by Nikki Ashton
“You’ll be waiting a long time,” I whispered as his bright blue eyes full of disdain and disbelief burned into my skin.
Adam leaned in again, closer this time, his breath whispering against my ear. “We’ll see how long it takes before you’re begging me to fuck you, because believe me, you will.”
He sneered at me and without another word strode away with his posse of hangers on a couple of steps behind.
I took in a deep breath, gripped a hold of the table, and tried to ignore the way my veins buzzed with adrenalin as Adam’s words continued to echo in my ear.
“I don’t,” Alannah said, forcing my gaze to her. “Well I do, but…”
Her eyes brimmed with tears and her complexion splotched with scarlet as she worried her bottom lip.
“Like I said, it’s no business of mine.” Feeling unsettled I gave her a wobbly smile and reached for her hand. “But if he’s forcing you.”
A cold shiver ran through me and I swallowed down the need to puke.
Alannah shook her head hard.
“He doesn’t. I swear.” Shame shrouded her features as she took a deep breath. “I can’t say no to him, Sarah. I’ve tried but he’s just so.” She pulled off her glasses, threw them down, and then pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes and groaned.
“I get it, I do,” I said and leaned across the table to her. “But be careful, I don’t know any of you, but he seems dangerous and mean. I’m scared for you.”
Mean.
Dangerous.
Magnetising.
Her head shot up and she looked me straight in the eye. “You don’t get it at all, but you will.”
I looked around the dining room and it suddenly struck me, no one had come to sit with us. No one was clamouring to talk to Alannah or find out who I was. Miss Daniels hadn’t picked Alannah to be my buddy because she was good with the fucked up and the deranged; she was fucked up.
“Why will I get it, Alannah?” I asked, my voice soft and tentative.
She gave me a sad smile and then jutted out her chin in defiance. “Because you’re on his radar now. He may have told you to stay out of his way, but I saw it in his eyes. He wants you and he won’t stop until he has you and ruins you, just like he does with the rest of us.”
She scanned the room and I swept my gaze with hers. Then I saw them, dotted around, and not easy to see unless you were looking for them; four or five girls, all sitting alone, and all with their eyes on me.
4
Adam
I practically threw my lunch tray onto the table, our table, and sat down, dragging my stool across the wooden floor with a screech.
“What’s got up your arse?” Ellis asked as he sat beside me.
Kirk and Tyler were messing around with a spoonful of mashed potato. It took all my effort not to stand up, lean across the table, and punch both of the fucking idiots between the eyes.
“Remind me again why we hang around with them,” I snarled.
Ellis grinned and his brown eyes twinkled. “Kirk’s brother provides us with weed and Tyler’s mum is fucking hot, and when she answers the door in her dressing gown, I get to see her nipples.”
I didn’t feel in the mood for his crap jokes, but he managed to bring a smile to my face. Ellis and I had been friends since year five at junior school when we’d moved here after my mum’s boyfriend left her with mountains of debt, and a kid in her belly. Back then Ellis always wore corn rows in his hair and big pieces of gold jewellery, because he was crazy for old school Snoop Dog at the time, and he’d greeted me like a long-lost friend. When you’re nine-years-old and starting a new school in a strange town, someone just being nice to you makes them a friend for fucking life. Almost nine years later and we were still close; as close as I would ever be with anyone.
“Seriously though,” Ellis said as he shovelled food into his mouth. “What’s eating you, because it isn’t just those pricks?”
I shoved my tray away and glanced over at the table where Alannah and the new girl sat.
Sarah.
I rolled her name around in my head, alongside a slide show of images of her on her knees as she sucked my dick.
Ellis reached for my untouched bread roll and ripped a chunk off with his teeth.
“Well?”
I let out a sigh and turned back to him. “Usual crap at home. Adam clean your room. Adam you know you’re supposed to be home by ten on a school night. Adam suck my fucking dick.”
Ellis burst out a laugh. “You know you can have him arrested for that,” he said, spattering half-chewed crumbs of bread over the table.
“Mum doesn’t say a word. She just stands behind him with her arms crossed, giving me this look that says; ‘I’m not angry Adam, just disappointed’. Well guess what mother, I’m fucking disappointed too. I’m disappointed you married a man who thinks I’ll like him if he just acts like a dad.”
I dropped my head back on my shoulders and closed my eyes, letting out a strangulated groan at the damn unfairness of my life. A lot of fucking things disappointed me about my mother, and Roger was only one of them.
I lived with one parent who I had no respect for and a stepparent who I fucking hated. My mum had met Roger just over a year and a half ago and married him six months later. As soon as she married him, she pretty much checked out on parenting me and my sister and left it all to him. It was like she’d been playing a really tough game of football and had been working hard around the pitch, trying to score, but nothing she did was right. Then the manager subbed her for Roger and the fucking relief was written all over her face. She finally had chance to sit back and watch Roger do all the damn work.
When he came along Mum encouraged me to call him Dad, like she did with all her boyfriends. I knew it would make her happy if I did, but I resented her too fucking much, so usually I just grunted at him or called him Roge, which I knew he hated. The thing was, he wasn’t my dad no matter how much he tried.
“I don’t know why you don’t divorce them or whatever it is,” Ellis said, his concentration back on his food as he separated his peas from his corn. “You could get an afterschool and weekend job and then rent a flat.”
“Yeah like there’s plenty of jobs on offer around here.”
Ellis shrugged and carried on eating, so I picked up my phone to text Mackenna. She should have been at lunch by now and I needed something to release the tension in my back, neck, and fucking bollocks.
As I started to type out the text, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. My head snapped up. I expected it to be Mackenna, but it wasn’t, it was Alannah and Sarah, the new girl. Alannah had her head down and was moving slowly across the dining room, but Sarah held her head high and led the way.
It struck me as a pretty confident thing to do, considering it was her first day. I watched her take a deep breath with every stride and tuck errant strands of her blonde hair behind her ears; my dick twitch again.
There was something about her that excited me. I was going to love playing with her when I was ready. She wouldn’t stand a fucking chance. All those attempts at being brave would come to nothing and by the time I’d finished with her, she’d wish she’d never even glanced at me. That was what I did. I played with people. Like a cat with a mouse, a dog with a rat. I played, I taunted and then I went in for the fucking kill.
“Shit,” Tyler hissed. “You see where they’re going?”
I watched in fascination as Sarah led Alannah to a table where Amber Smith was sitting, alone. Amber had been my plaything last term, but I’d had to humiliate her in front of the whole school when she’d decided she should be my girlfriend.
I didn’t have girlfriends.
I played, I taunted, and I went in for the fucking kill.
“What you going to do?” Kirk asked stretching his neck to see around Tyler.
Sarah sat down next to Amber and held out her hand. Alannah was more tentative, and I didn’t miss her glance my way, but then she pulled back her
shoulders and sat the other side of Amber. Amber looked shocked as her gaze shifted between the two girls, but when Sarah moved closer and said something to her, Amber’s face broke out into a grin.
“They can sit where they want to,” I said.
I pretended indifference, but Sarah had thrown down a challenge whether she knew it or not.
“It’s not like I told everyone to ignore her.”
“Yeah but, Adam, you told the whole school she’d had a threesome with you and Ellis and you and another girl and that she’d wanted you to piss all over her.” Tyler scoffed as he turned back to me. “Getting Kirk to flash that up on every computer in the school three times in one day, means no lad is going to want to go out with her in case she smells of piss and no girl is going to want be friends with her in case she wants to jump into bed with them and their boyfriend”
I shrugged, took a swig of my diet coke, and then grinned.
“The threesome part with me was right,” Ellis offered. “Although getting my cock sucked while looking at Adam’s bare arse pumping away was kind of off putting.”
We all laughed, but my attention was back on the table of three girls – actually strike that. It was on one girl as she took a band from her hair and let it cascade over her shoulders, before she gathered it back up on top of her head and wrapped the band back around it. She pulled at the bun and then combed her fingers through her fringe, all the time listening to whatever Amber and Alannah were saying.
“Hey, Kirk,” I said.
“What?” He turned to me, his eyes were narrowing because he knew what was coming.
“Use those hacking skills of yours to find out what you can about her.” I gave a chin lift in Sarah’s direction. “What her secret is and why she’s moved here with less than a year to go?”
“What makes you think she has a secret?” Tyler asked.
“Everyone has secrets,” Ellis answered without taking his eyes from the spoonful of yoghurt which was halfway to his mouth.
“He’s right,” I said as I pushed up from the table. “Everyone does and I want to know what hers are.”
5
Sarah
When I opened the door to our house after school, the last person I expected to see there was my mum. She’d only been at her job for two days and I knew she didn’t finish until five, so I jumped when she walked out of the kitchen into the hall.
“Oh my God, Mum. What are you doing here?” I dropped my backpack to the floor and placed my palms against my stomach.
She smiled and threw the tea-towel she’d been holding over her shoulder. “Mr Henry knew it was your first day at the new school, so let me go early. Wasn’t that kind of him?”
Her grey eyes shone with the tears that had seemed ever present for the last year, and she took in a shaky breath. Tentatively she took a step toward me and reached out her hand before pulling it back again. I knew I should have gone to her and comforted her, told her I’d had a great day at school, but the darkness inside of me told me to stay where I was, let her come to me, make her work for my love.
When I didn’t move or even twitch a muscle, she finally took the step and pulled me into her arms.
“Was it okay?” she whispered against my hair.
My arms flopped to my sides and I nodded. “Yeah, it was good.”
“And the teachers?”
I felt her body tense and the air around us stilled with anticipation as she waited for me to reply. Mum flinched as my hesitation became a long pause.
“They were nice,” I finally said and pulled away from her strong hug.
She let out a long, breath and looked down at her shoes; navy leather stilettos that she’d worn for work.
“Good. That’s good,” she replied, flashing me a broken smile. “So, I made fried chicken for dinner.” She laughed and pointed over her shoulder. “Well, I say made. I called in at KFC on the way home.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say I wasn’t hungry, or that I had too much homework and would eat in my room, but she looked so expectant and anxious.
“That’s great,” I replied. “I’ll put my stuff away.”
I picked up my backpack and made my way to my room at the back of the bungalow which Mum had moved us into. My room overlooked the average sized garden and as well as a big window it had doors out onto a small patio. I was pretty sure it was the master bedroom as it had a full bathroom, whereas Mum’s only had an en suite, but she was trying to make up for the last year, so I got the best room. I did feel kind of bad, Mum’s room was a little smaller and looked out over the front driveway, but I didn’t have it in me to offer to let her have it.
We’d painted it a deep cream with hints of violet and had done it together, which had been kind of weird. Mum and I had barely talked for ages and there we were spending a whole day together, painting my room, side by side. We’d still had little to say and at times the atmosphere strained as we avoided the two huge elephants in the room, but we got the job done and actually laughed when Mum stepped on the tray of paint and upturned it over her foot.
With a sigh I unpacked my back and stacked the books onto my desk, ready to do my homework later. I then pulled open my wardrobe and threw the bag inside; I wasn’t a normal teenager who left things lying around, I hated mess and always had done. It was something I got from my dad, he had to be the tidiest person I knew… had known.
As images of him laughing swam around in my head. The pain in my chest that never really went away, gave me a punch in the ribs, simply to remind me that it was still there. This wasn’t all a nightmare that I could wake up from and dad, a police officer, had been killed at the scene of a jewellery shop robbery. He really was gone. The pain never let me forget.
The memory still managed to blindside me and break my heart all over again. I took a hold of the wardrobe door, gripping it to steady myself, and blew out a long breath through pursed lips.
“Sarah, you ready sweetheart?” I heard Mum call. “It’s on the table.”
“One minute.”
I took another fortifying breath and made my way over to my desk, opened the drawer and reached inside for the creased and dog-eared photograph of the three of us when we’d been happy. All of us smiling up at the camera, the sea behind us and the sun bright in the sky as Mum snapped away.
“I love you, Dad.” I stroked a finger along the image of his handsome face with my low whisper.
It was the same thing I did every day, whether it was a bad, good or indifferent one. Every day I told my dad I loved him and stroked his face. I carefully placed it back in its place, under his precious and battered copy of Catch-22, and then closed the drawer and went to have dinner with my mum.
Dinner had been quiet, but not the uncomfortable silence that I’d grown used to over the last year or so since Dad died. At least Mum sat at the table with me and hadn’t hidden herself working until all hours like she’d done when he first went. I understood why she’d needed to keep busy, but she’d forgotten she had a seventeen-year-old daughter who needed her. As a result, I’d been left alone most evenings with my grief, my nightmares and my pain.
“So, tell me about your first day,” Mum said as she passed me the last dish to dry.
We had a dishwasher, but Dad had always insisted we did the dishes by hand. He said it was one of the best times to talk, to laugh and to be thankful for our little family, which was why after he died, I’d always run off to my room after dinner – our little family didn’t exist any longer. Tonight though, Mum had insisted I stay and dry. I guess it was her way of attempting to make things seem as normal as possible, a year too late, but at least she was trying.
“It was okay.” I shrugged. “Alannah is nice, the kids were okay, and the teachers were good.”
I noticed the way her shoulders sagged and wasn’t sure whether it was with relief or with sadness that we were having to talk about me having a new set of teachers.
“And Alannah took care of you okay?”
/> She turned her head to face me, and once again I saw sorrow where happiness used to shine. She and Dad weren’t the perfect couple, but they loved each other and never went to bed on an argument; it was always their thing. We had been a happy little family until that day he’d answered a call on his Police radio about reports of gunshots at a high-end jewellery shop in the West End. The sad thing was, it had been his rostered day off, but he had gone in on overtime to help pay for one last holiday together before I went off to Uni.
“Yeah, Mum, she did.” I nodded and gave her a small smile. “She’s a really nice girl.”
“Was there anyone else you got to know? Any other girls?”
She handed me a glass, slippy with soap suds, and I gripped it tightly to avoid dropping it.
“A girl called Amber,” I replied as I thought back to the quiet, shy girl who Alannah had told me once used to be lively and popular before she’d hooked up with Adam. I had no details of what he’d done, but I guessed it was something bad because when he’d passed us on his way out of the dining room Amber’s hand had started to shake and she’d dropped her gaze to the wooden table.
“Oh, that’s so good, sweetheart,” Mum said and flashed me a smile. “Really good.”
We carried on with the dishes in silence, but once again it wasn’t uncomfortable, and I started to feel my tension ease a little. Mum eventually let out the water and dried her hands.
“Have you got homework?”
I sighed. “Yeah, you’d think they’d be kind to me on my first day, wouldn’t you?”
Mum laughed quietly and reached out a hand to me. I stood stock still as I tried desperately not to flinch from the touch that I’d missed for so long but now didn’t welcome. Her warm fingers lightly touched my skin and her eyes softened.
“I hope that this is the start of something better for us,” she whispered.
