Chapter 1—She's Coming
The grass was cold and wet. The soggy mud clung to my jacket and the winter air bit at my skin. I quickly got up from where I fell and ran. I had no direction, I just ran. I would run as far as I could go, and find somewhere to hide until she was gone. The dark, moody sky hid me and my clothes were too dark to be seen from a distance. As long as I stayed out of the lights I would be fine.
Choking on air, I eventually ended up in the English classrooms, right at the edge of the school. I climbed into the window of a darkened room and shut it behind me. I didn't want her to find the way I got in. "You totally like him…" My hands shook, not just from the cold, but from the fear too. "As a friend, Alys, as a friend." How long would it take them? If they were successful, that was.
I hid behind the teacher's desk at the far end of the room, they always seemed to be in a place where nobody could see behind—especially people standing in the door—so they could hide their special stash I assume. I curled up under it, where a persons' feet are supposed to go, as small as I could make myself. The room was as cold and dark as outside. For all I knew, I could be here until morning. I couldn't help but yearn for a little company.
"SOPHIE!" The conversations ran through my head. "SOPHIE!" The shock of where I was and what had happened. I barely knew what it exactly was, but it wasn't safe. "I hope you have a good reason for interrupting my rehearsal." My own brother, the calmest boy I knew, running as if for his own life but in reality for mine. How could that be safe?
"Sophie, get your stuff. We need to go. Now." It's funny. If I'd just been let out there and then I might have been just that; safe. Well, might have been. "I'm afraid you'll have to wait till the end of the rehearsal, it's only another five minutes." But then, I wonder if it was a sealed fate from the start. It's like my blood runs so deep in her own veins that she can always find me. A bond, so dark but so strong that I could never run, I could never hide. Some things are so ruthless that there is no haven safe enough to hide in.
"It's not…her… is it?" Even now after—what—ten years? Almost. No, eight. Even after eight years, each time I still check if it's her. Each time I still cross my fingers hoping that God might have spared me this time. And each time he's thrown me to the most vicious of beasts. Despite this, when I find it's her I still stop for a split second and think:
Mum.
"Uh, where do you think you're going Miss Carter? Rehearsals aren't over yet." Mum. How weird… It's such a safe word, isn't it? Mum. One of the first that a baby says… one of the last of a sleepy child before morning…the cry for help that never fails. It's the biggest word of love, I suppose, there is. Well, besides the great word itself. It's safe. So much safety in just one word—one short, three letter word. How weird is that?
Because there's no safety in the word 'mum'.
"I have to go."
"Sophia Carter, we have one rehearsal left before the biggest concert of the year and if you don't sit back down you won't be welcome to play." "In that case there's an absent seat whatever happens. I'm leaving." I think the worst part is when you can't tell people. We all live in a world where everyone acts okay but you peel back the cover and there's this dark storm that's on-going but forever hidden under a flimsy curtain of beauty and safety and norm.
Sometimes it becomes so comfortable to have this thin veil over the live volcano that's become of your life, that when it erupts and the curtain is torn, your secrets and social safety are ripped away from you. It makes you feel so vulnerable. Perhaps more so by this than by the actual problem. "She's already here… Sophie, I'm so sorry." Sometimes. "Plan?" Sometimes not.
"SOPHIE CARTER! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!"
And I suppose it's when your mum comes down the corridor with a pistol and a mind set to kill that you realise that your social safety is irrelevant.