Fury (19 page)

Lexi was going to school to wait for Aardant, just before the last class was out. To say that she wanted to talk to him somewhere private. I didn’t tell Lexi what to say. She’s a smart girl; she’d know the right thing to do when the time came.

My uniform felt like a costume. I put on a fresh coat of black nail polish. I twisted up a tube of Revlon Red and put my war paint on. I sharpened the tips of my Fierce Words so they were like a row of shiny arrows.

I hitched Lexi’s skirt up and tucked her phone into her blazer.
I will ping you when we’re ready,
I said.
Then you take Aardant to the place.

Her eyes were purple. Almost violet. Almost alien.

I went to wait by Ella’s house. I knew from which direction she would be returning home from school. I had a few words I wanted to have with her. I didn’t have to wait long before I saw her.

You know, it was a shame that Ella didn’t stick with us as our second brunette. In the daylight, she made a really ugly blonde.

I approached her with my arms open like I was going to give her a big hug.

Come on, Ella,
I said to her as she struggled with my embrace.
You’re going to help us with a little something.

She didn’t want to go with me, but I didn’t give her a choice.
This is like the good old times,
I said.
Don’t you remember how much fun we used to have?

I told her
we got into this mess together so now we were going to clean it up together.
It was going to be quality time; it was only right.

Down by the East Rivermoor billboard, Marianne was waiting. I went to stand by her, dragging Ella through the dust with me. The sun was high and shone hot on the scrub and the dirt. Beyond the ditch the old train bodies lay, rusty red with age and abuse. We waited. Soon we could see Lexi. She had Aardant with her.

Okay, Brian, this is how it goes. Strap yourself in.

Aardant saw us.

“What is this, bitch?” he said to Lexi. “What are your disgraced friends doing here?”

“This,” replied Lexi and she pushed him. Caught off guard, Aardant stumbled and fell down in front of us. He was trying to get back up and was swearing at us, when I kicked him in the stomach. Then Marianne kicked him.

“How dare you think you can do this to us,” Marianne screamed, and she spat on him. “How dare you think you can keep doing it and doing it!”

Marianne turned to Ella. “Go ahead, your turn.” She pushed Ella forward.

“I don’t want to,” whined Ella.

“Don’t be shy now! Make your new best friend Jane Ayres proud of you.” Marianne grabbed the back of Ella’s head. “Go on. Do something daring and maybe she’ll be even more impressed this time.”

“Okay, okay!”

So Ella kicked him too.

We watched Aardant squirming there on the ground.

“What—do you fucking want?”

“You admit what you did,” said Marianne. “Look at what you’ve done. Look at her.”

She brought Lexi over. Lexi looked so lovely. I believed when I looked into her eyes I could see the ruin inside of her. Her body was no longer her home; she could scrub what was left of her with him still on it until she bled, but she could not shed herself and step into a new skin. I couldn’t believe that anyone could see her and be able to escape the guilt.

So I lost it.

“I hate you!” I screamed. “I hate you so fucking much! You tell her you’re sorry—tell her!” I grabbed my own hair. “Are you still undecided about the colour? You really want to know if I can get angry enough to match it? Then you—”

“Fine! Fine!” said Aardant. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

That made me stop dead in my tracks. Sorry wasn’t a word I heard often. Especially not twice in a row. It sounded foreign. Like something for which my brain needed a translator. I was silent for a moment as I turned the words over like a pair of skipping stones.

I wasn’t sure it was enough. I thought about taking off my shoe and using the heel as some sort of hammer, but a hand stopped my arm. It was Lexi.

No,
she mouthed.
Go.

I started at her. She nodded and I saw those eyes. Almost violet.

I turned away. I screamed in frustration. I took my shoe off anyway and threw it at his head.

“Good,” said Marianne down to him. “I hope that teaches you a lesson. If you try to get any of us back, next time I swear, we will kill you. Come on girls, let’s go. He’s not worth anymore of our time.”

That was true. The grand total of our entire plan. We were leaving. The problem was we were done with Aardant, but Aardant wasn’t done with us.

The pride of Priory’s football team threw his arm out and grabbed Lexi by the leg. She came crashing down. We all
screamed at the same time. I could hear Ella’s high-pitched scream above all of ours as she bolted away.

Fuck,
I thought. I wanted to go after her and drag her back,

but I turned, fell on my knees and grabbed Aardant instead.

I couldn’t have anticipated what happened next. Aardant grabbed a switch knife out of his pocket. He put Lexi in a headlock and pulled her up against him, sticking the blade to her throat.

“Don’t worry, babe. It’s easier the second time,” he said.

Tears welled up in Lexi’s eyes and they brimmed over and spilled down her cheeks. Once was unforgivable. A second time was inconceivable.

I watched helpless as Aardant slowly dragged himself up, his arm around Lexi with the knife tight in his fist. At that moment I hated everything. I hated Priory. I hated East Rivermoor. I hated all the teachers and I hated the world and I hated everyone in it. I wanted to kill him or I wanted to die. There was no in-between.

Oh God, make this right,
I prayed
. You owe me one, you really do. For all you have let happen, you owe me one.

I threw myself at Aardant and I bit down on his shoulder. He let go of Lexi and Marianne pulled her away. I wrestled with Aardant to get the knife away from him. It was only when my fingers and the metal of the knife and everything I was touching started to feel slippery that I actually looked down. It was blood. I looked at Aardant. I dropped my hand away.

My mother’s favourite artist is Alexander Calder. For her birthday many years ago, my father brought her a framed lithograph called
Sunburst.
She loves that lithograph so much it still hangs above her bed. Calder’s
Sunburst
looks like a very violent, bloodied wound.

Right then Aardant had one of those blossoming on his white school shirt.

“Oh my God.”

I didn’t know what I had done. All I knew was that I was trying to get the knife away from him. Trying to stop him from hurting Lexi.

Later they would tell me that whoever stabbed him meant it as no accident. The knife was plunged in so hard it splintered one of his ribs.

“How does that feel!” Marianne was screaming. “Did you like that?”

“Shut up, bitch,” Aardant said between gritted teeth.

“Just finish him off,” demanded Marianne and she turned to me. “I am sick of him, just finish the bastard off, Lizzie.”

I stared at Marianne, but I said nothing.

“Do it! He raped Lexi and he was just about to kill her! He probably would have killed you if you hadn’t stabbed him instead. Do it!”

I felt the knife still in my hand. Still slippery with blood. I didn’t know if it was all Aardant’s blood or whether some of it was my blood as well.

“Mari, I do not take orders from you—”

It was the gunshot that made us all jump.

The next thing I knew, I was facing Lexi and she was covered in a fine mist of red. Then I realised that the wetness on me was the same thing. Like a summer shower. Only sticky and sweet.

Aardant groaned below us. His eyes opened really wide, then they glazed over and he was dead.

Omigod I’m gonna be sick.
I put my hand over my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut. When I looked up again, there was Neil.

He took the gun that was in his hand and threw it into the ditch.

“Oh my God, Neil—why are you here?” I pressed my palms onto my forehead.

“Just passing by,” replied Neil. “I was going down to the bridge.”

“Don’t give me that crap! What is this?”

“Okay. I followed you. Can you blame me? Do you know what happened here once?”

“Neil,” I said. I could feel the tears prickling the corners of my eyes. “Neil, why did you do that?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? Isn’t this what friends do? Look out for each other?”

I didn’t reply. But in my heart I said
yes.

“This is for the best,” said Neil. “He’ll just get worse over time. He’s a monster. Best to end it now. Trust me,
I
can tell.”

Why should I trust you and what do you mean you can tell?
I wanted to ask him.
Aren’t we all monsters? Including me?
But I could feel my throat close up.

“Don’t worry about anything, it’s not your fault,” he said. “Just turn away from it. That’s it—just look away. It’s going to be fine. Let me sort it out. Do you remember how you trusted me with Rat B? Elle, will you trust me again?”

I nodded. What could I do? I did trust him. I trusted him with my life.

Neil took me by the elbow and steered me away. I only had one shoe. Where was my other…

“Girls, it’s time for you to go home.”

“Thank you, Neil,” whispered Lexi, tears still streaming silently down her face.

“Not a problem, Alex.” Neil kissed her on the cheek.

“I’m glad you’re our friend,” said Marianne, as Neil hugged and kissed her too. “I’m not sorry at all. I thought I would be—but I’m not.”

“Ah. Elle. Time for you to go home and get cleaned up.”

Neil was staring at me. I realised that I probably had smeared blood all over my face. I looked down at myself. A patch of wet red was covering my heart, making my shirt transparent.

“Why did you really do it?” I asked him.

“Are we going to speak the truth now?”

“Yes,” I said.

“To protect you.”

“You don’t have to protect me.”

“Of course I have to.”

“I am not a weak little girl.”

“Of course you are. The truth would crush you like the tiny flower you are.”

I know
I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to cry in front of Neil.

“You don’t give your mum enough credit for raising you, Elle. Look at you. Teenage sweetheart with a sugar shell and strychnine centre. We might as well finish speaking the truth now.”

“It was my mum’s fault—” I started to say.

“No, Elle,” said Neil. “It was your father’s. And my mother’s. Your mother and my father were just the victims. You should try and understand that. Then you might start forgiving yourself.”

I remembered playing
Hungry Hungry Hippo
on the floor with Neil. In his room with the plastic flying pig anchored on the ceiling. Going round and round in the heat of summer, buzzing like a blue bottle fly.

Oh God, why am I remembering this?

I asked Neil if I could go and find my father because there was something I wanted to ask him, or needed from him. I don’t remember what it was anymore.

“He’s not around,” said six-year-old Neil. I left his
room anyway and I saw the light coming from Neil’s parents’ room.

“Look,” I said to Neil and I pointed and smiled.

“No, not there,” he replied and he led me gently away.

Why do I have to revisit these forgotten places?

“Will you forgive yourself?” I whispered. I couldn’t really talk anymore.

Neil didn’t reply. He kissed me and wrapped his arms around me.

I wondered if I should have kissed him back. I wondered what that would have meant. If that would have changed anything. But the moment passed and it never happened, so it’s no good thinking about it now.

“Let me have that.”

I was still holding onto the knife. Neil took it from me and then he held it up to his face. He cut off a lock of his hair and dropped it into my palm.

“There you go, Delilah. I think this is what you wanted.”

Later Marianne said: “I hope it rains and washes it away. That would bitch it up real good.” But it never rained.

I lay in my mother’s bed that night, with Marianne and Lexi curled up next to me, thinking about Aardant’s body. We left him where he was and we walked away.

I thought about Aardant and then the girl dead in the depths of that ditch, and I thought of Lexi and her warm, breathing body next to mine.
Oh God, I am so glad.
I grabbed Lexi’s tousled head and kissed her hair. She smelt like John-Paul Gaultier and blood. Lexi mumbled noisily in her sleep and rolled over.

It took a while before it fully registered. Before it hit me that Neil had killed someone. All I had been thinking about was how he had saved us. How relieved I felt that he made a decision for me, one that I didn’t know how to make myself.

I finally took the postcard out of my blazer jacket. The one with the picture of the assassination museum on the front. I put the lock of hair, tipped in Aardant’s blood and folded it all up. Then I hid it where no one would find it again. It was not evidence. It was not going to be shown to the world. It was for me and me alone.

There was no way I could sleep for the rest of the night. I thought about how Neil knew exactly when to look up at me when I sent him those messages in my head during Politics. I thought about an unborn me and an unborn Neil connecting through our mother’s bellies; floating like little spacemen, trying to grasp onto something,
anything.

I pretended that I was a radar dish, opening up like a metal flower, tuning into
Frequency Neil.
Seeing if I could pick up any signals. If there were any I would find them.

Where are you right now, Neil?

Nothing. I didn’t feel anything. I guess … maybe we were supposed to be just friends then.

Now that I know how the story ends, I can see that Neil made sure to shut himself down, so that I couldn’t see what he was doing. He had already left me a message, I just didn’t know it. He had told me it was
going to be fine.
That he would
sort it out.
He said,
will you trust me?