SO HOW LONG HAVE I got? Not long enough. I get dressed and fold up the priory nightdress and leave it on the bed, my hands shaking a little. They know I’m here. They’ll send those KIDS here first of all, surely. Can they go into religious places? But if those guys got desperate enough . . . I just don’t understand the system well enough to know what they would or would not do. I just have to go somewhere they wouldn’t think of looking for me. I have to go where Burlem is. Wherever it is, he’s been hiding out there for over a year now.
Unless he’s dead, like those poor kids.
Once I am ready to leave, I take The End of Mr Y out of my bag and touch it, perhaps for the last time. I can’t take it with me: there’s too good a chance that they’ll catch up with me. No. This place; this is where they can’t go. And maybe one day I’ll come back for it.
Can I actually do this?
I run my pale hand over the cream cloth cover. I can’t take it with me.
But what if someone finds it?
I look again at the small bookcase. There’s even dust on the silver key. No one reads these books. They are there for show. I remember some English lit joke someone told me once about why it’s so easy to be a theology student specialising in any Old- or New-Testament faith. I don’t remember the whole joke, but I remember the punch-line: ‘Because they have to read only one book.’ I’m not sure it’s true, but it got a laugh from us all in the bar. So, do I take my chances and leave The End of Mr Y here with the Pope’s poetry? I don’t see what else I can do, so I unlock the case and put the book inside. You really wouldn’t notice it in there. I shut the glass front. Then I lock it. Shall I take the key with me? No, they’ll find it when they strip me down, after I am dead. I’ll leave the key here. But where? There’s nowhere else in this room to hide anything. Knowing I have to go, I just slip it under the bookcase in the end.
When I get outside, the black car has gone. The freezing air scrapes my face like a thousand knives, and at first I don’t understand the tears that come. It’s almost dawn and I want to be in bed, in the warm, with Adam. But instead I’ve got this: I’m on the run. I’m going to go and find Burlem and work out how I can stop these KIDS from messing with my brain. And . . . My thoughts are so precise and methodical that they scare me; I look at the Priory and for a second I imagine it as a non-religious place: a place that I’m not afraid of, in which I could have slept with Adam last night. But if it wasn’t a religious place . . . Am I now so lost in a fantasy that I don’t understand what’s going on any more, or is it possible that the blond men really couldn’t go in there, and that I made them leave? That’s what I was trying to do. I just focused on Martin, and his horrible, clenched feeling, and I told him he had to leave and find a toilet. Is it that simple? So why can’t they do that? Isn’t it just the KIDS who are supposed to be able to do that? So why can I do it, too?
Apollo Smintheus. Why did you desert me?
There’s a part of the A2, just around Medway, where it looks as if you’re driving into the sky. Most roads in Britain seem to be designed on the principle that they should be enclosed by something: hedges; fields; houses. But this road sweeps through the landscape like the broad stroke of an eraser tool on a computer, as if the pixel size has been set too high and too much has been rubbed out. It’s pale grey and four lanes wide. The sky is still black and everything that isn’t road or sky is covered with snow that glows in all the artificial white lights. For the second time this week, I feel as though I’m living in a black-and-white photocopy. It’s six a.m., and apart from two gritter trucks, I’m on my own out here, driving towards Burlem’s daughter’s school, not knowing what I’m going to do when I get there. I need to try to find Apollo Smintheus as well. I have so many questions.
The car heater is on full and I have finally started to warm up. But it’s freezing outside, and I don’t know where I am going to sleep tonight. I don’t even know how, or even if, what I’ve got planned is possible. How am I going to get into the Troposphere now? I don’t have a sofa, or a bed. Martin and Ed have got a motel room and two KIDS to help them. And I know that they’re willing to hurt me: that they want to hurt me. All I’ve got is my car and £9.50 in the whole world. I can’t go back to the university. I can’t go back to my flat. I think about my flat, the pathetic little space that was at least mine, and again I feel the beginnings of tears swelling behind my eyes. I see Adam’s face when he left my flat, and again when he left me last night. I was so sure I was doing the right thing. Now I’m on my own, probably until I die.
Take a deep breath. Don’t cry. Watch the road.
A feeling of coldness, more intense than the car heater . . . And then I seem to black out, just for a second – or maybe a bit more than a second. When I come back to myself, I can see a sign that wasn’t there before. ‘I hate it when this happens on the motorway,’ I think, quite deliberately, as if what I’m feeling is normal.
And I’m still not crying.
The sign is telling me that if I keep going, I’ll end up in London. That’s what I want. There’s another sign pointing to the various exits you could take if you wanted to go to any one of the various Medway towns. I haven’t lived around here long enough for any of the names to mean anything to me. Except . . . One of them does mean something to me. It’s the town where Patrick lives. Would he lend me some more money? Would he even be up at this time of day? My brain does some kind of quantum computation that’s too fast for my conscious mind to keep up with. And then, right at the last second, I’m indicating and pulling off.
Five minutes later I’m parked outside a Little Chef off a rundown roundabout. There are half-dead trees everywhere, and bushes full of lager cans and old take-away cartons. This place has the feel of something that’s been mis-designed on one of those city-sim computer games: a corner you’d forgotten to delete, or even arrange to have cleaned. It’s half past six. Does Patrick get up this early? I can’t piss him off, or alert his wife, so I send a text message: Will do anything for cash. I add the name of the town and three coquettish ellipses. This has to seem fun or he won’t buy it.
The cold air stings my eyes as I get out of the car and walk over to the door to the Little Chef. It doesn’t open until seven. I get back in the car and put the heater on full. Can you kill yourself sitting in a car with the heater on? Or do you actually have to turn on the engine and run a pipe into the window from the exhaust? Now I can’t seem to warm up, even with the heater on. I close my eyes. ‘Apollo Smintheus . . .’ I think. And then I wonder how you pray to an entity you’ve actually met. Is that possible? ‘Apollo Smintheus. Please be OK. Please help me, if you can. I’m doing something bad now, something I’ll never tell anyone about. But I need to get back into the Troposphere and see you, and for that I need a warm room.’ Is this even working? Is this how you should pray? I don’t even know any classic prayers. I used to be able to meditate. Perhaps that’s more appropriate. For the next ten minutes, I sit there with the buzz of the heater in the background and my eyes shut, repeating the words ‘Apollo Smintheus . . . Apollo Smintheus . . .’ like a mantra. I don’t know if it has worked, but when I open my eyes the snow under the car park lights seems about a thousand shades lighter than it was before. Then the world goes dull again. The Little Chef is open. I need some coffee.
I’m about halfway through my second espresso when my phone buzzes.
It’s Patrick. U r an early bird.
I start typing back: I know. Then I hesitate, trying to think of some joke about catching a worm that won’t insult him somehow. Nothing comes. In the end I simply write So . . . ?
Where r u?
Little Chef. Off the A2.
OK. C u in 10.
Can I do this? I have to do this. There’s no other way. I sip my coffee and wait.
When he walks in, he’s dressed for work in black jeans and a dark red shirt.
‘Well,’ he says, sitting down. ‘This is unexpected.’
‘Do you want some coffee?’ I say.
‘I want something else,’ he says, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh, you’ll get that.’
‘Where?’
‘Ever done it in a seedy toilet?’
He smiles and shakes his head. ‘God, this is dirty.’
I smile. ‘I know.’
‘I’ve never . . .’
‘Never what?’
The waitress comes over. Patrick bites his lip. ‘Two more coffees,’ he says.
‘Never what?’ I say again as the waitress goes over to the counter, picks two white cups from a pile and then places them, one after the other, under the spout of the coffee machine.
‘Well . . .’
He doesn’t have to say it. To him, this is an affair with a downward spiral of logic – but it is logic. We start in hotels and end up in a service-station café, drinking bad coffee and planning sex in the toilets. For him, this is a story: Act 1 – glamorous sex. Act 2 – violent sex. Act 3 – we’re going to do it in a grubby toilet, and he’s going to pay me for it. I hope he realises that this is it now. Act 3. Game over. There’ll be climax and catharsis, sure. And then the story will end. Of course, in my world there is no such logic. For me this has been purely episodic and accidental, and this situation now means nothing at all. There is no game. I just need some money. But if something wants to be a story, it will be.
Ten minutes later, we’re in the disabled cubicle and it smells of pink dispenser soap and damp paper towels. Patrick’s got hold of one of my nipples and he’s pinching it through the material of my jumper. He’s pressing me up against the wall.
‘God,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. Take your top off.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘We have to do this properly.’
‘Properly?’
‘Don’t you want to know how much I charge?’
He nuzzles his head close to my face and bites my earlobe. ‘You dirty bitch. Go on then, how much?’
‘A hundred.’
‘Your prices have gone up. What do I get for that?’
‘You get to fuck me. As hard as you want.’
‘I got that for twenty quid last time.’
‘OK. So what’s worth a hundred to you?’
‘You know what I want.’
Yeah. And he got it for free last time. ‘Money first,’ I say.
He takes out five twenties, cash-machine clean, and gives them to me.
‘Now take off your top and pull down your jeans,’ he says.
I do it.
‘Now put your hands behind your back.’
He takes something out of his pocket and ties my hands together. And I’m thinking that whatever he does next doesn’t matter. It’s only my body. I don’t mind how fucked my body gets as long as my mind’s OK. And my body is up for this, anyway. However scared I am; however much I want to be driving away from the blond men and the KIDS – my body recognises this feeling and wants more of it. It wants the familiar pain that’s coming.
‘Bend over,’ says Patrick. He takes some of the pink soap from the dispenser and smears it on his cock.
It takes about a minute and a half for him to come.
I get to Hertfordshire at around eleven. I have a plan of sorts. I figure that the only possible chance I’ve got of getting to Burlem is through his daughter. He’s her ancestor after all, and Apollo Smintheus’s instructions did say that you could reach people’s ancestors via Pedesis. So I’m going to check into a bed-and-breakfast near her school and then get into the Troposphere and see if I can find Apollo Smintheus and ask him exactly how I would go about this. If I’m near her school, then I’m near her. And if I’m near her, then it should be easy enough to find her in the Troposphere. That’s my guess.
The school is in a tiny village a few miles outside Hitchin. I drive around for about five minutes after locating it. There don’t seem to be any hotels or boarding houses here. I drive around again. There’s a large pub. I park outside it and go in. There’s no one inside, just a thin, sleazy-looking guy drying glasses behind the bar.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hello,’ he says back. ‘Not an escapee, are you?’
‘What?’
‘Not from the school?’
Surely I don’t look that young? ‘No,’ I say. ‘Maybe about twenty years ago . . . Have you got rooms here?’
‘Bed-and-breakfast?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hang on. I’ll get the book.’
I haven’t seen another human being since I drove into the village. I can’t believe that this place is going to be full up, but I wait while he flicks to the right page and then runs his fingernail down it.
‘Yeah. We can do tonight,’ he says. ‘Just you, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’ll be seventy-five pounds.’
Jesus. For a room in a pub? ‘Have you got anything cheaper?’
‘No, love. I’ve got one more apart from this one, but that’s eighty-five. It’s up to you.’
I sigh. ‘Is there anywhere else around here that might be cheaper?’
‘You can go back into Hitchin,’ he says. ‘You might get something there.’
Hitchin was about ten miles away. I have to be close to the school.
‘Thanks. I’ll take it,’ I say. ‘Oh – can I smoke in there?’
‘Do what you want in there, love,’ he says. ‘Do you want to settle up now?’
He doesn’t trust me.
‘OK,’ I say. I give him the cash.
The room’s better than I expected. The bed is soft and plump, with a red eiderdown. There are two bedside tables, each with an antique lamp. There’s an en suite bathroom with soft but worn white towels. I need to have a bath, but I don’t have much time. Can I get to the Troposphere from the bath? Would I drown? I need to make the best use of the time I’ve got here. What are my priorities? Food, then Troposphere. Maybe I’ll ring down for something and have a bath while I’m waiting for it to arrive. A quick bath, just to warm up. Can I even order food here? Yes, there’s a menu by the bed. Room service seems to consist mostly of dead stuff and chips. In the end I order a bowl of pea soup and two portions of chips. Then I have a bath. After my bath I put on a clean pair of knickers, a clean pair of jeans, a thick black thermal top and a jumper. It’s warm in here, warmer than the priory. I dip chips in my soup and re-read the document I wrote out last night. I still have so many questions for Apollo Smintheus.
I miss having the book. I miss The End of Mr Y.
When I search my bag for the vial of fluid, it isn’t there. Even when I dump the whole contents onto the bed: nothing. All I’ve got is the black dot on the piece of card. How am I going to go into the
Troposphere? Shall I cry this time? Or maybe I’ll just lie back on the bed and look at the dot and focus on the feeling of the jellyfish lights and the tunnel . . . Do I even need the fluid? Maybe there’s some in my system already, because the tunnel is suddenly real, and . . .
The Troposphere looks roughly the same as the first time I entered it. I’m on another thin city street and it’s still night-time. Is there no sun here? I look around at the neon signs and the broken shop fronts. Is this what the inside of my mind looks like? Why would that be? I walk past a sex shop with big purple dildoes in the window. Another sex shop? Then I realise that this is how I see sleazy men. This place must represent the man downstairs, the one who gave me the room. So is it my mind that makes these images? It seems like it. Next door to the sex shop there’s a pet beautician’s with a blue door. Where’s my mind got that from? Then there’s a greengrocer’s with plastic-looking fruit in baskets outside.
Console?
It appears. You now have thirty choices, it tells me.
OK. That’s not big enough for a school population. I’m obviously not that close.
Can I play the Apollo Smintheus card?
The Apollo Smintheus card has expired.
Apollo Smintheus?
Nothing.
I keep going. Obviously I am going to have to do this on my own. So how would I best get to the school? In the physical world, it’s about a hundred yards down the road. But in this world-of-minds? I keep going. I wonder for a second how direction works here. Do I have to go the ‘same way’ to find something here as I would in the physical world? It’s very confusing. For a moment I think back to Lumas’s story ‘The Blue Room’. Would it be possible to go somewhere in my mind that doesn’t work in four-dimensional space-time? Could I get trapped in here?
This road doesn’t make any sense. The jumble of small shops has now turned into a boulevard of exclusive-looking department stores and jewellers. The window displays repulse me. In one fluorescently bright space, mannequins in glittery evening dresses stand around ignoring one another. In the next, a mannequin takes a metallic dog for a walk. Another window has two male mannequins fucking one thin, fragile-looking female mannequin. I prefer that: at least it was unexpected. I walk on, past a mirrored building on my right and an office block on my left. The road narrows again and now there are houses everywhere. But these aren’t normal houses: they’re life-sized doll’s houses, all with the fronts taken off and placed to one side, each with a hinge dangling just below the roof. They are all painted in pastel colours: lilac, powder blue, lemon, rose. This represents the girls’ school. It must do.
Console?
You now have four hundred and fifty-one choices.
OK. I’m not sure quite how this is going to work, but I approach one of the closest doll’s houses and walk inside, straight from the street into the sitting room.
You now have one choice.
You . . . I’m fifteen and I’ve been smoking for two months and I think I’m addicted already. I’m addicted to Coke as well, and those rolls from the village shop. My biggest dream is to be so addicted to everything that people have to whisper about me. I want my stupid fringe to grow out and I want to sit on Hampstead Heath with Heather and Jo and the Highgate lot and talk about how out of control we all are, but I’m not sure about this because they all smoke weed and I don’t want to. I’m going to have sex at the next ball. I have to do it now or all my credibility is going to be, like, out of the window. I’ve lied about it so far, but now people want details. Jules asked me to draw a picture of a penis in maths the other day!
I take another drag off my cigarette.
‘Do you feel addicted yet?’ I ask Nikki.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Totally. And it’s fucked my voice.’
Nikki’s in the choir. But really she wants to be a singer in an indie band. You need to fuck your voice to do that. It’s why she started smoking up here with me and the others. Where are the others? Soph’s doing drama, but what about Hannah and Jules? I haven’t seen Jules since this morning, when she gave me a dirty look over breakfast. I don’t know what I’ve done. Oh, please, Jules, don’t stop liking me.
Think about something else.
‘Do you think Jim’ll manage not to, like, tell everyone in the whole village that we used the fag machine?’ I say.
‘Soph’s working on Jim. Don’t stress, babes. She’s got him in hand.’
‘She didn’t, though . . . ? Like, not actually . . . ?’
‘You’ll have to ask her. But . . .’ She giggles. ‘Oh, God. I’m not supposed to say.’
‘Basically yes, though, right?’
‘Yeah. Totally.’
‘Oh, yuck.’
Soph really is out of control.
The name Molly comes into my head from nowhere. Ugh. Why would I want to think about Molly Davies now? OK. That girl is way out of control. Soph might have messed around with Jim a little bit for cigarettes, but Molly’s reputation is, like, legendary. I can’t go anywhere near her; she freaks me out. It’s not just that she isn’t a virgin. I mean, well, no one here is a virgin (well, apart from me – but we’re keeping that one quiet), but Molly is about the least virginal person you could ever meet. Last year, when they had our common room and we had the lame one in the basement, she actually SUCKED OFF a VB on the sofa. VB = Village Boy. They’re all chavs. The idea that there’s chavvy spunk on the sofa . . . None of us can bear to think about it.
‘Hey, you’ve gone quiet. You all right, babes?’
‘Yeah. I was thinking about Molly and that lot.’
‘Don’t get stressed thinking about the lower sixth. They’re not worth it.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘You got that deo?’
‘Yeah.’
We spray ourselves with deo and, eating sugar-free mints, walk back towards the school buildings. Soph won’t have these; she says they give you cancer. One day Jules was like, ‘They give cancer to rats, idiot.’ Jules is hilarious, like, all the time.
There’s Helene, the slutty French girl, on her way up to their dorms. Don’t look at her; don’t look. Oh, piss. Why am I looking . . . She’ll think I’m a lesbian, which won’t be good as everyone says she actually is a lesbian, when she’s not being a slut.
A large doll’s-house frontage flickers over Helene. But I don’t try to jump. I remember what has happened before, when I’ve ended up right back in the Troposphere. I need to do this a different way.
Console!
The thing comes up. The screen swims with images. I can’t make them all out. I can see a little image of a desk; another of what appears to be a gym. I can see a white cracked ceiling in another . . . But there are about ten altogether, and I can’t pick one out. The French girl has gone. I continue down the corridor with Tabitha Young, aka Tabs, the girl who wants to be addicted to everything. As she walks along next to Nikki, her brain doesn’t stop chattering about people walking past, her socks (which are too short), her skirt (which is too long), her breath (which may or may not smell of fags) and a constant undercurrent of fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. At the same time as this, she’s able to say ‘Mmm’ and ‘I so agree’ every time Nikki says anything to her.
I leave the console on. I wonder if these images relate to what Tabs’s ancestors are seeing. Again I notice that there’s not much actual ancestry here. There’s nothing showing on the screen that I don’t recognise. No cavemen; no Roman graffiti. But I thought Mr Y used Pedesis to travel through time. Or maybe I just misread that part of the book. I wish I understood this. I picked up some information just from being in Martin’s mind, but it isn’t enough.
Another girl walks past, and Tabs recognises her as a lower-sixth girl called Maxine and tries to think of something cool and witty to say in case the girl says anything to her. This time, when the door opens over the image of the girl, a new display appears on the console screen as well. I recognise this by now: it’s an image of me/Tabs, and it means – or it must mean – that I can jump from here to there, just like I did with the mouse and the cat. OK. I’m going to try this. Cross my fingers: Go, go. Come on. And – yes – I’m blurring, but hopefully not back into the Troposphere . . .
You now have one choice.
You . . . I smell. I smell so bad. Those year eleven girls must have smelled me as I walked past just now. I can feel the dampness under my arms and between my thighs – my large, oversized, supermassive, chunky thunder-thighs. Wearing tights means that my legs don’t rub together so bad, and my skin doesn’t go red, but they make me hot and when I’m hot I sweat like an animal. But at least animals are meant to smell. No one minds if animals smell. No one else will ever understand this. I don’t know how I can go on through life with this problem. If I died, would anyone notice? No one is going to want to go to bed with me, ever. I even revolt myself when I get undressed, and I know that Claire, Molly and Esther notice, but don’t say anything. Well, they don’t say anything to me, but I think they talk about it when I’m not there. I so hope they’re not planning one of those stupid ‘interventions’. They did it last term with Nicky Martin. They all swooped on her just after she’d got into bed and told her that her breath stank. Obviously they were supernice about it. Everyone’s supernice about everything here. ‘We just thought you’d want to know . . .’ Smile, smile, privileged teeth. ‘We’d want you to tell us if, like, we had any problems.’ If they tried an intervention on me, I’d kill myself. I don’t know how yet. I don’t like blood and I can’t tie a noose. Oh, damn. There’s Esther. I have to go and change, but I can’t if Esther’s on her way to the dorm.
Great.
You now have one choice.
You . . . I’m so much thinner than Maxine now. That diet is fantastic.
‘Hey, Maxine.’
I like saying ‘Hey’ rather than ‘Hi’. It’s kind of American.
‘Oh, hi, Esther.’
But she doesn’t stop and talk; she practically runs in the other direction. What did I ever do to her? Stuck up bitch. Anyway, so what am I going to do if Miss Goodbody (‘Call me Isobel’) does make a move on me? I’ve had this crush for so long that it never occurred to me that she might feel the same way about me. But she was the one who suggested extra drama lessons, and she was the one who walked in while I was getting changed for the dress rehearsal the other day, and she was the one who commented on my tits. Seriously. I am certain I didn’t imagine it. There was the ‘Whoops’ after she pulled back the wrong curtain. Then the too-long pause. Then the little smile. Then – and I am ninety-nine per cent sure this really happened – then she said ‘Nice tits’, before walking away. So that must mean something. She’s not just trying to be cool and young, etc. She must be trying to tell me something. But it was so much under her breath that I can’t be sure she said it at all.
Just because I want her, that doesn’t make me a lesbian. Does it?
I am not a lesbian.
I am not a lesbian.
But I do want her to kiss me.
I turn a corner and start walking up the lower-sixth staircase. Usually I take these stairs two at a time, but my breathing feels tight today. What did I do with my inhaler? Shit. I think it’s in my gym bag down in the changing rooms. I can’t be bothered to go down there now. I’ll be all right. I haven’t had a real attack for over a year now. If only I knew what to do with this feeling I get when I think about Isobel Goodbody. It’s as though . . . It’s as though my stomach is a fish tank with thousands and thousands of fish in it, but the water’s been drained out and now they’re all flopping around like on that horrible documentary we watched in Biology. How do I switch this feeling off ? I think kissing her might do it, but when am I going to get to do that? And is it worth getting expelled for? What if everyone finds out and thinks I’m a lesbian? I hope no one’s in the dorm. Oh, shit. Someone is in here. It’s Molly, and she looks weird. What is going on with all that eyeliner? Has she even got a free period now? I thought she was supposed to be in Philosophy.
The console stays the same as the frame of the doll’s house hovers around Molly. Come on, come on. I’m potentially two steps away from Burlem now. Well, if this works, I am. Why isn’t this happening? Why am I not getting the image in the console that tells me I can switch over to Molly?
I think of Apollo Smintheus’s document, the bit I didn’t remember at first:
You can jump from person to person in the physical world (but only if the person is at that moment vulnerable to the world of all minds).
Vulnerable in what way? I don’t understand. I stay with Esther, but with the console in my vision, too. If there’s even a flicker, I’m jumping over to Molly.
‘Hey,’ I say to Molly.
‘Hey,’ she says back.
‘No Philosophy?’
‘Couldn’t be bothered.’
I go over to my bed and sit on it. So much for thinking about Isobel in privacy. Now I’ve got bloody Molly sitting here, simmering. She’s putting on make-up. I watch as she applies pink blusher and black mascara. Now she’s back onto the eyeliner, smearing more of it on, as though she’s about to join a troupe of mime artists who worship the devil in their spare time.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ I ask her.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where?’
‘Out.’
‘Molly.’
‘What? It’s Friday night and I’m not staying in this shit hole.’
‘But . . .’
‘Just cover for me, Esther, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘Of course.’
In fact, the sooner she goes, the sooner I’ll be alone. Unless Maxine comes up as well. I don’t know where she was going. She went off in the direction of the changing rooms – but she never does sport. I should have asked her to get my inhaler. I sigh. You can get a good education here, but no bloody privacy. At least next year I’ll have my own room. I was supposed to have my own room this year, or at least be sharing with only one other person. But there’s a ‘space crisis’, and mice in the old sixth-form wing. So here we are and it’s like year eleven all over again.
‘Hey, Moll?’ I say to her now.
‘Yeah?’
‘Who are you going with?’
Maybe she’s going out with Maxine. Although Maxine’s being weird with everyone lately. But I can still hope that the whole dorm’s going out without me tonight. Imagine being here on my own and having Miss Goodbody walk in and . . . I couldn’t call her Miss Goodbody if I was about to kiss her. Oh, Isobel . . . That sounds downright stupid.
‘No one. I’m gonna hook up with Hugh when I get into town.’
And that’s when it happens: the flicker in the console. I jump.
I’m in . . .
You now have one choice.
You . . . I ache for Hugh. Someone said he was the most dangerous guy in Hitchin the other day. Fine. Maybe I’m the most dangerous girl. He doesn’t see that, of course. He sees, what? A private schoolgirl with all the privileges he never had? A teenager; just an immature kid? But he must see something in me, otherwise why did he spend the whole night with me last Saturday?
But he hasn’t answered his phone since then. He hasn’t texted me. So I’m faced with another night of wandering from pub to bar to club on my own, pretending to be doing something other than looking for him. But what? I look over at Esther. She’s like a skeleton lately. That’s one good reason not to ask her to come with me. Maybe she’d be more his type, with her natural blonde hair, and the way she’s got those ginormous tits on that tiny body. Bitch. No, I won’t take her. I just need to be with Hugh again. I don’t care about his stupid housemates, or his mattress on the floor, or that he likes to drink vodka from the bottle while he’s screwing me. I don’t care that while I was whispering ‘Hugh, Hugh’ in his ear he only grunted back some name that didn’t sound like mine, and that when I said to him ‘Fuck me hard’ (like on that Internet porn story Claire printed out last term), he grinned and called me a little slut. I don’t even want to change him. Maybe I just need to change me.
Or have I already changed too much? What’s it called when butterflies come out of their cocoons? Whatever it is, that’s not what’s happened to me. I’d be a horrible butterfly. Whatever I was before I’ve hatched, that’s what it is: I’ve hatched into something else now. And it’s not as though I’m a typical stuck-up rich girl, anyway. Everyone knows about the ‘blow job on the sofa’ incident – even the teachers; not that they can prove anything. OK, so nothing happened, really. I saw the guy’s dick, but I didn’t suck it. I mean – yuck! But I like the reputation it’s given me, even though most of the form still aren’t speaking to me because of it. I could tell Hugh I’m going to be expelled because I have so much sex. That should impress him. After all, last time I saw him he did try to make out that we shouldn’t see each other any more because he’s so much more experienced than me. ‘I’ve seen and done things that would really shock you, babe.’ That’s what he said. So what, Hugh? I’ve had a lot of sex, too. We’re both damaged. We’re both sad, lonely people, which is why we should be together. Like in that Tom Waits song you played me.
Also, I know that he’s had a tragic past and everything, but so have I. What about the fact that my dad died when I was nine, and then I found out that my real dad was someone else – some colleague of Mum’s? Or does that sound hopelessly middle-class? It’s not exactly a case for social services, is it? I haven’t seen my dad – my ‘real’ dad – for over a year now. No one’s seen him for over a year. More eyeliner. But my school fees are still mysteriously being paid. So I can’t even say he’s dead. Maybe I will, though. I could say I’ve had two dads who have died, and that I think I must be cursed. It’s still not as exciting as alcoholism or drug dealing. I could say my mother beats me up, but that would be a lie. She hit me only once, when I said I was glad Dad had died.
The console’s been there all along and I’ve been watching the images float around. There are five, but I don’t know which one I want. I keep looking at them while Molly keeps thinking about Hugh. This is probably the first time I’ve been in someone’s mind and felt a connection greater than simply I’m here and I understand you because of that. I understand Molly on a much more fundamental level. But I can’t stick with Molly; I have to work out where to jump next.
Here are my choices:
– A view of a desk in an office;
– A first-person view of driving a car along a narrow lane;
– A view of an old woman chewing something;
– An old man reading the paper;
– Another old woman, but this one has pink streaks in her hair.
I know that if I jump into one of these I could end up anywhere. I have to end up with Saul Burlem, because I just don’t know how I’ll get back to this point if I get lost first. I look through the images again. The desk has a fluffy toy on it. The hands on the steering wheel of the car are female, with fluorescent pink nail polish. These people aren’t male. Now I’m left with three elderly people. Are these all the POVs of grandparents: images of other grandparents or grandparents’ acquaintances? Where’s Saul Burlem? Where’s his POV? I glance over the images again. I can’t choose. None of them seems right. Maybe he is dead. But my mind seems to want to rest on the woman with pink hair. In fact, I’m just looking at it, and thinking that it’s unusual, when my mind, clearly translating this into ‘interesting’, starts to jump me into this consciousness, anyway. Oh, hell. I’m blurring . . . I’m leaving Molly. Just as I go, I try to leave a thought in her mind: Forget Hugh. Forget him . . .