‘Hello.’ Rosalind Ryan stands on the path about five metres from me. I think that she might be a hallucination. She reminds me of a deer, her large brown eyes solemn.
I try to remember the last time I saw her. Exams? With Jacob at the shops? At his memorial? Dead in the lake? In my murky, messy dreams?
‘He loved you, you know.’ The only sound is her voice, there is nothing else.
I don’t know where we are. Nothing looks familiar now.
What is this place?
I barely move as I keep watching her.
She looks older now. Sad and worn. She tugs at her lip with her teeth. Shuffles her feet.
I’ve never seen her look nervous before.
‘I really cared about him. I want you to know that.’ Her hair flows down past her shoulders. Her white dress billows in the breeze.
I look at her for a moment longer before I close my eyes and roll the other way.
after
I hung in a place between light and shade. Officially, I was in a coma but I’ve come to think of those peaceful days as my time out. I needed to decide that I wanted to be part of the world. I had to choose life.
I woke after almost exactly four days, late at night, the glow of hospital machines welcoming me back. Scott had just left, the staff told me. He’d been in there almost the entire time. Sometimes with Ben, sometimes with my dad. He’d held my hand, stroked my head and told me that everything was going to be alright.
The largest bunch of flowers on the small shelf near my window was from Felix. The card was an apology of sorts and a final goodbye. He’s transferring to a city squad in March, moving his whole family. Getting away from me. Jonesy’s doing, I’m sure. I don’t know what we ever really had, if anything, but he’s part of my story now and I need to believe that being with him meant something. It was bigger than us, I think. Perhaps I needed him in my life so that I could see what I had right in front of me all along, and maybe it was the same for him. Or maybe he just used me. Maybe it will all become clear some day.
Six days after Donna Mason accidentally shot her own son, and two days after I returned to the world, I told Jonesy everything. How I’d set everything in motion. He listened, seated in the chair next to my hospital bed, silent but nodding occasionally, his bloodshot eyes fixed steadily on mine.
‘You were a kid, Woodstock,’ was all he offered. ‘I think it’s all best left alone. It was a long time ago. It changes nothing for me. You’re still one of my best. You just need some time to get better. Find your feet and get back on track.’
Find my feet. Get back on track, I thought. Yes. I need to work out where my feet are and which way the track is.
When I was floating in the darkness I dreamed of Jacob. His little-boy face. His hands on my body. His mouth on mine. He is embroidered into my being, woven into my core and pulses through my veins. Frozen between child and man, he is trapped in a place that protects him from shortcomings and the passage of time. Blocking him out has served me no purpose; I need to let him breathe into my life, swirl around from time to time, and trust that he’ll know his place.
John Nicholson was Rosalind’s father. And Rosalind’s baby had been Rodney’s. If Donna Mason is telling the truth, then she killed her own grandchild as well as Rosalind Ryan that night. I will never forget the sound she made on the tower when she thought she’d killed Rodney. It will ring in my consciousness for eternity.
Rodney is here in the hospital too. Donna shot him in the stomach but he will live.
Smithson is divided in two: half believe that Donna is covering for Rodney, the real killer, and the other half lean over steaming coffees, eyes huge, claiming that Donna killed Rosalind to protect her only son. I have not seen Donna or Rodney Mason since the shooting. I can’t. They can’t be part of the world that I’m trying to live in now. But I also can’t seem to summon any anger for what Donna did. Her existence is devoid of light now. Rodney may never forgive her, and that seems punishment enough.
‘You and I are the only ones that heard her that night,’ says Candy, her bright red lips moving so fast I feel dizzy. ‘And Rodney, of course.’ She acknowledges his presence with a flip of her hand. She paces at the end of my hospital bed like a puma, her dark skin offset by a tight white dress. ‘She was out of her mind at the thought of losing him. There is no doubt in my mind that she did it.’
Candy saw me leave the school and chase Rodney, then saw Donna follow us and trailed her to the tower, watching as she picked up a rock and crouched on the stairs. Candy heard Donna attack me and take my gun. She texted for help and flicked on her audio recorder to capture everything. She threw her shoe at the critical moment and cradled my broken body afterwards, holding her lightweight jacket hard against my wound to stop the bleeding as Donna howled at the moon, clinging to her bleeding son.
‘I thought you were a goner,’ Candy tells me sunnily, but I know she was terrified.
One way or another I probably owe my life to her.
‘I was scared, I have to admit.’ She leans closer. ‘And you are never allowed to tell anyone that my recorder didn’t work. Worst moment of my career, I swear.’
I can only laugh. ‘Same,’ I tell her.
We are tentative friends now, bound by the tragedy we witnessed. I admit I look forward to her visits. She still makes me roll my eyes but she also makes me laugh and that can only be a good thing.
I have an impressive scar that will be with me until the day I die. The bullet entered my flesh just below my collarbone and exited clean out the other side. I lost a lot of blood, but thanks to Candy I will be fine. I trace along the bandage with my fingers as I fall asleep, staring at the mountain of flowers I’ve been sent. So many roses.
Rosalind remains a mystery to me. So many contradictions. Alive now only in my memories. Anna is sure that she was as close to a psychopath as we will ever see in Smithson.
‘A manipulative bitch,’ she says cheerily, bringing me yet more flowers to look at from my hospital bed. I suppose Anna is probably right. I can see how dangerous Rosalind was. She used people, chewed them up and spat them out, looking for something, but never finding it. She continues to float in front of me, just beyond reach. My eyes, which always sought her out at school, now roam around the corners of my brain, still fixed on her: remembering things, turning them over.
Of course, if I’m honest with myself, I used her too. The thought of us being more alike than different scares me most of all.