It took a moment for her words to register in my head, another for them to sink into place.

"Do you think- do you think Phil knew?" I stammered.

The vibrant greens and blues of the leaves in the sky seemed to fade into monochrome as I fixed my eyes on hers with an intensity that was probably a little creepy.

"Is he friends with Gabes and Jake Mansford in year twelve?"

"No. No definitely not." I snorted.

"Then I doubt it," she said, "He kept it very secret. He'd never been into drugs, but his dad left them without a lot of money. He didn't have a good time in school and wanted something better for his sister, so he started running small time drugs for the local dealers. He worked his way up a couple of levels and managed to send Caitlin here off drug money." She shrugged.

"So is that why he was... you know. Because of something to do with drugs?" I said slowly.

Dani shifted uncomfortably on the bench. "It's complicated. It's probably nothing to do with your boyfriend and I really shouldn't be taking to you-"

"I think it might though," I said, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. "Phil met up with Jakob the day he was killed."

Her eyebrows raised and her mouth puckered into a little 'o'. "Oh. Well. Maybe. He could be the- Now wait, how do I know I can trust you? Caitlin wouldn't want me telling people this, she feels shit enough as it is."

"It's not Caitlin though, you can leave her out I just want to know about Phil-" I tried to keep my tone sombre and sympathetic, but I was struggling. Finally it was all becoming clear.

"I wish I could." She sighed. "Unfortunately, Caitlin has everything to do with this. I'm really not sure I should just be talking to you. I've no idea who you are-"

"It was cocaine, wasn't it?" I interrupted, bluffing. I couldn't lose this source.

"I- how did you know?" She said, her voice suddenly low.

"Phil told me." I murmured, crossing my fingers behind my back.

"Shit, okay... well, maybe if you know that... that's the bad bit I guess, there's not much more to tell. Okay." She took a deep breath.

I praised the heathen Gods as I shuffled closer to hear.

"Okay, so yeah Caitlin was taking coke, but she had no idea it was her brother's gang she was buying from and he had no idea she was a client. And it got so bad because she was going to parties and she wanted to be popular and grown-up and stuff so she was buying more and more. She was asking him for money for clothes and spending it on coke, essentially from him which was just so ridiculous. But like, coke is not good for anyone and it was kinda ruining her life. She started getting really angry even when she wasn't high, and she was spending everything she had on drugs and booze. Jakob loved her more than anything, he basically gave up his life for her so obviously he noticed and started getting worried, but because he'd never taken a drug in his life he didn't recognize the symptoms so one day when she was at school he raided her room and well he found the stash in her knickers draw." She was speaking so quickly I could barely make out a word, leaning in so close our heads were almost touching.

"He got mad and confronted her and ended up spilling about his dealing and so she called him a hypocrite and hit him and stuff because she was high and he kinda broke down because he blamed himself. But then he had to go to work and I don't really know much about that side of things because I've only got this from Caitlin, but there's a guy called Rod who is like on the same level as Jakob, and he was the one who'd been selling to Caitlin. So Jakob got mad at Rod for not telling him and told him to stop selling to her and so they had a fight and stuff and Jakob went home to show Caitlin all his injuries and stuff – I guess he hoped she'd be guilt tripped into stopping and it would all be happy again. Only when he got home Caitlin was waiting for him." Dani took another breath to steady herself, before sighing and brushing the hair out of her eyes.

"Caitlin was the best, she really was. So pretty and funny and she never cared about any of that before. Like we were happy being weird and watching Sherlock together and stuff. Only she went completely off the rails, you have to understand. I only stayed with her because I felt I owed it to her after all those years and I tried to make her stop only..."

I put an arm around her comfortingly. "Hey, hey it's okay. It's not your fault. What happened then?" My mind was working at 100mph. Where did Phil fit in? If he didn't know about the drugs, why did he spend so much time with Jakob? Maybe-

"I think this might be where your boyfriend comes in." Dani said quietly, cutting off my train of thought. "When Jakob got home, Caitlin confronted him. It was so awful, I was in the kitchen because she'd said she needed me and I'd cycled all the way from town to be there for her, only when I got there she was off her face and her mum was crying in the hallway. Turns out her mum was a crack addict even worse than Cait. Caitlin went in to scream at her mum, only she was out so Caitlin got mad and ransacked her room and found it all. And crack's so much worse than normal coke. And Caitlin just blamed it all on Jakob. She said it was his fault that their Dad left, and that was why their mum went crazy. Jakob was such a good kid as well. Really smart, really sweet and loving. But even he couldn't handle that." She shuddered. "I've never seen a boy cry like that, I swear."

A shiver ran through my body and I tried to blame it on the wind.

"But he was never one to give up, he wasn't like that. Not even then. He came up with a plan to shut their gang down – I don't know the details or anything, I've never been in a drugs gang." She let out a hollow laugh. "He had people helping him though, and I don't think they were all in the gang. I'm guessing your Phil guy was one of them as I heard him on the phone something like 'it was awful telling him' so like, he wouldn't have known about the drugs before? I don't know. Anyway. Whatever the plan was, it went wrong.

"The big ones, the alphas, found out and sent the order to 'deal with him'. Jakob, this is. Rod was sent, someone else and Jake Mansford. I know his sister, their story's pretty sad too." She sighed sadly. "Jake was only a runner but he wanted to go up a rank which is why they sent him, it was like a test. He was charged with hiding the body, but they didn't tell him before and he panicked and just put it in his freezer. His sister Ellie discovered it two days later when she went looking for ice cream for our Sherlock marathon."

Dani looked like she was fighting back tears and I gave her a quick squeeze, biting my tongue to stop myself urging her to keep going.

"When they realised what Jake had done they sent him a tonne of death threats that scared Ellie shitless, and charged the other guy with getting rid of the body as he was a lower rank than Rod. Only he was even more stupid than Jake and put it in that building site on a Sunday when there was no one there to mash it up. So now they're running out of reliable members of a low enough rank, because the alphas only reveal their identities to betas and betas only to dealers and dealers to all the runners and lower rank dealers or something like that it's stupidly complicated, I'm surprised most of them have the brain capacity to work it. Anyway, Rod took some people, beat up Jake and shot the other guy in the forest. That was what the gunshot was last week, do you remember? The whole college was in a state but they managed to hush it up pretty well. Ellie pissed herself in the middle of Biology because she thought her brother had been killed. It was awful."

I was speechless for a good minute. "How do you know all this?" I whispered.

Dani turned to face me, her eyes glistening with moisture.

"Because Rod is my brother, and the police told me before they took him to prison." She whispered.

The reality of the situation came crashing down on me in an instant. This wasn't just a story someone was telling me while I tried to put the pieces together like some stupid came of Cluedo. This was real people with families and friends and lives and these things were real.

I blinked, opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish. "I- I'm so sorry. Oh God, I-"

"It's fine," she said. "I've no idea why I told you all that, but it helped. Being able to talk to someone that wasn't a fucking police man. Rod's a dickhead and he deserved longer. Bye, Dan."

With that, she gathered up her bag and scarf and turned on her heel, leaving me gaping under the trees.

*

I walked through the corridors in a daze, trying to digest the deluge of information. So Jakob had been Phil's friend, and he had called on him to help bring some drugs gang down in order to save his family. But Phil had apparently told Jakob he never wanted to talk to him again that day, so maybe he had refused? That would certainly explain the nightmares – 'it's all my fault'. Maybe it was because of him that the plan didn't work. Or maybe he'd agreed and fucked it up somehow, or got scared and broken their cover. And because of him, Jakob had been murdered by drug dealers. I couldn't feel sad for this unknown man, a part of me still resented him for the time he spent with Phil even though I knew it was pathetic and horrible. And all this stuff with drugs gangs and murder and messed up people with messed up lives scared me. It was like Phil had said the second time I'd ever talked to him. It was a prison, and I couldn't get out of it. I just did what was expected of me. Just like a dancer. The thought felt like a heavy weight in my stomach. Phil had been right – again – I was a dancer, but for all the wrong reasons.

Still lost in thought, I pushed open the door of room seven.

"GET OUT!" PJ screamed from across the room.

"Wha-?" I stuttered.

"YOU'VE DONE ENOUGH YOU DICK, NOW GET OUT OF MY ROOM."

"Oh, hi Dan." Chris said, poking his head through the bathroom door. "I thought I heard your dulcet tones Peej. Might wanna be a bit louder next time mate, I'm not sure he can hear you."

PJ scowled and Chris turned back to me. "He's right though. You should go, please. We're looking after Phil. So don't come back, he's my best mate and I'd like him to stay alive a little longer. Cheers."

PJ's eyes were like daggers as I backed wordlessly out of the room.

I stood alone in the empty corridor, following the wood grain with my eyes as I patiently waited for my head to come up with some kind of explanation.

Chris's voice drifted through the closed door. "The library overlooks the fucking courtyard for Christ's sake, did he really think he'd get away with it? Evil piece of shit."