***
‘Wait here,’ Ashley said. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’
Finn watched her walk out of his apartment. He could feel the charge through his body, the unspent energy, the involuntary tensing of his muscles. The constant threat hanging over his head that everything could fall apart at any minute.
Ashley returned with a bottle of water, which she placed on the coffee table in front of Finn. She sat and held up a small pill between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Take this.’
‘What is it?’
‘A benzo.’
‘A what?’
‘It’s a relaxant. Helps calm you down.’
‘Why do you have it?’
‘Don’t worry about that. Just take it. Trust me.’
Did Finn trust her? She hadn’t done anything so far to make him doubt her. And he trusted Kelly. She’d given him a drug that wasn’t prescribed to him and that hadn’t killed him. She’d also turned her back on him, so Ashley was the only one left who actually wanted to help.
But it would be wrong to take this drug. It was wrong to break the rules. Could Finn break the rules if it would lift this unbearable weight, even just for a little while?
Why not? Everybody else did. And they thrived. While Finn died slowly every day.
‘Maybe I should go to a doctor and get them to prescribe it to me?’
‘They won’t,’ Ashley said. ‘Not for anxiety, anyway. They’ll make you see a psychologist first. Get a mental health assessment. That could take weeks and you’ll only end up here anyway. If that’s what you want to do, fine. Go through the process. But why wouldn’t you help yourself now if you could?’
She was probably right. Finn had investigated the idea of a psychologist a few years ago at Kelly’s urging, but he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to bare his soul to a complete stranger. He knew they’d want to talk about his dad and his mum, and that would be a betrayal of them both.We don’t talk about our family business outside the family, his mother had told him. And Finn knew that extended to paid professionals, even if they were obliged to keep patients’ details confidential. Once the words were spoken, there was no way to take them back – the knife in his parents’ back could never be removed.
‘I don’t want to see a psychologist,’ Finn said.
‘Then, please, Finn, take it. I can’t stand to see you hurting like this.’
Finn picked up the small pill in one hand and the glass of water in the other. His heart was pounding. This was wrong, but he’d reached the end of his endurance. Driving Kelly away had drained the final reserves of his strength and resistance. He had to do this. He couldn’t end up like his dad.
He swallowed the pill.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Finn followed his classmates down the stairs and out into the yard. The girls congregated in groups around the trees and the boys ran to the cricket pitch on the small school oval. He walked through the crowds of little kids squealing and chasing each other, swinging on monkey bars and flying down slides. He stood at the edge of the grass and watched the boys set up. Two batters, one set of stumps, half-a-dozen in the field. Pretty much the same lunchtime routine as his old school.
That kid who said Finn had a girl’s name, Oliver, was bowling. He marked out his run up, charged in and bowled a quick ball that beat the batsman and went through to the keeper. ‘Ooooh,’ Oliver cried. ‘You had no idea about that one!’
Finn sensed somebody beside him. He looked down at the girl from his class with the dark, curly hair. She was staring out at the pitch as well.
‘You like cricket?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t. World’s most boring game.’
‘Right.’
She looked up at him. ‘Are you a good actor?’
Finn was so surprised by the randomness of the question that he was momentarily speechless.
