Free Fury by Shirley Marr

left quickly.
    “Well, at least you know you’re definitely at Priory. School of Hard Knocks, Jocks and Designer Frocks. We’re not inHogwarts anymore, Hermione.”
    “You lied to Principal Hollerings,” I said, looking at the ground. “About Lexi and Marianne being there. I can’t believe it. Why would you do that?”
    Neil smiled.
    “You don’t have to protect me, you know!”
    “Of course I have to.”
    “I am not a weak little girl.”
    “Of course you are. The truth would crush you like the tiny flower you are.”
    I punched him in the arm. Then I realised that I was not five years old anymore and I stuck my hand behind my back.
    “I’m sorry you wasted your lunch,” I said.
    “No problem. I accidentally tasted some when it splattered off Biggins. It was pretty horrible.”
    My mouth couldn’t help but twitch upwards. I snuck a look at him. Sometimes I think Neil is cute. With his super-skinny frame, retro clothes and longish black hair that hangs in his eyes. But then I think of Neil when I knew him as a five-year-old, running around outside in his pyjamas with spaceships on them…
    “Don’t forget to tell your friends,” said Neil.
    “Tell them what?”
    “About what they just saw. In case we are ever brought in for questioning. Seeya.”
    “Oh,” I replied.
    Neil winked and he was gone.
    ***
    In case we are ever brought in for questioning.
    Isn’t it funny? The things that we say, that come back to bite us. Maybe there’s no such thing as innocent words after all.

four
    It is evening now. The clock behind my head is pointing to eight o’clock. But what would I know? This room has no windows and the fluorescent light is on all the time, so for all I know it could be eight in the morning of the following day. Why should I care anyway?
    I try not to think of Mum, but my thoughts wander to what she would say right now if it had been just another school night. On a day when she would actually decide tocome home from work. It would be something like, we should try that new Japanese up the road or have you seen Fluers du Mal’s new summer menu? I simply lurve the sound of the duck leg confit. Yum.
    “Are you going home?” I ask Dr Fadden. “Don’t you have a girlfriend or a family to go to?”
    Dr Fadden looks at me with his unreadable brown eyes.
    “No.”
    No to the going home part, or no to the girlfriend and family, I wonder.
    “If you can help me wrap up this interrogation quickly then you might be able to go home.”
    “Why are you still stuck on that?” I ask. “It’ll mean going home to my mother and I’d rather not see her again, ever. Write that down in your little notepad. So you don’t forget.”
    “If that’s all I’m going to get out of you then I might as well call it a day.”
    I look up at him.
    “No, don’t leave me!”
    The doctor looks at his watch.
    “Well, I’ve got to allow myself the luxury of, say, some semblance of ordinary life. I’m not the prisoner here after all. You are. I’m not going to suffer just because you want to.”
    “I am not a prisoner. I haven’t been found guilty of anything.” I grimace. “Wait, don’t put me back in that horrible holding room. I think I saw a cockroach in there and … I don’t want to be left alone.”
    Dr Fadden takes a good long look at me. I put on my most pitiful looking face. It’s a good thing I’d been practising in front of my laptop recently, looking for something suitably smexy to update my avatar.
    “Then tell me about the second body,” says Dr Fadden casually.
    I swallow. It feels like I am swallowing ball bearings. They go clunk when they hit the bowling ball sitting in my stomach.
    “I don’t want to talk about the first body; what makes you think I want to talk about the second one?”
    “Because I know it’s different.”
    “I— we— had nothing to do with that. Like I told you, I didn’t even know about it until I was brought here.”
    I force myself to shut my mouth. That