Page 3 of Fire Fight

There must be a bored student in one of the science classes, staring out the window on this grim, overcast afternoon.

See something, say something. Isn’t that the mantra?

So, where the fuck is everybody?

My continuing pleas get washed out in a flood of tears, my brain catapulting straight into despair.

Drake undoes my school tie, using it to bind my wrists, threading it through the wire until I’m slumped against the cage.Too low to the ground to stand without wrenching my shoulders. Too high to sit.

He takes a handful of mud and I’m scared he’ll shove it into my nose, my mouth, clogging my nostrils, choking my throat.

But he smears it across my eyes until I’m blinded. Particles scrape between my eyelids, against the tenderness underneath. The pain of his rough application is torturous. My copious tears barely make a dent.

“How much?”

“I didn’t charge her,” I yell, which is the truth I wanted to convey the first time. “She bought this dodgy street version from a dealer, and I got her the real stuff. I was trying tohelp.”

And the shout at the end is the sad truth.

Harriet is high strung. Even as a kid she jumped at shadows, losing sleep to nightmares and racing heart rates. Those childhood fidgets turned to panic attacks. The unwarranted fear immobilising her long after she could safely breathe again.

Her parents escaped some weird Brethren sect decades ago, but its teachings stuck fast. They don’t ‘believe’ in mental illness or anxiety. They ‘know’ strengthening your faith is the cure for all ills.

“It’s just Xanax. She takes a quarter tab when she’s stressed. I didn’t want her to overdose on some random shit because her parents freak at doctors.”

My mother’s medicine cabinet is always full. The pills in there are almost never in her name. Even when she’s in the first flushes of limerence with a new beau, she still bangs a pharmacist on the side. In return, he passes unclaimed prescriptions along to her and there is a lot. The stuff she can’t use, even for fun, she sells.

Maybe there were other ways to handle Harriet’s problem, but hindsight has turned up late as usual.

“I was trying to help,” I repeat, my tears making progress in the mud, clearing it until I can make out shapes, colours. “Please let me go.”

Instead, Drake bends closer. His muscular build fills my limited vision, his fetid breath hot on my face. He shoves his hand into my skirt pocket, withdrawing my phone as a fresh surge of dread overtakes me. “Give that back!”

He wipes my thumb clean with his sleeve, pressing it to the device until I hear the click of it unlocking. Garbage security from the cheapest phone I could afford.

“I didn’t charge her.”Drake’s lilting mockery is savage. “Yet you’ve got four hundred in the cash app on your phone.”

Yeah. My life savings.

“No. It’s—”

He cuts me off with a yell. “Fucking liar.”

Leaving me strung up, he steps away. A few moments later, he laughs. The phone goes back, and he pats my pocket, then my cheek. “Now you’re a generous donor to the SPCA.”

The loss hits me harder than my fear.

The money’s gone.

Dozens of mindless hours over countless months spent cleaning, serving, taking orders through a drive-thru headset with the sound quality of string and cans, hoping to buy a secondhand car to sleep in when Mum spins out of control.

Viciousness pours from me. “You crazy fucker. No wonder your mother killed herself.”

The words hang in the air, too late to take back.

Guilt swamps me as I remember the woman’s kindness when I wet my pants at kindergarten, giving me a spare pair and helping the teacher to clean me when my mother didn’t show.

A smiling face at every bake sale, every clothing drive; always volunteering behind the tuck shop counter. Doing it alone. His dad never in the picture.

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