Shadows Die

The World's A Gun (Kyla's POV)

“Did I miss anything exciting?” I asked smiling, and walked over to sit next to Jinxx.

“Oh just that Ashley thinks you have a hot body.” CC claimed with a shit eating grin plastered on his face, this only served to earn a smack to the back of his head.

Wait what!?

I felt my face turn red as I glanced at Ashley and then looked at the floor. I brought my knees up to my chest, pulled my sleeves over my hands and hid my face in my knees, to avoid looking at anyone.

After a couple of hours they had me laughing and joking around with them, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Once or twice I caught Jake watching me with a slight look of worry on his face. Gradually everyone drifted off to do their own thing, leaving me and Jake alone. We sat there in silence for about 10 minutes, neither of us knowing what to say. Eventually I had had enough of the awkwardness in the room and went to my bunk to get my art pad and pencils.

“Kyla…” Jake started.

“What?” I said walking back with my art stuff.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong” I replied a little too fast to be convincing. I couldn’t tell him about my past. Could I? No I couldn’t, no one was allowed to find out that…

“Kyla, I just want to apologize for not being around when you were growing up. Please forgive me.” Jake’s pleading voice brought me back to reality.

“I forgave you ages ago, you just weren’t around to tell.” I smiled, thankful that he has changed the subject. He finally got up and left saying something about calling his girlfriend. When he had gone I opened my sketch pad to my drawing of Ashley and continued to fill his arms with tattoos. I had almost finished when I heard a voice say

“Shit that’s good.”

Turning around I saw CC stood staring at my drawing.

“Thanks. It’s taken me a week to get this far and I’m almost finished.”

“Cool. I was gonna see what I could find for dinner, you hungry?”

“No thanks, you guys go ahead and eat, I’ll probably eat later.” Yet another secret to keep. After the guys had eaten and cleared up the dished, we put on a movie. Andy had requested Batman and as none of us had any objections, Batman it was. My phone rang about halfway through; I apologized, told them to keep the movie running and went into the bunk area to answer it.

“Hello.”

”Hi Kyla, its Pheonix.”

“Oh, hey Pheonix. What’s up?”

“Ermm. I’m not really sure how to tell you this.” Pheonix started uncertainty.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“Ermm…well…he put Raven in hospital.” I felt tears fill my eyes. Raven was one of my best friends, along with Pheonix they were my only friends. I thought he was different from the other jocks, Keiran. But he wasn’t. He was exactly the same.

“What… Will she be okay?” my voice broke on the last word. Tears began to roll down my cheeks.

“They don’t know yet and as I’m not family they won’t tell me anything. I wish you were here right now. I can’t really talk to her at the moment; they have her in a medical induced coma.”

“Can you tell her that I hope she gets better soon and that I really regret not being there to help her, please?”

“I will don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll forgive you, as you have just been reunited with your brother.”

“Still, that’s no excuse…I still should have been there… I should have stopped him.”

“There’s no use beating yourself up about it, he would only have hurt you as well, more than he had already. I’m going to go now her parents are leaving and I promised them that I would stay with her when they weren’t there.”

“Ermm… okay, I’ll talk to you later, bye.”

“Try and stay happy, bye.”

With that he rang off and I broke down in tears. How could he!? How could anyone do that to Raven, there was no one more kind hearted and good intentioned as her. After a few minutes headed back to the front of the bus. Jinxx looked up as I entered the room.

“Are you ok?” he asked, his voice laced with a note of worry. I shook my head in reply, as he made his way towards me. Everyone’s eyes were on me now. I stiffened as Jinxx wrapped his arms around me, but soon burst into tears. Silently I cursed, why couldn’t I keep my composure for more than three minutes. We stayed like that for a long time, until I had calmed down enough to explain that Raven had been hospitalized following a violent attack. I left out the fact that I know who did it, didn’t even mention his name.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“She won’t be though!” I exclaimed “He won’t leave her alone ever!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do! I know exactly what he’s like!” I ran to my bunk, throwing myself onto it and shutting the curtains before anyone objected. Or anyone could get me to explain what I meant.