Before I Die by Jenny Downham Page B

door.’
    ‘Shit!’
    ‘Ever seen a scared policeman?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s terrifying. My mum sat on the stairs and covered her ears with her hands, and they stood in the hallway with their hats off and their knees shaking.’ He laughs through his nose, a soft sound with no humour to it. ‘They were only a bit older than me. They hadn’t got a clue how to handle it.’
    ‘That’s horrible!’
    ‘It didn’t help. They took her to see my dad’s body. She wanted to, but they shouldn’t have let her. He was pretty mashed up.’
    ‘Did you go?’
    ‘I sat outside.’
    I understand now why Adam’s different from Zoey, or any of the kids I knew at school. It’s a wound that connects us.
    He says, ‘I thought moving from our old house would help, but it hasn’t really. She’s still on a million tablets a day.’
    ‘And you look after her?’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    ‘What about your life?’
    ‘I don’t really have a choice.’
    He turns on the bench so that he’s facing me. He looks as if he’s really seeing me, as if he knows something about me that even I don’t know.
    ‘Are you afraid, Tessa?’
    No one’s ever asked me that before. Not ever. I look at him to check he’s not taking the piss or asking out of politeness, but he returns a steady gaze. So I tell him how I’m afraid of the dark, afraid of sleeping, afraid of webbed fingers, of small spaces, of doors.
    ‘It comes and goes. People think if you’re sick you become fearless and brave, but you don’t. Most of the time it’s like being stalked by a psycho, like I might get shot any second. But sometimes I forget for hours.’
    ‘What makes you forget?’
    ‘People. Doing stuff. When I was with you in the wood, I forgot for a whole afternoon.’
    He nods very slowly.
    There’s a silence then. Just a little one, but it has shape to it, like a cushion round a sharp box.
    Adam says, ‘I like you, Tessa.’
    When I swallow, my throat hurts. ‘You do?’
    ‘That day you came round to chuck your stuff on the fire, you said you wanted to get rid of all your things. You told me you watch me from your window. Most people don’t talk that way.’
    ‘Did it freak you out?’
    ‘The opposite.’ He looks at his feet as if they’ll give him a clue. ‘I can’t give you what you want though.’
    ‘What I want?’
    ‘I’m only just coping. If anything happened between us, it’s kind of like, what would be the point?’ He shifts on the bench. ‘This is coming out all wrong.’
    I feel strangely untouchable as I stand up. I can feel myself closing some kind of internal window. It’s the one that controls temperature and feelings. I feel crisp as a winter leaf.
    ‘I’ll see you around,’ I say.
    ‘You’re going?’
    ‘Yeah, I’ve got stuff to do in town. Sorry, I didn’t realize what the time was.’
    ‘You have to go right now?’
    ‘I’m meeting friends. They’ll be waiting for me.’
    He fumbles around on the grass for the crash helmets. ‘Well, let me take you.’
    ‘No, no, it’s OK. I’ll get one of them to pick me up. They’ve all got cars.’
    He looks stunned. Ha! Good! That’ll teach him to be the same as everyone else. I don’t even bother saying goodbye.
    ‘Wait!’ he says.
    But I won’t. I won’t look back at him either.
    ‘The path might be slippery!’ he shouts. ‘It’s beginning to rain.’
    I said it would rain. I knew it would.
    ‘Tessa, let me give you a lift!’
    But if he thinks I’m climbing on that bike with him, he can think again.
    I made a fatal error thinking he could save me.

 

    Seventeen
    I start with assault, shove my elbow hard into a woman’s back as I get on the bus. She spins round, crazy-eyed.
    ‘Ow!’ she yelps. ‘Watch where you’re going!’
    ‘It was him!’ I tell her, pointing to the man behind me. He doesn’t hear, is too busy carrying a screaming child and yelling into his phone to know I just slandered him. The woman sidesteps me. ‘Arsehole!’ she tells