CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
"Alex, do you remember when mum would say don't ever trust anyone who doesn't have any fears?" my sister asked me as she curled up on the sofa, her voice quiet with tiredness.
I smiled at the random question looking up from my position sprawled on the floor and quoted my mother with the exact words I had heard a million times as a child. "If you're not afraid of anything, you can't possibly believe in anything either."
Alice nodded slightly before closing her eyes and falling asleep, a smile still on her face from my answer taking her back many years into the past.
Alex's head was swimming with memories that night.
He had woken up suddenly â his hands clammy and heart racing â with the same reoccurring nightmare of the moment his sister died. It had been a while since he saw it so clearly in his mind that he had almost forgotten just how haunting it was. Things were much better now, there was no doubt about it but it was as though his mind was reminding him that he'd never be quite okay again.
Knowing he needed to go back to sleep, he tried to calm himself down and lay in his bed reminiscing. No matter how many times he tossed and turned, his mind continued to play flashbacks stuck on the same scenes over and over again like a broken record. They weren't even the bad scenes of the shitty parts of his life. On the contrary it was all the happy moments that were running through his mind, the good times with his Alice, Lacey and Tyler when they were younger that he couldn't stop thinking about.
But that was worse in a way; as though his subconscious was haunting him.
Although things were much better with Lacey and Ty than they were a month or so ago, things would never quite be the same without his sister. With a heavy heart, he turned over for the millionth time and squinted at the luminescent figures of the clock on his bedside cabinet.
6:13 am.
"Great," he mumbled as he reluctantly pulled himself out of bed. There was no point even trying to sleep anymore and so he grabbed a faded maroon jumper from the corner of the room and slipped on some vans. Grabbing his phone, keys and camera which he pulled around his neck, he trudged out of the door, flicking his hair out of his eyes in the slight wind.
Recently, all the pictures on his camera's memory card were for their Art project and so it was refreshing to take photographs just for the sake of it without having to adjust the settings to take a perfect shot or to think too much about it. Alex looked through his viewfinder and took a few random pictures of the sky, roads and people rushing past to get to work. Before long, he found himself at a park near his home. Small and secluded and with a tiny canal, it was the perfect place to take some more photos in order to clear his mind and distract himself from his nightmares.
Although it was very early in the morning, the park had a few people loitering around. There were a couple of university students walking through clutching Starbucks cups, joggers with headphones in their ears oblivious to the world around them and frazzled mothers, holding tight to the hands of their sleepy children dressed in school uniforms.
Catching sight of a lone duck pecking at some bread a passer-by had thrown near the canal, Alex walked over quietly and zoomed in as much as he could. Trying not to startle it, he began to take a couple of pictures experimenting with the angles when a familiar figure caught his eye in front of him.
Dressed in what were obviously her pyjamas â but somehow managing to look like a supermodel in them all the same â Hannah was running around the edge of the park just ahead of him. Her eyes widened in recognition when she caught sight of him kneeling on the ground and she slowed her pace to jog towards him.
"Hey!" she said, breathing heavily as she tried to catch her breath. "Why you up so early?"
He stood up to greet her, the duck forgotten. "Couldn't sleep I guess," he shrugged as though it was no big deal. She just raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow slightly, as though she knew perfectly well it was his nightmares that prevented him from sleeping.
They made small talk for a while, Hannah clearly trying to ignore all her own problems by asking him a million questions about his trip to Brighton the previous day. Normally he didn't say much when Tyler and Lacey asked him questions about Kalila, usually wagging their eyebrows suggestively while doing so as though there was something more going on. But Hannah was much easier to talk to â perhaps it was because they weren't really considered friends or maybe it was because there seemed something vaguely familiar about her. Either way, Alex found himself telling her everything about their trip from the beach to the rain to the café and the souvenir shop.
He tried not to mention anything about the waiter that had served them and spent most of the time flirting with Kalila but his annoyance must have been apparent on his face because Hannah noticed. Before she was able to comment though, footsteps alerted them of someone else's presence behind them. It turned out that the loud, precise footsteps belonged to Melissa, complete in a hot pink tracksuit with black wedges and a novelty sparkling whistle around her neck.
"Hey guys!" she breezed, looking at both of them with a slightly adoring look in her eyes. They both muttered their replies, clearly not too eager to talk to her but she was far too oblivious to notice.
Using a manicured hand to push some of her perfectly curled hair behind her ears, she beamed at them. "How's Gabe doing?" she asked Hannah.
Although it was slight, Alex noticed Hannah flinch a little, her shoulders becoming tense. He may not have known her long but changing the subject since she obviously didn't want to talk about this Gabe guy seemed like the decent thing to do.
"Erm... How do you two even know each other?" he asked, wanting to slap himself for asking that when he saw Melissa practically beam in pride when she heard his question. There was only so much listening to her that he could take and it was evident she had plenty to say.
He begun to tune out when she began talking excitedly, waffling on about how they had met at a party and became really good friends though from Hannah's disgusted expression, that wasn't the case. He didn't know much about Hannah or her school life but from the way Mel was practically kneeling at her feet, it seemed as though she was immensely well known and popular. And rich; you couldn't be in Pemrose High Private School without drowning in money and everything about her was regal in every sense of the word.
Melissa must have realised he wasn't paying as much attention as she would have liked and so she changed tack. Fluttering her eyelashes in what was supposed to be a cute manner but really just made her look like she had a twitch in her eye, she wormed her way closer to Alex until she was almost pressed against him.
"Erm..." he begun to protest â clearly uncomfortable with her so near â but she didn't give him a chance to talk as she lightly ran a finger up and down his arm.
"Anyway, how have you been doing babe?" she purred in an attempt to sound sexy, "It's been a while. We need a catch up session."
He almost flinched in disgust, there was no way he was doing any catching up with her and definitely not in the way she was thinking. As perfect as Melissa Knight may have been, there was no getting away from her once her claws were in.
Hannah whose eyes had been completely glazed over during the entire interaction, jolted back to reality and almost laughed out loud. "Get of the poor boy Mel, he isn't interested in you."
Melissa looked as though she'd been slapped, how dare anyone tell her Alex didn't want her! Of course he did! She was perfect and they had dated for almost a year! With her eyebrows drawn together in anger, she opened her mouth to retort back but Hannah cut her off.
"He's with Kalila, any idiot can see that. Well apart from you evidently. Get over it," Hannah said with a roll of her eyes. She usually managed to put up with Melissa snivelling up to her just because of her popularity but Kalila was one of her only real friends. There was no way she'd allow Mel to ruin her relationship with Alex.
Relationship.
That's all Alex could think when he heard Hannah's words. Although he had told people in school countless times that he and Kalila were just friends, he wasn't so sure that's all he wanted anymore. And if Hannah, who was one of Kalila's closest friends, assumed that they were together what did that mean? He didn't really know but girls were weird, they always made something out of anything and he was sure there was meaning behind that sentence.
Before he could dwell on it any longer or protest his so called relationship however, he heard a slight growl from his side. Melissa was clearly fuming that somebody had the audacity to call her out on her crappy flirting but there was something about Hannah that she seemed to be slightly scared of. Alex still didn't know how the two girls knew each other but he needed to find out, he'd never seen Mel back away from a fight ever!
And surprisingly, back away she did.
With her nose in the air and a toss of her perfect blonde curls, Melissa sauntered off angrily, obviously trying to emphasise her perfect bum in that horrible tracksuit. Not that it was worth it though, Alex was deep in thought and barely even noticed her walk away from them.
"We're not together though," he managed to say.
Hannah just raised an eyebrow at him, her shoulders relaxing now that Mel was gone. Because he wasn't in her school and didn't know much about her, around Alex she felt like she didn't have to wear a mask as usual. It was easy for her to talk to him and forget about the magnitude of her own problems.
"Look you're a boy and most of the time boys are idiots so I'm gonna have to spell it out for you," she began, raising her hand to shush him when Alex opened his mouth to argue. "Kalila likes you, she might not ever admit it but she does. The only other guys she hangs out with are Tyler and my idiot cousin Cameron who both are gay and happy together so that doesn't count. I assume you like her too considering how pissed off you seemed when you told me about that guy in Brighton who was talking to her...?"
"Flirting!" Alex corrected loudly, "He was flirting with her!"
Hannah couldn't help but laugh at that. If he didn't like her, he wouldn't care if some other random guy was flirting with her. As she explained that to him, she smiled, glad that he was a decent guy because Kalila definitely needed one of them. Her 'aw' moment was interrupted however when Alex burst out in a string of swears.
"Oh fuck, I do like her don't I?" he groaned, wishing he had figured that out sooner. It sure did explain a lot. Like why he always felt better around Kalila, why she made him smile and he why he noticed so much about her. The way her hair got in her eyes a lot and the way she smelt of apples and her how her nose twitched when she lied.
Hannah chuckled. "Well, welcome to the conversation!"
It was final. Alex Bates officially liked Kalila Woods, probably the one girl in school who didn't want to be his girlfriend.
Shit.