Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (23 page)

Adam nodded.
Then he shovelled in his last spoonful of oats, pushed his dish to
one side and went back to his crossword. His knuckles were white
from gripping the pen too tight and his paper was rustling
manically in his trembling hands. The paper went down and was laid
out on the table but the movements were careful and measured. It
was hard for him, Katie realised. His charge had tried to take her
own life. Dina had lived in this creaky old house all of last year
and it was clear that everyone was so strongly bonded. It must be
like losing a sister, maybe even a daughter, for him.

Katie swallowed
the last of her breakfast and glanced down, trying to read upside
down. “Silhouette.”

He looked up
sharply. He had not been really mulling over the clues. “What?”

“7 across. A
shadow or phantom. A shapely darkness against light.
Silhouette.”

“Oh,
right.”

He wrote the
letters in the blank spaces, concentrating on each stroke of the
pen much harder than he normally would. Lessening his fine motor
control would give way to the spider scrawl clogging up the last
few pages and he couldn’t let Katie see that. She expected him to
be strong, hard, a father figure. On impulse, Katie reached across
the tale and clamped her hand over his forearm. No words passed
between them. They just sat there, at either end of the table, Adam
drawing warmth and comfort from the touch of another and thinking
that Katie was doing the same. She allowed her hand o slide over
his arm and down to his thick, tanned wrist where she felt blindly
for a pulse. There was a pulse in the wrist, Katie often checked
her own after a run, and she felt it jack hammering under her
fingers. Whether or not that fact should have surprised her was a
far off ambition. “Oh. You’re…”

“Terrified.”
Adam pulled his hand away, looking confused. “I’m meant to keep you
all safe.”

“Shouldn’t you
call her parents?”

“Her dad’s in
America.”

“Still. I’m
sure he’d fly over if he thought his daughter was dying.”

“I know you
mean well, Katie, but you don’t know what it’s like. I was put in
charge of you lot. In loco parentis. I can’t let him know I cocked
it up in case… They’ll never trust us again.”

“I trust you.
Because you’re alive and you’re sweet and you let me do things my
way. And that’s why Dina trusts you too.”

Without warning
Adam shot out of his chair and wrapped her in a bear hug. For once,
Katie had had nearly enough of being hugged and touched for one day
– yesterday too, in fact – and having her friends feel crappy and
depressed. She felt crappy and depressed too, but it felt so wrong
to be robbing them of any hope they had left to warm herself. But
being hugged by Adam… it fit. He was strong and solid and she could
feel in his embrace that he wished he could wave a magic wand and
fix everything. “It’s too soon. Too soon.” He kept repeating the
words and Katie stroked the shaggy blond hair touching his shoulder
blades until he was quiet. It was like cuddling a walking, talking
teddy bear; she took as much of the comforting
I’ll protect you
like a glass baby
from him as she gave.

“Am I
interrupting something?” said a voice from the doorway. “Not that I
care but it’d be nice to know.” Katie turned her head towards the
doorway, knowing who it was. It was a good idea to keep Leo where
she could see him. He crossed his arm and leant against the door
jamb. “I don’t mind watching. Considering this is virtually incest,
I reckon you might need a witness.”

Katie looked at
him – stared him out actually. There were a lot of things she was
not in the mood for and Leo and his attitude problem was one of
them. It was fast climbing to the top of the list too. “Did you
want something?”

“A million in
the bank and my name up in lights.”

“Sorry, they
don’t pay or praise morons. Let’s rephrase… you came to tell us
something?”

“The phone went
while you two were lost in each others eyes.” Leo over-acted a
swooning pose that just made Katie want to slap him until he cried.
”It was Jaye. Dina’s in a coma. Looks bad.” Understatement. When
was a coma ever not bad? “My job is done, I’m going back to bed.
You two can go back to… whatever.”

“Wait. How long
were you there?”

He shrugged. “I
didn’t like to interrupt.”

“Perv. Don’t
you care that our friend might be dying? I mean, she’s in a coma
and while you spend your day hibernating and stinking up that
oppressive little hovel up there, Dina might drop dead or anything.
God, you defy explanation.”

He shrugged
again. “She’ll come back.”

“But she won’t
Leo, she won’t?” Katie could hear her voice rising again, getting
angry, the rims of her eyes starting to burn with the tears she
didn’t think she had left. “Don’t you get it, you dumb little boy?
She won’t come back.” She buried her messy head in her hands and
clawed at her hair, looking, she knew, like the broken and crazy
girl she was desperate not to turn into. The boys shared a quick
look over her bent head – at five foot six it would have been close
to impossible standing upright – and Katie had the sinking feeling
she knew what the look was about. They were asking each other,
without words, if she actually knew anything and what they could
say for the best. Katie realised that she didn’t want any of them
to know how much she knew.
It’s too dangerous. It’s just not
worth it.
“You can’t do anything to fix me, okay. I’ve had a
lot going on and I’m not even that good friends with Dina but I
can’t help it.”

Adam nodded,
seeming like he understood. “Like a sister. You don’t always like
them that much but seeing them hurt is like hurting yourself.” It
sounded like the voice of experience. Adam never spoke about his
family – not that there had really been time for a heart to heart;
how many sisters did he have then? “Careless of me, of all of us in
fact, to let things go this far. Damn it! I should’ve seen this
coming.”

“Adam.” Katie
saw the little red light flickering on the cooker and busied
herself turning dials into a perfectly symmetrical OFF line, making
it a much bigger job than it was. Mostly, she was playing for time
as she fumbled for the right words. Okay, she had absolutely no
words to say to him. He sat at the table staring at the sun turning
the sky ever lighter shades of blue and pushing his cuticles as far
back as they would go. What could she possibly say to Adam right
now that she wanted to? What she wanted was to tell him everything
that was pinballing round her head, let someone else deal with all
this crap for a while and then just take over when she felt grown
up enough. But, if Jack had been right about how much trouble she
was in then she couldn’t dump anyone with it. Her friends couldn’t
be involved. Suddenly, Katie was glad her voice had deserted her –
that had been the hardest sentence she had ever even thought, let
alone spoken. The dirty dishes were still on the table and Adam
silently brought them to the sink and they started washing them
together, hoping for silence and not getting it.

“Oh, this was
pushed under the door last night.” Leo slid a sheet of creased
yellow paper across the table. Katie spared a glance at it over her
shoulder. It was covered with a photocopy of the academy grounds
and surrounding areas with hand drawn arrows and barely legible
words – the race route. “Thank you very much Leo. No problem,
bitch. Bitch.”

Adam tossed the
dishcloth back into the dirty water and whirled on the younger man,
a moment of anger that was gone as quickly as it arrived. “What’ve
you got against Katie? Against all of us actually. Life is tough.
Everyone’s on a knife edge. Being horrible does not make this go
away.”

“Cool it, man.
This is between me and her, okay?”

“Not okay.” He
was holding one of the wet dishes so tightly that his knuckles were
turning white. The trio stood, two to one, in the kitchen. Tall,
but feeling very small, Katie chewed the inside of her cheek and
tried to turn invisible. Confrontation was not her favourite thing
in the world and this one had the whiff of violence around it. Far
away came the crash and smash of something fragile shattering.
Katie reached out to the side for Adam’s arm and noted that he was
no longer holding the plate. “Leave-“ her hand came back with
streaks of blood on it. She stared at it for a moment, wondering
why, after all the blood she had spilled recently, this was making
her feel faint. Fantastic. Bloodophobia – Lainy would know the
proper word for it – another freakism to add to her long list of
oddities. She opened the cupboard under the sink, found a roll of
paper towels and shoved them at Adam, doing her best not to look.
It was a shallow cut to a finger because he had tried to pick up
the pieces. Grabbing a few sheets of kitchen roll and pressing them
to his hand, Adam hared off down the hall and slammed his
downstairs bedroom door, looking both guilty and haunted. “Okay,
thanks for that little show. Forgive me if I don’t call for an
encore.”

“Yeah, I
scripted the whole performance.”

“Seriously
wouldn’t put it past you.” She pulled the plug on the dirty water
and shook bubbles off her hands before turning back to Leo. “I
think you and I have a little problem.”

“Problem? I
haven’t got a problem except you.”

“Me? What the
hell, Leo?”

“You spend
every night either parading around like the world’s out to get you
or crying and then pretending you weren’t.”

“I cannot help
that. I’ve had the year from hell and there is no delete button on
my life.” Unfortunately. “I’ve seen things I need to bleach from my
eyeballs. I know things I’m way too young to think about. I’ve been
put through worse than you would wish on your worst enemy.”

“I read the
letter. I did the research.” Leo suddenly softened his angry
stance. “It sucks. I know. Believe me.”

Katie found
that she did. It was quite a shocking realisation to be honest. “I
know it was you.”

“Huh?”

“It might
shatter your dumb little fantasies but I’m not at stupid or naïve
as I look. I know it was you. Last week.”

“Yeah well… You
were there weren’t you?” He shrugged.

“Oh, I’m so
glad you aren’t in danger of developing a human streak. I was just
there.
Anyway, whatever. That’s not the problem I was
talking about.” There was a moment of quiet. Katie opened a
cupboard to put some mugs away, decided to line them up on the
sideboard instead.

“The silence is
boring, not intriguing. Spit it out.” You could always rely on Leo
to get right to the point of things – dismissing the traditional
small talk and coded ways of saying things. No sugar coating for
him.

“Okay, here
goes. You know what’s going on in this town, right? I mean, you
must’ve noticed how weird it feels just standing here. Like there’s
something here with us – dark and strong. I’m not sure what it is
but it’s everywhere apparently.”

“Are you on
crack or something? I have no idea what you’re babbling about.”

“It’s okay. I
figured it all out.”

Leo maintained
his bewildered face and the cogs were practically visible whirring
around his mind. He flicked his eyes to the door, remembering the
conversation everyone in the house but Katie had had on Monday
night, wishing Adam would come charging through the door to field
this one. It didn’t seem likely.

“The only bad
thing about this place is –“

“Stop it!” His
attitude was getting on her nerves now but the steel trap behind
his eyes had melted to expose a relentless denial rather than
hatred. “You know. I know. But I won’t tell anyone because…” the
next part of the sentence was the hardest to say. “If they know I
know, they’ll make Jack wipe my memory.” She reached over and
touched his shoulder, just lightly. Leo looked younger than her,
despite the fact he was two years older, lost and confused. Then
–

Saved!

The front door
slammed opened with a jangle of keys and Lainy and Jaye clomped
down to the kitchen. Both girls looked tired, stressed out, but not
overly sad. In fact Jaye looked downright cheerful, a grin
plastered on her face even if her eyes didn’t quite match.

Lainy looked
Katie up and down. “Long night?”

“And getting
longer.” She followed the woman’s eyes to the pieces of shattered
plate still on the floor. Cleaning up was on the list of things to
do. Not really very high up but it was most definitely there. “Adam
dropped it. He’s in your room. He’s hurt.”

“Something
happened while we were over the hospital. You’d better tell me
what.”

“Umm….” Katie
began, stalling for time.

“I surprised
him when he was drying up.”

Katie glanced
at Leo, caught somewhere between grateful and relieved.
That’s
two you owe him.

“Yeah, I was
asleep and they woke me up. I came down to shut ‘em up.”

“Making a guy
bleed obviously works then.”

Lainy grabbed a
pack of sticking plasters from a drawer and trudged off down to her
room. It didn’t look as though she was particularly bothered by
being called to nurse duty again. Probably used to it.

Katie looked
from Leo to Jaye and back again. She didn’t want to leave the two
alone in case relations devolved into swearing and violence again.
The fact Jaye could avoid getting injured, and that Leo had to know
that, should have helped matters – but it didn’t. The tension in
the house was sky high already.

“I’m sorry I
yelled at you the other day.”

“I’m sorry I
punched you in the face.”

This joint
apology was unexpected to say the least.

“But you
understand why I said it, right? I find it hard to believe in
anything or anyone who could this to me and the people I care
about.”