Chapter 81

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

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Thursday 29th June 2000

 

 

Exams over. School officially a thing of the past. Summer begins now!

 

(Except for Kitty and Lucy, who still have another few weeks of school to go, but on the whole…)

 

The past week had been pretty interesting… and I’m not talking about the rest of us having sat our final papers. Let’s face it, that isn’t of much interest. Rather, the incident in London had a knock-on effect with everything tied to Melody and her rebellion. We were updated on the arrested individuals: as best as could be ascertained, almost everybody at the scene (or scenes?) had been apprehended. Dirk wasn’t one of them, so we could be certain he was still out there.

 

Oh, on that note… we were offered a visit to the House of Commons. Quite something to see it in less-dire circumstances, even if we were still in our Painter guises (Lucy accompanying us, like she’d done anything). Now, how I failed to spot the cameras dotted around the walls of the chambers last time, I couldn’t tell you… I’ll chalk it up to being a little too distracted with everything else, but it’s not like they’re easy to miss.

 

Between all the broadcast footage from the BBC, ITV and everybody else, security cameras, and eye-witness reports, it seemed that at least eight individuals, Dirk included, managed to evade capture.

 

Where they went, though, was anybody’s guess. Melody must have teleported to Adam’s country house when she left the House of Commons, as in the late hours of June 21st, the place was found perfectly visible and penetrable. Anything particularly incriminating for whatever Melody had been up to all these months had been cleared out, but for the most part, it was exactly as she and her duped followers would have left it that afternoon.

 

What’s more, Adam and Dom were both found, worse for wear but alive. Presumably, Melody felt it was more useful to leave them alive, though she’d kept both of them unaware of whether the other was alive or not. We paid them a visit too, catching them up on everything that had happened, and Lucy thanked Dom profusely for giving her the Lokon daggers (which Adam didn’t know existed, so nicely-played, sister, you’ve landed Dom in trouble). The two of them seem to be recovering well… might take a little while for them to be at their best, Adam especially, but they’ll be alright.

 

And with all that, it made our little two-year anniversary celebrations even more significant. We weren’t just commemorating two years since all of this began, but marking a lot of it finally coming to an end.

 

I’m making that sound more sentimental than I need to (I know, you’re hardly surprised). We were too busy eating pizza and chatting for any tears.

 

“Remember the kayaking?” Kendal asked brightly, grinning for England as the memory buzzed in her head.

 

“Awh man, that one was rooouuugh…” Bao groaned, almost over-dramatically, resting back into his chair as though the mere thought exhausted him.

 

“What happened…?” Kitty looked to the rest of us, knowing she wouldn’t get a reasonable answer from Bao.

 

“And why wasn’t I invited?” Lucy added with a fist planted in her palm.

 

“Kendal took us kayaking on the lake,” Dakota began, with something not quite like a fond smile on her face, “and then this huge monster appeared… and it was our first big fight, we had no idea what we were doing…”

 

“And then I ran on water,” I added proudly (or as proudly as I could muster).

 

“Didn’t you fall over on water, too?”

Zahid delivering a nice dose of humility…

 

“Yeah, but I mean… y’know…” was all I could hope to muster, gesticulating aimlessly. Dakota giggled, and ruffled my hair.

 

“Sounds like that time Alex and I were sick and then the bed was in water and this monster appeared…” Lucy mused. “Would’ve been so cool if I was already a Painter then!”

 

“Definitely would’ve helped,” I chuckled.

 

“Two heads are better than one, especially when one of them is mine!” she nodded enthusiastically.

 

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to riff on that, would it…?” Bao checked with the rest of us; Lucy fired finger-guns at him, which earned her a playful cushion-whack from Kendal.

 

We laughed together. And that was the last bit of normalcy we had that day.

 

A knock at the door took us all by various degrees of surprise.

 

“Free pizza!” Dakota giggled as she sprung up to answer the door.

 

“Don’t joke, I could eat this for days!” Kendal called after her. I made sure to grab another slice before she got to it…

 

Nobody said anything else. We were too focused on listening to the impending exchange.

 

“Hi, Dakota…”

Harriet’s voice. A lump formed in my throat, so big that I was worried about swallowing my mouthful of pizza. Bao’s face was marginally stunned.

 

“Harriet, hey!” my girlfriend greeted her brightly. “How’re you?”

 

“I’m pretty good thank you… and you?”

 

“Good, thanks! We’re having a little party right now!”

 

“Ah, right, I didn’t mean to interrupt… is it okay if I borrow Bao for a little bit?”

 

I’m not entirely sure what I expected Bao to do, but he got up at lightning speed and headed straight for the front door with wider strides than I’d ever seen him take.

 

“I’m sure he’d-” was all Dakota got to say before he’d entered the hallway. She must have heard his approach and stopped herself mid-sentence.

 

“Hi Bao…” I heard Harriet smile at him.

 

“Hey… wanna take this outside? Not in, like, a fighting way, wouldn’t want to hit you, that’d be weird…”

 

Harriet tittered at that. Perhaps a little bittersweetly, though I could be wrong.

“I was going to suggest that…”

 

“Lemme just put my shoes on…” Bao muttered, while Dakota returned to the living room doorway, waiting a moment while looking at us before speaking.

 

“I take it you heard?”

 

“Every word!” Lucy confirmed with an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

 

“Lemme guess,” Zahid started with a light stretch, “she’s heard the news and figured now’s the time to try and rekindle things with Bao. I’d put money on it.”

 

“Probably…” Kitty murmured her agreement, brow furrowed a little.

 

“It’d be nice to have her back,” Kendal considered. “I missed her being around…”

 

I finished off my slice and stood up.

“Back in a few…” I muttered while heading out of the room, and upstairs. I stopped off in the bathroom to wash my hands, but my destination was, of course, the loft. Settling down at the piano, I found myself unable to think of anything to play.

 

My head was in a spin. Yes, it was nice having Harriet around back then. It wasn’t like she was a bad person – far from it. But when she left us, she burnt her bridges… certainly with me, if only indirectly, through Dakota. She called me out for being dangerous and terrible, and for as right as I still felt she might be, I didn’t really want to spend time with her anymore. She could be as personable as ever, but I’d always know what she thinks of me.

 

I couldn’t stay downstairs and listen to her return be anticipated. It would only serve to stir up all these conflicted feelings more, and probably make me frustrated at the others for wanting her back…

 

Well. Not that sulking in the loft made much difference.

 

After a few minutes of stewing in my thoughts, I found myself idly playing a melancholic piece. Once I finally caught what I was doing, it riled me enough that I forced a chipper tune instead.

 

More time must have passed than I’d realised, as Dakota walked into the loft with a puzzled look.

“Thought you might be here…”

 

“Yeah…” was all I could respond with.

 

“She’s gone now,” I was informed.

 

“Thanks for pointing out that I’m hiding from her…” I grumbled.

 

“Sorry…”

She walked over, leaning against the piano.

“She and Bao talked. They’re both going to different universities, so they’re just gonna take things slowly for now, see how things turn out.”

 

“That makes sense…” I told her earnestly.

 

“And she and I are gonna meet up some time, it’s been months since we hung out together…”

 

It took a few seconds for that to fully sink in, for the implications and potential consequences to ring through me. I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach the subject, so I started with a simple question…

“Why…?”

 

For understandable reasons, that puzzled expression returned to Dakota’s face.

“Beeecause she’s my friend and Melody forced her out of our lives…”

 

“Okay… it’s just – and I’m not trying to be controlling or anything, telling you ‘you can’t see her!’ – you wound up crying over the things she said to you before…”

And the idea of risking that happening again rubbed me up the wrong way. The state she was in that night is something I’d move heaven and earth to make sure never happened again.

 

“It was more than just what she said…”

 

“Yeah.”

I looked away from her.

“Sure.”

And then – for reasons that escaped me the moment after the deed was done, reasons I can only assume amounted to “I was hurting” – I said something incredibly stupid.

“You like things that make you cry, anyway.”

 

“Oh my god, Alex, seriously?” my girlfriend growled at me. “You’re going to be petty about this?”

 

“I guess so,” I doubled-down on my mistake, spurred by on her words. “That’s the kind of person I am, right? According to Harriet, anyway.”

 

“I hate what she said as much as you do, and I’ll talk about it with her, but-!”

 

“Oh, yeah,” I cut her off, “that’ll change her mind. You’ll tell her how amazing I am and she’ll go ‘oh yeah, all those times he flipped out didn’t mean anything, he’s a good person after all! Marry him, Dakota!’”

 

“And you’re really proving her wrong right now, aren’t you?” she glared. Her stance was wide, tense, almost like a cat arching its back to appear bigger. “This is what she’s talking about! You acting like you’re so horrible! You hurting me!”

 

“And if I could stop feeling like this, don’t you think I fucking would?!”

Every word, every second, felt like a valve was being loosened further and further and my words and thoughts were pouring out uncontrollably.

“That’s the problem! I’m a monster! This is what I am! And I can try all I want to change but it won’t happen!”

 

“Oh, yeah, and you’re so right about yourself, aren’t you?!” I was asked. “If you say you’re a terrible person, you must be! But if anybody else says it, what, they’re banished from your life? I’m not allowed to see her just because she thinks the same shit you do?! It doesn’t make any sense!”

 

“Welcome to my fucking world! And I’m not saying you can’t see her, I just don’t understand why the hell you want to stay friends with her when she hurt you!”

 

“I WANT TO STAY IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU AND YOU HURT ME!”

She screamed it.

 

“Yeah, well, that’s your mistake…”

Absolutely losing all sense of reason now, I got up from the piano and stormed towards the stairs.

 

“It’s not a mistake, it’s called LOVE!”

 

“No, it’s called you being too afraid to let anybody go!” I snapped at her, so worked up now that I couldn’t even regret it in the moment, grinding to a halt instead of walking out.

 

“Don’t you dare act like that’s all this is for me!” she grimaced at me. “I thought we were past this?! Get it through your head: I love you!”

 

“YOU DESERVE BETTER THAN ME!” I roared at her. “You just said, I hurt you! Do you think I ever want to do that to you?!”

 

“You’re doing it right now!”

 

“EXACTLY! I can’t help it! Harriet’s right, isn’t she?! I’m just gonna keep fucking hurting you! Because you can’t let me go!”

 

“Stop acting like it’s wrong for me to love you!” my girlfriend demanded of me. “All I want is for you to stop hating yourself! It hurts me because I care about you! I don’t want to see you like this!”

 

“THEN- FUCKING-!”

 

And for the first time in months, I hit myself. Maybe five or six times, I wasn’t counting. In that moment, I wanted to tell her to leave me – because I’m certain I can’t change – but not being able to find the right words, and not really wanting her to leave, created a gridlock in my head.

 

Naturally, Dakota leapt forwards, grabbing my arms, holding them tight to prevent me doing anything else.

 

“JUST STOP IT!” she pleaded. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were welling up.

 

I glared at her, and she glared back, locked in a silent stand-off.  I could see every inch of pain etched into her face, and I blamed myself for all of it.

 

“Stop it…” Dakota repeated herself, trying to stay calm now.

 

“I… I can’t…” I shook my head at her.

 

“You can, I know you can, you’re stronger than you realise…” she cooed at me, rubbing my arms with her thumbs like that would soothe me.

 

“This isn’t right…”

 

“Listen to me-”

 

“No, Dakota, this isn’t fucking right!”

I wrested my arms away from her.

“Look at me! Look at what we’re doing! You can do so much better-”

 

“Don’t say that, Alex, don’t…”

 

“You’ll hurt for a while but you’ll come out so much better and you’ll meet the perfect guy-”

 

“I already have him, why can’t you understand?!”

 

I backed away, turned, facing the stairs again.

“And I’ll go crawl in a hole and die like the fucking monster I am.”

 

“SHUT UP, ALEX!” Dakota screeched. “Stop doing this to yourself!”

 

“This isn’t about me…” I insisted quietly as I headed, step by step, away from her.

 

“Yes it is!”

I could hear her following me.

“It’s about you hating yourself!”

 

My pace hastened as I moved through the house, aiming for the front door.

 

“I’m sick of you being like this! I’m sick of you letting this control you! Why can’t you fight it?!”

 

I said nothing, still simmering, burning. Reaching the hallway, I put my trainers on. No talking in the living room: no doubt they’d all heard the yelling and screaming.

 

“Don’t you dare leave, Alex!”

Stopping to get my footwear on had given her the chance to catch up.

“Don’t walk away from me!”

I rose up, and opened the door.

“What, you’re gonna let this beat you?! You’re gonna make things worse?!”

 

“Only so they can get better,” I hissed, and opened the door. In a monstrous trance, I marched out and slammed the door shut behind myself, and I remained in that trance all the way home. My mind was too consumed with thoughts of self-loathing for any other thoughts to have a chance to breathe.

 

It was only once I returned home that an intense swell of guilt hit me. I slipped my trainers off, and Mum poked her head around the corner.

 

“Oh, hello stranger,” she chirped. “Didn’t expect to see you today…”

 

“Mhm.”

I made my way up the stairs, towards my room.

 

“What’s wrong…?” my mother asked from below.

 

“Nothing.”

 

Before anything else could be said, I retreated into my room, closing the door and sealing myself away from the rest of the world.

 

Two years. Two years’ worth of friendship, all destroyed. I was certain I’d just burnt every bridge I’d built. They’d forgiven me once – twice, if you counted the argument in Weymouth – but this had to be the last straw. Especially with Dakota…

 

I loved her too much to risk hurting her over and over.

 

And I knew – deep down – that I couldn’t help but keep doing it.

 

What hurt her the most was how little I think of myself, how much I infuriate myself. And that won’t change, because all I am is a useless monster.

 

I curled up on my bed and wished I wasn’t myself.

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