Imprint (17 page)

By the time his work was comp
lete
, Ali had given up and simply
lay on the floor, catching her breath. Sean glanced back one more time, before leaving through the window. He did not stay to see the expression of awe and surprise on her face when she finally noticed the
two barely legible words which had been carved
into the layer o
f foundation coating her dressing
table:

Please eat.

Chapter 10
: Stay with me

Sean was not a huge fan of parties, unlike pretty much every other teenager in existence apparently. It wasn’t that he disapproved of drinking. That sounded far too righteous. He just found them boring – they were all the same really. Drink. Get pissed. Act like an idiot. Exchange saliva with a complete stranger. Rinse and repeat. And while he didn’t mind others doing it, he personally hated drinking; it reminded him far too much of the sad state alcohol had left his mother in. It was unsurprising really that he didn’t get invited to many parties anyway.

What w
as
surprising was that Drew had taken it upon himself to make him likeable. The big, fat virtual party invitation polluting his facebook account was evidence of that. And while i
nitially Sean hadn’t thought
anything of ‘his’ sudden popularity, he suddenly wished that Drew would stop being so damn
friendly
to everyone. Because he rather liked moping in his dingy bedroom, and having to follow Drew to a
party
sounded like the worst possible way to spend one of his last few Saturday nights of spiritual existence.

“I can’t believe you’re so ungrateful,” Drew remarked, when Sean tried to explain this to him. “Here I am, doing you a favour by making you popular, and you have the gall to complain about it.”

“Correction,” Sean snarled. “You’re making
you
popular. You’re the one who’s keeping the body, unless I’m suddenly enlightened with the knowledge of how to get it back.”

Drew shrugged. “Yeah well, everyone still thinks it’s you who’s suddenly grown a personality. Anyway, be excited. You get to watch me have fun all night.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re actually planning on going.”

“Of course I am. Normal people like parties, you know.”

“Y
ou can’t go! I’ll-
”

“What? Swear at me? Sounds
terrifying.”

“I could make my fist solid and punch you in the face.”

“And risk fading out even quicker?”

“Okay, well-
”

“Face it, I’m going and you can’t stop me. Gosh you sound like my mother.” Drew rolled his eyes in amusement. “Ali’s going too, you know. Don’t you want me to look after her for you?”

“What?” Sean’s eyes widened slightly. Since when did Ali also get popular?
‘Well, since she started wearing skirts short enough to be belts’
his mind supplied rather rebelliously. Seeing the disbelief on his face, Drew scrolled down the invite list. Sure enough Ali was down as ‘attending.’

“She’s not as socially stunted as you, Sean,” Drew smirked. “She actually got a li
fe, around the same time I did, literally.
See what I did there?  Witty, I know.”

Sean sighed in exasperation. “I told you to stop with the puns. And fine, you win. But you’d better make sure nothing happens to her, or I will...”

“It’s kinda difficult to make threats in your position, isn’t it?”

“Shut up.”

Drew laughed. “Okay, fine. What are you, her father or something? I’ll look out for her. Scouts honour, except I was never a scout and I don’t really know what the funny hand signal is, so I doubt that counts for much.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of your own voice?”

“No. Oh, how about-
”

“Don’t you dare suggest a pinkie swear.”

Drew paused in genuine surprise. A moment later: “am I really that predictable?”

“I was being sarcastic, you moron.”

“Oh.”

Sean groaned
in exasperation and exhaustion. He couldn’t feel physical tiredness anymore, but he could sure as hell feel it emotionally. Tomorrow was going to be a long, long night.

The next day Sean was in a particularly bad mood. It only increased when he saw Ali’s genuine excitement for this stupid social gathering – when had she changed so much and why hadn’t he noticed it before? Three years ago, she would have joined him in scorning it rather than actually taking part.
It had already been a week since he had visited her, and she seemed to be unaffected. He was starting to think, with a certain amount of disappointment, that she hadn’t noticed the words he’d tried to write on her dresser.

By the time he and Drew actually arrived at the house where the party was being held, fashionably late as Drew had put it, Sean felt positively foul. He wished desperately that he could expel his bad mood on someone else, but since no one could hear him, he settled for muttering angrily under his breath and trying to block out the needlessly loud music. These idiots would blow their own eardrums out before they reached thirty. What annoyed him further was that both Drew and Ali seemed to be enjoying themselves. Within the first half an hour of arriving he had sought her out and done the whole ‘play nice and act like I care’ thing. She’d fallen for it of course. She always seemed to fall for Drew’s excuses and fake charming smiles nowadays. She was far too trusting, always had been, especially when it came to him.

Sean watched from a safe distance, away from the tangled crowd of bodies, as they danced together. Well, since it was a fast song, they were technically just dancing next to each other. They were both laughing and trying to have a conversation over the deafening music. He couldn’t help but notice what Ali was wearing – a delicate, white lace dress which flared out just
above her knees and clung to
her slender figure.
Her eyes were rimmed black, dark and exotic.
She looked even smaller than he remembered,
he noticed anxiously, and Drew’s words involuntarily replayed themselves in his head. He tried to convince himself it was just the fluorescent lights. Despite everything though,
he thought that she looked beautiful. Not sexy, because that just wasn’t Ali, and it would only imply a superficial beauty. Hers was pure, innocent, the same beauty she had always had but he had never noticed before now.

Suddenly, the song slowed down. Throughout the room people paired off into couples and danced in each other’s arms. A few without dates meandered off to the sides. Sean watched with interest as Drew whispered something in Ali’s ear. He saw her smile and nod, before she reached up around Drew’s neck and they swayed together to the rhythm. Sean had never seen the two of them so…intimate. He felt a flutter of something – frustration? Anger? – rise up inside him, but quickly tried to quell the out of place emotions. He really had to stop being so over-protective of Ali. Although Drew was an idiot, one dance with him would not mentally traumatise her. It was just a stupid dance. It didn’t mean anything.

Sure enough, they broke apart after the song finished. Sean was relieved. He didn’t want Ali to get close to Drew. That was the reason, he told himself. It was natural after all to feel concern for a close friend, and while Drew hadn’t shown any intention to cause her harm he was still a potential threat. They talked for a few minutes longer, and then Ali flitted off to the drinks table on the side while Drew started up a conversation with a pretty redhead Sean had never seen before. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes to himself. Why Drew seemed to think he was a ‘player’ he would never understand.

An hour crawled by, at the pace of a giant land turtle meandering across the prairies in the midday sun. At least that’s what it felt like to Sean. By now he was so bored he had been reduced to thinking up colourful metaphors to describe the extent of his boredom. He had tried a few of them on Drew, but the other boy just ignored him and continued entertaining the group of giggling girls who hung onto his every word like limpets. What was wrong with them?

Fed up, he glanced around the room looking for Ali. He hadn’t seen her for a while. His gaze landed on a couple engrossed in their mission of eating each other’s faces off in the corner of the room. He grimaced in disgust, and was about to move on, when suddenly he recognised the blonde head. Ali. What on
earth
? It had only been
an hour – how had she gone from getting a drink to sucking face with a stranger in that amount of time? He got closer, trying to figure out who the boy was. Sean vaguely recognised him as one of t
he more popular boys at school;
the type who played sports and went through girlfriends like bottles of beer. ‘
Great choice there, Al
’ he couldn’t help but think sarcastically. He really, really wished he could punch that guy’s face in.

He stood there for a few more minutes, seething inwardly. “You’re such an idiot, Al,” he muttered, knowing she couldn’t hear but wanting to get his frustration out anyway. Didn’t she realise what a jerk this guy was? That by tomorrow she would just become one of his many conquests? Unless it was all a game to her, too. When they eventually broke apart for air, he noticed that her cheeks were suffused in pink. She swayed on her feet, catching the boy’s arm to steady herself. Of course, she was drunk. Things made a lot more sense now. In her right mind, Ali would never have made such a bad choice.

He felt his protective side flare up again when The Jerk led her off the dance floor and towards the stairs. He could guess what he was thinking
of; he was also a teenage boy after all
. And he’d heard far too many stories about jerks like him taking advantage of drugged girls at parties. A sense of dread filled his stomach as the couple disappeared up the stairs and out of sight. He panicked,
knowing he himself couldn’t do anything,
and out of sheer desperation quickly made his way back over to Drew.

“Drew, Ali’s in trouble,” he blurted out. “She’s drunk and she was with some idiot and now he’s taken her upstairs,
you have to do something.”

Sean had to admit, for all of his flaws Drew was a remarkably good actor. He showed no hint of surprise on his face and carried on acting completely natural. However he quickly excused himself from the redhead he was back to talking to with a flirtatious smile, pushing quickly through the crowd towards the staircase. “Ho
w long ago?” he asked. The music
was so loud that Sean guessed he wasn’t worried about anyone hearing him.

“Maybe a few minutes ago.”

Drew
nodded and
bounded up the stairs, reaching th
e landing. It was dark,
music and chatter floating up and echoing eerily in the hollow staircase. The landing led off to six different rooms. Without hesitation, Drew chose the only door that was closed and barged in. The sight that met their eyes sickened Sean.

Most of the room was taken up by a large, double bed. On the bed two bodies thrashed, the larger one pinning the smaller one down. Sean could see the hand over Ali’s mouth, silencing her screams. Her eyes, terrified and still hazy from alcohol, streamed tears as she struggled in vain. The boy on top of her had his mouth pressed roughly to hers, tugging at her dress and ripping the lacy fabric at the shoulders. In that moment, Sean saw red. It seeped into his vision like blood, an angry haze that overpowered everything else. He had only ever felt rage this strong once before; after Drew had explained everything that had happened to him.

Before Sean had the chance to say anything, Drew crossed the room in a few quick strides and roughly tackled the boy off of Ali, wrestling him onto the floor and punching him hard in the stomach. Physically the other boy had more of an advantage over Drew, but Drew was quick and his movements nimble and practiced. It was almost as if he had learnt these movements by heart, as if he had done this a hundred times before. He was a vicious, efficient fighter.

In less than three minutes, the struggle was over and Drew had the larger and stronger boy pinned underneath him, with a bruise already forming around his eye. “Given up already?” Drew taunted, his tone menacing and his eyes narrowed in disgust.

“Bastard,” The boy panted, and while the anger and hatred was clear in his eyes, Sean could also see fear there. “You should keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

“Oh, but you see this
is
my business,” Drew’s glare darkened from angry to downright murderous. “Ali is my friend. And if you
dare
hurt her, or even come near her again, I will personally make your life hell.”