expect tears and about ten years of therapy
so Katie-sitting seemed like the better option.”

Katie got up
and pulled another board game room the pile and thrust it at him –
Scrabble – one of her favourites, and settled on the floor in front
of him with the stereo slowly hissing into life. “Strike one,
Adam.” She never made baseball puns – must have heard it somewhere.
“I’m very demanding.”

Time passed,
CDs changed, she was just counting up the scores on their second
game – one all – when the door banged open and Lainy, Leo, Jaye and
Dina took it in turns unloading bags from a supermarket van. Well,
she assumed it was a delivery van – Adam wouldn’t let her go out to
help. During their games, Katie had learned they only did the big
supermarket shop once every couple of months as most things could
be bought from the mini-markets and convenience stores in town.
That was good. Having to trek a mile to the bus terminal and then
journey another half hour on the top deck next to some weirdo who
wore cabbage leaves for shoes strangely lacked much appeal. She
was, however, allowed to help put everything away although neither
Lainy nor Adam were very happy about it. “Look, even I can’t get
into much trouble chucking tins in the cupboard and ice cream in
the freezer. I’m not that talented.”

“Oh, Katie,”
whined Jaye. “I wish we hadn’t let you go off alone last night. If
something terrible had happened… I feel so guilty.”

Katie opened
the door to the fridge and took her time rearranging milk and juice
cartons before shutting it and answering without looking at Jaye.
“Don’t. Don’t feel bad for me, don’t feel responsible, don’t think
it could have been different if you’d come with me. Things happen.
So don’t.”