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“It’s okay. You can trust me.”
Just do it, I tell myself again.
“I don’t want to scare you but I’m coming down,” he says, and I block out his voice because it is so familiar and the familiarity makes my heart beat fast and I know I have to get out. Just do it, I tell myself. Slowly I watch him crouch and then there is his hand on the sheet ready to pull it up, ready to grab me out of that space and do whatever he wants to do, whatever he may have done to Ha
I realise, after a moment or two, that I am not alone. Slowly I look up, beyond the tree trunk, higher than the branches, to the very top. There, in broad daylight, is the boy in my dream staring down at me. It’s like he has climbed out of that nocturnal world that I refuse to visit anymore and has decided to track me down. The sun blinds me as I look up, trying to cover my eyes, but then I hear a sound and I realise that he has brought the sobbing creature from the tree.
I feel hunted, with no place to hide. No solace, no belonging. Just an empty need to keep moving away from whatever or whoever it is that’s after me.
As usual, what awaits me when I get home is dependency. Ten questions before I can even get to the bottom of the stairs. About maths equations and parent pick-ups and permission to go to town and laundry crap. Then there is the nightly job of looking through every item of clothing and through the cupboard of our latest resident arsonist, checking to see if she has attended her weekly counselling session and having her sign a contract stating that she won’t burn us in our beds that night.
Once I’ve been assured of that I go to the kitchen to see if those on duty have prepared di
On most days the roster works perfectly and on other days it is a total disaster. By six that night I haven’t even reached the stairs to my room and when word comes that our House co-ordinator is coming around to check our rooms, the juniors especially are in a frenzy.
Later, I pass the phone stand and give it a glance before I begin walking up the stairs and I see two words on the notepad that stop me dead in my tracks.
“Who wrote this?” I manage to say, breathlessly.
No answer because I don’t think they’ve heard me.
“Who wrote this?” Still nothing. “Who fucking wrote this note?”
Silence. But a different kind. The year nines, tens, and elevens appear on the second and third landings, their faces shocked. The juniors come out of study, standing in the corridor watching me.
“I…I did.” Chloe P. stands there, Jessa next to her, an arm on her shoulder like some kind of angel of mercy.
“When did she ring?”
“I don’t…I could hardly hear…”
I walk over and grab her by the arm. “What did she say?” I’m shaking her. “I told you to call me if she rang. Doesn’t anyone listen to me around here?”
I don’t realise until she’s crying that my fingernails are pinching into her and Jessa is gently trying to dislodge me. She’s crying as well, as are half the year sevens. The rest of my House are looking at me like I’m some kind of demented monster. I leave them standing there and start to walk upstairs, my hands shaking, clutching the note, wanting it to have more than the words HANNAH CALLED on it. I want a number or a message. I want anything.
Raffaela comes down the stairs towards me. “You look terrible. What’s happening?”
I want to slow down the pace of my heart but I can’t. The more I hear her speak, the harder it beats.
“Everyone’s…” she begins.
“What? Everyone’s what? Disappointed? Thinks I’ve lost it? Thinks someone else should be doing this?”
She stares at me for a moment, a cold angry look on her face. A look I’ve never seen before. “You know your problem?” she asks quietly. “It’s that you’re never interested in what anyone else is feeling. What I was trying to say before you rudely, as usual, interrupted me, is that all of us are worried about you, not about this situation, and we think you should just try to get some sleep and let us take over but you don’t care because the difference between you and us is that you fly with…with…I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Airline and we fly with a friendlier one.”
It draws a crowd. I think Raffaela raising her voice tends to do that. It’s mostly seniors and year tens, but I know that the juniors are listening from downstairs. The past leaders of my House would be rolling in their graves if they knew about the shouting and mayhem that has taken place in this House since they left.
“You’re right,” I say, walking up the rest of the stairs. “I don’t give a shit.”
In my room I lie on my bed, sick to the stomach, and I want to cry because my mind is working too much. All I know is that there is something not right. It’s in my dreams, it’s inside my heart, and without Ha
Chapter 11
It is dark, surreally dark, and I’m hanging upside down from the tree. My legs are hooked over a branch and my arms stretched as far as they can go. From upside-down I see the silhouette of the boy, but this time he is on the ground.
“If I fall, will you catch me?” I call out to him.
He doesn’t answer and begins to walk away. I feel myself slip. One leg first, the position so painful that I am perspiring like hell.
“Hey!” I call out again. “Will you catch me?”
He turns around. “Catch yourself, Taylor.”
I can no longer hold on. My scream hurts my own ears. The ground comes quickly and I hit it with a sickening thud.
I avoid the House front. I notice that most of the students have started eating di
I begin to develop a pattern. During the day I hide outside Ha
There’s a point just outside Ha