Trapped Between

I woke up the next morning feeling a little groggy, that would teach me for drinking on a school night. It took all of about two seconds for my head to clear when the events of last night came rushing back into focus.

Whittaker’s stale breath on my neck, the pressure of his body pressed against mine, the cold menace in his threat when he’d said I would regret thinking I was better than he was. The whole night shot past my eyes, like I was watching it in fast forward, and I groaned, leaning forward to rest my head on my knees. The sick feeling was back.

I went through the motions with my family at the breakfast table, answering their questions about my night out whilst picking at a piece of toast. Yes, me and Jess had had a good time. No, we were still no better at snooker. Yes, Jess had ensnared a new guy. No, I still didn’t think I needed to see a doctor.

“Seriously, Mum,” I hated to see the worry and concern etched on her face, it made her look older. “I’m okay, just struggling to get over that stomach bug what with all the work I’ve got on. I’m working really hard on the memorial sculpture, but it should be ready for the showcase next week and then I can relax.”

“Okay, I just don’t want you to run yourself down to the ground, love.” Her eyebrows pulled down into a frown and she pursed her lips.

“I won’t run myself into the ground,” I said, forcing a roll into my eyes. “You know what I’m like when I’m busy on something. The sculpture is looking amazing; I can’t wait for its unveiling. You guys are going to love it.” My words rushed past each other at speed, I kept talking until my mum nodded, accepting my excuses. Her nod was followed by a smile that lifted her cheeks and relaxed the tense lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows.

I excused myself from the table and grabbed my school stuff. I’d need to get a move on if I was going to speak to Drew about last night, and get to registration on time.

Drew was, as always, waiting for me, his slender frame leaning against the War memorial. His bizarre array of colours would look funny on anyone else, a complete and utter fashion disaster. He was a weird mix of metallic brightness and deep earthy hues of navy and green, all interspersed by various shades and tones of grey. To anyone else, if they could see him, he would look pretty strange but to me he looked beautiful as I stood and just absorbed him. His colours showed who he was, a lost boy stuck between worlds. Stuck here, trapped between the place he deserved to go and the place he had said he wanted to be, a place where he had told me he loved me.

Looking at the battle between the rich colours and the shiny metallics made me want to cry in absolute frustration. If I was honest, I wished with my whole heart that the metallics and the greys would lose the fight and that he could stay here with me, real and alive. But that was selfish, he had been murdered and he deserved to go on to the shimmering place where the good and honest people go.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself to tell him about Whittaker. I exhaled, mentally steadying myself and opened my mouth to begin.

He beat me to it.

“So what happened? You got something out of Whittaker, didn’t you?” Drew leant forward speaking fast, his eyes lit up with a hunger for information.

“Drew,” I gasped as I realised that his eyes were lit up with more than just a want for knowledge. His irises shone out of his face, streaked with silver like two bright coins. “Your eyes have changed.”

“I know,” he said in a blasé tone, shrugging his shoulders as if it meant nothing. “He admitted it, didn’t he?”

I was unable to look away from his eyes; I was caught in them, trance like and unable to move. They shimmered and gleamed as he stared at me, as if they were a mass of liquid metal.

“Kind of, he-”

“He what?” Drew’s voice was tight and agitated as he interrupted me.

I looked at his stiff face, his silver eyes wide. Desperation to find out the truth and set himself free was evident all over his face, etched into every angle and shadow. I searched his Heaven-ready eyes looking for something tender toward me, but only saw his want for the knowledge of what happened with Whittaker. There was nothing in his silver eyes that suggested he no longer wanted to go to Heaven, like he had told me when he had declared his love for me. There was nothing left to say that he wanted me in that way at all. In fact, there was nothing human left in his stare; the eyes holding me were angel eyes, bright and cold.

I had told him that I didn’t want him to stay with me when I had built the wall around my heart. I had told him that what we had was only about finding the truth about how he died and nothing more.

It had all been lies, but he had believed me.

He didn’t know that the wall had gone, that it had been broken down. He didn’t know that I was selfish and that deep down I wished that he could stay with me forever. I swallowed back the lump in my throat that threatened to choke me and blinked at the tears filling my eyes. I focussed on the bridge of his nose, frightened to look back at his strange celestial eyes.

“I told him that I knew he was a murderer.”

“You did what?” Drew spluttered in an incredulous voice.

“I told him that I knew he was a murderer, and that I knew about what had happened fifteen years ago.”

“And?”

His eyes bore into my face, the mercury-like silver swirled around his pupils, and I found myself looking back into them, unable to tear myself away from their inhuman gleam.

“And the look on his face said everything.”

“But did he actually admit to it?” he asked, his voice laced with urgency, his eyes lit by seraphic fire.

“No.” My voice sounded small and weak. The word hung in the space between us, caught on the breeze. Just a small word but it left a huge shadow bearing down on us.

“Damn it.” Drew’s eyebrows pulled down so low that they merged with his eyelashes, smothering the fire from his eyes and giving me a moments respite from their intensity. I blinked several times trying to rid the black dots from my vision. Drew shook his head and, without the light blazing out from beneath his brows, his face became a landscape of shadows and sharp lines. He twisted his lips, pursing them to the side and deep creases formed in his forehead. “Think Beth. Did anything else happen?”

I froze as I wondered if I should I tell him. Wondered if I should tell him how Whittaker had held me against the wall and forced his vile hands on my body. Wondered if it would make any difference at all now that his focus was on Heaven and not me.

“Yes, something else happened,” I mumbled in a strained voice, looking down at his green trainers, hoping that they were a sign that there was still some human emotion left in him.

“What?”

“He….he touched me.”

“He what?”

“He touched me,” my voice cracked. “He forced himself on me and I didn’t think I’d be able to get him off me. Somehow I managed to get away but he touched me here.” My hands fluttered in front of my chest, showing him what I meant. As I drew my hands across my body they seemed to pull back the curtain of denial that I had forced around myself since Whittaker’s assault. I hadn’t let myself think about the horror of the situation, hadn’t let myself think about what could have happened, what very nearly had happened. Suddenly the horrific horribleness of what happened hit me and I bent double, desperately trying to breathe through the sobs that escaped from my mouth.

The floodgate was open.

My body shook, racked by great heaving sobs and wails that I couldn’t control. I wiped at my face, smearing the tears and snot that flowed freely across my cheeks. A small part of my brain considered that I must have looked terrible, but I was beyond caring. Through the pool of tears, I thought I saw Drew reach toward me, hover his hand over my shoulder as if he wanted to try and console me, but by the time I had scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand Drew was stood upright, both hands held stiffly by his sides, his expression flat and unreadable. Maybe it was wishful thinking that had made me think he’d looked like he cared.

I was open, split at the seams and falling apart. I was the most vulnerable, the most defenceless that I had ever been in my life and he just stood, all stony faced and blazing eyes, in front of me.

He looked away and stared into the distance, indecipherable emotions flowed over the angles of his face. I saw his jaw work and tighten and his lips curled back into a grimace.

“I can’t believe it.” His voice was soft and he shook his head. Relief began to seep through me, edging its way into my frozen limbs, soothing me with the knowledge that he did still care, a sob of joy edged up my throat. But just ask quickly as my cold fingers began to warm and relax his next sentence filled by body with ice again, freezing it solid. “I can’t believe he didn’t admit it.”

The sob that had been working its way out of my mouth, stopped, as if his lack of empathy had corked me shut. My eyes dried instantly as if the tears had been replaced my saw dust, I rubbed at them with my hand and they stung, they felt raw and scratchy.

He didn’t care.

When it came to it he didn’t care about me at all. All he cared about was finding out the truth and leaving. The thin reedy voice piped up in the back if my mind; you told him that this is what you wanted; you said that you didn’t want him; you said you just wanted to help him. I shook my head; I didn’t want to hear it. It was true, I had told him that and it had stabbed at my heart to say it.

I looked, dry eyed, at his hard face and heard my heart crack.

I felt the weight of the stones, the stones that had formed when Mr. Sharpe had told us about David Pearson’s death. The same stones that I had gagged and heaved over for days, unable to really breathe around, the stones that had finally shattered and smashed to smithereens by Drew’s declaration of love, by Drew’s promise that he would never turn away from me.

They were back.

They squeezed together, grinding against each other into one solid lump of rock, but it was no longer lodged in the pit of my stomach; it was wedged inside my ribs, filling up the space that used to be occupied by my heart. It didn’t beat, it didn’t pound; it was motionless, it filled my chest with cold.

“Beth,” Drew took a step toward me, the silver fire back in his eyes. “You’ll have to go back. You’ll have to confront him again.”

“What?” I stared at him in absolute horror, shocked by what he had just asked me to do. It was as if the last five minutes hadn’t happened, as if I hadn’t told him of my near escape, as if he hadn’t witnessed me breakdown in front of him.

“You’ve got to go back Beth, confront him again and get him to confess.”

“Go back so he can attack me again?” My horrified question was a hoarse whisper. “Haven’t you listened to a thing I’ve told you?”

“Of course I have, I’ve listened to every word and that’s why you have to go back. You’ll be able to break him, I know you will. You’ll be able to get him to admit to killing me. I can’t stay like this, like a grey spectre that doesn’t belong with anyone, who doesn’t belong here. Please Beth, you’ve got to go”

“No I won’t go, I won’t go back!” My voice became a shout and I slammed the words at him as hard as I could, hoping that they would hurt him as much as he was hurting me. I couldn’t believe how fanatical he had become. It was like he couldn’t see how I had put myself in danger for him, didn’t see or didn’t care. Absolute shock and horror boiled inside me, thickening and solidifying into fury and hatred. “You can find the truth out yourself, Drew. I could have been raped tonight and you don’t seem to give a crap!”

He stepped towards me, his eyes wide with surprise at my raised, angry tone.

“I do give a crap, Beth.” His eyebrows pulled down into a line, something that looked like distress flashed across his features. “If anything had happened to you I don’t-”

“Don’t know what you would have done?” I spat at him, interrupting him with a voice that was twisted and ugly with dark irony. “You mean you don’t know what you would have done if you had lost your only way of finding out the truth of what happened to you.”

He shook his head, like he was confused. “Beth, I didn’t mean that.”

Deep down I knew that he probably didn’t, I knew how hard it was for him the more we found out. I remembered what he had told me, about the ceaseless pull towards Heaven that he felt whenever we moved a step closer to the truth. And if his eyes were anything to go by, the pull was something he could no longer ignore. But at that very moment I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him, hurt him for making me go to the snooker hall, hurt him for Whitaker’s assault on me, but most of all I wanted to hurt him for making me love him when he was unreachable.

“Not everything is about you,” I whispered.

“I know it isn’t,” his voice had turned pleading. “Beth, please. What can I do?”

“Right now you can leave me alone.”

I saw his face crumple; he looked lost, completely lost. But I was untethered too, I could still feel Whittaker’s clammy hands on me; still feel his hot stale breath on my neck. I shuddered as I turned away from him.

“Beth, I-”

“Just leave me alone.” I didn’t look back. I couldn’t allow myself to see his face, his eyes.

And then I ran as fast as I could manage with the lump of stone weighing me down.

I kept my head down at school, trying to concentrate on my lessons but to no avail. My stomach was twisted and distorted around the rock and my head was full of Drew’s eyes and the desperation on his face. Not desperation to care for me after Whittaker’s assault but desperation for the truth to be out about how he died.

Yes, I had told him that he couldn’t care about me, that it was wrong to want something more out of our relationship than our original deal, but I hadn’t realised he had been able to turn his feelings off so easily. My feelings for him hadn’t changed. When I pictured his face with its strange, gleaming eyes, I felt my heart quicken and felt the warmth in my chest from the fire he had lit there. The rock in my guts heaved and I fought back the urge to throw up.

I shuddered as I thought back over the last twenty four hours. The only thing that had really changed was that I now had another reason, the biggest of all reasons to hate and despise Whittaker all the more. I already knew he was a murderer and that he deserved to wallow forever in Dante’s River Phlegethon, but now as a potential rapist as well he deserved to be immersed in its foul depths way past his head for the rest of eternity.

Jess grabbed me at lunch to let me know that Patrick was walking her home so, luckily, I was able to take the long way back to my house, the route that bypassed both the market and the park. I couldn’t see Drew now, I wasn’t even sure that I could see Drew ever. He didn’t care about me and that knowledge made me want to curl up and die, to cease existing.

All afternoon the rock pounded and pummelled at me until I was positive that if I lifted my shirt the skin around my middle would be black from internal bleeding. I felt like I had been punched in the guts repeatedly by a heavy weight and then left outside, my broken body exposed to the cold to simply wither away and die.

I trudged home through the misty rain, its fresh and cool air should have soothed my aching throat but it burned me every time I took a breath. It reminded me that I was living a nightmare, well and truly on Whittaker’s radar and well and truly off Drew’s.

The closer I got to home the more bitter and twisted my thoughts got. I wouldn’t see Drew anymore that was obvious; I couldn’t see him because it would destroy me completely. My lips curled into an ugly, selfish grimace as I realised my only option. If I couldn’t see Drew then no one else would, because no one else could see him, and if no one else could see him then no one would be able to help him so he would stay here, trapped between Heaven and life, just like he had been for the last fifteen years.

The thin and bitter voice in my head told me it was a good idea not to help Drew anymore and I agreed with it. In part because he didn’t care about Whittaker’s attack and I wanted to punish him, but mainly because if he found out the truth he would leave without a second’s hesitation. If the mystery of how he died stayed unsolved then he would still be trapped here. He wouldn’t be mine, but at least he wouldn’t be gone, at least he would still exist in my world in some way. My grimace became a thin smile, in some warped and perverse way I was pleased with the plan.