Heart-shaped Bruise

by Tanya Byrne

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers; YA Romance

Synopsis

They say I'm evil. The police. The newspapers. The girls from school who sigh on the six o'clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me. And everyone believes it. Including you. But you don't know. You don't know who I used to be. Who I could have been. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever shake off my mistakes or if I'll just carry them around with me forever like a bunch of red balloons. Awaiting trial at Archway Young Offenders Institution, Emily Koll is going to tell her side of the story for the first time. Heart-Shaped Bruise is a compulsive and moving novel about infamy, identity and how far a person might go to seek revenge.

Release date: May 10, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 205

Sample

This isn’t a journal. I’m eighteen; I don’t have the patience for journals any more. I don’t have the patience for straight lines, either. I tend to avoid them. So don’t expect this to be all this-happened-then-this-happened-then-this-happened because my brain doesn’t work like that. You’d be bored anyway.

As for what you do with this notebook, that’s up to you. Tell the nurses, tell Doctor Gilyard. I don’t care. You can even put it back on top of the wardrobe and pretend you never saw it if you want. But I need to say this, to be rid of it. I can’t keep carrying it around with me; I’m buckling under the weight of it. I look at myself sometimes, at the broken lines across the palms of my hands and the creases in my elbows, and I can see myself coming apart at the seams.

Like today, with Doctor Gilyard. I never speak first. Never. I’ve seen her once a week since I got here and I haven’t said a word without being prompted. But this morning, I sat down and before she even opened her notebook, I said: ‘I know what you think of me.’

It came from nowhere, I swear. For a moment I thought I meant it, that I’d turned the corner she’d been dragging me towards. But then she took her glasses off and as she did, I saw her fingers flutter and I realised that I did that to her – I did that – and some imbalance in the universe tipped back in my direction.

‘What do I think of you, Emily?’ she asked, but it was too late, the moment was gone; I’d faltered, but I’d still scored the first point.

It was cruel, I suppose. She must have thought it was a breakthrough because I watched her cheeks go pink as she waited for me to respond. I wonder if she was holding her breath, hoping that I would finally collapse into a broken, sobbing heap at her feet. But I turned my face away.

‘It’s okay, you can say it.’

‘Say what, Emily?’

‘You know what.’

‘What’s that, Emily?’

‘Why won’t you say it?’

‘Why won’t you say it, Emily?’

Always a question with a question.

My fingers curled around the arms of the chair. ‘Can I smoke?’

‘Do you have any cigarettes?’

She knew I didn’t have any cigarettes. The nurses have them and we’re only allowed four a day; one after breakfast, one after lunch, one after dinner and one before bed. I was furious about it when first I got here, but it’s for my own good, apparently. That’s what this place is about, establishing routines. I get up at the same time, shower at the same time, eat at the same time, go to bed at the same time.

My life is a song I listen to on repeat.

I think I’m supposed to find it comforting, the consistency of it all. This is normal, I’m told. This is what normal teenage girls do – they sleep for eight hours and take their make-up off every night. They don’t call their mates for a chat at 3 a.m.

That’s all normal is, you know, a habit I have to relearn.

Crazy is a habit I have to break.

‘You used to let me smoke.’

She did, when I first got here and we would sit in her office for hours – hours and hours – suffocating on the silence. She would put the box on the coffee table between us and she wouldn’t say anything, but I knew that if I said something, I could have one. So I would tell her things, tiny things. Cigarette-long confessions to distract her from the things I didn’t want her to write in that notebook of hers.

‘I don’t have any cigarettes, Emily.’

I stood up then. I do that a lot, walk around her office. It’s as though I have to see everything, touch everything. Trail my fingers along her desk and over the books on her shelf as though I’m counting each one.

‘Is this what’s wrong with me?’ I asked her during our first session, plucking a textbook on adolescent schizophrenia off the shelf and holding it up. ‘Am I mad?’

When she didn’t respond, I put it back, next to a textbook on sleeping disorders before moving along the row. ‘How about this?’ I said, pulling out another and looking at the cover. ‘Personality Disorders: A Practical Guide.’ I glanced across the office at her, but she just lifted her chin, her shoulders perfectly still and straight.

I began flicking through the book, stopping at a chapter about borderline personality disorder. ‘This could be me,’ I told her as I read the symptoms. ‘My emotions go up and down, don’t they? Me and every other teenage girl. I guess we’re all nutters.’

When I turned to her with a smug smile, she nodded. ‘Why don’t you read the rest?’

I looked down at the page – difficulty in making and maintaining relationships . . . unstable sense of identity . . . taking risks without thinking about the consequences – and snapped the book shut. ‘Nah. It’s boring. Got anything with vampires in it?’

Doctor Gilyard just smiled. And she just smiled today as I walked over to her desk and began opening the drawers. There was nothing in the first one; a few Biros, a neon-pink highlighter. There was a silver tube of hand cream in the second one and I stopped and stared at it. I couldn’t picture Doctor Gilyard doing something as normal as using hand cream. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even seen her stand up. In my head, when I leave her office, she sits there until I go back in the following week. She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t walk or eat or worry about what to wear in the morning.

The half-empty box of cigarettes was in the last drawer and I took one out and lit it with the lighter that was in the drawer next to it. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. It tasted disgusting – I didn’t even want it – but when I went back to my chair, smoke trailing behind me, a scoreboard somewhere registered another point.

‘What was it that you wanted me to say, Emily?’ Doctor Gilyard continued as though those last few minutes hadn’t happened. She just stepped over them.

I looked at the end of the cigarette and blew on it. ‘That I’m evil.’

‘Are you evil, Emily?’

‘Isn’t that what they say about me?’

She took off her glasses and looked at me. ‘Who says that you’re evil?’

‘Everyone.’ Juliet. The police. The newspapers. The girls I barely know from school who sigh and shake their heads on the six o’clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me.

‘Is that why you won’t talk about what happened, Emily, because you think I already know what happened?’

‘You do know what happened.’

She put her glasses back on and scribbled something in her notebook. I wanted to lean over and rip it from her, to read what she was saying about me. She has one for each of us, apparently. I imagine them sometimes, lined up in a row in a room, all of these secrets sitting on a shelf like dusty jars of jam.

‘You know everything about me,’ I told her.

She looked up again. ‘Do I?’

‘What you don’t know, you can Google.’

‘Is that who you are, Emily, what other people say about you?’

‘That’s all any of us are.’ I shrugged and took a drag on the cigarette. ‘The person people remember when you leave the room. You can’t be any more than that.’

‘So what do I remember about you, Emily?’

‘What I did.’

‘What did you do?’

‘You know what I did.’ I tried to control the tremor in my voice but we both heard it. I was furious with myself. She does that every time. It’s like she wants me to keep saying it, over and over, as though if I keep saying it, I’ll believe it. I’ll be sorry.

‘I know what you were arrested for, Emily.’

I tapped the ash from my cigarette on to the floor. ‘What else is there?’

‘You tell me.’

My gaze edged towards hers again. ‘Why do you want to know?’

Her eyes dipped to the notebook. ‘I want to help you understand why you did what you did, Emily.’

‘I know why I did it.’

‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘Why did you do it?’

I could have given it to her then, the letter to Juliet. I could have told her that Juliet made me do it, that I used to be like every other teenage girl, that I was stubborn and restless and melodramatic and said the wrong thing sometimes and broke mirrors and misheard lyrics, but I still sang, even though the words were wrong. That I threw coins in fountains and made wishes at 11.11 because I thought that if I wanted something, all I had to do was ask for it. And I asked, not for world peace or money or good health or any of those things other people wish for. I asked to be special. I wanted to be the sort of girl boys wrote books about, the sort of girl boys sang songs about.

I think I could have been, but then Juliet stabbed my father and I couldn’t be me any more. I turned into someone else, into this hard, angry, miserable girl who did the most terrible things. Things that made people take a step back when I walked into a room.

That’s what you won’t find on Google, I wanted to tell Doctor Gilyard today. Who I used to be.

But I didn’t because she’d never get that, would she? She’d never get that sometimes we do things that are so big – so awful – that they just become who we are. It’s like you do it and BOOM everything is blown to bits.

I guess if you’re here too, then you know how that feels.

I’m laughing now, as I’m writing this, because I don’t even know who you are but I think you understand me better than anyone else I know. After all, isn’t that why we’re here, you and me? Because we’re broken?

Saturday. Art therapy. We had to paint how we were feeling so I balled up my piece of paper and threw it at the therapist. I’m not allowed to have a cigarette for the rest of the day.

Saturday is also Visitors’ Day so Naomi (17, schizophrenic) is having her weekly shit fit. I’m writing this from the TV Room because there aren’t enough nurses to deal with Naomi’s histrionics and keep an eye on us too, so we’ve been corralled into the TV Room to watch a film like we’re two years olds. I half want to wander into the corridor weeping about how it isn’t worth it any more just to see how they would react.

The new girl, Lily (16, anorexic), keeps looking at me with this sad little smile as though she’s waiting for me to tell her that it’s going to be okay, but I won’t smile back because why should I be the one to tell her that it won’t be? If she doesn’t know that already, being in this place, then I can’t help her.

If you can’t read the tail end of that sentence, it’s because Naomi just broke something – something glass – and we all jumped. I say all, Val (17, bipolar) didn’t budge. She just sat there, staring at the television. But that’s Val; once she sits in front of the telly, she doesn’t move. You can go over to her and slap her across the face and she won’t notice, but turn it over when Deal or No Deal is on and she’ll pull you apart, bone by bone.

Naomi’s just broken something else. She does this every time her boyfriend comes to visit; she sees him, feels her heart again, and thinks she’s better. Then when it’s time to take her meds, she screams blue bloody murder. That’s why I won’t let anyone visit me. Not that there is anyone to visit me; Dad’s in prison and Mum’s – well, I don’t know where Mum is. Wherever she is, she isn’t thinking about me, so I won’t waste any more ink on her.

Naomi just roared, ‘I’m fine! I’m in love, I don’t need drugs!’, so it won’t be long until she threatens to kill herself and they sedate her, which is good, because we’re having spag bol for dinner. I don’t do much willingly here, but I’m first in the queue for spag bol.

I just had to stop writing because the new girl approached me.

‘Are you her? Are you Emily Koll?’ she asked, her eyes wide.

I’m not wearing my YES, IT’S ME, EMILY KOLL T-shirt today so I nodded.

She took that as her cue to sit next to me and as she did, I looked at her, at the gold crucifix around her neck and her unbrushed brown hair. She looked so fragile, as though her clothes were the only things holding her together, but she was bold enough to sit next to me without being asked, so I had to give her that. She’s braver than most of the girls in here.

‘You’re not what I expected,’ she told me with a whisper.

I made a show of rolling my eyes and snapping this notebook shut because what could I say? It wasn’t a compliment, was it?

‘You’re blond.’

I am blond. That’s what surprises people the most when they come here. They expect to meet the red-lipped, red-haired girl they’ve seen in the papers. But they find me – tiny, blond, doll-faced me – and they stare at me as though they’ve been betrayed. They want the wild redhead. Tiny blonde girls don’t do what I did.

‘Is it true? Did you really do that to that girl Juliet?’ she asked.

She was breathless and I love and hate that, how people are in awe of me and terrified of me, all at once. So I smiled at her. ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’

You shouldn’t either, by the way.

Emily Koll. Slipped that one in, didn’t I?

I probably should have told you that straight away, on the first page. I wasn’t trying to trick you; if I procrastinated, it’s only because I know what people think of me. I’ve read what they say about me in the newspapers, that I’m wicked, that I’m so rotten my bones are the colour of bitten-down apple cores.

But there’s more than one side to a story, and this is mine.

First, the facts:

Yes, my father is Harry Koll.

Yes, Juliet’s father is Jason Shaw.

Yes, my father is one of London’s most notorious gangsters.

Yes, Juliet’s father ran the police investigation to take him down.

Yes, my father broke into his house and shot him in his bed.

Yes, Juliet stabbed my father when he tried to shoot her too.

No, I didn’t know. About any of it. That Dad was a gangster. That he could just shoot someone like that. The dad I knew put me on his shoulders at Arsenal games and read me Goodnight Moon when I couldn’t sleep and came to all my cello recitals. All of them. So I don’t know who that man is, the one who sells drugs and kills men in their beds.

I don’t suppose it matters what I say now. You can take this notebook and tear it to pieces. You can burn it and let the ashes float away like dirty confetti, because all you’ll remember is that my father murdered her father. If you ask Juliet, she’ll tell you that’s all you should remember. Maybe you should. Call me mad, call me wicked, but I’m under no illusions – I know how easy it is to pick sides here – her father was the big brave policeman and my father is the gangster who shot him. He got what was coming to him. I did too, I suppose. But I told you – I didn’t know. I need you to remember that while you’re drawing that line between Juliet and me. And that’s fine, draw it. Go on. I’ll stay on my side of it if you remember that I didn’t know.

Here’s another fact for you: yes, I went after Juliet. That’s why I’m here. Why most of the girls here are too scared to sit next to me. But don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids, there was no vendetta. When I found out what Dad did, my instinct wasn’t to go after Juliet. I reacted like anyone else would have; I was horrified, ashamed. For months I tried to ignore it, to wash the taste of it from my mouth with cheap vodka and cigarettes.

But it wouldn’t go away.

Doctor Gilyard says that’s when it started – the crazy – but it felt more like grief. It was like this blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burned out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger. It followed me everywhere. It sat on my bed and watched me sleep and when I had to eat, it looked at me across the table.

So I gave into it, rolled around in it, swam in it, deeper and deeper, until it pulled me under. When I emerged, I had only one thought: Juliet. It was her fault. That’s how it started, the day I traced that line back to the night she stabbed Dad and everything fell apart. So I suppose I don’t always avoid straight lines.

Sometimes I run across them.

Doctor Gilyard started our session this week by asking me if I often lose my temper.

That’s all she ever does: ask questions. Questions. Questions. Questions. If the sun slants into her office at the right angle, you can see all the question marks floating in the air. Question marks and dust. I try to catch them on my tongue sometimes, as though they’re snowflakes. I can’t, of course, but it’s fun to see the look on her face as I try.

The first time I did it, she looked so worried that I don’t know how I didn’t laugh. Now she knows me well enough not to flinch when I do stuff like that. She just closes her notebook and when she puts her pencil on top of it, I stop because what’s the point of giving her what she wants if she isn’t going to write it down?

I swear I wouldn’t do half the stuff I do if someone wasn’t paying attentio. . .