Going Your Own Way, but with Magic

Chapter 2

Walking takes more effort than it should. It's like I have to teach myself how. I pass a small field (possibly a park if you're being generous), and another equally depressing café. For one surreal moment I manage to convince myself that I've walked in a circle. I genuinely expect to watch myself walk right back into the library. Even when I know I'm miles away it still seems to lurk around every corner.

I notice abstractly, with a kind of 'huh', that I'm so tired I am on the verge of collapsing. I keep walking for a few moments after that on sheer momentum. I turn around and walk/crawl back to the park. There is, thank god, a bench free, and I nearly fall onto it. My vision blurs for a second and when I can think straight again I am lying down.

That would be an embarrassing way for this all to end, wouldn't it? Passing out, getting carried to hospital, blurting out my name while high on painkillers and then being dragged home to face the consequences. That's the first thought. And the best case scenario. Because another, darker future becomes clear to me now and I shiver. It isn't cold.

Passing out and never waking up. A terrible shock for some jogger. A bit of a stir in the town, possibly in surrounding areas if it's a slow news day. Unidentified girl, no one has come forward, died of natural causes. Terrible tragedy. Then everyone will get on with their lives, and the only hint that Max Grafton ever existed will be schoolkids daring each other to sit on the bench where that girl died. I stand up. When it starts to rain, I welcome it. I'll regret it later, but right now it makes me feel like a person and not a corpse.

The town-village-suburb has a hostel, and I am eternally grateful. It's a dump, but that makes it cheap and nearly empty. I have my doubts about god, but I swear there's a little bit of benevolence radiating from the peeling wallpaper. The woman working the front desk gives me a pitying look that puts my teeth on edge. Teenage runaway, the classic. She probably sees a lot of them, and fixes every one of them with the whole eyes lowered faint grimace. I hate her, which is stupid for many reasons. Not least because she's absolutely right. I am a teenager, I am running away.

I'm staying in one of the rooms with six bunk beds, but right now I am alone. I don't think this place is a major tourist destination. The bed, at least, is clean. I sit down, my backpack still on. This is the time I should start crying or screaming. I want to scream. But my eyes remain stubbornly dry and if I screamed I think my chest would fall apart. I am too tired for emotion, almost too tired even for thought. I hide my money, lock my bag in the locker even though there's nothing in worth stealing, and fall asleep fully clothed.

I have a rare nightmare. Stalking through woods, squiggles in blood, lots of screaming. I try to dissect it, with increasing desperation. I sit with my knees pulled to chest and wrack my brains. There has to be a clue. There has to be. Either through weird mystical shit or dreams being your subconscious. There is nothing. It's not the same nightmare I've had ever since The Night. No one whispers to me in an ancient language that I inexplicably understand, or passes me a coded message about mirrors and ravens. Nothing. A cold sweat and a lingering fear. On the plus side, I'm not about to pass out from exhaustion anymore.

I leave. The same woman gives me the same pitying look. I buy some basic food at the corner shop and I try to ignore how fast my money is going to dwindle. I wander around, walking purposefully with no destination. I am going through the motions. Not of normal life, but at least of life. Of survival. Try as I might, I can't avoid thinking forever. And when you have nowhere to go and thoughts you can't run from anymore, a library is the perfect place. No comments on the irony of that, please.

Proportionate to the size of the town, the library is surprisingly big and well-maintained. It's clean and warm and the walls are painted bright blue. There's a children's section with big blobs of colour on the wall and a poster with lots of handprints. It's all very new, but not artificial new. It's the kind of new where you can still tell a place has been loved. I'll spare you the rest of the spiritual psychobabble. It's a nice library. Being in it feels wrong.