Page 58 of Everything That Kills Me
So that was that.
He still tried to send a message, just in case.
Zeph hardly spoke all day. He sat in the cafeteria at lunch and ate nothing. He was so deep in grief, he was unaware of almost everything, though he’d jolted at Alice’s piercing cry in computer studies when she was told Jack had left. Zeph wondered how she was going to make it his fault.
He didn’t want to go home. But he had no choice. He didn’t catch the bus. Instead, he walked, even though it was a long way. He wanted time on his own. Why couldn’t Jack keep in touch? Why had he left so suddenly? It hadn’t been planned. His uncle wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of getting him a place and then yanking him out again. Thomas’s job had changed,maybe? But that didn’t explain why he could no longer talk to Jack.
When he reached the railway bridge, he found a place to sit on the embankment where he could cry unseen and unheard. He wanted to wish he’d never met Jack, but he couldn’t. He found himself torn between thinking Jack hadn’t known what Thomas planned and believing hehadknown yesterday morning and hadn’t wanted to spoil things by telling him then.Thatwas why he’d not gone too far.
Whatever the truth, Jack had no choice but to go with his uncle. It would be the same for Zeph if his father decided to move to the north of England. Though that made him think again about his own situation and his decision to stay in the house.
He pushed to his feet and wiped his smeared glasses with the bottom of his shirt. A branch cracked behind him and as Zeph turned, he was given a hard shove. He cried out as he tumbled down the bank toward the train tracks, his glasses flying from his fingers. His foot caught, then wrenched free as he kept falling, rolling. Then his head slammed onto something hard and everything went black.
The next time he woke, he was warm and in a bed. He could hear beeping. He forced his eyes open.Hospital. Still alive then.He half-wished he wasn’t. His eyes closed. Zeph drifted in and out of consciousness.
It took a while for him to register how much was wrong with him. A broken pelvis, a head injury and something the matter with his hands and arms and legs. All of him. Everything hurt. He caught snippets of conversation, occasional awareness of people at his bedside other than doctors and nurses.
Apparently…
He was lucky to be alive after the fall he’d had.
Lucky he’d been seen lying there.
Lucky to have been pulled off the train track before he’d been hit.
But…
He hadn’t fallen. Zeph remembered that. He also remembered who’d pushed him. But he kept quiet because that revelation would be world-changing. Better to claim he remembered nothing, only that he’d turned to go home and tripped on the slope. For the time being, he kept quiet.
A psychiatrist sat by his bed and Zeph, by her questions, guessed what she was trying to find out. If he’d been trying to kill himself.If that had been the case, he’d have picked a better method than throwing himself down a slope on the off-chance he landed on the railway line. He didn’t speak to her either.
His father and Elisa never spent long at his bedside. He was fine with that. He didn’t want them there at all. Silence was his way of dealing with this.
“We bought clothes for when you can come home,” Elisa said. “We’ll buy you a new outfit for school, once you’re fit enough to go back.”
“Your backpack’s in the locker. You might feel like doing some reading,” his father said.
Georgia and Alice were with them. Alice was so pale, she looked translucent.
“Does he have brain damage?” Georgia asked. “Why can’t he speak?”
“The doctors aren’t sure,” his father said. “They say it might be shock.”
Zeph’s head ached but his brain was fine. He just didn’t want to say anything, not yet. He wished he felt strong enough to get his phone out of his bag, assuming it hadn’t been taken by his father. Maybe tomorrow.
He was stunned when Rufus and Scott turned up at visiting the next day. They’d even bought him a packet of Minstrels, which Scott sat and ate after Zeph didn’t reach out and take them.
“Can you remember what happened?” Rufus asked.
Partly, though he hadn’t yet put all the pieces together. He’d been told Rufus and Scott had dragged him off the track.
“You fell,” Scott blurted. “All the way down the embankment. It’s really steep. The rail company’s going to be in trouble for not fencing it off more securely. Or you’ll be in trouble for trespassing. Maybe both.”
“We pulled you off the rail,” Rufus said. “You’d hit your head. They’re talking about us getting an award.”
The irony.It almost made Zeph smile.
He needed to speak to Alice on her own. He also wanted to speak to his Uncle Martin. It was time to talk.
