The Race Car that was Tyler Scott

Chapter Four

I'm naturally very sensitive and quiet, an empath. In my first two years of secondary school there was this girl Milly. We were put in a dorm together. She hated the idea as much as I. All I saw was some bitchy, popular girl who knew she was pretty and was prepared to push anyone else down so she could climb higher, I've never judged someone more wrong in my life.
Milly had depth to her. She was kind yet fiercely strong minded. She could be silly but you could easily have a serious conversation with her. And she cared. She'd been through a lot and her experiences had changed her, even though I didn't know her before, I could tell they had.
Milly brought me out of my shell. She was my best friend. Due to her popularity I instantly became popular. I'd never been popular. I was confident and loud. I laughed. She made me laugh. They were the best two years of school I'd had.
Milly died in the spring term. She had a tumour inside her brain.
And back into my shell I went. Everyone in our year was expecting me to step up to where Milly had been, given that I was then the second most popular girl in the year. But I shrank away. I hid in my dorm, because I had no one.
I looked up at Toni. I hadn't told her about Milly. And I hadn't told her about the times I'd tried to end my life. I didn't need her to worry, besides, I was better now. Cured. I was happy -ish and Toni was the one that needed to be worried about.
She'd been taking drugs just now. Where or from whom had she got them from was a mystery. Toni seemed to have a network of people who could supply her all over the country.
I wouldn't label her as a druggie, she took drugs and might be addicted but she didn't match my vision of a druggie. She was just a girl.
Toni grunted, and rolled over to face me. She opened her eyes, "Oh yeah, hey" "Hey", she sat up in the dark, rubbing her eyes and face. "So where'd you go?", I asked a little impatiently, "Lime Street Station", now I actually wanted to know. She'd been to Lime street to do drugs with someone but whilst she was there she'd bought us train tickets for the journey down and had been to collect my bag from the hostel I'd been staying at. "You bought the tickets at the station? You know you can just do that online?", "There's no money on my card, plus you know...I needed a distraction". "How much was my ticket?", "You're not paying me back", she exclaimed - surprised that I'd brought it up.
I was surprised everyone was turning a blind eye to my 24hr visitor, I was sure visiting hours were only a few hours in the morning and a couple at night. How Toni was being allowed to stay overnight in the ward with me was a mystery.

The next morning Trudie came back to check my dressing and change it. She showed it to me, I didn't pass out this time. She explained to me how my attacker would have been distracted by the car and how he would have missed his aim. He had clipped my side. I felt like I'd been hole-punched. The bacteria from the bottle had been cleaned out thoroughly and Tyler's speedy actions had stopped me from losing too much blood. She showed me how to dress the wound myself and when I should take my medication.
Toni had sent for my bag from the hostel already and so I had something to wear other than a backless nighty.
We talked on the train and laughed a lot even though every time I did it felt like my sides were literally splitting. We laughed almost to the point where I felt like wetting myself, I'd missed Toni. And I'd missed finding everything this funny. We watched and judged people on our coach, we made up lifestories for each character on our carriage. It was a direct journey, no changes so some people stayed with us all the way, that way we could judge them for as long as possible. There was a family sitting on the other side a few rows in front of us. They had two kids. A girl with cherry coloured hair and a face full of freckles, she was chubby and had chubby fingers that got in the way as she tried desperately to put a straw into a Caprison. Their son had mousey thinly shaved hair, he was probably twice the age of his sister. Their parents were both old and the mother was overweight, probably the direction in which her daughter was going. Husband and wife wouldn't look at each other, she was playing with her wedding ring on the table, it dropped onto the floor and she didn't seem alarmed by the notion of losing it. They didn't look happy.
We got into Shrewsbury at 14:00 and walked to the cab station. We then drove home. Home to Toni's home.
Toni lived in a sandstone castle. A huge, ancient castle, it was beautiful. The inside was modern. It had been renovated when we were still in prep school, I remember.
We were dropped off at the gates and walked the track, up the hill and through the arch that opened up to a view of the house. I felt like a soldier coming back, wounded from the conflict. We strode through the courtyard and let ourselves in.
Mrs Holt was in the kitchen, humming to herself and cutting leaves off of her window plants. The oven was on and she had flour and a rolling pin on the side next to her. She turned round.
"Amelia, oh goodness - what are you doing here? It is good to see you!", I hadn't noticed that Toni had already gone upstairs and left me to muster up some kind of explanation to her mother. She was clueless as to why I was here, given that she thought Toni was at her sister's house.
"Well, I uh...I just came back with Toni actually, she said I would welcome to stay for a few days.", telling her that actually I'd been invited for the entire Easter and the week of school I was currently skiving would perhaps be a bit much for her to take on. "Well of course honey, you're always welcome with us and we have plenty of space, Bea and Anna are doing an art course and Martha is away at Lacrosse camp".
Toni was the second eldest of four sisters. Anna was the year above us and Beatrice the year below, Martha was only ten.
Toni used to be so close with her sisters Anna in particular, ironic that Anna would be the first one to push Toni away. Bea was exactly the same as Toni: a socialite and a class clown. Bea hadn't really pushed Toni away, a distance had merely been distinguished between the two of them. And Martha lived in her own little world, a little princess, spoiled but absolutely stunning - she was going to be a beauty queen.
Toni's mother and I chatted a little while longer, she asked me about school, and my sailing and how my last exams went. 
I took myself upstairs and found Toni's room at the end of the hallway.
Unlike me, Toni wasn't one for tidiness. As she liked to call it, "decoration", her floor wasn't visible, it was layers deep in clothes and papers and random bits and pieces. Her wall was damp, she had posters and pages from magazines loosely stuck to it. I knew for a fact that she kept her weed underneath the poster of Nevada. Toni's bed was Queen sized and had been fitted into a platform so it was high up. She had found a mattress for me from one of the spare rooms and had dragged it in "Oi oi", she looked at me and broke my gaze, "Oh shit yeah, sorry", I helped her put a base sheet on it and found a duvet to go over it.
The excessive nature of their lifestyle didn't make me jealous because I had been a part of this, I had been accepted into the family like a relative from a young age and so had been able to enjoy their luxury. The fact that they went on extraordinary holidays and that I'd never been, didn't make me jealous either, of course I wanted to travel, but staying in a five star resort for a month would bore me, besides I wanted to do it by myself, I didn't want to feel like charity.
Truth is, I actually had a lot. I had my wardrobe, I loved clothes - more accurately I loved playing around with clothes, cutting them up and making them into something else. I had my room back at St Juniper's, and they gave us food and everything we needed. Being an orphan wasn't awful, in my opinion, and the fact no one wanted to adopt you wasn't awful either. I didn't want a family. I felt like I already had one and I didn't want to be taken away from that. The only bad bit was that one of Them had found a loophole in some law that meant they could send me away, away from everything I loved, my family. The woman had told me it was for my "own good" that I would "thank her" one day. I doubted it. Boarding school wasn't so bad though. In fact I really enjoyed it at the start, just now I felt so lonely without Milly. I had lost faith and hence tried to escape it all, no one was going to know about that. Except this girl in my house thought it would be good for our housemistress to know. One thing led to another and soon I had a counsellor telling me to tell Them. The people at St Juniper's. I thought it was a silly idea. And sure enough it was. I told one of them, they retorted that I was "stupid and ungrateful", what a bizarre thing to say to someone in my position I had thought. After that, I tried again, I tried six more times. Each time not going all the way through with it. I couldn't understand why, until I realised that it was because something inside me still held out hope. So I pulled myself up again, I say that like it was just an easy manoeuvre; it wasn't. It took months. But I was back on my feet. Back to being me.
The people at St Junipers, my 'Care Home', people liked to call it, weren't evil. In fact a lot of them were kind and I enjoyed having them there to talk to, but I never trusted them. I never trusted anyone. One of them had set me up with my own bank account and so I had managed to get a job online. A tutoring job, one of my 'caretakers' was French and had taught me by speaking to me in her language every time I saw her. This way I was forced to pick it up. And so I tutored French. It was an easy way to make money.

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