“It seems to me as if you may have a bee in your bonnet, Brenden,” said Ms Halford, as much to distract herself from the thought of the pain suffered by the boy as anything else.
“Well, Miss, you know,” replied Brenden, whose mood had improved somewhat by being distracted by the relief he felt about the shirt, “it’s just the same thing that everyone talks about. It’s just that, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it as well. How am I going to go back to school? If I can’t go back to my mum, then where do I go? Also, Adam says that it’s good for us all to stay together and that the living just don’t get us, meaning things won’t be good for me out there anyway. It all seems like, well. Does it mean I have to go to the Tunnels?”
A spike of rage passed through Ms Halford as it appeared to her as if all her fears about this boy being in Adam’s class were being realised. Nevertheless, she maintained her calm and when she replied to the boy, she tried to ensure that her feelings were not exposed in her words.
“Brenden, all we can try to do here at the school is inform you as best we can, from our own experiences, on how to move ahead in your new life. It is not for any one of us teachers to decide for you what you will do; my advice would be that you should listen to as many opinions as you can before you choose one path rather than another.”
Ms Halford paused as she felt that she was about to say something that would make it evidently clear she was not only talking about Adam but that she might say something that could undermine the boy’s respect in his teacher: something that she truly felt she had no right to do, even if she did disagree with what she believed the man to be doing. However, she was aware that she could not wait too long as in that moment she had the boy’s interest and an opportunity to perhaps provide a counterbalance to Adam’s arguments.
“Brenden, look,” she started, hesitantly, “as I said, I do not think that it is my place to tell you what to do. I will just give you my advice. And this is it: I think you need to find out for yourself what is best for you and, as is often true in life, only you can discover what this may be. Of course, this is no easy task, but that does not mean it is not worth striving for. I would say this might mean that before you decide whether or not to enter the Tunnels, you should at least venture out into the world and see if you can find a place within it. Still, I want you to see that I am making it quite clear that this is just my advice and that you should draw your own conclusions on what actions you should take in light of it.”
The first look Brenden gave Ms Halford following these words seemed to be one of confusion. But, a different expression slowly emerged that made it quite clear that the boy had made up his mind on something.
“Thanks, Miss. Thanks”, said Brenden, before quickly collecting his cup from the table and abruptly leaving the room.
***
The faint sound of buzzing brought Amanda out of her dreamless sleep, a sound she half-recognized in her drowsy state to be the noise of a message arriving on her phone. Annoyed at having been woken up, but still settled and comfortable enough to know that if she just relaxed she could still fall back into her slumber, she rearranged herself on the slightly too soft bed and attempted to drift off. However, just as her mind was moving away from the sensation of the world around her, her phone buzzed again, louder this time, and brought her right back.
With the second noise came the image of the foolish boy who had confronted her earlier in the morning, with his jeans heading towards his ankles as he sprawled out on the floor. This caused her to let out an unexpected laugh and wake herself all the more. Indeed, as soon as her mind registered the strangeness of hearing Amanda’s laugh in the otherwise silent room, it concluded that the time had come to get back to business and to start pestering the young vampire with worries about the progress she had made on her case as well as what she could report back to deputy Chester.
“Crap,” she muttered to herself, determining it was not worth bothering to fight against the tide but better to get up and distract herself by looking at whatever message she had received. Amanda expected the message just to be further nothings from the social network sites that she had signed up to replace her old ones, something she had been forced to do when a member of her family had memorialised her accounts, locking her out. However, when she lit her phone up, she discovered that the messages were actually from the deputy; what was more, the man had already tried to call her several times while she had been asleep. She opened her inbox with the hope that the deputy had just decided to call and send messages to find out how she was doing with the case and that the reason that he had contacted her in the early hours of the morning was due to the man having no sense of time. However, the two short emails - both of which were exactly the same - seemed to suggest otherwise as they read: Urgent. Call a.s.a.p. B, M.
Reluctantly, Amanda brought up the deputy’s contact information on screen, pressed the call button and,
