Six Steps to a Girl (13 page)

“Call an ambulance.” Chloe’s voice was panicky, urgent. “He’s cold as ice. Hurry.”

I leaned deep against her. She wrapped both arms around me and rocked me gently. “It’s going to be all right, it is, Luke – oh please let it be all right.”

I could hear her sobbing as Ryan spoke on the phone.

“Eve?” I whispered.

Chloe leaned forwards. “What is it, Luke?”

“Eve?” I was trying to ask if she was OK. But all I could manage was her name.

“Yeah, she called me. I called Ryan. Don’t think about it now, Luke. Everything’s going to be OK.”

I couldn’t work out what any of it meant. I was so cold. The shaking was getting worse.

Ryan flicked his phone shut. “They’ll be here in a minute.” He squatted back down in front of me. “It was Ben, wasn’t it? Was he on his own?”

“No way,” I tried to smile at him, to indicate there had been an army attacking me, but I felt sick again. I looked down. Why couldn’t I make my body stop trembling?

Chloe was stroking my hair. Like Mum used to when I was little. Ben’s last words suddenly flashed back into my head. I looked up at Ryan.

“Ry,” I whispered hoarsely.

“What, mate?”

I made a superhuman effort to speak through my chattering teeth. “Don’t tell. ’Bout Eve. ’Bout Ben.”

Ryan frowned. I could see him look up above my head to Chloe.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t say . . . Ben.”

“OK, man, whatever. We won’t say anything. Don’t talk anymore.”

Satisfied, I lay back against Chloe and let the darkness take me.

When I woke up, the pain and the shaking were gone. I was warm, lying under crisp, smooth sheets. I could tell it was light in the room through the glare against my eyelids. People were murmuring in low voices in the distance.

I opened my eyes. The left one was just a narrow slit, but through the other I could see Mum, in a chair next to me. Her face was stained with tear tracks. She squeezed my hand. “Oh my God, my baby, my baby.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Mu-um.” It came out in this hoarse whisper. I swallowed. There was no pain anymore, but my whole body ached.

“Where am I?” I said.

“Hospital. Chloe and your friend Ryan brought you here in an ambulance. They’re still here, down in the cafeteria.” She smiled at me. “I was just talking to the doctor. She says you’re very lucky. There’s nothing broken and no internal injuries. Just lots of cuts and bruises.”

I frowned at her. “What time is it?”

“About one or so. Lunchtime. You’ve been asleep for hours. Oh, Luke, when you didn’t come home . . .” Mum paused, gulping back her tears. I tried to squeeze her hand, but the effort made me feel sick.

“Did you see who did this?” Mum said. “Did you know them?”

I shook my head, then closed my eyes and sank back against the pillows.

The next time I woke up, the pain was worse in my face, but I felt less exhausted. And I was starving. I could see I was in a long ward, with beds in two rows opposite each other. Mum was talking to one of the nurses by the door.

“Hey. Babe-magnet.”

I focused on the figure at the end of the bed. It was Chloe. She was munching on a sandwich, grinning at me.

“How you feeling?” she said.

“Can I have some of your sandwich?” I said.

Chloe walked over and handed me the remainder of her sandwich. I bit into it hungrily. “Ow.” My jaw hurt to move. I chewed more slowly.

“Tell me what happened,” Chloe said, sitting down beside me.

I explained briefly as much as I could remember. “You haven’t said anything have you?” I asked anxiously, glancing over at Mum. “Ben said if I told anyone he’d . . . he’d hurt Eve.”

Chloe shook her head. “Me and Ryan talked to the police last night. We just said we got worried when you didn’t get home, so we went to look for you.”

Chloe explained how she’d been out at some party when she’d got a call from Eve. “It wasn’t that late. Before eleven. She was hysterical – said that Ben was coming after you. Apparently he’d taken her phone and sent you some text on it, pretending to be from her?”

I nodded.

“She said something about her birthday. How she and Ben were going out, how she couldn’t call earlier. Frankly it didn’t make sense. Anyway, I knew you were out with Ryan so I got hold of him and he said we should go round the places you and Eve met. So we did.”

I put down my sandwich. “Did you know before?” I said. “About Eve?”

“Yeah, I kind of worked it out a while back,” Chloe smiled. “But I thought I’d be cool and keep my nose out.”

I smiled back, then sat up, determined to get out of bed.

“Hey. Slow down. D’you want me to call her? Eve?” Chloe said. “Make sure she’s OK?”

“I gotta see her,” I said, swinging my legs off the bed.

I looked down. I was wearing one of those hospital gowns that do up round the back. Below my knees my shins were a mass of bruises.

“Man,” I said.

“Wait till you see your face,” Chloe grinned. She fished in her handbag and pulled out a little mirror.

I looked into it.
Jesus.
The whole left side of my face was red and swollen. You could hardly see the eye. The skin was broken in several places and held together with little white strips. My lip was swollen and cut too. Altogether I looked a mess.

Mum came bustling over. “Lie back down, Luke. You’re not going anywhere.”

“But . . .?”

“No buts. That’s final.”

In the end they let me out that evening.

I tried to call Eve on her mobile a couple of times, but it was always switched off. Chloe rang Eve’s house for me, but her mum said she was out.

I guessed that must at least mean she was OK.

For the first time since he died I found myself really wishing Dad was here. I could have told him everything, I reckoned. He would have known what to do. I mean, Mum was just too much of . . . of a mum. If I explained to her what had really happened, she’d only worry and fuss over me even more. And she would never understand how much I hated Ben. How much I longed to get him back for what he’d done.

In the end, I told the police I’d been jumped by three strangers. No idea what they looked like.

What else could I do? Ben’s final words rang in my head. I’d seen his face. I knew what he was capable of.

I was afraid for Eve.

Mum wanted me to stay off school on Monday, but there was no way I wasn’t going in. I had to see her. Make sure she was OK.

I took some painkillers to ease the aching in my jaw, and set off. I knew I looked like my face had been turned inside out. I was braced for people to stare at me.

But I was not expecting what happened next.

As I entered the classroom, the talking stopped. Everyone turned round and stared at me.

Embarrassed, I scurried to my desk.

I buried my face in my bag and made a big show of digging out last week’s homework. I knew when I looked up people would be crowding round, eager to find out all the gory details of what had happened to me. I’d decided to repeat the story I’d given Mum and the police. Hopefully after a couple of hours everyone would forget about it – and maybe at break I could go and find Eve.

I looked up. No one was there. In fact, it was as if people had deliberately moved away from me – they all had their backs turned, concentrating on other things. There was this low-level tension in the air.

I stared round. To be honest I was a bit hurt. I mean, I hadn’t wanted to be the centre of attention, everyone staring at my messed-up face. But I had at least expected my mates to show a bit of concern.

I wandered over to the guys I sometimes played football with.

One of them – a tall, skinny guy called Jamie – caught my eye. He folded his arms. “So did you really do it?”

“Do what?” I could feel everyone was now watching me.

Jamie looked uncomfortable. “What Ben says you did.”

I stood there, my face flushing. What the hell was going on? Ben had demanded I say nothing. That he would kill Eve if I did.

“What did Ben say?” I said, cautiously.

Some of the girls were crowding round now. One of them sniggered.

“You know.” Jamie’s cheeks were scarlet. “About with Eve?”

Oh, God.
I knew it didn’t matter what I said, my face was giving me away. I lowered my eyes.

“Shit.” Jamie sounded disgusted. “If it was my girlfriend, you’d have had worse.”

I stared at him. Was he really saying that my having seen Eve behind Ben’s back a few times justified what Ben had done to me?

Jamie turned his back on me.

I wandered across the room to my desk again. The atmosphere was stretched taut. I could practically feel people hating me.

Leaving my bag behind, I left the room. I couldn’t wait until break. I had to see Eve, find out what was going on. As I walked along the corridor towards her classroom my heart pounded. I still needed to be careful when I saw her – not make anything too obvious until I knew exactly what was happening. I thought it through. Best thing was to go in, go up to Chloe. Try and speak to her privately.

I opened the door to Eve and Chloe’s classroom and peered inside. At first nobody noticed me – they were all talking too loudly. Lots of people were crowded round Eve’s desk. I couldn’t even see if she was there. I glanced across the room at Chloe. She was waving her arms, clearly telling me to go away. I pointed to where Eve sat, holding my hands up questioningly.
What’s going on?

“I don’t believe it,” said a deep voice beside me. I spun round, and came face to face with a thickset boy I didn’t know. He was sneering at me, his beefy hands rounded into fists.

My heart started pounding.

“Show your face anywhere near here again and I’ll make it look even worse than it does now,” he growled.

I backed out of the door and leaned against the wall in the corridor. Tears pricked at my eyes. My hands were shaking. That deep, menacing voice had taken me straight back to Friday night.

And yet this was almost worse.

I understood why Ben was mad with me. I’d gone after his girlfriend. But why was the entire school angry? My fear mutated to rage. It wasn’t fair. I was the one who’d been left in a bleeding pulp.

Chloe appeared at my shoulder, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “Get out of here,” she hissed.

“What the hell is happening?” I said, clenching my fists.

“It’s Eve. They all think you attacked her.”

“What?”

Chloe pushed me away from the wall, prodding me along the corridor, back in the direction of my own classroom. “Ben is saying that he only beat you up because you tried to force Eve to . . . you know . . . He says he caught you attacking her.”

“But that’s rubbish. Why doesn’t everyone just ask Eve?”

Chloe lowered her eyes. “Eve says it’s true.”

I stared at her. The corridor seemed to spin round my head. For a second I thought I was going to pass out again. I leaned against the wall.

Eve was telling lies about me?

Chloe prodded me forwards. “Go away.”

I stood my ground. There had to be some reason Eve would make up a story like that. It didn’t make sense. The bell rang.

“Can’t you tell them it’s not true?”

“I have,” Chloe sighed. “But they don’t believe me. They think I’m just sticking up for you because you’re my brother.”

“I’m going to talk to Eve,” I said, heading back towards her classroom door. “There’s got to be some mistake. She can’t do this.”

Chloe clutched at my arm. “Don’t be ridiculous. Eve’s really popular, especially with all the guys in our class. There are several of them in there right now who would happily break both your legs if you go anywhere near her. Leave it. At least for now.”

I hesitated, knowing that Chloe was right. There was no point me trying to talk to Eve at the moment. The bell had gone and there were too many people around.

I turned round, a huge lump in my throat. Chloe patted me on the back. “Forget her,” she said. “She’s not worth it.”

When I got back to my classroom I found someone had emptied the contents of my bag into the rubbish bin.

I picked everything out and trudged back to my desk.

I sent another text and left my phone switched on all day, but Eve didn’t ring.

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure there could only be one reason for the lies she was telling about me.

Ben had forced her to choose between me and him. And she had chosen him.

When I got home that day I told Mum that my face hurt and that maybe I’d gone back to school a bit early.

She agreed I could stay off the rest of the week.

By Wednesday evening my eye had gone back to its original size and the bruising on my face had turned from dark red to a purply shade of yellow.

My heart, on the other hand, was still ripped to pieces.

Ryan came round after school. He told me he’d spent the whole day telling people Ben and Eve were making their story up.

“Everyone who knows you believes me now, which takes care of most of our year.” He shook his head. “Be easier if Eve wasn’t going round school crying, though.”

I gritted my teeth, tasting the bitterness in my mouth. I was glad she was upset. She deserved to be.

Later that evening Uncle Matt turned up for a meal. Chloe ate with us for once – I think Mum had asked her to for my sake. She and Mum had been getting on a bit better since I’d been beaten up and it was obvious they were both making an effort to avoid another row.

It was nice of them – but I didn’t care what they did.