Chapter 2

Darcy followed Josh into the living room and took a seat when he gestured at the comfy looking sofa. She fell into a eutopia of soft throws and fluffy pillows, overcome with pleasure as she lifted her poor feet from the ground. Her soles were aching and probably covered with engrained bits of gravel and dirt.

She looked up as Josh's mother entered, a concerned frown puckering her brows.

"I'm sorry," Darcy said. "I had to take my shoes off, and my feet are—"

"Oh gosh, don't worry about that, dear!" the woman cried. "Are you okay? Do you need me to call your parents?"

"My Mum's away, so it's just me at home," Darcy explained. "Can I just borrow your phone to ring for a cab?"

"Oh, you'll never get one at this hour, the guy who run AB cabs is in bed by eleven," the woman explained. She pushed back the bright purple hair of her Halloween wig from her face and tore off the witch’s nose. "Sorry. We tend to go a little over the top for Halloween."

Darcy smiled as she glanced about the room at the decorations, spiderweb plates of leftovers and the coffee table full of empty wine bottles. Clearly, they had been a party here and the mother was in the middle of tidying up.

The room smelled like cinnamon freshly baked bread, and there was a cake stand with a couple of lonely green and purple swirled cupcakes on the bottom tier.

"Help yourself," the mother said, following her gaze. "They'll only end up in the bin."

"Oh, I... erm," Darcy fumbled, feeling bad about taking their food, despite the rumble in her stomach. By now, she and her friends would usually be sitting about sharing oven-baked pizzas and stories about their night out. 

'I wonder why they left so early,' Darcy pondered. They treated their nights out like a military operation and it wasn’t like them to leave a man behind

When Josh's mum rolled her eyes and handed her a cake, she took it gratefully.

"Umm, it's so good," she said, mouth full of frosting.

"I'd give you a lift, but I hit the wine too hard," the woman said. "I'll go and wake up Josh's older brother."

"He won't be too happy about that," Josh warned.

"He'll live," his mum said and shrugged.

"I never knew you had a brother," Darcy said in an attempt to make conversation. Anything to make this experience less awkward.

"Why the hell would you?" Josh uttered as he slumped onto the sofa. "We aren't friends."

"Josh!" his mother cried, hitting him over the head with a pillow. "Rude."

For a horrible moment, Darcy thought he might spill every detail of their sordid past. Tell her every nasty rotten thing she'd ever done. The thought filled her with dread, as although she'd just met the woman, she wanted to be liked by her. 

'Josh's mum is a cool mum,' she realised. And though the cool mums were laid back and chill in most situations, they tended to revert to mother-bear mode when they found out someone had hurt one of their babies.

"It's okay, he's right," Darcy casually brushed it off while flashing Josh a pleading look, asking him to stay quiet without words.

The look he gave her, both pitying and scathing, made her feel pathetic. It wasn't a feeling she was used to. She was usually the one to make other people feel that way.

"Oh, it's our favourite, Halloween part two," the woman cried, turning her attention to the television as the 'Mr Sandman' theme song played. "You have to stay up and watch it with me."

"Obviously," Josh said, taking a seat next to his mother. 

"I'll just wake up Dale and put a pot of coffee on," she said and whisked off with an excited smile.

"Your mum likes horror films?" Darcy asked. For some reason, this struck her as weird.

"So?" Josh grunted.

Darcy shrugged and fell quiet. Trying to make conversation with this guy seemed absolutely pointless. It made her uncomfortable, sitting there in silence with a cupcake wrapper curled up her fist, but at least she wasn't being raped or mugged. This was simply a matter of survival.

When the older brother entered the room, he took one look at her and grunted in annoyance. He was an older version of Josh, with longer hair, the same faded band T-shirt and black jeans look, and an antisocial scowl. 

"I'll have a coffee then take barbie home," he said. 

Instead of scolding him for calling her a barbie, the mother leaned over and hugged him. "Thank you so much for doing this, darling."

"Hmm," Dale grunted. Darcy got the feeling he hadn't wanted to do it and felt like the world’s biggest burden.

As she lowered her eyes, the mother must have sensed her pain as she started up a conversation. "So Darcy... what are you doing now? College? Work?"

This was a question she'd answered a lot. Adults always wanted to know what she was planning to do with her time now school was over. Life was so much easier as a kid—grown ups would ask, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up,’ smiling at the silly answers: fireman, or superhero, or caterpillar. Now when they asked, they expected a five-year plan and financial forecast.

"I'm doing an Art and Design course at Montsorrel College," she said. "I'm not super talented or anything but—"

"No you aren't," Josh cried, screwing up his face. 

Darcy stared at him, open-mouthed. Who was he to tell her what she was or wasn't doing to do?

"I'm on that course, and I haven't seen you once," he explained, upturning his palms. 

"What do you mean?" Darcy asked, feeling her heart begin to race. "It starts on the 25th of November."

"Of October, you retard," Josh huffed. "Go home and read your letter again."

"W—what?" Darcy mumbled, panicking as Josh's mum scolded him for using the R-word. Had she really missed the first week of her course? The course she'd been looking forward to with every fibre of her being. She’d thought and talked about nothing else for weeks.

"Come on, Lass." Dale rolled his eyes, making an exasperated face at Josh. "I'll get you home."

Darcy nodded and stood, still grasping the cupcake wrapper as she picked up her heels by the straps. She turned to Josh, wanting to thank him. The urge to throw herself at his feet and apologise for her past sins rose in her chest, but the brother was impatiently tapping his fingers. Both Josh and his mum were now engrossed in the movie, leaving her as an afterthought. 

"Thank you so much for—" she began.

"Oh, anyone would do the same. Don't mention it, Hun," the mother said before waving her away without taking her eyes from the screen. "Ahh, I love this bit!"

Josh didn't even look up, grinning at the screen as a gruesome murder scene played out. 

She followed Dale into a car that smelt like weed and junk food and tried not to grimace as his phone connected to the car and filled it with what she assumed was Death Metal. As the singer began to growl lyrics about Satan, he glanced over at her and turned the volume down slightly.

“I—Is this Death Metal?” she asked, in a dumb attempt at conversation.

He turned to her and looked at her like she was the dumbest person on Earth. “It’s Black Metal. Well… I guess you could class it as Blackened Death Metal.”

“Oh.” Darcy nodded and fell silent. She hadn’t known there were so many different types.

"Thank you," she said when they pulled up. "Do you want some petrol money?"

"It's a five-minute journey," he pointed out in a flat voice. "I don't think I'm going to miss the one pound thirty-five."

"Okay, well, thank you so much and I’m sorry for troubling you," Darcy said before closing the door behind her. As she fished her keys from her bag and let herself into her home the familiar scent of vanilla air freshener filled her nose. It was good to be home.

"What a night," she muttered as she plugged her phone into the charger. It was late, but she was determined to find out why her friends had all decided to leave her at the nightclub alone. 

First, though, she opened up her emails, searching for the one from her college. Her acceptance email was saved in a folder marked important. 

'Not important enough to read properly,' she thought, spotting the date. Josh was right. She'd missed the first week of the course.

"Great," she muttered.

She texted all three of her friends, Jen, Alexa and Heidi, but none of them answered despite appearing online.

'Are they ignoring me?' she thought. 'This night just gets better and better.'

As she sat, flicking through the channels to find Halloween two, she couldn't stop thinking about Josh and the way he'd looked at her. Like she was useless. Worthless. Less than the dirt beneath his boots. 

'I'm Darcy Granger. Most popular and pretty girl at Greenhill High,' she told herself, keeping her head high. 'Nobody can ever take that away from me.'

Still, she couldn't get that look out of her head. Loading her social media, she typed the words, Josh Parker, into her search bar. 

'There he is,' she thought, staring at his most recent pictures. He and his friends dressed up in their costumes. A pretty goth girl had commented, 'Murder me, baby," under a picture of him brandishing a knife that looked real. 

'He has a girlfriend?' she wondered and found herself stalking the girl's profile to confirm it. 

"Ugh, why do I care?" Darcy asked the empty room before placing her phone down and zoning out to the movie.

$ Chapter