Chapter Nine
Work had been tough going the night before, but Tom gave me a lift home and nothing untoward happened. I was so hopped up the next morning on my own agitation that getting up for school early wasn’t a problem.
The school felt empty and cold when I arrived, and I realised I was even earlier than usual. It gave me time to do the homework I had pretended to do while Base had been in my house, but too soon, a biting chill spread across my arms, raising goose bumps on my skin.
I glanced around, saw no one, and tried my best to concentrate again, but it was no use. My nerves were gone. I had always been able to fake confidence, but even that was gone now. I pulled my hood up and shoved my hands into my sleeves, trying to coax some warmth into my body.
I heard the scuffle of a clumsy footstep, and I looked up with a fright. Two figures down the hall. Sully and Aoife. Her blonde hair was greasy, a complete change for her, and tied up into a high ponytail. Her skin was pale and drawn, and huge bags were under her eyes. A polo neck covered up her throat, and her appearance echoed mine, with her sleeves covering her hands.
Sully carried her schoolbag, with a sneer that might as well have been tattooed across his face. His sunglasses hid his eyes, and yet indifference emanated from him. He moved to my feet, and I felt myself at a serious disadvantage on the floor, yet again.
“Good morning, Devlin O’Mara. Isn’t it a sweet, sweet day?”
I stared up at him, pulling my knees up close to my body.
“Cold, are we?” He pulled Aoife toward him, and she bounced against his frame like a puppet, her eyes dull and unfocused.
“Aoife?” Base called from the other side of the hallway. Within a couple of steps he had closed the space between us, and I felt better, warmer, all of a sudden. I got to my feet as Base asked Aoife if she was okay.
“She’s fine,” Sully said. “Not that it’s any of your business.” He laughed softly. “Not anymore.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Base said aggressively. “Aoife?”
“She doesn’t want to see you anymore, Brian,” Sully said slowly. “She doesn’t like you. She wants nothing to do with you ever again.”
I glanced from one face to another, trying to figure out why Aoife wasn’t speaking.
“Tell him, Aoife,” Sully urged.
Aoife looked our way for the first time. Her eyes found Base, and she spoke, but it was a warped, cracked sound.
“I don’t want to see you anymore, Brian,” she echoed creepily. “I don’t like you. I want nothing to do with you ever again.”
Base made a strangled sound before storming off, his cheeks redder than usual.
“What are you doing to her?” I demanded of Sully. “Aoife, is he hurting you?”
She refused to look at me, and Sully only laughed. “Keep out of my way, little girl,” he said, but he sounded like an old man. Experienced. In control. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, couldn’t protect myself if he attacked me.
“If you don’t,” he whispered. “Then your mother will truly suffer. And we both know she’s had so much of that already.”
He breezed away, closely followed by Aoife, leaving me stunned into silence. He had actually threatened Mam. There was no way around it now. He was trying to scare me to keep me out of his business with Aoife. And that just made me eager to interfere.
I searched for Base, but he was nowhere to be seen. At lunchtime, I spotted Aoife leaving the canteen, presumably to use the bathroom, and I followed her without hesitation. If I could speak to her, reach out to her, maybe she would see she wasn’t alone. That she could get away from Sully’s threats, from the dreary hopelessness that followed his path.
I waited by the sinks until she left the stall, but she didn’t even glance in my direction. I hesitated then, feeling uncomfortable, and I watched her dry her hands with a sideward glance into the mirror.
“Aoife,” I began. “Everything okay?”
She gazed at herself in the mirror, acting as though I wasn’t there. Alrighty then.
“Listen, I know you think Sully’s something special, or whatever, but if he’s hurting you, you can tell me. And Base… Base really cares about you, so why would you shut him out like this?”
She headed for the door, still avoiding my eyes. I blocked her way.
“Aoife, wait. Talk to me about this.”
With a strangely feral sound, she threw herself at me before I could defend myself, knocking us both to the floor, her arms flailing, and her hands curved into claws. She scratched at my face as I tried to push her away, and hot, stinging pain seared across my cheek. After that, it was all I could do to keep her off me.
“Jesus,” I spat when I managed to kick her away. “What are you doing?”
She fixed her hair in the mirror and walked out without a word. What in the hell was going on?
I stayed in the bathroom for a while longer, trying to process what had just happened as I held some damp tissue against my skin in an attempt to cool down the inflammation. Aoife, little Aoife, the quietest girl of all time, had just attacked me. Actually physically attacked me. What was I supposed to do with that?
I tidied myself as best I could, trying to cover the scratches on my face by letting my hair down and hiding behind it. I didn’t want to get Aoife into trouble because she obviously wasn’t in her right mind, and it had to have something to do with Sully’s influence.
Base still wasn’t around, so I couldn’t talk to him about it, and when Maisy asked what happened, I blurted out the truth, but she looked so disbelieving that I left school early and went home. Nobody would notice if I wasn’t there, and I would only miss one class, so I really didn’t care.
Mam didn’t realise I was home earlier than usual, and she was back in a catatonic-like state anyway. Sometimes I worried that one day she would retreat into herself and never come back.
I didn’t have work that evening, so I took a long shower while dinner was cooking. The doorbell rang while I was in there, and to my disgust, my mother didn’t answer the door, and the doorbell rang again.
“For the love of…”
I jumped out of the shower and pulled a towel around me, overly conscious of my red, blotchy face and wet skin and hair, and ran to the door to open it.
Base.
I cringed. “Really?” I demanded, trying to act brave despite my obvious nudity.
He stuttered for a few seconds. “I, uh, went to school to walk you home, and you weren’t there, so I felt like, um, I should check up on you?” He rubbed his cheek nervously before stopping short as he tried to keep his eyes on my face. “What the hell happened to you?”
I let my wet hair fall across my face. “Nothing important,” I said.
He brushed my hair from my face and peered at the marks Aoife had left. He winced. “It looks important to me.”
“At least let me get dressed first!”
“Yeah, of course. Sorry, Dev.” But I heard him laughing as he followed me into the house, and I prayed fervently that my towel covered everything.
I ran back into the bathroom, my heart racing with embarrassment. I would never hear the end of this one. But by the time I dressed, pinned up my hair, and returned to the living room, it was Base standing around awkwardly, his face a deep shade of red.
“Is your mam okay?” he asked, looking confused. “She keeps ignoring me.”
“She’s… Never mind. Want something to eat?”
“Nah. Thanks anyway.”
“Well, I’m just going to leave some food out for her, and we’ll chat, all right?”
He nodded, and I dashed around, finishing preparing a meal for my mother. I led her to a chair at the table and put the food in front of her, encouraging her to take a spoonful. After a minute, she began to feed herself, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
I dragged Base into my bedroom, half-hoping my mother would notice and throw a hissy-fit like a normal parent, and closed the door behind us.
“Aoife did it,
” I said when I noticed him gazing at my cheek again. I moved to look at the wound in the mirror on the wall. “I tried to talk to her in the bathroom earlier, but she blatantly ignored me. I blocked her way, and she threw herself at me, scratching like a cat or something. She’s not herself, you know?”
“That’s obvious,” he said, frowning. He came up behind me, and as I glanced at him in the mirror, I caught him staring at me. I turned in a panic, realising too late how close he was to me.
He looked down at my face and touched my cheek softly. I inhaled sharply, a wave of heat flooding through my body. “That’s pretty bad. She’s never even killed a spider. This is just not Aoife.”
“Maybe you could talk to her parents,” I suggested, turning away so he’d stop touching my skin, but my heart didn’t stop racing. “Maybe they could keep her away from Sully.”
“It’s just her dad,” he said slowly. “But I could try. What am I supposed to say though?”
“The truth. That he’s manipulating her, and you think he’s dangerous.”
“Do you really think he would hurt her? I know it looked bad before, but is it really what we think?”
I chewed my thumbnail, anxiety tearing my stomach apart in hard yanks. “I think he’s capable of anything,” I whispered.
“Will you come with me?” he said, urgency in his tone. “If it’s just me, he might think I’m jealous or something.”
“Aren’t you?” I asked before I could even think.
His frown deepened. “Not jealous. Just concerned. And if a girl is worried, then it adds more weight, right? Will you?”
I nodded. “Okay, but it has to be either now or straight after school tomorrow. I have work tomorrow evening.”
“We could do it now, but…”
“But what?”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “I have to work up the courage.”
“You’re scared of her Dad?” I scoffed.
“More like I’m scared she’ll hate me forever if I interfere. It is kind of like ratting her up to her dad.”
I shrugged. “If it keeps her safe then it’s worth it, in my opinion.”
“We are right, aren’t we? I mean, this is way more than bullying or stalking or possessiveness or any of that.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Well, I think it’s more than that, so I could go alone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He grinned, and I was stunned by my body’s overreaction to it. “That’s okay. But thanks. You’re not so bad, even if you do believe everything you hear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His cheeks flushed pink. “Nothing. So what do you think I should tell her dad?”
It was a desperate attempt at changing the subject, but I let him get away with it because I wasn’t sure I wanted to have a real conversation with Base. He unsettled me in a different way to Sully, but unsettled me all the same.
“The truth.”
“What’s the truth? I mean, we haven’t actually seen him do anything in particular to her. He’s a nasty git, but that isn’t proof of anything.”
“Yeah, but surely he’ll see that she’s changed. It’s obvious.”
“What if he doesn’t care? I mean, people change. Devlin, what’s the story with your mother?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “Don’t talk about her.”
“Okay, chill. But I was thinking… what if we really are overreacting? What if she’s sick of me, or I offended her or something? What if she really does like him? Then what?”
I made an exasperated sound. “You’re blind if you think that. I mean, it’s Aoife! You’ve been glued at the hip for ages. That doesn’t just go away overnight, no matter what you did to her.” I realised what I was really saying, and my face heated up. He frowned, and I broke from his gaze and tried to sound cross. “Are you seriously backing out? Even after the way she was at school?”
He held up his hands. “I’m not backing out. No way. I’m just saying, if Aoife keeps telling me to stay away, why would we ignore her?”
“Because he’s making her say that!”
“How, Devlin? How could he possibly make her say that?” His bottom lip trembled a little, and I shook my head firmly.
“You don’t understand what he’s like. When he tells you things. You believe him,” I said without thinking. I rubbed my upper arms, chilled by the memory of Sully’s touch, the way his eyes captured me and held me in his web.
Base’s hands covered mine, his expression dead serious. “What exactly did he say to you?”
“I just meant that’s what creeps like him do. They make you think certain things. They keep you away from your friends and family so you feel alone without them. They hurt you and make you think it was your fault, that you deserved it. They make you think that you’re worthless so you won’t have the strength to leave them.”
His hands gripped me tighter. “How do you know all this?”
“Maybe we should hang out in the living room,” I said abruptly. “I probably shouldn’t have a boy in my bedroom. Even if it is only you.”
He flinched, letting go, and he picked up his bag. “I need to get going,” he said, and when he left, he slammed the door after him. I had no idea what just happened.
“Boys,” I muttered, and went out to make sure my mother had eaten something. She had taken a few bites, but she had more colour in her cheeks. I put us both to bed early that night, although I sat up working on some homework for a couple of hours. I had taken to leaving both our bedroom doors open, just in case she cried out in the night, but she seemed to be getting through her constantly-drunk stage, if experience had taught me anything. Next would be the boyfriend-seeking stage.
I fell asleep with my book open, only mildly disturbed to feel fingertips against my skin. Someone stroked my arm, and I leaned against them.
“Base?” I whispered, still in a dream world. I heard a hiss and felt a pinch.
I sat up straight in the dark, wide awake and panting, my arm stinging like hell. I touched it, felt something wet, and turned on the lights with my stomach churning from the worry.
In the sudden light, I had to blink, and I could have sworn I saw something run out of my room. Without thinking, I jumped up and knelt on the floor to grab the bat I kept hidden under my bed. I ran out of the room, yelling, and a shadow moved in the corner of my eye. I swung the bat and felt the vibration of connecting with something, felt the tremor run through the bat and right up my arms, but there was nothing in the hallway. Nobody was there, so I moved slowly toward my mother’s room, dreading what I might find.
She was still asleep, curled up under the blankets, her breathing slow and steady. With a sigh of relief, I realised I must have been dreaming. I glanced at my still stinging arm and virtually fell over with shock. Scarlet gouges marked my skin. Almost like fingernails had been embedded in my arm. I pressed the wounds with a piece of tissue from a box on my mother’s bedside locker to stop the bleeding, and I made a point of checking all of the doors and windows before searching under the beds and in the wardrobes. I knew I would find nothing, and that scared me all the more.