Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) Read online

  There were things out there.

  Standing in the middle of this wasteland, this pre-historic desert, there was nothing to be seen for miles and miles. Sand, rock, dried grasses, stretched out to meet the horizon and then a sky so bright and cloudless it looked white and searing. The sun baked the parched and cracked earth. And Katie stood there. Her feet felt as though they were blistering on the ground. She was barefoot. No protection between her sensitive sole and the heat. The sun set her skin sizzling beneath her clothes. Sun stroke cruelly stayed just out of reach and she was horribly aware of her burning flesh, almost cooking. It hurt to move even an inch. Katie looked down. Thick ropes bound her wrists together at her back. A chain linked the rope to the ground, driven in deep.

  She wiggled her hand, knowing somehow that she would not get free of these things holding her still. Each knot or twist in the ropes felt like a knuckle, calloused and unrelenting. Every twist of her wrists carved another angry, red abrasion across her wrist. Tears welled up and a few snuck out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Katie stuck her tongue out and tried to catch those few drops of hot, salty moisture before this terrible heat made them evaporate, knowing she could not afford to waste a single drop of liquid on tears that no-one would see.

  Then something yanked on the chain, pulling her unsuspecting arms down and wrenching a hearty scream from her. Then the chains released and Katie resumed her straight and limp pose, using as little energy as she could. Then it pulled her again and let go. Then nothing for a few minutes. Precious time to wonder why she was out here, how she had got here, whether she would get home before the sun fried her.

  “HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME.” There was no answer for a very long time. Katie imagined that some-one, even some-one very far away, had heard her cry for help and was springing into action as she waited. But, after a while of nothing but heat and a horizon that hurt to look at, she accepted that help was not coming. Knowing that made it easier to stand here and not try to resist anything else that happened. “Where’s a hero when you need one?” Then she stopped speaking because her mouth was dry and her throat scratchy.

  The chain sank deeper into the earth and tugged Katie down towards the ground. He crouched as low to the ground as she could without getting down on the ground, and tried to hold onto the ropes – wrapping her hands around whatever slack there was and pulling. The unseen hands at the other end – she could tell it was a set of hands pulling her down by the start-stop motion – were stronger. She screamed again as the rough ropes bit into her. “No, you’re not taking me down there,” Katie ground out at the earth. And then the chain disappeared almost completely and stopped pulling. Katie’s wrists were touching the ground but she was being tugged no further, just held there. Katie scrunched herself up into a hot, sticky, sore little ball trying to make herself as small as possible. She kept a careful watch on the chain sure that it would start moving and take her under the moment she took her eyes off it. Watching so carefully that she did not notice a breath of breeze stir up dust behind her. Something – not quite the rough and tight hands of the rope – latched on to her ankles and yanked them from under her, twisting hard enough that she corkscrewed in the air and thudded down on her back, screaming as she felt at least two layers of skin peeling away from her back, with her wrists bound above her head and her feet near immoveable and feeling like they weren’t actually hers.

  Forget about conserving energy – what would she need energy for anyway – or keeping her wet tears inside a dehydrated body, Katie screamed and cried as long and loud as she could. Tied down and unable to turn her head enough to focus on something solid, the only thing to look at was that shiny sky and the sun like a gold disc reflecting itself down on her over and over again. Katie closed her eyes but the vista had burned itself so indelibly on her retinas that it was just like having open eyes. Her already tight skin was stretched even more – slices and lesions in her skin opened up and the raw flesh beneath started to sizzle and smell. It was a relief when enough slack crept into the shackles to allow Katie to turn her top half over to the hot soil, knowing it would hurt just as much but a different kind of hurt. One that was constant, true, but one which would not happen time and time again whenever a layer of skin was seared right through. And what would happen when their was no skin, no flesh left? Muscle? Bone? Would it end there? But the back… skin there was faster to heal. That could break and burn and yes it would hurt and yes she would scream and cry as she was doing now with the scraps of energy left in the tank, the tiny bit of her that still resisted this death by sun, but it would repair without her breaking it apart with every breath.

  Katie watched her tears soak into the hard earth, staining it a darker red. The colour was reminiscent of dried blood. The comparison cam unbidden and thoroughly unwanted but so easily. If she stopped crying – it was serving no purpose but tiring her out - stopped turning the ground that awful colour then maybe the though would go away. But that wasn’t the way it worked. A thought like that was like a scab or a paper cut – once you knew it was there you can’t stop picking at it. And making it worse.

  It was in the middle of these thoughts that Katie became aware of the sound. A distant hissing. How long had that sound been there? All the time while she was contorted over here? She opened her mouth to yell for help but found she had to take a deep breath and try to work some saliva into her mouth first. As she concentrated on that, the slices across her body momentarily forgotten in favour of the hope of rescue, the hissing sound seemed to track around her in a wide circle. It was watching. The sharp memory of that blinding sky and a neck so fried it had practically seized up kept her from turning once more to look around her. It really mattered none what might be out there. Katie thought, in some far off part of her mind that was not really hers, that she had seen the human race at its’ most depraved and primal and nothing more could frighten her. It was sunstroke talking – had to be. But everything still seemed so real, so present.

  And then the hissing got louder, they – it? How many were there? – got closer and morphed seamlessly into whistling. Just a high, thin, constant whistle like Moms old kettle. No. it was getting closer, not whistling but still hissing. The whistling was in her head, she knew – a trick the counsellor had taught her to distract herself, to take herself away from scary situations. Pity that really only worked in her head when the real danger was out here. The technique was probably designed for imagined danger. Externalise. That had been a buzzword. If she sang the rhyme she was silently whistling then maybe she’d scare it away. Very maybe.

  “Jack and Jill,” she began and started coughing after those three words. Every breath was dry and dusty, filled with the fetid dirty stench of the ground. It was so much easier to focus on remembering the words to this little rhyme Dad had confused her with until she was 10 and which Dan had suddenly understood just three months ago. It was a shame, Dan should have enjoyed at least a few more years of mud pies and climbing trees before learning that the world could hurt innocent people at every turn but there had really been no choice. Not when she too had seen people suffer for no reason. No. this train of thought was definitely not easier.

  “Went up the hill.”

  The hissing sound was close. It seemed high up ad she sent silent thanks – to who? – that it was not a snake. Then an imaginary hand shot out and snatched them back. Whatever was hissing must be bigger, badder than a snake. Bizarrely, she pictured Leo and the drawings of demons covering his walls. The thing wasn’t quite close enough to cast a shadow over Katie.

  “Though they knew they shouldn’t oughta.”

  She bent down as far as she could, feeling the skin on her neck cracking right across and not even feeling it. The heat was so intense and had been pounding down on her for what seemed like so very long that she was numb to any sensation, unable to process it. She pressed her head to he hot ground for a seco
nd and whispered down into a crack that might have gone straight down to hell for all she cared. “Please save me.” Above her, the hissing was replaced with the gruesome crunch of bones popping, flesh folding in on itself, muscles ripping and twisting and reforming. A huge shadow fell across her and Katie shivered. Whether it was because she had gotten quite cold or because the outline she could see resembled nothing she knew – human or animal.

  “God knows,” she managed before a glob of something hot and wet and viscous land at the top of her spine.

  “What they did up there.”

  This shape hanging over her, slobbering over her like the juiciest chop in the window, was big. It was tall and hulking and had lumps and bumps in places no man should have them. It looked like Predator from that film she’d seen on the school trip last year. It breathed in and out as raspy as if its throat was coated in sandpaper. It just stood there some invisible-to-the-naked-eye laser glare boring holes into her head. And it just stood there. Katie took a deep breath.

  “But now they’ve got a daughter,” she spat out and threw herself onto her back all in a rush. The thing, a dark shape against the bright sky, stared at Katie for a long second. Then it flexed its’ neck, or the flab of muscle that attached the head to he body, and she grimaced, listening to more unnatural cracks and crunches, but could not look away. He own curiosity demanded she keep watching this strange figure. And then it leaned down until it was so near her face that she could see dull blue spheres that might be eyes, a ragged slash that dripped and drooled and probably was the most refined mouth such a creature needed. And then it was close enough that she could feel its’ warm, sweet breath on her face. Katie blinked her sore eyes, longing to itch them but lacking the energy to move her arm even if it hadn’t been tied down, and wondered if she had the will to open them again.

  Katie could hear voices, faint and hushed. There was something sharp in her arm and a warmth spread all over her body – one she wanted to just curl up in and refuse to crawl out from.

  “Thank God someone found her.”

  “I wonder what she was doing down there in the first place.”

  “It’s weird but nothing seemed wrong earlier. She looked okay.”

  “She freaked when you got too handsie right?”

  There was a pause. Had anyone got too friendly with her? All Katie remembered was sitting on something really high, then there was music and voices, so many voices, and then things got all blurry. It felt important that she should force herself to remember recent events but her brain just flat refused to put any detail into the night. If it was still night. It had been dark, and then there had been a bright light so harsh it hurt to look at it.

  Katie dreaded having to open her eyes in case she only saw that endless sky and this lovely glow inside turned raw and itchy under her skin but she would have to wake up, rejoin the land of the living. But not yet.

  “Maybe we should call her parents. They’d want to know about this.”

  “Bad idea, Adam. We can’t risk her leaving town, her education, her new life just because some psycho roofied her. I won’t.”

  “I don’t want to either. But she’s just a kid. I’d kill anyone if who didn’t tell me about my daughter.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. You saw her when she came in. Doped out but otherwise fine.”

  Katie felt better than fine and probably would until this injection of sedative wore off. She dragged her eyes open a crack. Above was a tiled ceiling with a couple of halogens set into it, turned down to a dim glow. There were curtains drawn around her bed though hers was the only bed in the room that was occupied. Even breathing was an effort. Sitting up, which she desperately wanted to do to stretch her stiff and acid-heavy muscles, would be a big no-no for a few hours at least. There was a person slumped in the chair beside her bed. Being frightened was not even an option, - she had been so scared of so much for so long that some combination of that and the drugs had simply erased the word fear from her vocabulary. At least for now. She tried to swivel her head and succeeded in moving a whole millimetre. Instead, she inched a hand across the bed and let it swing down, hoping to touch the figures own hand or knee. And then her hand touched another. It did not feel right, as though it were solid but somehow not – Katie thought of candyfloss, fluffy and pink to see and then dissolving into sugar and air as soon as it touched your lips. The figure twined his fingers into hers and they stayed like that for a few minutes, both half-asleep but neither wishing to wake the other. Katie felt sure the hand she was holding should have been scuffed and scarred where it was smooth and soft… and it belonged to a boy, not one she needed to be wary of but not one that she knew either.. That was a paradox if there ever was one.

  “Hey,” he murmured. “You’re okay now. This is a safe place.”

  She wanted to tell him that she knew that but never got the chance. The next moment chased the words away. The boy lifted his head and leaned forward. Shiny green circles shone out of his shaded face. They were so beautiful that Katie really didn’t want to look away from then – not even when Dr de Rossa came in and inspected some medical equipment she couldn’t be bothered to look at. None of it mattered. Not the tubes or the injections or this hospital room – she felt safe and wanted and that was the best feeling.

  “We must stop meeting this way, Miss Cartwright. People will talk.”

  “Let them.”

  “Very well. I took blood and it’s being tested but you were so out of it when you were brought in that I’m pretty sure you were slipped Rohypnol at some point. That’s the name for –“

  “The date rape drug.” Katie felt tears drowning her eyeballs and turned to the side to let them fall, soaking the pillow but everything seemed to dry up when those striking green eyes found hers. “No-one did anything.”

  “I don’t think so but you wouldn’t remember if they did.”

  “I just know, okay. Nothing happened, no one tried to screw me.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Because it doesn’t feel like it did last time. But she just shrugged.

  “Please just rest here and be sure to let Lainy know if you have any headaches or nausea. People use all sorts to make the drug go further,” He left an old magazine on the rolling table and strode out with a smile back at his patient that made the doctor seem like the friendliest medic she’d ever met. The last lot had been all poking and prodding and photographing every mark on her body, new and old. It was doubt and questions and making her feel like a victim who should be ashamed of herself. Or a criminal for daring to make the complaint.

  “Sorry.”

  “For?” the boy asked. “Somethin’s making you cry. I hope it’s not me.”

  “A bit.” Her throat was hurting and the boy loosed his grip just long enough to pour some water and help her sit long enough to sip at it. But Katie found even that tiny movement exhausting and had to lie straight back down. “You’re sitting here with me when everyone else is just out there talking about me.” That was strangely worse than anything else. Worse than people talking to her, telling her what she had been through, what she should be feeling.

  “You looked so tiny and young lying here all alone. It feels wrong to leave you.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “Strike one, Lady Katie. I’ve known you for weeks, you just don’t remember me.”

  “I remember your eyes.” It must be impossible to forget eyes like that, just like it must be impossible not to remember the round, soft face that surrounded them, or the name that personified them. Impossible but there it was. She had forgotten. Had she ever known? Everything seemed to be getting far-off in her head and she surrendered to a deep, dreamless sleep crashing over her.

  Just after noon the following day, after a nice nurse called Sam had sat with her to chat about her new classes and hobbies – though Katie knew she was only making sure she ate som
ething substantial and kept it down – Dr de Rossa fetched in some papers to sign and let Adam walk her home. The day was bright again but there was a bit of a breeze in the air. Not many people had decided to go out but there was the obligatory group of kids kicking a ball around a patch of grass. She watched them for a minute, then looked over at her escort. The journey might have been uncomfortable if they had not been on speaking terms but the pair had kept up a steady stream of inane chatter since leaving the medical centre. Not that Katie even knew half of what she was saying. She was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, suddenly full of energy and knowing only one way to get rid of it. Wanting just the one way. “Race you home?”

  “Seriously? You want to race?”

  “Afraid you can’t keep up?”

  “There is no challenge I will not except if it involves competition. But you’ve still got drugs in your system. It’d be taking advantage. I’d win. You’d strop. Lainy’d kill me.” His voice withdrew into itself and his eyes flicked from side to side, clearly weighing up his options. “Worth the risk.” They started running and kept pace with each other for a minute and then Adam went haring off down the street. “Too easy.” And then he disappeared around a corner and left Katie jogging slowly behind him.

  If Katie had gauged the distance between her house and the student medical centre well enough from the other nights’ drive well enough, Adam would be out of puff and ready to drop about a third of a mile from home while she was still going strong. This urge to run had been building, almost unnoticeably, for a couple of days and had just spilled over into activity today. The thought of running through a town she hardly knew should have made her wary but she hardly noticed the buildings passing her by; concentrating on the steady thump of her scruffy trainers on the uneven waste ground and smooth tarmac, listening to her own controlled breathing, feeling the jarring impact of the hard ground vibrating up her long legs. It was all so familiar. Changing gear after a few hundred metres was just automatic. Keeping going took a little bit of effort but she grinned, proud of herself, that she had forced herself to keep going. It was only another half-mile home. Out of practice. The dregs of sedative in her system filled her still stiff and sore muscles with lactic acid and Katie ached to stop but no. Stopping now would be horrible for who knew when she would feel this way again. Better just to keep running until she crashed through the front door and pray that she would never stop feeling this good. Because it had been so easy just to decide never to run again I case something bad happened. Better just to keep up the pretence and then run away to a strange town and try to live a normal student life where bad things still happened. There was no one thing that caused people to be so cruel to each other – no single activity that must be avoided in order to be safe. Katie decided firmly, and with just a touch of determination that se had been missing, that she enjoyed running, was good at it and sod anyone who made her think otherwise.

  At the end of Newton Street, where the house was, she caught up with Adam who was crouched low and holding a fence post whilst gasping for air. “Don’t… challenge… me again,” he wheezed.

  “You took the dare.”

  “I’m a bloke. I can’t let… a girl… beat me this… way.”

  “Come on. Let’s get you up.” Kate watched him claw his way up to a standing position, jogged on the spot while Adam took a few gulps of air then took his hand and towed him home.

  Once through the front door he crumbled to the ground and Katie sat near the bottom of the stairs watching him and struggling not to laugh. “I have a confession.”

  “You’re Wonder Woman on steroids.”

  “I’m a pro distance runner.”

  “Cheater.”

  “Not entirely. See, I haven’t run in months… not really, so I thought this would kill me you know. But it was so easy. It just all came back to me.”

  “Why did you stop? You seem to enjoy beating the boys.”

  She shrugged. “Things happen. I lost an important race and my confidence was shot. Then there was the move out here which just about took forever.”

  “Noting but time now.”

  “Yeah. I’ll get back into it soon. I guess I just felt like doing not much of anything lately.”

  “Well no-one expects you to run as soon as you get here. It’s been too hot anyway. Tell you what, we’ll go down and speak to Roy tomorrow, see if there’s a charity run or something before term starts. That way you can run and just drop out if it’s too much. No harm done.”

  “Why wait?” Though she knew really that Adam was not going to let her out of this house today. If she had still been living with her parents Katie was sure she would have thrown the mother of all hissy fits, yelled that they were treating her like a china doll and stormed off upstairs. She smiled at the scene in her head. Today, she was more than happy to do exactly as she was told and be taken care of by her handsome guardian who was definitely not too old to be having delicious fantasies about. Here – in her home, she grinned again – no-one was tiptoeing around her on eggshells, she didn’t have to pretend to be over it and fine in case anyone worried.

  “So what was this big race” Adam asked, having finally managed to crawl from the front door to the settee in the front room. “I don’t know much about … much.”

  Katie chucked a cushion at him and he neatly blocked it with a kung fu move. That made Adams previous statement redundant. They both knew it. “Where’s Lainy? The others?”

  Adam appeared not to notice the change in subject. “She’s introducing them to the supermarket I think. I expect tears and about ten years of therapy so Katie-sitting seemed like the better option.”

  Katie got up and pulled another board game room the pile and thrust it at him – Scrabble – one of her favourites, and settled on the floor in front of him with the stereo slowly hissing into life. “Strike one, Adam.” She never made baseball puns – must have heard it somewhere. “I’m very demanding.”

  Time passed, CDs changed, she was just counting up the scores on their second game – one all – when the door banged open and Lainy, Leo, Jaye and Dina took it in turns unloading bags from a supermarket van. Well, she assumed it was a delivery van – Adam wouldn’t let her go out to help. During their games, Katie had learned they only did the big supermarket shop once every couple of months as most things could be bought from the mini-markets and convenience stores in town. That was good. Having to trek a mile to the bus terminal and then journey another half hour on the top deck next to some weirdo who wore cabbage leaves for shoes strangely lacked much appeal. She was, however, allowed to help put everything away although neither Lainy nor Adam were very happy about it. “Look, even I can’t get into much trouble chucking tins in the cupboard and ice cream in the freezer. I’m not that talented.”

  “Oh, Katie,” whined Jaye. “I wish we hadn’t let you go off alone last night. If something terrible had happened… I feel so guilty.”

  Katie opened the door to the fridge and took her time rearranging milk and juice cartons before shutting it and answering without looking at Jaye. “Don’t. Don’t feel bad for me, don’t feel responsible, don’t think it could have been different if you’d come with me. Things happen. So don’t.”

  Jaye glanced at Lainy - a look which told Katie everything she didn’t want to know or even think about. They felt sorry for her. Presumably it was about the previous night but sympathy was the one emotion Katie couldn’t quite deal with today. It seemed wrong to tell them both to snap out of it but just as the thought was forming, Adam beat her to it.

  “If I hear any of those words again today, there will be problems.” He flipped the latch on the window, pushed it as wide open as it would go and relieved Katie of those oh-so-heavy packets of pasta sauce. Jaye bounded off upstairs and slammed the door to the room she shared with Dina. Dina seemed to be a little shier than her friend but there had been moments, like at t
he pool, when she seemed more confident, more sure of herself. Perhaps she just needed time to warm to the new people in her life. It could be that she just felt bolder with her friend there as back-up. The feeling was alien to Katie. Another feeling swirled at the bottom of her stomach, a tingly sensation she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The claustrophobia that came with it was one she knew all too well. The claustrophobia was not a fully fledged fear of enclosed spaces – which would have been extremely not fun given the hours each day she would soon be spending cooped up in her room – and when she walked over and leaned towards the opening of the window she felt better right away. The older couple had been squabbling about where the furniture polish was meant to be kept when a memory came slamming into her head so fast and sharp that Katie had to voice it.

  “Was there someone at the hospital last night? I mean, besides you two?”

  “I don’t think so, hon. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I heard you and the doc talking. And he came in for a minute but I’m sure there was somebody at my bedside holding my hand. I think he was there the whole night too.”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Lainy insisted, a touch too quickly, as though that had been an over-learnt response. “You, Ad?” Adam shook his head. “Maybe you just remembered someone from the party. Or a hallucination. Those drugs hit you pretty hard.”

  “Probably. I don’t remember much anyway, just his eyes and he kept telling me everything was okay now and I believed him.”

  “Hang on,” Adam held up his hand. “It was a he? What if it was your attacker.”

  Katie shuddered, thinking, for the instant she would allow herself, of dull blue eyes and grabbing hands. “It wasn’t. There’s no rational explanation except I know it wasn’t. I know what danger looks like and that room was the safest place I’ve known.”

  “That’s what Rohypnol does. It makes you less aware of risk.”

  “No, it makes you less able to process that risk and fight it. I saw a lot of kids brought in all doped up on my placement.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “How many times, Adam? Watching Casualty is hardly reliable.”

  “But they have doctors on the writing staff.”

  “Seriously, there’s not even a real place called Tellytubbyland.”

  He made a disappointed face. This was what Katie had been missing the last few months. Normality. People discussing such mundane things as TV and not feeling as though they had to make her the centre of every conversation. Then she thought of her family and decided she ought to go up to her room and call them. Maybe tomorrow though. Uncle Billy would have reported back that she was actually managing to feed herself, and she didn’t want to call them so soon and give them cause to worry she was not coping on her own.

  “Oh, I was going through my washing earlier – found this in my dressing gown.” Lainy went to the metal letter rack nailed to the wall and fetched a folded yellow envelope with the police stamp in the corner. “Striving for safer cities,” she read.

  “Thanks,” Katie said and took it. Like before, she sat staring at it.

  “Jury duty? Oh, you’re not old enough yet.”

  Katie worked up a wry smile. If only Lainy had any idea how close to the truth she was getting. “Who brought me in then?”

  Adam shrugged. “We just took the call from that nurse.”

  Well, at least some-one had taken pity on a poor, unconscious girl and not advantage. “I just saw these green eyes and I remember thinking I could just drown in them and I wouldn’t care. Like you said, you dream all sorts.”

  “Have you been having some strange dreams?”

  “A few. But I’ve got a strange imagination. Shower monster and leap frogging pigeons strange. Messed up, right?” Lainy shrugged, looking non-committal. “Don’t rush to argue,” she joked.

  “So, anything important?”

  Opening the letter here – in the kitchen, in front of these two – seemed almost scary. Katie wanted to be in her room when she read it. A private place where she could scream and shout and cause random destruction only to her own stuff. No matter what it said, surely it was more fitting to be able to sink into her own thoughts. The quiet room seemed like a good place to be alone, to find out what this letter said without the questions and piteous looks. There would be tears and probably days of shock and depression which Katie would hide with a smile when anyone was looking and wallow inn it when she could. Tat was one option. The other was just to get it over with in front of her friends and have everything out in the open. No more secrets, no more wondering why she was so unpredictable around people she hadn’t quite figured out.

  She sliced the letter open with a knife, took the letter out and skimmed down it. Where were the tears? Where were the waves of emotion which threaten to beat her into oblivion? Where was the bite of reality finally coming good? Where was anything? All there was was a horrible hollow feeling inside. A total lack of feeling. “Before I say anything, I need to apologise for freaking out on you last night, Adam, and running out on you, Lainy. I hope it’ll make sense soon.” Katie held the letter out and spoke quickly before her brain chickened out of the confession. Confession? What did she have to confess to, to feel remorse for? Nothing, tat’s what. But confession felt like the right word. “Four months ago, I was offered a place at the academy which I turned down. A month later, I was raped. I couldn’t run away fast enough. I told everyone I got over it, just went back to my ordinary life, but I didn’t. not even a bit. So I rang admissions and here I am. New start.”

  “Okay. Why are you telling us?”

  “Because…” Katie stopped and looked at her new friends. The room felt as though it was closing in, the air crushing down. She went back to the window and gulped down lungfuls of still and stale oxygen. Then she bent to the sink and splashed water on her face, already feeling better. Some-one was out there, somewhere, keeping her safe and watching out for her. Some-one who felt so close, maybe close enough to touch, if only see could see them.

  She turned back to them and sat on the drainer as they huddled over the letter. Why was she telling them? Being attacked was her problem to deal with; it wasn’t fair to make it theirs.

  “The kids come through here are moody, unpredictable nd young. But a helll of a lot of fun. You fit right in.”

  “I just thought you should know. If I start shutting myself away or do a runner on you in future, it’s just because all the people are just too much. That day was intense.”

  “You’ve known us just a few days and you tell us this? That’s brave, Katie. Brave, strong and a little bit insane,” Adam grinned, suddenly joining forces with Lainy to make a Katie sandwich. Brave, strong, insane – she had heard that before. Where? Green eyes. “We’ll leave it to you whether you tell the others.”

  Did she want to enter that minefield? Did she have to? Jaye would feel sorry for her. Dina was too shy to care. Leo probably thought she deserved it. She shook her head, took her letter back and headed to the door, suddenly tired and wanting to go to bed and sleep for a very long time. Maybe forever. “Sunday morning training run. I went to school the next day.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN