“I said, are you sorry you’ve been seeing my sister?”

And I hate him with all my tears and screams and begging.

“What else have you been doing with her?”

And I want him to know what we did, but there’s no way I’m going to tell him anything.

“I don’t think you’re sorry at all . . . are you?”

And I’m not. I’m not sorry about any of it. I’m too full of hate to be sorry about anything.

“Let’s try again, shall we? On this side. This must be the White half.”

The T-shirt is stuffed back in my mouth and I feel the blade across the right side of my back, close to my spine. All the cuts he has made so far are on my left side and I know what is coming. That was the whole point of his talking; it was just so that I would know what to expect.

The cuts are bad, but all the time I think about the powder. That’s what I fear. Kieran is in no rush, though . . .

“Wakey, wakey.” A slap on my cheek. “Nearly finished. We still have my favorite bit left. Leave the best till last, that’s what they say, isn’t it?”

I’ve given up thinking; given up praying a long time ago. I look at the sand. The small grains: orange, brick orange, red, some tiny black ones.

“Do you want to put the powder on him, Niall?”

“No.”

“No? So it’s up to you, Connor.”

“Kieran.” Connor sounds really quiet. “I . . .”

“Shut up, Connor! You’re doing it.”

Kieran kneels close to my face and says, “Make sure there isn’t a next time, you Half Code heap of shit, because if there is I’ll cut your balls off before I rip your innards out.”

And I hate him and curse him and scream at him into the T-shirt.

It’s dark. The ground beneath me is cold. And I am cold inside, but my back’s on fire. I can hardly move but I have to put the fire out. I roll on the ground. Someone, somewhere far off, screams.

Shouting . . .

Arran’s voice . . .

The trees are like sentries, but they’re moving past me.

Blackness.

“Nathan?” Arran’s voice is soft in my ear.

I open my eyes and his face is close to me. I think we’re in the kitchen.

I’m on the table. Like a chicken served for dinner. Gran has her back to me; she is making gravy. Deborah is carrying a bowl that steams. Maybe it has potatoes in it.

“You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay,” Arran says. But he says it in a strange way.

Deborah puts the bowl beside me and I know it doesn’t have potatoes in it, and I’m afraid, so afraid. She is going to touch my back. And I beg Arran not to let them touch me.

“They have to clean the cuts. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

And I beg him not to let them touch me. But I don’t think the words come out.

He holds my hand tighter.

I wake again. Still a chicken on the table. Arran’s hand locked on mine. My back is hot inside but cool on the outside.

Arran asks quietly, “Nathan?”

“Stay with me, Arran.”

The sun is warm on my face. My back is tight and throbs fast with my pulse. I don’t dare move anything except my fingers. Arran is still holding my hand.

“Nathan?”

“Water.”

“Move your head really slowly. I’ll put the straw in your mouth.”

I blink my eyes open. I am lying at an angle on my bed with my head on the edge of the mattress. Below me is a glass of water with a long straw.

After I drink I doze for a few minutes then I wake as my stomach churns. I throw up into a bowl that has replaced the glass of water, terrified because each lurch of my stomach sends tight spasms across my back.

When I next wake up Arran is still by my side. He says, “Gran’s made a drink for you. She says you have to take small sips.”

The drink is disgusting. It must have a sleeping potion in it as I remember nothing else until I wake again in the evening.

I move my fingers, but Arran isn’t beside me. It’s dark in the room, but I can see the shape of him in his bed, asleep. The house is quiet, but then I hear subdued voices and I move my head a little to see through the crack in the door. Gran is on the landing with Deborah. They are talking and I strain to hear what they are saying and then I realize that they aren’t talking; they are crying.

The next morning I wake up thirsty once again. There is a glass of water beneath me; at least I don’t have to have more of the potion. I suck hard, making a slurping noise as I empty the glass.

“You’re only supposed to sip.”

I tilt my head up to see Arran sitting sideways on his bed, leaning on the wall. He is pale and has dark circles beneath his eyes.

“How you feeling?”

I think about it and move my head. The tightness in my back is bad. “Better. And you?”

He rubs his face and says, “A bit tired.”

“At least you’re not crying,” I say. “I’ve never seen Gran cry before.”

I suck at the straw again, even though there is no drink left, and then I look at him as I ask, “Is it that bad?”

He meets my look. “Yes.”

We are silent for a while.

“Did you come looking for me?”

“When it got late, I went looking in the woods; that was about ten o’clock. You weren’t there so I checked all the back streets. Debs rang me at midnight. Someone had phoned here telling us where you were. Debs thinks it was Niall.”

I tell Arran what happened and about my meetings with Annalise.

He doesn’t say anything, so I ask, “Do you think I’m stupid for seeing her?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“You like each other. She’s nice to you and she’s . . . you know . . . beautiful.”

We are silent again.

“Promise me you won’t see her again.”

I stare at the floor, thinking of Annalise and her smile, her eyes, and the look on her face when I last saw her.

“Nathan. Promise me.”

“I’m not that stupid.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise that I’m not that stupid.” I still stare at the floor.

Arran slides across the floor to sit by me. He strokes my hair back from my face and kisses my forehead, whispering, “Please, Nathan. I couldn’t stand it.”

I heal quickly, even for a whet, but it’s still five days before I have the bandages off. I stand in the bathroom with my back to the large mirror and a small mirror of Gran’s in my hands. Arran asked me on the second day if Kieran had said what he’d done. I knew then that it was more than just cuts.

The scars stretch from my shoulder blades to my lower back: a “B” on the left and a “W” on the right.

Post-Trauma

I know I have to stay away from Annalise. I’m not stupid; I won’t try to see her again, at least not at the moment, but I want to know if she’s all right.

Since Deborah finished school she has had no contact with Niall, apart from the phone call telling her where I was. But even if they were in touch I wouldn’t trust what Niall said about Annalise anyway. I ask Arran if he can get a message to her. He tells me that Niall has warned him off: “You will get what your brother got if you go near her.” I suspect Niall didn’t say “your brother” but the message is clear, and I tell Arran to forget it.

Arran says, “Don’t blame yourself.”

I don’t. Kieran and his dumb brothers are to blame.

And I know that Annalise would think the same way, and she will know that I never meant to cause her problems . . . but I screwed up. I was naive. I knew there would be serious trouble for both of us if we got caught, and I ignored that. But so did she.

Gran sits at my bedside and cleans her creams off my back. She runs her fingers over my scars, and I reach around to touch them too. They are uneven, shallow grooves.