My instincts told me to pack up and leave. I’d made enough money. Adding it to what O’Dea had given me, I decided it was time to trade in the raincoat for a cheap winter jacket.
After packing up, I wandered in and out of some of the less expensive high street stores. Most of them only had sales on their summer lines, which made sense, but I finally found a half-price coat that was a season out of style. I wavered handing the money over since it was a good chunk of what I had left, and then I remembered how awful the night before had been.
I needed that winter coat, and I might as well buy it while I had the money. I threw in a cheap winter hat, scarf, and gloves too.
Afterward, I splurged on a fresh chicken salad, sick of junk food, and made sure I had enough water in my backpack. Not wanting to waste the nice weather, I strolled to Glasgow Green, a park a twenty-minute walk from Buchanan Street. Laying out my raincoat on a spot of grass, I sat, ate my salad, and read a book I bought for fifty pence in a bargain bookstore.
It made me forget this morning.
It made me feel normal.
And I realized that as much as I wanted to disappear, maybe every now and then, it was okay—in fact, important—to feel normal.
IT WAS A NICE EVENING so I decided to walk back to the cemetery. The tall buildings of the city center disappeared as I headed north, and everything became much grayer as I strolled down a sidewalk of a busy road above the motorway. It was pretty much a straight walk along a busy main road all the way to the cemetery.
By the time I jumped the gates, it was dark. My hardened feet were sore and swollen in my boots from the heat that had cooled considerably. I eyed the shopping bag in my hand with my new coat in it, glad I’d bought it so I could sleep in it tonight.
As I began the long walk uphill toward my cluster of trees, I thought I heard a whisper in the air and put it down to the rustle of fallen leaves along the pathway.
But when I heard it again, I froze like a deer caught in a hunter’s sights. The blood whooshed in my ears as I strained to hear, strained to see as my eyes swept the darkened cemetery. The moon lit up everything within near distance, but beyond the near glow of its beams, there was thick, discomforting darkness. I lifted my torch toward it but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet, for the first time since I’d made this place my home, fear seeped into me.
Heart racing, I continued toward the trees, hoping the whisper had merely been my imagination.
I shrugged off my backpack and pulled out the tent. As I started to set up, however, I heard the unmistakable sound of thudding steps on the ground. I shot up, whirling around, alarm freezing me to the spot at the sight of the two young men from earlier standing in front of me.
They’d followed me.
I could feel my chest constrict, my breaths coming short and shallow, as the worst possible scenarios raced through my mind. Why had they followed me? Scared out of my mind but determined not to show it, I tilted my chin up and demanded, “What the hell do you want?”
“The guitar,” the tallest of the two immediately replied. “We know it’s worth a couple of grand.”
Wrong. My Taylor was not only a Presentation Series acoustic, it was specially made for me. Technically, it was worth just under ten thousand dollars, but it could go for a lot more than that at a fan auction.
My guitar case lay behind me on the grass, not only protecting my Taylor but all the money I kept in there for safekeeping. Fear of losing the guitar, of losing that money, turned the shakiness in my limbs to steel. I stepped in front of it, blocking it from their view. “Go home, boys. This isn’t worth the trouble.”
The tall boy grinned and it was so full of malice, it made my pulse race. “Ye think anyone is going tae care that a homeless bitch got her guitar stolen?” He gestured to the cemetery around us. “There’s nobody here tae care. Now give us the guitar and we’ll leave ye in peace.”
“Look,” I turned to the shorter boy who was fidgeting restlessly, wearing an extremely nervous expression, “this guitar has a lot of sentimental value to me. Please.”
“For fuck’s sake,” the taller of the two growled and strode toward me. I braced myself for attack but he merely attempted to brush past me for the guitar.
Instinct made me reach out and grab his arm.
I’d look back on that moment later and wonder how I could’ve been so foolish.
The boy, taller, broader, and better fed than I was, halted momentarily. He then shook off my hold only to pull back his arm and let it fly. His fist connected with my cheek in an explosion of fire that caused lights to spark across my eyes, blinding me.
The ground slammed into my back and I blinked, disoriented, as my cheek throbbed with an aching heat. As the cemetery stopped wavering, I realized he’d knocked me off my feet. I was lying in the grass as he crouched over my guitar case. He unlatched it, opening it I assumed to make sure the Taylor was in it.
Adrenaline ignited my fury and suddenly I was not only on my feet but I was charging him. I slammed into him, knocking him away from the guitar. I grabbed chunks of his hair, pulling with all my might and feeling satisfaction roar through me as he yelled out in pain. As he managed to shake off my hand, I drew my fingernails across his face, drawing blood.
“Fuck!” he cried out, his face contorted with rage, and he grabbed my hand and twisted it hard.
Sickening pain made my head swim as I dropped to my knees. The world wavered around me, nausea and dizziness making me sway. Tears dampened my face as my breaths stuttered out at the agony blazing up from my wrist.
“Johnny, what ye done?” the other boy cried.
“Grab the fucking guitar and shut up,” Johnny said before I found myself pushed onto my back.
“Johnny, let’s go.”
“No before I teach this bitch a lesson.” His hard hands squeezed both my wrists, pinning them to the ground beside my head. I whimpered as nausea rose from my stomach.
I was so discombobulated, it took me a minute to realize Johnny had let go of my injured wrist to unzip his jeans.
What?
No.
No!
“No,” I tried to scream but it was like my vocal cords had snapped, the words coming out scratchy and pathetic. “No!”
“Johnny, no,” his friend begged. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Get off me!” I tried to push against the hands holding me down.
His cold fingers fumbled under my raincoat for the zipper on my jeans and panic set me off. I began to kick up my legs, trying to unpin them from his. He punched me.
Again.
And again.
Until I was dazed enough that he managed to shuck down my jeans.
“Johnny, no!”
“Stop fucking saying my name. Go hide behind a fucking tree if ye cannae stand there like a man,” he spat, his saliva speckling my throbbing, wet face.
Cognizance was returning and with it my determination.
He’d loosened his hold on my injured wrist while he’d been shouting at his friend so I used that moment of distraction to force every ounce of strength I had into twisting out of his hold and clawing his face. Ignoring the pain that screamed down my arm, I scratched at his eyeballs, his nose, his lips, and he fell off me, trying to protect himself. I rolled, digging my fists into the hard soil beneath the grass and using it as an anchor to pull myself out from under him, my legs scrambling like I was in deep water and trying to propel myself to the surface.
His cursing, foul insults rent the air as my fear-soaked body somehow did what I needed it to do. I had just gotten up on one foot when I felt his hand curl around the other, yanking me back down, face first, the impact on my chin causing a horrible burning in my nose, spots in my vision momentarily blinding me. But I didn’t stop.
I whipped around, preparing to batter him with my feet, when through blurred, darkening vision, I saw the other boy bring a rock down across Johnny’s temple.
My attacker slumped to the ground, out cold.
The boy stood, my guitar case in his hand, and stared at his friend in shock. His pale face suddenly turned to me. “Run,” he said, and then he did just that.
With my guitar.