Thirteen (8 page)

He didn't look back.

He had almost been killed.

He was a killer.

And he had left the knife—the knife with his fingerprints. Evidence of his guilt.

All around him, the trees and grass murmured accusingly as he ran on:
savage, killer, murderer
.

Panic filled Adam's chest, crawling and wriggling like maggots.

I've just killed someone. Nothing will ever be the same again
.

Panic, confusion.

Adam ran back to Keenan's tent and tore in.
Killer
said the rising zip.

No one was inside, just a battery-powered lamp dimly spreading orange light. The glow had seemed bright before, now it was sinister and pale.

Should I get adults?

No—I've just killed someone!

Where is Megan?

Think!

Adam's T-shirt was exactly where he had left it half an hour earlier. Half an hour. That's all it had taken to change everything.

What have I done?

Then, clear drops of thought:
Put your T-shirt on and search their stuff. But quick—they will be coming back
.

Adam frantically went through the tent. First he went to the small metallic suitcase between the sleeping mats, trying three or four times to force it open, anxious that time was slipping away, but it stayed resolutely locked. As if it would make any
difference, he beat at it with his palms. Then he looked in and under sleeping bags—nothing.

He swore several times, the words an empty expression of frustration and fear.

He remembered the girls' tent. Keenan had said it was the next one. He should have gone there straight away to find Megan. If only he could think.

But he had killed someone.
Killed!

Grabbing the case, Adam dashed outside, wishing he had a flashlight or a weapon. A misty drizzle had started.

I am a murderer
echoed around his head.

The nearest tent was in darkness, but there was movement and sound from inside. What should he do? The case would hurt if he whacked someone with it, but if he struck through the tent he might hit Megan. He would have to go in and swing the case like a club.

He imagined himself killing again. Felt himself falling helplessly into a pit.

Adam knelt down on the wet grass and put his hand on the bottom of the zip. There was a high-pitched muttering coming from inside, but the words were indistinct. He pulled the zip up a couple of inches. No padlock.

Idiot! The lamp. Get the lamp
.

Idiotic killer
.

Adam snatched the lamp and returned, unzipping and entering the tent in one swift movement.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” A man and a woman sat up immediately, staring at Adam's illuminated face. The man, in his early twenties, looked angry rather than awkward. “You're in the wrong bloody tent.” The woman was pulling up their sleeping bag to cover herself.

Adam retreated without an apology. He didn't care. “Meg?”

He went to all the tents nearby. Some had people in them, some were empty. He started pulling at ropes and canvas, lost in his own frantic desperation. “Meg? Meg!”

A loud and deep voice came back: “Will you shut up?” Then another voice: “Move on or I'm going to punch your lights out!”

“Meg!”

Then, in the distance, Megan's voice saying, “Adam? Ad—”

And the voice was cut off.

She was near, just a row or two away.

The music had now stopped, and here and there people were returning for the night. Adam ran down the rows, the rain heavier now, making the ground slippery. He noticed that the rain sliding from his hands onto the lamp had a red tinge. Proof of his crime.

Suddenly, in the distance, he saw the backs of Megan and Cassie.
Thank God
. A little flame of awareness flickered in his mind:
hide the case and prepare to fight
. He threw the case between two tents and put the lamp in his right hand. It was the best weapon he had.

The girls turned at that instant. “Adam, I'm
so
sorry,” Megan said, clearly upset. “They said that they were going to send you to me as part of the game. I'm
really
sorry. I
knew
it was a bad idea.”

“Yes, a bad idea,” he said, looking at Cassie.

“Adam,
please
forgive me. I was really worried when I realized you'd gone.” Megan was near to tears.

“It seems that things didn't work out,” said Cassie.

Adam moved between the girls, pushing Megan slightly behind him, leaving a very faint red imprint on her top.

The rain fell heavily.

Walking toward Cassie, Adam growled, “Listen to me, you evil bitch.” He gripped the lamp. Cassie cast a large shadow against a nearby tent.

“Adam, we really are sorry. It was stupid,
stupid
, and dumb,” interrupted Megan. She was properly crying, her face contorted and her shoulders moving erratically up and down. “Please can we go back now?”

Cassie mimicked her: “Please can we go back now?”

Megan still cried, soaked and alone, as Adam moved closer to Cassie.

Adam spoke very deliberately, fear gone, anger composing him. “Cassie, or whatever your name is, I
promise
you that if you don't go, I will make you.”

A million drops of rain drummed off tents and hard earth.

Cassie spoke equally slowly, but quietly, so not even Megan could hear: “If you have hurt Harry or anyone else, I will cause you so much pain that you will
beg
to die.”

They stared at one another, bonded by hatred.

Megan came to Adam's side. “Please,
please
let's go back now. I want to go home.”

Cassie moved away, unsmiling. “I'm sure we'll get to play truth or dare again sometime. . . .” Then she started to run.

Megan stood next to Adam in the dark as he washed his hands under the outside tap near to their tents. Her eyes were red with emotion and sudden fatigue. “What happened? Why are you washing your hands? I don't understand.” She looked thin in her wet jumper and jeans. “And what's that?” she pointed at the case that Adam had retrieved.

Fear and guilt coiled like two snakes in Adam's mind. He started to shake.

“Megan, I would normally tell you anything. But I never want to talk about what happened tonight.” He had never shouted at Megan before,
ever
, but he did now. There was real desperation in his voice. “Never, never. Have you got that?”

Megan's face splintered again into tears and confusion.

Adam stepped forward and put his arms around her. She stood still, like a pillar, arms at her side. Adam didn't say anything.

Megan didn't understand what Adam had done, but she knew that the hug meant he was sorry, and that he cared for her. But she still feared that something had happened to change their lives.

Adam didn't sleep at all that night. He was terrified of another attack, so he never actually put his head down. His tent was some way from Cassie's and Keenan's, and much nearer to the main road through the site, but sometimes a rustle rose above the drumming of the rain and Adam tightened his grip on the mallet used to drive in the tent pegs. He was in mortal danger. And he had done something terrible. He knew he should tell someone.

But how could he? He was a
killer
.

His parents were decent people, but they would immediately involve the police, which would lead to arrest and imprisonment, probably. Adam didn't really know what they did with thirteen-year-olds, but the words
Young Offenders' Institution
hung over him. Or maybe they would send him to a
home
, a Victorian building with brutal dormitories and metal beds and cold showers.

Adam saw his future dribbling away. He prodded the locked suitcase.

He certainly couldn't confide in anyone at school. He hardly knew his form teacher, Mrs. Hopkins. Mrs. Tavistock? No way. Mr. Sterling? He wouldn't be shocked to hear Adam had
massacred a village, but even he would probably do what teachers do. It would all go straight back to parents and the police.

Asa or Leo? He kept all important things from them already. No, there was only one person: Megan. And he wanted to protect her from it all. He would have to do this on his own. If he kept quiet it would all go away—not immediately, but slowly; it would fade until it was just a shadow and might not have happened at all.

And in between thinking this, Adam kept being dragged back to fearful tension by the slightest noise.

Asa's shallow breathing continued regardless. Adam looked again at the case. Eventually he decided to take it behind the shower block and force it open with the mallet.

Megan didn't sleep at all that night, lying still in the darkness, turning the events of the evening over and over in her mind. Rachel asked several times what the matter was, but she always said the same thing: “I don't want to talk about it.”

To complicate things further for Megan, Asa's dad had called her parents by walking to the gate and getting reception on his phone. The words
missing with Adam
would have conjured up all sorts of images in their minds. Asa's parents didn't ask many questions when Adam and Megan had finally arrived: they were tired and saw only a vague boyfriend–girlfriend situation. If only they had thought to investigate, things would have taken a very different course. But they didn't know how very ignorant they were, so didn't think to ask.

The rain and early start had kept most people awake, so Adam and Megan were among tired company the next morning. Adam felt wretched: worried, depressed, exhausted.

“Is everything okay?” asked Leo needlessly.

“I think that there's been a bit of a domestic,” said Asa in front of Adam. “Let me know if you want some advice from
Uncle Asa.” He was buoyed by his success with Rachel and had slept soundly.

As they packed up, Adam glanced across the field to where they had played Truth or Dare. How long ago that seemed. He couldn't make out individual tents very well, but almost all of them had been taken down. Still the metallic case sat at Adam's feet.

“Is that one yours?” asked Asa's dad, who seemed to have completely forgotten about the earlier events.

“Yes,” he lied.

In silence, Adam and Megan walked to the station, trailing slightly behind the rest. As they left the festival site, the Rock Harvest banner still dripping from the overnight rain, Adam saw a tall blond boy and a brown-haired girl waiting in the distance by the roadside. Thinking about safety in numbers—they couldn't attack him
here
, surely—Adam drifted closer to the others, but gradually realized that they looked nothing like the pair he thought they were. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly felt desperate to get home.

Milton Keynes Station was awash with festival goers, a rather more subdued bunch than two or three days earlier. Somehow, everyone from Gospel Oak Senior had managed to gather in the middle of platform four, the departure point for one of the trains to London.

Adam and Megan wandered up. Jake was in the middle of the group. “I sorted him out,” he was saying, “and he didn't bother us again.” Adam felt safer now that he was with familiar faces, even Jake Taylor's.

Then something terrible. Across two tracks on the parallel platform was another familiar face: Cassie. She seemed to be alone and looked as tired as Adam.

Adam noticed a train about two hundred yards away, trundling closer with the usual sparks and squeaks, about to arrive in front of her.

She mouthed four words: “The case. Leave it.”

Adam edged away from his group and spoke across the tracks, “Why?”

The train was gliding in. One hundred yards.

“I want it.”

Adam waited, looking between case and girl.

Fifty yards.

He shrugged a little. “Okay.”

Then twenty yards, then ten.

And at that point he threw the case toward Cassie, but it fell short, on to the tracks in front of her platform. Almost immediately the train was sitting over it like a dinosaur shielding an egg. There was no way that Cassie could get to it until the train pulled away.

Curious onlookers muttered and nudged, including some from Adam's group.

“Grant, you're so stupid,” said Jake. “I've had dumps that are more intelligent than you. I don't know why a pretty thing like Meggie wastes her time with you.” At that moment Adam's train arrived and they all flooded on.

Adam found himself able to look out of the window and see the train on Cassie's platform pull out, revealing the case.

Despite the shock of onlookers and shouts from attendants on the station, Cassie leaped onto the tracks. Adam peered down from his train.

With terrifying presence of mind, she glanced up and smiled. “Thanks.” And, looking pretty, and innocent and attractive in ways that still affected Adam despite everything, she added, “See you soon.”

Then, case in her arms, she leaped back up on to the platform. Several travelers gathered around her.

Seconds later she turned back toward Adam, fire in her eyes and snarling. She was looking for the fastest way to reach him.

Adam gave a weary smile from his train as it slowly pulled away.

She showed him the broken clasp on the case. Broken with a tent hammer.

Adam held up a large envelope in one hand and his backpack in the other.

Cassie, lips tight and fists clenched, shrieked and yelled at Adam's train window as it slid away down the track. The people near her backed away, confused and frightened.

Adam put the envelope in his bag. Inside was £1,000 in fifties and twenties. Cassie was not worried by the loss of the money. “Money is just paper,” Coron would say, “and we can always get more.” She was more worried by the loss of her weapon, now in Adam's backpack. But she was most worried by what Coron's reaction would be.