Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Four

Most days I took one of the central line buses home from school, getting off on Dominion Road and walking the rest of the way. But today I couldn’t bear the thought of being crammed into a box on wheels with three dozen other students, listening to the chatter and the noise and the signs of life. So when I came out of the school gates at 3:20 I turned away from the bus stop and started walking.

My feet carried me along the footpath on automatic, past the shops and the cafes and the Russian Orthodox Church that looked more like a fortress than a house of worship. Cars zipped by me in a never-ending stream, just as they did all over the city. The air was stuffy with heat and exhaust fumes, but I needed the mindless mechanical nature of walking to clear my head.

I knew Dad would be asleep when I got home—he worked night shifts doing security work—so I came in the front door quietly and dumped my backpack. No sign of Dad’s girlfriend, Leanne, but she was usually out so that didn’t surprise me. I sat down at the kitchen table for a few minutes and scratched at an old sauce stain on the surface that reminded me too much of blood. I opened the fridge, felt my stomach clenching up at the thought of food, and closed the fridge door again. Forced a muesli bar down my throat just to keep me going. Fed Phineas, our black tomcat, even though it wasn’t his dinner time yet. Went into the lounge, flicked through cartoons on TV, switched it off. Nothing worked. Nothing had any substance anymore. I usually changed out of my uniform when I got home from school, but I couldn’t even be bothered doing that. I trudged up the stairs to my room, tossed my keys, wallet, and phone on the desk, opened my laptop.

While the ageing machine slowly turned on, its fan roaring like a jet plane taking off, I sat down at my desk and picked up my model two-masted schooner. I was halfway through putting it together. The plastic cement at the base of the rear mast had dried where I’d applied it this morning. Phineas came into the room and strolled around my legs in a figure eight. I clipped out a few more parts from the model’s plastic sprue and cleaned the mould lines off with a craft knife. While I worked, I thought.

None of it made any sense, and the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Megan and Ella knew everything about each other. Jeremy used to joke that Ella and Megan made a better couple than me and her ever did. They told each other everything. I knew Ella told Megan after we first had sex, because the next day at school Megan went red as a tomato every time she looked at me. If Ella was that close to the edge, how could Megan not know?

And what about the method of suicide? Ella didn’t even like scarves. Hated the feel of things tight about her neck. If she was going to off herself, why wouldn’t she do it a different way? Overdose, maybe. She knew how to get drugs, knew how much she could handle. Knew how much it’d take to kill her. Better that than a noose.

And then I couldn’t stop thinking about what it must’ve felt like for her, feeling that pressure against her neck, throat closed off, lungs burning. The blood pounding in her head. Did she regret it? Did she struggle? Christ, what if in the middle of it she wanted to back out, wanted to live, but she couldn’t get it undone, couldn’t get free, couldn’t—

Sharp pain went through my thumb. I looked down at my hand and saw the cut running lengthwise along the pad of my thumb, blood beginning to ooze out of it.

“Goddamn it,” I muttered to myself. I retracted the craft knife blade before I could do myself any more damage and crossed the room to get a tissue. I could feel my pulse throbbing through my thumb as I pressed on it. Phineas stared up at me and meowed.

My laptop had finally booted up. I’d been meaning to change the desktop background, since every time I looked at it was like a punch in the teeth. But now there was something strangely soothing about it. We were at Piha beach when we took that photo, which was a goddamn stupid idea since it’d been July and the middle of winter. Ella was holding the camera at arms’ length, pointing it back at us with the sand and the water and the darkening sky behind us. Her bangle—the one I’d given her—hung in front of the lens, blurring the corner of the photo. She was pulling a face, mouth open wide, tongue pink and soft inside, her dark hair going in every direction in the wind. I was trying to look cool and not doing a very good job, my not-quite-brown-not-quite-blond hair blown over my eyes, my cheeks red from the cold. For as long as I could remember I’d looked perpetually fourteen-years-old, which was great when I was younger but not so much fun anymore. But still, I could see the happiness on old-me’s face. A couple of hours after that photo was taken, I’d be running down the beach butt-naked with Ella screaming and laughing beside me, diving into those freezing waves with the girl of my dreams, and running out again before we both caught hypothermia. Running back to the car we’d borrowed for the trip, cranking up the heat, and finding other ways to warm up too.

“You lucky bastard,” I told the picture of me. I wished I was him again.

I peeled back the tissue from my cut. It’d started to close, but the tissue was soaked through. I stared at the rust-red blood for a moment. Did you bleed when you died, El? Or was it clean? Can it ever be clean?

Something dark and ragged and animal went through me. I grabbed the model ship and hurled it at the wall. It didn’t break as satisfyingly as I hoped, so I picked up what remained and threw it again, and then I stomped on it, ground it into the carpet. The pieces flew across the floor, under my bed. Phineas went sprinting out of the room, little more than a black blur. My breathing was loud. I slammed my fist into the wall, again, again, until my knuckles were scraped and burning.

I felt better then.

I sat on my bed. Stared at my hands. Stood up. Picked up my key and wallet and phone. Went to the bathroom, splashed my face with water, swallowed a few handfuls. Looked at myself in the mirror.

I made a decision. I had to go to Ella’s house.

~~~

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