The Sound (31 page)

I hear a noise outside just then – the crunch of gravel – and glance up. How long have I been? I imagine Jesse sprinting up the drive and dart towards the door. The last thing I want
is him getting arrested for coming near Tyler. If the police catch him on the property he’ll be done for violating the terms of his parole and sent back to juvie. I need to get out of
here.

The bedroom door swings open just as I reach it and my legs almost buckle.

Tyler is standing in front of me. A flash of surprise crosses his face as he sees me but then his gaze flies to my hands and the copy of
The Prince
I’m holding. His eyes narrow
into alligator slits as he looks back up at my face.

‘Little extra-curricular study into the art of warfare and politics, Ren?’ he asks, pointing at the book.

‘You could say that,’ I answer, clutching the book tighter.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his voice strangely cool and collected. ‘I don’t like to lend my books. Maybe you can buy a copy from Amazon.’

‘Not sure they stock this edition,’ I reply, my eyes skirting the room, looking for another way out. There’s only the window though.

‘Ren,’ Tyler says, my name a warning. His eyes are glimmering, a muscle twitching wildly beneath one. ‘Give me the book.’ He takes a stride towards me.

I spring left, trying to dodge past him to the door. But he’s faster. He darts in front of me, blocking the exit, panting now, his eyes lit bright.

‘I know what you did to Hannah Miller,’ I say, breathless.

He throws back his head and laughs. ‘That is what this is about?’

‘She was thirteen years old.’ I can’t keep the rage out of my voice.

He smiles slowly, viciously. ‘She wanted it. Oh, OK, she didn’t want it exactly but she didn’t put up much of a fight. The younger ones are so scared all the time. I
can’t count how many of those there have been. You’ve got all their names right there.’

‘You sick bastard,’ I spit. ‘This is just a game to you?’ I ask, holding up the book. ‘It’s just about winning some points? You ruined a girl’s life!
You almost ruined her brother’s life.’

He shrugs. ‘Yeah, well, boys will be boys and Jeremy’s pretty competitive as you can see. Though I’m still winning. He would be in the lead if he’d managed to bang you
last night. Your boyfriend showing up really helped me out. Who knew the English nanny was such a player?’

‘You bastard.’ I wish I could come up with something more creative but words simply fail me.

‘Oh, Jeremy had you going though, didn’t he? You know, he used to tell me all about it after you’d been together. I know how you kiss, how you like it. Sure you don’t
want to try me out too? You know, help put me in the lead?’

I react without thinking. I slap him so hard that the noise of it is like an explosion, a firework. Jesse must have heard it from the road. I hope. I pray. Tyler takes a step back, his hand
flying to his cheek, his irises bleeding rage, and then he lunges, striking so fast that his fist is just a blur beneath my eye.

I’ve never been hit before in my life, except by a netball in PE once, so it takes me a while to realise that my head hasn’t just rocketed off the top of my spine but is in fact
still attached to the rest of me and that the ringing noise is just the repercussion of the blow sounding in my ears and not an orchestral score blasting from the stereo. I blink and realise that I
am cowering against the door. Tyler looms over me. He grabs hold of my arm and hauls me to standing. His lips are drawn back over his teeth in a snarl. ‘I just want the book back, Ren.’
He grabs for it and every ounce of strength and fight in my body is focused on holding on to that book.

He smiles at me, even as he tries to wrestle the book from my hands. ‘I like it when girls put up a fight,’ he whispers, his face almost against mine.

He pushes me backwards until my calves bang against the bed and panic soars up my throat, threatening to close my airway.

‘Let her go now, Tyler.’

I turn. I’m expecting Jesse, so for a heart-stopping moment I’m frozen with confusion. It’s Matt and he’s standing in the doorway between me and Tyler. ‘Let her
go,’ he says again.

Tyler hesitates, and then takes a step backwards, laughing, holding his hands up in a gesture of defence. ‘Dude, we were just messing around. Ren here was playing games.’

‘I was not . . .’ I splutter. ‘He just hit me.’

‘What’s going on?’ Matt asks now.

‘This!’ I say, holding up the book and moving simultaneously to hide behind Matt’s broad shoulders. ‘
This
is what’s going on! Do you have any idea what
your brother and this shithead here have been doing for laughs? This summer and last summer?’

‘What?’ Matt asks, turning to look at me over his shoulder.

‘She’s just pissed at Jeremy for breaking up with her,’ Tyler interrupts, shouting over me.

‘I am not! I couldn’t care less about Jeremy – he’s a total dickhead. What I’m pissed off about is that you’re going around sexually abusing girls.’ I
turn to Matt. ‘It was all a game – a competition between Tyler, Parker and Jeremy – to win points.’ I turn back to Tyler. ‘And for what?’ I ask, my voice
shaking. ‘You bunch of losers.’

‘What the fuck?’ Matt suddenly shouts.

‘She’s lying!’ Tyler yells.

‘I’m lying? Then what do you call this?’ I say, waving the book in his face. He lunges forward and tries to snatch it from my hand but Matt smacks his arm away.

‘What’s she talking about, Tyler?’ he asks.

Tyler eyes him carefully, his eyes darting to me then back to Matt. He laughs, trying to downplay it. ‘What’s it to you anyway, Matt? Jealous that we wouldn’t let you be part
of the game?’ His eyebrows rise mockingly. ‘Come on, dude, if you want to play you only have to ask.’

Matt is speechless for several seconds and then finally he asks, ‘Is this why Jesse Miller beat the crap out of you? Is that what that’s all about?’

Tyler doesn’t say anything.

‘Yes,’ I answer from behind Matt’s back. ‘He attacked Jesse’s sister.’

‘You son of a bitch,’ Matt spits, his shoulders tensing tight beneath his T-shirt. I wonder if he’s about to punch Tyler and am thinking,
Yes, yes, punch the
bastard!

‘And
my
sister?’ Matt asks, through gritted teeth. ‘Does Eliza know about this little game you’ve got going on?’

Tyler scoffs. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ He shrugs though, smiling slyly. ‘She got me some points, though. Jeremy didn’t think she should be fair game but I let him have
the nanny in exchange for a hook-up with your sister. For all her Ice Queen routine she’s quite the little slut when she gets going.’

Matt charges Tyler right then. He manages to land a punch to Tyler’s shoulder, but Tyler shoves him backwards and Matt stumbles into the desk.

I don’t stay to see what happens next. I turn and I run, as fast as I’ve ever run, leaping the stairs three at a time, almost twisting my ankle, holding the book against my chest. I
reach the door and fling it open. Running towards me up the drive, sprinting through the darkness, is Jesse. He’s beside me in the next second, the question falling from his lips.

‘I got it,’ I pant, just as we hear a yell behind us. We both turn. Tyler is standing by the front door, poised. He sees Jesse and starts running towards us.

Jesse grabs my hand and starts sprinting back up the drive towards the road. Our feet spit up gravel. Jesse is yanking my arm so hard I’m flying not running, and we reach his truck and
throw open the doors and I climb inside with my heart racing and my lungs starting to question their part in this whole break-in, chase, flee operation.

I bend over my knees as Jesse starts the engine and try to breathe. The book is still clutched in my hands. Jesse presses his foot to the floor and we go skidding out of the lay-by and onto the
road just as a fist thumps against my window. I look up, startled, in time to see Tyler’s face, a fright mask of hatred and rage. Jesse tears past him in a screech of tyres. My fingers fumble
for my inhaler, which is still in my back pocket. I pull it out and take a puff, then I hold up the book. ‘We got him,’ I say, still panting, and I smile across at Jesse.

He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me towards him so he can kiss the top of my head.

‘What happened to Paige?’ I ask, swivelling in my seat to look back down the road. ‘Where is she?’ Panic sends leaping signals through my body like strobe lighting.
What if she’s still back there?

‘She’s meeting us at the store,’ Jesse says, reaching across to calm me. He holds my hand and I hold on to the feeling.

We pull up outside Miller’s and when we climb out of the truck my legs are shaking with spent adrenaline. I have to hold on to the door for a few seconds to get my
balance. Paige is standing beside her car, hugging herself. When she sees me, she starts crying.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says through the tears. ‘He threw me out. And I didn’t get anything.’ She hands me my iPod. ‘I’m sorry.’

I smile at her and reach into my back pocket, pulling out Jesse’s iPod. I hold it up. ‘Backup, baby,’ I say, grinning. I hit the replay button. Tyler’s voice echoes
around us:

‘OK, she didn’t want it exactly but she didn’t put up much of a fight. The younger ones are so scared all the time.’

Paige looks at me in stunned silence. Jesse mutters something far more creative than I could come up with in Tyler’s bedroom.

‘He’s going to come looking for this,’ I say, holding up the book. ‘So let’s get inside.’ I pull Jesse towards the store. ‘Paige, you go home.
We’ve got everything we need. We’ll call you.’

‘OK,’ she says, glancing nervously over her shoulder at the empty road, as though she expects Tyler to come tearing down it any second. She darts forward and hugs me. ‘Thank
you, Ren.’

‘Bye,’ I say, squeezing her tight.

We watch her get in the car and drive off and Jesse grabs my hand and pulls me towards the door of the store. It’s covered in plywood, which has been nailed tight to the wooden frame,
replacing the smashed glass. Inside it’s like a cave. The battened-down front window allows no glimpse of the outside. We could be buried underground. Jesse hits the light switch and I gasp.
It’s still a mess inside, with shelves hanging from their hinges and display stands leaning wonkily against walls. Though the glass has been cleared up and the bikes are all standing, the
devastation is total.

Jesse doesn’t seem to notice, however. He pulls me towards the counter and reaches behind it to pull out his computer. He takes the iPod out of my hands, which I realise are still shaking,
and plugs it in.

‘Where are we going to upload it?’ he asks.

I lean over him. ‘We need it on an external hard drive somewhere Tyler can’t access it.’ I grab the laptop and log in to my blog’s server and once the file has
transferred to Jesse’s computer I quickly hit the upload button.

Just then Jesse’s fingers stroke my cheekbone. His touch is accompanied by an artillery explosion of rocket fire behind my eyeball.

‘Ow,’ I wince.

‘He did this to you?’ Jesse growls, trying to turn me to face him.

‘Yes,’ I say absently, watching the file as it slowly starts to upload.

‘I’m going to kill him,’ Jesse growls.

‘No you’re not,’ I answer. ‘You’re going to hurt him, yes, but no fists allowed.’

Jesse doesn’t answer because the sound of someone hammering against the door makes us both jerk around. Tyler’s voice accompanies the banging. ‘Give it back, Ren,’ he
yells, his voice muffled by the plywood.

I glance at Jesse and then back at the computer:
22% uploaded
. Jesse makes a sudden move for the door and I snatch his hand and pull him back. ‘Ignore him,’ I say. ‘He
can’t get in.’

The pounding keeps on. This time the wood against the window frames starts to rattle.

Jesse turns back to me, his expression unhappy. In fact his expression is walking a fine line between murderous and vengeful. I think the bruise on my face from Tyler’s fist just pushed
Jesse over the very fragile ledge I’ve managed to pull him onto and back into the land where orange overalls are his future.

‘Jesse,’ I say, holding on to him now with both hands, gripping his shirt as though he’s hanging over that ledge and it’s only my grasp that will keep him from tumbling
over. But I can’t hold him, I can feel him slipping, pulling, turning away, reaching towards the door.

So I do the only thing I can think of to distract him. I kiss him. Hard. Pressing my body against his, I tune out the banging and Tyler’s yelling, which actually isn’t all that hard
to do because Jesse’s lips are against mine and his body is just one thin layer away from my touch. And I can feel the muscles of his chest rock hard beneath my hands, his body still half
turned away, rigid and defensive and pulsing with anger, but then slowly he softens and untwists and in the next instant he’s wrapping me in his arms, pulling me close and holding me tight
and kissing me so deeply that everything is forgotten. Everything in this whole world is just Jesse Miller.

Until the tinkling sound of glass splintering breaks us apart. We stare up at the shattered window above the door – one of the only pieces of glass that had been left untouched from the
break-in and vandalism. And then suddenly the dark patch of sky we can see through the gap blazes orange.

Jesse moves instinctively, pulling me against his chest, burying my head against his shoulder as he turns his back to take the worst of the blast. My face feels the scorch of flames and we
stagger backwards, blind, towards the counter. Jesse lets me go and I turn to see that a fire is now spreading across the front of the store. The boards covering the front windows are alight and a
rack of cycling shorts and T-shirts has burst into a ball of flames. I don’t have time to figure out how the fire has started – only that Tyler must have thrown something flammable
through the window – because Jesse is pulling me towards the back of the store, yelling at me over the
whoosh
of flames to run.

We throw ourselves around the counter and I snatch for the laptop, glancing at it as we run. Miraculously, it’s still uploading. Jesse pushes me into the back room and shuts the door.