Heartache High

Heartache High

Jon Jacks

Other New
Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The
Caught

The
Rules

Chapter One

The
Changes

Sleeping Ugly

The
Barking Detective Agency

The
Healing

The
Lost Fairy Tale

A
Horse for a Kingdom

Charity

The
Most Beautiful Things

The
Last Train

The
Dream Swallowers

Nyx;
Granddaughter of the Night

Jonah
and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens

Dr
Jekyll’s Maid

The
500-Year Circus

P

The
Endless Game

DoriaN
A

Wyrd
Girl

Coming
Soon

Heartache High: The Primer

Heartache High: The Wakening

Text
copyright © 2013 Jon Jacks

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Wow, what a
dream!

I’d just dreamt
that, at last, Iain Sinclair had finally started to take an
interest me!

One of those
dreams you could almost have sworn was real!

But no;
unfortunately, it wasn’t real after all.

Because here I
am, waking up in bed.

Damn!

Back to
reality.

The reality
where Iain doesn’t even know I exist.

Unless, that is,
I get in his way in the school corridor.

Or make a fool
of myself right in front of him. Dropping my bag and spilling its
contents all across the floor,

He must think
I’m the dumbest girl he’s ever come across.

But I can’t help
it; not when I’m around him.

All my
coordination goes out of the window – suddenly, I’m the gawkiest,
most inept girl in school.

Stumbling over
my feet.

Stumbling over
my words

Like I’m tongue
tied with the thickest rope anyone could manage to find.

I’m not like
that normally; honest.

Normally, I’m
okay.

Like any regular
girl.

Yeah, that’s the
problem I suppose.

Like any
regular
girl.

Not like the
pretty, popular girls that hang around Iain like he’s got them all
on strings and they’ll dance to any tune he’ll play.

Yeah, he plays
the guitar too.

No chance; I’ve
got no chance of getting off with Iain Sinclair.

*

Before I get
around to opening my eyes, I go for a lazy stretching of my arms
and legs, preparing my body for the rigors of the day
ahead.

Yeah, that’s my
morning exercise regime, see?

Hey, if it works
for a cat. Why not me?

How many unfit
cats do you see?

(Come to think
of it, don’t answer that; next door’s cat looks like it overdoses
on Katomeat every hour of the day.)

Trouble is, my
strenuous workout is running in to problems; mum must have made the
bed like she’s aiming on joining the navy, the quilt tucked in
amazingly tight into the bed’s sides.

What’s she gone
and done that for?

My legs and arms
only get so far before they’re wedged tightly between quilt and
mattress.

It feels like
the bed’s only half size.

I finally get
around to opening my eyes to see just what the heck is going
on.

What?

It’s not a
quilt; it’s sheets and a scraggy old whatever those things are
called that the Amish like making out of bits of old
material.

And the bed
really is half the size, going by what I’m used to.

Has someone
played a joke on me?

Moved my bed
out, and somehow slipped me into this one without even waking
me?

Still groggily
half asleep, I look around my room.

This is
my
room?

No, it’s
not
my room!

I jerk upright
into a sitting position, giving my dozy head a shake. Thinking,
Hey, am I still dreaming?

The bed’s small
and simple, like it’s just enough to stop you falling out provided
you only move as much as an Egyptian mummy.

The room’s
hardly better; tiny, and with only the most basic
things.

Small bedside
locker. Closet hardly much bigger. Couple of armchairs, long past
their best.

Tiny window.
Curtains little better than dishcloths.

Bared light bulb
hanging from the ceiling.

Painted
walls.

Paint left over
from camouflaging a few army trucks.

Yeah, that’s it;
it’s like an army barracks.

Either that, or
it’s the world’s worst hotel.

*

I can’t remember
coming here.

I can’t think
how
I could have got here.

Where
is
here anyway?

I’ll phone mum
and – my mobile’s not by my bedside, where I’d usually put
it.

I glance around
the room again, looking for where it might be.

The clothes I
was wearing yesterday have been carelessly thrown over a simple
wooden chair placed against the wall.

(Yeah, that
would
be me who did that!)

I skip out of
bed, realising for the first time that I’m wearing a long,
plain-white nightdress, like I’m some sort of patient in
a–

Please
tell me this isn’t an asylum!

Please
tell me I haven’t been committed, mum and dad finally despairing of
my endless moping over Iain-bloody-Sinclair!

Where’s that
phone?

My bag isn’t
underneath my clothes, where I was expecting it to be.

I search through
my jean pockets.

Nope, not there
either.

Great!

Thing is, they
take things like that off you in an asylum, don’t they?

Sharp things
too.

Oh come on! I
wasn’t
that
crazy!

What
am
I
thinking here?

Well, I’m
thinking I’m in a weird place and I can’t remember how I ended up
here!

I search through
my clothes again, a little more frantically this time.

Yep, still no
phone.

There’s no
landline phone by the bed, or on the wall either.

If this
is
a hotel, I hope we’re not paying much for the
rooms.

I open and peer
out of the door.

It’s a corridor,
long and thin with lots of doors similar to this one.

Same job lot of
paint used for the walls.

Same basic
decoration too; no pictures hanging on the walls, no
flowers.

So no phone
either.

Bleaksville.

There’s no one
around.

There’s not even
any noise hinting that someone might be close.

No clanking of a
chambermaid’s cleaning buckets, or fresh bed sheet
trolley.

No yelling kids,
no dad bawling at them to be quiet.

No music playing
or dreary presenters droning away on a TV.

That figures, I
realise looking back into my room; there’s no TV, nothing to play
any music on.

Come to think of
it, there isn’t any electrical equipment in here, apart from that
lonely looking light bulb.

I can’t even see
a plug socket.

How’s a girl
supposed to manage without a hairdryer?

I could knock on
a door and ask where I am. First, though, I need to put some
clothes on, spruce myself up a bit.

I slip my
clothes back on as fast as I can. Give my hair a quick shake. Run
my hands through it to flounce it up a bit.

I hate putting
on clothes I’ve warn the previous day, but it’s hardly like I have
any choice. At least there’s a towel, soap and a toothbrush and
paste, all neatly stacked on the seat of one of the armchairs. But
that can wait.

I run a tongue
against my teeth, just checking that there aren’t any tell-tale
signs that maybe I had something to drink last night that might
have been best avoided.

Nope.

All seems
fine.

Thing is,
though, there goes another explanation as to how I could have ended
up here without remembering a single thing about it.

*

I think, Forget
knocking on a door.

How’s it going
to look?

‘Oh hi; er,
could you tell me where we are please?’

Yeah, that’ll go
down well.

All I need to do
is find mum and dad and have a minor rant at them for bringing us
to the Dreary Hotel, Drearyland.

As run and
decorated by your friendly proprietors, Mr and Mrs
Dreary.

While I’m at it,
I can ask mum and dad what sort of travel sickness pill they
slipped me to knock me out for the entire journey.

Both the
corridor and the bedrooms leading off it are still eerily
silent.

Sometimes, I get
this weird impression that doors are opening and closing behind me.
Movement I think I’m seeing out of the corner of my eye.

But I must be
imagining it, just a little freaked. Because when I turn to make
sure, there’s never anyone there.

Perhaps we’re
the only ones staying here.

Not that
that
would be too much of a surprise.

Near the end of
the corridor, I at last find what I’m looking for; double doors,
opening up onto a landing connected to wide stairs, leading both up
and down.

Before using the
stairs, however, I take a look out of the large window at the end
of the corridor.

(Why hadn’t I
thought of this earlier? I could have looked out of my room’s
window.)

As soon as I
look out, over smart lawns and imposing Victorian gothic buildings
lying just beyond them, I immediately regret it.

It’s a layout
that just screams –
hospital
!

You’re in a
hospital
Steph!

*

No, no; I’ve got
to stop torturing myself, trying to guess where I am.

Just how many
Victorian hospitals are left? Most of them have been converted into
business parks, or apartment complexes.

Mum and dad are
probably downstairs, waiting for me in the hotel’s breakfast
room.

‘Where have you
been sleepy head?’ they’ll ask. ‘We let you sleep in to recover
from the journey.’

(The journey I
can’t remember, yeah?)

I step through
the double doors onto the wide landing.

Once again,
everything’s bare and basic.