Because of Her Page 5

  Not that she ever spoke to me at school, you understand.

  Outside of the gym where we met each week, Eden was still much of a stranger to me. She would only briefly speak to me before or after the two classes we took together—biology and philosophy—and then only if Gabby and Beth weren’t taking her attention away from me.

  Libby had once said it would take a very special person to infiltrate the Gabby, Beth, and Eden clique. During school hours I’d agree with her; the three of them were watertight. But when I had Eden on her own, she transformed. She was as smart, funny, and attentive towards me as I was to her, apparently hanging on every word I said just as much as I clung to every tiny thing she said to me. I liked that. I told myself I just wanted her as a friend. Another new friend in my new life.

  Her friendliness towards me was starting to tell me that she liked me, too.

  One Tuesday, a few weeks into my fencing classes, I turned up to find Eden playful, jokey, and relaxed—a totally different girl from the one I’d seen just earlier in our philosophy class. We were practising parrying again, and Eden had collared me the moment I stepped from the changing rooms, telling me she wanted to “push me to my limits.” That sent a pulse through my body. Meekly, I followed her onto the practice mat.

  “So, okay,” Eden said, flexing her foil and grinning at me. “Rob says he wants us to perfect our defensive moves tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said warily, seeing a look in her eyes.

  “So I’m going to come at you, and you’ve got to try and hit either the tip of my foil,” she said, waving her foil in the air, and plopping her mask down over her face, “or the base, near the handle.”

  “Tip or base. Gotcha.” I lowered my mask over my face, too.

  We assumed our positions on the mat, and I gripped my foil tighter, holding it up slightly in front of me as Eden came towards me. I backed away, ungainly, seeing her suddenly lunge towards me, the foil in her hand jabbing more and more at me.

  “Take it easy, Eden!” I laughed. “Those things can hurt, you know.”

  “So, parry.” Eden lifted her mask up onto her head and raised one perfect eyebrow.

  “Playing rough, huh?” I spoke from behind my mask.

  “Not scared of a little rough, are you?” She laughed back. “Hmm?”

  “Me? Scared?”

  I thrust forward with my right foot, driving Eden backward again. Pleased to have gained the upper hand, I stupidly let my concentration slip long enough to allow Eden one final lunge towards me, her foil centimetres from my face. The second I jarred back on my left leg, I heard a noise come from my knee. I instantly dropped my foil. My leg buckled as a shooting pain ripped through it, and I landed in a clumsy heap on the mat. I groaned.

  “Oh God, Tabby!” Eden ripped off her mask and was at my side in an instant, an anxious look on her face. “I’m so sorry! I misjudged that last one.” She sank to her knees next to me.

  “Yeah, big time.”

  I winced as I tried to move. Okay, that wasn’t good.

  “I’m so sorry, really.”

  Eden reached over and rubbed at my knee, her fingers spreading out across my skin, massaging it over and over. I watched her as she did it, her face a picture of worry, and felt my breath start to come in gasps behind my mask.

  What was she doing to me?

  “It’s fine, really.” I scrambled awkwardly to my feet.

  I took my own mask off, then tested my leg, leaning gingerly over onto my left foot and screwed up my face as another jolt shot through my knee. I suddenly felt sick and faint, the gym appearing to close in around me, and sat down hard on the mat.

  “Tabby?”

  I lay on my back, groaning up at the ceiling. It seemed as if it was dropping down at me, then floating away again, ebbing and flowing in rhythm with the pain. Eden stood over me, looking panicked.

  “I think I’ve broken my knee.” I grimaced, the pulses of pain in my leg increasing with every heartbeat. “Soldier down.” Another wave of nausea hit me.

  The next thing I was aware of was Greg and Rob kneeling next to me. The pain was constant. Intense. Excruciating.

  “Can you stand?” Rob’s face loomed over me.

  I shook my head. “I already tried.”

  “Is it bad, Rob?” Eden spoke from behind Greg, who was watching, his face anxious.

  “Okay, that really hurts.” I screwed up my face as Rob poked his fingers into the muscles around my kneecap. “You didn’t have to do that, you know!”

  “How the hell did this happen?” Rob swung around and looked at Eden, who visibly jumped at his words.

  “I don’t know…I just—” Eden looked like she might cry, her face crumpling. She beseeched me, and I smiled back.

  “It wasn’t Eden’s fault,” I said, trying to forget I’d only jumped back because Eden’s foil had been so close to my face. “I stepped back and landed funny. It was more my fault, really.”

  The relief on Eden’s face was palpable.

  “Hmm.” Rob stood, bending over and putting his hands under my arms. “Let’s try and get you up, then.”

  I clambered to my feet and, with the help of Rob on one side and Greg on the other, hopped on my right foot, trying to get my balance. I put my left foot on the ground and gritted my teeth as a spasm ripped through my knee again. I was relieved when Rob and Greg lifted me between them and carried me to the gym’s exit. Eden followed close behind us, occasionally reaching out and touching my arm, saying over and over how sorry she was.

  There was a small part of me that wanted to turn to her and say, “Well, this is one helluva way to get to know you better, isn’t it?” but instead I just told her it was okay, that accidents happened, and that at least I’d have a temporary reminder of how lousy I was at fencing. She laughed at that. Her laugh was like her voice, soft and sweet, and if my heart hadn’t been busy pounding away at the pain in my knee, I think it would have flipped over at the sound of it.

  After making a quick detour via the school’s office, where my predicament was duly logged and numerous sympathetic looks were directed my way, we were instructed to head straight for the nearest hospital. I wasn’t about to complain about that, despite knowing I’d no doubt end up being stuck there for the rest of the evening, putting paid to any thoughts I’d had of Skyping Amy that night. The pain in my knee had reached such an intensity that I knew if I didn’t get some painkillers within the hour, I’d probably start trying to kill someone.

  “Right, in you hop.” Rob opened the passenger door to his 4x4, parked just outside the gym, and held my arm as I scrambled onto the seat, then walked around to the driver’s side, his mobile clamped to his ear. “You, too.” He gesticulated towards Eden, who was standing next to my window looking adorably lost.

  She clambered into the back of the 4x4 and sat down, leaning forward between the passenger and driver seats to rub my arm, then leant back again and buckled herself in. We drove in near silence on the twenty-minute journey out to our local hospital, Rob occasionally asking me if I was okay, if I felt sick or faint, or if I wanted him to stop. I shook my head at each question, just wishing the traffic would hurry up so we could get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

  The hospital’s Emergency Department was unusually quiet. I was ushered more or less straight into a cubicle, where I sat on a bed, propped up with pillows, fighting the urge to cry. Or be sick.

  Not the way I expected the evening to end.

  “Why do hospitals always give me the willies?” Rob sat on the end of my bed and gestured for Eden to have the chair. “The minute I step into one, I feel ill.”

  “It’s the smell.” Eden sat down, looking around the cubicle. “Does the same to me.”

  “Can’t say I’m feeling too hot at the moment either,” I muttered.

  The pain in my knee still hadn’t subsided at all, and I fought hard not to show my increasing panic that I’d done some serious damage to it.

  “Want a drink?”
Rob stood up. “I can’t stand all the waiting around in these places.”

  “Coke would be good. Thanks.”

  “Eden?”

  “Same. Thanks.”

  I watched Rob disappear out of the cubicle, poking his head back in briefly to instruct both Eden and me to telephone our parents by the time he returned, before disappearing again. I looked over to Eden, but she wasn’t looking at me. Instead, she was staring hard at the curtain, then the ceiling, then the floor—anywhere but towards me.

  “How is it now?” she finally said.

  “Still ragging, unfortunately.”

  “Thanks for saying it wasn’t my fault, by the way.”

  I waved a hand. “S’okay. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, to be honest.”

  “No, but if I hadn’t come at you like a thing possessed, you wouldn’t have jerked back.”

  “I guess.”

  “So, thanks.”

  “Bet we look dumb in these, huh?” I said, nodding at my jacket.

  Eden smiled. “I think they look okay, actually. You look like a proper pro in yours.”

  “A proper pro with a busted knee?”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  She leant over and rummaged in her bag, pulling out her phone. “Mum,” she said. “Just letting her know where I am.”

  “This isn’t keeping you from anything, is it?” I asked. I pulled my phone from my sweatpants pocket and fired the briefest of texts off to my mother, too.

  She shook her head. “It’s fine. Honestly.”

  I watched her from the corner of my eye as she wrote out a text, her fingers sliding quickly over the screen.

  “So, who’s at home waiting for you?” I asked.

  “Mum, Dad,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “Annoying brother.”

  “You, too, huh?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Annoying brother. I have one, too.”

  “Yeah, he’s called Ben.” Eden tossed the phone back into her bag. “Yours?”

  “Ed. Is yours older or younger?”

  “Older. Yours?”

  “Same,” I said.

  Eden nodded.

  The conversation ground to a halt after that, and I was grateful when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I retrieved it, flicking my eyes over it.

  “Overreacting mother.” I held my phone up. Then, noticing the time, I hurriedly wrote out a text to Amy: At hospital. Busted knee. Long story. Don’t worry if I don’t Skype on time. I’ll catch you later xxx

  “Bloody drinks machine was out of order, so I had to go across to the other ward.” Rob flung the curtain of my cubicle back and stepped inside. He handed me and Eden a bottle each, then retreated back to the entrance to the cubicle. “Seen anyone yet?”

  I shook my head, then unscrewed the cap on the bottle and took a long drink. I was thirstier than I’d realized.

  “Tabitha Morton?”

  I grimaced at the sound of my name and grunted a reply of sorts. A nurse in scrubs poked her head around the side of the cubicle curtain, then held it open so that Rob could make a discreet exit.

  “So what have we here?” She read from a clipboard. “Knee injury, yes?”

  “Mm.”

  “Right, if you can wriggle yourself out of those trousers, I’ll take a look.”

  I put my bottle down and lifted my hips up from the bed, glancing self-consciously at Eden as I did so, and cursing the fact I’d chosen that very day to wear a pair of Simpsons boy shorts. I shuffled my sweats down to just past my knees and sat there, with Homer poking out from under the hem of my jacket, feeling stupid and embarrassed. Thankfully, Eden was being considerate and had turned to face the curtain.

  “Can you bend your knee?” the nurse asked, shaking her head as I tried and failed to bend it. “I think you’ve probably just twisted it, but we’ll X-ray just to be safe and make sure it’s nothing more serious than that.”

  “So that means at least another hour’s wait,” I heard Rob mutter from outside my cubicle as the nurse left again. “I’m going for a wander.” He poked his head through the gap in the curtains. “Be back in a mo.”

  “The wheels sure turn slowly in this place, don’t they?” Eden stood up and yawned, linking her fingers and stretching her arms high above her head.

  “If you have to go, it’s cool,” I said. “You really don’t have to wait. My mum will be on her way soon.”

  “I want to, I told you,” Eden said. “I’m responsible for all this—it’s the least I can do.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  I stared down at my skinny, bare knees poking out above my waistband and started to pull my sweats up again.

  “Can I have a look?” Eden suddenly said. “It’s sure swollen, isn’t it?”

  “Like a balloon,” I said, mid-wriggle.

  Eden came around to the left side of my bed and leant over, peering hard at my knee. She’d undone the top buttons of her protective jacket, so that the lapels flapped down. When she leant over I was acutely aware I could see a hint of cleavage and the satin of her bra. I swallowed hard, trying to stop my eyes, which had mysteriously taken on a life of their own, from staring down her front.

  “Yikes.” Eden grimaced. “Can I?” She waggled her fingers, indicating that she wanted to touch my knee.

  “If you want,” I said, my voice suddenly sounding strange.

  It had been bad enough back at the gym when she’d massaged my leg through my sweats, but this? This was a thousand times worse. Or better. I wasn’t sure. All I was aware of as she gingerly traced her fingers across my skin, occasionally looking at me, her cleavage tantalizingly close, was that it was absolutely fucking killing me.

  “You have goosebumps on your leg!” She suddenly laughed. “Are you cold?”

  Are you kidding me?

  “I…uh…”

  The abrupt buzzing of my phone on the bed next to me made us both jump.

  Amy.

  As her name flashed on and off my screen, Eden pulled away from me. My eyes followed her around the end of my bed, the intensity of having just had Eden touch my bare skin apparently rendering my brain completely unable to register that my phone was ringing.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Eden flopped back into her chair.

  I snatched up my phone, hoping that my hands weren’t shaking too obviously.

  “Baby.” Amy’s voice was fretful.

  “Hey.” I subconsciously shifted a shoulder so I was leaning slightly away from Eden.

  “So what happened?”

  “I just crocked my knee a bit, that’s all.” I glanced at Eden.

  “How?”

  “An overexuberant opponent.” I dropped my eyes from Eden’s. “Look, I better go. We’re not supposed to have phones on in here, and—”

  “Call me when you get home?”

  “Sure.” I killed the call and looked apologetically towards Eden.

  “Parent?”

  “No. Old school friend.”

  “Nice that they called.” Eden studied me, a faint smile at the corners of her mouth.

  The curtain to my cubicle was pulled back, and the nurse who’d seen me before came back in with a porter who was pushing a wheelchair.

  I’d never been so grateful to see two people in all my life.

  “You’re in luck,” the nurse said. “X-ray department’s fairly quiet, so Frank here is going to take you on up now.”

  “Thank God,” I said, with feeling, grateful to at last pull my sweats back up and get out of the cubicle.

  The nurse turned to Eden. “You want to come with your friend?”

  “If that’s okay with you?” Eden looked at me.

  I nodded weakly, by now beyond words, the memory of Eden’s fingers on my skin still teasing me as Frank wheeled me from the cubicle and down the harshly lit corridor to X-ray.

  Chapter Nine

  The X-ray, much to my relief, showed a sprain to
my knee ligaments but nothing more serious. By the time I left the hospital with some anti-inflammatories and a pair of crutches I’d never get the hang of, Eden had already left, collected by her mother a good hour before my mother turned up.

  Of course, I spent the entire journey home in the car with my mother fending off inane questions from her, then having to go over it all again once my father arrived back from work, shortly after eight p.m. His reaction was exactly what I’d expected it to be: fencing was a sport for gentlemen and ladies, he thought I lacked the required sophistication needed to be good at it, and he could have guessed I’d end up getting injured within weeks of taking it up.

  “I suppose you went at it like a bull in a china shop as usual?” he said, looking unsympathetically at my swollen knee, propped up on a footstool. “Trying to prove that you can beat everyone? Fencing takes patience and guile, Tabitha. Neither of which you’re blessed with.”

  And that was all the sympathy I got.

  I fared better with Amy, though, when I Skyped her later that same evening, needing to see her face, knowing I’d get the compassion I needed from her.

  “You poor thing.” Amy’s face creased with concern as I held my iPad over my knee to show her. I was lying on my bed, my crutches propped up against the wall next to me. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not so bad now.” I waggled the pack of pills the hospital had given me. “Thanks to these.”

  “How did you do it again?” Amy asked. “You didn’t get a chance to say much earlier.”

  “Meh,” I said nonchalantly. “Just mistimed a step backward and whoomph! Bye-bye knee.”

  Amy pulled a face. “So no fencing for you for a bit, then?” she asked, peering at the screen.

  “Guess not,” I said, disappointment stabbing at me.

  “You want me to come and kiss it better?” Amy raised her eyebrow.

  An image of Eden bending over me in the hospital and rubbing my knee floated into my head, making the skin on my face feel warm. I tried to shake the image from my head.

  “When are you coming down here?” I gazed at my screen, ignoring Amy’s comment. “I miss you, Ames.”