Seduced by Lies by Stacey Quinn

tears, but thankfully his mind had returned to relative normality.
    There was no doubt that he’d screwed up badly. He wasn’t sure why his words had triggered such a violent reaction, but his eagerness and impatience had got the better of him and now he was back to square one. Well, worse than square one really. He still didn’t even know her name!
                  “But, not unsalvageable.” He murmured to himself. It would be hard work, but then life was hard work, day in day out, and at least this hard work would be worth something. In the past twenty four hours, Sam had experienced soaring highs and soul-crushing lows of real emotions that he never possibly could have imagined existed, and he was not about to give those up without a fight. He’d seen a new future, a new life laid out before him, if he would only just reach out and claim it. He rose up on shaky, uncertain limbs, shaking the pins and needles gently out of his lower legs and wiping the quickly congealing blood off his hands as best he could onto his dark jeans, before turning his back on the scene of that mornings utter, crushing failure and squeezing               back out of the hedgerow.
    Sam couldn’t even begin to guess how long he’d been in the overgrown smoking area, which now looked so peaceful and innocent. All he could tell was that College was definitely in full swing. The previously deserted car park was now practically overflowing with various, clapped out, hand me down cars and the ridiculous, tiny, bubble shaped cars that (for some bizarre reason unknown to man or beast) had become popular with all the girly-girls in Sam’s year. The sun had also seemed to have shifted its position dramatically, and now shone fiercely and relentlessly down on the top of Sam’s head.
    Brow furrowed with confusion, Sam pulled his mobile phone from his jeans pocket, wincing as the rough denim chafed against the grit-filled wounds on his palms. Squinting to see the screen through the glare, he looked at the tiny clock in the top right hand corner - 11:59 am. He’d been slumped against that hedge, wallowing in his own blood and misery for nearly three hours!
                  “Well that’s this College day down the drain!” He chuckled to himself, marveling at how trivial things like education and time management now seemed, in the light of much more life changing events.
    Sam weighed up his options. He couldn’t let himself be seen in College - there’d be too many questions about his absence and the grizzly state of his palms, questions that he simply did not have answers for yet. But neither could he bring himself to go home over three hours early, despite the comparably pleasant morning. He knew exactly where he wanted to be, where those pesky, invisible hooks in his skin begged him to go, but was he ready? Was it too soon?
                  After another fifteen minutes of arguing with himself on the bonnet of his car, Sam was, once again, running out of time. Soon, hundreds of College students would be pouring out of the revolving doors at the other end of the car park, to spend their lunch hour basking and flirting in the persistent September sun, and there was no way he could be around here when that happened. And so Sam chose the only other option he could think of (or wanted to think of, he wasn’t quite sure), and allowed those invisible fishermen and their invisible hooks to reel him in, leading him around the very outer edge of the west side of the College, towards the rarely-used and little-known second entrance door to the library.
                  Sam felt as if he’d bought a season ticket to the world's most harrowing, exhilarating, soul-satisfying and addictive roller coaster - a roller coaster he would more than happily strap himself into, time and time again, until he reached his destination. While his feet pounded across the grass of the football pitch his mind raced