Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  He stood up to get me, but Sam held him back. ‘Leave it, Kash.’

  So I did. I came back out here instead. I don’t know why I bother provoking Pete. It’s only cos I’m sick of him thinking he knows more than the rest of us.

  BUT NONE OF US KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!

  That’s the truth of it, and why doesn’t anyone else realise?

  Pete doesn’t know what those crops are.

  Pete doesn’t know how we find them.

  Pete doesn’t know if we’re still part of the psychological immersion programme. He doesn’t know if this is just one more task.

  He doesn’t know what happened to Lily and George.

  I’ll get moving in a moment, stretch my legs. I’ll check the other cabins again, look for clues. There must be something to tell us where Lily and George have gone. People just don’t disappear without leaving something behind.

  I can hear the boys laughing behind me. I hope it’s because of whatever Nyall is doing on the screen rather than Annie. There’s something so fragile about Annie. Sometimes I wonder where she came from, why she’s here. She seems too delicate to be homeless, too much like a tiny bird. I bet she doesn’t have a Dieter who could stump up the two-thousand-pound fee to get her onto this thing. How did Nyall get on this thing either, for that matter? Did they steal their way on? And Pete? I know Sam used his own money, saved up from his work at the garage.

  They cackle like parrots behind me.

  ‘Stop perving,’ I yell back. ‘You’re like little kids.’

  They don’t say anything, but they shut up laughing. I want to call everyone together and ask the obvious question before it gets too dark: when are we going back to our camp? Or maybe the question should be: are we even going back to camp? Or are we going to walk out of here in the other direction instead?

  Soon it’ll be too dark for it to even be a question.

  I can hear the creak of a chair being pushed back. It’s Sam, walking towards me.

  ‘Pete thinks we should stay,’ he’s just said. ‘We’ll go back in the morning.’

  I guess I’ll write more later.

  It’s later.

  After we all got back together in the main hut, Pete gave his reasoning.

  ‘There must be a rewind button,’ he said. ‘Or something on that computer. I want to play with it longer. See if I can get in, find out anything.’

  I know enough about Pete to know he’s a hacker. Perhaps that’s how he got here – that was his fuck up. Perhaps him breaking into this computer is his special Tribe task, and Lily gave it to him on the sly. I get this flipping journal and he gets to play Mission Impossible.

  Or perhaps his hacking is like my cutting.

  Perhaps this challenge is irresistible for him.

  ‘What about these soldiers or tribes you’re so worried about?’ I said. ‘If we stay and they come back, we get popped off too.’

  Pete smiled like a cream-got cat. ‘We’ll see them coming. Cameras now, remember? We’re in the safest place.’

  Annie tucked her head in against Nyall’s shoulder, away from the rest of us. Nyall put his arm around her, and I felt a pang of something inside me. Jealousy? Not because I wanted Nyall to do that to me too. I don’t even like Nyall like that; I don’t like anyone. But the thought of an arm around me right now, any arm, wasn’t a terrible one.

  ‘You really think it’s the safest place?’ Nyall said. ‘Lily and George disappeared from here, didn’t they?’

  Pete nodded at the cabin with the screens. ‘From here, we’ll be able to see who’s coming for ages.’

  Nyall shifted under Pete’s gaze. ‘Then why didn’t Lily and George see…?’

  ‘Maybe they were high,’ Annie said.

  Silence then. Were the others thinking of those crops, too? What they were … who might want them … what they had to do with us or The Tribe or L and G… We sat around the long table in the main cabin, staring at each other.

  ‘Anyway, it’s too late to trek back up now,’ Pete finally finished. ‘It’s dark.’

  ‘But we don’t know where we are … we don’t know anything!’ Annie’s voice came muffled from against Nyall’s shoulder.

  ‘We don’t know anything about the other camp either,’ Sam said quietly. ‘Not really. Maybe whoever got Lily and George was going there next.’

  That shut us up. And I was thinking…

  It’s become whoever.

  It’s become got Lily and George.

  Eventually Annie undug her head from Nyall’s shoulder, her face tiny with her eyes too big.

  ‘At least the other camp was kind of familiar,’ she said. ‘At least we knew where the food was.’

  ‘You don’t eat anything anyway,’ Pete snapped.

  Nyall shot him a look, grabbed Annie’s shoulder and almost seemed to push her straighter as he hugged her then looked back at us all in turn. ‘I think we should explore everything here tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Thoroughly. Then we decide whether we stay or not. Then we decide what to do. We’ll give Pete a chance to hack first.’

  It was about the most I’d heard him say in one go the entire time we’d been here. He’s a little like me in that, talking more each day, getting bolder. Perhaps it’s Pete: the sheer dickishness of that guy makes the rest of us need to talk, even if it’s just to hear another voice. Nyall’s voice is quiet and gentle, nicer than mine, but there’s iron to it too. He suits Annie, despite what I heard Lily telling them about being too co-dependent. But what does she know anyway?

  Pete nodded. ‘Fine, get some kip. I’ll take the screens. I’ll wake someone if I need a break.’

  Nyall and Annie went back to the cabin that was Lily and George’s. I hoped they’d remembered the camera in there, and that Pete would be watching it. This left me and Sam alone in the main cabin. Secretly I was glad. It was dark enough out there; it would be darker without Sam.

  ‘Night, lovebirds.’ Pete laughed as he left. Not a nice laugh. He knows what’s going on between us; he’s seen it or Sam’s told him. He knows Sam wants something I’m not giving. I watched him walk across the clearing to the cabin with the screens.

  Then Sam and I sat facing each other across the long table. It was a while before my eyes flicked to the folded pages of notes Annie had pinned to the wall.

  ‘We should know what they think of us,’ I said.

  I unpinned them and laid them out. Only a few pages. The text was faint and there weren’t many words. Sam sat close to read. He smelt hot, like old sweat and dirt. I probably smelt the same. Neither of us had had a shower that day. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d washed.

  Lily’s writing was spidery, like her, and the letters were faded from the sun. From what I could work out, she’d written a few sentences about each of us: brief words to sum us up.

  Peter Samuels. Expelled from three schools. Bullying. Fighting. Alcoholic father. Has money. Posh. Then there were a couple of addresses, a couple of school names.

  ‘Do you think he’d want us to know this?’ Sam said.

  When he went to move the papers away, I stopped him. There were more notes: about Pete’s school grades and a description of Pete’s house.

  ‘Weird,’ I said. ‘Why do they want to know this sort of stuff?’

  Next was Annie.

  Annie Smith. Homeless? Ran away at thirteen. Drug dependence? Doesn’t eat. Wants money. Won’t want to go home. Then some notes about her next-of-kin.

  I flicked over to Nyall.

  Nyall Symder. Homeless. Boyfriend of Annie. Co-dependent. Desperate. Split these two up, they’d do anything to get back together.

  I paused at that, looked up at Sam.

  ‘What’s Lily on about?’ he said.

  ‘What’s any of this on about?’

  Already my eyes were back on the page looking for what it said about Sam … about me.

  Sam Wolton. Jacks cars, or so he says…?

  Again, I looked at Sam. He didn’t steal
cars. Not that I knew about. There’d only been one, only once.

  ‘You told her that?’

  He kept his eyes on the paper. ‘I had to tell her something,’ he said quietly. ‘I had to get on this thing.’

  ‘Why would you say that though?’ I’d thought that night – taking Mum’s car – was private. I thought no one knew about it apart from me and Sam. I’d never told anyone and I didn’t think Sam would either.

  ‘I wasn’t going to let you come here alone. We both know it was easier for you to get on this thing than me.’

  The tops of his cheeks went red. I didn’t know whether to be mad at him, or let myself feel something else. I chose the mad.

  ‘I thought you wanted to do this?’ I said. ‘That’s what you told me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘It was your idea coming here.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, firm. ‘I wouldn’t use all my savings for nothing.’ His eyes were still flicking across the page, still reading. ‘It was meant to be our adventure, remember? You and me! Together we’d sort each other out, fix what happened. I thought it would … help!’

  Abruptly, Sam scrunched the piece of paper into a ball and clasped it in his fist.

  ‘What does any of that matter now anyway,’ he said. ‘Who we were? Maybe we’re different out here. Changing, like they say.’

  I lunged for the paper in his hand.

  ‘Let me see that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s stuff about me, isn’t there? I’m the only one left.’

  ‘It’s not about you.’

  I grabbed for it, pushing him to try and get to his hand. He tumbled backwards over the bench. I went over with him, still reaching for the paper. He huffed hard as he landed, but I leant across him.

  ‘Just give it to me.’

  His arms were too long to get anywhere near. Even if I could get to his hand, I couldn’t unclench his fist.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. I’d get it later, when he was asleep. ‘Just let me go.’

  He wasn’t making it easy. Every time I tried to untangle my feet from his, he moved his to tangle them more. He was trying to hold me there, trying to keep me. I went limp.

  ‘What do you want?’

  He stopped moving his feet. ‘Nothing. It’s just … you don’t have to struggle all the time.’

  His breath was suddenly on my cheek and his face so close. I looked down at him. His eyes were steady on mine.

  ‘The note…?’

  ‘Believe me, Kash, just once, you don’t need to see. Anyway, it’s about me.’

  I could feel his ribs underneath my stomach, how his chest was breathing quickly, making me rise up a bit too. I wanted to believe him. Once I’d believed him without being asked to.

  I felt his other arm curl up around my back, holding me. I was so close I could see the dirt stuck to the grooves around his nose. Once, I’d known everything about Sam. Once, I’d have liked his face this close. But now? Now, he could have a girlfriend waiting for him back home and he wouldn’t tell me.

  I wouldn’t let myself relax. I was waiting for the moment his hand wasn’t so firm against my back, then I’d be out of there, pushing him away.

  He brought the hand with the crumpled piece of paper towards my face. I was too busy looking at the paper, trying to find its words, to see how close he was leaning. He uncurled his fist, touched the tip of his index finger against my cheek.

  ‘What are you doing, Sam?’ My eyes were on his now.

  Still he leant forward, touched the tip of his nose to mine. His bottom lip quivered.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he said. ‘Like before.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I whispered. But I didn’t move back. This wasn’t real, this was a time long gone.

  But did I want it again? Want him?

  Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

  It might be so easy.

  Cautiously – carefully – I brought my head forward. I fairy-touched my lips against his, as soft as leaf-tips feel when you brush past a tree.

  But then I stopped.

  I’d thought about Mum, hadn’t I?

  So quick, I’d got an image of her face – of how she’d look if she saw us doing this. And then I was thinking: had she seen us that night, had she been waiting in the shadows of the quarry? Is that why it happened?

  I pulled away.

  Kiss me – it was what Sam had said in Mum’s car that night, when it had been darker outside than oceans. And I’d wanted to. I’d wanted to kiss him more than I’d wanted anything in my entire life, I think. Sam Wolton. I wanted him in the same way I wanted to hurt myself sometimes. I wanted all of him. Every single bit.

  His lips on mine, so gentle.

  I remember it.

  So much warmer than the cold of the car. His tongue darted out and touched my teeth. I wanted to catch it, keep it. I felt the tiny bristles of the hair above his top lip against my skin. I smelt the car oil on him.

  He pressed his hand into the small of my back, pulled me towards him. The gear stick and the handbrake were in the way, but I didn’t care. I don’t think I was breathing. I don’t think I was thinking anything at all. His hand moved up my spine, tracing the ridges of my bones, stopping when it got to my bra. The tips of his fingers dug underneath it, fumbled with the catch. For one stupid second I wanted to tell him that I loved him; that I’d always loved him. Instead I leant further in towards him. Perhaps I could show him instead. I pressed my hands against his smooth, warm stomach.

  His fingers worked out the bra catch, undid it. Then they were feeling their way around my body, across my ribs.

  ‘We can’t do this here,’ I whispered.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s Mum’s car.’

  ‘Not anymore it’s not.’

  I still wasn’t breathing. At least, it didn’t feel like it. All I could think about was his hand, moving up around me. I pulled back, tried to focus on his eyes, nose, mouth; everything was close together, jumbled. He stopped then, just looked back at me. His gaze was steady, his mouth slightly open. I thought he was going to say something. I wanted him to. I wanted him to tell me that he thought about me in the way I thought about him.

  But my phone rang.

  I jolted back from Sam immediately, hit my head against the car window. His hand slipped out from under my jumper. The phone was flashing through my jeans pocket; I could feel it vibrating on my leg. I didn’t want to answer. It could only be Mum. Eventually it was Sam who moved away, who sat back in his seat with a thump.

  He flicked his head towards it. ‘Going to get it?’

  But Mum had already gone. There were text messages from her though. Three. I took a breath before I read them.

  I saw the cat, Kasha. It’s here!

  I flicked to the next, hoping Sam hadn’t seen.

  When are you coming? It’s still here. I’ll try to trap it for you.

  Then, the last one made me put the phone down altogether: I don’t know what to do here without you. Hurry! The cat’s angry.

  I shoved them back into my pocket. I thought of Mum on the mountain summit alone. Was this the night she proved to everyone just how wrong they’d been not to believe her? I shook my head. A big black cat? Here? It was ridiculous. Just more proof of where her mind was really at.

  Sam was already shuffling towards me again, getting ready to take up where we left off.

  But I pushed him away. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  And I did. When Mum needed me, she’d stop at nothing. She might even go to the cinema to find me, might even look for her car. I swallowed quickly and opened the door.

  ‘Hey, Kash … wait!’

  When I didn’t, Sam came round the other side. He placed a hand on each shoulder and made me stop. ‘What have I done?’

  I shook my head, pushed him away again. ‘I’ve just got to go.’

  ‘I’ll walk you.’

  ‘No.’

  Sam moved in front of me and made me stop. He crouched down to my e
ye level, made me look at him.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he said.

  He was so close, centimetres away. It would have taken nothing to lean over and feel his lips on mine again. I could already feel his breath on my nose. And I wanted to.

  I swallowed the desire.

  I kept thinking of Mum. Alone on the mountain. How I hadn’t checked her pills. How, recently, she’d been getting stranger and stranger.

  I had to go. Shouldn’t even be there. I’d spent too long already. So I turned away from Sam, ran through the trees. Sam could hide the car without me.

  ‘See you tomorrow!’ he called.

  I turned onto the deer path that led through the quarry and onto the side of the mountain. I didn’t need a torch. I knew my way from all the times I’d been there with Mum. I think if I was blind I’d know my way to the top of that mountain. Sam would be OK. He’d stick to the main track, find the road.

  But … I’d so wanted to stay! I even paused for a moment, wondering if I could go back.

  To Sam…

  To being a normal teenager…

  To making out in a car like normal girls did…

  I was being stupid, hoping for that. I ran on. It had only ever been just Mum and me.Always.

  Us against the world. We stick together, you and me. Us girls. Her words.

  How could I think any different?

  I leapt logs and clumps of bracken. Maybe I should’ve stopped and sent a message. I should’ve waited with Sam and called Mum first. But I just wanted to get there. If I could do that, I’d be able to calm her. I wouldn’t feel so guilty.