Whenever she passes me in the corridors, she stays silent. Her gaze is always beyond me. If I force her to look at me, place myself in front of her, she looks through me. I’m transparent as fucking air.
Fuck, if I don’t exist to her.
Hate is leagues above not existing. Hate means she feels some thing. Means I’m not nothing.
I haven’t been inside her for over three weeks. Twenty-one days that feel like a hundred-year sentence.
Amy won’t be as easy to manipulate like other people. That means I need to dial it up, move on to the next level.
‘Hurry up,’ I shout at Max. He’s trailing down the pebble path.
He stands next to me. Max is no taller than my waist. He wears a bright green coat and my black sunglasses. They’re too big for his head, but he pulls the look off.
‘The road to Hell is paved with flowers,’ I tell him. Max thinks about that, nodding. He’s figuring what the hell I mean. I don’t say, ‘I want to remind myself of who I really am.’
The flowers are easy — tiny yellow ones and fat pink ones, a bundle small enough for a kid's hand. I stuff them into Max’s teeny, tiny ones. He takes the flowers, sniffs them with a smile.
‘What do you want me to do again?’ he says.
‘Need you to give these flowers to Amy.’
‘Pretty. They smell nice.’
Max looks kinda hopeful, like he thinks something nice might happen to him, soon. Makes me wonder if Amy ever looked like that. She looks lost, most of the time. Broken. If Amy ever did look hopeful, she sure didn't by the time I came back.
‘Come on, Max.’
I like to imagine Amy’s spine going stiff when she sees me walking with Max, flowers in hand.
We walk back into the estate, and up the main staircase. Max’s white trainers pad on creaky wooden floorboards. I know already how much it's going to jar Amy. How the kid’s pink skin and green coat and raggedy bundle of flowers stand out in the greyness of the building, where everything is soulless and dull. The boy and those flowers almost hurt my eyes, they're so full of life.
Nothing like me.
‘I think you need to water these flowers,’ Max says.
His hand is damp and warm in mine as I look the flowers over. They look the worst for the trip, ripped up by their roots by some big-handed delinquent.
‘Just needs a little sunshine,’ I say.
At Amy’s door, I rap my fist three times with a loud bang. I hear her dainty footsteps on the other side. When a bit of light spills out, I push the door wide open. Her eyes are like planets when I take the kid inside.
I smell cookie dough and lavender. And dead flowers.
‘Amy,’ I say. ‘I brought you a present.’
Amy’s hair is drawn tight to her head and the green fabric of her top seems to bind her limbs, like she's being eaten alive by a snake. She doesn’t have any lip gloss on or perfume and she’s pale like a ghost. She’s all cold indifference, a girl who's forgotten what life looks like.
‘Max,’ I say. ‘You know the drill. Give Amy the flowers.’
I let go of Max’s hand. He follows my instructions to the T. He offers Amy the bundle of wild flowers. Amy doesn’t understand why I’ve come here with Max. It just about destroys her.
‘I’m super duper happy you and Shepherd are boyfriend and girlfriend, Mamy,’ Max says. ‘Oh! Shepherd said we can all go out to the park. Like a real family.’
Amy jerks her head up at me. ‘Sh-Shepherd?’
I enjoy being the bad guy. It’s a lot easier to get people to hate you than to love you.
Crossing my arms, I tell Max, ‘Yeah, sure. Can’t wait, buddy. Amy can push us on the swings.’
She says, ‘Shepherd, please don’t . . . ’
‘Go on, Amy. Or you wanna tell Max you’re not coming to the park with us because you don’t want to?’
I watch Amy flinch away. She’s trying to escape this whole scene I’ve set up.
I look at her. It's better than I expected. I thought it would be good, but the way Amy falls apart is maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It starts in her shoulders, where she seems to go weak, and at last, when her hand closes over the kid’s, when she takes the flowers, the weakness goes to her eyes.
Oh, all her tricks are gone now. She's afraid and real and sad and crying into a pile of flowers that are already dying.
Amy looks at Max, and then at me. She can't decide what to say or do. That kind of feeling makes me want to destroy things. But Amy doesn't want to destroy anything. She wants to save Max, protect him from the big bad monster. That is what tears at her. Amy’s wondering where the danger is and I smell fear rolling off her in waves — such intense fear that she will do or say the wrong thing. She can't guess what I’m up to. She's wondering if I plan to give her a demonstration of what kind of monster I really could be. Remind her I have a fuck for a heart.
The flowers fall out of Amy’s delicate hands and onto the floor. She says to the kid, ‘Thank you, Max. You mind if you leave me and Shepherd alone? We’ve got some important adult matters to discuss. Boring stuff. Why don’t you go back to your mum? I’m sure she’s missing you.’
‘Okay, Mamy.’ Max trots out of Amy’s room, saying, ‘Smell you laters,’ with a skip in his step.
‘You wouldn’t use a kid? Surely?’ Amy whispers, her words hot as lava.
