Alice jumped to the floor, doing a front flip with barrel roll before diving under the bed. She froze in position just as the door opened and the room filled with the sound of overlapping conversations. She could hear a female and male voice arguing—probably Zoe and Reece, as well as her brother giving a monologue about a guy called Zeke. Apparently, Zeke was overrated and not as ‘woke’ as he made out.
“Maybe… you know… knock next time,” Adam scolded them. “I could have been doing anything in here.”
“Oh, like what?” Reece joked. “Having another imaginary threesome with Freya and Andrea?”
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Alice stared out of the window, mesmerised by the raindrops that made their way down the glass. Two drops would veer into each other, become one giant blob before splashing to the floor.‘Sort of like people,’ Alice thought. Adam had been on her mind since the incident in his front yard. Seeing him fight—or rather—beat someone up had been eye-opening to say the least. She could tell herself it didn’t matter how he treated other people over and over, but somewhere deep inside herself, Alice knew it mattered.“Wake up,” Joseph said, poking her in the rips. “You need to get that beauty finished today, remember?”
Sitting in an English lesson, Alice pulled her art notes from her bag. She jotted away, pretending to be taking notes from the lecturer, hoping to finish at least the written portion of her art project by today—the deadline. Well… technically the deadline had been this morning.“Alice?” Miss Henbury interrupted Alice’s furious scribbling.“Yes?” Alice asked, hoping she wasn’t about to be scolded for working on her art project during an English lesson.“Mr Yates wants to see you,” Miss Henbury revealed. “He’s in room 23a.”
Alice sat at the bar, nursing her second pint. She tipped the glass, poured the last few sips of warm, flat beer down her throat and asked for another.“Are you sure?” Joseph frowned at her. “What’s up with you today?”“I feel like drowning my sorrows,” she said, giving him a weak smile.“Oh, babes, maybe it’s a good thing he found someone else. You said yourself he was violent—”“But he was nice to me,” Alice whined.
Joseph sped to Alice’s house as quickly as he could drive without drastically breaking the speed limit. After she never returned, he’d started to worry. Then one of Aleks buddies had mentioned her leaving with him.“Please be home,” Joseph muttered to himself. “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that third drink.”As Joseph got out of the car and half-ran, half-skipped up the path toward Alice’s front door, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the bushes. Stopping, he frowned and parted the shrubbery.“Erm… hello?” Joseph said.
Alice stared at her phone for what had to be a good twenty minutes before replying.She re-read the message from Adam:“Mine. Tonight. 9pm.”So cold. So uncaring.‘And why does he even want to see me?’Alice wondered.‘When he has a perfect new girlfriend to occupy his time?’Unsure how she should respond, or even if she s
Jamie plonked the shirt on the counter and coolly told the cashier he wanted to return it.The girl looked at him, swallowed, and muttered, “Erm, you can’t return it if you’ve worn it—”“The stitching is coming undone. I’ve worn it once. It’s shoddy,” Jamie told her. In truth, there was nothing wrong with the stitching aside from the portion he’d unpicked by hand. It hadn’t been easy either; the quality of the garment was, in fact, annoyingly high.The truth was, Jamie had spent the last of his allowance on clothes and left himself short. Now he c
When Alice arrived at Adam’s gate, she almost turned around and walked away. He hadn’t invited her. He despised her, it seemed. Would he be angry about her showing up unannounced?She was mulling it over when she overheard a voice.“Please Adam, you have got to stop skipping classes. You know the soc’ is on my back. You managed to clean up the house for Christ’s sake… why can’t you just behave in school?”It was Mike.The smell of smoke wafted over the fe
Ste sat at the table, pretending he didn’t hear Alice pleading with her brother on his behalf.‘You can be the better person’… those words stung. He knew what she meant; that Jamie didn’t have to stoop to Ste’s level. Still… she was trying to do him a favour. He must really look pathetic.His reflection in the window confirmed this. He looked life ‘death warmed up’ as his granny would say.Ste still felt awkward enough as it was, being at Jamie’s house. Even dressed up in Jamie’s designer clothes—like a living Ken doll as Jamie pu