I wasn’t sure what I should do then. It was getting dark, and I only just realised I wasn’t sure where to sleep that night. I guess I could go back to Lily’s and ask her if I could sleep there, but I didn’t much want to do that. I could have maybe asked Penny, but I didn’t really want to do that either. I didn’t know what to do, so I just decided to go back to university. At least I could hang out there for a few hours and think about what to do before they kicked me out. I started heading towards where the bus stop was. It was quite warm outside. I sort of thought it would be cold, because it was night time, but it wasn’t. When the bus got there, I was very glad to see it was completely empty, except for the driver. I wasn’t in the mood to sit next to anyone. No one except me even got on it for my entire trip.
While I was on the bus, I was thinking about this one time when I was younger. I was quite young, probably only thirteen. Me and this girl Charlotte were sitting on the swings at my high school at lunchtime. Charlotte is this girl I used to be friends with. She was all right, but she had these very big thighs. We were sitting on the swings, just talking. We were talking about what we could do after school, and we thought maybe swimming and movies. It was Friday, so we wanted to do something interesting. We thought that we could take our bikes and ride to the swimming pools in Newmarket and then go to the movie theatre.
There was this girl who was sitting on the grass just a little bit away from us. I had noticed her a few minutes before, because she kept looking over. Then, while we were talking about all that stuff, the girl got up and came toward us. Her name was Chloe. She had red hair, and she was very quiet all the time. She was in some of my classes, but I had only heard her talk one or two times, when the teacher asked her a question. She never said anything to anyone that I ever saw. She came up to us with this goofy smile on her face.
“My name is Chloe,” she said. I already knew her name but only just. I’m not sure if Charlotte did though. Then she said something that surprised me a lot. She said, “Would you two mind very much if I came along with you this afternoon?” We didn’t say anything at first, but we didn’t even really get a chance. Chloe started to talk to us very quickly with these wide eyes. “I know we never hung out before, but I think we can have a great time together. I’ve always seen you two and think you’re really pretty and cool.” She was talking so quickly we didn’t even get a chance to say anything. “I don’t have my bike at school right now, but we could go to my house and get it very quickly. It’s only my mum there, but she’s really nice, and she said she’d love to meet both of you. I’m actually a great swimmer. Last summer, I swam thirty laps with only one break.” She was so excited. It was crazy, I’ve never seen anyone so excited about anything before. She was kind of hopping around on her feet and looking at us with these really wide eyes.
Charlotte had told me later on that Chloe was always a weird girl and that once, she was even taken out of school for a week because she was infected with head lice. Then when she came back, her head was completely shaved.
Chloe was just standing there, breathing kind of hard, looking at us, waiting for us to say something. Then I said something. I said something very horrible. I was a nasty, nasty little girl.
“Were you eavesdropping on us?” I said. What a little bitch I was. Chloe looked kind of horrified when I said that. I remember her eyes; they looked so worried and scared.
Then Charlotte said, “We don’t even know you.”
After that, Chloe ran away. She just turned and ran off. Sometimes, I think about that and it makes me very sad. So I don’t like thinking about it too often, but sometimes, I can’t help it. Chloe must have been so sad, all because of what I said. It’s no wonder why horrible things happen to me, because of how horrible I am to everyone else. Bad people deserve bad things to happen to them. If I wanted people not to do bad stuff to me, I should have thought about that before I went around being such a disgusting person to everyone else.
I didn’t see Chloe for a while after that. Then, when I eventually did see her around school, I tried to say hi to her a few times. But she wouldn’t really look at me anymore.
I got off the bus at university. It looked quite different at night, with all the lights on in all the buildings. I hadn’t really been there at night much before. I was just standing around on the side of the road, trying to think where I should go. Right when I was standing there, there was this man walking past me. He was pulling this little girl behind him. He was clamped on to her upper arm very tight it looked like. She wasn’t making any noise, but I could see she was crying. I could see it on her face.
“Pick up your feet,” he said and tugged on her arm. She was just being dragged along behind him, since she didn’t have any choice. He stopped and stared down at her. “I said don’t drag your feet!”
I wanted to go up to him and tell him off. Actually, what I really wanted to do was go up to him and shoot him right in his face. But I knew I’d never be able to do it, so I didn’t even bother trying.
I didn’t know how anyone could be so horrible to a little kid like that. I’d never do anything mean at all to children if I ever had them. Once in a while, I sort of think about what it would be like if I had kids. At the moment, I don’t really want any children. It sort of scares me. But I thought that maybe later in life, maybe I might want some. I might even want lots. A big family sounds pretty nice actually. You’d always have someone to talk to. Or people to play with if you wanted. Sometimes when my parents and I tried to play a board game or a card game or something, we couldn’t. Because maybe the game needed four people. And we only had three. Or maybe my mum was feeling too tired, and then we even only had two. And most games with only two people aren’t very fun at all. But I thought that sometimes it could be pretty nice to have about eight people in your family. Then you could always play any game you want. Or even if you wanted someone to watch a movie with, there would probably always be at least one person. Or if you needed help figuring something out, someone could always come and help you. I thought maybe I would have a husband and a big house somewhere. Kind of outside of the city though, so I could have a garden. Maybe my husband would be a doctor, so we wouldn’t be too poor. It’s probably not too nice to be very poor. And maybe I could be a very successful businesswoman or something. I could wear very cool business clothing and have a lot of very important meetings. But mostly, I’d just employ other people to do the work for me, because I don’t want a very stressful life like that. Then we would have about five or six kids, I think. But even better than that is that we would have a lot of cats and dogs! Like maybe four cats, and some dogs, too. My husband could look after the dogs, because he would like dogs a lot. But I’d get to be ruler of the cats. I’d be the Cat Queen. One great thing I’d do is that the house would have little cat runs going all along the walls. Like little ledges around the edge of all the rooms in the house and ramps leading up to them from the floor. That way, the cats could run all around the house and just peer down at people from their lookout spots. I like it best when cats peer at you like they do, because they look quite tough and evil. But then, when you actually pat them, they’re very friendly and cuddly. That’s kind of what I want to be like. I want people to know that I’m very tough and not to mess with me. But that if they actually get to know me, and I like them, then I’m a very kind person.
I was thinking about all that and then a terrible thing happened. I was standing on that street and I heard someone yell, “Francesca!” I don’t like it when people call me that. Mostly only my mother calls me that. I turned around and saw my Uncle Pete. He was already getting out of his car and coming towards me. He must have been driving past, because his car was just stopped there, in the middle of the road. The front door was even still open where he had got out, and there was a car stopped behind him, because he was holding up all the traffic.
Pete was this big man. He was very tall, maybe almost seven feet tall, and he had this big belly and these even bigger shoulders. He was huge. And he was sort of walking and running over to me, yelling my name. I was quite surprised, to be honest. I didn’t even really have time to feel anything else, because I was still trying to process what was going on. I hadn’t seen Pete in a very long time. He used to occasionally babysit me when I was young, and my parents were too busy to look after me. But then he got this head injury, and he had to quit his job. He was actually pretty nice to me before then. He worked as a chef, and he always tried to teach me how to make things. He actually did teach me how to make pancakes once, and I still remember it even now. But after he hurt his head, it sort of made him become a bit crazy. He started walking around everywhere with no shirt on and kind of grunting all the time. I saw him do it a lot at our family Christmas party. My parents didn’t tell me very much about it, maybe because they didn’t want a kid to worry about very grown-up things. But they said they were trying to get a doctor to help him. Then he started taking a lot of drugs, and my parents didn’t let him come over any more. The next year he wasn’t at the Christmas party. I don’t think he was even invited.
His big, bald head was coming toward me. He was completely bald, but he had this long grey beard. He came up to me so quickly that there was this wall of air that hit me and almost blew me away. Even my hair kind of flew back a little bit. He grabbed me roughly by both of my shoulders.
“Where have you been?” he said. He was sort of shaking my shoulders while he said it. My head was bobbing all over the place. He’s very strong. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your mother’s completely distraught, and all she’s been asking for is to have you home. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been writing my essay,” I said. And that was true, I had been.
“Your essay?” he said. He sounded very angry. “Francesca, your father has just died, what the hell does your essay matter? You need to be home to see your mother right now.”
I already knew my father had just died! I didn’t need him telling me that! “Stop shaking me!” I said. He was still shaking me. I was quite angry now. “And let go of me!” I sort of karate chopped his arms to make him let go of me. I have quite a good karate chop, when I try. I think he could have easily kept holding on to me, but luckily, he let go. I saw there were a couple of people who were looking at us now. I think we were both being quite loud. There was even a man with a red hat on the other side of the street who had stopped to see what was going on.
“I have to finish my essay,” I said, and I started walking off. I wasn’t in the mood for talking to him. But he grabbed my arm when I tried to leave. He grabbed the upper part of it, between my shoulder and elbow, just like that little girl I had seen. He clamped down quite hard.
“Where are you going?” he said. “I’ve been asked to bring you back home. Your grandparents are there with your mother, trying to keep her calm. They’ve been going crazy looking for you. We’ve all been driving around day and night trying to find you. We’ve been to your flat, to your friend’s house, whatever her name is. We’ve been combing the bloody streets. We almost called the police to report you missing.”
“I’m not missing, thank you very much!” I said. I was feeling very irritated at him. He was being incredibly rude! “Let me go!” I tried another karate chop. It didn’t work this time, though. He wouldn’t let go of me. He started pulling me towards the car.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. He was kind of yelling at me. “You’ve got to see your mother.” He was still pulling me toward the car.
“Stop!” I screamed. I started hitting him in the face and stomach and anywhere I could reach. But I couldn’t get him very well. I only had one arm. He was holding my other one.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, you crazy girl,” he said. Then he grabbed my other arm, so I couldn’t hit him anymore.
“Help! Help!” I started screaming. “Let go of me!” I tried to kick him, but I couldn’t really do it properly. He was too strong. He was pulling me over to his car. Then, suddenly, someone ran up and punched Pete right in the face. Right in front of me, I saw him get punched in the nose. He let go of both of my arms right away then. Pete sort of stumbled backwards and fell right down onto the concrete with a big grunt. It was the man who I saw before, with the red hat. The one who stopped to look at us across the street. He had punched Pete. He started saying something to me, but I didn’t hear him. While Pete was still on the ground, I knew I could get away. I ran as fast as I could. I just kept running and running. I was so glad to get away. I was very thankful that man had saved me. I wish I had said thank you to him, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I ran all the way through the university until I got to the park. Once I was pretty far into the park, I turned around and saw that there was no one behind me. I had gotten away. I leaned up against a tree to catch my breath. I was breathing very hard.
After I calmed down a little bit, I started thinking about that man doing that very cool punch. I’d never punched anyone in my life before, but it looked very cool. Very badass. I turned to face the tree that I had been leaning on and put up both my hands in fists in front of my face, like boxers do. Then I started pretend-punching the tree. I was ducking left and right and throwing a lot of jabs and upper cuts. I’d seen quite a few scenes like that in some movies. I pretended the big tree was big old fat Pete, and I was punching the daylights out of him. I was hitting him over and over with awesome combos. I wound up this very big hit and let loose right in his jaw, just to finish him off. Then I pretended the tree slowly started tipping over, like they do when you see loggers cut them down. Right there in the middle of the park I yelled, as loud as I could, “Timber!” and raised my arms up in victory.