Hurt
Authors: Tabitha Suzuma
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Social Topics, #Social Issues
Contents
At seventeen, Mathèo Walsh is Britain’s most promising diving champion. He is wealthy, popular – and there’s Lola, the girlfriend of his dreams.
But then there was that weekend. A weekend he cannot bring himself to remember. All he knows is that what happened has changed him.
Mathèo is faced with the most devastating choice of his life. Keep his secret, and put those closest to him in terrible danger. Or confess, and lose Lola for ever . . .
In loving memory of my kind, funny and loyal friend
Camille Lloyd-Davis
28th November 1974 – 29th October 2012
Forever missed . . . Never forgotten
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Igor Stravinsky
He opens his eyes and knows instantly that something is terribly wrong. He senses it through his skin, his nerves, his synapses, even though, spread-eagled on his back, all he can see is the frosted light-fitting on his bedroom ceiling. The room is white, violently bright, and he knows that it is a sunny day and he forgot to close the curtains, just as he knows, from the belt cutting into his side, the denim against his legs, the clammy cotton sticking to his chest, that he slept in his clothes. Arching his foot and finding it weighted down, he lifts his head just high enough to see that he even failed to take off his shoes. And then, slowly, his eyes focus beyond his mud-caked trainers and begin to take in the rest of the room. For a moment he holds his breath, convinced he must still be dreaming. Then, with a gasp of horror, he snaps upright as if from a nightmare.
The walls around him immediately begin to sway, colours bleeding together, fraying at the edges. He screws his eyes tight shut and then opens them again, hoping not just to clear his head but to rid himself of the vision – the chaos of his wrecked bedroom around him. But sunlight is pouring in through the windows, illuminating the anarchy of this usually immaculate space. Fractured furniture, crippled objects, torn clothes and smashed glass are all that remain. The room looks like a scene from a crime show. The breath is wrung from his lungs. Things are beginning to take on a particularly tactile, vivid, saturated look. He puts his hand to his mouth and tears at a hangnail, and then just sits there, stuck like an old vinyl record with no more play.
Beyond the windows, the day is still. The branches of the trees don’t move; the sky is a deep, impossible blue. The sun appears to blaze brighter for a few seconds. He seems to be in some kind of trance, staring around with a kind of guardedness, a horrified fascination. From the wall hangs a brutally twisted picture frame, like something salvaged from a furnace. On his desk, pieces of a smashed mug catch and reflect the late-morning light like scraps of glass adrift in a pool of coffee, the surface shimmering with oily iridescence. Spread out beneath his bookshelves is a tapestry of splayed books, pages ripped from their spines and scattered like leaves. Broken diving trophies, splintered and ragged, lie nearby like the contents of a suitcase lost at sea. There isn’t a single surface or stretch of carpet that isn’t covered with the flotsam and jetsam of the night.
Slowly he slides himself down to the end of the bed and levers himself onto his feet, a time-consuming manoeuvre which requires great orchestration and willpower. His muscles are stiff and sore and unyielding. A sharp scorch of pain rips through his leg – he looks down to find that his jeans have a tear just above the left knee, threads darkened with blood sticking to his skin. Prickles down his arms reveal a multitude of scrapes and scratches. Pain corrodes his body – his head, his neck, all the way down his spine and into the backs of his legs. He focuses on the humming in his skull, the maelstrom in his head. Below him, his body hovers, unattached. Then, all of a sudden, the breath is kicked out of him and he is shoved onto the cold hard concrete floor of his life.
He takes a step forward in the ransacked room. Abject horror slides under his skin, burrowing into his body without asking: his hands are its hands, and its hands are filled with an otherworldly strength. Fear, like a pinball, bounces against his heart, his head, his throat, until finally settling in his gut, hard and cold. His chest churns with unspecified, wretched thoughts. He wants to hurt someone for all the hurt he is feeling right now. He wants something that will knock him flat and keep him there until the world goes away.
His first thought goes to his brother. He wrenches open the bedroom door, skids across the marble landing, and halts in the doorway of the adjacent bedroom, staring at the perfectly made bed, vacuum paths still fresh on the carpet. He continues through to the other rooms, the empty, hollow house seeming suddenly sinister and ghostly, like a mausoleum. But nothing is out of place, everything is in its usual immaculate state. The front door, the back door, the windows – all locked. No sign of anything missing – stolen. No sign of forced entry.
Back in his room it is as if he is looking through a shattered windscreen. His mind is running on several planes at once. Everything he sees seems freighted with significance but he cannot put the pieces together to create a comprehensible whole. His mind races back to the previous night and chases it, failing, scenes stuttering, disappearing. Memories pull and bend, mixing and blending like watercolours on an abstract canvas. He is on a carnival ride, being sucked to the wall, glimpsing faces, colours, lights. His life is disintegrating, bits and pieces of it flying off into the dark. His mind hits the self-preservation button and turns blank, like a ream of unmarked paper. He can remember the diving competition in Brighton, the day before. He can remember leaving the Aquatic Centre after the press conference. But after that, nothing.
He lays out the facts the room has provided him with, side by side, in his head. Nothing of value seems to have been taken; in fact at first glance he can detect nothing missing at all. His desktop, his PlayStation, his laptop – all smashed beyond repair but present all the same, mashed gruesomely into the carpet. Muddy footprints crisscross the floor but, on inspection, perfectly match the soles of his trainers. The windows are locked from the inside.
Slowly, painfully, he begins to pick through the remnants of his belongings. He tries to avoid his reflection in the mirror but finds himself glancing at it periodically even so, like a motorist peeking at the gruesome remains of a roadside accident. Suddenly he can take it no more, and straightens up to face the stranger before him. He barely recognizes himself. Running his fingers through his tangled hair, he watches in stupefaction as twigs and dead leaves fall at his feet. His face is pinched and bleached – violet staining the skin beneath his eyes. There is a cut on his cheek and dark shadow beneath it. The corner of his mouth is encrusted with blood, and what appears to be the beginnings of a bruise blooms purple across his forehead. He looks shocked and thin and insubstantial, his collarbone visible through his cotton sweater, his cuff torn and his jeans streaked with mud.
What the hell happened?
His mind refuses to answer. Silence fills the room, as fragile and intricate as frost; so much silence, refusing to be stirred. His world suddenly appears before him as an unmarked road, with visibility down to almost zero. His headache persists, a heavy pounding that refuses to let go of his temples. Then, abruptly, fear is replaced by rage, fanning through his veins, his own fury seeming to spike the very air around him. What if he suddenly just goes crazy and starts to scream? It scares him because he feels that is exactly what he is about to do – any second now.
He is filled with a deep, black desire to fall to his knees and weep. It’s as if he knows that he will never recover. He senses himself desperately trying to cling to the person he once was, hanging on with both hands while spinning away from the real world.
His life is over . . . His life has just begun.
Just one week earlier he was lying in the long grass with his friends. Such a short time ago, but it might as well be a whole lifetime. Another life. He was a different person. One who knew how to laugh, how to crack jokes, how to have fun. He was just an ordinary teenager back then, although he didn’t know it. He thought he was amazing; everyone thought he was amazing. School had just finished for the day and the long weekend beckoned – three whole days of turbulent freedom, off with his coach to the south coast to compete in the National Diving Championships. A-levels were finally behind him, the final weeks of school were just a formality now, and all those painstakingly stacked stale hours of closeted revision had led to this: lying back against the soft, pulpy earth, the grass tickling his ears, staring up at a violently blue expanse of sky, while movement and general conversation buzzed around him – a pleasantly dim hum, like the noise of a badly tuned radio.
Here in the park is where most of the sixth formers hang out during free periods. In the shallow dip between the two hills, far enough from the lake not to be bothered by squawking geese but close enough to see the sequined light dancing off the water. The sun is a pure, transparent gold, stroking the local hangout with light and filling it with delirium. It’s a particularly warm day in June, and today feels like the first proper day of summer – the kind of weather where you can kick off your shoes and enjoy the feel of the soft, cool ground beneath your soles. Where ties are scattered in the grass and blazers are bunched together to prop up heads. Where shirt-sleeves are rolled up, exposing anaemic white arms, and collars flap loose, buttons undone down to the curve of breasts or the tops of bras. Where guys like him with six packs wear their shirts hanging open, or shed them completely to engage in a raucous game of football.
All around, Greystone pupils sit in pairs or in groups: guys with their arms slung proprietarily round their girlfriends’ shoulders, amoeba-like clusters picnicking from pizza boxes or swigging bottles of Coke. A gaggle of girls is drawing on each other’s bare arms with thick black felt-tips – hearts, messages, cartoons with speech bubbles. Someone has organized a piggy-back race: girls clambering onto guys’ backs, shrieks echoing through the park as they wobble precariously or go tumbling into the grass. The sun, approving their languor, is making its way lazily down the sky, in no hurry to end the day. He can almost taste the freedom and release in the air – summer, like an infection, spreading across the park.
‘Are you playing, Matt?’
Mathéo considers for a moment, then decides to let them wait, his eyes squinting in the needling brightness of the sun.
‘Matt?’ Hugo sounds irritated and prods him with his foot. ‘We need you on our team.’
‘I think he’s asleep,’ he hears Isabel say, and realizes his eyes are half closed against the blinding white light, amorphous silhouettes blurring and fading around him. ‘As I was saying, my parents are away that weekend,’ she continues eagerly, ‘so we can all come home after the Leavers’ Ball and have our own party—’
‘He’s faking!’ Hugo’s voice cuts through. ‘Lola, will you tell your lazy sod of a boyfriend to get up?’
Whispers. A muffled giggle. Mathéo presses his lids tightly closed as he becomes aware of Lola shuffling over towards him on her knees.
Trying desperately to relax, he inhales deeply, fighting to keep his lips from twitching upwards. Her breath is on his cheek – what the hell is she up to this time? He tenses his muscles, ordering them not to move. Her theatrical snort cues the sound of laughter exploding from all around him. Something tickles his nostrils. A blade of grass? He bites down on his tongue, his chest tightening, lungs contracting, threatening to explode. The feathery wisp brushes back and forth.
