A Porcelain Lullaby [Chapter Four]

Four

Adam woke up. He lay in bed for a moment or two, feeling as though something was not quite right. He looked around his room, it was a mess, but nothing seemed out of place. Then it came to Adam like water breaking through a dam. It was Saturday, he had work, and he had not been woken by his alarm. He turned to his bedside table upon which several clock parts lay gathered together. He quickly got up and ran through to the bathroom where he checked the wall clock. It was eight-thirty; Adam was supposed to be at the pier two-and-a-half hours ago. He got dressed into the clothes he’d worn yesterday as quick as he could. He nearly jumped down the stairwell, and after checking the fruit bowl in the kitchen for his usual early morning apple, and to his surprise finding it empty, he left running for the pier without locking the door.

When he arrived, none of the boats were docked. He came to a halt before getting any closer to Morris’ wooden hut, so as to catch his breath. The weather was awful, the skies were dark grey and it was raining lightly. The ground was soggy; Adam‘s boots and lower trousers were coated in mud because he’d ran over the fields rather than through the village on the path. When he was once again able to breathe normally, he progressed on, going up to the cabin and walking through the empty doorframe.
“Morris?” he called out, once inside. He’d entered into a small corridor with two doors in front of him. After a few seconds, the handle of the door on the right turned, and out stepped the tall and rough looking Morris.
“Lad, where were you?” Morris asked. He didn’t s sound angry at all, which perhaps shouldn’t have surprised Adam.
“I... overslept,” Adam explained, “I’m really sorry.”
“Well - It can’t be helped now.” Morris shrugged; it was obvious that he was disappointed.
“Is there anything I can do?” Adam wanted to make himself useful somehow.
“What? Around here?” Morris chuckled, “not unless you want to watch me snooze.”Adam stayed quiet.
“Get yourself out of here lad; I’ll not pay you for today and I’ll take thirty from your wages tomorrow. Fair?”
Adam nodded. Morris turned and went back into the room he’d come from. Before the door closed, Adam saw a bunk bed and a chest of drawers. Adam hadn’t realised Morris actually lived in the cabin; he’d thought it was only for storage, but that was what the other room must have been for.
Adam left the cabin and turned back, heading for home. He decided to walk back through the village since it was so wet that walking around the thick grass around the village a second time would not be a good idea considering Adam’s already itchy and irritated calves and feet. The path that ran from the pier to the village turned from rough gravel to smoother stones as Adam got closer. When he arrived in the village, he passed straight through the village centre. The grey and brown houses were made to look even duller in the dismal weather. Adam passed by Mrs. Grenson’s bungalow. Outside she had several pots, each holding flowers of various colours and sizes. Some of their petals were dying, and their heads were bowed. Mrs. Grenson appeared as a dark silhouette at the window and Adam put up his hood so that she wouldn’t recognise him: He didn’t want her get the idea that he’d lied about having a job yesterday just because he couldn’t be bothered to help her mow her back garden lawn. Adam turned to see if she was still there; she wasn’t. Adam upped his pace anyway, in case she came calling after him. As Adam came to the edge of the village, he could now see the large horse-chestnut tree that lay close to his house. As he got closer, he thought about how the leaf had waved to him yesterday. In a moment of strange sympathy for the tree, who had no choice but to stand tall and alone against the elements, Adam waved back.

After scolding himself for being ridiculous, he looked down at his feet, protecting his eyes from the strengthening rain, and he started to ascend the slight incline that the rest of the path took towards his house. He didn’t notice the girl stood next to the tree, who after mistaking Adam’s wave to the tree as a wave to her, was now watching Adam walk up the path and towards her.
“Hi.” she said, causing Adam to jump. For a split-second he had thought May was speaking to him, but the girl had a different accent, she sounded as though she was from across the sea.
Adam stopped and looked at her, unsure of what to say.
“Hi,” he at last delivered.
“Hey - you’re... you’re the kid who ran up to us last night,” she said, “you know, in the truck.”Adam could tell that she’d found the whole thing amusing.
Adam decided against explaining that in actual fact he wasn’t waving to her, he was waving at the tree, “Oh... you were in the truck,” he said.
“Yeah,”
Adam slowly started on his way again; he hadn’t wanted to be reminded of last night.
“Hey, wait!”
Adam stopped and turned “look, I just thought you were someone else. It was really dark,” he tried to explain.
“Okay,” the girl said, and then “I’m Amanda.”
Amanda was quite short and quite pretty. She had dull green eyes and nice lips. Adam couldn’t see her hair because she was wearing a woollen hat, but strands of it hung over her face and it looked a maroon colour. She was also wearing a thick dull yellow coat and jeans. Her legs looked too skinny, but her cheeks were full and healthy-looking. In her hand she held a large horse-chestnut leaf.
“What’s that?” Adam asked, pointing at the leaf.
“Uh...it’s a leaf – from the tree,” Amanda looked at Adam a little funny and he laughed nervously.
“No – no, I mean why are you holding it?” Adam clarified.
“Oh, right - I collect them.”
“You collect leaves?” Adam was surprised, he’d not heard of that before.
“Horse-chestnut leaves, yeah.”
“Don’t they go brown?”
“Well y-”
A muffled voice came from over near the houses, Adam and Amanda turned to look. There was a man walking towards them, and this time his voice carried louder: “Mandy! Come ‘ere!” he shouted.
“Uh, I have to go,” Amanda declared before hurrying off to meet the man.
Adam watched as Amanda seemed to persuade the man to go back to the house rather than continue walking towards Adam. She followed him inside.
Adam was left standing alone in the drizzling rain, wondering what all that was about. Adam thought about Amanda as he set off on the final small stretch of his journey. He mused that he could actually make a real friend, but he wasn’t so sure. Amanda looked a bit older than him; she could be in her early twenties. She seemed a bit younger in personality though, so maybe it was possible. More than anything, Adam thought about how lovely she was. He’d thought she was pretty as soon as he’d seen her, but it was only when she’d left that him standing on his own that it had dawned on him that he found her attractive.
When he arrived home, he undressed from his muddied boots and trousers and changed into some jogging bottoms. It was still early, only nine o’clock, since Adam had nothing better to do, he decided to go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
He awoke to the sound of rain hammering on the roof; he lay still for a while, allowing the sound to relax his mind. He fell into deep thought for a few minutes before May emerged sat cross-legged on the bottom of his bed.
“Hey,” she said, she looked like May again, happier. She was once again smiling; no longer the dismal apparition that had appeared earlier.
“May,” Adam spoke and stared at her. He noticed her smile seem to flicker for an instant.
May didn’t reply, only returning his gaze, waiting for him to finish. Adam could tell she knew roughly what he was going to say.
“What was that about?” Adam asked.
“What?” she replied quickly, obviously feigning ignorance.
“You know what,” Adam was stern. He sat up, still under his sheets.
“Oh – that. That was just a joke,” May said as convincingly as she could.
“A joke?” Adam spoke almost in disbelief, “you think making me think I’m some kind of psychopath is a joke?”
“No, Adam,” May replied, as she lost her cheery facade, “I don’t think it’s a joke.”
“Then why, why - did you say that stuff?” Adam demanded.
“Can we just – can we just not talk about it?”
Adam stared her in the eye until she was forced to look away.
“May, are there more?”
“More?”
“More of whatever you are – imaginings?” Adam asked and then he explained: “You said earlier - you said there was one before you.”
May had lost her cheer before, but now she had become gloomy.
“Adam, I do-”
“I deserve to know,” he interrupted her before she could avoid the question.
“Yes,” she answered without further hesitation, much to Adam’s surprise.
“Yes...” Adam repeated, “how - how many?” he wanted to know.
“Two.”
Adam stopped and waited for a minute, wavering. He shut his eyes as a feeling of intense worry rose inside him.
“What’s wrong with me?” he at last uttered.
May didn’t reply, and Adam opened his eyes to find she had gone.

Adam got out of bed and headed into the bathroom, where he washed his face. Then, he went downstairs and turned on the television. There wasn’t much on, a few cartoons, the news, and a black-and-white movie. Adam switched it off again. He’d never been one to particularly enjoy television, he felt it was often dull and, mostly, a waste of time. There was one cartoon he liked, but it was hardly ever on. It wasn’t funny; it had more of a story. It was called The Bad Knight of the West and it was about a man who travelled around and slayed dragons and rescued people, he barely spoke and so never asked for nor accepted anything in return other than the occasional sword or piece of armour so that he could continue on his quest. If Adam could, he would live a life like the knight; he would travel the world and just help people. That would be his place in the world. As simple a dream as this was, Adam couldn’t just leave everything behind; he wasn’t naive: Adam knew that going out to do good would take more than just good will. Else, he’d probably just end up homeless and, terrifyingly, purposeless. Adam would just bide his time, like he always had, waiting for an opportunity that might never come. Adam flicked through some more channels before his eyes felt heavy, and he found himself staring at the ceiling, eyes-half-open, the TV blaring in the background.

Sleep comes easily when you don’t want to be awake. It’s both a blessing and a curse that the worse things get the easier they become to escape, for a while. Some people spend their entire lives sleeping; every waking hour is spent thinking about getting back to bed. But dreaming is an obstacle that is perhaps put in place to save people from spending their lives with their eyes shut. Taking a walk in dreamtown can show things in a new light; it can lead to discoveries, in effect, it can change the world. Dreams, for example, have at times (and with varying degrees of reliability) been accredited with the invention of the sewing machine, the formation of Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity and even the scientific method outright. Dreams, an unexplained phenomenon, are often nonsensical, and yet when the mind inhabits the dreamworld, it can very rarely tell the difference from reality. Dreams are subtle, and are easily disregarded, it is possible to learn from a dream without ever remembering the occurrence of the dream itself - a perfect mechanism, one which can be employed in order to directly affect the universe and its outcomes without anybody ever noticing. Dreams, like many neurological phenomena, are lost to us deep within our own grey matter.

Adam jolted. It didn’t feel as though he’d been asleep, but, looking at the clock, it was evident that twenty-five minutes had passed. Regardless, a heavy rumbling had roused him - and it took Adam longer than it should have to realise that the rumbling was emanating from his own stomach. He sat up, stretched, then stood up. Not only had he not eaten all day, but he hadn’t eaten since the sausage rolls which he’d eaten on Friday morning. Having gone twenty-four hours without food, suddenly, hunger had hit Adam like a brick. He nearly sprinted into the kitchen. Eggs, eggs were what Adam was hunting for: he opened the refrigerator and, to his surprise, a lone egg held in an open box on the middle fridge-tray was there to greet him. He picked it up and looked over it for a few seconds before laying it steadily on the counter. He turned on the hob and filled a deep pan with water, then he waited for a minute or two before putting the egg in the water. He’d never really boiled an egg before: he’d never needed to. Though, he had seen his mother do it, and so he was going off of that. He made himself some toast, spread some butter on it, and then cut it into little oblongs. Eggs and soldiers, the meal with the highest deliciousness to effort ratio – Adam’s favourite. He set himself out a plate, and, failing to find an egg-cup, he settled for one of his father’s wider shot glasses. The meal prepared, Adam delved in. Much to his surprise, the egg was runny and not even a little hard-boiled like he’d expected. He finished eating quickly, and he was, if anything, hungrier. After searching the cupboards and the fridge and finding nothing to sate his appetite, he decided that the only thing for it was to head for the village and get himself a snack in the bakery. Adam spent a good half-an-hour looking for his money that he’d earned working for Morris the past weekend; eventually though, he found some notes in his mother’s bedside drawer. With this, he set off. He had enough money that he decided a trip to the local shop would be a wise idea too, for some milk, some more apples and stuff to at least start to fill up the cupboards. For some reason, Adam was feeling happier now. He contemplated that perhaps he’d forgotten to consider the bright-side of the situation: Without his parents, he was wholly independent, giving him a purpose he hadn’t had before – survival: not allowing himself to get overly hungry, maintaining a steady income from his weekly job, and also as a bonus, passing the exams that were now only a few days away. Adam was also pretty confident that his mood had something to do with meeting Amanda, though he knew he shouldn’t let himself get carried away with that, having only met her once - and briefly. Nevertheless, he felt better, despite the rain, as he wandered on his way.

He bought himself two sausage rolls and dispatched them before entering the dimly-lit and dingy grocers. He took a basket and he partly filled it with apples; the dark-red ones, Adam’s favourites, tended not to keep too long, so he made sure to get some lighter ones too. He got himself some bread, a chicken, sliced ham, cheese, cereal, a few bottles of coke and some gum along with a few other items. It was only after he had paid and was ready to leave that it dawned on him that he’d have to carry everything back all at once, or make more than one trip; neither method was ideal, but Adam tried the first, and finding the eight or nine bags too much to carry, he was forced to opt for the latter and he ended up walking to and from the shop twice. By the time he was home again, it was past three in the afternoon, and his legs ached. He sat down on the sofa again, resting his legs on the coffee table and he turned on the television. He managed to catch the last twenty minutes of an episode of Bad Knight on one of the more obscure channels. He watched as the titular Bad Knight, clad in rusted armour and with a broken sword on his waist, walked through a scenic town and into the king’s courtyard. The Bad Knight asked called for an audience with the king, and asked him to grant him a sword. However, he found that the people of this kingdom, including the king, did not speak the same language as him. Luckily, a man in the crowded court approached both the king and the knight, and acted as a translator. The king refused the knight’s request, insisting that he owed the knight nothing and proclaiming his offense that the knight should approach him and expect to be so easily granted a sword. With no time to explain, the knight demanded that someone from the crowd hand him a sword so that he may save them. The knight was mocked and laughed at, before two knights of the king’s kingdom approached him and drew their swords. The Bad Knight, being the best warrior in the land, dispatched and disarmed the two knights: leaving them alive, but taking their swords for his own. It was then that a thunderous roar rang through the mountain kingdom and its surrounding villages, and from the dark skies to the west came a dragon – a winged drake, as large as the mountain itself – it scorched the surrounding villages before landing in the middle of the king’s palace, from where it began to level the town. After only a few minutes, the town was almost completely destroyed, and the survivors, including the king, his knights and the Bad Knight, were holed up inside the king’s keep, which the king said could withstand anything, with strong stone walls reinforced with iron. Nevertheless, the walls of the keep started to feel soft and malleable under the intense heat of the raging dragonfire. It was then that the Bad Knight exited the keep and came face to face with the dragon, seemingly unburned by the ferocious inferno projected onto him. The dragon, initially surprised that such a tiny thing could withstand him, paused for a while, and then a choking, booming laughter emerged from his belly and he started to mock the Bad Knight in the deepest and roughest of voices. He called him a fool for not attempting to run. The Bad Knight did not speak, he only held both his swords high, and for an instant it appeared to the king and his cohorts, who were watching through a crack in the keep’s wall, that the Bad Knight himself stood tall and wide as a mountain – even against the unimaginable demonic presence of the drake. The Knight charged whilst the dragon was still laughing, and for a while it seemed, as the Bad Knight fell farther and farther into the distance, appearing as only a dot next to the behemoth, that he had merely disappeared. But after another minute, the dragon waned and took off, screaming into the sky. It swooped down upon the knight, who stood firm and ready, charging and stabbing at the winged beast’s feet whenever he had the opportunity. Finally, after an hour of fire and blood, the dragon stomped upon the knight. The knight had not managed to dodge like all the other times before. The king and his men cried out, the impossible man, who stood alone against this beast for so long, was defeated. Or so they thought. The knight rose once more, pushing away the dragon’s enormous paw whilst letting out a brutal cry of anger and ferocity. He rose and rose, and then he used his momentum to throw the dragon off balance, landing the beast on its side in the dirt. The dragon scurried again to its feet, and took off. The king and his men watched as the demon flew a little way, before letting out a final cry and falling hard and fast into the mountain lake. The beast did not return. The king went along with a search party that he’d organised, attempting to find the knight who had been witnessed by surviving villagers to be riding on the back of the dragon as he plunged it into the lake. The Bad Knight of the West never came ashore; not that day, not that week, not that month and not that year. The king ordered the building of a great statue along with the reconstruction of his town. The bronze Bad Knight stood tall and wide as a mountain, in a field a mile or two from the king’s courtyard. No words were placed on the statue, it stood for itself, requiring no message. This man watches over us and our kingdom, the king would go on to tell his children and then his grand children. And from that day, the people of the scorched kingdom were happy to hand a sword, or a hot meal, to any weary-looking traveller who happened to pass by. Little did they know that on the mountain that overlooked the kingdom, two days after the death of the great dragon, stood a hooded figure in rusted armour who had on his waist a broken sword. The figure took a last wavering look upon the still burning kingdom, and it could perhaps be imagined that the figure wished to stay and help rebuild, but for some reason he could not. He turned to walk further east.

Adam looked away as the TV switched to the commercial break, and he muted the volume. He liked that show. It had very little dialogue, but a lot of meaning to him: It made him think. Adam glanced through the door into the kitchen and remembered that he’d left all the shopping bags still packed on top of the table. He decided to go through and sort them out, since he’d have to do it at some point. He filled the freezer first, then the fridge. Everything else went in a single cupboard next to the fridge; he thought that would be easier and made more sense than thinly spreading all of the cupboard stuff out over all the cupboards.Then Adam decided that he should probably wash up the plate, pot and cutlery he’d used to make and eat the boiled egg with toast earlier. Then he decided that the living room and kitchen were a mess anyway and that the toilet off of the utility room next to the kitchen was dirty, so he vacuumed and dusted the rooms and cleaned the toilet. His parents had been gone a little over a day so far, and the place was already a mess; Adam supposed he hadn’t realised how much upkeep a house took, even when nothing was really going on in it. Then again, Adam reasoned with himself that his house was usually worse than this, and that he was simply looking for something to do. Talking and mulling over with himself in his head reminded Adam of May, and how much he missed just conversing with her about interesting stuff, and not worrying about what she was going to say about other things being in his head and what not. In fact, the idea of May had at first scared Adam. When she first appeared, he remembered being so frightened; he thought she was a ghost or something. But, as she kept hanging around and showing herself to be just this bubbly, happy, friendly girl that would talk to Adam about anything, he kind of just accepted her. Now Adam was regressing: He was remembering the fear that had struck him all that time ago. It was, in truth, quite terrifying. May was such a mystery. She’d appeared from nowhere, and now she was saying that she’d been ‘inside’ Adam a lot longer than he’d known about her. Adam often forgot that May was just an extension of him; he forgot she wasn’t real. She was a product of something that might be medically considered ‘wrong’ in Adam’s brain. Adam knew that, but he didn’t want to find out if he had something wrong with him, because it wasn’t negatively affecting him or anyone around him. He desperately hoped that wouldn’t change.
Adam started on his final chore: putting the rubbish out. He picked up the plastic bag from the bin in the kitchen and tied it in a knot. He slipped on his shoes, scuffing their backs, and he opened the front door. It was still raining quite heavily, and the skies were much darker than before. He walked on the now wet and slippery cement slabs that lead from his house to the road, and at the end of them he threw the rubbish bag into a metal bin. Spinning on one foot to turn back around, he ended up slipping and tumbling into the grass beside the path: his scuffed shoes betrayed his balance. Not badly hurt, but shocked and grazed, he lay for a couple of seconds looking up at the dim skies, he squinted his eyes on account of the rain. He heard a quiet snickering, and he sat up to see Amanda’s face looking down on him from the upstairs window of the house next to Adam’s - which he supposed he ought to now start calling Amanda’s house. He went a little red, but his face was cooled quickly by the rain. He grinned at her and shook his head. Amanda disappeared from the window and Adam, who was still sprawled on the floor, got himself up and brushed himself off. Amanda opened her front door and almost stepped out onto the doorstep before putting her hand out and deciding it was raining too much.
“Are you okay?” she asked standing in the doorway. Her voice still held a definite tone of amusement.
“Yeah - fine,” Adam replied, “I just... slipped - it’s slippy.”
“I know,” she said, “I saw.”
Adam didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah,” was all he came up with.
“Okay, well, you have a nice day now - and, be more careful, or, something” Amanda laughed a little one more time, before she started to turn around and go back inside.
“Hey - wait!” Adam urged.
Amanda turned around, and looked at Adam, waiting for him to continue. Adam, not having thought this far, tried to come up with something quickly.
“So, like, leaves – why do you collect leaves?” he asked.
She looked at him a little funny, and he saw how it might come across as a bit strange that he was trying to make polite conversation whilst he stood, now sodden, in the pouring rain.
“I – yeah, well actually I collect the seeds, y’know -conkers.”
“Oh, right,” Adam nodded with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm.
“Yeah, but they won’t be around for a while, and, I mean, the leaves are like a second-best, so...” she started to mumble a bit towards the end of her sentence.
“When do you get conkers from them?” Adam wanted to make her feel comfortable talking to him. He liked her.
“It’ll be a few months yet,” she spoke, but then, feeling sorry for Adam, standing in the rain, she said “hey, why don’t you come inside?”
“Oh, okay,” Adam started walking towards her door.
“No! Let’s go into yours, actually - if you don’t mind,” she quickly exclaimed.
“Okay - sure,” Adam stopped and took a second to agree. He went back towards his own door, and Amanda crossed over the grass and path and joined him. He thought it was a little weird that she would rather go into his house, but then maybe she was just curious. Adam wasn’t going to complain, anyway.
When Amanda was inside, Adam closed the door behind her. She wandered into his living room, then through to the kitchen and into the utility room next to it. Then, she came back out and wandered through the other door in the living room, into Adam’s dining room, where there was a gothic-looking table and set of chairs, that looked a little out of place with the rest of the house’s decor, and an equally unsuitable piano. His parents purchased the piano on a whim a while back, and neither of them could really play it – but that didn’t stop them trying; many times Adam had been woken in the early hours of the morning by his parent’s drunken laughter and discordant piano-playing. He smiled inwardly – that was one thing he wouldn’t miss over the next few months. Then, his mind returned to the present and he tried to remember what he and Amanda were talking about.
“So, conkers?” Adam continued where they’d left off.
“Oh, yeah,” Amanda said ceasing to roam around; she sat down on the sofa and continued, “I started collecting them when I was really young, with my brother.”
“Why?” Adam kept on with this topic because he really didn’t know what else to talk about.
“I, uh, I don’t know - I guess we just liked to play that game, you know, that one - I think it’s just ‘conkers’ -where you hang them on string and smack them into each other,”
“I know the one,” Adam smiled. He too sat on the sofa.
“Where are your parents?” she asked, catching Adam off guard.
“Actually, they - they left for a while,” Adam shifted uncomfortably.
“Oh - really? How long?” Amanda seemed not to notice that he was not really comfortable talking about it.
“Months,” Adam looked her directly in the eye, then looked down and smiled.
“Oh... shit - sorry,” she caught on. There was a long silence, before Adam thought of a question that he’d wanted to ask earlier.
“So... how old are you?” he inquired.
“What?” she was clearly taken aback, though she didn’t seem offended.
“How old are you?” Adam repeated.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked. She seemed to find the question amusing.
Adam didn’t reply, he instead waited her out, even he knew that question was the equivalent of a minefield.
“I’m seventeen.”
“Oh,” Adam wasn’t overly surprised, but he was relieved that she was a similar age; Adam forgot himself for a moment and said “you look older.”
Amanda opened her mouth as though she was offended, but there was also a hint of a smirk. She was in disbelief that Adam had just said that. Adam was cursing himself in his head; he tried to correct himself:
“I mean, you don’t look old. I just... I mean - you look older,” he quickly spouted, and then, seeing as that didn’t help Amanda’s expression, he tried again, “like - that’s a good thing. You don’t look old; you could be like, twenty-three, tops.”
“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Adam apologised.
“It’s fine,” Amanda’s full grin returned, “I know I look a little older, and it comes in handy, sometimes.”
There was another long pause filled by Amanda picking up the TV remote and flicking through the channels - finding nothing, and turning it off again.
“By the way,” she said, breaking the silence, “you haven’t told me your name yet.”
Adam almost didn’t believe her, but then, thinking back, he realised she was right.
“Adam,” he replied.
She didn’t comment on his name, instead she started to ask him more questions about him and about his life. Adam explained the situation with his parents, and he even let her know how he had no friends, really, and she seemed really sympathetic without being patronising, which was really nice for Adam - to be validated by a real person. He told her about his fishing job, and she chuckled a little when he told her about how he was late today. Adam couldn’t help but stare at her shining green eyes the whole time; he would try and hold her gaze for as long as possible before the little subtle butterflies in his stomach forced him to look away.
They talked for another few hours, taking it in turns to ask and answer; Adam found out that Amanda’s parents were, in some ways, worse than his: they cared way too much. She used to have to be back at home before it even started to get dark, and she was never allowed to watch TV. She had three or four extra tutors for school who would come around almost every night. Her parents were also really religious, so they would never let her even speak to boys, she had to go to church, and they sent her to an all-girls school for a few years before finding out that the school allowed the students to go out and socialise with the mixed school from across the road. She was being home-schooled by the age of thirteen. Amanda seemed a little cautious and unwilling to reveal much else, skirting around the subjects Adam brought up. Initially, Adam assumed from the way she was going on about her parents that the man he’d seen earlier, who pulled Amanda away, was her older brother. Adam thought they’d both run away together. Despite Amanda’s apparent hesitancy to explain, Adam soon found out that, actually, the man was much older and was her uncle on her father’s side. She explained to Adam how he was the only normal one of the family, besides her brother, and how he ‘saved’ her. Adam could tell something had happened to Amanda’s brother from the expression on her face when she mentioned him, and also by the fact that she said it was just her and her uncle now. He didn’t question any further, for the fear of the worst. Adam and Amanda talked well into the night. Before she knew it, Amanda had asked and answered herself to sleep. She snored quietly on Adam’s sofa. Adam, feeling tired himself, laid his head back and tried to let himself drift off. He found it difficult, though, as he was feeling excited and glad, a whole mixture of emotions. As far as he could tell, he had made a real friend.
If Adam could somehow see through his closed eyelids, he might have seen a pale, short girl, who stood in a flowing cyan dress - one which appeared tattered to some degree, lightly torn at the seams. She stood, staring at Adam, with misery on her face and a hint of anguish in her eyes.