The Stranger, Mark Ayre [microsoft ebook reader .TXT] 📗

and crossed the room, taking a seat in the padded chair situated by his bed. On the bedside table were a plastic jug and two plastic cups. The pitcher was three-quarters filled with water. If there had ever been ice, the cubes had melted since the drink had been delivered.

“How are you feeling?” Abbie asked. She was on the side of the bed Michael was facing away from and could only see the back of his head. She fought the urge to stroke his hair.

“Stupid question, I suppose,” she said. “You must be awash with grief, with guilt. You probably hate yourself right now. You definitely hate your father. All those things are understandable. They’re okay, too. I know how you feel.”

Michael gave a strange snort. “Yeah, right.”

“Ah, yes, you’re a teenager, and when bad events happen in a teenager’s life, they are bound by the pact of adolescence to assume said event has happened only to them. No adults have experienced dark times, and, oh my God, don’t I sound like an old person? That’s a horrible turn of events.”

Slowly, as though it was mounted on a rusty hinge, Micheal’s head turned to face Abbie. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes asked the question she had expected.

“By the time I was a few years older than you,” said Abbie, “I had lost my baby days before it was due to be born and seen my brother go to prison for assaulting and hospitalising one of the people who raped me. Naturally, I believed I had suffered more than any one person should in a lifetime and that I was therefore done. It would be plain sailing for the rest of my life because that was fair. But as you’ve known since before you could walk or talk, life isn’t fair. And just when I thought the pain could get no worse, I lost the last thing that meant anything to me in my crappy little life. My beautiful sister, Violet.”

Abbie reached for the jug on Michael’s bedside table to distract herself from the image of her little sister, which flashed into her mind. As she took it, she looked at Michael.

“Do you mind?”

He shook his head. Abbie poured a helping of water into one of the cups. Gestured to the other with the jug.

“Want one?”

“No,” said Michael. “Thank you.”

Abbie nodded. Replaced the jug and collected her glass. She sipped and found it was as warm as expected. Not nice, but a semi-decent distraction.

“How is my sister’s death relevant?” Abbie mused. “Because it led to a furious fight between my mother and me. A fight in which she might have killed me with a kitchen knife if I hadn’t wrestled it from her and knocked her down. Standing over her, losing blood but as full of hate as ever I would be, I wanted to kill her. If I had taken the decision to, there would have been nothing my mother could have done to stop me.” Abbie glanced at Michael over her glass. “But I didn’t. As you didn’t. But now you know, however shit your experiences, you’re never the only one to have suffered them. What’s that saying? There’s nothing new under the sun. So true.”

For a little while, Michael watched Abbie drinking. There were tears in his eyes. She knew he wanted to say something that might comfort or appease her after his initial comments, but what would that something be? Abbie knew there was nothing, so didn’t mind when he looked to the ceiling, dried his eyes, and returned to his own pain.

“I don’t know how I’m going to live with it.”

Abbie knew Michael wasn’t referring to Eddie.

“At first,” he said, “I didn’t feel anything. I went on as normal, and that was fine. Then yesterday, when I got that gun, it all came apart. I fell to pieces. I felt lost, then, suddenly, it clicked. I blamed Eddie, and I blamed myself, so the answer was simple. I’d kill us both, and that would make it right. But I didn’t kill Eddie, then I couldn’t kill myself. Even if you hadn’t stopped me. I knew it the moment I put the gun to my head. So what do I do now?”

Abbie had killed plenty of people. Most of them deserved it. Some were borderline. At least one didn’t. Even those who deserved to die had left families behind. Some of the most abhorrent people insulated their children from their true selves. Some of them loved and cherished their families. Abbie knew how it felt to lose a sister and baby, yet how many siblings, children, spouses had she left without their loved ones?

Possibly, Abbie could have lied to the boy. What use would that have been?

She said, “You suffer.”

Michael looked at her with big doe eyes. They might have been begging her to say something else. Anything else. But Abbie couldn’t.

“You’ll spend your days trying to distract yourself from the nasty thoughts that never leave you alone. Your nights will feel near impossible for a long time. Expect insomnia to be your friend. Expect eight-hour stretches, which feel more like eight-day stretches, spent lying on a mattress, tormenting yourself with the memories of what you’ve done. You’re going to suffer. You took the life of an innocent man. You should suffer.”

Replacing her glass on the table, Abbie leaned forward and clasped Michael’s arm.

“You’re going to prison,” she said. “But nothing they do to you in there will be a fraction as bad as what you’ll do to yourself in here—“ she tapped Michael’s head. “I don’t tell you that to scare you or to make you think life isn’t worth living because I believe it is. I believe life is always worth living, even in prison, and even haunted by what you’ve done. Because it’s never too late to make amends. Nothing is preventing you from improving yourself behind bars. Take your suffering and use it; let it drive you to be a better person.”

There was