Chapter 13
ELLIOT
“I’m fucking sick of this!” I screamed, throwing my journals across my room until they hit the wall with a resounding thunk. “Who does he think he is?”
Blood dripped down my wrist from the fresh cuts scored into my skin. I watched it bead and fall, detached. Like it belonged to someone else. Pain was easier than the empty stretch inside my chest where Mum’s voice used to live.
How dare he make me feel like he cared for me. Cleaning my wounds. Holding me until I fell asleep. Then disappearing for a whole day after the most awkward conversation known to man.
Every time I thought things had changed between us. Every time I thought he saw me. Really saw me. The next second he abandoned me. I was sick of him building me up only to tear me down again. I was sick of not being enough for anyone to stay.
The sun had turned the sky a shade of orange that seemed like the whole world was burning. Maybe a fiery death wouldn't be such a bad thing. It was better than trying to convince myself the slow ache in my chest was just hunger or boredom or something ordinary.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand and for a split second my heart skipped when I thought it would be Anthony but I was wrong.
Unknown Number
You alive, beach boy?
I frowned at the screen. My thumbs hovered over the keys as I tried to work out how to respond.
Who is this?
Three dots appeared. Then disappeared.
Unknown Number
Wow. Rude. It’s Mia. From the beach. The bonfire night?
My stomach dropped. I never gave her my number. How the hell did she have mine? I stared at the message too long.
How did you get this number?
Mia
Relax Drax had it. You were in his phone from the night at the beach, you were playing some retro game called snake? IDK.
Right. That felt wrong. Everything felt wrong lately. But flickers of that night had come back to me. That was just a part of it that hadn’t…yet.
Mia
A few of us are hanging out tonight. You should come. There’s an old fairground out past Miller Road. You’ll like it. It’s weird and dead and kind of perfect.
Weird and dead and perfect. Something in that slid under my ribs. I didn’t respond right away. I stared at the wall. At the place Anthony had leaned against the other day. At the faint crease in my blanket where he’d been last night.
I told myself I didn’t want to sit in this room alone tonight. That was the truth. The lie was that I told myself I wanted to go. I didn’t. I just wanted to disappear.
Maybe.
Her reply came instantly.
Mia
Come ooooonnnnn!!! You need to get out of your head. We’ll be there in like an hour.
Out of my head. I pressed my phone to my chest. That was exactly what I wanted.
The fairground was on the other side of town, past where the houses thinned and the streetlights disappeared. I walked most of it. Liked the freedom of it. Gave me time to think, not trapped within the same four walls.
The sky was purple and heavy. The air smelled like dust and cold metal.
When I got there, the place looked like a memory someone had dropped.
Rusting rides frozen mid-spin. A carousel with no horses.
A ticket booth with the glass punched out.
The place made my chest loosen and tighten at the same time.
Like it was already ruined enough that nothing I did here could make it worse.
Fires burned in metal barrels dotted around making the rides look haunted. Music thumped from a car with its trunk open. Under car LED’s pulsed in time with the bass.
People were already dancing there—silhouettes leaning against bumpers, sitting on the ground, laughing too loud.
Mia spotted me first. She grinned and jogged over. “You came!”
Her happiness was too big. It hit me like a wave.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
She handed me a beer. I took it without thinking. That wasn’t true. I thought about it very clearly. I just didn’t care what happened after. The first sip barely touched me. The second one slid warm into my veins. The third made my shoulders loosen. The fourth made the hollow in my chest blur.
My inhibitions and insecurities seemed to melt away as I let Mia supply me drink after drink.
She dragged me from group to group introducing me to everyone she knew.
Faces blurred, names blended into each other.
That wasn’t true. I thought about it very clearly. I just didn’t care what happened after.
By the time the moon was high in the sky, a single point of light in the mellow darkness we were lost to, we joined the rest of the guys I’d met at the beach. Drax was leaning against a car, smoking a joint. The sweet, sharp scent reached me, making me sigh.
Dix was sitting on the hood, legs swinging, laughing too loud at something Jet said. Mia bounced up to the guys, hugged them in turn and stole Drax’s joint whilst he was distracted.
“You little shit,” he grumbled, shaking his head.
“You did promise me one,” Mia whined, taking a drag.
“Yeah,” Drax huffed. “Your own one. Not mine!”
“Well,” Mia took a long inhale before passing the joint off to me. “Looks like I’ve lost mine.” She shrugged and sidled up to Drax. “Could you make me it now?” She fluttered her lashes and kissed his cheek.
Drax rolled his eyes. “Anything for you, poppet.”
“You owe me twenty,” Jet crowed, slapping Dix on the back “Knew he’d cave if she went all cute as fuck on him.”
Dix snorted. “Like we all would dick! But—” She handed over a twenty. “—It did take him less than 30 seconds to fold.”
“Thank you,” Mia curtsied dramatically. “So, beach boy how’s things with the hot daddy?”
I choked on the smoke in my lungs. “Uh…what?”
“You know. Hot, older daddy who came storming down the beach the night of the bonfire.”
My body flushed with heat as the memory hit. Anthony had looked a bit like an avenging god that night until… I shook my head. “Not much better than they were.”
“Huh,” Jet mumbled. “I thought something would have happened by now.”
A deep sigh slipped past my lips as the edges of the world softened and I planted myself on the hood next to Dix.
“You can talk to us, Elliot,” Mia said and leaned down to ruffle my hair. “We know what it's like to feel invisible.”
“Yeah,” the guys agreed.
“What’s your story? You guys wanna know mine but I know nothing about you.”
“Fair,” Drax agreed. “Well Dix and I were neighbors in high school. We’d sit in the woods out the back of our houses as our parents beat the shit out of each other.”
“Yeah,” Dix huffed, running a hand through her hair. “We made a deal by the time we graduated that we’d run away. It sounded good when we were thirteen but we did it. Kinda.”
“Yup,” Drax smirked. “We run Outta Banks surf shop at the far end of the cove. We made a life for ourselves. And then these two turned up one by one. And now this is our family.”
“That’s…thats kinda nice, you know? That you were able to make something good come from such a shitty situation.” I looked at the guys and they were a unit. A family. You could see it in the way they all looked at each other. That connection. The same one I craved.
“It is,” Mia sighed, draped across Jet's lap where he sat on the car roof. “Come on up, newbie. It's time to get lit!”
Hours passed in a haze of beer and weed. I felt lighter. Freer than I had since I’d lost mum. Numb but not in a way that hurt. I laughed too easily. Answered questions I didn’t remember being asked.
Mia sat too close on one side, her hand stroked up and down my thigh. Jet sat on the other side, hand resting on my knee. I felt like too much. I didn’t lean into it. Didn’t push them away either.
Just let things happen to me.
It felt easier that way. I stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like an object. Like something things happened to. It was quieter that way.
“Open up,” Mia looked at me, pupils blown.
“What—”
“Trust me,” she said. “Its gentle.
I stared at the tiny white pill with a picture of blood red lips on it stuck on the end of her finger.
“I don’t—” Words died on my tongue as she stuck the pill on it and pushed my mouth shut. Something in me screamed to pull back. To say no. The sound drowned under the weight of wanting to feel different more than I wanted to feel safe.
“It’ll make you feel lighter,” she whispered, then kissed my cheek.
Reeling from the brush of her lips I watched through hazy eyes as she put another on her tongue and pulled Jet to her.
The moment their lips met I swallowed what was left of the pill that had dissolved on my tongue. As I watched her feed him another.
I was already floating by the time it hit my blood stream. That was the moment things stopped being mine. The world tilted. Sounds got too loud.
My skin felt too close to my body. My heart started beating like it was trying to escape my ribs. Every breath scraped. My pulse thudded in my ears so loud it drowned out the music. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the night began.
Someone laughed behind me and it felt like a shout. Someone brushed my arm and it felt like a handprint burned into my skin
I was on the ground with no recollection of how I got there. I stood up too fast. Everything was spinning. “I need air,” I gasped, clutching my chest.
Nobody listened. Or maybe they did, and I didn’t wait. I walked. Away from the noise. The fire. My new friends. Down the road that curved past the fair ground. The darkness of night had never seemed so vibrant and alive.
My phone buzzed in my hand as it turned on.
I didn't remember picking it up. I didn’t remember unlocking it.
I just knew the only name in my head was his.
I hit call without thinking. My fingers knew his number better than my mind did.
Even through the fog, even with my thoughts sliding sideways, my body remembered who felt like solid ground.
“Eli—”
The sound of his voice cracked something open in me. Relief hit so hard my knees almost buckled.
“Can you come get me?”
“Where are you? Are you okay?” Concern laced Anthony’s voice.