Fight Or Flight

Chapter 12 - Resistant Materials

Chapter 12 - Resistant Materials

It was the day the fog fell. A thick, impenetrable fog, the kind you find out here when you're trapped between town and countryside.

I remember we were all sat in class, on the top floor of the four-storey block, bored, watching as it sneaked down during period four. Watching, as it spread out, covering the playing fields, the brook, the woods and the entire town by the time the final bell rang.

At the final bell, the school emptied to the sound of high-pitched screams, childish yelps and the usual assortment of strange grunts, as the younger kids vanished into the thick fog, creating pandemonium as they charged about, flinging their bags in the air, wrestling, fighting, spitting - you know, the usual stuff the lower school kids get up to when their world is altered ever so slightly.

It was Valentine's Day. A day of love. The day we'd arranged to go over the other side of the brook and get wasted. Just me, Layla, Adam and Ed.

Little did anybody know back then, as we left school, what would be waiting for us the next day - once the fog had lifted - out beyond the playing fields, in the small wood, on the other side of the brook.

I was one of the few who didn't leave school when everybody else did that day. I'd been rehearsing after school with our band. We'd been practising a couple of songs for an assembly the next day: a half-term treat for the Year 7 kids. Hour after hour, week after week, trying to hone our sound. Make our music perfect. But that night, my heart wasn't in it. It hadn't been in it for a long time. I was bored with the music they wanted to play. I didn't want to play Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop anymore. I wanted to stop.

I left early, the rest of the band pissed off at my lack of effort, my lack of love for the music. Their music.

I headed to the bus stop, bag over my shoulder, my guitar in hand. I'd been angry all day and ignored - then started to delete - the texts Adam kept sending me throughout the day.

Give me 1 more chance, the last one said. Come over the bruk tonite. Gonna b a gr8 party!

We'd split up again. Because he'd swerved me again. Swerved me once too often. The Friday before, he'd been back over the brook again. Without me, without telling me. Without inviting me.

***

It was on Monday that week, the rumours about him and Becca Smith first started drifting around the school. At break time, I was sent a picture of what looked like Adam and another girl kissing. The anonymous text said it was Becca Smith. She was blonde, like Becca. And both of them were kissing inside the wooden den on the other side of the brook. It looked like Becca. The text said it was Becca.

Between lessons that Monday morning, I was walking down the corridor and I bumped into Tammy White. She dragged me to one side, dragged me into an alcove close to the main hall, and told me that in Biology everyone was talking about Adam and Becca. She said that Jade Ainsworth had been mouthing off about it and had posted pictures of the two of them on her Facebook page. A photo of Adam and Becca Smith kissing. Loads of people had been commenting, saying shady stuff about me, too, apparently. She said that she was telling me for my own good.

I believed Tammy, she wasn't as bitchy as other girls and was telling me for my own good. I knew that. No doubt I was the topic of much gossip. Girls, and even some of the boys, would be whispering behind my back, pointing at me as I walked the corridors: there goes the girl whose fella's doing the dirty behind her back. Such an idiot, she doesn't even know what's going on.

Before the next lesson began, I texted Layla and asked if we could meet up; I needed to talk to her.

I didn't mention Adam.