Chapter 13

When Darcy pulled herself to her feet, she had to shake the pins and needles from her limbs before she could walk. She picked up her leg and rubbed the grit engrained in her ankle. The stones left little angry red indents in her skin that wouldn't smooth out.

Without saying goodbye to the guy who'd stopped to comfort her, she stumbled away, using the wall as support. The guy muttered something, something she didn't quite catch about her rudeness.

'You don't matter,' she thought. The only person who mattered was Josh. She could hear his voice echoing in the hallway as she entered. He stood in the corridor, pinning someone to the wall: someone who was shouting at him. 

As the door swung shut with a bang, he turned, and she saw the other person was Chester. As soon as Josh took a step back, Chester took the opportunity to flee. 

"W—what was that all about?" she asked, her nosiness getting the better of her.

"None of your business," Josh uttered and turned to leave.

The coldness in his voice and eyes were like a kick to her stomach. What had she done wrong?

"What did I do?" she cried, chasing after him.

He turned and tutted, looking her up and down with his lip curled in disgust. "Not everything is about you, okay? I do have other things in my life, you know? I'll talk to you later."

After putting her firmly in her place with his sharp tongue, he turned to leave. 

Stunned to silence, Darcy ambled toward the bus stop. She had another lesson but couldn't face it... not like this. All she wanted to do was get far away from everyone else.

The air was just starting to come alive with the first hints of winter: that chill of frost that felt like Christmas. As Darcy pulled a sweater from her bag, she noticed her phone chiming with notifications. A spark of hope in her mind told her it could be Josh apologising for his harsh words.

But it wasn't.

Again, her ex was trying to message her for whatever reason, and again she ignored him without reading them. Why couldn't he leave the past in the past? She had nothing to say to him and wasn't interested in anything he had to say.

When she got home, Darcy's face transformed into a grin as she saw her mother had returned home. She sat on the veranda with her best friend Diana, sharing a drink and chatting animatedly.

"It makes it so much worse, doesn't it?" she asked her friend.

"Oh, it really does," Diana agreed. "What kind of man is he?"

'Slagging off my dad, as usual,' Darcy thought, rolling her eyes. Her mother had never remarried or gotten over him. She would tell and re-tell the same story to anyone who would listen; the tale of a man who had left his wife and adopted daughter after getting a younger woman pregnant.

Yes, it was a dick move, but was she going to remain bitter and twisted forever?

"Baby!" Mum cried, calling Darcy over. "You're looking great. Are you still dieting?"

Darcy smiled and nodded, staring down proudly at her slim waistline.

"She's beautiful, isn't she. So beautiful," Diana gushed. 

As the two women discussed her physical attributes, Darcy got herself a glass of water. As her hands reached for the glass images of Josh flooded her brain. She glanced over at the box of diet sodas, wondering why the water had been her choice. 

His voice filled her head. 'Go get a drink of water.' 

With every gulp, she thought of him. Her memory conjured images of his face twisted in anger, staring her down in the corridor as he told her not everything was about her. He was right, she knew he was right, but by the time she'd finished drinking two fat tears sat by her ducts, waiting to spill.

Darcy closed her eyes slowly, relishing the warmth of those tears as they made tracks down her cheeks. She retired to her room, unable to listen to her mother’s tired old conversation. Sitting in front of her computer, she opened up her social media in the hopes there would be someone online she could talk to.

She was shocked when Chester said hello.

"Hi," she replied.

"I thought what you did earlier was pretty brave, and I believe you're genuinely sorry for how you behaved in the past," Chester typed. "But Josh doesn't"

The first part built her up, only to have the wind knocked out of her sails by the second part.

'Josh doesn't.'

"Look, he's going to kill me for telling you, but we knew about you all along," Chester typed. "We've all been playing you. Making you feel bad on purpose. Zara doesn't really fancy Josh. Ryan wasn't really bullied for being fat - he's not even really that shy. He is a good actor, though."

Darcy couldn't breathe. Couldn't blink. It was as though time had stopped. 

'Maybe this is a dream,' she thought. But she knew it wasn't. Dreams didn't hurt like this.

"I know it's messed up. We went along with it because we liked Josh and we didn't know you at all except what he'd told us. But... I can't keep lying. He's taking it too far."

Darcy didn't know what to say. What could she say?

She said the only thing she could think up.

"Thank you."

"For?" he asked.

"For telling me the truth," she replied. Her fingers, pale and cold, shook as she typed those words.

When Josh appeared as online, she couldn't take her eyes off his profile picture, surrounded by the green light. Green for 'go.' Green for 'tell him what you think of his revenge plot.'

"But why shouldn't he get revenge?" she asked herself, speaking out loud the empty room.

Her anger dissipated as rapidly as it had bubbled up. All she felt beneath the initial reaction was sadness, and like a complete idiot for falling for it. For believing he might like her enough to give her a second chance and for believing she was worthy of his forgiveness.

As she stared at the tiny image of his face, she couldn't bring herself to blame him. What he'd done was strange and messed up, but it wasn't as if she didn't deserve it.

As her hands hovered over the keys, she couldn't make herself type. Instead of confronting Josh, she asked Chester to keep quiet.

"Can we just carry on as before?" she asked him. "Pretend we never had this conversation?"

"I don't want to lie anymore," he replied.

"Please?" Darcy asked him. She assumed he would give in and was shocked when he told her no. He didn't want to lie to her or to Josh. It was going to be out in the open whether she liked it or not.

Instead of being angry at his refusal, she was impressed by how he stuck to his morals.

"Do you want to hang out?" she asked. He might get the wrong idea, and this might be a huge mistake, but Darcy couldn't bring herself to care. She was too upset to be alone with nothing but her thoughts. The way she was feeling right now, she knew she’d end up doing something stupid. She needed distraction. She needed a friend.

"Well... you can come over here if you like?" Chester offered. "But I'm not doing an awful lot. You might be bored."

After explaining that boredom was better than her current situation, Darcy took an Uber to his house. It was one of those small houses where the front door leads directly to the living room, and every member of his household just happened to be sitting around the television. With a collection of gym equipment, a clothes horse and two bird cages clogging up the room, she had to shimmy around his parent's knees to gain entry to the stairs. 

"Cool," she muttered, looking into the buggies home as she passed.

"That's Derek," Chester told her. "He's a moody bugger."

For some reason, this struck Darcy as hilarious, and she couldn't stop laughing as she made her way up the steep and narrow staircase.

"What?" Chester frowned.

"Derek?" Darcy snorted with laughter. "Who names a bird Derek?"

He shrugged. "I dunno... ask my dad."

When Darcy shifted about the room, looking at his collection of books and Games, he told her she could sit. She took a seat as he pointed at the wicker chair covered in a bright patchwork blanket. It was an odd room—not your stereotypical boy's pad—with clutter on every surface. Horror movie models, plushies, gadgets and trinkets filled shelf upon shelf and spilt over onto his bed. 

"Cool room," she said, picking up a Michael Myers figurine. She moved his hand up and down, making a stabbing action with the little plastic knife. The masked killer brought back the memory of the first time she'd gone back to Josh's home. 

"So did you guys talk about me behind my back often or..." she asked. She hadn't planned on bringing it up, but something inside her was desperate for more details.

Chester glanced at her and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it. I thought you just wanted to hang out."

"Okay," Darcy said quickly, nodding to show her enthusiasm. She didn't want him to think she was only here to pump him for information, because she honestly wasn't.

After an awkward silence, he handed her a controller. The smooth plastic felt comfortable in her hands as her fingers found the buttons. She'd played on the PlayStation a lot with her ex because her only choices had been to join in or be bored watching him play.

She smiled at her new friend as he took a seat cross-legged beside her and pulled half the patchwork over his shoulders. 

A few minutes later, she was having fun, the trauma of the past few weeks a distant memory. A twinkling light on the horizon.

$ Chapter