About Last Night - Chapter 10
'Ma’s necklace clung to my skin, but I would never dream of taking it off. Ma gave it to me the day I got lost at the pier. She told me that as long as I had it I would always find my way home.'
Catch-up on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, and Chapter 9.
July, 1997
‘Damn it,’ I said, slumping on the grass. The heat was unbearable, my face was burning, my T-shirt had formed islands of sweat under my arms and Ma’s necklace clung to my skin, but I would never dream of taking it off. Ma gave it to me the day I got lost at the pier. She was so frightened when she finally found me and I burst into tears, sensing her distress. To calm me down, Ma took off her necklace, put it around my neck and told me it was my true North. As long as I wore the necklace, I would always find my way home.
Amy took the flyer out of her pocket and studied it with intensity. It had MAGIC IN THE WOODS FESTIVAL written in bold letters and some kind of an illustrated map that only made sense to the pixies of the forest.
‘Give me that,’ I said and snatched the piece of paper. I ran a hand over my sweat-covered forehead and brought the map closer to my eyes, squinting from the sun. ‘See that,’ I said. ‘This looks like the main road, next to this clearance which is where we must be now. If we keep a beeline in this direction, we should be back onto the main road, where we can hitch a ride to the train station.’
I looked at Amy and saw her disappointment. ‘I’m sorry, Little Red Riding Hood,’ I said. ‘But I honestly don’t fancy spending the night in the forest, hoping to find some secret gathering and ending up eaten by the Big Bad Wolf instead.’
Amy laughed. I loved making Amy laugh. There was never much laughter in her house. Amy’s mum cried all the time. Praying to God that Amy was better at school, purer of heart, more obedient of her father. Their house was the saddest place on Earth (if you don’t count the orphanage, but I’d rather used the word ‘hellish’ than ‘sad’ to describe it) and that’s why I was out here in the woods, against my better judgement, trying to rustle up a bit of joy for her.
‘Look,’ I said, softening my tone. ‘We tried, okay? We came all the way here in the middle of nowhere, and we can’t find the blooming thing. Maybe it’s not even real, you know. Maybe it’s some crazy person’s idea of a practical joke to hand out flyers to some fake festival. For all I know, they’re filming us, and we’ll be the laughing stock on the telly tonight. And we don’t want that, do we?’
Amy responded with a weak smile. ‘I guess we should go back,’ she sighed.
As we began to hike through a patch of long grass that must have been crawling with ticks, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we may also end up with Lyme disease.
‘Was that a snake?’ cried Amy.
‘Don’t think about it, just keep walking,’ I said. I tried not to think of snakes either, but it was exactly what was going through my mind. The story of Adam and Eve popped into my head, followed by an image of Amy’s father threatening my soul with eternal damnation. I shooed the thought away. I wasn’t scared of him. He was a bully and I wasn’t afraid of bullies. I could take a lot of pain, remember? I was more afraid of not keeping Amy safe, which is why I was desperate now to get her back home before anyone found out what we’d been up to.
‘There’s the road,’ I said, triumphant. ‘I can see it.’
I started running, letting out a satisfying yelp. When we reached the tarmac, Amy began to cry.
‘Hey, what’s that about?’ I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘We found the road, we’re going to be okay.’
‘For once, I tried to do something I wasn’t supposed to, and I’ve already failed,’ she said, between bouts of tears. ‘I thought that finding that flyer on the church floor was a sign. That it was God himself telling me that it was okay to have some fun. Guess I was wrong.’
‘There’ll be other occasions to have fun, I promise you.’
We’ve been walking by the side of the road in silence for over half an hour. The sun was becoming hotter still and the tarmac was like burning coals, the heat seeping through the soles of my shoes. Amy looked like a wilted salad and I don’’t think I looked much better. We were both covered in sweat and we were running low on water. With every painful step I took, I started to believe there was no way this day would end well. When a car pulled over out of nowhere and a window rolled down, I knew for certain. I caught a glimpse of a guy with blond hair and Ray-Ban glasses in the passenger seat. The driver was wearing a baseball cap that was hiding his face. I knew this could be bad news but I had to try. This was the only car that drove past since we’d been walking on the side of the road.
‘Hey there,’ I said, stooping down to talk to the driver. ‘Could we get a lift?’
‘Where to?’ said the driver.
‘The train station,’ I said.
‘Actually, we are looking for this secret festival in the woods,’ Amy jumped in. ‘Do you guys know anything about it?’
The men exchanged looks. ‘It’s your lucky day,’ said the blond one, grinning. ‘We happen to be on our way to it, too. Hop on.’
‘Awesome,’ said Amy, making a move towards the back-door handle.
I took her by the hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Excuse us for one second, please,’ I said and walked her a few steps away from the car. ‘Amy, what are you doing? These guys could take us into the woods and kill us. We don’t know them. We sure can’t trust them. We need to be very careful. Let’s just ask them to drop us at the train station and be on our way back, as we agreed.’
‘Helena,’ Amy said, with pleading eyes. ‘I don’t want to go home. Please.’
I pursed my lips, trying to make sense of the battle of thoughts in my head. I knew where Amy was coming from, but, boy, we would be taking a hell of a risk. You think like a grandma, Amy would always say to me, but I couldn’t help it. I was wired this way, distrustful of the world, always ready to face danger one way or another. There were only two people in the world I trusted: Amy and my mother. And my mother wasn’t here to help.
‘Come on, girls,’ shouted the blond guy with his head hanging out the window of the car. ‘Make up your mind. We don’t have all day.’
‘Please, Helena,’ said Amy with pleading eyes. ‘I’m sure it will all be fine. We’re supposed to have fun, remember?’
‘Only if you promise me you won’t leave my side,’ I said and started to walk back towards the car, making Amy run to catch up.
‘I’m Trevor,’ said the blond one, extending his hand and revealing sharp canines with his smile, as we slid into the back seat of the car. I got a sudden bad feeling about him. ‘This is David,’ said Trevor, pointing at the driver.
‘Hi,’ said David, looking at us through the rear-view mirror. I caught a glimpse of his eyes underneath his cap. He had the most beautiful brown eyes. The longest eyelashes. The darkest eyebrows. He made me feel more at ease.
‘Hey,’ said Trevor. ‘Why don’t we swap places? Get to know each other better?’ He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Show you what nice guys we are?’
Before I could stop her, Amy got out of the car and got in next to David, while I reluctantly allowed Trevor next to me. My gaze burnt holes at the back of Amy’s head, as the car pulled out, already regretting my decision. I should have listened to my instinct.
David fumbled with the tuning of the radio and found a station that played a song I recognised. The Rolling Stones. Sympathy for the Devil. The car filled with rock‘n’roll and my tension began to dissipate. Maybe I was being paranoid.
‘You like The Stones?’ said David with a smile, turning to face Amy.
‘Yes,’ she said, blushing. ‘But I shouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ said David, taking a turn onto a forest track.
‘Her father forbids it,’ I said. ‘He’s got an entire list of artists, musicians and authors that he calls the servants of Satan.’
Amy threw daggers at me with her eyes, and I responded with a smirk.
‘What other servants of Satan does this list contain?’ said Trevor, with a chuckle.
Amy was officially red. She turned her head away from David.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Amy,’ I said, adopting a scholastic tone that did not suit the circumstances, ‘but I believe Picasso and Dante are somewhere at the top of his Holiness’s list. Closely followed by Salvador Dali and Marilyn Manson.’
‘Stop it,’ Amy muttered under her breath.
David turned the volume higher, as Trevor’s cackle filled the car. Amy hugged herself, ashamed. ‘My father is a vicar,’ she said to no one in particular.
‘Hey,’ whispered David, throwing Amy a quick glance as he manoeuvred the car around a pothole in the road. ‘I’m impressed that your father has even heard of Marilyn Manson.’
‘I’m not sure he has,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘I think Helena made that up.’
A red light flashed on the dashboard. The car stopped abruptly, and David pulled on handbrake with a screech. He removed his baseball cap and scratched his head. ‘I need to take a look at the engine,’ he said. ‘We might be low on cooling fluid.’
‘Cigarette break,’ proclaimed Trevor.
We got out of the car. I walked over to Amy and poked her ribs. ‘I told you this was a very bad idea,’ I said between my teeth. ‘This must be a ruse.’
Before Amy had a chance to reply, I felt a hand around my shoulders. It was Trevor with a cigarette between his lips. Amy took advantage of my present distraction to go around the front of the car and pretend to assist David, although she’s never looked under the bonnet of a car before.
‘Everything okay?’ she said, rolling a strand of hair into a curl and chewing on its end. David lifted his gaze at her. A lock of hair was hanging over an eyebrow, and sweat glistened on his forehead. He had a visible dark stubble piercing through his skin, which gave him a bad boy edge. Amy threw a guilty glance at me, in time to see Trevor’s hand tighten its grip around my shoulders, like a boa constrictor.
‘What’s wrong, poppet?’ he said. ‘You don’t like me?’
‘I don’t know you,’ I said, my eyes still fixated on Amy.
‘What do you wanna know?’ he carried on, breathing in my ear.
‘Tell me about your friend,’ I said, keeping my gaze on Amy.
‘I knew it,’ said Trevor, removing his hand from around my shoulders and taking a drag from his cigarette. ‘All the chicks like David,’ he let out a cloud of smoke and leaned against the car. ‘What is it about him?’ he said, gesticulating with the cigarette in the air. ‘Is it because he’s such a brood?’ He pushed his Ray-Bans at the top of his head and took another drag, squinting at me, like he was about to tell me the single most important thing of my life. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d tell your friend to stay away from him. He’s a murderer.’
My look of horror must have struck him as funny. He held on to his belly, laughing maniacally. ‘You should see your face,’ he said between fits of laughter. ‘Relax, he didn’t kill any people. Just a bunch of fish.’
I threw Amy an I-told-you-so look. Either David was a criminal, or Trevor was not right in the head. Why else would he make horrible jokes to sixteen-year-old girls alone in the forest with two older, bigger, stronger guys? Either way, we were not safe.
‘Oi, Trevor, cut it out,’ said David slamming down the bonnet. ‘Stop scaring the girls.’
‘Is the car okay?’ I said, trying to employ a casual tone. The quicker we got to the festival, the safer we would be.
‘Yeah, the engine was just overheated, I poured some water in to cool it,’ said David. He popped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. ‘Let’s roll.’
We drove in unbearable silence for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Trevor’s hand rested on my knee, searing my skin. I was so tense, I knew I would give myself away if I tried to speak. Amy was stealing glances at David and looked out through the window every time he almost caught her staring. When we finally reached a gigantic banner hanging from trees on either side of the track that said ‘WELCOME TO MAGIC IN THE WOODS FESTIVAL’, my heart nearly burst with relief. Thank God this thing actually existed. As soon as we got out of the car, we would be safe. We would be surrounded by other people. Unless this was some witch gathering and we were the virgins to be sacrificed on a pyre. Why else would the call it ‘magic’ in the woods?
I took a deep breath to stop my mind from spiraling. Having reached the festival site was better than being in the woods with these two guys, no matter the outcome. We drove on, past the banner and into a clearing, where dozens of cars were parked chaotically. Further down a slope, at the end of a thin walking path, there was a gate decorated with bunting and ribbons and a small marquee.
‘Thank you, thank you! We would not have found this in a million years,’ shrieked Amy and clapped her hands. David turned his head to her and smiled.
He parked the car and, before he even stopped the engine, I jumped out, opened Amy’s door, took her by the hand and pulled her out. Amy fell into the grass.
‘Thanks for the ride, guys,’ I said, hurrying Amy down the path towards the entrance.
I was pulling her along, but her eyes stayed locked on David’s. He waved.
‘What are you doing?’ she screamed into my ear. ‘You are so rude. These guys have practically saved us, and this is how we repay them? With rudeness?’
My cheeks burned like hot coals. ‘Oh, yeah? And do you think that dick Trevor wasn’t rude when he came to sit with me in the back? Do you think he didn’t put his hand on my leg? Do you think I was in a position to say anything about it when we were at their mercy, trapped in their car, in the middle of the bloody forest?’
Amy’s eyes widened in shock. For the first time since we hitchhiked the ride with Trevor and David, she took a proper look at me and saw the vein embossed on my temple, heard my shallow breathing, smelled my fear.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had no idea.’
I shook my head. ‘Of course, you had no idea, Amy. You never do.’
‘If hadn’t been so selfish, I would have picked up on it. I could have helped lighten the mood, turned Trevor’s attention away,’ she said, about to burst into an ugly cry. I put a hand on her shoulder.
‘I didn’t want to upset you,’ I said, softening my tone.
‘You didn’t upset me,’ she said, but I knew it wasn’t true.
‘Listen,’ I said, my voice softer still. ‘If it’s meant to be, you’ll see David again. Ma always says that if you want something bad enough, the Universe will send it your way.’
‘You promise?’ said Amy, with hope in her eyes.
‘I promise,’ I said and crossed my fingers behind my back, hoping that we will never see David or Trevor again.
Stay tuned for Chapter 11 next week!
