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Authors: Suki Fleet

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BOOK: Falling
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“Someone’s in a good mood this morning,” he says.

“You look ridiculous,” I say in response.

“Your face is ridiculous.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’ll go far in the world of customer service.”

“You’re not a customer.”

“No, but I get to fire you if you piss me off too much.” He smiles like the Cheshire cat, and I narrow my eyes and glare.

I spend the morning cleaning things. Anything. I take all the shoes off the shelves one by one to clean away nonexistent specks of dust as though my life depends on doing such pointless tasks. I vacuum the stockroom until I manage to vacuum something I shouldn’t, and the stupid thing makes a weird noise and stops vacuuming altogether.

Soren keeps out of my way, thank God.

I’m taking my brief lunch break, sitting on the stockroom floor, staring at my uneaten sandwich, when Soren pokes his head round the door.

“There’s some boy on the phone for you.”

I feel like throwing up.

“Tell him I’m not here.”

“No fucking way,” Soren says, raising his eyebrows as if I’ve asked him to go kick a kid in the stomach. Funnily enough
kicked
is exactly how my stomach feels right now. “I’m not doing your dirty work. Go talk to him yourself, and make it quick.” Soren disappears back onto the shop floor.

Reluctantly I drag myself up.

Soren is with a customer but he watches me as I walk over to the counter and pick up the handset. The plastic is cold in my hand.

“Hello?” My voice is flat.

Silence.

I sigh. I should just put the phone down. But I don’t.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Angus says eventually in a voice so small and quiet I can barely hear him above the general rumble of shopping center noise going on around me. “Mum missed you this morning.”

“Tell her I’ll call in later.”

“Okay,” he says still in that small voice.

There is a pause, and then he hangs up.

I lean against the counter. The sharp corner digs into my stomach, but I don’t move. I suddenly feel so ill, I think I need to lie down.

 

 

A
LL
AFTERNOON
,
the rain outside is torrential. Not that we’d know it in our cave of a shop if it weren’t for all the drenched, complaining customers.

“Think you might be able to give me a lift to Bridge Street?” Soren asks, a mock-hopeful look on his face, as we close up.

“Yeah, okay.” I give him my best put-upon face and sigh. Of course I don’t really mind.

Bridge Street is where Soren’s dealer lives. I’ve been there before, which is why I’ve got so much shit on him and his drug habit. It really must cost him a fortune. I secretly hope he wants me to wait around while he scores as that will take even longer…. Except then I would have a car full of drugs. Even so, I think I’d rather wait. Right now I would probably be willing to drive him the one and a half hours to Brighton to pick up a stick of rock if he asked me. Anywhere that isn’t home.

The rain is still absolutely pouring down as we walk out of the shopping center. Rivers of glistening water run down the sides of the streets. We leap over them and then run, exhilarated and freezing, toward the car park.

It amuses me to watch Soren fold his long skinny limbs into my tiny car. I’m not short, but Soren looks like a spider shoved in a shot glass.

“Comfortable?” I ask.

“It’s not exactly a limo, is it?” Soren says, knocking the gear stick as he shifts around and looks suitably apologetic as I scowl at him. “So, this is probably a bad idea considering the small space we’re in, but how’s your problem working out?”

“You’ll be pleased to hear I’m fucking things up even more,” I say heavily as I pull out onto the main street.

Soren looks horrified. “Why would you think I’d be pleased?”

Distracted, I have to swerve sharply away from the pavement. “I don’t know,” I mutter.

“I mean it, Josh. I know we, well, we don’t know each other that well.” Not for Soren’s want of trying, I admit as I think back to all the times he’s invited me out with his friends, or to his house, or to meet his girlfriend. “But I can see this stuff is really getting to you. I can see you’re stressed out, and what I’m trying to say is, I know I can be a dick to you, but sometimes I’m just trying to cheer you up, and if you ever want to talk… I’m here.”

I stare fixedly ahead as though I haven’t heard him.

Why would I want to talk about it? Why on earth would I want an audience as I fuck up everything I do and land on my face?

“Um, Josh?” He touches my arm. “You know that turning you take for Bridge Street?” I grip the steering wheel. “Well, it was back there.”

The wheels spin a little on the slick road surface as I swing the car round in the middle of the traffic and cause a chorus of angry beeps. Soren actually grips the handrail above his head.

As we turn into the street of Victorian two-up, terraced houses, I find it faintly amusing, in a painful sort of way, that Soren doesn’t know what else to say to me. I’ve got my “fuck off and leave me alone” attitude down perfectly.

“Thanks for the ride. You can just drop me here if you like.”

I think he just wants to get out of the car as quickly as he can. And as soon as I stop, he hops out, slams the car door, and sprints through the rain down the street to number twenty-eight.

He knocks, the door opens, and he vanishes inside.

Miserable little house after miserable little house, rubbish piling up in front of them, windows broken or boarded up. It’s not my concern, but I hope Soren isn’t getting in too deep. Do these people ever let you just walk away?

I keep the engine running and stare into the darkness.

Some kid is banging on the door of the house right next to the dealer’s house now. Both hands, over and over, like he doesn’t care how much it hurts his fists—like he’s desperate. I don’t think he gets that whoever lives there either isn’t in or they don’t want to answer the door. I don’t think he gets that someone is going to come out of one of those other houses—out of the dealer’s house maybe—and shut him up if he doesn’t do it himself soon.

The narrow little street is wide enough for two cars at a push, but only if you don’t mind clipping wing mirrors as you go, and I know I can’t sit here in the middle of the road forever. It’s just that the steady noise of the windscreen wipers as they drift back and forth and the low growl of the idling engine lull me and make me believe I can ignore that little worm of guilt that whispers I should get back and see how Eleanor is. Anything could have happened. None of this is her fault either.

I wish I could sit here forever.

Urgent tapping against my window snaps me out of my reverie, and I jump back in shock. A sharp face appears in the rain-streaked glass.

The kid who was banging on the door of the house is now knocking on my window. His hair is plastered to his head, and his soaking clothes stick to his skin. Up close he looks a little older than I thought—definitely not a kid.

“Open your window a sec!” he says, placing his palm against the glass. His expression is a little too desperate.

The black eye and the deep cut above his lip look fresh. This whole area is dodgy. Maybe he was looking for the dealers and got the wrong house. I don’t want any trouble.

I glance round the car and realize I’ve not locked the doors.

So I do what seems like the most sensible option—put the car in gear and start to drive off.

I’ve gone barely a meter when an almighty yell stops me dead.

What the hell?

I glance in the wing mirror and see the boy doubled over, his face twisted up in agony.

It occurs to me that this could be a trick to get me out of the car, but my annoying conscience won’t let me drive off, so I reverse back up and wind the window down.

“What the fuck were you doing? You just drove over my foot!” the boy spits, breathing heavily. He’s bent over clutching his foot, obviously in pain.

“I didn’t know you were stood so close to my car…. Can you walk on it?”

He yelps as he tries to put his foot on the ground, and something twists sickly inside me—I don’t think he’s putting it on. I get out and reluctantly help him round to the passenger side of the car. The horrible freezing rain soaks through my jacket in seconds. The least I can do is take him to the hospital, and if I’ve broken his foot, I doubt he’s going to be much trouble.

Sitting in the passenger seat, he’s shivering as though he’s been out in this rainstorm for hours. I suspect his lips are blue, but in the dim car light, he just looks unearthly pale. I turn up the car heater to full blast, but it doesn’t get much warmer.

“Do you normally go to such extreme lengths to get a lift?” I ask wryly, but he just wraps his arms around his body and folds forward, breathing as though he’s run a great distance.

We drive to the hospital in deep silence.

“What are you doing?” he asks in a shocked voice as he looks up and sees I’ve stopped in an ambulance bay outside A & E.

“Taking you to hospital, where did you think we were going? Your foot might be broken.”

“It’s fine. My foot will be fine. Please just… take me somewhere else.”

Now he doesn’t look so old anymore. I’m guessing he’s barely twenty, maybe younger, and I hate that I recognize that fear in his eyes, but I do. He looks haunted. I hate that it brings back old buried feelings of being so young and unable to see a way out.

“Okay… where do you live?” I ask, trying to remain detached.

“What?”

“Tell me where you live, and I’ll take you home.”

“Could you just drop me in town somewhere? I’ll get home from there.”

“You’re freezing and soaked through and it’s pissing it down out there. I ran you over, and I’m not just leaving you somewhere in the rain.”

My guilt about running him over won’t let me get away with dumping him somewhere and trying to forget about him.

For a few moments, he studies me, trying to work out if I mean what I say.

“Can we start over?” he asks softly, and despite the bruises and my better judgment, I nod.

“I’m Oskar,” he says, holding out his hand and all at once coming to life.

“Josh.”

His fingers are freezing.

“Hey,” he says, sitting straighter. A pained expression flickers across his face, but his eyes are suddenly bright with a curious fire. “Did you think I was going to mug you or something? Is that why you drove off?”

“Do you trust everyone you meet?”

He looks at me quizzically. “Only fools trust
anyone
.”

“You look too young to be so cynical. So if you weren’t going to mug me, what did you want?”

“The time… and maybe a ride….” He squeezes his eyes shut.

However much I don’t want to admit it, I can’t stand to see anyone in pain, or hurting.

An image from last night fills my mind—of Angus’s hurt expression as he wondered what the hell he’d done wrong. I try to shut it out. I wish I knew when I’d started to care so much about him, but it’s something that has crept up on me, like a thief in the night.

“It’s six fifteen and you’ve got a ride. So where do you want to go?” I say, trying to distract Oskar (and me) by continuing to talk.

He slips down in his seat and throws his head back. “Honestly… I don’t know.”

The lost way he says this makes me suspect he has
nowhere
to go, no home to return to, and it pushes me into offering something I wouldn’t normally offer. And despite saying only fools trust anyone, right now he is in pain and vulnerable.

“Come back with me and let me give you a change of clothes, at least.”

He considers this and then says quietly, “Okay.”

Hugging his foot, he closes his eyes and curls up in the seat like a cat.

 

 

I
PARK
as close to the house as I can get. Oskar still can’t put any weight on his foot, so I awkwardly slip my arm under his shoulders and half carry him inside. He barely weighs anything, although he is of a similar height to me, and I feel afraid to hold him too tightly lest I break him.

We pass Eleanor’s front door and, gathering myself together, I stop. I can’t avoid this moment forever.

“Wait here. I won’t be long,” I tell Oskar as I lean him against the wall and get Eleanor’s keys out of my bag to unlock the door.

Oskar hops, wincing, to the stairs, where he slumps down, shivering again. He seems to alternately fire and fade. Any burst of energy leaves him exhausted. I find myself wondering when he last ate anything, and I mentally go through the contents of my fridge.

I slide the key into the lock—the familiarity of this task makes my heart ache—and I push the door open.

Inside, the flat is too quiet, and deep, awful dread seeps inside me, my rational thoughts replaced with formless anxiety. What if something terrible has happened because I wasn’t here to stop it?

I flick the light on in the hall and hurry into the living room, every sense on high alert. A little lamp glows in the corner, illuminating the sofa and Angus’s sleeping form curled beneath a blanket. Relief washes over me. As silently as I can, I make my way across the room. I’ve got to check on Eleanor. She’s the one I
should
be most worried about.

“I gave Mum her tablets early and helped her to bed. She was so anxious, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

I spin round. Angus is sitting up, hugging the blanket tightly. His hair falls messily in front of his gray eyes. He looks exhausted.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s not like you’re
related
to us or anything. You don’t owe us anything,” he carries on tiredly, and for the first time, I detect a little bit of bitterness in his tone—the way he says
related
as if it’s a curse. “When you didn’t come, I told her you had some emergency at work or something. I said I wasn’t completely sure. I didn’t want to lie.”

I know I should probably say something. Like apologize or say it’s not true, I do owe her, and Eleanor has been my only family for so long. But the right words aren’t coming, and “You didn’t do anything wrong last night” comes out instead.

BOOK: Falling
7.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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