Chapter 59
It’s fair to say that my life hasn’t been short of horrors, but there is one particular moment that stands out in my mind.
It was the end of the school day, and I was getting my bike out of the shed. I’d hung back to allow the majority of kids to get their bikes, to avoid running into people. Usually, Christos would have waited for me, but he had left earlier because he had a shift at the fish-and-chips shop.
The problem with this was that, when Billy showed up, no one was around.
“Mad Mabel.”
I was bent over, unchaining my bike. An image of him forcing me into the toilet cubicle crossed my mind.
“Want to go to the sports shed?” he said. “Isn’t that where you and Loukas used to do your thing? Or will any shed do? The bike shed works for me.”
I stood and attempted to wheel my bike around him toward the shed door.
“Hey!” he said. “I was talking to you. Don’t walk away from me.”
He grabbed the wheel of my bike, stopping me. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He stood between me and the door. Billy was taller than me, and stronger. He pulled my bike toward him, pulling me with it. I let go of the bike and turned toward the back of the shed, but he grabbed my shoulder. I heard my bike clatter to the ground.
It didn’t make sense to fight him, I knew this much.
Instead, I let him spin me by my shoulder, and using this momentum, I surged toward him, propelled by my full body weight.
His face morphed from mild amusement to surprise, then finally fear, as he fell backward.
Unfortunately, that was the moment that Christos appeared behind him.
Billy’s head connected with Christos’s on the way down …
then Christos’s head connected with the asphalt.