30 Days

30 Days of Stolen Phones

Dedicated to crgaynor because she is the one that persistently tries to get me to stop procrastinating and update regularly.

C h a p t e r   T h r e e

 I’ve always hated hospitals. Primarily because the smell of sickness mixed with disinfectant always hits you the minute you walk in. I woke up to a white room that was more or less empty apart from a glass of water next to a vase of plastic flowers on my bedside table. I managed to find the energy to pull myself out of the hard bed and shuffled towards the door. I wasn’t really sure what had happened after I blacked out, so as a nurse walked past I started to call her, but was interrupted by Mark running up to me and hugging me tightly. Too tightly. I reckoned that he was probably just relieved as if something more serious had happened, my parents would have kicked him out. Nevertheless when I finally manage to bring my eyes to meet his face I saw that his eyes were red and swollen like he had been crying.

“Lex, I am so glad you are ok.”

I mumbled thanks in an attempt to accept his somewhat sincere greeting, but was finding it hard as I knew that this was still his fault.

“I suppose I ought to tell you what happened.” He paused looking for my confirmation before going on, so I vaguely nodded and waited for him to continue. “Well, as I said before, I have changed so I no longer do things for those sorts of people any more. Although I know now that what I was doing was wrong and hurt a lot of people, the reason they were so persistent was, well-“

He paused again “To put it simply I was good at being bad.”

“Where exactly are you going with this?” I said as I realised this explanation seemed to be veering off subject.

“Hold on I’m getting to the point. I hardly ever got caught and I always got the job done. These airheads seemed to find it hard to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to work for them anymore so that is why they were threatening me outside.”

I looked down as I couldn’t look at his face, his eyes were filled with guilt as well as remorse and his expression was pained. It didn’t take a genius to know that what he was saying was genuine.

“Listen, I messed up, I know. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown the party it was irresponsible, dangerous, reckless-“

“And fun” I added.

“What?”

“What you did was dumb. But it’s not like I’m hurt or anything, and for what it’s worth it was a pretty cool party. Now stop apologising, I’ve forgiven you, now you need to forgive yourself.”

∙∙∙∙∙·▫▫ᵒᴼᵒ▫ₒₒ▫ᵒᴼᵒ▫ₒₒ▫ᵒᴼᵒ☼

I had only been home for ten minutes, yet I had already come up with a list of at least five different ways I was going to kill Raymond. After passing out, from what Mark told me “a tall kid that seemed kind of drunk” had taken my phone from my pocket and ran off. He said he would have chased him but was more concerned about getting me to hospital. I thought I hated him before, but this was just a new level, I mean who sees someone struggling to breathe and slowly slipping out of consciousness and thinks “Might as well take her phone, it’s not like she was going to need it or anything”. If not for having a severe headache and not knowing where he lived, I would have, without hesitation, hunted him down and choked him right there and then – Number three on my list of ways to kill him. Instead I took the somewhat higher road and collapsed on my bed to sleep for a couple more hours.

I woke up to the smell of pancakes and baking wafting around my room and went downstairs to see Mark in the kitchen cooking pancakes. My eyes were drawn to a chocolate cake with “Sorry for almost getting you killed” inscribed on the top.