Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (18 page)

“Oh honey-“

“It’s better
this way really. New start and everything,” she cut her mother off
before she could rush into another round of platitudes she had
heard a hundred times before.
Last night.
“How’s Uncle
Billy? I heard he lost a fight with a lamp post?” Katie phrased the
question carefully.

Not quite
carefully enough as it tuned out. “He said it was on the way home.
How did -?”

“Small town.
Stupidity travels fast.”

“He’s doing
fine. Got a black eye to be proud of. Honestly, men can pick fights
with anything, can’t they?” Yeah, even 16 year old girls. “Hey,
what can I hear back there?”

Katie glanced
up at the ceiling where Jaye and Dina sounded like they were
thrashing out the row from earlier. “We’re at war,” she sighed. It
seemed like she had walked straight from one fight this morning
into another with Jaye and Leo and now yet another with the girls
upstairs. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Sweetie, I do
worry. We all do. You know that.”

“I’ve made some
friends. I’ve got a race coming up. Term starts in a week. If the
world’s not ending tomorrow, I’m happy with what I’ve got.”

“What a lovely
attitude to have. It must be so hard for you. Out there all on your
own.” Katie didn’t feel on her own. Okay, once or twice she’d had a
wave of homesickness, of wanting to be looked after and wrapped in
cotton wool so she never had to grow up, but she hadn’t felt alone.
“How are you coping fending for yourself?”

She could hear
the worry in Moms voice and had to bite her tongue before she
blurted everything out.
Well, Mom… I nearly got raped last week,
I nearly blinded my uncle, I freaked on my landlord, one of my
housemates hates me, the next town is totally off limits, something
weird’s going on with the people here but I don’t know what, these
dream/nightmare things keep haunting m even when I think I’m awake,
there’s a cute boy called Jack who wrote on my mirror this morning.
And I think I’m losing my mind.
Katie put her knife down and
touched the bandage on her arm, having more or less forgotten about
it all day, sending a fresh ripple of sparking pain down her arm
and up into a shoulder. “That can’t have been a dream. Dreams don’t
leave marks… at least, not on the outside.”

"Katie, are you
okay? If you want us to come up we can.”

“No, I’m fine.
Just –“ Oh God, what excuse could she use? Reading aloud? No, she
hadn’t done that since she was six. Trying to have another
conversation at the same time? The comment was way too random and
sudden. Some combination of the two maybe? “Just running lines with
a drama student. It’s all busy busy busy.”

“Don’t push
yourself too hard sweetie. Remember how much younger you are than
most students.”

As if she was
likely to forget. “I have to get this in the oven now so send my
love to Dad and tell Dan I’ll kill her if she steals any of my old
clothes. I don’t care that they’re only marked for charity –
they’re for the needy, not the tragic.”

They said their
goodbyes quickly, Katie itching to get her mother off the phone as
soon as possible because she sounded close to tears. Wasn’t it
Katie who should be sad? She snapped the phone shut, aimed in the
general direction of the full ironing pile and was pleasantly
surprised when she didn’t miss completely. It was a big target
though. After the lasagne had been covered in foil and put in the
oven for it’s first lot of cooking, Katie decided to set the
ironing board up and try to get the pile down. She found her mp3
player and switched it on. The LOW BATTERY message flashed up so
she found the mains charger and plugged it in, switching to the
playlist of country and western tracks. The constant back and forth
and flip and fold of the ironing mixed with the far away simplicity
of songs that spoke of open lands and standing by your man took her
away from this place. The arguing upstairs was a hundred years and
ten thousand miles away. In front of her stood a boy with green
eyes and a cowboy hat. He smiled at Katie, traced the bandage on
her arm. “It wasn’t meant to happen like this.”

Katie
remembered the name written on her mirror – it wasn’t TACK, it was
JACK – completely duh! – and put two and two together. This was the
boy Adam and Lainy had been arguing with. Questions popped into her
brain but all that came out of her mouth was an accusation. “But it
did.”

Jack looked sad
for a moment and distant expression fell over his face. Katie
frowned and wanted to reach out for him. But she didn’t. “This
music, it reminds me of home.”

“Where’s
home?”

“A long time
ago. A long way away.”

“You’re Jack
and I’m Lady Katie. We know each other. We like each other but we
forget.” For some reason it felt important to say the words.

“I never
forget.”

“But I do.”

“Yes. That’s
how it’s meant to be.”

“Will I forget
this?” Jack looked away from Katie but she moved her face and
locked her gaze with his, the way he could do with her. Memories
were flaring in the darks of her mind and she would retrieve them,
process them when this was over. Answers were more important.

“Rules are
there for a reason.”

“No, they’re
not. Rules are there because someone thinks they’re God.”

“They stop
people gettin’ hurt.”

Katie looked at
him for a long moment, long enough for Jack to start feeling
uncomfortable, and then she giggled. Jack frowned at the girl. He
didn’t understand that Katie had to laugh because she’d cry if she
didn’t. But he said nothing. Just stood and watched her.
“Seriously?” Katie asked. “This is too messed up. What rules?”

“The rules I
broke by coming back here.”

Katie glanced
down and saw the iron in her hand, felt the warm glow coming from
the humming oven, heard Johnny Cash growling about walking the
line. This was all real, almost frighteningly real, and she had to
remind herself that Jack was actually standing next to her. It was
easy to pretend this was just a day dream. But nothing was ever
easy, was it?

“You got
attacked and that wasn’t the plan. So, they sent me to see you. One
time only, that was the deal. I tried to keep it. But I couldn’t
stay away from you for long. And then all this bad shit kept
happenin’ to you and I had to see you more and more. Just to make
sure you were still you.”

“Right. My
turn. Who are they? What’s this plan? Why were you only supposed
to-“ She shook her head and folded up one of Leo’s t-shirts – a yin
yang symbol licked with flame – and added it to the growing pile.
“Be honest with me, Jack, is this your fault?” She gestured to her
injured arm.

“Yes. I’m
sorry.” To his credit, Jack looked genuinely guilty. “I tried to
show you who I used to be, what happened to me. I knew you might
get hurt but… I knew.”

“What’s the
time?” A quick check of her player said it was almost five. The
lasagne had been in the oven almost an hour. “Staying for dinner,
right?” she threw at Jack as she quickly slid the ironing board
away and the unsteady pile of clothes onto one arm to be taken
upstairs. Without waiting for the dithering boy to answer she
dashed off upstairs. Jack had never been invited for a meal in all
the years he’d seen and didn’t really know what to say. It wasn’t
like Katie had given him much of a choice anyway.

“You’re talking
to me about secrets!” Dina yelled inside the room she and Jaye
shared. “What gives you that right? I’m not keeping the biggest
secret of her life.”

“And I’m not
keeping the damn secret out of some misguided sense of self
preservation.”

“It’s the
rules, right?”

“Yeah. Look
what happened last time we broke that rule.”

“Come on, Jaye.
She’s way stronger than he ever was. She can handle this.”

“Whoa, whoa,
horsey. This is not about us and the things we can’t say or do.
This is about you, what you did.”

“What I did? I
didn’t
do
anything.”

“You let her
get groped all night, roofied her, then let her run off alone.
Anything could have happened out there.”

“But it
didn’t.”

“It nearly
did.”

“Nearly, not
quite. You know better than anyone, Katie is stronger than that.
plus, she has Jack looking out for her. And when he’s not here,
you’re sniffing around her heels.” Katie had been beginning to feel
a bit guilty for listening in on their conversation but, now it
seemed to be about her, she felt a little better about it. “like
you used to do with me.”

“Is that why
you did it? Because…” There was a sudden sobbing from behind the
closed door. Bedsprings squeaked and Katie could picture Jaye
sitting next to a weeping Dina, holding the girl awkwardly. “Look,
you’ve had an entire year to get used to the idea.”

“But it’s all
so different now. I know when and where. I’ve seen the place where
it’s gonna happen. It makes it more real.”

“Dina.” She
drew the name out like parents did when they were pretending to be
angry with their kids. “We talked through this last night. She’s
new here and we have to protect her from all this for now. But it
doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking out for you, babe. You’re meant to
be like me you know.”

The sobbing
continued but more muffled and less frequent. Katie waited a second
before knocking the door. “I’ll leave your clothes out here.
Dinner’s ready in fifteen.” She dropped everything in the bathroom
and outside everyone else’s rooms before changing her food stained
shirt and running back to the kitchen to finish off the dinner.

Katie let her
hands work on automatic and went over the things she had just heard
upstairs. Dina had drugged her a few nights ago then left her to
dash off, vulnerable. It kind of made sense actually. She hadn’t
been exactly best friendly this week, unless Jaye had been with
them obliging her to be pally, and she was obviously feeling guilty
after their little chat last night. That must have been why she had
sat down for a chat earlier. There was also something no-one was
telling her. Keeping secrets around here was obviously second
nature. If she could just figure out what it was…

Dinner went
well. Katie nodded and smiled at the compliments her housemates
gave her – see if they say the same thing in an hour – but she
barely even tasted her own. Even having Jack there wasn’t proving
much of a distraction. There was tension crackling between
everybody at the table. It hung heavy over the front room like an
animal net; inescapable, no matter how hard the struggle.

“What’s going
on around here?” Adam asked. “I don’t think this house has ever
been this quiet.”

“Leo punched me
in the face.”

Adam frowned at
her face, noted the absence of a bruise, then glanced over a Katie
for an instant, hoping she didn’t see. Of course, she did and
frowned back at him. He knew why Jaye didn’t have a bruise but not
that Katie also knew. Even if she didn’t understand. Jaye stared
back at him coolly and then shrugged.

“Why?” he asked
then.

Jaye said
nothing, perhaps having forgotten what their fight had been about.
It didn’t seem likely though. He looked at Leo for an answer. It
was not forthcoming.

“Look, we’re in
charge of all you guys and, since we don’t want a murder on our
hands tonight, you’re gonna have to tell us what’s wrong.”

Lainy put her
fork down and rested her folded arms on the edge of the table. Her
plate was one step away from being licked clean. She was not fat
but she definitely liked her food. “Thank you, Katie, that was
lovely. Now, to business. I will not have violence in this house. I
will not have fear. And I will not have lies.”

For just a
second Katie wondered if that particular rule would apply if she
asked why they were keeping things from her, and what those things
were.

“She was doing
her make-up in the bathroom and I went in to get my towel. The door
was open.” Leo sat back, a grin on his face as if his story was
over. “And then she went all psycho-bitch on me. Starts yelling at
me about boundaries and all that.”

“He told me God
would never forgive me and I‘d go to hell.” She waved her knife
between her thumb and fore finger, watching it as if there were
more interesting things she could be doing with it. “Sometimes, I
think hell might be easier.”

Dina put her
handover her friends’, stilling the thrumming cutlery.

Katie looked
up. “Why did you do that?”

A moments
silence fell again, deep and eternal. She wished Kaye would start
drumming her knife again, anything to break this horrible deathly
hush. It probably wasn’t as long or total or awkward as Katie felt.
“I’m no threat to you, Dina.”

“I don’t know
what you mean,” she said.

Dina sounded
honestly confused and Katie wondered if she had simply imagined her
and Jaye arguing an hour ago. A lot of things that seemed real were
either not real at all, half real or had no right to be real in the
first place.

“You…” she
could not finish that sentence, could not bring herself to make
that accusation. She, instead, started stacking plates to wash.
“There’s no point. Not tonight. I’m too tired to be angry right
now.”

She took the
plates out and clattered them into the sink, tears threatening to
spill over once more. Not the crying again. She didn’t see the way
Adam nodded at Jack and then after Katie, the way Leo threw his
chair back and flopped down in front of the TV, or hear the hushed
murmurs of a student house desperately trying to keep itself
together. Until Jack walked into the kitchen and felt her stiff
body relax into his, Katie was aware of absolutely nothing. Katie
turned to him, glad once more she was wearing pumps – she’d tower
about three inches over him in heels – and let herself get lost in
his eyes, letting them make everything okay for a few minutes. She
leaned in to kiss him, to taste him, to breathe him in, because
things were just
better
when they were together, and stared
at him in surprise when he pushed her back. Maybe with a touch of
disappointment. And a whole splodge of rejection.