“Is that why you don’t talk so much? Because you can’t get a word in?”
“I guess it would make sense for that to be the case.”
“Something tells me it isn’t, though.”
I frowned, even though I wasn’t annoyed at all. The hint of my last smile was still there on my face. I could feel it. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Everything.”
“Do you always talk in a way that’s impossible to understand?”
“We’ve only spoken three times in twelve months. I’ve just not had the chance to make you really listen yet.”
“You kept count?” I asked, raising both brows as I tugged on one strap of my bag a little harder than the other. My fingers curled around the material to try to stop my body from responding to him at all.
“I have a good memory for nice moments, Natalie.” Alex tilted his head to one side and smirked as he narrowed his eyes.
Natalie.
He said my name like he cherished it. I’d never heard it spoken that way before.
My chest was tight now, a new fire burning and spreading through it until the smoke of anxiety and uncertainty took my throat hostage again, but I was still smiling. My emotions and my reactions were not in line at all. Twisting my head up and squinting against the harsh lights of the corridor, I gave him a paralysed grin and held his gaze.
“Why do you speak to me that way?” I asked without any thought at all.
“How do I speak to you?”
“Like we’ve known each other our whole lives.” I paused, a thought hitting me all at once as the memory of him in the doorway, watching over Elizabeth, flashed through my mind. For one moment, I was back in that room. I could smell the medicine. I could smell the impending death. “Why do you look at me every day, Alex? Do you feel you have to? Is it because of…?”
He shook his head, almost violently, all humour draining from his face before he eventually spoke. “Natalie.” He swallowed, the huge Adam’s apple in his neck protruding as it sank down while he regained some composure.
This time, my name on his lips didn’t sound so good. Regret tinged his voice, and a soft wave of sadness washed over me at the realisation that he probably pitied me. I turned to face Sammy. I thought that maybe she could show me something without having to speak again. I wanted to see reassurance in her eyes, a sign that I was being too cynical or sensitive – one of those looks she wore that could make me cower like a beta wolf to the alpha. But when I searched for her, she had gone. Vanished. No longer there. She’d left me and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Natalie,” he whispered again. The school bell rang out loudly, causing my shoulders to flinch in surprise, bringing me back down to earth with a bump.
“I should go,” I muttered.
Alex’s hand flew out to reach for my arm, grabbing hold of my bicep in much the same way Sammy had done earlier, only somehow with much more tenderness, while keeping me exactly where he wanted me to be. I was rooted to the floor as I looked back up at him through cautious eyes.
“What are you doing?” I frowned.
“Listen to me. I know we don’t know each other. I know there isn’t much to tell anyone about us, either. We don’t speak. We don’t have a need to. I get it. I’ve been at this school for just under a year now. That’s all. I’m already on every sports team you can imagine. I’m passing all my classes. I’m so far ahead I could take the rest of this year off and still not fall behind. I know almost everything there is to know about every guy in our year, and almost all the girls… besides you. I don’t have to get on that bus every morning at the time I do, because half of my timetable doesn’t even begin until the afternoon.”
His eyes searched mine intently, looking in every corner, at every fleck of white, blue and black that I owned. I was being stripped naked without shedding a single item of clothing. The feeling made my insides tighten and my knees begin to shake. I wasn’t scared – far from it. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was also speechless, so I remained quiet, only creasing my brows together just a little more to emphasise my confusion.
“I don’t talk to you because I know what I saw that night. I can see how you see yourself in my eyes now. I know what moment I intruded on.”
“You didn’t…”
“Please, let me finish. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to say this again because I don’t know if we’ll ever get to talk. I just wanted you to know… I’ve wanted you to know since the day after it happened…” He paused, parting his lips to suck in a long breath before he spoke out through his exhale. “I don’t pity you. I don’t think you’re weak. I don’t have anything but respect for you and what I saw that night. What I witnessed – I won’t ever forget it. I had no right to be there, but I was. How that came to be, I will never really know. I shouldn’t have stepped through that door, but I did and now I’m the one who should be embarrassed. I’m the one who doesn’t know what to say, but, that doesn't stop me from feeling some weird kind of gratitude. I felt privileged to have been there, you know? To witness what you two had, to be in those moments with you and your family. It was the kind of thing you only read about. I couldn’t turn away no matter how hard I tried. I'd never seen two people being so open with each other before. I saw your pain, Natalie. I saw it and I guess it’s why I get on the bus each morning. I look at you every day because I want to... because I need to. Something happened to me that night that I can’t explain. I don’t need to hear you speak. I'm not hot on conversation myself. I just need to get on that bus every day, see you and make sure you’re alright.”
My lips barely moved when I pushed out a dry whisper. “I’m alright, Alex.”
He studied me for a moment, his grip on my arm turning loose before he let his hand fall away completely. “I know.” He smiled, raising a brow. “I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I see you’ve started smiling more lately.”
My head dipped without warning and the blush rose to my cheeks like a tidal wave. I’d always known we were aware of each other. There was something between us that couldn’t be described, but I’d never, not in all of my daydreams, imagined that he had taken so much notice for the sake of my sister.
“You’re being charming again,” I said through a muted laugh, skimming my trainer over the surface of the school’s shiny floor just for something to do before I looked back up at him again.
“I do that a lot.” He grinned.
I chuckled, raising both brows and nodding slowly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For giving me something to look forward to in life, when, for the last year, I’ve not really seen much to live for at all.”
“And what do you have to live for now?” he asked, his eyes bright as he tilted his head to the other side.
The hall bell rang out again, the high-pitched shrill loud enough to call a flock of seagulls back from the other side of the world. Yet we both stayed there, completely still, lost in our moment and the twisted smirks.
When I eventually released my smile’s full potential, I huffed out yet another small laugh and took a single step closer.
“The bus journey to school every morning.”
Then I walked away, past Alex, our arms brushing against one another as I tried to sidestep, only to misjudge the distance completely. At that moment, I didn’t feel peace. There was only adrenaline, and a really weird tightening going on in the very depths of my stomach, like a thousand butterflies had just been set free after almost seventeen years of darkness and imprisonment.
They felt good, really good. I may have even kept that smile on my face until the moment my head hit the pillow later that evening when, for the first time in a long while, I dreamed that I was somewhere else – somewhere a world away from dirt and desperation, somewhere peaceful. Somewhere warm. Somewhere the sky was the colour of caramel, and the clouds were outlined with bright, twinkling hazel bor
ders.
And it was beautiful.
FIVE
It wasn’t simply that I had been dreading April. It was more that I would rather have stuck my head in a bucket full of hot tar than enter the month with any form of consciousness. It didn’t stop it from arriving, though, and when it did, I tried to pretend it was just another day in the life of me, post loss. Only it was proving more and more difficult to hide the fact that even though the sadness was always hanging over me, there was something – or should I say someone – else occupying my mind and holding my hand in the darkness.
The groan of the engine as it slowed, the hiss and sigh of the doors as they opened, the rough but gentle tones of his voice as he passed the driver… all these sounds were becoming my new focus. Every day I struggled to hold onto my smile, and every day Alex returned whatever expression I gifted to him with one that was practically identical. If I gave him a sideways glance, barely looking his way, he would do the same. If he managed to coax a full smile from me, he shot me one right back, forcing me to look up to the sky and narrow my eyes until the ache in my cheeks subsided.
It was a Thursday when he first chose to change the rules completely.
My backpack, which I’d wedged between my feet when I had taken my seat, somehow slipped away from the grip my calves had had on it, only to slide backwards and force me to try and jerk forward as fast as I could. I didn’t even hear him get on the bus that day. In some strange way, it was like he knew how much I’d come to crave our routine, and he knew how much I would struggle without it that morning if I didn't get to see him at all.
Before I could even lift my head up and rearrange the long curtains of hair that had formed around my face, his breath was against my ear and my body was frozen in place.
“Let me get that for you.”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The heat in my cheeks was like an inferno, and for the first time in my sixteen years, I was trapped under a boy’s spell like the giddy schoolgirl I was, unable to move for fear of making a fool of myself.
With my eyes down on the floor, wider than they’d ever been, I stayed in place, waiting for him to do whatever he needed to do, then leave, but he didn’t go anywhere. In just a few swift movements, he’d pulled my bag from its wandering path, pushed it back into its usual place between my legs and sat down beside me.
It was only when he was settled that he pressed his shoulder against mine and reached up to carefully lift the curtain of hair away from my face. My eyes flickered to the side to take him in, and when our eyes met, it seemed that everything else did, too.
“Hi.” He smiled lazily, his single finger still holding my hair in place.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“You mind if I sit here?”
“N-no,” I said quickly, swallowing before I bit down on my bottom lip.
That move wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t to be seductive or to try to look cute. For me, it was only about one thing...
I had to stop it from trembling. I had to stop it from making me look like I was about to cry, when in reality, somewhere deep, deep down inside, I’d been waiting for Alex Law to sit down beside me for a hell of a long time.
“Good,” he whispered as he tucked my hair behind my ear and dropped his hand into his lap.
His eyes fell on my trapped lip, and he studied it for quite some time. At some point, the bus began to move again until it pulled up outside the school gates like it had slipped through a time portal and made this single, much craved-for, moment pass me by in the blink of an eye.
“Have a good day, Natalie.”
“You, too, Alex,” I mouthed, watching him as he stood and began to walk away from me into the crowds of his friends who were waiting for him by the door. Their mouths hung open, much the same way mine did, and I would have had to be blind to miss the way each one of the boys turned my way, taking a curious glance to find out what it was about me that held his attention.
That was the first and last time he ever asked for my permission. The seat next to me soon became his everyday spot, and it wasn’t long before the smiles grew bigger, the hellos got longer and the goodbyes held a lot more promise as to what the next day would bring.
It was the eve of the anniversary of Lizzy's death, and I was leaving the playground to make my way home after waving Sammy, Suzie and Daniella off on their way. They were all enrolled in a dance class after final period, but I wasn’t quite ready for that just yet. I wasn’t sure if I ever would be. Dancing had never really been my thing. I’d never held enough grace in any of my limbs to make myself look like I was doing anything other than having a temporary fit of uncoordinated insanity. I was also far too self-conscious to let myself go.
The afternoon was warm – much warmer than any of us had expected it to be – and as I pulled off my jumper and began to wrap the arms around my waist, the sun shone down on the exposed parts of my skin to give me a teaser of what was to come. I’d secured my bag in place, run my hands through my hair to push it back over my shoulders and was just about to make a right out of the school gates when the sound of a male voice forced my head to snap left.
Two men were arguing beside a car, and it was only when the elder of the two, in a smart, grey suit, slammed the passenger door shut, exposing the other person to the world, that I saw who else was involved.
Alex’s head was bowed low, and his shoulders sagged forward as the man standing in front of him looked down on him with nothing but disdain. The anger on his face was apparent. He looked like one of those bad guys I’d seen in a rusty, eighties mob film that my father occasionally liked to watch. Every feature was dark and menacing, every crease in his skin like a war wound from a darker time that he paraded around as a trophy of destruction.
I couldn’t stop looking at him.
I didn’t mean to hang around, but the moment Alex’s head rolled to the side and he looked up through hooded eyes, I slipped back around the stone pillar and hid, my hands gripping the harsh ridges on the rough surface until I pressed my cheek against it and held my breath in waiting.
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” the older man shouted.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Do I need to remind you who it is you’re talking to?”
Pause. A long pause, followed by what sounded like the slap of a hand against the roof of the car.
“No... sir,” Alex pushed out.
His voice sounded different. Colder. Flatter. Lifeless, just like the very stone in my hands. I so desperately wanted to peer around the pillar and check to see if he was okay. Looking back around the yard, I tried to see if anyone else was witnessing what I was, but there were no other bodies in sight. It was just the three of us – two people in one moment, and me, the intruder.
Nothing else was said for a while, and just as I was about to step out to take a peek, I heard the unmistakable sound of skin meeting skin. The loud crack rang out, filling the otherwise silent air around us until it hit me straight in the heart and made me gasp for breath.
I couldn’t help myself then. I moved without thought.
Bursting out from my hiding place, I didn’t even wait to take in the scene in front of me before I cried out.
“Hey!”
Alex’s chin rested against his chest, and his hand cradled his cheek while the man beside him turned all his attention to me. The anger that shone from his eyes was almost as menacing as the emptiness I saw there. Whoever he was, this man was cold. He was dangerous and he was currently hurting my friend.
My heart rate picked up speed, and every goosebump I possessed came to life and raised their warning flags to the world. I froze in place, one hand gripping the strap of my bag while I tried to figure out what to do or what to say. With my lips parted, I moved to take a step forward, wavering slightly when I saw his eyes narrowing even further.
“Alex?” I said, blinking away my uncertainty as I turned to look at him and moved
forward. “Alex, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You were meant to be in the sports hall ten minutes ago. Mr. Ryan sent me out here to fi–” I stopped briefly to swallow down the hint of nerves that was making my voice tremble. “To find you.” I finished.
Alex didn’t look up, instead focusing his attention on the ground as he worked the muscles in his jaw back and forth, inhaling through his nose.
I should have turned and left him alone. I should have done what I’d always done since Lizzy left me. I should have bowed my head and ignored the world and all the problems that existed in it, but as this man – this foreboding man with no regret in his pores – turned his dark and eerie attention to me, I spoke anyway.
“Have you hurt him?” I asked, frowning up at his towering form.
“Excuse me?” he answered, unable to hide the creepy smirk on his face.
“I think you heard me,” I whispered. “And I think you know I already know the answer.”
He pushed both his hands into his suit pockets, shifting around until he was fully focused on me, and even though I knew I should have been scared, all I could focus on was the fact that Alex had stiffened beside me, pushing himself up off the car as he fisted his hands down by his thighs.
“Alex, are you alright?”
“He’s fine,” the man answered for him.
I sighed heavily, unsure what to do as I looked up at him and slowly shook my head.
“Forgive me for interrupting whatever you were explaining to him with the back of your hand... sir... but I have to take Alex back into school now. If I don’t, his football coach is going to be out here looking for him, too. He might even be on his way now. I’d hate for him to get involved in whatever this is that’s going on between the two of you.”
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