The sky is greyer than it should be at this time of year. Clouds stretch across it like ink-stained tissues floating on a pond of murky water, ready to buckle and sink at any moment. The odd heat presses on, even when soft rain begins to tumble from the cloudy roof above me. I smoothly climb up the two large rocks, trying not to look like a turd, and I see the little ‘cave’. Flat out: the cave is just a hole between two rocks that lean against each-other at the top. It smells like the sea and the walls should feel coarse but they’re slippery and damp and fantastically soothing against grazed palms. If they were to collapse on us, my mangled body would be uncovered amongst the wreckage in…shorts. No thank you.

I offer the other three a pathetic little wave that I instantly regret and scramble across to situate myself against the wall next to Ash. Opposite Ashie, with his gangly legs crossed, sits Noah and further down at the back of the nook lays a tired-looking Stacey.

“Hell not fun enough for you?” Stacey asks. Her dishevelled, fading red hair is pulled into a loose plait behind her head and for a fleeting moment she kinda morphs into the timid little girl I remember from primary school and my stomach feels queasy or sad or guilty or something. Not my problem. Never will be.

I grin sweetly at her.

“Hell wanted to hire me as their party planner. I kindly declined…I don’t look as good in summer clothing.”

Ashie shuffles a mangled deck of cards and Noah’s lips feed me the faintest of smiles. Faint, maybe, but with spiked with overlying smugness. He knew I would come. Brat. I fell into his trap of…of what? I discover that I’m smiling in reciprocation and quickly correct this by switching to a comfy scowl.

My leg dangles out into the air to remind me that there is still an outside. A gradually drenched leg is way better than the pressure that arises in my chest in enclosed spaces. So I straddle the edge between the cave and the outside world.

Ash eyes me off with a weird look, shakes her head to herself, and breaks the silence by turning to Stacey.

“In answer to your question Stace, yes I have a boyfriend. Two years. He’s proposing when I finish school.”

Guarantee you we all wear the same face: mortification.

Stacey is the only one to speak though.

“That’s so…so…young! You’re not Christian or anything…it’s not like you’re sprinting down the aisle to finally dispose of your virginity. Why would you cut your life like that?”

I swear I hear Noah clearing his throat with unease.

“It’s their life. Whatever.” I mumble to change the subject, which of course alerts the redheaded wench to focus down on me.

“Ok…Theo. Your turn. Girlfriend?...Boyfriend?”

“What is this? Breakfast Club bonding time? Are we each gonna come out of this a nerd, a princess, an athlete, a basket-case and a criminal?”

Ashie places the card deck down and Noah cuts it in half. The cards are momentarily swallowed by his long, delicate fingers before he places them down again.

Ash then feeds me this funny sideways smile.

“What?”

“Closet B-Club fan. I think I’m crushing on you a bit now, Theo.”

Face is hot. Mouth is dry. Want…pancakes. Mmmm yes, pancakes. With…cheese? Summer is a disgusting season. Especially when it’s supposed to be autumn and summer just hasn’t received the message that it’s time to scoot.

My shoulders force a shrug. “Midday movie. Nothing more, nothing less.” I reply about as casually as a pantomime. Noodles. Yes! That’s my craving!

Stacey sits herself up slowly, like a big jungle cat. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yeah, answer the question, Clare.” Ashie snorts victoriously to inform me that this is not the last of her witticisms towards me letting my guard down.

I wipe my hands on the legs of my shorts. “Ok, well. Yes.”

“Huh? Yes to a girlfriend or to a boyfriend?”

“Yes to both.”

I stare straight at Noah to drink in his reaction. He’s unfazed. Instead, he picks up the cards and watches the outside world, where the rain has picked up and I really dread climbing back down the rocks because if any of our group were to slip and fall, Karma would make certain that it’s me.

Noah is silently, meticulously shuffling the cards into oblivion before dealing them out to Ash, Stacey and himself.

“So you consider yourself in a relationship then?” The kid eventually asks me, peeking up from his own universe for a moment.

“Uh, Yeah.”

“With two people?”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

His eyes stare holes through his hands to avoid looking at me before replying with a gentle grin dancing across his lips, “You’re right Theodore. I don’t get it. I don’t really care to. It’s your business.”

“You’re fuckin' right it is, Noah.”

And that, ladies and gents, is how you make a room (or cave) feel uncomfortable.

So how does having both a boyfriend and a girlfriend work? We all like each-other equally. Simple as that. What I feel for Zoe, Zoe feels for Sam and Sam feels for me. If you stick to the rules, having two lovers with no drama or jealousy means never sitting around and thinking about what to do next.

Then, the little goon leans over towards me.

“What on Earth did you do to yourself?” He inquires, boycotting the girls and their card game and sliding over to inspect my bloodiest knee. It’s a lot messier than previously thought, now that my attention has been drawn to it. Both instinct and my elbow shove him away.

He digs into one of the zillion pockets of his khaki board shorts and pulls out a tiny roll of bandage, some soaked cotton buds (Wow. Useful.), and a little bottle of brown liquid crap.

“Don’t think you’re touching me with that shit, Dr. Quinn.”

“Bend your knee, Theodore.”

Ashie winks at him. Conspirators. Who knew they’d all become bestest chums while I was Indiana-fucking-Jones-ing through the bush?

Like second nature, he pours some of the browny-yellowy-orangey stuff onto the least soggy of the cotton balls.

“Just you try it, Kid.”

When the warning spills out of my mouth, his eyebrows slide up his face in the mother way and I know I’m not getting out of this with verbal trickery. Man, home is too far away right now.

“I guess you’d prefer it to get infected, then? Perhaps some Gangrene would make you look ‘cooler’?”

He pushes my foot in to buckle my knee so abruptly that it makes me grit my teeth and inhale with a sharp hiss.

“It’ll sting a bit Theodore, but we need to be sure there’s no dirt or gravel stuck in there. You’re quite fortunate you don’t need stitches to match the ones on your temple. You’d look like all your insides were rushing to burst out of you.”

Probably the most he’s ever said in one hit.

“It’s so gross.” Stacey chokes, mesmerised by my wound.

Ash giggles to herself. “Hm. Teddy bear bursting with fluff.”

I’m slapped with this image of myself, limbs stitched onto my torso, kinda like Frankenstein. FrankenTheo. But I’m not anybody’s creation of beauty. I’m not made of other people. It’s as if my body has rejected them or something like that. Then I zoom in closer and I look more like a teddy bear – eyes of glass and lips stitched together into a permanent smirk.

Stuffed with stuffing and feeling nothing. Stuffed with stuffing and feeling nothing.

I used to be my mother’s ‘Teddy bear’. It’s what Harry called me too. She stopped when...

Stuffed with stuffing.

See what happens if you let yourself think too hard? If you actually listen to corny kids movies and allow your imagination to do things? It does scary things, not nice things like they’d lead you to believe.

Static. Static. Static. Come back.

My knee screams at me, providing an interruption to my polluted thought-wave.

“Watch it, Lockart!”

He ignorantly presses the disinfectant onto my wound. He’s not even being rough. Just stupid.

“You’re welcome.”

Noah then proceeds to dab at the graze. It’s cold and it throbs and my eyes watch the top of his damp hair for distraction. His other hand holds my knee still as he leans in to inspect the wound. How long has my hand been gripping onto his arm? Why am I being such a damn baby about this?

My jagged breaths echo through the moments of silence in the cave and I see that it’s going to get dark and rainy soon. I have no torch or umbrella. Indiana needs no umbrella, so neither does Theodore Lakkis. What Theodore Lakkis does need is dry clothes, a smoke, some food, preferably a good fondle of the Mister by an attractive person (which would probably be myself in the current situation) and an uninterrupted sleep without a lanky church-fiend sharing my damn sleeping space.

Sincerely over it.

Once Noah has smoothed the bandage onto my knee, I mumble something about heading back to camp to the others, in which they all actually agree with me and as I climb down the rocks, I am just thankful that it’s too muggy to have a campfire.

Someone’s anxious, Lord

Kum-Bah-Yah.

Someone’s drained my Lord,

Kum-Bah-Yah

Someone’s edgy Lord

Kum-Bah-Yah

Oh Lord, Kum-Bah-Yah.

What? an update?

In answer to your question dear reader, yes. I am now on uni holidays.

Sorry this chapter was such a strange one, hope you kind of liked it anyway!

Thank you so so so much for reading if you've made it this far :)

And a billboard-sized thanks to my reviewers: Dramatizer, Kazoua, Sychaeus and Catseye Rose

Xx