The Mute and the Liar Page 11

  We start walking at a steady pace first. I have to remind myself that walking means putting one foot in front of the other. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left, right, left. Suddenly we’re running. Running and running. Although I’m not entirely sure whether we are running from the imaginary police offers chasing us, or running away from who we have become.

  *****

  9:12 PM

  I haven’t seen Jayce since we got back to Kit’s house. He sauntered off silently to his room and never reappeared. In the meantime I gathered up all the newspapers in the house and just flicked through them without writing anything down or trying to solve any cases. I wasn’t even reading them, just looking at them - I couldn't process anything. To me, the letters were just black squiggles wriggling around the page. I might as well have been trying to read Chinese.

  I rummage through the drawer next to me out of sheer boredom. It’s no use even hoping to find something that will get me out of here. I’ve already searched the whole house twice. There’s just nothing. And even though I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up, I still feel drained when all I find are a few ancient face creams in here and half of a hairbrush.

  Actually, wait a second. What’s that on the bottom of the drawer? A newspaper! It’s been folded to highlight one particular article.

  15th December 2010.

  MARTY WILSON’S BODY FOUND.

  Today will forever be remembered as a day of mourning for the boxing world. Amateur boxer Marty Wilson, 25, declared missing on the 12th December shortly after celebrating his victory in the Eleventh Southeastern Amateur Boxing Regionals, has been found dead this morning. His body was pulled from the River Medway at approximately 2:05 a.m. after locals heading back from a night out noticed what they thought to be an animal in the river. Witness’ reports have suggested Wilson was under the influence of alcohol. It is believed the celebrations got out of hand, with some witnesses claiming he had struck up a fight with another contester from the Regionals. Wilson may have, at some point that night, decided to go for a swim in the River, and ultimately met an early, ill-fated end. “He had so much potential. He could have been a legend,” honours his coach Leonard Ajayi. Our thoughts and prayers are with Wilson’s family, friends and supporters through this tragic time.

  Marty. Why does that name sound familiar?

  I know how things work now. Everything is deliberate, planned. Jayce has predetermined my every move. So why would he want me to see this?

  *****

  Giving up, I put away the newspaper and head upstairs to my bedroom.

  There's Jayce's room up ahead. As I get closer, I can hear something slamming, as though he has just thrown a chair at a wall. He seems to kick something and now hurls out a swearword. Curiosity possesses me once again and I find myself standing outside the door. There is silence. Mustering up all courage, I poke my head around the door.

  It's a room similar in design to mine, that is, the double bed cloaked in white sheets, the mirror wardrobe and the scattering of cream chests of drawers are all identical and in the same place. However, his room has a very distinct feel. For a start, there is a piano. While the main colour in my room is blue, here it is seafoam green. That is the colour begging for attention - it is everywhere I look, from the walls to the fluffy rug in front of the bed. It is a much more homely room. Unlike my room, which is littered with photographs of the sea and so could be any old room in a hotel, this room definitely belongs, or belonged, to a person. There are a couple of framed photographs hanging in a row above a shelf of books.

  From here I can make out an old, yellowing photograph of a couple, who I assume must be Kit's parents. The next one is of the woman from the previous photograph laughing with her arms around another woman. The last photo is of a young blonde boy around eight with oversized, black square-rimmed glasses standing beside a bicycle.

  The window, though much smaller than mine, is south-facing, with views of hills tumbling away into the distance, sprinkled artistically with trees. Although the night has drained the life from outside, I can just make out squares of houses in the distance, arranged like a tic-tac-toe board. The shadowy hills create the illusion of a slope as they ascend higher and higher, all racing to see which will reach the sky first. The window has a window-seat and is right beside another shelf of books. This is clearly a room of an intellectual, someone with a passion for reading and learning, or maybe someone who just spends far too much time alone.

  The only thing that seems out of place is the sliver of a boy hunched against the wall at the far end. He's sitting with his head in his hands. To my horror, I slowly realise there is something seriously wrong; he is breathing rapidly, deeply and completely out-of-time, the way a drowning person would.

  Before I even have a chance to think rationally, I run over to him and throw my arms around him. His face is a crippling red, ill and pained, and his forehead is soaked in sweat. He pushes his head against me and continues gasping for air, shudders rippling through his body.

  His expression is so twisted and pained I might have said someone was clawing his face with stinging nettles, and from the sounds of him coughing and spluttering, I might have said someone was trying to ram them down his throat too.

  We sit there, his head rested against my neck as he coughs and splutters and gasps. I can feel every breath and every accompanying shudder of his body. I hold on even tighter and rake my hands through his hair, desperately willing him to be all right.

  I notice he is trying to do something with his breathing pattern. It seems he is trying to breath in deeply for five seconds, hold his breath for two seconds and exhale for another five. For a horrifying moment it hits me that this might take hours to stop. I don’t know what is happening. I don’t understand. And that scares me.

  “Panic attack,” he explains when his breathing, although still a little jagged and uneasy, is otherwise back to normal. “I used to get them all the time, although I haven't had one for a good two years,” he cranes his head to look at me. “Not since they killed her.”

  I struggle to understand what he means and his asphalt words are left to crumble in the air between us.

  “They killed her. Oh God, they actually killed her.”

  He pulls away and I let my hands slip away from him. Although strangely, that one gesture tugs something in me. I wish... I wish I could have held onto him for a little longer. He sits up, pushes his back against the wall and then pulls his knees up and hugs them. There is something disjointed in his shadowy eyes and something broken in his voice.

  “Becky Meyer,” he says softly, staring into the distance. No, staring longingly at a person I am forbidden to see. My eyes narrow. I don't think I want to hear this. “She was my best friend. My... My only friend. And they just killed her. Just like that. We were only fifteen.”

  He looks at me now, and I mean really looks at me, as though we have been suffocating in a crowded room this whole time and he has finally seen me. “Gone,” he whispers.

  He’s never spoken to me about his past before. Why now? Maybe he trusts me. That thought sends a strange warmth in my chest.

  He rummages into his pocket, pulls out his phone and scrolls through his photos. Smiling at me with a mouth of perfect pearls is a rosy-cheeked, round-faced girl with her blonde hair pulled into two plaits. Standing with his arm around her possessively is Ryo, although I struggle to put a name to him at first - he looks completely different, or perhaps just a lot younger. The only giveaway is his murky, dark brown eyes and gangly, awkward posture; the Mohawk is gone and so is the scar running underneath his eye.

  “She was amazing. I tried to follow her home once. I sat behind her in class so I could hear her talking to her friends. I thought about her all the time.”

  I never wondered about Jayce's past. To be honest, I forgot he had friends, a home, a life. Maybe even a girlfriend, if that's what this Becky person was to him. I somehow forgot about all of that since we have been here. Is that stupid?

&n
bsp; “I cried all night when I found out she was with Ryo. He didn't deserve her. The sky didn't even deserve her; how the Hell could he?” he glowers. He puts his phone back in his pocket and turns to face the wall on his right, so I can no longer see his face. “Do you know what the happiest day of my life was? The day she sat with me at lunch. Ryo had punched me outside my house that morning and I remember that because he broke my glasses again so that meant my mum was going to kill me again and I was thinking how cliché it is for a bully to break a nerd's glasses again. So that day I was just sitting there, on my own, like always, and then she just comes over and sits next to me.”

  Although I can't see his face, I can hear him smile. I wish I could see his face. I want to know how much he loved her. I want to know why he loved her. His cold words wedge themselves into my chest and stay there - I try but I can't get them out, and for some reason I feel cold all over.

  I look away from him. I've decided I don't want to hear anymore. But at the same time, I don't want to leave him.

  “I remember every word she said to me that day. I even remember that she had a ketchup stain on her shirt and she was wearing pearl earrings and she was eating a tuna sandwich and an apple. And everyone was staring, but she acted like she didn't notice, but knowing her, she probably didn't care.”

  “Ryo got so mad one time. And who does he take it out on? Me obviously. He waits for me to leave school and get to the street down the road and then bam,” he punches his fist into his palm. “But then Becky jumps in out of nowhere and stops him.”

  Jayce stretches out his legs and leans right back against the wall.

  “Do you see those photos over there?” he jabs a thumb at the wall opposite where the three photographs are hanging. “That’s me in the last photo.” I look up at the photo of the little blonde boy standing proudly next to his bicycle. “My mum and Kit’s mum were best friends, so I’ve known Kit since I was tiny. When I was older I used to stay here all the time to get away from my mum. Kit brought the piano in here especially for me.”

  “Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I reckon Becky talked to Ryo about me that night because the next day he was waiting for me outside school. He pulls off my glasses and my tie and at first I think he's going to hit me, but instead he drags me inside and walks beside me. That's all. We don't talk or anything. We just walk side by side. And it's sick and disgusting but sadly true that that day is the second happiest day of my life.”

  “They slowly accepted me into their gang. But for every gain you have to suffer through one sacrifice, right? Everything has a price. And as an ultimatum for my acceptance, God decided to steal Becky from me. They all said she slept with Ryo's best friend, Sasha. But it wasn't true. I know it wasn't true,” he stresses the word, making sure I understand, making sure I believe him.

  I don't want to hear any more, but the sincerity in his voice is enchanting, and the beautiful glimmer of sadness, that raw emotion I didn't think he was capable of feeling, is mesmerising. He finally turns to look at me fully once more and I realise that’s exactly what I wanted him to do.

  I wish I could speak right now.

  Say something. Go on, just say something. Say anything.

  I part my mouth, hoping anything, anything at all, might flutter out.

  Then he speaks again, the moment scuttles away and I remember that I am meaningless.

  “I know it wasn't true because she loved Ryo. I know that much because it ripped right through me. I don't want to go into details. They followed her in a street at night and attacked her. She died in hospital a few hours later. After that, they accepted me in their gang. I got what I wanted. But I lost Becky.”

  “I'm not a killer. That's why Jeffrey can't be dead. I don't want to be a killer.”

  So why is he trying to make my father kill his mother? Or maybe that’s exactly why. He won’t get his hands dirty. Father will be the killer, not him. It’s sickening.

  “I don't want to be a killer,” he repeats, his voice croaky and drained. “I don't want to be Ryo.”

  *****

  Mosquitoes could be angels. I have always thought it is strange, but it's true. They have fine, shimmering wings, so thin they are almost translucent. Almost angel wings. They are the perfect shade of caramel to seep into the background unnoticed. Invisible. They are the masters of flight and the champions of disguise. They carry diseases to poison you. They are blindly ruled by their needle noses; they are immune to anything except thirst. They feed on other creatures so they will thrive for as long as other creatures do - God unknowingly created the perfect immortals.

  Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe God sewed the angel wings onto the mosquitoes with plans to set them among the butterflies. So imagine His horror when the mosquito opened its eyes to reveal only unseeing blackness. Not a cousin of the butterfly but a nocturnal - a creature of the moon. Imagine His horror when He set it free to feast and it returned with a stomach heavy with human blood.

  They were too powerful. They needed to be weakened, or the balance of nature would collapse.

  So that’s what God did. He struck at the very source of their power: their otherworldly wings. He gave them a new set of wings, a set of wings that make a sawing, humming sound to warn other creatures of their presence.

  Mosquitoes could have been angels, but will never be, for the simple reason that angels are free, but mosquitoes are bound by the laws of nature: they have to pay for their blessings.

  It's just the same as how power costs a bitter soul. Or how silence costs loneliness. Or how life costs death.

  Everything has a price.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He's falling.

  Gently, softly.

  Beautifully, really.

  There's metal hanging over him.

  Metal in someone's hands.

  Metal clatterers to the ground.

  The stench of metal reaps the air, so strong, so narcotic, it's slipped past the point of being a smell and has become a taste.

  But maybe it's not the smell of metal.

  No, now that I think about it, there's a strong, salty, almost solid dimension to the smell.

  It's not the smell of metal at all. It's the smell of blood.

  Why did you let him try to help you?

  Why did you let Jayce do that?

  Now he’s gone.

  And it’s your fault.

  It’s your fault.

  It’s your fault.

  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

  *****

  3rd March 2011

  10:15 AM

  I gasp alive, feeling as though a panther has just leapt on my chest. Oxygen shudders through my ribs, unexpected and sudden. I need to take my mind off of Jeffrey. I could hardly sleep last night because I kept thinking about it. And now I'm dreaming about it too.

  They have probably found his body by now. Stop. Don't think about it. Just don't think about it.

  Unfamiliar ceiling. That's all I can take in from my surroundings. Mocking, unwelcoming, unfamiliar ceiling. It takes me a good few seconds to notice the gangly blonde boy sitting hunched and cross-legged next to me.

  “Happy birthday to Alicia! Happy birthday to you!” he sings at the top of his voice.

  Happy birthday. He's singing happy birthday. Why?

  It's no one's birthday. You can't just sing happy birthday when it's no one's birthday. That's got to be bad luck or something. What day is it today? Yesterday was the second… so today must be the third... So... So it is my birthday.

  I forgot my own birthday? What? Well, I guess with all these problems I've had way more important things to think about. It's just ridiculous how I've forgotten my own birthday and Jayce somehow knows when it is. It seems he's got a better hold of my life than me. Like so many other times, I find myself wondering just how much he knows about me. I would be worried normally, terrified even, but I'm too tired of worrying.

  So at seven o'clock this morning, I became sixteen
. Sixteen! I'm supposed to be mature now. And sophisticated. And hot. I can get a job. No, even better; I can drive a tractor! Brilliant. I'm a whole year older than I was yesterday… and yet I feel exactly the same.

  This sucks.

  I turn my attention back to him. He's saying something now, slightly tilting his head to the left as though questioning something trivial, the light tinting his hair golden as a few strands flicker across those green cauldrons he has for eyes. His thin, pale lips keep moving and cutting dimples into his almost translucent cheeks, but my mind is still dusty from sleep and I struggle to understand at first.

  “I love birthdays. Don't you love birthdays? It's the day of the year when people just give you presents and it's better than Christmas because you don't have to give any back. And I don't know about you, but I love getting presents without having to give any back. Wait, does that make me a bad person?”

  His eyebrows arch and his eyes flare up, contemplating this for a second. “No,” he decides. “I'm not because if I were, then I wouldn't have got you a present. And I've only given a few birthday presents before, so you had better be very, very grateful! Come on!”

  With that he grabs both my hands and drags me out of the bed, in turn bringing the duvet and the bed sheet along on the adventure too.

  He's bought me a present? Why?

  So apparently it’s my birthday and a psychotic murderer has apparently got me a present. This definitely happens to normal people.

  He walks backwards, holding both my hands, and leads me into his bedroom. I can't imagine what will await me there, how special or heavy my present is that he could not just bring it to me. With the excitement ringing in his eyes and the ecstatic rippling grin on his face, I'm starting to think he's somehow transformed his room into a spaceship for me.

  I'd quite like a spaceship…

  My birthday present is not a spaceship.

  Disappointment is an understatement.