These Days

ii

AARON CHARTER: WHO ARE YOU?

Hope Waterman: if you want to know, you'll be there on Saturday. 1pm.

Aaron stares confusedly at his laptop screen. The conversation happened three whole days ago - exactly two weeks after his whirlwind with Hope. Even now, with just one hour to go until his apparent meeting with the hijacker behind the screen he isn't sure whether he should go or not.

What if this is all just a trap? What if it's just some sick ruse? What if someone thought that it would be funny to hack into a dead girl's account and fool her friends into meeting up with them?

Aaron sighs, weighing up the chances of it actually being some creepy 50 year old man out on the prowl.

He returns to his laptop, clicking through the pictures of Hope that he can find. Like he has done a million times in the past two weeks, Aaron wishes that he had had the chance to meet her, that he had connected with her on omegle just a single week earlier so that they could have gone to Ben and Jerry's and he could have seen her laughing in real life. The pictures barely capture her crinkled nose and lit up eyes.

He clicks back cross to her information section as though something might have changed in the past five minutes. He's wrong. It's still the same as it always was.

Education: Hawker's Grammar School (started 2009)

Date of Birth: 7th June 1998

Gender: Female

Interested in: Men and Women

Relationship Status: Single

Of course, there are also her vast amounts of music interests listed alongside her favourite films and sarcastic quotes that she probably hasn't even thought about since she was thirteen years old, but Aaron has flicked through those enough times to know that she adores bands that he has never even heard of and her general film taste involves lots of action and lots of death. He can tell you that her favourite fictional character is from Harry Potter and that two years ago, she was obsessed with some book called Solitaire by some author called Alice Oseman. He can tell you that when she was fourteen, Hope Waterman went through her inevitable emo phase (he winces at the phrase, realising that he is in fact quoting a comment from her sister which occurred a year later) where she died her hair black and blue and combed her straightened fringe over her eyes, and that when she was fifteen, she had train track braces for six months. He can tell you that at sixteen, she briefly dated a guy with blue, ocean eyes and that her best friend was a girl with chocolate skin and cornrow hair.

And he can tell you that at seventeen, Hope Waterman killed herself.

Aaron exhales hard, clenching his left fist. He wonders again if it was on purpose - if after everything that happened that night, Hope Waterman decided that she was fed up, that she was completely and utterly done and completely and utterly ready to leave everybody behind. Sometimes, he is convinced that that is the only logical explanation - that Hope never intended to be saved at all. But at other times, he thinks that if she could go back and do it again, she would still be here. After all, he thinks, a lot of painkillers must be needed to numb a ruptured esophagus.

Aaron realises that what he is craving is answers. He could virtually stalk Hope Waterman for as long as he wants to but he will never be able to know - to really, truly know - what happened.

But this mysterious person on her account might have some of those answers. There is a chance that they will be some kind of murderous stalker, but there is also a chance that they will not, that they might have the missing chapters of Hope's life that Aaron is searching for.

Aaron blinks really hard. It's a half hour train ride to Cheltenham, he figures. He has forty five minutes.

He frowns, staring back at Hope's profile. She's worth it, he decides. She is worth the risk.

He's not so confident thirty five minutes later when he's huddled up on the cold seat, nearing his stop. The train is fairly empty - Aaron can still hear the two Essex girls at the other end of his carriage loudly discussing the party they are on their way to and the man two seats in front of him hasn't stopped snoring for the past fifteen minutes, but aside from them, there haven't really been any disturbances. That's probably why they didn't bother to spout out any hot air - crappy service for a crappy county.

The voiceover announces the stop and Aaron stands, easing himself out of the two seater and wandering down the moving aisle. He doesn't have any luggage - just his phone and his wallet, both stowed away carefully in the pocket of his jeans. He leans against the carriage partitioner, thinking hard about what he is about to do. It's stupid, he realises a little too late. He's going to a coffee shop that he doesn't even know exists to meet someone - and it could be anyone, anyone with skills enough to have access to Hope Waterman's Facebook account - who he doesn't even know exists all because of a dead girl who he's never actually met.

He's glad that his parents are both out today - if either of them had caught wind of this, Aaron would have been immediately reprimanded for his idiocy.

The train pulls to a stop and Aaron hops out, stepping carefully over the yellow line. The platform is as cold and empty as the train. He hurries down it, eyes darting everywhere. It's been a while since he's caught the train to Chelt. He can barely remember where the exit is.

It takes him another ten minutes to actually find Mead Street all, and by the time that he finds his feet standing at the end of the road, it is 1:04pm. He hopes very much that Hope's hacker has a little patience.

The coffee shop is self explanatory - it's the only thing of vague colour in sight. The sign above the door is so scuffed that Aaron can't even make out its name. He shrugs, inhaling shakily and pushing open the door.

He has absolutely no idea who he's looking for. Could it be the lady sat with her pot of tea? How about the man reading the daily paper? Or the waitress, with her pencil and notebook in hand?

Aaron recognises none of them.

He runs around, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He's failed. Whoever it is, they aren't here. They don't have any answers for him.

"Sir, may I help you?"

Aaron shakes his head. "Sorry. I was supposed to be meeting someone here but it looks like they haven't shown up."

"Would you like me to leave a message for them if they do turn up?"

Aaron chuckles. "Umm, no. That won't be necessary. Thanks though."

And then he leaves, completely oblivious to the woman pouring a fresh cup of tea into her mug or the man turning the page of his newspaper or the waitress turning on her heel to sit back behind the counter again or the girl with chocolate skin and long, black dreadlocks that he walks smack bang into.