Getaway

Chapter 18

Despite what I had said to him, I did not meet up with Fletcher that evening.

Dinner had been a relatively sombre affair, neither Dad nor I had apologised to each other yet – not that he entirely had anything to apologise for – but he had told me to carry on with my holiday.

“You might as well make the most of the time we have left,” he told me, “Kyle is going to be fine but I don’t want to risk anything tonight. You go watch the show though.”

I nodded and went along with the plan, but when Dad had begun to make his way back to his room with Kyle, I grabbed a cup of tea – I was not exactly in the mood for hot chocolate – and took the long way back to my room, making sure to shut the door quietly after me to make sure I didn’t make too much noise.

My mind was still in the middle of a freefall, my thoughts bounding around in my brain like uncontrollable toddlers, unwilling to settle on one decision. One moment my heart was set on something, the next minute I wanted the exact opposite. All I really wanted to do was fall asleep and not wake up for a good twenty-four hours and yet that was the exact thing my body didn’t seem to be capable of.

The room was quiet, the air-conditioning was back on – the heat had somehow managed to seep in – and so the only sound was a constant buzzing in the room, it made it feel like something was drilling into my brain and I felt the once familiar headaches starting to return.

They had become a frequent occurrence after my mum’s disappearance, the Doctor’s attributing it to stress. They hadn’t asked after my mother, they hadn’t known to ask and so put it down to too much homework, too much worrying about school. The teacher’s had started to take pity on me, as did my fellow students and I hated it. But at least they didn’t know.

But now the headaches were back, after they had been gone for at least two months and the only thing that could stop them, a pair of shiny tablets, were at home in my bedside draw hidden away because I didn’t want to look at them, they showed weakness, they showed stress.

And if the headaches were returning then it could mean only one thing, I was over thinking things, sending my brain into an overdrive that it just couldn’t handle.

I lay on the bed, buried my head in the pillow and screamed.

It was all too much like mum. I was at fault for her leaving; I was at fault for Kyle nearly drowning. It seemed that everything was always my fault. And this hurt a lot more than it had done with mum, because this was most definitely my fault and I had cared so much for Kyle. Made sure that he had his lunch packed every day before he left for school and that his uniform was freshly washed and ironed ready for the day. I had made sure that his life was good, was safe and then one small slip had sent everything spiralling.

And it was all down to Fletcher.

It was by no means his fault, but if it had not been for Fletcher then I might have been down in the sea with Kyle. If I had not been with Fletcher then I would have thought twice when Kyle told me he even wanted to go into the sea with his friends. If I had not met Fletcher then nothing would have changed, everything would have gone on as normal and this would not have happened.

I changed into my pyjamas slowly; jarring movements were not particularly welcome in my given state and then lay down under the covers pulling them tight around me. They material was scratchy, the pillows lumpy but they were a lot more comforting than standing bored in the middle of the show, trying to make conversation with Fletcher when my mind was all over the place.

He wouldn’t understand. There was no doubt in my mind that he would try and it seemed that after last night he seemed to think that he was perfectly capable of helping me through every situation. But last night he had seen just a small side of me, and I wasn’t sure that he would like the rest.