Evil, Unintended

Chapter 14

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all to short a date:"

To His Love by William Shakespeare

I could imagine her guilt, but I didn't care. I could imagine her sadness, but I didn't care. I knew that she couldn't control her transformation, but I just didn't care.

I just walked.

I'd grabbed a hoodie from just inside the door, not bothering with boots. My feet hit the road with heavy steps.

I turned right out of our drive, heading the opposite way to the school, destination undecided.

I walked along the road in the same converse I had been wearing forever, white in the past but stained by London streets. A small fragment of a leaf flapped from one of the shoelace holes.

The wind bit at my chin forcing me to tuck it into the top of the jumper. My ears ached and my nose stung in the constant battle against the chilled air that had now picked up speed and whipped my hair around the frame of my face at my cheeks until they felt red. I stuck my fingers in my pockets, trying to avoid the sweet wrappers that always seem to be present in coats of any description. I kept walking.

Had it been building up to this for a long time?

There was a low rumbling from behind me a long way off. It sounded like a car.

There was no point in risking it. It could be Fran ready to pick me up and apologise to me like a scolded child, explaining who Claire was to her really.

I had no idea what it could be, none of it made sense whatsoever because every alley was a dead end. God forbid Claire was her girlfriend or someone she'd like to be her girlfriend, not because I'd be against it, but because they obviously hadn't seen each other since I had arrived which would make me the problem once again.

As if I clearly wasn't the problem already.

I swerved off the road to the right and sat behind a clump of mounds of grassy dirt, cold and wet seeping through my jeans, freezing my bum. Fran's car drove past slowly.

I wouldn't've been surprised at my intrusion, but upset with myself nevertheless.

Of course they could actually be just friends in which case it was my fault anyway for boring Fran to the extent of her longing for some good company in the form of a chubby makeup mannequin who'd recently robbed an Oxfam and had her roots badly retouched.

It didn't matter. Well, really it did but it was making my head hurt and my joints were stiff and the cold was cold. I could've either gone back to her and admitted a weak defeat or waited it out to prove a point.

The sky was already darkening, the woods to my right dipping into blackness along with the sun and casting shadows over the moss and grass underfoot, stretching over the expanses of open green to my left. The road would soon be swallowed by the night and with it would go my thoughts of Fran. Tonight would be a night in the wilderness.