Wasted (25 page)

Gone. It should make her feel better but it doesn't.

It's Jack's coin – it had been picked up by the nurse, who had handed it to Jess a couple of days after Jack came round. And Jess had been embarrassed when she took it, almost as if she was being paid for Jack's life.

Jack kept asking about it, though he has begun to ask less now, some six or more weeks later. Jess thinks he is beginning to forget, but he is not. It is still inside him and could eat away at him, if he lets it. Or if she lets him let it.

No one will ever know which way it would have landed if it had been spun again. And although any coin would do just as well, Jess is throwing this one away to symbolize all coins. For what's a coin anyway?

The coin is gone. And Jess is glad. She is angry too, angry that because of a coin they had to go through all this. She wishes she had made Jack throw it away long ago.

If only.

It could have been so much worse: he could have died, and Jess knows how nearly he did. She cringes inside when she remembers that terrible moment when his heart stopped and they thought it would never start again. Jack feels this too. He cannot say it but there is a blackness where that moment is.

“What was it like?” Jess asked him once, while he was lying in hospital recovering.

“What?”

“Nearly dying.”

“I don't remember anything about it.”

“What, so no near-death experience? No white light or anything?” She's hoping he'll say no, because she doesn't like the idea that there is a place between something and nothing.

“Nothing. Honestly. Nothing from running into the sea to waking up.”

“So, really, we had a worse time than you? And you get all the attention?” She smiles and then she doesn't. “God, Jack, it was just so horrible. I can't tell you.”

“Could have been worse. I could have died.”

And in his voice is all that knowledge. This is the knowledge that they must leave behind, somewhere in a safe place where it will not hurt them. They must walk away from it without looking back.

“God, you were lucky, Jack.”

“I always am.”

*  *  *

Jess cannot see further than her footsteps home that hot damp evening. She does not and must not know the things that may or may not happen to her in the rest of her life. But we can guess a little because, looking down, we can see something more than her.

We can see her arrive home. Sylvia is sober – she has been ever since Jack's accident and that girl's death. Jess had screamed at her a couple of days later, something about alcohol and how if it hadn't been for the alcohol in Kelly's blood… And that Jack had seen her drunk and how ashamed Jess had been. Sylvia had cried at that and cried for Kelly and the horror of it. (Jess has not cried for Kelly; there is just a cold place where she was.) Perhaps Sylvia needed to be shouted at and that was what Jess was able to do for her – to shock her into life. Jess's father, Lorenzo, who will never know how nearly he died himself and how that might have changed things for Jess – for certainly her prom night would have been somewhat different if her father had died a few days before – has gone back to the US. Jess had shouted at him too, when he'd said something about missing his lunch-date with her and she'd said, “God's sake, Dad, can't you think of anyone but yourself? Jack nearly died, you know, and all you can think about is lunch?” And then he'd had the usual row with Sylvia. And doesn't it just show that some things don't change? Jess is still the thing they fight over. But in another sense she's not, because she's going travelling, she's getting away, with Jack, as soon as he's fit enough. They're going to India and Thailand and as many dangerous places as they can find.

And Sylvia will not even try to stop them. Somehow, she must find the strength not to. It doesn't matter where she finds that strength from and it doesn't matter if no one ever thanks her – find it she must, for Jess and for herself. In that way, or in some way, they must heal the earthquake crack between them, though perhaps it may have to split a little wider before that can happen. Sylvia will need to find another way to live her life.

Jack and his dad will talk and we must hope that Sam will discover the dark place of guilt that has screwed Jack up. Sam will be horrified to know that this is what his son had felt, after overhearing the conversation with the casserole-bringing woman in the kitchen all those years ago. Oh, and people will bring casseroles while Sam is in and out of hospital with Jack and it may rake it all up for both of them. Tessa will help, of that we can be confident. Friends and all the people who love Jack and Jess and Sam and Sylvia.

And there is Spike. Spike spends a lot of time now in Jess's room, curled up into the smell of her. Jess spends much time with her face in Spike's fur. Spike is sometimes fearful and his skin prickles and in his cat dreams he worries for Jess. One day he may settle but not yet. He senses change and fear. But Spike could be wrong, like Farantella. The prophet who messed up Oedipus's life was doubtless also wrong very often, and it's a shame Oedipus's parents didn't guess that.

Indeed, when Jess comes home from her beach walk, Spike is there at the door with his coiling back and she picks him up. Together they crush the blowsy roses as they brush past and she inhales the scent of them and feels a kind of hope.

One thing's for certain: Jack and Jess will be changed by what has happened. They will be happy again if they will let themselves be and if they make the right choices – if they remember that they can only change the present but the future is another world and not in their control; and if Jess reminds Jack that in the end Oedipus destroyed not only his father and his mother, but himself. And that, in the real world, he would not have had to. If he had only
not
believed in fate.

If we were able to speak to them we could tell them this. Perhaps they could then get on with their lives, controlling their actions as best they can, and understanding that any of those actions could have several results. Nothing is until it is and until then, everything possible is possible.

Luck is just what we call it.

NICOLA MORGAN
knew when she left university that she wanted to be a writer. While working to achieve that ambition, she was also an English teacher, and became an expert in literacy and dyslexia. Now, after writing numerous bestselling books for young children, Nicola is the author of many critically acclaimed titles for older children and young adults. Her novels
Fleshmarket
and
Sleepwalking
both won Scottish Art Council prizes, the latter winning the Scottish Children's Book of the Year, and her non-fiction title
Blame My Brain
was shortlisted for the prestigious Aventis Prize.

Nicola lives in Edinburgh but travels widely, visiting schools, conferences and festivals, enjoying any chance to inspire young people about fiction or the workings of their brains.

You can find out more about Nicola and her books at:
www.nicolamorgan.co.uk

Or for Nicola's advice on becoming a published writer, visit:
www.helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com

DEATHWATCH

NICOLA MORGAN

THE HIGHWAYMAN'S FOOTSTEPS

When high-born William de Lacey saves a highwayman's life, he cannot guess how his own life will change. He may have escaped his father's sneering contempt, but has his easy childhood prepared him for the terrifying dangers that he must face now? The stark, ghostly moors are as hostile as the pursuing redcoats, and Will must make some difficult decisions if he is to escape with his life.

NICOLA MORGAN