Crashing Down by Kate McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

Guilty.
    â€˜I finish at one.’
    â€˜I’ll pick you up at two,’ Al says finally.
    At the end of lunchtime, she is confronted by Tasha and Taylor, two of the school skanks.
    â€˜Hey, how do
you
feel?’ Tasha asks, and by the tone of her voice it’s not out of concern.
    â€˜Yeah, not too bad,’ Lucy says, walking on quickly. She’s late for class. Her Chem teacher had kept her behind for a ‘little chat’. That made all her teachers now.
    The verandahs are deserted. Tasha and Taylorhave either been smoking or scoring a few bucks behind the gardener’s shed, Lucy thinks meanly.
    â€˜If it were me, I’d be gutted having put my boyfriend and his best mate in hospital,’ Taylor says snidely, looking at Tasha for support.
    â€˜Yeah, well, if you ever had a boyfriend, hospital would be a good place for him,’ Lucy says angrily. ‘Having CT scans to see if
he
has permanent brain damage.’
    She pushes open the door to the library and sits at one of the computers. They’re just a pair of bitches, she thinks to herself. But they’ve finally voiced what everyone is thinking, but no one will say.
This is your fault, Lucy. Look at what you’ve done.
    Unable to hold her fear in any longer, she leaves school without signing out.
    Lucy searched each room when she arrived home early, but the house is empty.
    She sits on the toilet lid and looks around the bathroom. She has known this room for twelve years. It’s been white, off-white, beige, and is now yellow. The tiles have changed, too, from tiny ugly brown ones to these cream handmade tiles,
imported
from Italy, darling,
her mum says, pretending to be pretentious. It’s been Lucy’s domain for the last five years, since Emma left to move in with Graham; later, after finding Graham in bed with her best friend, Emma had relocated to Europe. These days it’s Lucy’s towels and clothes on the floor. Her own makeup spread across the counter. Her own twenty-minute showers, with no one hammering on the door.
    This is the room she’d spent over an hour in, for that first date with Carl. Changing her eye makeup — too heavy, then not heavy enough. Backcombing her hair — too high and eighties, then too flat. And twisting each way to see if her bum looked big in those jeans she wasn’t sure of, but both Lydia and the saleslady said were flattering and totally hot. This is the toilet she spewed in the first time she’d had too much to drink at a party, only this year. This is the mirror in which she’d watched him watching her, the first time he ever saw her totally naked.
    She shudders and her flesh prickles. She flips the box in her hand. What to do?
This
is a first she had never imagined.
    She opens the box, surprised at her shaking fingers, and scans the instructions. It’sstraightforward. A no-brainer. She pulls out the first foil-clad stick. There are two — she hopes she doesn’t have to use them both. She uncaps the plastic and holds it between her fingers. Lifts up the toilet lid, unzips her jeans, drops her knickers.
    He had told her they would be safe. He knew what he was doing. She shakes her head.
Carl.
Maybe he had got careless. She’d known the first time he’d been unsure of how to put it on. But nothing had gone wrong that time, had it?
    She pees on the stick. Feels the urine warm against her fingers. So gross. She tries to shake it off. After placing the stick on the foil wrapper — she doesn’t want wee on her vanity — she washes her hands.
    That white face in the mirror, wide-eyed — surely it can’t be her.
    â€˜It’ll be okay,’ she tells her reflection. ‘This won’t happen to you. You’ll be alright.’
    She wishes she could blame him, be angry at his selfishness. But she knows that’s not true. She’d been a willing participant. She eyes the stick warily. She can’t see the