The library

September 15th 2003

The fact that summer had left Sheffield until another rotation around the sun was firmly cemented in everyone's minds now.

I trudged along the pavement out of The Sheffield College with my head hung low. The rain patted softly against the raised hood of my coat and nipped at my dirty trainers in the form of small puddles on the ground. It was another terrible and dreary Monday as I left The college at five o'clock with the sun already beginning to set over a rainy and overcast Sheffield. It was almost like the persistent rain had arrived after...

Me and Alex... it was difficult.

After I had left that one fateful band practice, Alex came clean to me over text message. She was called Johanna Bennet. He confessed everything. How he and Johanna had met at the Boardwalk one day and from there they kept seeing each other. He claims that nothing ever escalated between the two whilst I was gone but I didn't know whether to believe him or not. He blamed it on being lonely but I just labelled it as cowardice.

I sighed to myself as I thought this all through along a dark alleyway on my way to my house. I had found a few sketchy shortcuts that almost halved my commute since starting college but I knew that once it started getting light late and dark early in the winter, these would no longer be safe enough to pass through. High Green was a seedy place at the best of times so I put not going home through dark secluded alleyways high on my list of priorities.

I sighed pleasantly as I stepped through the front door and slipped off my shoes. "I'm home!" I called to no one in particular.

"Welcome back darling!" My aunt called back earning a small smile from me. I shrugged off my coat and hung it up before going upstairs to my room, shutting the door behind me. I set my bag down on the bed and pulled out my pencil case and art portfolio out, continuing work on an A3 self portrait at my desk.

It didn't take long or much for me to start procrastinating. I finished off one of my eyes and sat back with a sigh. I glanced over at my bag on the bed before sighing again and getting up. The bed creaked slightly as I sat down and opened the tatty green bag, pulling out my ripped up and well worn sketchbook. I opened it and found what I was looking for instantly. Flipping to near the end of the book, I glanced over my sketches, doodles and drawings of Alex, smiling slightly as I did so.

Then, a gut feeling. I didn't want to intervene with myself in case what I was doing was the right decision so I just watched from afar as I quickly packed an overnight bag, wrote a note and slipped out of the house without telling my aunt or uncle.

I had to slip out without alerting them because I knew they wouldn't let me. High green in the dark on a cold Monday in September was definitely not a place a seventeen year old girl should be walking around.

I clutched my bag tightly to the point where my knuckles became white. I kept looking around as I walked through the orange streets, lit only by sodium lights. I could've sworn I knew the way to Alex's house off by heart. Everything seemed different and distorted when bathed in the relentless orange lighting.

I reached a crossroads. A choice of three. Carry on straight ahead and eliminate the other two options, branch to the left and eliminate the other two choices and the same with going to the right.

I remember always going to the left to go to Alex's house but this time I came from a different direction because I took that earlier diversion...

I started to panic. For the first time in a long time I had no idea at all of what to do. I looked around at all options again and felt myself start to hyperventilate before tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I glanced to the right. Was it the right? I didn't know what way I came from anymore. I had never been out late in Sheffield ever. Especially not up here. At most I would go down into the city centre but right now I was on the outskirts of High Green and completely lost.

"Hey! Do you need help? You looks lo..." the voice trailed off as I turned to face the source.

Alex was staring straight back at me.