SORROW WOODS, page 25
She holds her hands up and walks slowly towards me. “I’m here to say sorry, and you know
how I hate saying sorry.”
Zak frowns at me.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “You were totally out of line back there.”
She huffs and sits down next to me, not even acknowledging my brother. “First of all, I don’t
think you can blame me for being annoyed when I found out that you went on a cute little date with Serena without telling me.”
“It wasn’t a date,” I say.
“It sounded like one.”
“It wasn’t,” I repeat.
“Whatever,” she mumbles, “and secondly, I realise how stupid I was to even think that you
might have been interested in her. All the papers make out like she’s this beautiful princess that’s been hidden away all this time, but really she’s just a girl who doesn’t wear make-up and needs a haircut. I know I don’t need to feel threatened by her.”
Zak raises his eyebrows in a mocking sort of way.
You really should feel threatened by her, I think. Aloud I say, “You don’t need to be a bitch
about her, Anastasia.”
“I know,” she says. “And I know you’d never pick anyone like her over me. She’s just
so…wild.”
And fun, intelligent, happy, and carefree, I think. She’s not wild; she’s so much more than
that.
Zak clears his throat. “What did you do?”
Anastasia finally turns and nods at my brother. “Oh, hello Zak.”
He smirks. “Anastasia.”
“I’ll tell you what happened on their little date,” she says. “He took her to the fucking zoo.”
Zak looks at me and winks. “The zoo, eh? Nice. I like taking girls to the zoo on a date.”
“It wasn’t a date,” I say again.
“What’s so special about the zoo?” she asks.
“Oh, you know,” he says, “plenty of walking and holdings hands. There’s a meal in the
middle of the day and you’ll most likely end up seeing a big penis if you watch the rhinos for long enough.”
I snort, thinking about the elephant that I saw. I had to quickly turn Serena around so she
wouldn’t see it and even after she asked me for the tenth time what I was hiding from her, I couldn’t tell her.
“You’re sick,” she says to my brother, wrinkling her face up.
He holds his hands up. “You asked why I take girls there and I told you. It’s usually fun and
girls like fun guys.”
“Well, he’s my guy and only I can have fun with him.”
I roll my eyes at Zak.
“What day did you take her to the zoo anyway?” he asks me, feigning innocence.
Anastasia spins her head around and narrows her eyes at me. “Yes, Kaiden. What day did
you take another girl on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date,” I repeat. “I went to the zoo with Serena - as friends - on Monday.”
“Monday?” asks Zak.
I glare at him.
Anastasia snaps her head back around to face Zak. “What’s so special about Monday?”
“Oh,” he says, a smile playing out over his face, “nothing, except he didn’t get home until
midnight on Monday.”
“Midnight!?” she shrieks. “The zoo doesn’t stay open that late, so what the fuck were you
doing with her until midnight?”
“Who says I was with her the whole time?” I ask defensively.
“Were you?” she spits. “What did you do after the zoo, Kaiden? And don’t lie to me.”
“Nothing,” I mumble. “Can we just drop this now?”
“Why didn’t you get in until midnight?” she demands.
She’s really starting to get on my nerves. If she doesn’t see Serena as a threat, then why is
she carrying on about it so much? “Forget it,” I snap.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Where. Were. You?“
I huff and shake my head. If she wants it, then she can have it. “I went for some dinner.”
She blanches, but composes herself so quickly I can’t be sure I really saw it.
“With her?” she growls.
I glare at Zak over her head, but he just smirks. He’s enjoying this.
“Yes,” I huff, “I took her out to the diner on the beach and we had dinner together.”
“That closes at ten. Even if you were there until closing, why didn’t you come back home for
another two hours?”
I’ve lost. I know they’ve cornered me, and right now I’m not sure who I’m more annoyed
with. I hate the fact that I feel like I can’t lie. I’m blaming Serena for my new-found honesty.
“Swimming.”
She blinks. “What?”
“We went swimming.”
She frowns. “Where?”
“In the sea.”
She smirks, but I’m not sure why. “Together?”
“Yes,” I tell her, not breaking eye contact.
“Were you naked?”
I love how stupid she is sometimes. “No Anastasia, I was not naked.”
I don’t use the opportunity to be completely open and honest with her, like Serena tells me I
should be. I don’t tell her that Serena was stark naked. I also don’t tell her that I’ve often thought about Serena and her naked body whilst showering or lying in bed. Anastasia doesn’t need to know
that I can still feel Serena’s firm breasts pressing into my back if I think about it hard enough.
She shakes her head and pinches the skin in between her eyes with her fake nails. “I can’t
believe this, Kaiden. You’re a shit all of the time, so why are you suddenly acting like a nice guy for her?”
I shrug my shoulders again. “I’m not acting. We just have fun together.”
“Why don’t you ever ask me to go swimming?” she asks sounding annoyed.
“Because you’d drown.” Has she really forgotten that she can’t swim?
“That’s irrelevant,” she snaps. “You know what I mean. You never take me anywhere like
that.”
“That’s because you’re only interested in your nails,” I tell her, “or how your hair would look
after doing something.”
“That’s not true,” she shrieks, appearing shocked.
“It is, Anastasia,” adds Zak, “even I know what you’re like, and I’ve only met you three
times.”
Her nostrils flare before she pushes back her chair. “I’m not having sex with you today, by
the way.”
I didn’t want to have sex with her anyway.
Zak laughs. “Using sex as a weapon? Classy.”
“Shut it,” she spits at him. “What would you know?”
“I know everything,” he says, “and I know that you’re a complete bitch. Now get out of our
house.”
She blinks. “You can’t speak to me like that.”
“Oh I can,” he says, “and I have, so tell me why you and your fake hair are still here?”
She hesitates and looks over at me to defend her, but I’m too busy looking at Zak with my
mouth wide open to even think about her and whatever it is she might be thinking.
“I’ll see you at school on Monday then?” she sighs, sounding defeated.
I nod but don’t look at her. I hear her heels click down the tiled hallway and then the front
door slams shut.
“Finally,” he says.
I shake my head. “What was all that about?”
He shrugs. “She’s a bitch. You think she is. I think she is. Mom and Dad think she is too.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get why you’ve acted as if you’re personally offended by her.”
He leans forward and rubs his temples. He used to do that all the time when he was younger
and worried about something. “She came on to me.”
“What?” I ask, shocked. “When?”
He sighs. “The last time she stopped over. She accidentally stumbled into the bathroom
when I was in the shower and then asked me if I’d like for her to join me.”
I get up and put my empty plate into the dishwasher. I don’t doubt that he’s telling the
truth, but why would Anastasia do that with my own brother?
“What did you say to her?” I ask.
“I told her she was a little tramp and even if she didn’t repulse me, I would still say no
because she’s my brother’s girlfriend.”
I think about the last girlfriend Zak had. She was this dainty little English girl, who constantly walked around in high heels and a pair of knickers. If she had asked me if she could join me in the shower, I wouldn’t have thought twice about saying yes. Maybe that’s why Zak has always been the
nicer guy out of the two of us.
“You should have told me,” I say.
“Perhaps, but I’m telling you now.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Seriously though, Kai, get rid of her. I know you’re the ‘bad boy’ of the family. I know you
like a challenge and you like them a bit rough and naughty in the bedroom, but you don’t need
someone like her and I don’t think you want someone like that anymore. Not when you’ve let Serena and her innocence get under your skin.”
“She’s not under my skin,” I say defensively.
He laughs. “Alright then, you’ve let her get into your heart.”
I shake my head. “I haven’t got a heart.”
“Really? Because what would you have said if I had just told you that I’d gone over to
Serena’s house, caught her in the shower and invited myself to join her?”
The image of smacking him in the face swarms to the forefront of my vision.
“Exactly,” he says, smirking. “You would have killed me, but you didn’t so much as bat an
eyelid about Anastasia saying it to me.”
I shrug. “It’s different.”
“It shouldn’t be. It should be the other way around.”
Serena
On Monday night, Bethany rang me to tell me that Kaiden had asked her if she would bring me with
her to the party at his house. As annoyed as I was with him, and even though I’d already told him that I didn’t want to go, I’ve still found myself traipsing around the mall behind Bethany today. It’s Wednesday, so I have no idea why she isn’t at school. Kaiden spends a lot of time not at school and I wonder if Bethany does the same.
I stare at her red hair as she darts into another shop. We must have been in about ten shops
by now, and she still hasn’t found a dress that she likes. I found my light-purple wrap dress in the first shop we went into, and then a pair of silver stilettos, that made me feel like I would topple over, in the second shop. I was pretty much done as far as I was concerned, but Bethany just continued to moan that it was impossible to find dresses in the right colour for red-heads. I think that the colour of her hair and the freckles splattered across her nose and face are nice, but she seems to hate
them.
When I finally find her in the shop, she’s holding a tiny black dress up against herself.
“It’s going to have to be black,” she sighs. “I always wear black.”
“It’s nice,” I say. “And besides, isn’t a little black dress considered a classic?”
She nods. “Yeah, I guess. But everyone will know that I wore a little black dress to the last
party.”
I look up at her bright blue eyes and smile. I’ve never had to worry about any of that before
and a part of me is glad. Just the thought of being teased because of the way I dressed or looked seemed unreal before I came here.
“What about gold?” I ask her.
She blinks at me. “For the jewellery?”
I shake my head and glance at a gold dress that looks sort of puffy around the hips.
“I mean a gold dress.” I point to it. “That looks like it would go with the colour of your hair
perfectly.”
She blinks. “You really think so?”
I nod. “Hold it up against yourself and let me see.”
She puts the black dress back onto the hanger and picks up the gold one. She shuffles closer
to the mirror and holds it against her. It instantly deepens the colour of her skin and brightens her eyes.
“It’s perfect,” I say, smiling at her.
Her eyes are still wide as she looks at herself. “I like it.”
“Good,” I say, “shall we go and pay for it then?”
“I need to try it on first.”
“Why?” I ask. She’s been trying on dresses in all of the shops we’ve been in. Surely she must
know what size she is.
“To make sure it fits,” she says simply.
“But I thought you knew what size you were?” I ask, confused.
“I do,” she laughs, “but sometimes it depends on what shop you’re in. Some have bigger
sizes than others.”
“Oh.”
I take her bag from her and hover around by the changing rooms whilst she tries it on. I
watch the other girls that walk around the shop. They pick up dress after dress and hold it up against themselves before shaking their heads and putting them back down. I wonder why they all seem to
be so fussy. Even Bethany is fussy.
Is it because they want to make sure they look good for boys? Is it because they think they
won’t look right in a certain style? I have no idea. I just know that I saw my dress and liked the colour, and when I tried it on it fit correctly, so there was no reason for me to not buy it.
“Serena?” she calls and I hear her clothes rustling on the floor.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Are you still there?”
I roll my eyes. She keeps doing this. I know Angela and my Aunty have told her that she
needs to keep an eye on me and to not let me out of her sight, but this is silly. I feel like a baby.
“Yeah,” I sigh, “I’m still here.”
“Okay,” she says.
I hear the clanging of hangers and more rustling. “I’m going to get it,” she says, as she
snatches back the blue curtain. “It’s a little snug, but I’ll just have to make sure I don’t eat bread between now and the party.”
“What does bread have to do with your dress?” I ask.
She leads me towards the cash register and pulls out her credit card.
“Bread is full of wasteful calories and it bloats you,” she explains. “If you stay off the bread, then you are more likely to lose a few pounds and have a flat stomach.”
I think about the times that I’ve eaten bread and don’t remember it affecting my stomach at
all. I don’t say anything to her though; I just watch her pay for her dress and then follow her back out to the main shopping area.
“Let’s go and get you some make-up and stuff for your hair and then we’ll grab a coffee.
How does that sound?” she asks.
I shrug. “I guess that sounds alright, but I have no idea what to do with make-up other than
apply a bit of mascara.”
She grins at me. “That’s okay. I’ll come over to your place on Friday and help you.”
We go into a large department store where there are several beauty counters selling
thousands of different types of make-up in hundreds of different colours. I have no idea what I’m looking for, so I just follow Bethany around and hold the steadily filling basket. I don’t even bother to look at what she puts in, mainly because I’m too busy staring at the girls that work in this area of the store.
They all have their hair scraped back tightly on their heads and the biggest eyelashes I have
ever seen on a person. Their lips are blood red and remind me of Hannah’s lips when I went to the salon. Their skin looks orange, but I don’t think they’re tanned. I can’t figure out what it is that they’ve done to their faces to make them shine like that.
“Let’s go and pay,” Bethany says to me.
I nod and follow her towards a cash register that is manned by a man. He laughs and giggles
and talks in a high-pitched voice. He looks and sounds like a girl in a boy’s body. I wonder if that’s possible and find myself trying to think back to all the books that I’ve read, but before I’ve come up with an answer or an appropriate explanation, Bethany is holding her hand out for my credit card
