by Jon Jacks
‘Digging tunnels. Watching out for the searchlights. The Great Escape!’
They both chuckle as they speak.
‘So that’s it?’ I say despondently. ‘There really is no way out of here?’
‘Not that anybody’s worked it out yet,’ Dave admits.
‘But why? Why are we all here?’
‘Well, we all have something in common, obviously.’
‘Yeah? What? I didn’t murder anyone. I wasn’t particularly nasty to anyone, far as I can recall.’
‘Ah, but let me guess,’ Jassy says. ‘There was a certain someone you told yourself you just couldn’t face life without, right?’
‘Well, it’s personal–’
‘Course it’s personal!’ Dave smiles. ‘See, you asked earlier if you were dead, yeah?’
‘Sure, what else was I supposed to think, what with all these ghostly figure – oh, sorry! But that’s exactly what you looked like when I first–’
Dave raises a hand, pulls a couldn’t-care-less expression that says that’s all right by him.
‘Yeah, to everybody who first arrives here too. But, think about it, Steph; when you were back in your regular school, right, suffering all these pangs of longing for this hunk or whatever he looked like – you were more or less dead to the world around you, right? You lost interest in all the things you used to enjoy doing, cos you began to think the only way you could enjoy your life anymore was if this guy was a part of it, right?’
‘Well, yeah, okay, sure; but that’s hardly like being dead dead, is it?’
‘Isn’t it? When you next wander around here, take a look at the kids you see around you. Good looking kids, most of them. But take another good look and you’ll know what you’ll see?’
They both stare at me expectantly, like they’re guessing I’m going to shout ‘Eureka!’ any moment now.
I shake my head.
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I confess.
Dave grins, like all along he knew I’d be stumped.
‘No one’s paring off with anyone else. Well, hardly anyone, anyway.’
‘Sooo…’I say unsurely. ‘And that’s because…?’
‘Because no one could possibly compare to whoever they’ve left behind.’
‘Whether that’s someone they never, ever managed to get off with,’ Jassy says remarkably brightly, considering the subject, ‘or someone who dumped them.’
Actually, she says the last words with the bitterness of experience.
‘Wait. Are you saying everyone is – of course! How stupid could I be? Heartache High!’
I almost give my forehead a theatrical slap for being so dumb.
Jassy and Dave regard me with all the joy of a trainer who’s just got his favourite chimp to whistle Dixie while safely juggling three chainsaws.
‘You mean everyone here has had their heart broken in some way? How unfair is that? As if we haven’t suffered enough, we all end up here, at a school for complete losers?’
‘How unfair is that?’ Dave laughs. ‘How many times have you asked yourself that very question, Steph?’
‘Wait, wait a minute!’
Something’s just dawned on me.
Something that, I think, blows a massive hole in whatever they told me earlier about Heartache High.
I look about me urgently, just checking that what I’m about to say is correct.
Jassy and Dave politely wait for me to gather my thoughts together.
‘There aren’t any adults here!’
They swap glances that say I’m stating the obvious.
‘Sure, but we don’t need them–’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that!’ I rudely interrupt Dave in my urgency to explain. ‘I mean if there aren’t any adults, no one’s aging! Which means they must leave here somehow!’
Jassy and Dave look at me like a mum and dad who have finally got around to telling their kid that the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny won’t be visiting anymore.
‘That’s because we don’t; we don’t age,’ Dave says.
He turns to Jassy.
‘How long did you say you reckon you’ve been here?’
‘Thirty years maybe; it’s hard to tell, what with the way every day just seems to blend into another.’
‘Thirty years?’ I gasp. ‘I thought you were about sixteen, seventeen at the most!’
‘That’s because she still is; me, I’ve only been here around fifteen years.’
‘We don’t age,’ Jassy says with her sixteen-year-old’s smile.
‘So we stay like this? Stay at the age we arrived here?’
Once again they swap knowing, doubtful looks.
Jassy shakes her head sadly.
‘No Steph. One day you’ll be here one minute; the next you’ll have just disappeared.’
*
Chapter 10
The only thing that kept me going throughout the rest of the day was the thought that, once I was back in my bed (yes, even that minute bed) I’d be able to dream of Iain once more.
Who knows, I kept on telling myself, it might even be a wonderful dream like the previous night’s.
I had a shower in the Girls communal bathroom. I brushed my teeth.
When I got back to my room, I slowly changed into the flimsy nightdress I’d woken up in, building my anticipation.
I’d told myself it wasn’t any use thinking of my mum and dad; as Jassy and Dave had warned me, dwelling on things like that only brought you unimaginable pain.
‘Oh,’ they’d also added, almost as an afterthought, ‘don’t go kidding yourself they’re going to send out the emergency services looking for you. It’s just one of the many things we can’t figure out about this place; how can so many kids go missing without it raising some questions in the press? Back in what some of us still mistakenly refer to as the real world – this is your real world now, Steph – we can’t remember anything like this appearing in the news, can you?’
To help me sleep, I’d brought a hot milk drink back to my room. Apparently, part of the refectory always remained open, more or less whatever you wanted being available from there at any time of the day.
As Dave had tried to explain before I’d interrupted him, adults weren’t required at Heartache High. All the chores you’d expect the school staff to take care of were performed by unseen hands.
Thankfully, sleep came quickly.
The dreams seemed to come almost at once.
I was with Iain.
Boy, was I with Iain!
Yeah, we’ve still got our clothes on; but somehow I’ve managed to make what I recognise as my regular clothes look like something out of one of the catalogues Cherry had found under her mum’s bed.
My voice has dropped an octave.
Iain gazes into my eyes like each one’s a full moon about to transform him into a howling werewolf.
I stroke his neck with a hand that seems to be pushing buttons, putting him completely under my control.
Was this really me, doing all these things?
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but this wasn’t love; it was unbridled lust!
If it were a movie, I’d be barred by mum and dad from seeing it.
Even Iain seems a bit amazed by it all.
He’s the one holding back, saying, Steph, don’t you think we’re rushing into things here?
According to my dreams, Iain obviously doesn’t live up to the reputation the school’s gossip merchants had given him.
He’s the one who’s shy, nervous – inexperienced.
(Wow, says little miss innocence here!)
Where did I learn all this stuff I’m getting up to?
Not from any books I’ve read.
Not from any magazines or films either.
These are techniques any sensible girl would be taking notes of for future use.
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*
When I wake up, I’m disappointed.
I’m still here.
Still in this pokey little room at Heartache High.
There was a part of me that was still hoping all this would turn out to be a prolonged dream and I’d wake up safe and warm back at home after all.
No such luck.
Yesterday, Jassy and Dave had told me I should just turn up for whichever class I fancied.
There was always a list in the main porch, detailing what each class would be dealing with.
It wouldn’t say who was taking it of course; if you felt you had something important to say – either something you wanted to get off your chest, or something important you thought you might have figured out – you would effectively be the lecturer for the day.
I thought about seeking out Jassy and Dave.
I thought no; I still had a ridiculous amount of things whirling around in my head that I felt better dealing with myself.
I didn’t feel like completely opening up my inner thoughts – let alone my inner turmoil – to anyone else just yet.
As I studied the list of classes, I noticed that a girl was standing just outside the porch, looking up at the carved lettering.
Chatting groups of people were passing her on either side, but she didn’t seem to realise they were there. She just looked about herself blankly, like she was too tied up in her own misery to notice anything else going on around her.
How could she not see all these passing people? It didn’t seem possible, but I’d missed them all too.
As Dave had more or less said, I’d been too wrapped up in my own sad little world to pay any interest to anyone else.
Odd people in the groups would briefly glance at her, giving her the amused or sorry looks that they’d given me in the laboratory when I’d first begun to realise they were there.
She walked right past me, like I wasn’t there.
She opened the door to a classroom, looked in on what was a full class, then turned away with a puzzled, anxious frown.
Should I approach her, help her out?
Oh sure; like I want to be the one who has to tell her, ‘Hi, welcome to Heartache High; by the way, did you know that you can never leave?’
*
Chapter 11
The class I choose is one where you just begin to pour out all your thoughts into a notebook.
It’s supposed to work as a purging exercise, getting out of your system all the negative thoughts you have about yourself, trying to come to terms with your – ultimately – self-inflicted misery.
The aim is to come up with at least an essay or a discussion that can be used to help others deal with their own problems.
Now and again, someone stands up in front of the class, some more confidently than others, some quite shy and almost stuttering through their words.
They’ll put forward an idea they’ve had about, say, what led them into stupidly falling in love with someone who was never going to return that love. Or explaining whatever selfish thing they did that ended up with them forever losing their soul mate.
Then it’s open to discussion, no holds barred.
It’s not until the third day here that I stand up in front of the class.
As soon as I get up there, I regret it.
I want to back down, to retire into my own little world once more.
But it’s a class of people who perfectly understand what I’m going through.
They can read my nervousness in my faltering actions.
‘That’s okay Steph,’ a guy called Billy says loudly yet kindly, ‘chances are you won’t be saying something we haven’t all lived through. Spill it all out; for your own good.’
‘It’s this guy, this guy called Iain…Iain Sinclair…’
*
When I’ve finished describing my ‘relationship’ with Iain, I cry.
Everyone claps. Some of the girls, even some of the boys, are crying along with me.
Everyone seems affected by my tale.
Because they’ve all been affected, of course, in an almost similar way themselves.
As I make my way back to my seat, there are supportive cries of ‘Well done Steph.’
They all appreciate my bravery in standing up there and letting all my agony pour out.
All apart from one boy.
He’s wandering around the class, unable to see me, incapable of seeing any of us.
He’s been wandering around like this now for just over two days.
Jassy says it’s not unusual.
She knew one girl who continued to aimlessly wander around for almost a month before she began to realise anyone else was here.
‘It’s part of the condition,’ Dave had said. ‘The state we’re in when we arrive here. So locked up in the little compartment of our brain we’ve retreated to, cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world because we prefer living in our dream world. A little, self-created compartment where we can think endlessly about whoever we’ve made the mistake of falling in love with.’
When one of these ‘Wanderers’ (as everyone calls them) finally wakes up to everything going on around them, it’s quite an emotional experience, especially for anyone like me who only recently went through exactly the same thing.
Yesterday, the girl I’d seen reading the carved lettering above the porch had finally begun to see the rest of the students.
At first, she’d looked terrified.
Anyone close by quickly tried to reassure her that everything was okay. That she was amongst friends. Much as Jassy and Dave had kindly helped me adjust to the shock of seeing what originally appeared to be ghosts.
But she’d broken down in tears.
Then she’d become hysterical, moving away in terror from anyone attempting to console her.
She’d run out of the room. I could still hear her wailing screams as she’d hurtled down the corridor.
Later, I saw her coming out of the surrounding woods.
She walked across the lawns in a daze.
I even wondered if, somehow, she had returned to the oblivious state she’d been in when she’d first arrived here.
But no; I could tell by the way she moved to avoid people that she could still see them.
She just didn’t want to know them.
She preferred living in her own little world.
*
Chapter 12
My dreams of Iain have been getting wilder.
I’m even slipping into daydreams of him throughout the day.
When they start, they’re so powerful, so intrusive, I have to walk out of whatever class I’m attending.
I can’t control them.
I know I should be able to.
I know that’s the whole point of the classes; to come to terms with what we’ve been suffering. To try and find a reason why we’ve clung onto nothing more than wishful thinking, rather than immersing ourselves in the real world.
To work out why we’ve been cursed in this way, simply because we’ve fallen in love.
We’ve each got our favourite classes.
Jassy, she likes comparing what we’re going through with mythological and fairy tales. All of which she regards as being ‘the collective consciousness of human emotions and conditions’.
Yeah, me too Jassy.
Dave loves trying to work out the physics of Heartache High; like how and where it exists in relation to the world we’ve left behind.
(Everything we study here comes from the collective knowledge of all the students. There aren’t any reference books to be found anywhere.)
Me, I decide I prefer writing my though
ts down. Even though, when it comes to using the old typewriters we have here, I discover I have dyslexic fingers.
I have to retype each line about five times.
Each page is so thick with correction fluid, it cracks when I pick one up.
I call it my primer; my Heartache High’s Primer for Students.
Writing all my thoughts down, discussing what I’ve written with the others, trying to work out a way of helping others come to terms and resolve what they’re going through – I find it all quite cathartic.
That’s one of Jassy’s words by the way, cathartic.
‘It means cleansing, a purgative; from the Greek kathartikos.’
I even begin to flatter myself that I’m following my own advice and thinking less and less of Iain; but I’m kidding myself.
I can’t let him go.
I don’t want to let him go.
He’s the only real pleasure I have; thinking of being with him, of loving him, of feeling his love for me.
My love.
My curse.
*
I can feel his touch.
I can feel his kisses.
It’s torture.
It’s bliss.
When I say I can feel his touch, I mean my skin tingles, it heats up.
My mouth responds to the sense of his lips against mine.
It’s embarrassing if anyone’s around to see me.
But I can’t stop it.
I don’t want it to stop.
I don’t want it to ever stop.
I head off back to my room.
Where I can enjoy the sense of being alone with Iain.
*
Chapter 13
‘Steph; we’re worried about you.’
It’s Dave.
He and Jassy have ‘accidently’ run into me as I make my way back to my room from the refectory.
I’m not in the middle of a day dream.
But I’m hoping that, once I get back to my room, I can begin to experience one.
It’s like a drug.
A drug I can’t resist.
The most powerful drug known to man (and woman).
Love.
It’s probably the most destructive drug too.
‘It’s not unusual; we’ve seen it before,’ Jassy says, giving me the kindest smile she can muster.
‘A regression,’ Dave adds, like he’s Heartache High’s resident psychiatrist. ‘A retreating back into your imagination, where you feel most secure, most rewarded.’
I’m a bit irritated by their way of talking down to me, like I’m some idiot who needs their help.
But I’m also flattered that they like me enough to notice that I’m not working things out as well as I’ve been making out in the classes I’ve attended.
