Dear Liv,
It was New Years Day yesterday.
It went by really quickly, with people counting down to twelve o'clock and the snow coming down in tonnes. The Christmas lights all got an upgrade and I watched them glow all the colours of the rainbow. They reflected in the shop windows and car mirrors, as they stole the glory of the regular old lampposts.
Some kids from school went down to the little archway near the bakery and took pictures of all the lights.
I guess I'm going to be seeing a lot of them soon, because we're going back to school on Monday. Considering that it's currently Thursday, we haven't got long to go and I'm not really happy about that.
I really don't like school. The lessons are boring and a lot of the teachers are really patronising, whilst some of the kids annoy the heck out of me.
I don't know if you remember how our social system basically works, since we've got almost everyone that was in our primary school still with us in secondary school.
There aren't really cliques. For some reason, people automatically assume that there are, but I just want to clear it up from the very beginning. There aren't cliques. There are just people who regularly talk to the same group of people, but also spend time with completely different individuals.
I don't know if you still read those weird teen fiction books about nerds and rebels and weird cheerleaders, who are way too cranky and awful to actually cheer. That was just in case you do and they brainwash you into thinking our school is like that too.
It's not.
We have some bike racks out back and some people go out and smoke, like blackening their lungs will really bump their coolness factor. There are only really two or three of this type of people in our year, and they're mostly the ones who are trying too hard to impress people. They're not 'bad' or rebels. They're either suffering from too much stress or, like I said before, think it's cool and will push them up the popularity ladder.
If you look a little further to the left, you'll find a group of maybe five people who basically wander around at break and lunch. They're incredibly nice and some of the quieter people in school, so they sometimes find it harder to make friends. They basically just hover within a metre of each other and occasionally murmur a few words.
Another thing is we don't have cheerleaders.
I mean, we have teams (for girls and boys) and they play loads of sports but mainly in the summer. That's it though. The team supports each other at the actual games and when they come back, there'll be an announcement in assembly to say where they ranked. Then, they'll just get a round of applause and it'll be over.
Most of the people who play in those teams are pretty nice, and smart too. You and Laney hung out with them quite a lot before the incident.
Anyway, the point was that we have so many different people within our school. We have the self proclaimed weirdoes, the smart people, the broken people, the sporty people, the cosmetics lovers and so much more. No one belongs to just one title. They're all made up of a load of different characteristics.
I want you to remember that, if you can.
I heard you're planning on coming back to school soon, so it'd be useful for you to have some background information and not rely on any books and films like you would've done before.
I've got to do some last minute homework now and hope that I'll somehow magically pass the class.
See you in school, Liv.
Sincerely, Red
Like I had done so many other times before, I tucked the letter into the fairy piggy bank and wondered what Red stood for. Were they a girl or a boy? Was 'Red' a part of their real name or something completely made up? Were they playing a trick on me, trying to take advantage of a weakness and twist it into stories to put inside a mind brimming with thoughts and feelings?
I thought about this and so much more, as I jumped off the bed and got dressed. I thought about it all the time as I walked down the stairs again. I even thought about it as I ate breakfast, slowly bringing each spoonful of cereal to my mouth.
I wondered if Red actually was a stalker. He or she clearly knew a lot about me, too much in fact. Privacy had been breached long before this letter and it felt weird that they knew so much. A part of me even thought that it was sick to dump so many emotions (like Red had done) on someone who couldn't understand, someone who was too busy trying to piece the past together that they were forgetting about the present.
That was what I was doing.
I was stupid and idiotic. I was keeping letters from someone who was clearly mentally unstable. This someone had broken past all the boundaries that not only I, but humans put up when they think of strangers.
And Red was a stranger, a stranger who knew way too much for comfort.
"I was planning on going to school on Monday," I said, out loud.
"No," Claire stated, automatically. "And don't wait for David to come here, get him to agree and then attempt to convince me."
"But why? Why can't I go to school? I thought getting an education was a good thing," I said, angry now.
She raised her head. "I didn't say getting an education was out of bounds. I said you're not going to school, because it's not safe. Until it is, I'll just have to find you some tutors and you can work at home."
"But this is my last year at school. How am I meant to pass my exams, with an arrangement I'm not happy with?"
"You'll do fine," she said, not sparing a glance at me from behind the newspaper she'd grabbed off the table. "You only forgot events, not information like this. Let's not forget that you didn't affect that side of your brain. It's not like you're starting from scratch."
"I didn't affect my brain and the way it worked," I said, desperately trying to reign in a sense of barely contained anger. "The situations, as you yourself once admitted to, changed the way I thought and coped with things."
She huffed. "Well, whatever it is, you're not going to school and don't even try to change my mind. It's not safe."
"Is it because of that or the fact that the situation I'm a part of is embarrassing you?"
"You're not going to school."
"I don't like you," I said.
"I know," she muttered. "Believe me, I know."
Later on, I wondered if I should have said that at all because I knew (or I hoped) that a part of her did care. It was understandable that she felt the way she did, because the job that she'd built her life on was being shaken to the core by none other than me.
But at that point in time, I was angry, too angry in fact. And when one emotion is stronger than all the others, you tend to lose sight of things and forget to treat the people you care about with love, even if it is overrated.
The anger stayed put all the way up to Monday, which is the day that school started.
Claire had generally tried to avoid me, often staying out of the house for as long as she possibly could and moving into her home office whenever she was actually here. The brief conversations that we did have were always in the kitchen, on the high stools and with a table in between the both of us.
Nearly all the conversations translated into arguments, with our joint stubbornness meaning that neither of us ever came to a compromise.
Claire still wanted five to seven tutors, each complete with degrees and a strict teaching style.
I wanted to go to school and deal with life as it had been and would be from now on.
"Darling, you've got to learn to understand that the world isn't the way you want to see it," she told me on Monday morning. "So you can take that uniform off because I'm not driving you to school."
"I'm not asking you to drive me to school," I muttered. "I'll take the bus."
"And where exactly are you going to get your bus fare?" she asked, almost mockingly. "Even David isn't here to offer his... reinforcements."
"I have my-"
I was almost going to tell her that I was going to use the money in the stupid, pink fairy piggybank. The coins that were buried under all the letters would surely be enough to get me through at least one day of school and then I could figure everything out from that point on.
Then it came to me that she would take the money bank away. And with the money, the letters would go too, raising a ton of questions. It would also mean an interrogation from Claire, who liked annoying the crap out of me, it seemed.
Of course, I probably annoyed her just as much a lot of the time.
"Don't make that face," she said, not looking up.
"I didn't do anything," I denied.
"Don't lie," she ordered. "Every time you sigh, you're either biting your lip out of frustration or glaring at me."
"How can you possibly know that? You're not even facing this way," I muttered, before backtracking. "I mean, I didn't even do anything!"
"I'm going to work," she said, abruptly.
In fact, everything seemed to be abrupt with Claire. Her words started not at the beginning of anything, but in the middle or the end of thought processes. And Claire's thought processes nearly always seemed to be sharp and take sudden turns that nobody, not even the people she lived with, would ever be able to understand and process.
It was hard to keep up.
"I'll ask someone at the office to look for a tutor," she said.
"But that's not even their job!" I shouted, beyond frustrated now.
"They're getting paid to do something," she said. "I don't understand why that something can't be looking for tutors."
"This is just a wild guess here, but I'm pretty sure they didn't spend most of their lives studying to end up searching for tutors for a fifteen year old kid. That's degrading."
"I don't particularly care."
For the billionth time that day, I questioned whether Claire was actually that cold or just putting up an act. Like David had said before, everything had hit her faster than she could have ever expected. With her job being affected and her life falling apart, she was in a position to be angry and mean.
It was just a question of whether it was possible to be willingly bitter all the time.
It was while I was thinking of this that Claire sneaked out of the door and left.
I heard the engine rumbling as I ran towards the door, but the car started and reversed out of the driveway before I could get to it. The screech of tyres sounded and echoed in my ears as she practically raced out of the house and to work.
I wondered if the smell of rubber was actually there or if my mind was just overdramatizing things.
It was possible.
So with that in mind and Claire's annoyingness (if that was enough to describe it), I decided I would go to school that day, even if was the last thing I did.
There proved to be many, many problems with this otherwise flawless plan.
One of these problems happened to be the fact that I had no idea where the bus stop was, which meant that I didn't really know how to get to school. I wandered around the grassy banks and hills around Claire's house, until I was walking through too many interconnected roads and streets to actually remember what I was doing.
This soon led to the second problem.
I got lost.
The third problem was a result of the second one (I was beginning to see a trend here) and I was beginning to question why I had ever wanted to go to school.
My mind went into overdrive, conjuring up all the possible scenarios that could happen in the space of time that it would take me to get back to the house. I could get kidnapped. I could get assaulted. I could fall in a hole and stay stuck within its depths until someone found me.
Considering that, I tried to find the nearest road, which didn't turn out to be too hard because I found the muddy tyre trails of a car leading the way to civilization.
It was then that I saw a car, a blue rusty one to be exact.
And Tim was sitting inside it, eating little bear shaped biscuits.
My stomach churned with a familiar feeling of nervousness and all of David's warnings came back to my mind in a rush of awareness. Even Red's small references to the man were beginning to take their toll.
He didn't notice me, I don't think, because I ran to hide behind a metal bin.
It was a stupid idea because the owner of the bin happened to be passing by, holding a large bag of grass in his hand.
"Excuse me," he said, urging me to get up. "What are you doing behind my bin? I don't keep food here. It's just for when I cut my grass and-"
Oh, this was going awfully wrong.
Apparently, this is what happened when someone wishes to go to school and get an education and have a career and a good life.
"Hello?" the man asked. "Bin lady?"
"Huh?" I asked, intelligently.
David was beginning to have his effects on me.
"Why were you hiding behind my bin?" he asked again.
"Um," I muttered, glancing behind him to check for signs of Tim. "I'm hiding from this guy with bear biscuits."
"You're doing what now?" the man asked, bewildered.
"There's a guy in a blue car, over there," I said, pointing behind me. "He's not a very nice guy and I don't trust him. I think he has an axe in his boot."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Oh, that's really something," he said. "Well, is there anything I can do?"
"I need to get to a bus stop," I said. "But I don't know where it is."
"There's one outside my sister's house, about ten minutes away from here," he offered.
"Well, could you give me directions?" I pleaded. "That guy really scares me."
"Sure," the man agreed. "Just walk straight ahead and take a left at the end of the-"
"I have a bad memory," I muttered, almost wincing at the obvious truth in those words. "I won't be able to remember that much, especially with that guy on my back."
"See, I'd love to help you and all," he said, making excuses like the clouds make rain. "But I have to get back to cutting the grass or else it'll grow really long before the winter."
"Oh," I replied. "That's okay. I know how important grass is this time of year."
"Yeah," he muttered. "Well, I, um, better go then. Good luck with your stuff."
"Thanks," I said under my breath. "You've been such a big help."
He waddled off back to his house, just as Tim climbed out of his car.
"Hey, Ollie!" he shouted, coming closer. "What are you doing out here? Does Claire know you've left the house?"
"Yes," I said, instantly.
Olivia Anderson's top tips number one: when weird men approach you and ask if you're carer knows you've left, say yes. That way they'll know they won't be able to kidnap you without someone noticing.
"What are you doing out here?" I asked.
"Just cruising around," he said.
Olivia Anderson's top tops number two: when a man who looks above the age of fifty says he's "cruising around", know that there is something seriously wrong with him or he's a wannabe teenager.
"I'm going to head home now," I told him. "Claire's probably waiting."
"Oh, yeah, sure," he said. "Do you want a lift?"
You don't even need a tip for this one.
"No, thank you," I muttered. "I'd rather walk."
"Oh," he said, scratching his head. "Okay, then."
He glanced back towards his car.
Olivia Anderson's top tips number three: if an old dude named Tim offers you a lift and glances back to his car, he is most likely planning something. Run.
David's thoughts reinforced my own bad feelings when it came to Tim. There was just something off about his character.
"Bye," I muttered quickly, before running in the general direction the bin man had described.
From there, it wasn't hard to find my way home. The bin man had given me a path to take and, having taken that path, I'd found a bunch of other people along the way. Their joint directions finally led me to a bus stop, where I used the money from the fairy bank to pay for a ticket.
The ticket would get me home faster and safer than anything else out there.
A.N: As you may have noticed, Liv's age has been changed from seventeen years to fifteen. This means that she's in the process of preparing for her GCSE's (exams), before pursuing higher education, which fits better with the story.