1399: Part 15

Sian enjoyed coming into town on a Sunday. There tended to be fewer people than on a Saturday, and the staff in the shops she liked to visit tended to be look considerably less harassed.

Today she had come out with the express purpose of looking at shoes. She didn’t have the money for new shoes, of course, but she thought it’d be nice to get some ideas. There would be parties around the end of term, and she knew from experience that everyone — male and female — would be judged by their peers on how well they dressed.

Sian was reasonably confident enough in her appearance, but not enough to feel like she could get away with not making an effort. She was always rather envious of Jasmine in this respect; even on days where her friend claimed she’d overslept and hadn’t had time to spend on her appearance, she still looked gorgeous, and as such it was unusual for a party to come and go without Jasmine having at the very least shared a kiss with some of the more desirable boys in the year.

Sian, meanwhile, was yet to give her first kiss to anyone — not that she really minded, of course, since there was no-one in particular she had her eye on. She often fought with herself internally about this; her own sense of maturity meant that she often felt like many of her peers were too immature for her, and she was in no rush to jump into bed with the first guy who paid her any notice.

That didn’t mean that she wasn’t interested in a relationship, of course; just that she wasn’t actively pursuing one right now.

As these thoughts flowed around her head, she realised she’d been staring at the same pair of shoes for a good few minutes now. She blinked, looked around — no-one seemed to be giving her any funny looks — and sauntered down the aisle to look at some other pairs.

Nothing was really grabbing her right now, so she decided to leave the shop. The high street was busy, but not unmanageably so. Time was marching on towards the end of the year, but the populace hadn’t quite switched into full-on Christmas panic-buying yet — that would probably start from next week, Sian thought, and continue throughout the rest of November right up until Christmas.

She sighed. She was struggling to muster up much enthusiasm today, despite leaving the house earlier with some enthusiasm. She was discovering that her relatively new-found freedom from incarceration at home by her parents wasn’t particularly exciting after all — though secretly she’d always suspected this — and was now wishing she’d stayed in her room, listened to some music or played some video games.

“Oi!” came a yell from further down the street. “Get back ‘ere!”

The source of the yelling was the middle-aged owner of the newsagent that bookended one end of the main shopping drag in the high street. Even as the rest of the street had gradually started to be taken up by nothing but clothes shops, leading to several half-hearted residents’ campaigns to “save our high street”, the newsagent’s had steadfastly refused to move. He was always doing good business, too, even with a larger WH Smiths further down the street.

Now it looked like he was having some trouble, though. Sian followed the sound and saw the owner standing outside his shop yelling, and a figure running down the road, knocking people out of the way as it went.

It looked strangely familiar. In fact, Sian knew exactly who it was without having to look too closely.

She started up the street in the direction of the running figure. She didn’t break into a run of her own, though; she figured that the shoplifter would probably tire himself out before long, and that’s when she’d find him.

Sure enough, it didn’t  take all that long; after glancing down several side streets after seeing him apparently vanish from the main road, she eventually found an exhausted-looking Edward leaning breathlessly against a wall, clutching a bundle of magazines to his chest.

“Hey,” she said. He jumped in fright and dropped his magazines on the floor; she was unsurprised to see that they were made up of a combination of men’s interest magazines with scantily-clad women on the front, and outright pornography, some of which were bagged and had a covermounted DVD. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone you’re here.”

He gave her a look that was somewhere between terror and anger, and said nothing. To Sian’s eye, he looked like a wild animal cornered by a predator, unsure whether to fight or run away.

She took a step closer and he visibly stiffened, pressing himself back against the wall as if willing himself to sink into it. She paused and looked at him.

“What’s up, Edward?” she asked, trying to use as calm a voice as possible. He still didn’t answer; his face was turning more and more wild by the second — now it was contorted into an outright snarl.

She took another step closer to him, and this time he moved; he bolted, leaving his stack of magazines on the floor. Charging down the side street, he knocked several dustbins over before disappearing around a corner at the end. Sian took off at a jog after him; she felt fairly confident that she’d catch up to him again before long.

She was right; Edward had barely got around the corner before having to stop to get his breath again.

“What do you want?” he yelled. “Leave me alone!”

“I just want to talk to you,” said Sian. “I’m not going to tell anyone where you are, I said that before.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?” he said breathlessly, a little less aggression in his voice now. “You saw what I did, didn’t you?”

“I did,” said Sian. “But I don’t care.”

Sian surprised herself by saying that, but after a moment of reflection she realised that she meant it. She detested the kids in her year — mostly boys, but there were a few girls, too — who wore criminality like a badge of honour, vandalising property and shoplifting in ever-increasing attempts to look cool. But she also knew that Edward wasn’t like that; because he’d alienated pretty much everyone around him, there was no-one for him to look cool in front of — except perhaps Sian, and she believed he was intelligent enough to know how she felt about that sort of thing — and thus he was obviously indulging in this behaviour for another reason. Perhaps stress relief?

“Huh?” he said, panting. His breathing was slowing a little now.

“I don’t care,” she said. “You did something wrong, but I don’t believe you wanted to actually hurt anyone. And if you were really that attached to those magazines you’d have taken them with you.”

He said nothing and just looked down at the cracked surface of the pavement on this side street; a far cry from the fresh, clean paving slabs of the high street.

“I hate myself,” he said after a moment’s pause. He didn’t look up, and kicked the ground lightly. “I don’t know why I do the things I do.”

Another pause.

“Well, I do. But I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

Sian said nothing. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to Edward right now. He sounded like he wanted to get some stuff off his chest, but also that he was embarrassed by it. Sian felt it would be better to let him say what he wanted — if anything — at his own pace.

“I want to take the stuff I nicked back,” he said after a long moment’s silence. “I’ll get in trouble but I don’t care. I want to do it.”

Sian was surprised at his proposed course of action, but didn’t argue. As he started walking back in the direction the pair of them had come, she followed along behind him.

“You don’t need to come,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Whatever,” he replied, turning his eyes back to the front.

He led the pair of them back to the side street and picked up the pile of magazines that lay where they had fallen just moments ago.

“Shame,” he said, looking fondly at the cover of one of the pornographic magazines. “This one looked pretty hot. But I can’t afford to buy it.” He looked over at Sian.

“If you can’t afford it, I’m not buying it for you,” said Sian with a laugh. “You buy your own porn.”

She had to admit she was morbidly fascinated with the magazine and its covermounted DVD; she was familiar with the idea of porn and had even looked some up on the Internet out of curiosity once or twice when her parents were out — taking care to delete the browsing history afterwards, of course — but had never actually seen a pornographic magazine or DVD up close.

She caught herself staring and looked away, feeling her cheeks flushing slightly.

“You sure you don’t want it?” asked Edward, a mocking tone in his voice.

“No,” said Sian, firmly.

Edward gathered the magazines, clutched them to his chest and led the pair of them back out of the side street into the relatively bright daylight of the high street. They proceeded up the pavement towards the newsagent’s until they reached the doorway; Edward paused before going in.

“Do you want me to come with?” asked Sian.

“No,” said Edward. “Yes. No.”

Sian giggled.

“Come on, then,” she said. “I’m coming in.”

Edward walked into the shop with Sian in tow. She immediately saw the owner stiffen behind the counter as if preparing for another confrontation, but she was grateful that he didn’t seem to have called the police as yet. She got the feeling that this wasn’t the first shoplifting incident he’d suffered, and ultimately a few “specialist” magazines going missing probably weren’t going to cut into his profits too much.

Edward plopped the bundle of magazines onto the counter in front of the owner, who looked at them in surprise.

“Sorry,” Edward muttered, then looked at the floor.

“He wanted to return them,” Sian explained. “He really is sorry. He’s just… going through some things at the moment.”

“Hmm,” said the owner, looking Edward up and down. Edward, meanwhile, was still staring at the floor.

There was an awkward silence for a few minutes. Then the owner spoke again.

“All right,” he said. “I believe you. After all, you did bring them back. Just… please don’t do it again.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Edward muttered. He looked up at the owner, then over at Sian. “Things are worse than they’ve ever been. Or perhaps they’re better than they’ve ever been. I don’t quite know. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to think any more.”

Suddenly, without warning, he started to cry. Sian looked over at the newsagent, who looked slightly embarrassed, then back to Edward, who clearly didn’t care what a spectacle he was making of himself right now.

“Shhh,” said Sian, laying a tentative hand on his shoulder. He immediately flinched.

“Don’t touch me,” he said through huge, gulping sobs. “Don’t ever touch me.”

Then he ran, leaving a very bewildered Sian standing, confused, in the middle of the newsagent’s, with the owner and several customers looking curiously at the door Edward had just charged through.