I Was Born for This(90)

‘How about we split up?’ I suggest. We need to keep looking. Anything to keep us looking. I’m nearly crying again. This is entirely my fault. We need to find him. We’re going to find him.

‘No, that won’t do any good,’ says Rowan. ‘We’re better together.’

It’s true. We are.

Bliss lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Fine. Let’s just keep walking for now.’

And so we do.

Rowan and I end up at the back of the group, side by side.

‘Why?’ he murmurs. ‘Where did he go?’

I glance at him, and I can’t tell whether he’s crying or whether there’s just a raindrop falling down his cheek.

‘I can’t deal with you both leaving me,’ he says.

Am I really going to leave him?

I don’t know.

I don’t know any more.





I don’t know how long we’ve been walking when we finally come to a stop. We stopped shouting a while back. The light is quickly fading, and we all have our torches on now. The path ends, opening out into a seemingly interminable wheat field. Lister could have gone in any direction from here.

‘So now what?’ asks Jimmy.

No one speaks for a moment.

‘Maybe we should go back now,’ murmurs Rowan.

Jimmy immediately protests. ‘No, no. We can’t.’ And he’s right. We can’t go back. We can’t just leave Lister out here.

Bliss and Juliet don’t say anything.

‘You can go back,’ says Jimmy. ‘If you want. But I’m not.’

‘Where else are you going to look?’ asks Rowan. ‘He could be literally anywhere out there!’

‘We should just keep going,’ I say.

Everyone looks at me. Jimmy’s eyes light up.

‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding at me. ‘Yeah. If we spread out across the field, he might—’

‘It’s not safe,’ says Rowan.

‘Yeah, well, Lister isn’t safe,’ Jimmy shouts. ‘And it’s my fault! So I’m not going back until I find him.’

‘I’m staying too,’ I say. Jimmy glances at me again.

‘Well, we can’t just leave you here!’ says Rowan, looking at us both.

‘Choose, then,’ says Jimmy. ‘Stay or go.’

We’re all interrupted by a lightning flash, and then there’s a low rumble of thunder. The rain seems to start falling harder.

‘Hey, everyone,’ calls a voice. We all turn and spot Juliet crouched down by some bushes at the edge of the pathway. She stands back up and holds out an object. ‘Isn’t this what Lister was drinking earlier?’

We approach her. It’s a large, empty bottle of red wine. Jimmy takes it from her and looks at it, then looks into the bushes. They’ve been trampled on and pushed aside, creating a murky tunnel.

‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice a croaky whisper.

He drops the bottle and runs straight into the woods.

Everyone cries out, telling him to come back, but I don’t hesitate. I start running right after him.





Even without the light of my torch, I can see the exact path he’s taken. Flattened grass and still visible footprints in the mud. I call after him. He’s going to be dead, right? Something’s happened. I push through branches and thorns, feel them scratching at my skin, I don’t care, I don’t care any more. What have I done?

There’s someone behind me. Is it Rowan? I turn and – No. It’s Angel. She cares. Why is she doing this?

Why is she here with me?

Why did this happen?

‘We’ll find him,’ she says to me as we run, and it’s like a real-life angel has promised, a real-life angel knows exactly what is going to happen for the rest of time.

We burst out of the brambles and Angel grabs the back of my shirt just before I topple down a slope – we’ve reached the river, though it’s shallow here, only a few centimetres deep, more of a creek than a river. The bank is both high and steep, and the mud is smeared like somebody has slid down it, and so we look over the edge, both of us, and there at the bottom, lying in the shallows of the water and covered in mud, is Lister Bird, with my knife embedded in the left side of his stomach.





Jimmy freezes, unable to do anything but stare down at Lister and the knife. I stop thinking entirely. I step down, digging my shoes carefully into the mud before transferring my weight so that I don’t slip, and start climbing slowly down the bank.

He must have slipped and fallen. Probably drunk. Did he fall onto the knife? Was he holding it when he fell?

As I get closer, the more I can analyse the situation. His head isn’t in the water, thank God, but his eyes are closed. Once I get even closer, almost at the edge of the creek, I can see his chest moving up and down. Faintly, but definitely moving.

Thank God, thank God, thank God.

‘He’s-he’s alive,’ I call back to Jimmy. I shoot a quick look behind me. Jimmy’s already climbing down after me – a lot slower than me, but he’s on his way.

I turn back to Lister and look down at his body. The knife is definitely inside him. Oh God. Oh shit. Are there any important organs there? It’s kind of in his side. Is that where the kidneys are? Intestines? Oh God, I got a D in biology GCSE.