This is Not a Love Story (20 page)

They should take the pictures down and paint the room white, because it is too fucking small. There are too many things inside it, not enough space to even breathe.

Absently, I wipe my face. Why the fuck am I crying anyway?

Tentatively, Estella reaches out and touches my arm. When I don’t flinch or pull away, she puts her arms around me and hugs me, but I am too numb and spilling over to hug her back and just lie limply against her, giving up to the current and letting myself be washed downstream.

If she had no ID, how do you know it was my mother?
I mouth after pulling away at last.

“I did a DNA test. Your mother’s DNA was kept on file because she was unidentified.”

Oh.

I nod.

Can I go back to bed now?

“I’m so sorry, Romeo. I really am,” she says as she gets up and carefully pushes me through the doorway and out into the corridor.

I watch the strip lights above us blur into enormous starlike brightness. There is no use in pretending the tears aren’t streaming down my cheeks, no use trying to hide them, but I can’t connect to them, I can’t feel anything—I’m not sobbing, it’s not sadness or grief welling up inside me, it’s not anything.

So why does it hurt so much?

It is not yet morning. It is that almost time between night and day where the clock hands tick slower and the minutes grow fat and lazy with sleep. The birds aren’t singing, but they will be. The sky is whispering.

Pasha is watching me sleep. Except I’m not. I’m watching him through the haze of my eyelashes, thinking I’m dreaming and not wanting to chase my dream away. Right now he is the only connection I have to Julian.

He is like the picture of a boy on the cover of a book I had as a child. Ragged and elfin, his nose and cheeks pink from the cold. I didn’t have many books, and the ones I did have were decrepit and watermarked, their spines cracked from use. My mother had brought what she could carry with her to England and no more.

Baba Yaga,
it was called. The witch in the woods.

“Turn your back to the forest and your front to me,” my mother would say with mock authority, holding me in her arms and letting me turn the pages for her to read.

She used to read to me a lot. Stories were all we had to keep the dark and the damp away.

We were all each other had.

Funny how after spending so long trying to forget, now everything reminds me.

“I know you not sleep,” Pasha whispers. “Come. I take you to him.”

My eyes fly open.

“Come,” he urges, holding out his hand to me. “We do not have much time.”

Determined I can walk unaided, I follow Pasha slowly down the ward. The nurse’s station is empty, though I can hear their voices echoing from the brightly lit corridor nearby.

As we pass a laundry cupboard, Pasha grabs a couple of blankets and drapes the heavy things around my shoulders. With every step, the urge to cast them off and run builds and builds.

“You need them out here,” he mumbles, opening a barred exit onto a long, narrow, flat roof.

The soft rose of the sky gives the illusion of warmth when really it is unbelievably fucking cold. I cough lightly before bringing the blankets up over my nose to breathe. But if I’m shivering, it’s not just from the temperature.

Pasha glances around, whistles, and my stomach drops. I can’t believe I’m this nervous. It’s only been a few days.

A sudden doubt creeps into my mind. Pasha just said “he.” He didn’t say “Julian.” Maybe whoever is out here is not the one person my heartbeat is thudding in my ears for. Maybe it’s Roxy, Cricket, fucking anyone else I don’t want to see. But that doubt is forgotten as he steps out of the shadows a few feet from me.

Julian.

I’ve seen him damaged and bloody before, but it shocks me now how different he looks. How that bright spark, that glow that shines from within him, is dulled to an ember. I can’t take my eyes off him as he walks toward me. He moves as though he is in pain.

I know he will not cry, but he falls to his knees, wraps an arm around my stomach, and buries his face in the rough blankets that cover me.

I sink onto the coarse roof, cradling his head.
He is here… he came for me….

His blond hair is matted and unwashed, suddenly grown so long, and his dirty clothing gives off the bitter smell of smoke. I try to ignore the cuts and the dark patches of blood that cover him. I have to—it hurts too much.

I reach to stroke his hair, to touch him after what feels like eternity, but I forget my hands are bandaged and how weak I have become, how hard it is to move.

He nuzzles my side, and I close my eyes, trying to curl against him. We end up cuddling awkwardly, Julian pulling me back against the wall.

Pasha keeps lookout next to the doorway, doing his best to ignore us.

“Don’t cry, baby,” Julian says softly. Even his voice is tired, worn out, thin.

But I’m not upset. This is just the closest I’ve been to feeling safe and okay in days now.

With the greatest care, he brushes my tears away with his thumb, his fingers tracing my jaw. I lean into his touch. I want to reach out to him.

I don’t understand why he looks so sad.

Fuck
, I sign in frustration, my fists together. I want to grip him tightly and never let go. I want him to never leave me again. I want this not to be a dream.

I want to ask him where he’s been, why he didn’t come for me, but I feel too vulnerable and exposed out here on the roof, too uncertain of what’s changed between us.

But before I can gather my courage to say anything, he says quietly, “I have to go away for a bit.”

What?
I mouth, panicked, but he’s not even looking at me.

I wriggle out of his grip, the blankets falling. All of my fucking wishing and longing and his not being there, all the fucking grief that I can’t face, all of it ripping me apart.

Breathe.

How can he fucking go? How can he come here and tell me that? After all we’ve been through, everything. He doesn’t come for me and now he tells me he’s got to fucking go like it’s the most okay thing in the world. For a blindingly painful second, I think I hate him.

“Breathe, Remee.”

A hand brushes across my shoulder. I flinch, angrily shrugging it off.

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry? Sorry doesn’t fucking cover it.

Fuck off.
I gesture, selfishly.
Go.
I want to hurt him.

How did we grow so far apart?

“You’ve got to stay here, Remee. You’ve got to get better.”

I’m not a fucking child. It’s my life. I want to shake him, make him understand. I should be the one to decide whether or not I stay.

Is Pasha going with you?
I mouth. I will not fucking cry, and I will not make it easy for him.

Glancing quickly at Pasha, he shrugs like he doesn’t want to give me the answer. And I don’t think there is anything between them. I’m not jealous of Pasha. I’m not. I just want to be with him. That’s all I ever wanted.

Why? Why do you have to go? They’re going to put me in a foster home, and you’ll never find me.

With shaky hands he caresses my cheek. The dark rings around his eyes make him look wasted. I close my eyes.

He puts his arms around me, pulls me close.

“Baby, I
will
find you,” he whispers, his voice choked. “I’m not leaving you. I’ve just got to go. It’s better for you this way.”

For a second I let myself lean into him, bury my face in his neck, let my lips brush against the warmth of his skin. I don’t want this moment, this heartbeat of time, to ever end.
This
is what’s better for me, this touch, this feeling.

Why can’t you go to Gem’s?

He shakes his head, slowly, sadly, all the time moving away, getting to his feet.

Where will you go?

His eyes never leave mine, but he doesn’t answer.

What’s going on? Is it Cricket? The drugs?
I grip his arm between my bandaged hands, ignoring the agony it causes me.

He doesn’t deny it.

And it makes so much fucking sense. The way he looks, how he’s acting. I feel betrayed.

Gem told me once Julian started using, years ago, to escape stuff that was going on at home. But things got so fucked up, and he got clean, swore he would never touch anything ever again. We swore to each other we would always find another way to cope. We had each other. And now? And now I guess he just couldn’t take it. I guess what we had wasn’t enough, and he’s not as indestructible as I thought.

Pasha watches us from the doorway. “We should go,” he says.

Julian looks down at me one last time.

Don’t
, I mouth, hunched up on the floor. But he looks away as though he can’t take it and vanishes into the shadows, suddenly dropping out of sight. Distantly I hear the gravel crunch and know he has jumped to the ground.

Pasha hangs back. He crouches next to me and says earnestly, “We come back. I promise. It’s not safe right now for him, but we come back. I watch you.”

He turns to leave too. But I reach out.

Look after him.

I
FEEL
so utterly bereft, I could just sit out here in the cold all night, staring into the blackness, staring at the one spot I saw him last. And for a long time I do. For a long time I just sit and think, about everything. Beginnings, endings, how wrong I’ve been about lots of things.

I’m scared too. If my mother is gone, who is looking for me? Putting a lot of effort into looking for me. Without Julian, I’m on my own.

I can’t touch even the edge of the darkness surrounding my feelings for her, not yet.

But maybe I am stronger than I think. Maybe I can be strong enough for both of us. I realize I’ve been scared, and I’ve not trusted myself since Lloyd and his gang beat me, months and months ago. Julian saved me then, and he’s been saving me ever since. But maybe I don’t need saving anymore. Maybe I’ve got to be the one to save him now. If I ever find him, I think hopelessly.

No.

I’m
going
to find him. I can’t let myself doubt that.

I think about what Cassey said, about needing hope, needing something to hold on to, and I begin to question deeply what I really want. When each day is a struggle to survive, you don’t think too much about the future. It’s no sure thing. Everyone wants to get off the streets, get a job,
be
one of them, cross the divide. We just don’t know how to do it. That life is separated from us by a wall of glass we’re not strong enough to break through and we can’t get a purchase on to climb over.

But maybe that isn’t the answer anyway. Maybe there is another way for us. Maybe we just have to step back, ignore the glass wall completely.

I think about Julian, glowing, alive, with me always. I think about green fields and quiet woods. And I let myself dream….

T
OO
MANY
days pass.

I don’t look for Pasha, because I know he will only come when I am not looking for him
—
I don’t turn my head if dark hair flits at the edge of my vision. I don’t let my heart pick up speed at the sound of running footsteps, lilting whispers. I don’t look, and yet still he doesn’t come.

I try not to think of Julian at all because it kills me. But obviously I do, and maybe that’s what love is, maybe dying inside when you’re not together is how it has to be.

Because, believe me, I’m dying.

J
ULIAN
.

So beautiful and serious. I can’t take my eyes off him as he walks toward me, lighting up the darkness.

His arms fold around me quicker than a heartbeat, and we fall like flicker-book figures onto the bed.

But in his diminishing glow, I begin to notice things aren’t quite right. As he moves his head, clumps of his beautiful hair are left stranded on the pillow, the side of his neck is black and bruised, and when he looks at me his eyes are the hollow eyes of a memory, or a ghost.

What have you done? I ask in horror.

He pulls up his sleeve, his arm just skin and bone covered in hundreds of needle marks.

And as I look, the marks shift to form two words. Help me, they say.

I wake up, shaking, my breath coming in painful gasps. I have to get out of here.

F
OR
THE
past few days, Cassey has been my only visitor, although Estella has phoned and left messages, which the nurses pass on to me, saying she wants to introduce me to my foster family at the end of the week. She must really believe I’m going to let her ship me out to some holier-than-thou couple ready to pour the prerequisite amount of sympathy onto another difficult kid the state has handed them. The idea doesn’t appeal on any level. I won’t let it. The streets are where I live now. They are where I’ll be until I find Julian and we make it off them together. What the last year has taught me is that I have a punishing will to survive. I am not some helpless, scared kid anymore. And I know it’s easy to think these things sitting in my warm hospital bed, eating regular hot meals and not curled up frozen in a doorway, but still I believe it’s true.

Yesterday, in uninterrupted silence, I told Cassey about my mother, and she held me until I finally pretended to let go and cry. She said the whole thing breaks her heart into pieces. But I’m still not sure what I feel, and I don’t know how to deal with it on my own—I don’t
want
to deal with it without Julian, so I lock it all up in my heart, where its dark weight bides its time, and I know one day it will consume me.

Finally the cold dawn light brightens the horizon. I’ve been lying here waiting for the day to begin for hours. It’s Thursday, and though I’m still weak, and my chest is still tight in the cold air, I have to leave tonight before Estella comes back tomorrow ready to send me off to my foster family like a good little package. After the nurses have finished their breakfast rounds, I get up and wander the corridor, building up my stamina and thinking about what I’ll need when I leave later on.