CRAIG
CRAIG
“Dare give me that look again, and I’ll deck you.” Those were the first words my brother ever said to me.
It was my first day of year seven, my first Geography lesson at Yoverton Community School, and just two weeks previous to that meeting, I hadn’t even known the boy existed. Honestly, if not for YCS being the only secondary school in our small town, I’m almost certain I would’ve remained in the dark. Eleven years of thinking myself an only child made it a staggering blow to learn.
Alex, however, had not been fresh to the discovery of me.
My eyes had barely caught on him. His glower, fierce and intimidating, pulled me up short just inside of the classroom door. He said: “I’m not playing, Golden boy,” and he looked so sincere. “Trust me.”
We’ve come a mighty far way over the six years since then. Reaching the point now that, without any hesitation, I can say he’s the one and only person in my life I do trust. Fully and entirely.
Time and time again, he’s come through for me. Today, no exception.
Yet…
Yet.
“Thank fuck for you, Al,” I say as I climb into the passenger seat of his mum’s old Honda, turning away from the solitary house and the unfriendly figure seeing us off at its door. “I owe you big time for this.”
The arctic look my brother levels me with has no less of an impact on me.
He starts up the car without a word, his face more than threat enough. His blond fauxhawk has the ravaged look of frustrated raking.
I make the mistake of catching a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, seeing what Alex sees — it’s grim — and then I’m slouching down in the seat and folding my arms across my chest. Only the steady purr of the engine relieves the stony silence of the car as we leave the farm behind. Yoverton North Farm, I read off the sign by the gate as we pass out through it.
I’m wearing another man’s ill-fitting sweats — commando. My own clothes, blood-soaked and mud-caked and altogether ruined, stripped from my body by a stranger. And no matter how hard I’m wracking my brain, I cannot get anywhere close to fathoming how the hell I managed to land myself in this predicament.
My favourite jacket will be missed.
A shower and change will be gratefully appreciated.
I should count my small blessings, really, that Alex isn’t pushing for an explanation I don’t have. But as the view of nothing but trees and fields to both sides of the car — and a long, empty road stretching ahead — makes the quiet too intense for me, I crack. “Maybe I was lured all the way out here by some will o’ the wisps or something, huh?”
My effort doesn’t even score me a glance this time. My reach for the stereo is pulled short at the warning tick of his jaw.
It’s not yet nine in the morning; a peek at the clock horrifies me.
I awoke to discover myself in the woods, a voice thundering through my head, and a dog probing my nethers. I next opened my eyes to that same ominous voice and Ashleigh Shay unfastening my pants...
Truly a nightmare that just keeps right on giving.
Ashleigh. Freaking . Shay!
And for all I don’t understand about this, she’s perhaps the part I’m most unsettled by.
“What did she say when she called you?” I make another attempt to engage Alex. “Actually, no. I’m not sure I want an answer to that.” He blinks, nostrils flaring. “I’d be stupid to hope she won’t blab to Steph, right?”
I was friends with Ashleigh once. Kind of.
Because of Alex’s occasional girlfriend, Stephanie, he still is. “She’s a really sweet girl,” he’s insisted before.
I get why he believes that. I do, and she is. Mostly.
But ever since Ashleigh joined YCS midway through year nine, claiming the desk beside mine in tutor group, the girl’s unloaded far too much of herself onto me, unprompted, for me to feel anywhere close to at ease in her company.
When she made it my business to care about her unstable dad or her crazy foster home or the fondly nicknamed ‘Lord Butt-Rod ’ she’d been cursed to live with. When she decided it was on me to help with her trouble fitting in. Yet, no amount of discouragement ever stopped her flow.
It’s been years since I last spoke to her. About a week before I disappeared from YCS. She told me she wished I’d have let her know me better.
What on earth was I supposed to do with that?
“She’s a ditz with a runaway mouth,” I’d snapped back at Alex, irked. And half the time, I’d swear her head’s on a different planet to the rest of us. “Sugar is sweet. Doesn’t mean it’s harmless.”
Alex is finally driving us through an area of Yoverton I recognise now, only a handful of turns and streets from home, and the soothing effect of familiarity is immediate. I drop back in the seat and close my eyes.
Riding shotgun is not a position I enjoy. My place is behind the wheel, in control. Riding in a car that’s not my own is also less than swell. Feels fitting, though, I guess.
“You know that the worst is yet to come, right?”
The sudden break from tight-lipped irritation causes the seatbelt to slam jarringly into my shoulder as I bolt upright. “Ow! Mother …What?”
“Think the news of you getting whipped into the tarmac by your own fucking hero cape won’t have already reached home?” My brother’s steely gaze remains locked on the road. He snorts. “Or have you forgotten who it was you tried to jump?”
I frown hard at the side of his head. And, too soon, he’s pulling the car into the curb outside my house. Only then does he slide me a sideways look, watching as my attention shifts past him, through the black bars of the security gates, across the drive, to my mum’s petite frame filling the front doorway with her fury.
My stomach turns. “Oh.”
“Yeah, bro. Oh.”
I’m reasonably certain I’ve not been home since leaving for college over twenty-four hours ago, but I’m also entirely certain it’s not my absence that has Mum looking so riled.
Because, of course, what level of stupid must I be to have forgotten the incident that started it all. “Shit!”
I launched myself into a fight yesterday afternoon, one that didn’t concern me. It was outside of a school I shouldn’t have been near, against a monster I can’t afford to cross, and in defence of a boy I’m meant to hate.
“Shit indeed,” Alex nods.
I hadn’t actively been in search of trouble. I only dropped by YCS to catch Alex and see if he fancied joining me for a swim. But at the sight of Tate McAllister slumped against a tree, Gary Tinwell advancing on him, and students crowding around, all rationality vanished from my head. I couldn’t just stand by and let it happen.
I also, as it transpired, couldn’t land a single decent blow.
“Crap like this is happening to you way too often lately, bro,” I was berated as Alex pulled me from the ground and through the spectating throng, away from the school, Gary’s bellowed taunts chasing us. “Hasn’t McAllister screwed you over enough?”
There was nothing smart I could’ve said to that. Not without either pissing Alex off further or lying to his face. And lies aren’t things my brother and I ever deal in. Avoidance of the hard truths, now that’s our game. He knows this full well. So, really, it shouldn’t have come as any kind of surprise to him when, at the first chance I got, I’d bolted.
“Your mum will hear about this.” Those were the last words Alex said to me before I left him on the roadside. They were a warning, not a threat.
And now…
Now, here we are.
When Dad appears at Mum’s shoulder, my eyes unwittingly dart a desperate plea at Alex. But he only presses his lips and faces forward in a way that says, ‘You made your bed; you lie in it’ . The car’s still running, and his fingers are tapping an impatient beat against the steering wheel.
It takes a great force of will to lift my hand to the door handle, and more still to get my fingers to pull on it. Tempting as it is now, there’s no point in asking Alex to come in with me because he wouldn’t. And even if he did, we both know he’d not be welcome.
The security gates start to swing open as I climb out the passenger door and straighten. Dad moves past Mum onto the front step.
“Son,” he greets me without warmth. He halts two strides beyond the entrance to optimize the torture of my approach, and his anger is something I daren’t even guess at.
Attacking Mum’s saintly Godson (unprovoked, obviously), disappearing without a word, today’s unauthorised absence from college, being in the company of his first-born mistake (who is undoubtedly to blame)—there are so many options. It could be any or all of them. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s better informed of my night-time adventures than I am.
“Dad.” My feet are heavy. “Hey.”
Alex doesn’t linger. The Honda’s cranking into reverse before I’ve taken more than a step onto the drive. Neither of my parents turn their eyes from me at his departure. I send him off with a cross-fingered salute.
“One of these days,” my dad says, the curve of his lips immediately snapping my arm down to my side, “your death wish will be granted.”
“Inevitably.” I do myself no favours.
And Goddamnit! My car is still parked up at the leisure centre in town. She’ll probably have a ticket on her windscreen by now. Why on earth didn’t I think to get dropped off there?