Chapter Fourteen The Dark Knight

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE DARK KNIGHT

Somewhere deep inside me, panic was rising. ‘Stop,’ I heard myself gasp.

Robbie’s eyes shrank to slits in his puffy face. ‘Just relax.’ I tried to shake my head, but could only make a sideways figure eight. ‘I don’t want this.’

He chuckled. ‘Then why would you show up to a party wearing this? ’ He tugged at the fabric of my dress. I tried to speak again, but I couldn’t conjure up enough energy to push the words out. He moved a rough finger against my lips and I moaned, feeling saliva pool at the back of my throat. He inched closer. Spittle gathered at the sides of his cracked lips as he said, ‘Stop playing hard to get.’

His hand moved to my hips and suddenly it was all I could focus on. He pressed his body against me, sandwiching me between his thick frame and the cold wall. He started to run a hand through my hair, tangling it and jerking my head backwards.

I struggled to remember how far I was from home, but everything was a blur. The panic grew and pulsed against my skull until it throbbed. I tried to move my arms, but they were unresponsive, crushed beneath his weight as he walked his other hand up towards the hemline of my dress.

My eyes fluttered back in my head as he shoved his salty mouth over mine. Fleetingly I thought of Nic: how butterflies had exploded inside me when I tasted his tentative kiss, felt his strong hands curling around my waist. But these were not his hands, or his lips. Robbie forced his coarse, snakelike tongue into my mouth, probing relentlessly until I gagged.

There came the sound of a roaring engine, then tyres screeching to a halt nearby. Robbie froze with his lips still on mine, and moved his hands back on to my waist. In my dazed state, I imagined we looked like two wooden puppets, propped against each other in the night.

I rejoiced in the welcome rush of cool air when his body was ripped away from mine. He let out a strangled yelp as he sailed backwards, taking the pressure with him so that my chest expanded again.

Someone was shouting. My body slumped against the wall and slid to the ground beneath legs I could no longer feel. Faraway gravel shifted, and a deep cry rang out. There was a resounding crack and an ear-splitting wail that sounded like a dying cat. Shoes scraped against the ground. High-pitched sobs descended into desperate pleas. I tried to understand, but the words became garbled and indistinct as my body slid towards the ground and my head connected with the concrete.

‘Get out of here before I rip your heart out.’

Is he talking to me?

More shuffling.

Why is it so dark?

The sound of footsteps – further and further away.

Am I still alive?

Another set of footsteps, steadier and quieter than the last, moving towards me.

‘Sophie? Can you hear me?’

Something gripped my shoulders. My whole body shook gently, but there was no strength left to open my eyes. I was dead to the whole world. Dead to everything, except his voice.

‘Sophie? Come on.’ More gentle shaking. A finger pressed up against my neck. I could feel my pulse throb against it. There was a sigh – long and relieved. ‘Come on, Sophie. Wake up.’

I struggled for the energy, but I was spent, like a deflated balloon. Silence followed, and I found myself trying to remember where I was and what was going on. Had I left the party? Did I fall down?

‘Can you try opening your eyes?’

Why couldn’t I place that voice? It was so familiar yet so far away. An arm slid around my shoulders and another underneath my knees, lifting me away from the cold ground. My head drooped on to something hard, and I could hear a steady heartbeat drumming against my ear.

I sailed through the air, and into a warm place. The muffled sound of a car door gave way to the comforting hum of an engine, and soon I was rocking back and forth against some-thing soft. The minutes bled into one long stretch of darkness until I was soaring again, through a realm of a hundred distant voices, flashing lights and groaning beeps.

A lone finger trailed along the side of my cheek.

A faraway voice invaded the moment just as I was piecing together where I was, and the thought fluttered away from me before I could pin it down.

‘I located her mother. Don’t you want to stay until she gets here?’

‘I can’t.’

Footsteps clicked against the floor, getting softer, until I could hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing as it rattled through my chest. Feeling safe in the complete absence of everything, I fell into nothingness, where half-forgotten memories mingled with harrowing nightmares until I forgot what was real and what was imagined.

I woke to a ceiling entirely different from the one I was used to. It was big and tiled, with fluorescent lights that stung my eyes. The smell of disinfectant hung in the air, and the open curtains of a faraway window were a dull, unfamiliar green. I tried to wriggle my body, but it was constricted under the weight of overly tucked-in sheets. And yet, despite the warmth that clung to me, I felt a cold stiffness rippling through my left hand.

The bed was edged with bars and the walls beyond were a blinding shade of white. I flexed my fingers against the thick bandage just above them and noticed, with a pinch of horror, that there was an IV drip invading my hand.

‘Mrs Gracewell, she’s awake.’

My bed shook from the other side. I rolled my head and flinched against a sudden onslaught of pain in the base of my skull. The un-made-up face of my mother was the first thing I saw. Beside her was an exhausted-looking Millie, wearing an oversized hoodie and last night’s lipstick, which was just a red stain now. She scooted her chair forwards. ‘How do you feel?’

Trying my best not to completely freak out, I wiggled each of my limbs in turn and was relieved to find them unbroken. I checked my body for bandages and found none. Then I dragged my hands through my matted hair and all around my face to make sure there were no stitches.

‘What happened?’ I croaked. ‘This is the worst headache I’ve ever had.’

‘That’s OK, sweetheart.’ My mother stroked my hand reassuringly. ‘That’s to be expected.’

Millie looked like she was about to burst into tears. Her foundation was streaked with tear tracks and there were dark smudges of mascara beneath her eyes. She dropped her head into her hands and pulled at her dishevelled brown hair. ‘I’m so sorry, Soph.’

My mother squeezed my hand until it stung. ‘It looks as though you were drugged at the party.’

It took several seconds for the meaning of the words to connect in my fuzzed brain. Then my heart plummeted into my stomach. ‘Drugged?’

‘We had no idea,’ Millie sniffled. ‘One minute you were fine and then the next you couldn’t stand up. You kept forgetting where you were and you kept saying you wanted to go home.’

I tried to find them but the memories would not come. ‘So you brought me here to get my stomach pumped?’

Millie frowned and traced shapes in the hospital blanket. ‘We thought you were just drunk. Someone said you had taken some shots of tequila or something. So we sent you home with Robbie Stenson.’

My mother’s features scrunched into a display of disapproval. ‘Though Millie now knows she should have called me,’ she said. ‘Whether you were drinking or not, I still should have been called to make sure you were OK.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Gracewell! If I thought for a second someone had slipped her something, I wouldn’t have just sent her home like that…’ Millie broke into sobs that shook her frame with every heave.

My mother rubbed her back in large, circular movements. ‘I know,’ she said, trying to comfort her.

‘What happened?’ I felt like I was trying to recall something on the tip of my tongue, but the more I struggled, the more I seemed to forget.

‘Robbie hadn’t been drinking and he said he knew the way.’ Millie was holding back, skirting around something; I could sense it.

My mother cut in, ‘I got a call to say a young man had brought you to the emergency room. When I arrived they ran some tests and discovered traces of Rohypnol in your system.’

The word fell into the air like a ton of bricks. ‘R-Rohypnol?’ I stuttered. ‘I was roofied?’ Immediately my hands flew to my underwear.

‘No, don’t worry,’ Millie interjected hurriedly. ‘He got to you in time.’

‘Robbie?’

My mother exchanged a glance with Millie. ‘No, not Robbie. The nurse said a young man with tanned skin and dark hair brought you in. She says he wouldn’t give his name.’

My head throbbed so hard I could barely think. Where did Nic come into all of this? And why was he being so secretive about his involvement?

‘I don’t understand…’

‘He told the nurse he found you with a boy who looked as though he was trying to take advantage of you. He raised his concerns and the boy left. Then he brought you here when he realized what bad shape you were in.’

I felt my hand pinch beneath the drip. ‘Where is Nic now?’

‘He was gone when we got here,’ Millie answered this time. ‘The nurse said he stayed for almost an hour, though, while they tried to reach your mom. He wanted to make sure you were OK.’

My mother sat back in her chair and seemed to relax a little. ‘Millie and I tried to contact the Priestlys, but they’re unlisted. It would be a good idea to have a talk with that boy when we get out of here.’

‘So where did Robbie Stenson go when Nic showed up? Was he the one trying to take advantage of me?’

Millie shrugged, her eyebrows knitting themselves together in confusion. ‘I guess Nic thought he was trying to kiss you. I thought Robbie might have a crush on you, but I didn’t think he’d do something like that when you were so out of it. I mean, you’d vomited twice before you left my house.’

I winced – I didn’t remember that.

‘Alex has been trying to call Robbie all morning to find out what happened,’ Millie continued. ‘Maybe Nic just freaked out when he saw the two of you together.’

Memories of how Nic had reacted jealously to Alex at the basketball tournament tugged at my brain, but I was still washed out and confused. I couldn’t remember meeting Robbie Stenson last night, though I had a vague recollection he had been at the party somewhere among the crowds.

‘So who was it?’ I asked, growing hot with anger. ‘Who put the Rohypnol in my drink?’

‘We don’t know, Soph. You were the only victim, as far as we can tell.’ Millie could barely look me in the eye. ‘Alex says it might have been a cousin of one of his friends. He was mixed up in something like that a couple of years ago. He wasn’t even invited in the first place, and now we can’t track him down.’ Millie’s voice turned quiet. She rubbed her eyes, smudging her eyeshadow until she looked like a panda. ‘It’s all my fault, Soph. I’m sorry for letting the party get so out of hand.’

‘It’s OK,’ I offered, hoping it would ease her guilt. ‘It could have been worse, right? I didn’t come to any harm.’

‘Yes, thankfully,’ said my mother.

I clamped my eyes shut and concentrated. I was dancing. I was in the kitchen. I was with Millie. And then, nothing. ‘I’m trying to remember.’

My mother rubbed my arm. ‘Sweetheart, the doctor says it’s unlikely you’ll regain your memory of last night. There is a possibility of flashbacks, but they probably won’t have all the answers to what happened. We’re determined to get to the bottom of it, though. The police will want to speak to you now that you’re awake, and we’ll talk to this Robbie boy when he surfaces, too, I promise.’

‘We’ll figure it out,’ echoed Millie.

I glanced at the needle in my hand and felt a heightened awareness of the cold liquid entering my body, drip by drip. ‘When can I get out of here? Hospitals give me the creeps.’

As if right on cue, a nurse sashayed into the room. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

I had the vaguest feeling I had heard her voice before.

‘Confused and headachy,’ I told her.

Without looking up, she launched into what seemed like a perfectly rehearsed speech. ‘The Rohypnol is leaving your system and the worst of its effects have subsided. You’re going to experience residual headaches and possible nausea for another day or two, but after that you should be back to normal. The doctor says you’re ready for discharge when you feel strong enough.’

‘I’m strong enough.’

The nurse pulled the corners of her lips into a frown. ‘In the future, I would caution you to keep your drink with you at all times and to have it covered when you’re around people you don’t know well.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped myself. I was furious, but not at her. I was angry at everything: at the person who’d drugged me, at the boy who’d tried to kiss me when I was so out of it, and at Nic for leaving me here with my mounting confusion.

First, he speeds away with his brother, ditching me in a deserted street, and then he turns up out of nowhere to rescue me, but leaves me with no clue about what happened. Even in his absence, he was still playing games with my head, and one way or another, it had to stop.