Chapter One

THE SECOND HE SAYS the words I want him to take them back. I want him to have said something else, instead – something sunny, like, “Oh, hey we’re going to have a great time on our vacation, hooray!” – but of course that’s not something you have to announce. I mean, it’s obvious we’re going to have a great time on our vacation. Three weeks in a cabin by a glorious lake, surrounded by nothing but trees and wonderful weather and barbecued food?

Sounds like heaven.

Or at least, it sounds like heaven until he slips in this little tidbit:

‘I invited Artie.’

And then it just sounds like I want to punch him repeatedly, in his stupid face. It’s not even as though he says it in an innocent, no big deal sort of way. He says it in a way I know all too well, having been his friend for the last five years. It’s his “I know you’re going to hate this” tone of voice, and by God he’s right.

I hate it very much. I hate it almost as much as I hate Artie Carter, and his big, pompous, stupid attitude, and his swooping, ridiculous haircut, and that way he has of looking at you, like you’re the most ridiculous person in the world.

‘Are you serious?’ I ask, because it’s the only thing I can go with, really. All of the rest of my words are lost, lost on a tide of what my holiday could have been. Drinking games and Boggle tournaments and nights out at terrible local pubs, with James and Lucy. Endless days of sunbathing in a bathing suit I don’t really mind wearing, because neither of my two best friends ever make me feel bad about anything.

But Artie Carter … ohhh, he makes me feel bad all right. I could wear a snowsuit covered in 17 jumpers and a cagoule and he’d make me feel bad about it, somehow. It’s not this season’s winter collection, or something, and the fact that I’m daring to wear it just makes me a pleb he recently scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

‘Look, Mal … he really doesn’t hate you,’ James says, but he’s just so blue-eyed and open and honest … it’s easy to see when he’s lying. It’s almost like he’s begging me to understand with that hangdog expression – and of course I know why.

This is the vacation when he’s finally, finally going to attempt to bone Lucy. And OK – he hasn’t used the word bone, but even so. I know that’s what the idea is, here. He’s made it supremely obvious to everyone but Lucy, with all the extra gym time he’s been putting in and the spray tan he actually went out and got and oh Jesus …

Are those highlights in his hair? He does realise that Lucy isn’t a gay man, right?

‘Yeah, I think I’m too beneath his notice for active hatred,’ I say, at which James makes just the expression I’m dreading. It’s not even pity, really. It’s worse than pity. It’s like a wince, and it gets more crumpled the further this conversation goes on.

‘It’s just the way he is,’ he tries, but I’ve heard that one before. I’ve heard it after he’s finished telling me about the great game of basketball him and his buddy Artie had, and what a swell guy he is, and oh did you know? Artie and Lucy spent the whole day at an amusement park the weekend before, because apparently he gets on well with everyone in the world.

Apart from me.

‘It’s not the way he is. It’s the way I am. He thinks I’m an idiot, and he makes it clear on a daily basis. I mean, is that how you think I should spend my holiday? Being judged by a guy who thinks I’m an idiot?’

‘He looked at you weird one time. He probably had something in his eye!’

‘Yeah, I think it’s called “extreme contempt”.’ I cluck my tongue at myself, which is the worst part, really. No matter how I approach the Artie issue, this is always what I’m left thinking: ‘I shouldn’t have told that story about the vibrator.’

Of course, James doesn’t let me be irritated with myself for long. He laughs right after I’ve said the words out loud, and puts an arm around my shoulder.

‘That was an awesome story, Mal. I really don’t think he was bothered by it.’

I think of Artie’s big, still face, unbidden. Those eyes of his like something seen through fogged over glass, his gaze always sliding and sliding away from me.

‘Did he say that to you? That he wasn’t bothered, I mean?’

James shrugs.

‘Well … no. But then, he doesn’t really say much about anything.’

Which is definitely the understatement of the year. If someone stabbed Artie in the guts, I doubt he could work up the wherewithal to say ow. It’s like he’s not even really a human being, sometimes, and though that thought is more comforting than “he secretly hates me”, it’s not exactly the best thing in the world, either.

Few people want to go on holiday with a robot from Mars.

‘So you’re sure,’ I say, even though I know what I’m really doing. I’m trying to convince myself, before I unpack all of the clothes I’ve just stuffed into a case, and change my mind entirely. ‘You’re certain he doesn’t hate me?’

James nods, once.

‘Fucking A, baby.’

Of course, a blind fool would have known James was lying. Even I knew he was lying, the second the words came out of his mouth. And yet here’s the thing about Artie … even through third parties, he lures you into a false sense of security. He’s just there, minding his own business, being as quiet and weird as usual. Occasionally making a polite comment, about something like the weather or our current location, as we drive our way down to Silver Lake.

And then bam.

‘I don’t enjoy popular music.’

And OK – that’s not a terrible comment, all on its own. It could be perceived as a little snooty, I suppose, coming from someone who looks like he just fell out of an Ivy League school yesterday, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

It’s only the worst thing when he says it in some random, nonchalant sort of way a second after I’ve told Lucy to turn the radio up, because I love this song. And of course the song I love is “popular music”.

It just isn’t my imagination, this thing. I’m sure it isn’t. I mean, who else could that comment be directed at? I was the one who mentioned music, and though he’s framed his comment as though it’s entirely detached from anything anyone’s said, I know it’s not.

He hates me. And worse, he can’t even be upfront about it. He just lets words drift out of his mouth in that purring, half-American accent of his, and if it nails me to the wall, well … that’s just an added bonus.

He doesn’t even look at me as he says these things. He’s sat a foot from me in Lucy’s little car, arms folded over his massive chest. That smoky gaze of his running all over non-interesting things he’s probably not even paying attention to, through the passenger side window. But he doesn’t look.

He just waits until I’m mortally wounded, then changes the subject. Speaks to James or Lucy in the front, as though I don’t even exist.

‘We’ve got about an hour more to go, right?’ he asks, though of course once he’s done it I have to wonder – is that really a subject change? Or is it just another chapter in his Big Book of Hating Me?

Because that’s how it looks when I glance out of my own window, those words turning over and over in my head. He wants out of the car, quick, due to my presence so close to his. I’m probably giving him plebeian cooties, through all the tension and silence that’s suddenly sprung up between us – and I don’t even have to be paranoid or neurotic, to recognise that the latter is there.

It just is, always. It’s like a wall between us, 70 feet tall and 200 feet wide. And the more I try to smile painfully and say things I think he’ll like, the higher and harder and more oppressive that wall gets. It’s like the wall recognises my pathetic efforts, and hates me for them.

So I decide then: I’m just not going to make them, any more.

The problem with not making any effort to avoid his wrath is twofold, however. One: it means that I have to sort of pretend he’s not really there, regarding me with his massive disdain and two:

He’s actually literally massive, and not just massive in my head, where all of his disdain probably is. In fact, he’s so massive that sometimes I feel as though he’s sat in my lap, even when he’s all the way across the room from me. I can almost make out the pressure of his immense gaze on the side of my face, as I make a comment I know I shouldn’t be making.

I know it, the second it comes out – but somehow I just can’t help it. I’m not even trying to employ this new “Artie can go fuck himself” attitude. The words simply come out all on their own, like a reflex.

A rude, rude reflex, in response to Lucy’s suggestion that she’d be happy just to have some movie star hunk of the week read the phone book to her.

‘He could read the phone book to me, too,’ I say, and then the Doc hits my knee with the little hammer, and my leg kicks up. ‘As long as he does so directly into my vagina.’

I’m not even sure why I use the word vagina, in all honesty. After all, between my legs would have been the much safer option. Or even pussy … pussy would have sounded so much nicer, because it’s a word for something else, too.

There’s absolutely nowhere to hide with vagina. It’s absolutely rude and graphic, and though it makes Lucy snort wine out of her nose and James bites on his fist like I’m the baddest person in the world, none of these reactions alleviate the looming presence of the wall.

The one that grows another 10,000 feet, the moment I say something even remotely naughty.

‘I would let him read the phone book into my foo-foo all night long,’ Lucy says, because she’s cute. She’s cute and sweet and she doesn’t say vagina.

But I do.

‘I’d tell him to take his time with really difficult names. You know – maybe have him spell them out to my clit.’

‘Mallory,’ Lucy says, but she doesn’t do it the way Artie’s eyes do it. She does it while grinning and mouthing me too.

‘What? My clit’s really stupid. She needs an intense and thorough education, on the pronunciation of several impossibly long names – and especially when they have a lot of Ls in them. Ls are very problematic.’

‘Personally I’m deeply troubled by Os,’ James says, as he reaches for the chips. Of course I notice he brushes Lucy’s arm, as he does so – but that’s not so unusual. I mean, Lucy’s right in front of him, on the floor. And the chips are nearly in her lap.

It’s all innocent, right?

‘Os?’ Lucy asks, and wrinkles up her cute little face. Of course she does. She’s like a sweet, pure angel, sent from heaven. And I’m the Devil who has to explain it to her.

‘He means … you know,’ I say, and then I do something even worse than the whole licking your clit with letters thing. I do it, without once looking at Artie. I can’t look at Artie. There’s a wall between us, remember?

So really, it doesn’t matter at all if I mime giving someone a blowjob. He can’t see me, as I poke my tongue into my cheek in the lewdest way it’s possible to actually do something like that. In fact, it’s so lewd that Lucy actually fans herself and blushes and kind of glances over her shoulder, as though maybe she’d be only too happy to do something like that to James.

If James plays his cards right.

‘And what’s the international signal for the other one you were talking about …?’ James asks, this look on his face like go on, go on. You’re practically getting me laid with hand gestures.

Of course I’m practically getting myself chased by villagers with torches, too, but what the hell.

‘You mean this?’ I ask, and then I split two fingers and just slide my tongue between …

‘I’m going to bed.’

He says it so abruptly that I do exactly what I swore I wouldn’t. It can’t be helped – it’s as kneejerk as the urge to be myself and say whatever I like. It just happens the second he speaks, as sharp as a knife digging under bone.

I look at him. I look at him and see his sometimes so soft mouth set into a compressed line, that impenetrable gaze of his skirting over everything but me. Body language bristly and almost sort of … hunched over, to the point where I don’t feel what I want to. I don’t feel angry, that’s he’s so put-out by my personality.

I feel guilty, instead. And though I hate myself for it, it’s there none the less – this stinging sense that I’ve made him that uncomfortable, that I’m so clumsy and rude that he doesn’t even know what to do with it. He can’t even say anything about it, or walk out of the room in a normal, straight sort of fashion.

He just crashes on out of there, leaving James to clear up his mess.

‘It’s not you,’ he says, once Artie has gone.

But that’s what everyone says, isn’t it? It’s not you, it’s me. It’s not you, it’s him, it’s him, he’s a jerk and an asshole and whatever else my mind can conjure up, to make me feel better. But when the clock hits 1am and I still can’t sleep, I know.

It’s not him. It’s me.