iBoy (7 page)

As I followed Mrs. Walker into the hallway and shut the door behind me, I didn’t feel very comfortable at all. My head was full of questions: maybe Lucy’s mum wasn’t in the right frame of mind to decide if I should come in or not? maybe I should have waited outside? maybe I shouldn’t have come up here in the first place? But it was too late to turn back now. I’d already followed Mrs. Walker into the front room.

“Just wait there a minute,” she told me. “I’ll go and see if she’s awake.”

I watched her go into her bedroom (wondering why she was going into
her
bedroom and not Lucy’s), and then I looked over at Ben, who was sitting on the settee watching TV. Although the bruises on his face were fading, and the cuts were starting to heal, it was pretty obvious he’d taken a really bad beating. He was sitting kind of hunched up, which I guessed was on account of his broken ribs, and his left wrist was heavily bandaged.

“Hey, Ben,” I said to him. “How’re you doing?”

He stared at me. “How d’you think?”

I looked around. The flat was a mess. Empty pizza boxes on the floor, bottles, cans, dirty plates. There were piles of clothes on the dining table, piles of old newspapers on an ironing board. The curtains were closed. The light was dim.

I turned back to Ben. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“OK, fair enough . . . but if you change your mind —”

“I said
no
, all right?”

“OK.”

Mrs. Walker came out of her bedroom then. She smiled at me — a fairly vague kind of smile — and said, “Don’t be too long, Tom, all right? She’s not used to seeing people yet . . . she gets really tired.”

I looked at her.

She smiled again, indicating the open bedroom door with a slightly wobbly jerk of her head, and I guessed that meant that I was supposed to go in. I glanced back at Ben, saw that he was immersed in the TV, and I went on into the bedroom.

The curtains were closed, and the only light came from the pale orange glow of an electric heater standing on the floor. There was something about the room that made it feel like a sick person’s room. The stuffy air, perhaps . . . the low light, the lack of energy. I didn’t know. It just felt like a room without any life.

Lucy was sitting on the bed with her knees scrunched up against her chest. She was wearing a baggy old sweater, loose-fitting jogging pants, and big woolly socks. And as I stood there in the doorway, doing my best to smile at her, I could see straightaway that she wasn’t the same Lucy anymore. Her face was very pale, her skin very dull, and there was something about her that seemed to have shrunk. It was as if her entire self — her body, her mind, her heart — was trying desperately to retreat from the world. And even in the muted light, I could see the depth of pain in her eyes, the faded bruises on her face, and — more than anything else — I could
see
that she’d been through the worst thing imaginable. It was
in
her, it had become part of her.

She’d been violated.

She smiled weakly at me. “Hey, Tom . . . do you mind shutting the door?”

I closed the door.

“Sorry, about the mess,” she said, looking around the room. She indicated a chair by the bed. “You can sit down . . .”

I went over to the chair.

“Sorry,” she said again, realizing that the chair was piled up with clothes and books. “Let me —”

“It’s all right,” I told her, clearing the clothes and books off the chair.

“Sorry,” she said once more. She smiled anxiously. “I don’t know why I keep saying sorry all the time . . .”

“Sorry?” I grinned.

She smiled weakly back at me.

I sat down in the chair and looked at her. I’d always loved the way she looked — her messy blonde hair, her pretty blue eyes, her slightly crooked mouth . . . I’d always liked that crookedness. It had always made me smile. And another thing that I’d always liked about being with Lucy was that we could look at each other without feeling uncomfortable . . . we could just be together, and look at each other, and neither of us felt self-conscious about it. But now . . . I realized that Lucy kept touching her hair, pretending to fiddle with her bangs, and I guessed that what she was really doing was trying to cover up the ugly yellow bruising around her right eye. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t
have
to cover it up for my sake, but I wasn’t sure if it was an appropriate thing to say. I mean, if she
wanted
to cover it up, if it made her feel better, who was I to tell her any different?

The truth is, I simply didn’t know
what
to say to her.

What do you say to a girl who’s been raped?

What
can
you say?

“It’s all right,” Lucy said quietly. “I mean . . . you know . . .”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“How’s your head?” she asked.

I instinctively reached up and touched the wound. “Yeah, it’s OK . . . it doesn’t even hurt anymore.” I looked at her, wanting to ask her how
she
was . . . but I didn’t know how. Instead, and kind of stupidly, I said to her, “This isn’t your room, is it? I mean, this used to be your mum’s room . . .”

“Yeah,” she said, absently looking round. “Well, it’s still my mum’s room, really. I just . . . well, I just couldn’t sleep in my own room anymore.” She lowered her eyes. “That’s where it happened, you know . . . that’s where . . . in my room . . .”

“Oh, right . . .”

“I can’t go back in there . . . not yet, anyway. It makes me feel . . . you know . . .” She shrugged. “So I’ve been staying in here.”

“It must have been terrible,” I said, without thinking. “I mean, what happened . . .”

“Yeah . . .” she muttered. “Yeah, it was terrible . . .”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to —”

“No, no . . .” Lucy said. “It’s all right . . . honestly. It happened . . . there’s no point trying to pretend that it didn’t, is there?” She looked at me. “It
happened
, Tom.”

“I know . . . and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry it happened, Luce.”

“Me too,” she said sadly.

“Can you . . .? I mean, do you want to . . . ?”

“What? Talk about it?”

“Yeah.”

“What for? What’s the point? I mean, talking about it isn’t going to change anything, is it?”

“No, I suppose not . . .”

She looked at me, her eyes wet with tears now. “I can’t, Tom. I can’t do it. I know I should, but I can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t say anything . . . you know, to the police. I can’t tell anyone. I just can’t . . .”

“Yeah, I know.”

I wasn’t just agreeing with her because it was the easiest thing to do, I was agreeing with her because she was right. If she knew who her attackers were — and I was pretty sure that she did — her life wouldn’t be worth living if she gave those names to the police. She’d have to endure an endless nightmare of threats, abuse, verbal and physical assaults . . . maybe even worse.

“And the thing is,” Lucy said quietly, her voice trembling, “the thing is . . . even if I did, you know . . . even if I
did
tell the police who did it, they’d still get away with it, wouldn’t they?”

“Well . . .”

She shook her head. “Come on, Tom, you know how it works. Even if I
could
identify them, give the police names . . . I mean, it doesn’t matter how much
evidence
the police have got. DNA, fingerprints, whatever . . . none of it makes any difference.” Her voice was still trembling, but now it was tinged with anger, too. “All they’d have to say was that it was
consensual
. . . I
agreed
to it. You know, because I’m a
slag
. . . I mean, it says so on my door, doesn’t it?”

She was getting really upset now, and I was tempted to get up and put my arms round her, just hold her for a while, but — again — I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do.

“What about Ben?” I said to her.

“Ben?” she said, almost spitting out his name. “What about him?”

“Well, they can’t say that he
agreed
to being beaten up, can they?”

She shook her head. “Ben won’t say anything. He’s too scared. He’s already told the police that he couldn’t see their faces because they were all wearing hoods or balaclavas.”

“Were they?”

“What?”

“Wearing hoods?”

She looked at me, hesitating. “Some of them were . . . but not the ones who actually did it.” She took a shallow breath. “They
wanted
me to know who they were . . . and they wanted me to know that they didn’t
care
that I knew, because they knew there was nothing I could do about it.”

She was crying silently now, mute tears pouring down her face, and all I could do was sit there, trying hard not to cry myself, feeling more helpless than I’d ever felt before. I just didn’t know what to do. Should I try to comfort her? Would she
want
to be comforted? Was comfort even the right thing to consider? Or should I just sit here, listening to her cry . . . should I just
be
here for her?

As I thought about all this, I could feel my wound throbbing, and I guessed there was something going on inside my head, some cyber-connected part of me that was trying to do what it thought was the right thing . . .

But, just for the moment, I didn’t want anything to do with that. Whatever it was, whatever it was doing, it wasn’t right for now.

“Is your head all right?” Lucy asked me, sniffing back tears and giving me a baffled look. “Why’s it doing that?”

“Doing what?” I said, suddenly embarrassed.

“I don’t know . . .” She was frowning at me, her eyes wrinkled with puzzlement. “It’s stopped now. It was kind of . . .” She put her hand to the side of her head, just where my scar was, and waggled her fingers. “It was glowing, you know . . . like, it was all shimmery . . .” She looked at me. “Honestly, Tom . . . it was really weird.”

I shrugged. “It was probably just a trick of the light or something.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, it feels perfectly all right,” I said, carelessly rubbing the wound, as if somehow that proved there was nothing wrong with it. “So, uhh . . .” I started to say, trying to think of a way to change the subject, but I couldn’t think of anything that seemed OK to talk about.

“So . . . what?” Lucy asked me.

“Nothing . . .” I smiled awkwardly at her. “I was going to ask you when you’re going back to school . . . but, you know . . . it’s a pretty stupid thing to ask.”

“Yeah, I don’t know . . .” she said distantly. “I haven’t really thought about it. I suppose I’ll have to go back at some point . . . maybe after the Easter break . . . but at the moment, I just can’t face it. I’m not sure I’ll
ever
be able to face it, to tell you the truth. I just . . . it’s like, I don’t want to do
any
thing. I don’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone or think about anything. All I want to do is stay in here, with the curtains closed . . . no, I don’t even want to do that.” Her voice was a broken whisper. “They ruined me, Tom. They totally fucking
ruined
me.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Look, you’d better go . . . I’m sorry, I just . . .”

“It’s OK,” I said quietly, getting to my feet.

“Maybe another time . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, of course . . .” I looked at her. “I could come round tomorrow, if you want . . . or not. I mean, whatever you want . . .”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Tomorrow. I’d like that . . . I just need to be on my own for a bit now.”

I nodded at her, then turned and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Tom,” I heard her whisper.

I turned back and looked at her.

She smiled sadly at me. “I mean, thanks for . . . I don’t know. For just listening and everything. It was . . . it was . . . well, you know. Thanks.”