Surviving After Dark

Chapter 1

I've never had one of those huge, life-altering moments before.

You know the ones that are always talked about on TV and in the movies? Those moments that the character looks back on and says that's when it all changed.

I always envied them; they had experienced something so amazing, so mind-blowing, that their monotonous, everyday lives flipped one-eighty, never to be the same again. Of course, for them, it was always something good. Something fantastic that set them on the path to everything they'd ever dreamed of. They always have a happy ending.

I wanted that.

Sure, I knew it was fiction, but I struggled to see the line between real life and fiction. I'm sixteen now, and I still struggle sometimes. The line blurs and I wander off into my little fantasy land.

Mum calls me her little daydreamer.

My life has always been boring. Boring and predictable. I wake up to the same alarm at the same time every day. Sit around the same table, eat the same breakfast, and have the same conversations with my mum and dad. Then I walk the same route to the same bus stop, before sitting in the same seat for the same twenty-minute ride through east London to school. Every single day.

Until today. Nothing will be the same after today.

Someone is talking to me. I hear their voices, but not their words. My heart is beating too loudly in my ears, and my blood is rushing through my veins like it's trying to escape. Because that would be easier. To just collapse. To bleed out on the rough, blue carpet of the office. At least that would take the pain away.

I can't focus on the man sitting behind the desk in front of me, or the police officer at his side, both with their eyes trained on us as we sit on the cold, hard, plastic chairs. Their shapes are just blurred, like ghosts, there but not there, on the very edge of my vision. Instead, I look past them, and out of the window that stands proudly in the background. A portal to another world.

It's a sunny day, which feels out of place now. The sun shines so unashamedly in the sky as if it's daring anybody to question its right to be there and to cast such a brightness across everything. Forcing the shadows away.

But it all feels so wrong. I see the sun; I see the shimmer of heat waves in the distance outside of that window... and I feel cold. Icy cold. I long for the shadows. For them to envelop me.

I doubt I'll ever feel warm again.

"Cassandra."

I hear my name, but it sounds distant. Not like it's coming from someone in the same room as me. Maybe I'm not really in the room at all. Maybe I'm the ghost, and I'm just observing, hovering between two planes. A mere spectator, unable to intervene.

I jump at the feel of a hand touching mine. Fingers clasp around the fist I'm clenching, and my head turns to face the boy sitting next to me, his ash brown hair unruly as always and falling into his eyes. He doesn't try to move it, instead, he's using it as a shield to hide his own emotion, but I can almost feel the pain radiating from him.

"Cass?" He says gently, and the careful tone of his voice, that edge that tells me he is fighting back tears... I feel it like a stab in the gut.

I meet my brother's eyes; I see the shimmer of tears pooling there, and it's all I can do not to turn and bury my face in his chest and sob. But I don't. Instead, I just swallow as the head teacher speaks again.

"Cassandra, do you understand?" Mr. Nichols is asking, and I blink as his image sharpens again in my sight line, along with that of the uniformed officer, standing stiffly beside him. I force myself to nod, although I'm not sure that I do understand. If I'll ever understand.

Mr. Nichols pauses a moment before his lips twitch, not quite acceptance, but acknowledgment. He's willing to accept my nod, at least for now. He glances behind me at the woman standing in the corner, and she steps forward. "This is Rachel Johnson. She's a social worker, and she's going to be looking after the two of you, okay?" He explains.

Rachel Johnson comes in to view. She's maybe in her late thirties. Plump, but not overweight, with blonde hair that's pulled back in a neat ponytail. She has a kind face, I note, but she's wearing a sad look upon it as she walks to the side of Mr. Nichols' desk. No, more than sad, and pitying, and it makes my stomach churn. I tense, and my brother feels it, and his hand tightens on top of mine, willing me to be calm as Rachel positions herself on the edge of the desk. I think it's an attempt to look more approachable. More like she's on our level, not standing behind the desk like Mr. Nichols and the police officer. She's trying to connect with us, but it doesn't work.

"Elijah, Cassandra." She uses our names as a greeting. "I'm so sorry for your-"

"It's Cassie." I interrupted, finally finding my voice. Rachel looks taken aback. So does Mr. Nichols, and I regret saying it. It's a stupid thing to be hung up on right now. But only they called me Cassandra, and it stings to hear it from anybody else's lips now.

Rachel nods slowly and bites her lip before she makes a note on the clipboard she's holding. Then she gives me a small smile. "Cassie. I'm sorry. I know this is a lot to take in." That's an understatement. "I'm your assigned social worker, and I'm going to help you as much as I can, okay?"

Elijah and I both mumble an agreement, and she nods to the police officer, who excuses himself, closing the door ever so gently behind him as he leaves the office. As if the sound of a door slamming might startle us or send us into a fit of inconsolable grief. I suppose it might have, if not for the fact I feel much too numb to react at all.

Somehow, the room feels smaller with fewer people in it. Like the walls are closing in on me.

"Now, I've spoken to your head teacher here, and he says that there is no other emergency contact listed on your school records. Is there somebody we could call for you? A grandparent, or an aunt or uncle? Someone you could stay with temporarily?"

"It's just us," Elijah answers with a shake of his head. "Just the two of us, and-"

He cuts himself off as his voice catches with emotion, and I feel that stab of pain again.

Rachel's face gives nothing away. She just nods again and makes more notes on her clipboard. When she's finished, she clips her pen to the metal part at the top, and it clamps down on it with a loud snap that seems to echo in my brain. Silence falls, and it hangs heavily over us all for a moment, before Rachel clears her throat and straightens up, patting her black pencil skirt down and straightening her blush pink blouse as she stands.

"Okay, well, I'll make some calls and find somewhere for you to stay for a few days, until we have a more permanent solution." She walks to the door and gestures for us to follow. We don't immediately; we just stay seated, still clutching each other's hands, as if we each think the other might disappear if we loosen our grip.

Eventually, Mr. Nichols clears his throat, pushes himself up from his plush leather desk chair, and comes around to stand in front of us. "Take all the time that you need. The school will be here to support you in any way that we can, okay?"

Elijah moves first, saying, "Thank you, Sir," as he stands and takes Mr. Nichols' outstretched hand, giving it a curt shake. I stand too, somehow, despite the shakiness in my legs, and Mr. Nichols briefly squeezes my shoulder.

No handshake for me.

Rachel opens the door and steps out, and we follow her numbly. She turns to mumble something under her breath to Mr. Nichols, and he nods gravely at her words, but I don't catch them. Then she spins and walks down the corridor that leads from Mr. Nichols' office to the main reception area and, finally, the main exit. To the real world.

A world that will never be the same.

I take a deep breath and force myself to take a step, and then another, and eventually I find myself halfway down the corridor, although it feels like I've walked a mile. Then I pause.

Elijah doesn't realize it at first, and he makes it a few paces ahead of me before he notices I'm no longer at his side. Then he stops too and turns to look at me, but I don't see his eye. My gaze is downcast, focused intently on the office-grade carpet and the age-old chewing gum that a thousand different pairs of shoes have trodden into over the years.

"Cass?"

I don't look up at him. I can't. The sadness I know I'll see on his face... it will break the fragile control I'm barely clinging to. And I can't break down. Not here. Not at school. Everyone is still in class for now, but... I just can't. I'm not that girl.

"What are we going to do?" I whisper before I can stop myself.

I'm not sure if I meant to say it to Elijah, or if I meant it just for me, but I feel his hand touch my arm and I finally force myself to look up at him. My breath catches at the sorrow clear in his eyes. But he blinks it away and clears his throat before he speaks. "Honestly? I don't know. I guess we just put one foot in front of the other, and we keep going. It's what Mum and Dad would want."

"They're gone, Eli." I say, my voice quivering, and I lose the battle within myself as the first tear breaks free to roll down my cheek. "Mum and Dad are gone. We're alone."

Elijah pulls me into his chest as the bell rings overhead. But we don't move. We just stand there locked in the embrace while the sound of our classmates' chatter fills the air as they pile out of classrooms back down the corridor. Their days will carry on as normal like nothing has even happened. Because it hasn't for them. A freight train hasn't just torn through their lives and taken everything they knew and loved along with it. Elijah and I are alone on that platform, peering at the destruction. Staring down at the tattered pieces of our lives left on the tracks.

After maybe a minute, I pull away from Elijah and wipe my nose on my sleeve as he wraps his arm around my shoulders.

"We'll get through this, Cass. What did Dad always say? We're Millers, and Millers always survive, no matter what."

I bite back the urge to point out the irony in that since it hadn't worked out so well for Mum and Dad. What makes him think it will be any different for us? Two teenage orphans, alone in the world?

It would be easy to lash out at his optimism, but it also wouldn't make me feel any better. So, I say nothing.

Elijah turns and starts walking towards Rachel, who is waiting patiently by the door, I bite back the urge to point out the irony in that, since it hadn't worked out so well for Mum and Dad. What makes him think it will be any different for us? Two teenage orphans, alone in the world? "And we're not alone as long as we've got each other." He continues as if reading my mind.

I don't respond. There's nothing to say. Our parents are dead. Killed in a car accident on their way home from the supermarket.

Even their death was dull, like everything else in my life until this point. But I know, in years to come, this will be the day that I look back on and say that's when it all changed.

I already ache for the monotony of my old life.

Four weeks. Elijah and I have been orphans now for four entire weeks.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Mum and Dad aren't just on holiday, or a work trip. Some days reality is too heavy a cross to bear, and my childish mind goes back to that secret fantasy land. There, I let myself believe they were coming back for us. Soon we'll be back home in our plush semi-detached house in Forest Gate, with its three double bedrooms and two reception rooms. Not to mention the attic room that'd been converted into Dad's home office. We weren't supposed to go up there, but I often did, when Dad wasn't home, and I wanted to be alone for a while.

The house used to feel cramped, even with just the four of us. That seems ridiculous now, considering our current situation. Apparently, no foster families were willing to take two teenagers at once. One had offered to take just me... obviously assuming the girl would be less of a hassle than the testosterone-ridden seventeen-year-old boy.

They wouldn't believe that if they met us. Elijah and I get along just fine, mostly, and that's completely down to my brother. He's the calm one. He's the one who thinks before he speaks because I'll just blurt out whatever is on my mind, and to hell with the consequences.

Eli has never even been in detention. I, on the other hand... well, let's just say I gave Mum and Dad their fair share of headaches, and Eli was always the peacemaker campaigning for leniency for my heinous crimes against the institution. I swear, he's going to be a defense lawyer one day.

I'd kicked up a fuss when one of the other social workers suggested separating the two of us. Even Eli himself had 'expressed his concern', as he put it. Ever the polite one, my brother. It was Rachel Johnson who'd put a stop to it though, arguing that, considering our trauma, it would be detrimental to our wellbeing to be housed separately. She found us a residential home with two spare rooms the same day. I probably should have thanked her for that. Eli will have done.

Sitting on the edge of the lumpy mattress I've been assigned, I think back on all the times that I would bang on the wall that I shared with Eli, yelling for him to keep it down while he played on his Xbox. I'd longed for that so many times over the last four weeks, while I lay on this unfamiliar bed, boxed in by similarly unfamiliar walls, with strangers on the other side of them instead of my brother.

But Mum and Dad weren't coming to take us home. They would never pick us up from school and surprise us with a McDonald's and cinema trip, or a 'Miller Special', as Dad called it. He'd never come home late from work on a Wednesday and announce that he just had to have pizza for dinner because he'd had such a long, hard day. Mum would never argue that she'd already defrosted something for said dinner and then give up when he wrapped his arms around her from behind and she giggled like a teenager.

Elijah and I used to catch each other's gaze at those moments and roll our eyes. Sometimes we'd pretend to throw up, just for good measure. But it was heart-warming to see, really, how in love they still were after all those years. Even though, as I'd often joke, they'd spent seventeen of those years stuck with my brother...

I can't resist a small smile from pulling at my lips as another memory flashes. I used to say that they had to try for another baby because they failed so badly with the first one, and God granted them me for their troubles. Elijah argued the opposite; that he was such a delight that they couldn't wait for another and stopped with me because I was such a nightmare.

A loud rap at the door pulls me from my thoughts. Groaning, I push myself up off the bed and cross the tiny room to pull the door open, finding Rachel Johnson standing on the other side. She smiles at me warmly, undeterred when I don't reciprocate her friendly greeting.

"All packed?" she asks, glancing over my shoulder to inspect behind me.

I purse my lips to stop rolling my eyes and turn to peer back into the room that has been mine for the past month. It's half the size of my bedroom at home, with only a single bed instead of the double one that I'm used to. The walls are a bare pink, with bits of blue tack and drawing pins still stuck around them from the previous occupant. They told me I could put some photos or posters up on the walls if I wanted to. To make it feel more like home, Rachel had said. I didn't. This room wasn't my home, and I saw no point in pretending otherwise.

But the room back in Forest Gate isn't mine anymore either, is it? I remind myself and feel a stab of grief in my gut. They have probably sold the house already, to pay off the mortgage. I know Mum and Dad still owed it because I heard them whispering a few months ago when there was talk of redundancies at Dad's company. Mum started freaking out about how we'd survive if he lost his job. She'd painted a smile on her face as soon as I stepped into the kitchen, though, and then had asked what I wanted for dinner. Just like nothing was wrong at all.

At least they don't have to worry about stuff like that anymore. I think deprecatingly. Someone new has probably already moved into my room. They've probably already picked out a new wallpaper to replace the dinosaur one I'd had since I was a little kid and never got around to changing. I'll never step foot in that room again.

They're becoming less frequent, the stabs of pain that accompany those flashes of memory, or the reminders that my life is ruined. But they still happen now and then and, when they do, it feels like my body might spontaneously combust at the intensity of it. I think that'll probably always happen. Like picking up a new phrase and adapting it into your normal vocabulary, those waves of grief are a part of me now. Life will never be as carefree as it was before.

The room behind me is empty, except for the bed, with the duvet strewn haphazardly across it, and my single suitcase standing by the base. I have no doubt that Eli's bed would have been made up perfectly before he vacated his room. He's always been weird that way. But if the untidiness of my abode bothers Rachel, she says nothing. Just continues to smile at me. It's nauseating.

I bite back the urge to respond sarcastically as I take in the sight of the empty room.

Instead, replying with only a single word.

"Yep."

Rachel nods approvingly. "Great! Elijah is downstairs waiting. I want to be on the road as soon as possible because we've got a long drive ahead." She pauses as she steps back to let me wheel my suitcase out into the hallway. "Have you said all your goodbyes?" she asks once the bedroom door is closed behind me.

"Yes." I say, but it's a lie. There isn't anyone I want to say goodbye to. Eli made some friends in this place, but I didn't. The other girls on my floor seemed nice enough, and a couple of them tried to talk to me when we first got here, but I blew them off. I don't know why, and I felt a little guilty about it. But I didn't feel like making friends, I guess. Happy to wallow alone in my self-pity.

Safe to say, I don't think anyone is going to miss me now that we are leaving.

Rachel continues to chatter as we walk down the hall and to the stairs, and then she helps carry my suitcase down the two flights to the ground floor. I don't listen to a word she's saying. My mind is too lost in thought, too concerned about where we are heading.

Yorkshire, according to Rachel. Apparently, we have a long-lost grandmother, which is strange, because Dad told us she died not long after I was born.

But what's even stranger? She's agreed to take in two teenage orphans that she doesn't even know. The woman is either a total badass or completely crazy.

I'm not sure which one is worse.