Opening Story - 003

I missed my bus due to holding a different one for a stranger. It makes me sigh heavily. I guess that I'll be walking back after all.

After the girl thanked me, and the bus driver hurried her onboard, I began to make my walk home. This late, it's so cold. It feels like I'm walking through Antarctica. It's about a thirty-minute walk back from outside the mall. I keep my hands in my pockets, but I can still feel that my fingers are starting to go numb from the cold. My breath doesn't feel any warmer than the outside air, it must start freezing as soon as it passes by my lips. I wish I was wearing more layers. Not that I have more layers to wear.

I'm about halfway back now. I haven't seen a single person since I left the main road. Even a city like this feels like a ghost town at this time. Maybe in the city centre, it's more alive, but somehow, I don't think so. Cities like this are no longer the places they were when my father was growing up. People have been leaving Christchurch for bigger, and more globally integrated cities to the north. My father's birthplace is certainly not what it once was.

I try to keep my mind distracted, so that I'm focused on other things, and not how little I can feel my toes. It's more difficult than I thought it would be, and not just because it's so cold. There isn't much I want to remember from more than a couple of weeks ago. I guess I'll think about what I want to do from now on instead.

I have a job now, but I'm only working part time. I'm barely getting enough money to pay rent, so I'll probably have to get a second job if I want to be able to eat more than once a day. Getting a second job would probably be a good idea even if that weren't the case. How little I have to do each day is driving me crazy. I'm getting quite lazy as well – spending the whole day just lazing around doing nothing.

I would like to go back to school as well, if that were possible, but I get the feeling that that might be quite difficult. It would be pretty hard to enrol in a high school without proper identification, and I can't use my real name if I don't want to be found.

No, school's probably impossible. Once I get a second job, however, I won't be so bored, and I'll have a bit more money to spare.

I jump a little in shock as I turn around the street corner. There's a group of four people, three male, one female, speaking quite loudly. I must've gotten quite absorbed in my thoughts to have not noticed them till now. They were just around the corner from me, and speaking loudly so you would've thought that I'd have heard them. I start walking again, intending to go past them. As I do, however, I notice that something isn't quite right. The girl is unnaturally quiet, and it almost seems like the others are pressuring her. I look in their direction as I walk past, slowing down a little so that I can see the girl's face.

She looks exasperated, desperate. Her eyes meet mine for a moment, and the look in her eyes is undoubtedly a plea for help. I almost open my mouth to say something, when one of the guys speaks to me.

"Is there a problem, friend?"

I pause, stopping myself from saying anything. He's taller, bigger, and clearly stronger than me, I'm sure any bystander would attest to. He's not the only one either. One of the other two is also well over six foot. They all look older than me as well, though the streetlights aren't great so it's hard to tell. University students at a guess.

Having them looking down, bearing down on me, I can't help but say, "no, there's no problem."

I continue walking, but I'm not even ten paces away when an overwhelming sense of guilt comes over me. Who am I? I feel sick with myself. At how weak of a person I'm being. When I came to Christchurch, I said that I was going to be kind and be honest. That those ideals were the way I was going to live my life from now on. And yet at this moment, I can't even be honest with myself? What was the point of leaving Wellington if I don't change at all? If I don't change, then there was no meaning to leaving that life behind. If I don't change, then all I've done is run away.

Being kind. Being honest. It sounds easier than it is in practice. I think I'm starting to realise that. Maybe if I'd realised something that obvious sooner, I wouldn't have ever left Wellington.

I turn around, and begin making my way back toward the group of four.

The guy who spoke to me first, is the same one who spots me coming back.

"Keep walking the other way, kid. Don't come back."

"I just want to ask something, then I'll be on my way," I say with a smile, trying not to show how scared or nervous I am.

"What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Huh?"

"I'm asking her. Not you."

The other two look over their shoulders at the girl, who I can barely see past the muscular giants in front of her. In contrast to them, she seems about my age, perhaps younger considering how short she is. Actually, I'm pretty sure she is younger. Her face seems… innocent.

She also looks very frightened.

"She's fine."

"Like I said, I'm not asking you."

The girl looks up, her eyes darting between the faces staring up at her. And finally, she sets her gaze in my direction.

"I'm fine," she says with what is an anything but convincing tone on her tongue, and an overexaggerated smile plastering her face.

I keep standing there for a time, feeling somewhat deflated. What kind of person do you have to be to pretend your fine in a situation like this? The conclusion I come to, is that they must have some hold over her. I want to say that I think I've just misjudged the situation, but that's not the case. Without a doubt, that isn't the case.

I'm not going to run away this time.

I try to muster my courage and the little strength I have, as I raise my fists up in front of my face.