Liarholic, стр. 31

‘You don’t know a single real thing about me.’

Amy is not gonna make me feel anything. She’s not gonna get to me.

Nobody’s gonna trick me into feeling Christlike.

‘Is . . . is that why you vanished out of thin air?’

I look down at my steel-capped boots, grind a stone into the dirt. ‘Yeah.’

I can see Amy’s mind ticking away, processing what she’s just learnt. Then she says, ‘All this time I thought you didn’t care.’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

Her shoulders dip down. ‘All this hate . . . you don’t need to be the angry man.’

This girl really is fucking clueless.

As I got older, I started to understand how my life was different from that of my mates. I was finding it harder and harder to control my temper at school. The tiniest thing set me off.

Boys at school called me Shepherd Loser instead of Lawson. It was a little thing. But it got me every time. It wasn’t just a pun. The fact was, I was a loser. The children’s home never threw a single penny my way. I wore second-hand clothes, and my trainers were always falling apart.

The first year of high school was hell. I was a scrawny, inadequate kid. Every journey to school was like running through the middle of a battlefield. I was jeered at, spat at, and tripped up by the other children.

I worked hard and did my best to keep my head down, but that didn’t help me with the cool kids. They were provoked by what they saw as my swottiness. And also by the fact that I was starting to get attention from some of the girls. I didn’t court it. It just happened. I was too shy to know how to respond. They thought I looked cute. That did me no favours with the boys who were interested in girls, but couldn’t get a look-in.

They started calling me ‘pretty boy’ and took to beating me up. I felt paralysed. Ashamed. I was so weak I couldn’t stand up to them.

Until Jake and his gang saved me.

Jake was fifteen and I was twelve, a huge gulf at that age. The cool kids didn’t dare come near me again, now that I was one of Jake’s boys. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I belonged. It was a saving grace at the time.

At twelve, I was drinking and taking drugs. I loved the feeling of getting out of my head, of floating above the shitty world I lived in. I wanted that feeling to stay with me for the rest of my life. I was so high, I never saw the crash coming.

It dragged me to Hell.

‘Let’s not pretend, Amy. I’m not Christlike and I don’t have a fuck for a heart. You got me wrong. You don’t have a fucking clue about me. I don’t need or want your goddamn help. Ever. Got that?’

Amy is visibly shaking. ‘You're right. I just wanted to help you.’

She points at a dying weed in the ground below. ‘I think that when a beautiful flower is left in the darkness for too long, it turns into an ugly weed. That all it needs is a little sunshine to make it grow into a pretty flower again.’

Flowers bloom and die, Amy.

‘You need to quit with the therapy, Amy. You’re the one who needs help — don’t ever forget that.’

‘Can you not stand knowing someone cares about you, even a little?’

‘I couldn’t give two shits what anyone thinks of me, Amy. Your opinion means nothing to me. Never has.’

I get ugly with Amy, but when it’s over, I get my soul back. She is a whimpering, wounded animal in my grasp, a cruelty that seems high on the list of my favourites.

I look deep into her shiny wet eyes.

I murdered the real. Buried it dead.

OTOT do?

‘I’m so sorry for shoving my nose where it doesn’t belong. I promise, Shepherd, I won’t tell a soul. And if I do let somebody help me — it won’t be you I come to.’

I feel my heart ache, but I’ve forgotten what that feeling means.

She runs back inside Swan Lake, and the darkness closes in. Just like a hurricane, the fury is gone and in its place, there’s bright fire.

I should walk away, move out, and never come back. But for some fucked-up reason, I can’t let Amy vanish from life. Not yet.

I’m a heartless, nasty, ex-criminal, scheming, deceitful bastard.

When I was fourteen, the old sweet Shepherd was gone and the new Shepherd’s motto was ‘fuck the world’.

I don’t look back. There’s nothing good there. Just guilt. Shame. This day, in front of me, that’s about all I can deal with. But even then, there’s always something to wreck.

Once a weed, always a weed.

Sunshine ain’t gonna change that.