“You just don’t get it,” Robin said leaning back in his chair. Lizzie held up her hands in silent protest but it did nothing to calm the anger inside of him.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Lizzie said from across their table in the library, “I just don’t understand why you got into a fight with them in the first place.”

“I’ve explained it at least a million times. You say you want to help people but you still don’t understand?” Robin knew he was being an asshole but he couldn’t help it. He had been defending an innocent homeless man against two drug-thugs. A little black eye was nothing considering he hadn’t killed the bastards.

“Ok, fine. I won’t bring it up again.” Lizzie sighed deeply before continuing, “Is everything ok?” She was looking at Robin with those beautiful questioning eyes, but he just shook his head. He would never be able to tell her everything anymore.

“It’s fine. I’m just a little edgy.”

Edgy was a nice way of putting ‘Ready to rip the head off of any living thing’. It was the honourable way of saying ‘Yes, something is wrong but I don’t want to tell you, so shut the fuck up.’

Lizzie looked back down at her books and didn’t say anything else. He wanted to scream at her, start a fight, but he knew it wouldn’t do anything. She wasn’t the cause of his anger, and they were supposed to be studying. He looked down at the text book in front of him but he couldn’t concentrate enough to read it.

The words on the page blended together to create images, faces, him holding a baseball bat and swinging it at that rapist’s head. Robin smiled inside, letting the images make him feel better. The bastard deserved it after what he had tried to do to Robin’s sister.

After a while the images lost their beauty, like they always did. Instead, they morphed into blood stains and bone fragments. Robin shut the text book. He didn’t want to see his doubts on display. It was the right thing – it didn’t matter what the law said.

“Yeah, I can’t study either.” Lizzie shut her text book. “Do you wanna go watch that new slasher flick? I think we can still catch the late show?”

“I don’t want to go see a slasher flick.” Did he say it too quickly? It was the last thing he needed right now.

“Ok.” Lizzie shifted in her seat. “Do you want to go for a walk, it’s nice out.”

“No.”

“Afraid you’ll find more bodies?” It was intended as a joke but to Robin it felt like a knife stabbing him in the gut.

“Do you think it’s funny?” He felt his voice rise. “Do I need to remind you what it is like to find some guy who tried to rape my sister dead behind a garbage bin with his throat cut open?”

“Robin?” Lizzie looked around flushing slightly at the people who had begun to stare, “It was obviously a bad joke, but you know I don’t think it’s funny.” Keeping her voice low she continued, “I think you’re taking this whole thing worse than Tania. At least she was able to go identify his body this morning you couldn’t even step inside the morgue. Maybe you should go home and rest or something?”

“I’m taking it just fine.” He knew he should lower his voice but he couldn’t control it. The police had been in the morgue. He hadn’t been ready to face them. They had told Tania that they wanted to talk to him, tomorrow. They might catch him in a lie, and here she was making a joke about it without even realizing. It was excruciating.

“Mr. Davidson,” a voice said behind him. Robin turned around to see the Librarian looking down his nose at Robin. “I think it’s time that you left. And please don’t come back until you’ve learnt how to behave yourself in a library.”

“Whatever.” He didn’t want to be in the library anyway. Robin turned in his seat and started packing up his stuff. He glanced across to check if Lizzie was following his lead and felt more than a little relieved to find her stuffing books into her backpack.

A small leaflet fell out of a book as he stuffed it. He picked it up ready to shove it in too when he noticed the big bold letters: COME MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

____

Purchase The Red Book to read “Innocence” in its entirety.  Official release is 1st December – pre-release orders taken as of 24th November.