Maverick

Chapter 29

I pulled into the rainy, grey tarmac lot slowly, the early morning rain pattering lightly against my windscreen. Finding a space easily, I watched as a bright orange truck slid past me, the greasy-faced boy in the drivers seat flashing me a grin as I let him past, and I cut the engine. Taking a moment, I slumped back in my seat a little, letting the mist and rain droplets shield myself from view. Kids from my class, sporting dark raincoats and bright lever-arch files sauntered into college amicably, chatting and laughing with each other. I looked on, wanting to be like them yet thinking of nothing worse at the same time. After a while the bell rung out, echoing across the student lot sonorously, and I got out the car, walked over to the boot to get out my backpack as the rain blurred my vision and dampened my hair lightly. As the rain intensified I pulled up my hood and followed a group of unisex raincoats towards the entrance, shouldering my backpack and keeping my eyes firmly fixed to the ground. Today was not the day to be noticed. No day was the day to be noticed.

"Hey, Reece!"

Eight in the morning, and already too late. Sighing, I turned around to face Benny, a new intake like me, a sweet, rubber-faced boy with deep dimples and a wayward shock of bright red hair. "Hey, Benny, Frankenstein essay due next period. You got it covered?"

"Ah, shit." Benny rubbed a freckled hand over his face. "Knew there was something I'd forgot. Do you mind if I...?"

I reached into my backpack and pulled out my stapled creation. "Sure, Benny. No worries." We weren't lit partners for nothing.

"Thanks. Hey, do you think you could give me a lift home today? I got a ton of Tech stuff to bring home."

"Sorry," I hitched my backpack further up my shoulder as disappointment clouded Benny's expression. "I can't today. Maverick's picking me up."

"Oh," Benny said, "right." My heart sunk as I watched my only friend walk away from me hurriedly, clutching at my essay as if he were afraid I would grab it back. In this place, I only had to mention Maverick's name and I could clear a corridor.

When I first started college, barely over a month ago now, I had done everything I could to hide my identity. I didn't tell anyone my name. I wore a hoodie constantly, even when, by some miracle, the sun was shining. Some students recognised me, either from my last school or from the avid descriptions from town gossip, but they were always too scared or too wary of my history to say hi. Not that I expected a warm welcome. Why would anyone want to know the girl who had stood there and watched while her best friend had struggled with depression, and eventually committed suicide?

Suicide. Yes, that's what they were saying now. The local press had started it. What happened as a result spread like wildfire. While some locals insisted to the papers that Ezra was the happiest kid they had known and had just been the victim of a terrible occurrence of fate, others still stood by their belief that what he had done was deliberate. Not that I could argue with them. His diagnosis of depression didn't help his case.

Sure, he had been far out. Isaac knew the lay-out of the beach like the back of his hand; there was no way he miscalculated the position of that rock. It had been Isaac himself who had nicknamed it 'Deadman's Head'. If he had been alive, he would have laughed at the irony of it.

But Ezra wasn't alive. He was dead. Cremated; his body just a mere mountain of ashes floating in the sea, where we had all gathered one misty Monday morning to remember his life. We did it on top of the cliff face; no priest, no prayers, no promises of an afterlife. It's what Ezra would have wanted. That's what Gabby told us, anyway. Ezra had never believed in a God. Ever since his mother died, he had thought the whole idea of religion to be kind of fruitless. He knew that he wasn't going to be saved. Even if there was a Heaven, Ezra said, he wouldn't be allowed in anyway. "God doesn't like gays," he had said.