The Silent Deceivers

Chapter 12

Gash

I’ve skipped school ever since that day. I couldn’t face it and I knew wouldn’t be able handle it. I just wanted to disappear, for the floor to open up and swallow me, there and then. The most important thing I had to do was try and get my life back to normal. Well as normal as it could be without parents and no place to call home.  Lisa and Andy respected my decision not to go back to school and said that I could return when I was ready. Even if that was after the summer holidays.

Every day of the week that followed I sat in the bay window seat at Oakley watching the others skip of happily down the drive to school. Then I would wait for the care workers to stop fussing and leave me alone. I ended up getting frustrated because they kept on suffocating me. I went stomping off up the stairs, slammed my bedroom door and plugged in my headphones. I would stay at home all day, keeping myself busy by writing, dancing (very badly) and cooking in the kitchen. Lisa suggested it, I was allowed to use any ingredients I liked to make pudding for after the evening meal. I’d wait all day until I heard the other kids kicking open the front door and walking in chatting nineteen to the dozen. I would sneak out the back door and into the woods at the end of the garden. It was the same routine every day.

I already knew that Aden and his gang lived in the woods when they weren’t crashing at Oakley but other than that I hadn’t really explored the woods that lived at the back of Oakley. The first time I escaped to the woods I walked for ages, not sticking to the paths. I walked through acres of land, letting time tick away and by the time I turned around to head back it was getting dark. I hadn’t bothered to bring a torch so I had to endure a nice three mile jog back to Oakley. I jogged the final steps through the back door and collapsed at the table.

I sneaked out to the woods every day at around three pm, it was very therapeutic. I even remembered to take a torch the third time I went, which saved me the mile jog. As I walked in for the back door on the second night I was met with questions form Lisa. I told her I was just clearing my mind and she left me to it but before she went; she told me that were two gangs Metallic, Gash and they were both situated in the woods and that I should be careful if I’m out there late at night. I don’t think she knew that Aden and Roxy were involved with the gangs but it wasn’t my place to say.

A week later I still continued to spend my evenings in the woods. I said goodbye to Lisa as I shrugged on my leather jacket and walked past her vegetable patch. I walked through the bushes keeping out of the nettles. I was getting further and further away from Oakley, the care workers, the police and the mask of death that had been covering me for the past month.

I headed towards my place of comfort. I had a found a clearing about two miles from the boarder that stood between Oakley and the wood on my second day. To enter the clearing you had to fight your way through thorns and nettles and duck under branches. It was getting easier the more times I went. The clearing was filled with cherry blossoms and tall thriving green trees. A stone wall towered high on the far side, it curves around the clearing but gradually crumbles to stones. The floor was covered in short managed green grass. A small stream trickled down the right side and I had dug a hole in the middle for a camp fire. I had buried a steel box that I had found in the shed at Oakley underneath a rock. It contained, two boxes of matches, spare batteries, another torch, mobile phone and some loose change. There was a swing hanging from an oak tree near the entrance. The clearing was in the middle of nowhere and its location was hidden, I reminded me of the Secret Garden. I spent nearly every evening there, just clearing my head and forgetting everything. Just concentrating on being surrounded by nature.