Everyone has a moment they can trace everything back to.
Mine was a frosty November morning.
The air was crisp, and the birds harmonised peacefully above me. I arrived late to school, which was ironic, considering my mother dropped me off at seven-fifty sharp every day. She worked at my school too, as the attendance secretary; everyone loved her. After the bell rang, I sat in form with my two close friends, Hazel and Sam, where I got berated for my skirt length, as usual. Nothing about that morning seemed particularly memorable. I just didn’t know yet that I would spend years remembering it.
Everything felt normal that day—until break time began.
Impatiently, I stood in the canteen queue, waiting to pick up something that would fill my stomach after two gruelling hours of sociology. I usually enjoyed the lesson, but my teacher had been especially strict that day; I had been sent out for eating chocolate without permission. This was why I was relying on the canteen food to fill the hole in my stomach. What I didn’t know was how big a hole the day was going to leave.
I picked up a breakfast wrap. I remembered those being my holy grail in Year Seven, with their yellow, stripy packaging resembling a little wrapped parcel you might receive on Christmas morning. But this time, it was coated in dull brown paper—a parcel you wouldn’t want to receive. Granted, I chose it anyway, eagerly tearing at the wrapping to get to the goods. When I bit into it, a volcano of snotty egg erupted into my mouth, leaving a thick coating of lava down my throat.
Accepting my fate, I swallowed, but threw the remains in the bin. I was tempted to go back and ask for a refund, but the queue was longer than my attention span, so I walked away in a huff.
My next period was free, and everything felt too quiet, so I decided to go for a walk.
“We should probably revise,” Hazel protested.
She was probably right. She usually was about most things—or, at least, she made us believe she was. Hazel had been my best friend since the start of secondary school, so I had learnt to accept her faults. But the older I got, the more I began to notice the cracks forming between us.
“Yeah, but we can revise tomorrow and the day after,” I said, already beginning to feel agitated. “We’re only in Year Twelve. We have our whole lives ahead of us to take things seriously.”
My mindset that year had been careless. From Year Seven to Year Eleven, I had valued school far too much. I had never stepped out of line or got myself into trouble. I felt like I had wasted the ‘fun’ years of school being too uptight, so that year, I wanted a change. Usually, I didn’t cope well with change, but this time, I was in control of it. Or at least, that was what I told myself. Hazel raised an eyebrow and gave me that I’m heavily judging you right now look, so I rolled my eyes.
“Well, I’m going to the rec. Come or don’t, but I guarantee I’ll have more fun.”
“Fine!” she said unwillingly, dragging herself towards me as if I had just forced her to commit a crime.
The rec was a park in our hometown—a basic children’s playground tucked beside a nursery. In reality, it was the local spot for bad decisions and worse company. I had always loved it. As a child, I had learnt to ride my bike along its winding paths and spent countless afternoons there, running around until my knees were grazed and my clothes were covered in grass.
As I got older, though, it became something else entirely: a place to escape, a place to forget, and eventually, a place that captured some of my darkest moments. I had once thought pain was falling over and grazing your knee. A simple plaster could cover my wounds back then.
Not this time.
We walked down the alleyway, with the sun peeking innocently through the trees and creating dark shadows that seemed to deceive the beauty around us. The gate swung open, and blocks of flats towered above us. Women in their pyjamas hung out their washing, surrounded by their feral dogs and children who ran around cheerfully on the dead patches of land. Nothing looked particularly dangerous. That was the thing about the rec.
“Cut through this way,” I said, pointing.
Hazel nodded and sped ahead until we reached the shack where most people smoked or fooled around. I pulled out my vape and took a puff, closing my harsh, grey eyes as I took in the moment. Hazel didn’t approve of vaping. Her cousin was a drug addict, so she often distanced herself from me whenever I had the occasional puff. She had already walked off and perched herself on the tiny roundabout, so I took that as my cue to put away my artificial burst of energy and indulge in something more meaningful.
I spun us both round and round until all we could see was a blur of sunlight, playground equipment and each other. Eventually, Hazel stopped it with a sudden halt and challenged me to walk in a straight line without getting dizzy. Anything straight had never exactly been my speciality. I accepted her challenge and stumbled into the distance like a drunken wave.
“I dare you to try and fit in the kids’ swing,” Hazel sniggered mischievously.
One thing to know about me was that I struggled with temptation. Adrenaline was what I craved. More than anything, I loved the buzz it gave me, the feeling that for a few seconds I was completely in control. I told myself it was a choice. Looking back, I think I had simply found something else to control me.
“Dare accepted,” I said mischievously, a small grin spreading across my face.
Somehow, I managed to squeeze my limbs into the metal contraption, like a contortionist bending themselves into impossible shapes just to please a crowd. Hazel pointed and laughed at me, and I laughed too. For a second, it felt like I was the monkey at the circus, being laughed at rather than laughed with. But I didn’t care. Hazel thought I was funny, and most people used to think so too.
Trying to get out of the swing was certainly not funny by any means. We nearly had to ring the fire brigade to release me. I couldn’t deal with the shame, so I used every last bit of strength in me to free myself from the swing’s unforgiving grip. Once I was finally stationary, I heard my phone ring, and my stomach dropped. After the breakfast wrap from earlier, my insides were already sore, but now it felt as though they had been tied into a tight knot. There were three potential suspects who could have been calling my phone: a salesman, my mother questioning my absence, or my dad. Just kidding. It would never be my dad.
“Hello?” I said hesitantly to the unknown number.
“Hi, this is Melanie from the main office. Can you come down, please? I have some news regarding your stepdad.”
“My stepdad?” I said, utterly baffled.
Out of all the things the woman could have said, I would never have guessed Mike would be involved. My stepdad, Mike, was unproblematic, reserved and usually irrelevant to anything involving my school life.
“Just get here as soon as you can, please,” Melanie said calmly.
Too calmly.
With that, Hazel and I took off back towards school, me overtaking her this time. A thousand possibilities went through my head.
Is he okay? Is he dead? What has he done? Where is my mum? Why hadn’t she called me herself?
Hazel hurried off to her next lesson as I abruptly rushed into the main office. Melanie was standing beside Mum’s desk. Two teachers hovered nearby, pretending not to stare.
“Where’s my mum?” I asked nervously, my heart beating so hard it felt as though it might burst through my blazer.
“I’ve got her on the phone now, love. She’ll explain it all.”
“What’s happened?” I said forcefully, not wanting to pick up the phone.
Melanie gestured towards it as though she were about to place a live grenade in my hand.
“Mum, what’s wrong?”
I cut straight to the point.
“Try not to panic, Roxanne...” she said apprehensively, calling me by my full name.
That was never a good sign.
“It’s Mike... He’s got into a bad crash on the motorway, and I don’t know if he’s going to be okay...”
Everything around me blurred. The words she was saying seemed to float around the room, detached from any meaning. I couldn’t process them. I didn’t want to. Tears pricked my eyes, like hundreds of tiny needles piercing my skin.
“But he’ll be okay, right?” I choked through my tears.
“I’m on my way to the hospital now. I’ll keep you updated, I promise. You can stay at school or go home. I just want you to be safe.”
I sat in silence as the phone emitted a constant beep after Mum hung up.
It sounded like a flat line.
Roxanne, stop thinking the worst, I told myself. But before I even had a chance to think, I had a parade of teachers surrounding me. One hugged me as I sobbed into her shoulder like a human handkerchief. Another offered to drive me home or get me some lunch. I was so flustered that I couldn’t say anything at all. So I just sat in Mum’s office chair, taking back every mean word I had ever said to Mike, every resentment, every bad memory. I prayed to God—even though I didn’t always believe there was one—that Mike would pull through. The thought of going home made me feel as though it would confirm that the worst had happened, so I stayed at school and tried to get through the last lesson of the day.
I just wanted everything to feel normal.
I didn’t care about adrenaline anymore.
I didn’t want to feel anything at all.
“We have English with Miss Hoarsen now,” Sam said gently.
“What?” I was completely lost in thought.
“English with Miss Hoarsen. The Great Gatsby—remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I said quickly, trying to sound as with it as I could.
I loved The Great Gatsby. It was my favourite book we had read in English so far. I didn’t think my teacher liked me very much, though. I had joined the subject late because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and ever since I joined her class, she had always looked down on me in a way I couldn’t explain. I was usually a good judge of character, but to this day, I never understood Miss Hoarsen. Even when I passed my English A-Level and got an A, all she said to me was, “You knew you’d get it,” which was far from the truth.
I sat down in my seat, ready to get caught up in someone else’s imaginary life, or so I thought. As Miss Hoarsen read the pages aloud, the words sounded strangely familiar.
“He ran over Myrtle as you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car,” Miss Hoarsen read.
“So he’s dead?” I said aloud without thinking.
“Yes, Rox, the car crashed into her,” Sam said quietly.
Great. I had stayed in school to try and block out the fact that my stepdad had just been in a serious car accident, and now the denouement of my favourite book was telling a story of the same misfortune. I swiftly picked up my bags and walked out of the room without saying a word, aimlessly drifting down the corridors, just like Nick described in the book. He said he was “within and without”, attached to the world around him yet somehow detached from his own life. That was how I felt that day.
“Shall I check on her?” I heard Sam say in the distance.
“No, leave her. She’ll be fine,” Miss Hoarsen said callously.
I never received empathy from Miss Hoarsen, not once in the two years I had her. Even though other teachers cared about me, I didn’t want it. I craved it from Miss Hoarsen because I knew I would never get it. My mind felt like Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the American Dream, always reaching for something unattainable. I had always found a way to make myself unfulfilled, setting goals that were impossible to reach. I realise that now. Being alone in my current headspace wasn’t my brightest idea, so I walked to the top floor to find Hazel’s geography lesson. I stood behind the door, peeking my head through the small window, desperately waiting for her to make eye contact. Once she looked over, I gestured for her to come outside, and she quickly made up an excuse to her teacher before joining me.
I was thankful for Hazel in that moment. She didn’t ask questions. She just followed me, distracting me by taking us to the local café, where the men would compliment us and make us feel like prized trophies. Normally, I would have laughed along with her. That day, I barely noticed them. We sat down and ordered a smoothie and a ciabatta. She always got chicken and cheese; I got the same, but with tomatoes too. That was about as far as I went when it came to pretending I had a healthy diet.
She ate hers slowly, savouring every mouthful, while I just stared at mine like it had the plague. The waiter gave me a takeaway box, and I put it in my bag, knowing I probably wouldn’t eat it later. Hazel waited with me at the bus stop, and once I got on and was left alone with my thoughts, it felt as though the journey was never going to end. I was tempted to stay on the bus and let it loop around until I could name every stop, but eventually, I sheepishly pressed the buzzer and walked down my road.
As I rattled through the door, the silence of the empty house screamed louder in my head than any noise I had ever heard before. I sat cross-legged on the sofa, rocking back and forth like a baby being rocked to sleep. Time moved painfully slowly. Every tick of the clock seemed to remind me that Mum still wasn’t home.
When was she going to come home?
At quarter to four, I heard the clink of keys rattling in the door. I jumped up like an excitable puppy.
“He’s alive, Roxy. He’s okay.” Mum smiled, and I could have cried all over again.
“Thank fuck,” I breathed, throwing myself into her arms with a sigh of relief.
That day taught me that time was precious. That there was no point wasting it on regrets, grudges or the things I was too afraid to say. For a while, I thought that was the lesson I was meant to learn.
I didn’t know I’d have to learn it all over again.
Only next time, there wouldn’t be a happy ending.