Chapter One
I couldn’t take any more of this shit. It was like being a soldier, caught up in the middle of a war, only I didn’t believe in either side that had decided to take up arms. I didn’t want to participate in this tragedy taking place, all I wanted to do was find a way out of it all. I did enjoy spending time with Vicki, don’t get me wrong. The games that we played with her were great, but I knew Trent better than he knew himself. Eventually, he’d get tired of her, he’d grow bored, and then I’d be left asking him, ‘what about Vicki’?
And he’d respond with: ‘who’?
I knew that in time he’d forget the fun that we had together, or separately, with Vicki. I’d watched the same thing happen with Claire, and with so many others. Ok, maybe I was being harsh, because Trent knew who Claire was but just as quickly as she’d caught his eye, he’d lost interest and moved on to the next conquest. Now, I was starting to take responsibility for the past; we’d taken these poor innocent flowers and turned them into thorny roses, and we had to accept the consequences of our cruel intentions.
Christmas had come and gone already; it was an eventful one with Vicki around for not only Christmas, but the New Year too. Now, it was all over, and we were back to hard work, and thinking about the next stage in our lives, heading out to the real world and life at a university.
The sad part was that both Claire and Sarah wanted to stay with us during the holidays, which is what they had done the previous years.
“Claire, go spend the holidays with your dad, he’ll miss you,” I said to Claire, knowing her family didn’t miss her at all. That’s why she was here, after all, he didn’t want the inconvenience of having a child around.
I could tell that she wasn’t happy when she said, “Daddy won’t know that I’m there. He’s got a new wife, I’m no longer his little girl.”
I hated it when she said that, because I knew that she was daddy’s little girl. When we took away her innocence, both Trent and I claimed that we were helping her get over the death of her mom. Claire’s mother killed herself, the same way that Stephanie had done when she wanted, but didn’t get, Carlton’s attention. Her mom had left Claire broken hearted. We claimed that we were healing her pain, and now we’d dumped her like a bag of trash.
I could see new pain in her eyes as she said to me, “You and Trent don’t want me either. No one does. I’ll go back home, but then I’ll be back again.”
I knew that it was a warning, not a reminder, by her tone. I told Trent what she said but he dismissed it and told me that I was paranoid. With a shrug he’d continued, careless as always. “Ah she’ll get over it!”
Part of me hoped that he was right, but my gut feeling told me otherwise. As the days turned into nights and the New Year was upon us, the more I came to see Claire’s texts during the holidays as a cry for help, as a threat to all that we held dear, as a warning of what was to come. I knew that my gut feeling was right, and Trent was wrong.
Vicki was tempted to go visit her uncle who was some kind of rapper, but she didn’t in the end. Trent, and I managed to convince her to stay, and she didn’t regret it one bit. I made sure she had a good time because I knew she would have been disappointed with her uncle. He’d told her that he was one of the hottest artists to come out in a while, but I was a huge fan of rap, and I’d never heard of him until I looked him up. I found out a lot about her uncle then, things like the fact that he had less likes on his YouTube channel than I did, and I wasn’t even in the business. I hated to burst her bubble and tell her that her uncle wasn’t as hot as both her aunt and he claimed to be, if anything he was a nameless, wannabe online.
I didn’t even have to pay for advertising on my channel, I didn’t need to because Claire was my number one fan. She did her best to make sure that everyone saw my new posts, when I could be bothered to put them up, most of the time, the videos consisted of us doing some stupid shit at some party.
I hated the first day of class after the New Year. It seemed to drag on even longer than usual. The whole day was surreal, as if we’d had a three month break instead of only two weeks. I wasn’t concentrating, but thinking about everything, and anything apart from being in class today.
“Hey, can we talk?”
Claire asked as the class I’d zoned out in came to an end. I’d done my best to look as if I was paying attention, but I wasn’t really there at all, not mentally.. Not today. Maybe being hungover every single day was taking a toll, because my head was still spinning, and I was dying for something to eat. I knew I was taking a leaf out of mom’s book. She had a very destructive past, and I felt as if history was repeating itself. I didn’t want to go down that road of self-destruction and shame, constantly seeing disappointment on my family’s face. The same way disappointment that Mom now avoided.. I remember, things like all those times she was supposed to take me to the store when I got out of school, but she’d always forget by the time I got home. She would just stare at me as if I was a zombie, something so far out of reality that she couldn’t comprehend who I was, let alone what I was. Sometimes, I had the impression it was because she didn’t even recognize me.
“Claire…”
Before I could even finish my sentence, “No, you don’t have a class. Don’t even try it. Look I really need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”
She looked around furtively, as if someone was stalking her, and she was obviously panicking. I felt my temper flare a little as I realized that she was going to cry as her eyes started to fill with tears. I hadn’t seen her since we all came back to school, and part of me had hoped that she was still pissed about Trent and I not wanting to spend Christmas with her. That way she would avoid us like the plague. I didn’t want any drama in this new year, but the Hawks had a way of attracting it, like a moth to a flame.
I nodded, thinking back to what I said to Trent last night. She was innocent back when we first met her, shy even. I looked at her as I stood up and noticed that she had heavy bags under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept, and probably hadn’t eaten properly for a while. She’d lost a lot of weight in a short space of time. Her uniform hung on her thinner frame, a couple of sizes too big because of her weight loss.
“Where do you want to talk?” I sighed thinking about the headache that was burning inside my head. A confrontation was the last thing that I needed right now. Another drink, hair of the dog, was my best hangover cure, and it always worked like a charm.
“We can go to the cafeteria. It’ll be quiet now.”
I nodded, thinking that she really wanted to talk. She didn’t even suggest that we should go up to her room so she could give me a taste of what I’d been missing over the holidays.
It felt like all eyes were on me, I could feel it. The rest of the students stared at us, as I turned around and walked behind Claire as she led the way. I had no sense of direction or anything else at the moment. I was about to tell her to forget it, that I needed to be in the right frame of mind to have this conversation, because I felt overburdened, that I had all the weight of the world on my back.
I sighed as the walk to the cafeteria, which normally took a few minutes, seemed to stretch into hours. The simple act of lifting up my legs and breathing felt like a chore. As soon as she opened the door, the only thing that I wanted to do was sit down. Luckily, Claire was right and the cafeteria was empty. I needed to know what was up and find a way to pacify her so that I could make a quick getaway to my suite, sober up a bit, and carry on the day as a normal student. I slumped down on the bench that was the closest to the door, and dumped my bag in the floor. Claire followed suit, and then let it all pour out.