Crossing the Line Read Online Free PDF

joke, really, just some harmless fun Greta and I had with some others during a Friday afternoon last period. I only mentioned it to pass the time and now I was being quizzed on it, as if there’s some dark meaning behind every little thing I do. And so I sat there keeping mum, thinking what was the use.
    Noel and I sit and look at one another a lot, like we’re playing this game of who’s going to be the first to break the ice. Usually he wins. Gotcha, Sophie! But I don’t mind. I kind of like getting stuff off my chest. Some stuff, not all of it. There’s nobody I trust that much.
    Today I take a careful look around his office. On the wall facing me are some colourful prints with patterns on them – very pretty. On the desk near his leather seat stands a box of tissues – expensive ones, impregnated with aloe vera (for patients who like to cry, I suppose), and a travelling clock with its back to me. Sometimes there’s a packet of throat lozenges. Honey and lemon. Above Noel’s desk near the door hangs a calendar with a black and white photo of a small boy and girl kissing. I love that picture! His desk is strewn with lots of books and papers.
    ‘What are you thinking of, Sophie?’ Noel asks halfway into our session when neither of us has said a word.
    ‘I like the kaleidoscope patterns in your pictures.’
    ‘And why is that?’
    The man’s a quiz master of the highest calibre.
    ‘I don’t know. I just like them.’
    ‘And what else do you like?’
    ‘As in things in this office?’
    He shrugs, which I take to mean is what do I like anywhere; in his office, or in the world.
    I say the first thing that comes into my head. ‘I like ice-cream.’
    ‘What flavour?’
    ‘Liquorice.’
    He smiles, glances at the clock when he thinks I’m not watching.
    ‘Do you like ice-cream?’ I ask.
    This is like tennis. Lobbing the questions back and forth.
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘I suppose so. I haven’t met anyone yet who didn’t like it.’
    And so it goes on. Don’t know why I bother. Or what he gets out of it all.
    Sometimes, when I feel like it, I talk about school. Or living with Matt and Amy. Or other people I hang with, like Greta. When I do this, Noel leans forward. As if what I’m saying is fascinating.
    ‘Amy can be pretty out there,’ I tell him.
    Noel nods. Smiles. ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’ve seen her shoplift.’
    I know this is not what the Department pays my shrink a huge packet for – to listen to me gossip about my second-favourite flatmate. But it’s easier than talking about myself.
    ‘You want to tell me more?’
    I stop short of mentioning her smoking pot and driving without a licence. Funny how the mind works. I think of Amy being in trouble and that lights up a memory of when I was at the Pattersons, my old fosters. Always in hot water there. Without much effort at all I can still see old man Patterson coming at me, about to give me a tongue-lashing.
    Noel’s voice is somewhere in the background but I’m in another space. Images now zap about my brain – of headless beings, of my younger face, contorted, tearful, lost, of being pulled away screaming from loving arms. Of wolves ripping into me. Then I’m falling into a deep chasm, arms and legs flaying the black and sticky air, and I’m just falling, endlessly falling.
    ‘What are you thinking of, Sophie?’
    His voice jolts me back to reality.
    ‘Oh nothing, nothing really.’
    Instead of letting Noel anywhere near my deepest feelings, I start rambling on, spitting out whatever wanders into my mind . . . ‘And then this dick of a teacher tells her she’s on detention. But Greta tells him to shove it and she’s off out of there, yelling that he can stick his bloody geography up his . . .’
    I am suddenly aware of Noel’s hands, small and plump, resting in his lap like delicate white birds.
    ‘You’ve got little hands,’ I say. ‘For a man.’
    Suddenly the shrink changes, becomes real. A flush shoots up his neck and onto