Two for Joy - Louise Collins Page 0,8

understood me the way I understood them. No one comes close, no one will ever come close.”

Chad looked as if he was about to speak, but Paul cleared his throat, ending their moment, and Chad closed his mouth.

Instead of replying, he smiled, a big smile that lifted his watering eyes, and rounded his cheeks. The smile Romeo had needed to see since Chad had stepped through the door.

Now that’s my magpie, he thought, but never said. Everyone knew he was a monster, but no one knew Chad was the monster’s magpie.

That was between them, their secret.

“You disgust me.”

Romeo froze at Paul’s voice, then slowly turned his head. His eyes weren’t on Romeo, but Chad. When Romeo turned back to face Chad again, his smile was gone, and the haunted look had taken over his face.

His hand scrunched and relaxed on the table in a manic manner for the rest of the visit.

****

There was nothing on the news about a gruesome murder, no clue to why Chad had looked and acted so oddly. Romeo turned off the TV, thought about re-reading his book selection, but couldn’t stomach rereading the diseases section of the A-Z medical dictionary or the endless preaching in the bible. Once he was done living in prison hell, he was destined for Hell hell, that’s all it taught him.

“Hey,” he shouted.

Will struck his bars. “Yep.”

“There been any murders lately?”

“Are you always blood thirsty?”

“I just wondered whether I’d missed anything.”

“No, no murders, some poor bloke electrocuted himself—

“Not interested.”

“I can tell you about stabbing those police officers.”

“No, thanks.”

“My murder not good enough for you?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You did it out of anger.”

“Don’t we all.”

Romeo sighed, walking away. “No, not all of us do it from anger.”

“Why did you do it then?”

“The monster in me needed it.”

“Monster.” Will smirked.

Romeo collapsed on his bunk and stared at Chad’s face on the wall. Something had upset his magpie, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

He ate, he exercised in his small cell, paced around the slightly bigger cage outside, then laid back down on his bunk. The days, hours, the minutes, the seconds, slowed, and he closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.

Chapter Four

Romeo waited obediently with his hands through the bars. Fred snapped the cuffs on, then he stepped forward, waiting for the gate to his cell to open.

His one-hour allowance of exercise in the yard. Fred and Paul led him the opposite way to the visiting the room through more doors and gates until finally he was outside, in the cage. A cage each of them stalked around at different points of the day. Romeo had the cage when the sun was high above his head, beating down on him with no shade to soften the heat. He paced, and the monster paced around his head. Hands finally free, but no chance of getting hold of someone, ending his countdown with the vital number one.

Paul and Fred watched him walk in silence.

He froze when a black glint caught his eye. He looked down at the ground, studying the beetle. Its mad dash across the cage with the monster. It was over halfway, only a meter from freedom, then it stopped, and they were caught in an odd standoff.

Romeo’s mind drifted to the past.

It had started with the spiders, but the bug brutality took on a new level when he began school. Romeo squashed beetles, woodlice, ants, ladybirds, anything he could under his shoes. He enjoyed it, but learned quickly that he shouldn’t have.

He’d been stamping on earwigs in the school playground. Alice Bell pushed him, told him to stop, it wasn’t nice, but he ignored her. How could something satisfying be not nice?

Then she told the teacher.

The teacher had come towards him, face twisted in disappointment, ready to tell him off. Romeo finally looked up from his art and saw the reaction of the other pupils and teachers, the disapproval, and in some, even fear.

What he was doing was wrong.

He started wailing, claimed it was an accident, and he felt sad for killing them. Despite Alice repeating it hadn’t been an accident, he’d killed them on purpose, he did every day, the teacher bought his wobbling bottom lip and the tears streaming down his cheeks.

The tears, after all, had been real, not for the earwigs, but for himself. He cried because something that felt good to him was wrong. He was wrong, and even at six years old, he knew it. At that age, he cared that he was different,