Chapter 63
If this were a film, I’d finish my story here, fading out on the battlefield of chaos, with Mum heartbroken, Dad blowing his deal, and Chrissie being dragged off by the police — no, make it the men in white coats. I’d kick open the front doors, and Beth, Stew, Dave, and I would walk off into the sunset.
Trouble is, this is my life, and when you’ve just exposed your twin sister as some psycho loony and framed the staff and a bunch of rich kids as sadistic bullies protecting some stupid Code of Honour, there’s no just walking away.
I might not have been able to rely on Mum and Dad, but I’ve got something better. I’ve got the best friends in the world, and they were all there waiting for me. If it weren’t for Beth showing Social Services what happened to me that night in sickbay, they’d have never let me leave with her parents.
Did I mention Dad got his deal? They signed on the day Chrissie was sent to a clinic for treatment. As for me, I’m back at my old school and got my old friends back, but I’m not the same Rich. Some might say I’m better for it — my acting coach, for one. I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to be terrified, tormented, and betrayed — I’ve lived it… wish I hadn’t.
“I really am sorry, Rich,” Chrissie apologises again. “You do know that, don’t you?”
As I sit with her in the sunny visitors’ room at the hospital, St. Bart’s seems like a lifetime ago. “I know.”
“I only did it so you’d have no choice but to stay with me,” she explains, hugging her knees.
This is why I came to see her: to understand, to forgive, and to move on; this is the only way to stop the nightmares.
“I knew it was wrong, but when they started picking on you and you needed me for the first time ever, I felt so happy…” She stops, as if realising her own logic makes no sense, but she knows I need to hear this. Even though it’s uncomfortable to go there, she continues for me. “I blocked out you getting bullied all the time because I knew us being together was the only way I’d be safe.”
I squirm. I can’t help it. This isn’t easy to hear.
“Lilly, my therapist, helped me figure it out. Bad things happened when you weren’t with me. I kind of got it into my head I wouldn’t be safe unless you were there all the time.”
“What bad things?”
“When you got run over.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was the one who ran into the road to get the ball,” she explains. “If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way, I’d be dead. Then when we got sent to different schools, I got really sick, and…”
I get it, and for the first time since St. Bart’s, it kind of makes sense.
“I’m still not better,” she confesses. “Even though I know I’m not going to die, I still want to be with you all the time. That’s why I wasn’t sure whether I should see you.”
For some reason, this isn’t freaking me out. I guess it’s because she’s being honest with me. Perhaps if she’d told me all this before, none of this would have ever happened.
“You must hate me,” she says, breaking the silence.
“No.”
“Even after everything I did?”
“No,” I tell her, and just to prove it, I give her the wrapped-up disc. “I just want you to get better.”
She’s back to being too skinny again, but she smiles when she tears open the red paper. “What is it?”
I shrug, suddenly embarrassed as she reads the title.
“The Magic Unicorn Part II?”
“The guys and I finished it last week,” I tell her.
“You got a new camera, then?”
I nod. “It’s really good. I made a 3D version too, just to make sure you got better this time.”
She beams up at me; there’s no need for words, not between twins. I think we both know she’ll get better now, and then my story will have a happy ending.
THE END
Thank you for reading School Monitor. If you enjoyed this book, why not join Ella Lewis, assistant to The Demon Magician, as she tries to stop her ex-boyfriend Jonathan become an immortal demon and take the souls of everyone she loves to Hell, or sixteen-year-old Ben Howard, who is trying to find his way back to The Gray World to save the girl he loves in Crazy for Alice.
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Other Books by Alex Dunn
The Demon Magician
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Crazy for Alice
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Waking in a strange ethereal black-and-white world where most people exist as living statues, Ben leaps from New York skyscrapers into African jungles without fear of injury, severed from his emotions, until he meets and falls in love with Alice. But, no sooner does he settle into this strange, new existence than he’s traumatically catapulted back to the brutal reality he left behind.
Nobody believes he’s spent the last six months in a Gray World. Not his neurotic mother, his policeman brother Gavin, or his friends Mitch and Wendy, and certainly not Dr McKenzie, who’s threatening to give him even more pills. They all think he’s crazy, and why wouldn’t they when he’s been in some strange coma while locked up in a mental asylum?
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