6
Stupid. STUPID. This is what I’m thinking as I’m jogging away from her. I didn’t need to do that. Why didn’t I just come down on her hard, march her to the Head? Why did I need to speak to her at all?
I know why.
Because I’m an idiot!
And she doesn’t believe it. Any of it! Not even after yesterday when the bastard admitted to what he’d done. Just thinking about all that shit – how Shepherd said he was guilty but didn’t admit the whole story – well, it makes me want to hit something. Someone! Yesterday I’d wanted to push aside chairs and people and whatever-the-fuck-else just to get at him.
The boys would approve of me punishing Emily Shepherd. We’d all said it, hadn’t we? That we’d kill Jon Shepherd given the opportunity, chuck him over the Leap to the sharp rocks below. Strangle him slowly. Punish him.
But she isn’t him.
The most I can do is rough her up a bit, give her the toughest sports detention I’ve ever given. It’s not enough, though: I want her to feel like I do, to understand. I want her to know what it’s like to lose people who don’t have a chance of coming back.
I tip into a run. I should go to Mr Smith and clear this sports detention like I’m meant to, but I won’t. Course not – I decided that as soon as I gave it. Smith would never clear a detention for me and Emily Shepherd in Darkwood – no one would, it’s mad.
As I turn on to the playing fields, I touch my hand to the base of my spine, feel the space where my tatt begins. My old man wouldn’t like how I am right now. Ashlee wouldn’t have minded, though – she always liked me playing tough. I remember what it was like to run after her, fast in the dark, to take her dog collar. I want to do it again so bad that I almost have to bend over and breathe deep to stop this feeling from rising up into coughing, or sick, or something worse like crying. I feel choked, like Shepherd is trying to strangle me too. I need to run this feeling out. I need to run Shepherd’s daughter so hard that she’s the one who’s sick. Run her ’til she tells me who her dad really is and why he picked Ashlee. I almost pull out my phone and call Mack, even if he is in class. Because right now I need Darkwood. The Game.
No.
I can’t need that again.
I close my hand into a fist and try to think of what my old man would’ve done: he’d have said that the Shepherd girl is scared, probably just as screwed up as I am. The fact that she doesn’t even believe her dad did it at all suggests she’s mental, don’t it?
But even so . . . why Darkwood? Why even say that to her? It’s because it was the one word that was going round in my brain as I was looking at her. And I need to go back. Because I need those woods. Need what they do to me.
And I need to understand.