BULLETS FLEW PAST HIS HEAD AS HE ATTEMPTED TO LEAVE THE BATTLEGROUND THAT WAS CALLED HALSEY HIGH BY SOME OLD-TIMER NAMED CARL. Calum had tried to rush as fast as he could for a boy who hadn't slept in four days, but he just wasn't quick enough.
"Hey, Hood, where you going?"
He didn't understand why Luke tried to shoot him from so far away. All he did was just waste bullets and Calum's time. He continued to walk away.
"Luke, just leave him alone." Ashton said quietly, trying to get his best friend from even bothering to lift up the gun.
"Going to push somebody else off a cliff?" Luke continued.
Calum turned around, walking over to him, his eyes dark. Calum was so close that he could shoot him right between the eyes, but he didn't bother. "I never fucking killed her, Luke. She slipped. Why the fuck would I kill Avery?"
Luke liked the fact that his enemy had given him pretty much permission to at least shoot him in the foot. "She probably said something you didn't like. You have a thing for hitting people when you're mad, don't you?"
"I love her, Luke. I mean . . . loved. I never laid a hand on her. You just told everybody that I did."
Calum didn't bother saying anything else. Instead, he turned around and took a wrong turn when walking home, to a place that allowed him alcohol and tears. It was in the back of an alley, 'come in, you're okay now' painted just above the door.
Inside, every wall was stained with pictures, drawings and quotes written in Sharpie. It gave off a café-esque vibe, but it wasn't like anyone minded. After his visit, he walked around with at least a half a bottle of wine in his system. His eyes were pretty much black, and his walk was slurred like his words.
He went to the only place he thought it would be okay to cry. His feet worked with the sober part of his brain to guide him, even though the rest of him had no idea where he was going. When his bare feet touched the wet grass in the freezing cold, he knew he was there.
He started yelling – screaming – that he didn't kill her and how he never would have, he loved her so much. He started to cry, yelling her name, waiting for her to come out of her house, or open her window like she always did.
His jeans were wet with tears and rain drops as he knelt down on the grass, sobbing like he was scared for his life rather than taking another one. His vision led him to believe that four people walked out. None were Avery.
He cried even harder.
"What's your name?" came a harsh voice.
"Mum, be gentle; he's balling his eyes out." Came another voice that was spoken by another blurry face.
"I didn't kill her." Calum continued, ignoring them both.
"Hey, mate, can you tell us your name, please?" The younger blurry face asked.
The Maori got to his feet, but fell over again. "Where's Avery?" The feminine body held a phone in her hand, and Calum knew exactly what she was going to do. "No! Don't call the police."
"Why not?"
"I'm not doing anything wrong."
It was the younger one who pulled him up to his feet again, dragging him into the house, pushing him down into an armchair. He forced water into the drunk boy, hoping he'd sober up a little. The tanned boy kept on asking about Avery.
The pale boy furrowed his eyebrows, because, who the fuck was Avery?
"Come on, let's get you to bed."
The boy's mother stopped him at the staircase. "Michael, we are not having a drunk stranger in the house. We're calling the police."
"Please, can we wait until morning?"
"He could kill us by morning." His mother exclaimed, stressing her dirty-blond bed hair.
The dyed redhead smirked. "With an attitude like that, you're never going to have any friends." He mocked, pulling the drunk boy upstairs.
Michael had dealt with drunk people too many times to count. Aspirin was already put on the bedside table, next to a half-empty (or was it half-full?) glass of water. He pushed the drunk boy onto the bed and walked out grouchily.
He went into his own bedroom and put himself under the covers, asleep in minutes.
***
Calum woke up, startled. He looked around. What the fuck was he doing in Avery's room? She was dead. He looked around, seeing AW + CH etched into the corner of the room. He got up. Everything was different. Cardboard boxes were stacked up in the corner, each labelled.
"Ave . . . Avery?" He said, nervously.
"You never stopped talking about her, you know?"
He turned around to see a boy sitting on top of a stool eating cereal and he literally did not understand how he didn't see him before. He furrowed his eyebrows. "What?" more to the point, what the fuck?
"You came here drunk last night, screaming your head off. I had to make Mum not call the police."
None of this was helping his hangover. He walked over to the bedside table and took the pills. "How long ago did you move here?"
"Like, a week ago."
Calum nodded. "Cool. I'm gonna go now."
Michael furrowed his eyebrows, putting his bowl of Froot-Loops aside. "Where you going?"
The Maori never answered, and headed downstairs, rushing out of the house. He wasn't there to make friends. He was there to see his girlfriend his drunk mind forgot was dead.
He ran back to his apartment, ignoring Mali yelling at him for not even texting him the night before. He sprayed himself heavily with deodorant so nobody could smell the drunk on him and walked out again.
Where was his bag?
It then clicked that he must've left it at the bar. He shrugged, because he could carry everything he put in his bag, anyway.
He ran to school, late to homeroom, but not late enough for it to matter. His teacher rolled his eyes, but marked him down anyway. He stopped short when seeing somebody was in his seat. It was that kid.
That guy that moved into Avery's place. Too shocked to do anything, he just stood there. He bit his lip, figuring that giving him the cold shoulder would help the boy not get a bad name on his first day of school.
"Get out of my seat." His expression was different from his voice. His voice was stern, warning almost, but his face read that he was relaxed. "Go and sit next to Luke, and you'll be good." He mumbled again.
Michael, confused as fuck, got out of the seat and went over to sit next to the boy called Luke. The blond greeted him, and then automatically said straight after some shit about Calum. Michael didn't ask about it.
Throughout the next two lessons, Michael watched as everybody took the seat the furthest away from the Maori, like he was the most repulsive thing ever. He turned to Luke, who had been having a deep conversation with Ashton about what he was going to do next year.
"Why does nobody sit near him?"
"Because he's a fucking freak." Luke spoke with such distaste that the redhead never wanted to ask again. He concluded that he would ask Ashton next time.
He put his head down and sketched out a few things. A bird that hung around the window, dying flowers that were on the teacher's desk, Calum. As soon as he realised he was sketching him, he stopped, not wanting the other two to think he was weird.
The boy looked so lonely, though. He had a full table to himself, but the seats looked like they had been abandoned for a while. Tentatively, he stood up, and walked over. He sat down in the seat opposite to Calum's.
"You should go back to your table." The tanned boy said, not even looking up from his work.
"This is my table."
Nothing else was said.