Innocence (13 page)

He repeats the same question over and over. Time just vanishes. Two paramedics come. Finn’s body jerks as they load him onto a stretcher. His facial burns are far worse than Jay’s.

“Is he alive?” I ask, struggling to go after them as they hurry away. But they’re probably told not to respond to people like me.

My body doesn’t want to move, so PC Quinn fastens my hands with what feels like a cable tie and leads me down the track, back the way we came. The dog licks my fingers. Somehow it knows how I will come undone.

“Is this your van?”

We’re stood in the alley behind the houses.

“Is it the van you were going to use to put the copper wire in?”

No one told me whether it’s better to confirm or deny, so I keep my mouth shut. The rain runs down my face. All I want to do is sink down and curl up on the wet cobbles. In my head there is just a roar of static.

They take me back to the police station in a cage in the back of a police van.

This is it. I’ve fucked up. They’re going to put me in jail. I’m eighteen. I’ll have a criminal record. I’m fucked.

I should be panicking, thinking of a way out, but however hard I try and focus on what is happening, all I can see is Finn’s mangled features. I just need to know if he’s alive.

“Name?”

The police station is too bright. They stand me in front of a counter, emptying out my pockets as I hold my hands above my head.

It’s a woman behind the counter. I look at her pleadingly. “Please, I just need to know if the person I was with is okay.”

“Name?” she sighs.

I shut my mouth.

After searching me, they shove me in a cell. There is a toilet in the corner, a hard bench to lie on. They took my coat, so I pull my T-shirt up over my head and sink down the wall next to the door. If I have to fucking cry, they’re not going to see me do it.

A woman sits in with me on my interview. They assume I’m a minor. I don’t say anything. I’m not even listening.
What if he’s dead?
I can’t get my head around it.

Eventually they put me back in the cell.

It must be morning when they come for me again. Maybe this is what they do with kids who won’t talk, just interview them every few hours until they break.

But it’s not an interview. I’m being bailed.

At the counter they hand me back my belongings and lead me through a set of double doors. I expect them to shove me out onto the street, and I have no idea how I will get home. But someone is waiting for me in the reception. The emptiness in my chest aches like a sea.

Malachi.

He stands up as they bring me through, his tanned skin pale, a haunted look in his eyes. But still he is beautiful, and my body reacts to him as it does to no one else, my skin heating, my heartbeat quickening in redundant, pathetic anticipation.

I don’t want to give myself away, so I hang back, my head down, moving only when Malachi’s fingers close around my wrist and he tugs me forward.

“What are you doing here?” I mumble.

“I could ask you the same question.” His words belie the heaviness in his tone. “Told them you were my brother,” he says quietly once we are outside. “But that lie is only going to work once.”

“Am I going to have to go to court?” I don’t really understand.

“No, not this time, but you need to keep out of trouble for a bit.”

It’s dawn, and the world is a storm-blown, rain-soaked mess. Malachi’s tiny car is parked out the front of the police station.

“Finn’s dead, isn’t he?” I say once we’re inside and the doors are shut, automatically drawing my knees up to my chest, trying to hold myself together.

“No… he’s badly hurt, though.”

If I could stop the way my shoulders start to shake, I would. I’d rather be back in that cell than cry in front of him.

Gently his hand curls round my shoulder.

“Don’t,” I gasp, shaking it off, but wanting nothing more than to pull his arms around me.

The hand withdraws.

Sobs rack my body so hard it is difficult to breathe.

“I’ll take you home,” he says quietly, once the storm inside me has died down. He hands me a tissue and watches as I wipe my face.

“Can you take me to the hospital?” I sniff.

“Finn’s in intensive care. They won’t let you see him.”

“They might. I want to at least try.”

“They won’t. I came here from there.”

Maybe they were better friends than I thought.

Malachi starts the engine, and I stare out the window.

Outside, the ground is black with rain, the puddles dark holes in the surface of the earth. I imagine stepping in one and falling through. The roads are all empty, and we don’t see another car the whole way.

“Thanks,” I say emptily, opening the car door almost before the car stops. It hurts to be with him, knowing how he feels about me.

The Tavern looks eerily quiet. For the first time, I wonder if Jay and Dad have heard about the accident, if they’re worried about me.

“Wait.” Malachi’s voice is loud in this silence and, I realize with some surprise, not completely steady.

I pause, half out of the car.

“I was worried it was you in the hospital.”

Sinking back down in the seat, I glance over at him.

“Logan came back to the camp near hysterical. He said the police had come and then ambulances, he didn’t know who had been hurt or arrested or anything. That’s why I went to the hospital.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I catch the edge of his glare and raise my eyebrows. “You’re the one who didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I’m sorry.” His dark eyes rest on mine. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and it’s as if I can see all the way inside him. “Sometimes people do things they regret. I was worried about you. I
am
worried about you.”

I look away. I never was any good with lectures. “I’m fine.”

“Stealing fucking copper? You’re better than that, Christopher.”

“Fuck you! What do you know about my life?”

I feel smug as I say the words, a cheap echo of what he once said to me.

But as I get out the car and slam the door, I want to take them back. He said he was sorry, he said he regretted the things he’d said, and I threw it back in his face.

I stand on the pavement, waiting for him to drive off.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he gets out, cautiously resting his arms on the roof of the car and looking at me steadily. In this light his hair is part of the shadows, part of the night. “I guess I deserved that. We about even, now?”

“I don’t know,” I say unhappily, bringing my arm up to hide my eyes. My throat is so tight and constricted I feel like I’ve swallowed a handful of stones. There’s something wrong with me. I never cry.

In two strides he walks around the car. I try to ignore my shock as his arms enfold me in a brief, tight hug. Something breaks in my chest, and I close my eyes, pressing my face into the slightly stubbled skin of his neck, inhaling his musky scent, overlaid by aftershave, and letting my arms wind round his back.

I could stay like this forever.

“If I hear any more about Finn, I’ll let you know,” he says softly as he pulls away and gets back in the car. “And by the way, Maisie has been pining for you.”

He shuts the door, gives me half a smile, and drives off, leaving me with the sensation that I’m standing on something more solid than I was before, something so unlike the quicksand that’s usually beneath my feet. I want to trust him, but at the same time, I’m scared. And more than anything, I need to squash these stupid feelings I have for him.

I wander back to the boat and sit out on the deck until I hear Dad moving round inside.

I want to go to Jay, but I need to do this first. Gathering my resolve, I get up. I’m going to tell Dad what happened last night, where I was, what I was doing. He’ll find out anyway, and I’d rather it came from me.

And then I’ll deal with the consequences.

M
Y
HANDS
shake as I open up the hatch and step down into the galley.

I tell myself I’m trying to do the right thing. But really, however angry he might be, I just need Dad to know.

In the dim orange glow of the galley lights, I can see Jay asleep on the sofa, his blond hair fanned like a halo around his head. Dad is making his second or third cup of tea. He empties the stewed dregs of the teapot into his mug, glances at me, then looks away. I can tell he’s angry from the way his shoulders tense up and his hands grip the edge of the sink so tightly the knuckles turn white.

“Outside,” he hisses before I can step any farther inside.

“Let me explain!” I whisper, standing my ground as he tries to usher me back on deck.

On the sofa Jay moans softly in his sleep and rolls onto his side.

“Your brother has been near hysterical worrying about your whereabouts last night. He needs his sleep. Outside.”

I step back out onto the deck. I hate to think of Jay worrying about me. Even more, I hate to think of how worried he must have been to seek comfort from Dad.

“I don’t know where I went wrong with you.”

“Let me explain,” I repeat, but he holds up his weatherworn hands to stop me. Hands I’ve known since the beginning. Hands that held me and stroked my back night after night when I couldn’t sleep after Mum left.

All at once it hits me how much I need him right now.

“Save it, Christopher. I don’t care what you and that sick pervert traveler were doing. I don’t want to know anymore. You need to find somewhere else to spend your nights. I won’t have it on my boat.”

He’s chucking me out.
I can’t… I can’t believe it. Of all the things I thought he’d do, this is among the last. I stare at him, too stunned to speak.
Sick pervert?
Is he talking about me being gay? I can’t believe Jay would have told him about Finn and I, but maybe it all spilled out in the dark of the moment, and I can hardly blame him for that.

For a long moment, he stares at me, but I know he’s not seeing me, and then he just turns and starts to walk away. It’s as though he just doesn’t care anymore. I clutch at the cold wire rail than runs round the deck of the boat, afraid I’m going to fall.

“We were stealing copper from the railway, and Finn got electrocuted in the rain. I got arrested, and Malachi bailed me out. Finn’s face was gone, just a bloody mess. I thought he was dead.
Please
….”

I don’t know where the words are coming from, what it is I’m begging for, even.

He stops walking but doesn’t turn round. His usually upright stance is gone, his shoulders sagging.

“You’re so like her sometimes, I can’t even look at you.”

He sounds so weary, so tired of everything.

I choke back a sob. I’m nothing like her. Nothing. I want everything back to how it was before we came here.

“You’ll be nineteen in three weeks. I expect you to find somewhere else to live by then,” he says quietly.

“I don’t have any money! You take all the money I earn!” Anger burns through me, and for just a moment it’s brighter than the hurt.

Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he throws a thin blue book on the floor next to my feet. “It was meant to be for your birthday,” he says dully, before disappearing back inside.

I open the book. It’s a savings account in my name, and already it has nearly a thousand pounds in it.

A thousand pounds. It’s all I wanted. It’s how much I thought we’d need to go and search for Mum, but in the dark spaces of my heart, I know I only agreed to go in search of her because it was such an impossibility, such a dream. I never really thought how I would feel once I actually had the money. There is a big difference between wanting to leave and having to.

I sink down and close my eyes, pressing my forehead against the slick, swollen wood of the deck as life goes on all around me—the way the birds call out as they splash in the water in search of food, the way the cats stalk the river rats through the undergrowth on the opposite bank. The way everything begins and ends.

A whisper of footsteps behind me, so quiet and so soft that at first I think it’s raining again, but then Jay’s slight form curls round my back, his arms clutching me tightly. I can feel his relief radiating through me, and I grip his hands to pull him closer, hiding the bankbook beneath my hip.

We stay like that for a long time, until slowly the awful ache in my chest begins to ease.

“What did Dad say? I didn’t hear him shouting.” Jay eventually whispers into my ear.

I can tell he’s wanted to talk since he came out here, but I’m glad he didn’t. I’m glad he just held me awhile.

“He didn’t shout,” I mumble.

“What happened last night? I had such a bad feeling. I was so worried about you.”

“I know.” I sigh, rolling onto my back to look at him. “You’ve got to stop worrying about me when I go out. I mean it, Jay, please, don’t worry. I don’t want to leave you if I know you’re going to worry.”

“Then don’t leave me,” he says with heartbreaking obviousness. “I could come with you.”

I pull him down onto his side and rest my head against his collarbone. “I’m trying to do the right thing,” I say, more to myself than to Jay. “What would you do if something happened to me?”

“I don’t know.” His voice is breathless. I don’t want to look at his face. “I couldn’t….” He trails off.

You couldn’t cope,
I almost finish for him. That knowledge is a weight I will always carry. It’s not a burden I resent—it’s just the way it is—but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try.

“You need other people, Jay. You need Lorne, and you need other friends.” It’s easy for me to say this. I know how hard it is for him.

“I’m only friends with Lorne because all she wants to talk about is you.”

“What? But she won’t even talk
to
me.” And then I groan, bringing my arm up to cover my face. Oh God, how could I not have realized she had a crush on me?