This is Not a Love Story (21 page)

Except when I get back to my bed and start to get everything together and prepare myself, I find my clothes are gone. The plastic bag that rests on top of the cabinet next to my bed, containing the only possessions I have in the whole world—my jeans, top, jacket, and my pad and pens—is no longer there. My pad is the most valuable thing I’ve ever owned. Julian bought it for me. And I filled it with pictures of him. They are the only pictures I have of him. Panic flutters like a bird trapped inside my chest. I should have been more careful. I only went for a short walk up the corridor, but I should have hidden it, or taken it with me, or… something. I look around the ward at all the immobile patients lying in their beds, then over at the duty nurse wheeling around the trolley of drugs.

Who would steal from me?

Suddenly light-headed, I stumble over toward the nurse’s station through the double doors. The world is unclear at the edges. I just want my drawings back. I’m not looking where I’m going, and I crash blindly into someone who gasps and catches me, but I’m so shocked I can do nothing but stare at her openmouthed and think
you shouldn’t be here, you can’t be here, and please don’t take me away anywhere tonight.

“Romeo?” Estella frowns in concern. “Is everything alright?”

No, nothing is fucking alright!
I think, riding a sudden rising wave of shock and hating how fucking perfect her world must be. How, if her boyfriend or husband or relative went missing, she’d have the resources, the money, to find them. How, if her possessions got stolen, the police would commit themselves to reacquiring them. How, if she collapsed out there on the street, people would stop to help. How, if she wanted to leave this hospital right now, she could just walk out the fucking door get into a taxi and go
home
.

I shift out of her grasp and notice there is a tall, brown-haired boy a little older than me standing behind her, looking at me anxiously. When I catch his eye, he smiles shyly.

Hello
, he signs with the fluidity of someone who has spoken sign for a long time, and closes his eyes for a second as if surprised by his own boldness.

His dark eyelashes fan out against his cheek, so long they look to be false, but I know they’re not.

I look away.

This isn’t part of the plan.

I need to hold on to my anger, stop panicking, and figure out a way to get out of here, now.

Glancing quickly between us, Estella says, “Romeo, this is Crash. Crash, this is Romeo.”

She smiles, and I hope she’s not going to leave us alone.

“Crash is deaf. He lives with the foster family I want to place you with. He’s been with them for two years now.”

Oh.

“You were going somewhere with a purpose, Romeo. Do you need something? Can I help?”

I shake my head, then change my mind and mouth,
My bag has gone. All my stuff. Everything!

Too calmly she places a hand on my shoulder, and all at once I realize I’ve underestimated Estella and her freeness. She may possess some seemingly wild elemental force inside her, but she’s been herding me straight down this path since the beginning.

“It’s okay. I’ll go and speak to the nurses. It’s probably been placed somewhere for safe keeping.”

Fuckfuckfuck.

She knew I was going to run, and she got the nurses to move my things. She knows she can’t physically stop me leaving, but she also knows how much those drawings mean to me after our stupid conversation the other day. Angrily, I watch as she disappears back through the doors, then I storm back to bed, uncomfortably aware that Crash is just standing there biting his lip and looking one way then another, probably wishing he’d never agreed to come.

Just because I can’t speak doesn’t mean I can’t live with normal people
, I think, knowing I’m being an obnoxious prick.

I can feel Crash watching me, but I don’t care. I don’t want to know his story or be his friend. I just want to get out of here and go… where? My plan never got further than just leaving and somehow finding Julian—mostly banking on luck and intuition.

Crash’s hands are shaking a little by his side as he stands at the end of the bed. I don’t care that he’s nervous. I don’t, but I do look up.

Romeo?
he signs carefully.

He’s shy, and I can tell talking to me is hard for him. But I don’t know why he would want to try.

Estella told me a lot about you. She said you were living on the street.

I nod distractedly. Could I leave without my pictures? Clothes, I could steal, but could I leave my drawings? What if I never found him? What if they were all I had left?

I lived on the street for a while too.
He mouths the words as he signs them. I don’t know whether it’s a habit or a push to be clearer.

He looks like he’s about to say something else, but at that moment Estella walks back, smiling. It only serves to make me angrier. It’s so fucking unfair!

“Romeo, the nurses have your bag. They’ll make sure it’s kept safe.”

I want it back.

“It’s locked away right now, but I’m sure we can get it back for you tomorrow.”

You can’t force me to go with you.

“It’s my job to protect you, Romeo. If I don’t make sure you are being appropriately cared for and living in a safe environment, I’m not doing my job.”

I roll away onto my side.

“I brought Crash to talk to you. He’s been through a lot of similar experiences. I want to show you other people do understand what you’re going through.”

Yeah, but I bet he’s not lost the one fucking person he loves more than anything. I bet he’s only here because he’s been manipulated somehow.

“Romeo, will you just listen to us for a moment? Please? I’m not trying to take away your freedom, that’s the last thing I want to do. I’m trying to show you things can be better for you. I’m giving you a choice. If you go back out there, you could end up spending your life living like that, and there are better ways to live. You’ve got so much potential. Crash is an artist too, of a sort….”

It’s about this point that I tune out because she doesn’t understand the choice she’s giving me. She doesn’t understand the implications. If I go with her, I lose him. Simple as that. There would be too much separating us. I would be on the other side of the uncrossable divide.

I’ve already made my choice.

L
ATER
THAT
night I leave. I steal someone else’s clothes from the laundry on the lower ground floor and then slip back along the corridors and stairwells, just like the thief that I am. I no longer hear the whispers. I no longer feel so haunted. An incredible loneliness sweeps around me like a suffocating mist instead. The night is a deep starless black, the hospital grounds eerie and full of shadows. I crunch through the gravel lining the narrow hospital roads and pathways until I come to the spot I last saw Julian when he jumped off the roof. I wish I could reach out and feel some tangible link to him, follow the secret connection between us like a boy following a trail of breadcrumbs. I pull the blanket I stole tighter around me, feeling only cold, and somehow lost.

At first I head toward Cassey’s. I know I need help, and I know she will help me—I have come to trust Cassey deeply—but I change my mind. If Julian has gone into hiding, if he is running from something, there is only one person who might have a clue as to where he would run to. Gem. And, though it is not something either of us would ever mention, Gem owes me.

I take it slow, forcing myself to walk as though I have all the time in the world. I need to remain okay. I pass Victoria train station, the station where Pasha said he saw all the missing posters of me plastered along a platform. I stop outside for a moment. It’s too early for the trains to start running, and heavy latticework gates bar the entrance onto the concourse. Without thinking too much about what I’m doing, I slip down a back street, over a low wall, and out onto the empty tracks. The mouth of the station devours the tracks darkly, and in its shadow I am terribly small. I don’t really know why I’m putting myself through this. I just want to see. But as I approach the platforms, stumbling noisily over the uneven ballast between the rails, I see I’m not the only one wandering around the deserted station. A hooded figure moves soundlessly between the pillars, stopping every now and then to stick something to the walls. All at once, the figure turns, and I’m sure I’ve been seen. Dread fills me, and it’s hard to catch my breath. I crouch down beneath the lip of the platform, my heart beating too loud, wondering desperately if it’s too late to run.

T
HE
OVERHANG
on the platform is so shallow, I’m sure whoever is out there will see me. I try to calm the white panic rushing through my veins so I can listen out for footsteps echoing nearer. But I can hear nothing but the high-pitched wheeze of air as it forces its way in and out of my lungs, the dramatic thud of my heart. I know I’m fast, but right now I’m not sure I can run. I can barely breathe.

So I wait, cowering on the train tracks, willing myself not to cough, not to make a fucking sound. Though what I’m waiting for, I do not know.

I try to picture the figure I saw, but I can remember nothing distinguishing—dark hooded top, dark trousers. Tall enough for me to assume it’s a man rather than a woman. But really it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to confront them. I convince myself I’ve no idea what they were doing really, and that whatever it was it has nothing to do with me. They just looked like they didn’t wanted to be disturbed. When you’ve been on the streets this long, you know when people don’t want to be disturbed with what they’re doing. You develop a sixth sense.

I shiver and pull the blanket tighter around myself as a cold wind blows down the worn-down tracks and into the station like a ghost train. I am so conspicuous. Anyone else walking down these tracks would spot me a mile off. I feel caught out in open fields, birds of prey wheeling the sky above me. Vulnerable as fuck. And this is not how I saw my first night out of the hospital going. I told myself I could do this. But this is the first time I’ve been truly on my own out here, and it is fucking terrifying.

Sometime before dawn, I get the courage to take a quick look along the platform. Birds are screeching loudly in the skeletal rafters above. I haven’t heard another sound since I crouched down here, and it feels like I’ve been stuck in the same hunched-up position for hours; my legs are stiff, my fingers frozen.

I peer around. Everything is as grainy as the picture on a black-and-white television set in the gray morning light, and it makes it hard to see even with the low station lighting still on.

Beneath my feet the ground starts to vibrate, and I know the first trains are going to be coming in soon. I’m going to have to get up off the tracks even if there is someone else still around. A horn sounds. A train horn. I spin around and see the sudden immediate glare of lights advancing quickly along the track toward me.

Fuck.

I sling my body forward and slither ungracefully up over the edge and onto the platform, the train missing me by seconds. My blood thunders. I didn’t expect that at all.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve had a narrow miss with a train. I let my head rest against the filthy concrete for a moment. But this is completely different. Well, maybe not completely
—
I was without Julian then too. But back then I was a little lost, and now I have a purpose. And even though my situation is no less hopeless, I have hope.

In the main part of the station, beyond the platform, I can hear people arriving for work, doors being unlocked, shutters drawn up. The minute shift from nighttime to daytime, the shreds of safety it brings. I look around. Whoever was here is most likely long gone. But… for a moment the posters, pasted to every pillar and wall, take my breath away. There must be hundreds of them. It’s like Pasha said—I’m everywhere. The platform is an eerie hall of mirrors reflecting my face.
This
is what they were doing. I can see where the posters have been torn down and others stuck over the top, as though they are replaced whenever the previous ones are cleared off. At the bottom of each one is a telephone number. I look away and shudder, utterly spooked.

I scan the concourse anxiously. I need to get away from here. I don’t care who they are or why they’re doing this, I really don’t. This is too creepy. The sort of creepy that could have me ending up in small pieces in a bin bag dumped in the river.

I can’t go back out on the tracks with the trains now running, so I shoot toward the barriers that divide the platforms from the main part of the station. Someone behind me yells. A train driver with a perplexed look on his face points in my direction, but I turn away and carry on walking quickly. If I can just manage to get over the barriers and slip outside, I will be okay. I can vanish into the streets, and no one will be able to find me. But he shouts to a guard on the concourse who starts running toward me, and I don’t manage two steps before I’m tackled to the floor from behind. I hit the concrete with a painful thump and try and scramble away from the heavy weight pinning me down, but I just can’t. I don’t have the strength, and as I lie winded on the cold dirty concrete, I start to wish I’d never left the hospital last night.

If I’d taken my time and had more of a plan, I wouldn’t have been so distracted and thought coming here was such a good idea. I wouldn’t have frozen my arse off hiding and then got caught trespassing or whatever it was the driver yelled at me for doing. Maybe he was just shocked because he almost killed me. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just wish I weren’t here.

They drag me into a booth at the top of the platform. There are three of them, the driver and two guards. The room is small, with one chair. I’m shoved toward it.

“So you’re the little wanker putting up posters of yourself, eh? Getting too cocky to cover your face now, are you?” one of them spits.