the restart

Chapter one: the end.

  The tree seemed to rush towards us, the hot night air cold on our faces through the broken windows of the kingswood. HQ vs eucalyptus, not good odds by anyone's book.
I was laughing like someone possessed, my hair streaming out behind me.  In the drivers seat, Dean was frozen, fear sobering him too late.  Liz was passed out so at least she didn't know what was about to happen but Emma had been rolling a joint, looking up when it was jolted out of her hands when we hit the paddock.
They didn't want to die, only I did.  The pom.  The one everyone hated at school, teased or excluded.  These were my only friends so why did they have to die too?  Everything associated with me was so useless that this was just fitting; the flat tire (I later learned it was a slow leak puncture from a screwdriver instegated by Shane, who when he couldn't legitimatelly beat the shit out of me because I was a girl had decided to give me a good fright.), Dean panicking and oversteering when the tyre went.  The girls being too shit faced to ruin the moment.  Me - Ange - hoping, pleading, longing for the release of no longer breathing and knowing.  The world left behind to move on.
No.




Chapter 2: the beginning.

I had stepped off the plane at Tullamarine airport and the first thing I had smelled was the eucalyptus, heavy and cloying in the dry air.  It had been just over a day since I had left Manchester, left everything and almost everyone I knew.  All my friends, my A levels, my home.  It hadn't been a great home - perspex over the windows to stop the rocks, syringes outside the door every morning, the grotty estate overflowing with drunks - but it was the only home I'd ever known.  Just Mum and me.  Now she was gone.
  It hadn't felt final then.  I'd been too numb, hadn't registed it into my brain to compete with the rest of my hatred for Mark, my dreams of escape and even what I'd planned to do Saturday night after my calculus exam. 
I'd got home from school, same as always.  Caught the red number 25 bus from Warrington, same as always.  The same drunks hanging around Orford, the smell of stale beer and the broken windows, broken bottles.  So much glass.  I remember the boys behind me had been talking about going to see a movie in Liverpool on the weekend and my friend Lisa beside me had been monologueing about how stressed she was about the French exam and how swat vac was killing her.  I even remembered she had been wearing a pair of blue converse and had been given detention for being out of uniform that day.
I clung to those details as the policeman had told me I couldn't enter my house.  Well, my and my mother's and her boyfriend's grotty rented flat.  The red and white striped tape I'd seen on the tv.  Where was DS Lewis to put his arm around me and tell me it was all okay?  That soon I'd be back there, it was all a mistake and mum would be half cut and swearing about the teenagers on the estate dealing pot and how she couldn't get the lino clean as she drank Tesco cask wine from a chipped mug.