Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (17 page)

“What the hell
did you do to that poor kid?” Lainy.

“Yeah. Kid.
Whatever you’re thinking, mate, she is a child. For the next year,
she’s
our
child.” She had never heard Adam sound so angry.
Calm and quiet but there was no mistaking that harsh edge of rage
in his voice.

“She has a
mark, Jack, a whip mark. You’re doing, I’m guessing?”

“Look, I never
meant her to get hurt. I just didn’t know what else to do.” Jack?
Was that the word smeared on her mirror?

“You didn’t
know. That one gets old so fast.”

“I would never
intentionally hurt her.”

“You…”

Adam must have
made some noise to hush Lainy because she trailed off andhe took
over. “Before we get to the blame – before, not instead of – tell
us what happened to Katie. How did she get that slash?”

Katie glanced
down at the bandage on her arm and peeled a corner of it up to look
at the ugly cut beneath. It made her shudder. Not because it hurt –
it was a pleasantly numb area until she tried to move it – but
because she was sure she had gotten the wound in some nightmarish
other world. Certainly, there were no memories she could use to pin
point it. Just – it was cold and wet and dark and there was
screaming and then there wasn’t.

“… deserves to
know.” Jack finished. Katie felt guilty that she had missed what he
said, then she remembering she really had no right to be hearing
this in the first place. “I couldn’t just stand by and watch her
stumble into trouble because she’s too young to be told.”

“The rules are
there for a reason, Jack. You knew what might happen and now she’s
scared, hurt, God knows what else. Does she know why? Forget it,
doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that you did something
incredibly stupid last night and you might have made an enemy out
of Katie. Well done,” the sarcasm oozed through the door and Lainy
began a slow handclap.

“Who even let
you in last night? It wasn’t me.”

“Katie did. She
didn’t know she was doing it either.” And then Katie had a sudden
memory of being awake late last night and sitting by the window
when she suddenly felt dizzy and breathless. Then there was a boy
standing beside her, holding onto her hand as though he might fall
away if he let go. With a start, Katie realised that was absolutely
true.

The
conversation quieted to a series of mutters she couldn’t quite hear
and, whilst she doubted any of them would bat an eyelid if she
burst into the living room and started firing questions, she
realised that she wasn’t that sure she wanted any answers. Not even
if she had had any questions to ask. As it was,, there were
important things to be getting on with. Like dinner.

Even though she
hadn’t really felt like it, Katie had jogged down to the corner
shop she’d sat outside with Jaye, pretty sure they would have
everything she needed and ended up with so much stuff that she’d
had to take the bus back home.
Home
– it still made her
smile. There was precisely one bus that ran in Northwood. It mostly
ran along the main road and into a few of the streets where, she
guessed, older or disabled people lived. There was another bus that
ran down into Millford but it didn’t even stop in Northwood. Most
places in town could easily be walked to, but it was handy to have
the service when you needed it. There had only been a handful of
people on the bus when she got on – she was sure she recognised one
as the woman from the hospital that second night – and gave her a
little smile and wave. The woman nodded back. It reminded Katie of
another little job she had to do when she off-loaded. One she was
not at all looking forward to.

“How’s your
son?” Katie asked, sliding into the seat behind her. The woman
frowned and Katie tapped the side of her head to remind her.

“From the
hospital. Of course. Oh, he’s fine now. Tried to cadge the first
day off school though.”

“We all did
it,” Katie replied. Dan still tried it every term.

“As soon as he
was through the gates he was off playing footy with his little
friends.”

“Football star
in the making, hey. Maybe he’ll be training here at the academy in
a few years.”

“Oh no, I’d
never send him to Levenson. Well, not if I didn’t have to. It’s
much too… expensive.”

The woman tried
to make that last sentence as seamless as possible and managed it
pretty well but Katie didn’t miss that fraction of a beat between
the last two words. “Why wouldn’t you send him to college here at
home?”

“It’s just,”
she started, looking nervously out the window and gathering and
re-gathering her bags. “It’s just not the right place for him. Not
Freddie. They promised.”

“Who promised
what and why? That he wasn’t good enough? I’m sure he’ll turn out
great at football. If you start young, there’s plenty of time to
get good.”

“That’s what
I’m hoping for. And that’s why he can never go here.” She finally
got her bags together and stood up, yanking the cord that told the
driver to halt. “I need him to have that time. I want people to
call him Magic Feet Freddie. ‘cos he
is
good. Much too good
to have it all be wasted when he’s eighteen.”

“You’ve lost
me.”

“This town, the
people who live here, we’re all just waiting, you know. And you… I
don’t know why they call kids in if they can’t tell them. They
never rush to tell you anything.” A question was halfway out of
Katie’s mouth when the brakes squealed on – she really wished her
mouth had told her brain what it was. “Look, it’s my stop.” And she
damn near ran down to the folding doors. Katie sat back and looked
out the window as the bus rolled slowly on the one stop to Newton
Street. Now, she was glad she had had to catch the bus from the
shop. If she had even suspected Northwood was not the average small
college town, the woman had more or less confirmed it. There was
nothing overtly weird or creepy about the place – it was just this
feeling of everything running a little too smoothly, the people
being a little too nice.

When Katie got
back, she went straight to the kitchen to put her bags down on the
table. And walked right into Dina repeating Jaye’s actions of the
morning step for step. Only she dragged her eyes away from her
textbook at the door, registering Katie and the carriers. “Food?
Real food?”

Katie nodded
and Dina slammed her chemistry book down on the table, looking
relieved. “I’ve been living off burgers all summer. I think that’s
about all I ate in America. They had a lot of seafood but it made
me puke one night.”

Katie tried to
grin but inside she felt sick herself. She really didn’t need to
know that. “Thanks for sharing.”

“I’m the kind
of cook who can get beans on toast wrong but I can help unpack.”
Dina, with bones sticking out everywhere, was much stronger than
she looked. She took a few things out of bags and then, after Katie
had tried and failed, she set about getting the heavy pots and
dishes out of random cupboards. They seemed random to Katie,
anyway, but the housemates had probably developed some intricate
system. “What is it, anyway? I’m praying you’re not stashing
seafood somewhere.”

“Lasagne with
chicken instead of beef. Lean meat, full of protein. Pasta – carbs.
Veg – obvious.”

“Well thought
out. Actually, it’s the first meal we’re all getting to eat
together.” Dina sat on the sideboard and started swinging her legs
so the backs of her feet drummed out a higgledy rhythm on a
cupboard.

Katie emptied
her bag of tomatoes into a colander to wash when feet flew down the
stairs and voices started shouting. “Stay the hell out of my room,
Leo!” yelled Jaye.

“It wasn’t your
room.”

“Fair enough.
But when I’m in the bathroom, it’s temporarily mine. Meaning you
can’t come in.”

“That’s
rich!”

“Oh, for God’s
sake.”

“You’re going
to hell for that.”

In the kitchen,
Katie looked over at Dina who was already racing for the door.
Katie left the tap running on her tomatoes and dashed to the door
just in time to see Jaye giving him the middle finger.

“Screw you and
screw your precious fucking God too.”

It looked as
though Jaye – strong, happy Jaye – was crying, or about to start;
her eyes sparkled. The pair were also so lost in their current
battle that neither of them noticed they had an audience.

“This was my
house before you ever got here.”

“It’s time to
share then. I’m here now and I’m going nowhere,” he said, just low
enough for it to sound like a threat but loud enough to be full of
anger and danger. “Get used to it.”

“You invaded my
space!”

“You cursed me
and took God’s name in rage.”

“Oooh, come on
then big, bad God,” Jaye called up to the ceiling. “Strike me down
or something.” Nothing happened. “See? No Lord Al-fucking-mighty.
And if there is some beardy dude on a cloud, he obviously doesn’t
give a crap about little old me. What happens to us when we’ve had
enough?”

“God forgives
the good and the rest of
you
-“ he put a bit more emphasis
than was strictly necessary on that word “-go to hell for the rest
of eternity!”

“Seriously, you
need to learn some boundaries.” Jaye was standing as tall, as she
could but Leo, Katie estimated, was touching six feet and towered
at least seven inches over her. Jaye had managed to twist around
until she was on the bottom of the stairs, still up against the
wall but closer to his face.

“And you need
to back off bitch!”

Katie saw in
her head what was going to happen fractions of an instant before it
did. Maybe the others did too. More likely, the next few seconds
were so predictable that they should have all seen it coming.
Shrugging off the tiny, scared voice that always crept into her
mind –
don’t do anything stupid, girly. Nothing that;s going to
get us a smack in the face, right
– and started forward to stop
the argument. Dina laid a hand on her arm and shook her head vey
slightly though her fae looked strained, as though she were having
a hard time staying out of it too. Leo, angry, curled his hand into
a fist and pulled his arm back. Why did everything descend into
violence around Katie? She almost wished she could say that
everything happened in slow motion or even so fast she barely saw
it, it would just make it easier to watch if she could control it
like the speed of a film, but it was normal speed. Achingly normal
speed and no skipping the gross parts. So she watched as Leo
brought hist fist thundering towards Jaye’s face. Jaye opened her
eyes wide at the side and then closed them again, bracing for
impact, unable to get away.

And the fist
never connected.

Not with her
face anyway.

But it did make
a lovely crunch against the wall, shaking plaster loose.

For a second,
Katie heard her brain repeating that
Leo just missed, that’s
all.
Her eyes told a different story, at least for the instant
it took Jaye to squirm her head back an inch or two. Leo had
punched right through the girl. For some reason, the sight wasn’t
nearly as surprising as it should have been but she still stood
there, mouth hanging open. It was impossible. But it had happened
right there. Leo had been ready to hit Jaye, she’d seen the punch
coming, and her face had just – melted? – to allow his fist to pass
right through.

Dina snapped
Katie’s jaw shut with a finger. “You’re catching flies.” She walked
up to the pair, who looked in turn just angry and stunned enough to
go straight back at it, and pulled them apart. She placed a hand on
both of their chests and looked at Leo first. “You. Take a walk,
whatever, as long as it’s outside. Chill.” Her voice had taken on a
calm but commanding bass that nobody could seriously want to
disagree with. Leo hesitated for a second, the urge to disobey
shining bright in his eyes. On impulse, Katie threw a jacket at
him, held the front door open and waved him out.

“You heard her.
Out. Or do I need to sign it for you?”

He glared at
her. Katie pointed at him and then outside and he slunk out after a
minute. Dina and Jaye were mounting the top stair and vanishing
into their room when Katie closed the door. She sank back against
it. God, why had she just stood up to Leo like that? One part of
her was oddly proud whilst another was just terrified that he’d
stalk back later and decide she caused all the trouble. But, last
night, he’d shown that he had some compassion for others. It was a
long shot but maybe, just maybe, Leo would even apologise to Jaye
later.

And she didn’t
even have time to process what she had just seen her friend do.

Right, time was
getting on.

“Hi Mom.”

“Sweetie! How
lovely to hear from you! We’ve all missed…”

Katie let her
mother blather on, gushing about how much she was missed, how
things just weren’t the same without her, and went on layering
pasta sheets in a dish, trying to making the right noises at the
right times. “I’m glad thing’s haven’t fallen to pieces without
me.”

“You sound
distracted.”

“Yeah. I’m
making dinner.” She jammed the phone tighter between her chin and
shoulder and went on the hunt for salt and pepper which she
eventually found in a bunch of sachets swiped from some café. “It’s
all pizza and pot noodles round here. I’m campaigning for proper
food at least once a week.” That was doubtful unless she
volunteered to cook once a week. Never.

“You sound
happy though?” Mom made the statement a question. She couldn’t know
that her daughter had been faking her smiles all summer. Could she?
But this grin was genuine. “Did you open your letter? Was it good
news?”

That really
depended on which side of the fence you were sitting. “They’re
dropping the case.”