Trust Me

Cross My Heart

Jake was sitting on the ground, crying. His eyes were filled with tears and they were pouring down his face like a waterfall gushing with rainwater.

Clutched in his hand was his phone, he was holding onto it so firmly that I thought it might break. His nails were planted into the phone screen and his knuckles were going red.

His tears just kept on pouring out. It was a monsoon of tears. It looked like his heart was breaking.

I knew that he heard me when I opened the door. He wiped his eyes and let go of his phone.

“Juliette, leave me alone,” he demanded. I scuttled out of his path, straightaway.

Too many times had I been spoken to in that tone. It was a dangerous tone, full of unsaid anger and malice. I had learnt from the past to avoid anyone who was talking to me like that. Especially not to answer back, I had been given many scars that way.

But Jake was different. In a way, he was my friend, my only true friend. Many friends had come and gone, most of the time it was my fault. It had been a tough path, living a life like that. No one really knew what it’s like. No one wanted to tell them.

Jake needed a friend and I was going to be his, whether he liked it or not. I marched over to Jake who still had tears leaking out of his eyes like a dripping tap.

“Jake, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked him firmly. I handed him a tissue for his leaky eyes.

“I can’t,” Jake said quietly. “It’s too hard,” I looked at his eyes, a flash of vulnerability showed, he was usually so brave. What could it possibly be?

“You can do it, Jake. I know you can,” I told him.

“Whenever I think about it, it hurts in here,” Jake said as he pointed to his heart.

“Pretend you’re telling a story, pretend it doesn’t involve you in it,” I advised him.

“Okay,” he said with a deep breath.

“Once there was a little girl, she was born to a happy family. Her brother loved her very much. She had beautiful curly blonde hair and the most dazzling smile. When she got older, she always had that big smile on her face and followed her big brother around. “He started off.

I listened curiously to the story. I knew so little about Jake; any piece of information was interesting.

“But after a while, the little girl started having terrible nosebleeds and she became very pale. Her brother used to call her, ‘his little vampire’. But she was so tired that she could barely smile at that. When she got home from school she would just fall asleep in her brother’s arms.” He paused as he stopped for breath.

“One terrible day, the little girl nicked her finger while she was cutting up fruit. It wouldn’t stop bleeding so the girl’s family had to take her to the hospital. Her brother was so worried about his little sister. The doctor did some tests on the little girl and she had to stay in the hospital.”

Jake was trying really hard not to cry. I could see his watery eyes and blotchy nose. I was almost feeling like crying too.

“The doctor said that the little girl had a dangerous kind of leukaemia. He also told them that her chances of living would be very slim. The little girl was on all sorts of medication and one made her mane of hair, fall out. Her brother was so scared for his little sister that he insisted that he would sleep next to her in the hospital.”

Tears were starting to leak down my face. I was breathing deeply, trying not to sob.

“Her brother wished for her leukaemia to go away. He wanted his healthy sister back. However, something wasn’t right with the little girl; the doctors had discovered that the cancer had spread to her nervous system. But they thought she was going to make it.”

I held his hand while he finished his last part of the story and I tried not to cry.

“It was her brother’s soccer grand finale. While he was there, he received a phone call from his parents who were at the hospital. The little girl had died from the cancer while he was at the game and her brother never got to say goodbye,”

As he finished his story, I started to sob. He pulled out his phone and showed me the picture that I had seen the night that I stole his phone. The happy, smiley little girl, Jake’s little sister.

We held hands as we cried together. I had never done this with a stranger or a friend.

As soon as Jake got his breath back, he started to talk again.

“My little sister’s name was Paige. She looked so much like that girl that we rescued today.” He explained.

That night, we talked about Paige. We didn’t talk about anything else. It was all about her and by the end of it, I felt like I knew her.

Jake and I were so tired that we slept till midday. To an outsider, we would have looked like sleeping children, lying side by side. No one would really know what sorts of dangerous secrets we both had.

Jake was still asleep when I woke up. His face was crusty with dried tears. I decided to go for a walk outside. I knew it was risky but I needed to clear my mind.

It was a very hot day; the sun was gleaming brightly. Anyone without sunscreen would have certainly got terrible sunburn.

A sleeping woman lay on a brightly coloured beach towel, with her hair falling over her face like a mermaid dancing in the ocean. Next to her was a trashy gossip magazine.

As I bent down to look at the cover, I realised who it was. My heart almost stopped, my hands began to shake. So many questions raced through my mind. Most of them were concerned for my safety.

The model on the front cover was Estelle Winters, the famous actress. But I knew her better as Mum.