Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
ABIGAIL
Iwoke with a start, sweat pooling on the sheets beneath me as the nightmare I’d been shackled to slowly ebbed away.
I dreamt I was in a tiny cupboard, held captive.
It was dark and I could barely breathe. But it was the smell, the acrid stench of urine and other crap that made everything seem so lifelike.
Now, I lay in my bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling and trying to get my breathing under control.
I turned my head to look at the time on my clock.
Three Thirty-Two. I had a few hours before I needed to be up for work, but I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon.
Not after that nightmare. So, I rolled onto my side, slid my legs out of the bed, then stood up.
I touched my hair and grimaced at how matted it felt.
I usually woke up with bedhead, but this was another level of bird’s nest.
I went over to my dressing table, sat down on the stool and started to brush my hair, or attempt to brush it.
The knots were so tangled, I doubted anything but a deep condition in the shower would work them out.
So, I gave up, grabbed a hair tie and put my hair into the best messy bun I could manage under the circumstances, using a few hair slides to secure the random bits that kept falling out from one side.
I sat in the darkness of my room and stared at myself in the mirror. My ears strained to hear any suspect noises, but everything was quiet.
So why did I feel like I wasn’t alone?
I sat still in the silence, and memories of a time it hurt to remember came seeping into my brain...
“You can come to my house after school. My mum won’t mind. Dad will be at work. You could even sleep over, if you like?”
“You know I can’t do that, Abs,” my best friend, Stacey, said as she fiddled with the frayed edges on the strap of her school bag. “I have to be back at the home right after school, otherwise I’ll get into trouble. It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
It was the same every afternoon. The closer it got to home time, the more nervous she became.
I knew Stacey hated being at the children’s home.
I hated her being there, too, but life hadn’t given her a choice.
I wished it could’ve been different. But her mum was a heroin addict.
She was in prison. And her dad left when she was a baby.
She’d told me all about it in confidence, sharing that part of her horrible life, but I knew she kept other things from me.
I wished she wouldn’t. I just wanted to help.
“Maybe this time they’ll be okay with it? I could get my mum to ring them. My dad’s a policeman. They should be okay with you being in our house. You’ll be safe.”
“Safer than I would be there,” she muttered, and when I went to speak, she added, “I don’t want to rock the boat. Not at the moment. There’s a lot of stuff going on right now. Stuff I can’t really talk about.”
I hated that her nails were bitten so far down that they often bled.
That she looked so tired every day, and her eyes had dark circles like she might not have slept through the night.
That she ate her lunch like she hadn’t eaten in days, devouring every morsel, then watching the rest of us as if she needed more.
I often shared my lunch with her. Mum had started giving me extra after I told her about it.
But most of all, I hated that she wouldn’t talk to me.
I knew they weren’t looking after her at the home.
I knew she hated it and wanted to get away.
I wanted that too, and I’d have done anything to help her.
I’d asked my mum and dad if we could arrange for her to live with us.
I’d questioned what we could do to help.
But Mum told me you could only help people if they wanted it, and Dad said he’d check the home out and make sure she was safe.
Adults couldn’t always fix things. Not the way you wanted them to.
Every day, Stacey came to school with the same sallow skin and haunting eyes. Every day, she sat with me, smiling in a way that felt forced. I wanted to help my best friend. But I didn’t know how.
“Maybe I can come home with you? Would they let us do that? I have a lipstick and some mascara I sneaked from home in my bag. We could do our make-up. Watch some YouTube videos on how to do it properly.”
“I’d love that,” Stacey said with a hint of a smile, and her cheeks flushed. I think she meant it. “But we can’t do it today. Pauline, the house manager, said we have a guest coming tonight. I need to be home for that. It’s best you go home and then tomorrow we can arrange something.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, knowing full well she wouldn’t keep her word. She’d said the same thing to me before to put me off.
“Positive,” she replied. “I know a few of the girls in the home have some make-up we can share. We can do our hair too. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do a French braid.”
I knew how to French braid hair, and I told Stacey I’d do it for her tomorrow, in our lunch break.
That day never came.
I never saw Stacey again, and neither did anyone else. It was as if she just vanished off the face of the earth.