The Deepest Cut by Natalie Flynn Page A

she sighed.
    I looked at my plate. I still had some food left and wanted to eat it but thought it’d be rude while she was sitting talking to me.
    â€˜Yo, Adam,’ she poked me in the arm, really hard. ‘You mute?’ She asked.
    I nodded.
    â€˜Cool,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m Josie,’ she held out a small, skinny hand with really dry knuckles.
    I shook it. She had a tight grip. It took me by surprise.
    She leant in and whispered in my ear, ‘This place can get crazy at times, but stick with me and you’ll be all right.’ Then she sat back, winked and smiled.

Six
    I was outside.
    Out of the ward.
    I’d gone through the door with the keycode on it, down the stairs and out of the other door with the keycode on it. I was sitting on a bench that was a bit soggy from the rain.
    I was free from the dense air of that place, free from its endless, dark corridors and my dingy room. Free from Caitlin being bossy and Blake putting my pants on his head.
    The air outside smelt like rain and I was sucking it up. I sat with my face to the sky, smelling it, taking in as much of it as I could because in about five minutes, I’d be back inside that dungeon.
    â€˜Just light this, don’t pull on it too much, light it and just hold it, they won’t know you’re not smoking,’ Josie handed me the cigarette she’d just rolled. ‘Make it look like you know what you’re doing.’ She winked.
    Smokers were allowed outside, for supervised fag breaks every couple of hours, after meals and between therapy and activities, Josie had told me.
    â€˜Privileges,’ she’d whispered as we were walking down the stairs behind a few of the other smokers and one of the nurses. ‘If you don’t smoke you aren’t allowed out, so pretend.’
    I’m glad she made me go out. The fresh air felt so good.
    She handed me a lighter and I put the cigarette in my mouth and tried to light it.
    â€˜Pull on it a bit, but only a tiny bit,’ she said. She was watching Damian, the nurse who was supervising us, to make sure he wasn’t watching. ‘Shit, just pull on it,’ she said in a whispered panic as he started to walk over.
    â€˜I didn’t know you were a smoker, Adam.’
    â€˜Bit of a nosy parker, you are,’ Josie said.
    â€˜Just doing my job, Josie.’ He smiled.
    â€˜Well, you lot have had him doped up to his poor bloody eyeballs and locked up in there, so now he wants to enjoy a fag.’
    â€˜And he can’t speak for himself?’
    Josie looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. ‘If you did your job properly, you’d know he was mute, so no, he can’t speak for himself.’
    Damian’s face changed. ‘I’m sorry, Adam. It completely slipped my mind,’ he said.
    I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I wanted to say if I could.
    He backed off and went over to the others.
    â€˜If I wasn’t a raging lesbian, I’d fancy him a bit,’ Josie said.
    I wouldn’t have guessed she was a lesbian. I’d never seen a real lesbian before. I’d only ever seen them in the porn films we’d watched after we hacked into Nathan’s dad’s computer.
    We sat in silence for a bit, her smoking, me awkwardly holding a fag, which I was sure had gone out.
    â€˜Adam.’ Josie turned her body around to face me and crossed her legs up on the bench. She took a long pull on her fag and then blew it out slowly.
    â€˜I heard about what happened to your friend,’ she said.
    My body froze, including my breathing and probably my pulse. Then panic took over and all my senses went into overdrive. My breathing and pulse raced and the blood must have been flying through my veins. I tried so hard to control it, keep it inside so she didn’t see, but if she knew about me, about Jake and about what happened that night, any second, she’d tell me what a monster I was and how