On the edge

Chapter 7: The invisible boy

The following day, James picked Sue up at exactly eleven o'clock. Not a minute early, and neither one too late.
"Hell, you're precise," the red-haired remarked after a look at the screen of her phone.
Like most people these days, she relied more on technology than an actual watch, a diary, or anything probably as old as the antiquities she sold.
"Just lucky," James replied.
"I'm usually late..." he then admitted.
Sue laughed a little and pulled a strand of hair behind her left ear, sighing a little breath of relieve.
"So am I," she confessed, "Apparently we're both lucky today."
The two youths jumped into James' old van, and he hastily stowed away a packet of cigarettes; hopefully Sue hadn't seen it. From the way she looked at him, however, he could tell that she had.
"Do I need to ask?" she queried with a sharp voice, correctly assuming that her facial expression alone said pretty much everything; mutely asking all the necessary questions.
"They're not mine," James defended himself.

"I drove my father to Dungeness on Friday night, and he left his cigarettes in the car," he explained the situation, as they drove out of St. Margaret's Bay.
Dover was, but a ten-minute drive away and Sue remembered going there quite often with Joanna when they were teenagers.
"You've got an explanation for everything, don't you?" she teased James, "You're without fault, aren't you?"
The blond kept quiet for a while, pretending to concentrate on the road.
"Unfortunately not," he then said and added with a little sigh, "I've done stupid things; you and everybody else just never cared to look close enough."
His answer admittedly took Sue by surprise; she hadn't expected him to be so blunt. But she liked the fact that James slowly thawed; his posture was less stiff, and he let go of the unnecessary courtesy.
"Sorry," Sue said, once she had found her tongue.

This time, it was James who looked a bit caught off-guard.
"Sorry for what?" he wanted to know.

"You didn't care about me, that's pretty much the nicest treatment I got in school."
He turned to his left and looked at Sue for a much longer moment than someone who drove a car should, and smiled at her warmly.
"I probably should have helped you," the red-haired said quietly, "We all should have."
She paused for a short moment before continuing:
"You were on your own all those years; someone should have stood up to those bullies... We all looked away; thought that it was none of our concern. Stupid things children think..."
"You helped me up once; told me to get back on my feet," James noted.
"No, you ordered me to get up," he corrected himself with a cheerful laughter.

"You still remember that?" Sue asked, a bit surprised, but so did she.
James nodded as he said, "Yes, I always will. You told me not to let them see me cry. That was probably the wisest advice anyone has given me during all those years in regards to the bullying."
"Well, did you?" the young woman to his left wondered, "Cry, I mean."
"Like a baby," James confessed, "More than once, quite often actually."
And with each word he said, Sue felt worse for never having cared about what several other children had done to James over all those years. Almost every single day of their long school years they had found a way to annoy or hurt him; they had beaten him up and stolen his pocket money; broken his glasses, and thrown his books into the mud on the street. And never had he said a word or raised a hand. Even when they were all older, and James had become well stronger than his bullies, he had never sought vengeance for all the torture. He had quietly endured it, day after day. Sue didn't know what she could possibly have said to express but a fraction of how sorry she was and felt at that moment; and so the two just sat in James' car, as he drove past a huge blue sign that announced Dover, in awkward silence.
"So," the red-haired eventually broke it, "Have you ever smoke a cigarette?"
"Once..." the blond admitted, "I hated it. The taste, the smell; it's awful."
He wrinkled his nose slightly to express disgust.
"Even worse than when I have to bear my father smoking next to me..." he added.
"Oh wow!" was all Sue could answer.
"You've indeed been quite a naughty boy, haven't you?" she remarked a bit sarcastically.
"I've never thought you would... Yeah well, how could I know..."
Remembering his words from a few minutes ago, Sue chose to not finish her sentence and asked yet another question. She felt as if she had only scratched the surface, and the deeper she dug, the more she discovered the actual person hidden underneath, and he seemed truly an intriguing one.