Page 61 of Everything That Kills Me
I don’t want to live here anymore. I’ve gone to stay with Uncle Martin and Paulo. I can never be what you want me to be. I don’t want to try. Please leave me alone. Zeph
He left the house key on top of the note.
Zeph breathed a sigh of relief when Paulo had driven away from the house and they were heading for the motorway. He was sitting across the back seat with his legs up.
“What happened?” Martin asked. “Do you still have hospital appointments?”
“I had a pelvic fracture that didn’t require surgery. I’m supposed to rest for six to twelve weeks, not put any weight on it. Broken leg—”
“Your bad leg?” Paulo asked.
“No, the other one. I wrenched my arm too and fractured my skull. I do have follow up appointments but I can do them at another hospital. I asked.”
“What the hell happened?” Martin turned to look at him.
“If I tell you the whole truth, you have to promise to never say anything.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to make us promise when we don’t know how serious it is,” Paulo said.
“I’m guessing someone did this to you.” Martin sighed. “Those boys that were bullying you?”
“They might have been involved. I’m not sure. I was pushed down an embankment onto a train track and lost consciousness, then pulled off the rail before I was killed.”
“You know who pushed you?” Martin asked.
“Yes. I swore I wouldn’t tell.”
“Oh God. Who was it?” Martin turned again to look at him.
“Promise never to tell.”
“Zeph!”
“It was Alice.”
His uncle looked astounded. “Why in God’s name would she do that?”
Zeph knew he’d have to tell them all about Jack, so he did, though not every detail. “He left and he blocked my number. Iwalked home, trying to get my head straight and that was when I was pushed.”
By the time he’d finished, he was crying.
Martin reached back to take hold of his hand. “You deserve better.”
“Jack wouldn’t have had any choice about moving,” Zeph said.
“Probably not, but what’s the harm in keeping in touch,” Martin pointed out.
No harm at all.
Three years later
Seventeen
Zeph came out of the exam on machine learning with José chattering at his side. He’d never known anyone who talked so much. It was a miracle the Venezuelan had kept quiet in the exam.
“Aren’t you fascinated by the applications of kernel methods? I’m just so into it. But I don’t know what to pick for another topic. Convex optimisation, statistical learning theory, transfer learning, meta learning? There’s so much to choose from. What do you think?”
Zeph’s head was too full for anymore today. “I’ve not made my mind up yet.”
