Just Keep Breathing by GS Rhodes (good books to read for 12 year olds .txt) 📕

again, reliving every one of those feelings he had when he first saw the body, when he walked up to it and realised it was somebody that he knew. Kidd felt sorry for him.

“There was a body, someone, just lying there and I figured she was in trouble, so I went over there,” Dexter’s voice had gotten very quiet all of a sudden. “And that’s when I realised it was Sarah and…I didn’t know what to do. I froze. There were a couple of people who came down when they saw me standing next to the body. I don’t know how many people must have gone past her this morning and not even noticed, but I did. And she was just…lying there. So still. So pale.”

He pulled his sleeve over his hand and rubbed at his eyes, dabbing up the tears. He wiped his nose and then looked across at Kidd and Sanchez, panicked.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t even mine and I’m—”

“It’s okay,” DS Sanchez said, offering him a smile. It seemed to calm him a little bit. “What else?”

“Well,” he said. “I took out my phone. I didn’t know who to call at first, I thought about calling my friends, I don’t know why, but then figured that this was bigger than that and called the police. They arrived pretty quickly. But then they put me in cuffs and arrested me on suspicion of murdering Sarah and I got real scared. I panicked and I tried to pull away and I told them that I didn’t do it but they weren’t listening.”

The response team would have known they were looking for Dexter Black after they couldn’t find him so they would have gone in all guns blazing when they realised who he was. Kidd, once again, found himself pitying Dexter Black.

“They wanted to call my parents but I have Andrew’s number because, like, he’s friends with my dad and I thought he could help.” The tears were coming fast now, flowing down his cheeks, cascading off his jawline, and onto the collar of the jumper.

“She was wearing my jacket,” he sniffed. “I gave her that. She got cold one night when we were all out as a group and I gave her the jacket and she just kept on wearing it. I didn’t want it back. I never wanted it back. It was hers as far as I was concerned but…” He trailed off, crying again.

Kidd needed him to keep talking. “I know this is very distressing, Dexter, but I need you to take us back to Friday. I need you to tell us everything that happened to you from Friday when you shouted at Sarah in front of everyone. We spoke to people at the school, they were really worried you were going to hurt her. Was your relationship with Sarah like that? Did the two of you get into fights often?”

Dexter scoffed and looked away. “It wasn’t even a fight.”

Kidd straightened up. This lad was really taking him on a ride here. One minute he felt sorry for him, the next he wanted to reach across the table and smack him in the face.

“What was it then?” Kidd asked, firmly. “Because everything that we’ve heard is that it was a fight. And from what we were told you fought a lot, and your relationship was strange. A lot of people were confused.”

“We were putting it on.”

“Putting it on?” Kidd repeated. “The people watching seemed to think it was pretty real. I’ve been told you were screaming in her face, threatening her. Is that what people do in relationships, Dexter?”

“We weren’t in a relationship!”

“What?”

“I’m gay.”

Kidd sat back in his chair and blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Going off of Kidd’s silence, DS Sanchez chimed in. “So you were in a fake relationship?”

Dexter sank a little further down in his chair and Kidd suddenly felt a strange affinity with the lad. He remembered what it was like being young and gay, not being able to say it out loud for fear of getting in the shit for it. Maybe that was the first time Dexter Black had ever said it out loud.

“I…I’m gay,” he said again. “And Sarah knew about it. We’ve been friends for years, since we were babies, and she knows my parents, knows they’re super religious and the biggest pair of arseholes you could possibly meet.” He stopped and looked up. “I mean, I know they’re my parents but…they’re not, like, accepting. They’re pretty far from it actually. That’s why I wasn’t allowed out all weekend.”

Kidd was lost. “Circle back,” Kidd said.

“My dad found…he found that I’d been looking at…websites…” Dexter trailed off. Kidd didn’t need to know what kind of websites. He could imagine what kind of websites a curious sixteen-year-old would be looking at. “We got into a big fight and they…they said some things to me and they…they locked me up in my room for the weekend, longer actually, they wouldn’t let me go to school.”

Kidd nearly said that’s the last thing they should be doing to a horny teenager with access to the internet but he held his tongue. “Go on.”

“So when I had a chance to go out for a run, I took it. They’d left me breakfast outside the door and left the door unlocked so I could get it and when I realised they weren’t home, I went running,” he said. “But Sarah was trying to protect us from all that, from my parents finding out, but then I got stupid and they found out anyway.”

“You said us,” Kidd said. “Who is us?”

“Me and Nick,” he replied, looking down at his hands again, furiously picking at the skin until he started bleeding. Kidd winced. “She was…she was trying to protect us. We’ve been seeing each other for about a year, getting to know one another, both of us doing it in secret, really. He’s not out to his parents either. His parents would