She grinned ear to ear. “It’s true, though. So stop with that rubbish and actually live a little, yeah? Make your own smut stories out of your real life. You used to jump the hottest men. I swear. Remember the guys at last year’s Royal Show? Oh, my God, I’ll never forget them lining up to you like that. You’d have thought you were the ride instead.”
Still laughing, I looked back on that day. “It was such a cold day.”
“Yeah, and I ended up paying for everything, asshole.”
“It’s not my fault someone pickpocketed me. I bet you it was that granny that snarled at us too.”
Now she laughed. “Maybe it was that hot guy you were sitting next to.”
My heart squeezed at the memory of Stranger. I thought of him often. I didn’t know what to call him, so Stranger sort of just stuck. Fuck, he had been a sight to behold, but I thought more about the conversation we had than anything. I’d never had such a bizarre encounter with someone before – and even after.
“No, it wasn’t him,” I said with certainty on a dreamy sigh. “But he was extremely sexy, wasn’t he?”
“The sexiest.”
I swallowed my disappointment at having not seen him again. I really thought I would. That he was interested in me enough to reach out.
When cards interrupted my vision, I groaned in irritation. “God, Em, I don’t want to pick a bloody card!”
“Yes, you do. You know somewhere inside of you there’s still that crazy, rebellious babe. The sooner you pick a card, the sooner she’ll return to me.”
I looked at Emily’s determined face. When she was stubborn like this, nothing in the world was going to stop her from having her way. So I sighed dramatically and picked a random card. I turned it over and read her writing, noting already that the marker she’d written with looked awfully fresh.
Party this Friday with your best, most beautiful friend =)
I glared at Emily. “Your desperation is just sad.”
“What does it say?” she asked innocently.
“Don’t look at me like that. You know what it says because you planted this card.”
She gasped, insulted. “I did not!”
“Then show me the other cards in your hands.”
She moved away and quickly put the cards back into her purse. “You know that’s against the rules. We’re not meant to look at the cards.”
“And making a whole batch with the same dare is against the rules too.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “You have no proof. You picked the card, you read the card, and now you must do as the card says or else the Dare Card Gods above will smite you to death and subject you to an eternity of grovelling to a million Emily clones.”
“And if I prefer that to this?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re going to go out this Friday, and we’re going to have a lot of fun. I promise. Once you’re over this stupid fear of showing people a few little facial scars, then you’re going to be yourself again. I just know it.”
Emily was too optimistic. Too glass half-full type of person. She thought any problem could be rectified easily with a little persistence. Which made this whole situation difficult, because I knew my life would never be the same again. It wasn’t just the scars – and they were far from little as she just stated – it was to do with who I was. I knew myself before the attack. I’d had an identity. And while I wasn’t very proud of that identity, it was all I knew.
Now I was just lost. So scatter-brained with life, I sought refuge by escaping in everything. From studying, to sketching, to reading those smutty books she laughed at me for. It kept my mind off life. And the truth was, I wasn’t ready to confront the world just yet. But then again, when would I ever be?
Maybe I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone. Maybe to stop being afraid, I had to confront my fear.
Chapter Three
Haven’t Forgotten You
The house was a tomb. It was so freaking cold, it was warmer outside than inside.
After another round of puking in the morning, I washed myself and sat down in a lawn chair in the backyard. Directly under the sun and feeling its heat, I did a bit of sketching before turning my Kindle on for a light read. It wasn’t long before last night’s lack of sleep caught up to me. I fell into a light doze, until the sound of the front door slamming shut jolted me awake.
“Claire,” Mum called. “Where are you?”
“Backyard!”
She opened the sliding door to the yard and stepped out. She looked exhausted after a night shift in her nurse’s uniform and her chestnut hair in a messy ponytail. Her face looked a little rundown, the bags under her eyes dimming the green of her irises. She stopped in front of me with a few bags of groceries in her hands and said, “What are you doing today?”
I shrugged. “Homework. You?”
“Was a really long shift,” she said with a yawn. “We’re short-staffed too. Awful. Might sleep most of the afternoon away. Was thinking we could go to the shops and do something. Thursday is late night, so everything’s still open. A bit of perusing might be fun, right?”
“Perusing for what?”
“I don’t know. Cold weather will pass soon. Do you need any clothes?”
“No.”
“Well, you can’t wear sweaters through summer and you’ve slimmed down a lot. You’ll need some things, right?”
“I guess.” I really didn’t care.
She sighed and pulled up a chair. She sat next to me and looked out into the well-manicured yard. It was all my doing. I liked keeping the grass short and the plants watered. It gave me a good enough excuse to be house-bound.
“Did you hear about John Macht?” Mom then asked.
John Macht was some rich businessman in Perth who had been accused of murdering his wife three years ago. The trial had come to a close, and Mom had been reading into it every step of the way.
“No,” I answered. “Guilty?”
“Not guilty.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded severely. “Can you believe that? It won’t be long before someone shoots him in the face. I bet you any money. There’s no way he didn’t kill her, and there’s no way someone out there isn’t plotting their revenge to kill the bastard for it.”
I shrugged. “They found nothing on him. Plus they never even found her body. It was all circumstantial, so I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“They found her blood in the trunk of his BMW!”
“Still not enough. They couldn’t determine how old it was.”
She let out a sound of disgust. “Well, deep enough pockets and you can get out of anything, huh?”
“Yep.”
She sighed and sat idle for a short while. She closed her eyes and let the sun beat down on her. Exhaustion after a long shift made her body look like jelly in her chair.
“I love you, Claire,” she said quietly, her face solemn as she opened her eyes to look at me.
“I know,” I replied, trying not to get agitated by the guilty sound of her voice.
A few tense minutes passed before she said, “I’m not sure if you remember, but I’ll be flying to Melbourne tomorrow –”