Save Me (Maxton Hall Series 1)

Green – Important!

Turquoise – School

Pink – Maxton Hall Events Committee

Purple – Family

Orange – Nutrition and Exercise

If I were to divide my afternoon into colors, it would look like this:

Lila – Crying Me Out at Ember

Lila – Crying Me Out to Mum

Lila – Avoiding Dad so he can’t ask me too many questions

Orange – Go for a run with Ember to clear your head

Green – Give James Beaufort the bag back and let him know how much he can lick my ass

A successful list, in my opinion. And if it actually existed, I would have ticked off all but the last one.

For an hour, I tried to write a letter to him with a towel turban on my head. Now I’m still sitting here, surrounded by crumpled leaves, and I decide to give it up. I wanted to write something in which I express my anger and disappointment, but on paper the words suddenly seemed completely irrational to me. I wish I had told him all this on the sports field, but I was far too shocked to be quick-witted.

In front of me on my bulletin board hangs the card that James wrote me on my birthday. The words meant so much to me at the time. I actually believed that he was serious. Now everything that happened between us seems to me as if I had imagined it. As if everything – our phone calls, the moments when we laughed together, our kiss – had sprung from a blooming imagination.

Suddenly I can’t look at the map for a moment longer. I tear it off the bulletin board, take a black pen and write the first thing on it that seems to make the most sense to me at this second:

James

Fuck you.

–Ruby

I look at my work with my head tilted. I wrote the words right under his, and it hurts to look at them and realize that we’ve actually gotten to that point.

‘Ruby?’ Ember sticks her head into my room. ‘Dad made dinner. Are you coming?’

I nod, unable to take my eyes off the map.

Ember comes to me and looks over my shoulder. She sighs and strokes my arm. Then, without another word, she pulls the box out from behind my door and helps me put the bag back in it. My heart bleeds as I put the card on it and finally seal the box.

‘I can take him to the post office tomorrow on the way to school,’ she says quietly.

A lump has formed in my throat that seems to be getting bigger and bigger. ‘Thank you,’ I say hoarsely as Ember hugs me.

Ember takes the box to her room so I don’t have to see it. I’m grateful to her that she didn’t say anything about James’ sweater, even though I clearly saw her gaze lingering on it for a moment. I didn’t have the heart to put it in the box. And I refuse to think about what that means.

After dinner, I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. This one evening and this one night I give myself to mourn what has been between me and James. To mourn my friend I lost without knowing why.

But nothing more. I am still me, and I have sworn to myself that I will not let anything or anyone distract me from my path. From tomorrow everything will be the same as the last two years. I will focus on school and go to the event meetings. I will have lunch with Lin in the cafeteria. I will prepare for the job interviews in Oxford.

I will again live in a world where James Beaufort and the rest of Maxton Hall do not know my name.

James

Ruby is insanely good at avoiding me. It’s as if she had memorized my timetable so that she wouldn’t meet me anywhere. When our paths do cross, she walks past me with firm steps, without even looking at me, both hands tightly clasped around the straps of her green backpack. Every time I see her, I think of her card, which is folded up in my wallet and which I sometimes take out when the longing for Ruby becomes unbearable once again.

Just like now.

When will this finally stop? When will I be able to think of anything other than Ruby again? Especially since now is the worst possible time to be distracted. The Thinking Skills Assessment takes place on Thursday, and if I want to have even the spark of a chance in Oxford, I have to do outstandingly.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember anything that Lydia and I have discussed in the last half hour. We printed out all the exercises there were to find, spread them out in Lydia’s room and worked through them one by one until our heads were spinning. Lydia is just closing the book she leafed through in search of an answer and leaning on her elbow. She lies on her stomach, has her legs bent and lets her feet tap in time with the music that plays softly in the background. As she stretches out her hand, I wordlessly hand her the bag of chips from which we have been taking turns helping ourselves for over an hour.

Then I run my finger over the edge of Ruby’s map again. In the meantime, it is already quite blunt, the corners full of creases. I’m just about to put her away again, when Lydia crawls a little closer to me on her stomach.

‘What’s that?’ she asks abruptly, grabbing the card faster than I can react. I want to get it back immediately, but Lydia has already unfolded it and is reading my and Ruby’s words. Her eyes darken, and when she looks up, I can see pity in her eyes. ‘James—’

I snatch the card out of her hand and put it back in my wallet, which I then slide into my pocket. Then I open the book that Lydia has just put aside again and start reading. However, the letters don’t make sense, no matter how much I concentrate.

Why the hell is my heart beating so fast? And why do I feel so caught?

‘James.’

I look up from the book. ‘What?’

Lydia sits cross-legged and begins to twist her hair into a messy bun, which she then fastens high on her head with a hair tie. ‘What’s the deal with this card?’

I shrug my shoulders. ‘Nothing.’

Lydia raises an eyebrow and casts a meaningful glance at my trouser pocket, in which my wallet and the card have just disappeared. Then she looks at me again, warmer this time. ‘What happened between you and Ruby?’

My shoulders stiffen. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Lydia snorts softly and shakes her head. ‘I know exactly how you’re feeling right now,’ she says after we’ve been silent for a while. ‘You don’t have to pretend in front of me that the Ruby thing doesn’t bother you. I have eyes in my head, James. I notice when you’re feeling bad.’

I stare at the book again. Lydia is right – I’m miserable. Everything in my life is a disaster, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

‘What weighs on me,’ I say, ‘is the fact that I have a shitty family and find the thought of my own future repulsive.’

I feel Lydia’s compassionate gaze on me, but I can’t look at her. I’m afraid that I’ll lose the last bit of self-control I have, and I can’t afford that. Not in this house, where my father has eyes and ears everywhere and I’ve never really felt safe.

‘Ruby is not well either. Why—’

‘I only kept an eye on Ruby because of you,’ I interrupt. ‘That was all it was.’ The words scratch in my throat and feel unspeakably wrong as I say them. I can’t breathe properly, and Lydia’s gaze is so insistent that the weight on my chest becomes heavier and heavier. I have to blink against the unfamiliar burning in my eyes and swallow hard.

‘Oh, James,’ she whispers and grasps my cold hand, rubbing the back of my hand with her thumb. I can’t remember the last time we touched each other in this way. I look at her pale fingers for a while, which clasp mine. Somehow, with this simple gesture, she manages to make it a little easier for me to breathe again.

‘I know what it’s like when you can’t have someone, even though you know they’re the only one with whom this life would be somewhat bearable,’ Lydia says abruptly, squeezing my hand tightly. ‘When I met Graham, I knew immediately that this was something special between us.’

I look up jerkily. Lydia calmly returns my gaze. So far, she hasn’t talked to me about Sutton’s thing once and vehemently blocked any attempts by me to get her to talk. The fact that she does it now tells me how bad I am at hiding my despair from her, and how sorry I really have to be for her. Nevertheless, I am grateful to her for the change of subject.

‘How did you meet in the first place? What’s that going on at school?’

She shakes her head. For a moment, it looks as if she is looking for the right words. I can see that it takes them a lot of effort to tell the story. After all, she has kept this secret forever.

‘It was over two years ago, shortly after the Gregg affair,’ Lydia begins, and immediately hot anger flares up in my stomach. Gregg Fletcher had pretended to be Lydia’s boyfriend for several months, when in fact he was an editor at a local newspaper. He took advantage of Lydia and broke her heart just to get information about our family and our company.

I grip Lydia’s hand tighter. ‘I didn’t feel like it then,’ she continues. ‘On . . . nothing. I’ve totally withdrawn.’

‘I remember.’ The media pounced on our family like hyenas in the wake of Fletcher’s revelations. It was a bad time, and we all had to find a way to cope with it. Mine was coke and too much alcohol, hers a grim silence and a wall that nothing could penetrate.

‘One evening I was just desperate. I had no one to talk to, but I would have had to do so urgently. I was fifteen years old and had been deflowered by a reporter because I was so naïve as to believe that there could really be someone out there who cared about me. Not only for Beaufort. I felt terribly. I blamed myself so badly and wondered how I could have been so stupid.’

She takes a short break and takes a deep breath.

‘That evening, I created an anonymous profile on Tumblr. I just wanted to let it all out without any consequences. My first post was a bunch of confused words. I just wrote down how I felt and that I wished I could be someone completely different. A day later, I had a very nice message in my mailbox.’

I stare at her. ‘But not from Sutton, right?’

She nods. ‘It wasn’t much at all, just a few nice, sympathetic words, but in this situation they meant the whole world to me.’ A slight smile comes to her lips. ‘After that, we started writing to each other regularly. We talked about all kinds of things, confided in each other things that we hadn’t told anyone before. He told me about Oxford and the crushing competitive pressure under which he was gradually giving in. I am afraid of my broken heart and my fears for the future. We encouraged each other. Of course, I never told him my real name, and I didn’t know his either. Still, what I shared with him felt more real than anything else in my life.’

‘That’s crazy.’

Again she nods. ‘I know.’

‘And then?’ I ask.

‘After six months, we spoke to each other on the phone for the first time. For a whole five hours. My ear hurt half the night because I pressed the receiver against it so hard. After that, we talked more and more.’

I remember the night of Ruby’s birthday, when we also talked on the phone for half an eternity. I drove home from Wren’s party just to keep hearing her voice.

‘That’s why you threw me out of your room so often,’ I say with a smile. ‘And then you met at some point?’

‘It took me over a year to dare to meet Graham. We went for a coffee after he graduated.’

It’s just unimaginable that all this passed me by.

‘And when did you … ‘Have you come together?’ I ask, realizing at the same time that I sound like a sixth-grader.

‘We were never really together, but we spent a lot of time together during the summer holidays.’ She clears her throat. ‘When Graham got the job at Maxton Hall, he put an end to the matter between us. Right away. He said we could continue to be online friends, just like before, but nothing more.’ A suspicious gleam enters her eyes. ‘That was okay with me, you know? Better that way than losing it completely. When he had no prospect of being taken on at the end of the school year, I regained hope. The whole thing started all over again until he was informed in the middle of the summer that a position had become available. The same heartache from the beginning. Only this time he didn’t even want to have anything to do with me online. He completely cut me out of his life because he thought it would be better for both of us.’

I think for a moment about everything she just told me. ‘What was that at the beginning of the school year?’ I ask. ‘The day Ruby saw you together?’

She swallows hard. ‘A kind of relapse.’

I nod slowly. I knew that Sutton was more than a nice pastime for Lydia. She has suffered too much in the last few weeks and defended him too much when I dropped a remark about him. However, I never expected that the two could have a two-year history together. And that it was so serious between them.

‘Only one more year, and then you could—’ I don’t know myself what I’m proposing to her. Even if Lydia no longer goes to Maxton Hall College, a relationship with a former teacher would destroy her reputation once and for all. I can imagine what our parents would say about it.

‘I’m not stupid, James. I know Graham and I don’t stand a chance.’ She withdraws her hand from me and reaches for the bag of chips as if she hadn’t exactly confided her biggest secret to me. She shoves a handful into her mouth, her gaze transfigured on the cover of her bed.

It hurts me to see her like this. And above all, it hurts me that I can’t help her. Because she’s right: there is no future for her and Sutton, just as there is no future for Ruby and me.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ I finally say.

Lydia swallows the chips and then takes a big sip from her water bottle. ‘Maybe you’ll tell me about Ruby someday.’

The pressure on my chest, which has slowly disappeared during her story, is suddenly back. I ignore Lydia’s searching gaze and draw the next exercise sheet from the pile. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

Lydia’s soft sigh reaches my ears as if from far away. The task on paper blurs with the memory of Ruby coming to me on the sports field and the mean words I threw at her. All this runs like a cruel endless loop over and over again in my mind’s eye until at some point I can no longer concentrate on the tasks at all and only stare at the wall.

The TSA is doing well. Everyone in my family is so adamant that I can do it, that I don’t even want to worry about what will happen if it doesn’t.

The week after the TSA is one of the last meetings of the Oxford study group. Ruby sits with Lin at the other end of the room. As always, she doesn’t look at me in the last few days, but she also doesn’t let it be known that something has happened between us. She behaves exactly as usual, brings everyone to their knees with her astute argumentation and even manages to leave our tutor speechless once.

It’s hard for me not to look at them all the time. Damn hard. As soon as she opens her mouth, I hang on her lips, and the need to kiss her comes over me.

In moments like these, I conjure up the image of my father, remembering the back of his hand hitting my cheek and the pain that pounded in my jaw for days afterward. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit me. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough – especially when I don’t think I live up to the demands of our family.

The fact that Ruby doesn’t meet his expectations hurts me, but I’ll have to live with it. I was born into a family from which I cannot isolate myself, no matter how much I wish to. I will go to Oxford, and I will inherit Beaufort.

It’s time for me to accept that and stop feeling sorry for myself.

‘Let’s take a look at the second question. James, would you share your thoughts with us?’ asks Pippa suddenly. I have no idea what she just said. The only thing I understood was my name.

‘Rather reluctantly,’ I reply and lean back. If I’m honest, I just want to go home. And if I’m completely honest, I only want Ruby, but that’s not possible.

The fact that she sits in this room without looking at me is tantamount to torture. It’s the only thing that motivated me. Now there’s only lacrosse, otherwise I’m not attached to anything anymore. Even the parties with my friends can’t distract me from the fact that everything in my life feels pointless right now. The clock is ticking faster and faster until I graduate, and I just don’t know how to stop it all. How I can make it so that my existence doesn’t seem so dispensable to me.

‘If you are invited to the applicant interviews, you have to have an answer ready for every question,’ says Pippa emphatically and makes an encouraging gesture.

I lift the piece of paper in front of me slightly to make it easier to read the italicized text.

When, if anything, is forgiveness wrong?

I look at the question. For ten seconds. Another ten until my silence becomes uncomfortable and someone in the room clears his throat. A cold shiver runs down my arms and backwards down my back. The paper in my hand gets heavier and heavier until I have to put it back on the table. It feels like I’m swallowing cement, but I don’t have anything in my mouth. Just my inadequate tongue, unable to form words.

‘As a rule, forgiveness follows a harmful act,’ Ruby’s voice sounds suddenly. ‘But if you forgive someone for the pain they’ve caused you, it doesn’t mean they’ll just disappear. As long as you still feel the pain, forgiveness is wrong.’

I look up. Ruby looks at me blankly, and I want to reach out to her. There are only a few meters between us, but the distance feels so unbridgeable that it makes it difficult for me to breathe.

Pull yourself fucking together, Beaufort.

‘If you forgive people too easily, they get the feeling that they can do anything. Thus, the anger of the person to whom evil has been done is the punishment for the offender who desperately desires forgiveness,’ Lin adds.

Yes, Ruby’s anger feels like a punishment I deserve. But still, I wish that she doesn’t spend the rest of the school year hating me. She is said to be looking forward to being able to live her dream soon in Oxford.

If anyone deserves that, it’s her.

‘Forgiveness can never be wrong,’ I reply quietly. Something flashes in Ruby’s piercing green eyes. ‘Forgiveness is a sign of greatness and strength. If you lose yourself in anger for years and destroy yourself, you’re no better than the person who wronged you.’

Ruby lets out a contemptuous snort. ‘Only someone who constantly does wrong to others can say something like that.’

‘Isn’t there this proverb? ‘Forgive, but not forget’?’ Alistair looks around the group, and Keshav and Wren growl in agreement. ‘You can forgive someone for their actions, but that doesn’t mean that what happened is out of the world. Forgiveness is something obligatory in order to draw a line. Forgetting is something that takes a long time or does not happen at all. And that’s okay. Forgiveness helps you to let go and move on.’

Lydia to my right straightens up. ‘It sounds as if forgiveness happens with a snap of the fingers and only forgetting is really exhausting. But you should not forgive everything that has been done to you. If it’s really bad, you can’t just get rid of it.’

‘I think so too,’ Ruby agrees. ‘If you forgive too quickly, it means you don’t take yourself seriously and carelessly push your own pain aside. This is self-destructive behavior. It takes time to recognize when to let go, that’s true, but if you see the decision to forgive as just a simple means to an end, it’s wrong.’

‘Maybe we could distinguish between healthy and unhealthy forgiveness here,’ Lydia interjects, and Ruby nods. ‘Unhealthy forgiveness comes too quickly and ensures that you may be treated badly again. But healthy forgiveness only comes after careful consideration. In that case, one thinks enough of oneself not to be treated badly again.’

‘But forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation,’ says Wren, who is sitting next to Lydia. I lean forward a little to look at him. He has both hands clasped behind his head and sits deep in his chair. ‘If the original meaning of forgiveness is the letting go of anger, it is intended for the victim rather than the perpetrator, so he or she can determine for himself or herself the standards by which he or she forgives.’

‘But there are also unforgivable acts.’ Kesh spoke softly. Everyone turns to him, but he has his arms crossed and looks as if that was all he wanted to say.

‘Can you elaborate a little further, Keshav?’ asks Pippa kindly.

‘By that I mean murder or something like that – I think it’s perfectly okay if the victim’s relatives don’t forgive. I mean, why should they?’

My neck tingles slightly, and I look at Ruby again almost imperceptibly. Her gaze crosses mine, and the tingling sensation becomes stronger. We are separated by two tables and the space between them, but I want to bridge the distance with a jump, take her face in my hands and kiss her again.

‘But that, too, is due to the moral ideas of each person. Everyone has a higher or lower threshold for what they consider unforgivable,’ says Lydia.

Kesh answers something, but I don’t listen anymore. In Ruby’s gaze, I can see exactly where her moral threshold lies at this second. What I said to her is unforgivable for her. Her mouth is pressed into a hard line, and under her eyes there are dark circles that must be there for my sake. She would never forgive me, and even though it was clear to me that there was no future for us, it is only at this moment that I realize what that actually means. I’ll never get the chance to touch her again. I will never talk to her again. Laugh with her. They kiss.

The realization shakes me to the core. It’s as if a deep black hole opens up below me, into which I fall and fall and fall.

I try with all my might to take deep and calm breaths while the rest of the discussion rushes past me. Just like everything else.