Toby feels like all he’s done for days is sit on the floor in Carrie’s room and watch her cry. Time to move on, my friend. Always the same story.
Everything would be so easy if people would only let go. It’s the clinging on to things that makes all the misery in the world. You can’t hold living things, they’re in motion, if you want them to stay you have to kill them. But say this to someone and they hear something different, they hear, I want to leave you, and they start to cry.
So Carrie cries. I try to tell her, but all she hears is this won’t be forever, and if it’s not forever it’s going to end, and if it’s going to end it’s already dying. But hey, we’re all dying. Every day a step nearer the end. What’s new? But Carrie cries.
“You say I should live now,” she tells me, “now, you say, now. But you don’t live now. If you did, how would you know you’re going to leave? You wouldn’t know it until you were doing it. So why do you have to say you’ll leave?”
All of which is fair comment, but since when did I claim to practice what I preach? Since when did I preach? Say the first thing that comes into your head. Act without forethought.
Look, all I’m trying to do here is step lightly on the earth. Leave no trace. If I could shed my self I would.
“Don’t sit so close,” I tell her. “I need space.”
“Come closer. Lie down beside me.”
She lies down beside me. What does she want from me?
Her manner with him though not her words says, Do with me what you will. She plays at disagreement, but she has submitted. The pleasure this gives him dwindles day by day. She senses this and fears she’ll lose him. In her fear she seeks to please him more, and so he becomes cruel.
“You watch me too much. Close your eyes when you look at me.”
She closes her eyes.
“Don’t do what I tell you to do.”
She doesn’t and so she does. Trapped in the mesh of his will. And as for Toby, caught in another repeating pattern, he grows bored.
I’m so fucking bored of being bored. Let’s play a game. “Pretend you hate me,” he says.
“Pretend you despise me. Tell me stuff to hurt me.”
“You’re a cunt,” she says.
That makes him laugh. She says it so carefully, like it’s a technical term. Then she’s happy she’s made him laugh, which isn’t the idea of the game at all.
“Try harder,” he says.
“You have no emotions. You love only yourself.”
“If only that were so,” he says.
“You’re a narcissist. All you see in other people are mirrors of yourself.”
“Closer,” he says.
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “You hate yourself.”
“Closer,” he says.
But still it doesn’t hurt.
I am invulnerable. This is my deformity.
These are dangerous thoughts, these glimpses of the demon. He rations them, because always they come with an intoxication of the blood, a beautiful poisoning, that makes him thirsty for pain. His own pain, the pain of others. The demon feeds on shock and dismay.
I am one sick fuck.
All you can do is move on. You don’t ask people to love you. You don’t make promises. You don’t offer gifts. You don’t deceive. But they want the demon, that’s the truth. They long for the demon’s hurting kiss. So we’re all sick together.
She says, “Come out in the car with me.”
They go out driving.
Every time they come out in the car Toby is possessed by an urge to take the wheel and drive them into the oncoming traffic. So it’s good that it’s Carrie who’s driving.
“Imagine driving on the wrong side of the road,” he says. “All those cars coming straight at you. All those moments you could die.”
“You want to die?”
“No. I want to be inside those moments when I could die.”
“What happened to you, Toby? Why are you such a freak?”
“Usual story,” says Toby. “Too much of this. Too little of that.”
Over the Phoenix Causeway, the river running low.
“I’ve stayed long enough,” he says. “Time to be on the road again.”
“What road?”
“The road away.”
She drives in silence, past the old bus station to the traffic lights at the bottom of the High Street. Her body has gone stiff. She grinds the gears into neutral, brakes at the red light.
“So that’s what you do,” she says. “You start things you don’t finish. You hit and run.”
“What were you expecting? Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind?”
“Oh, fuck off, Toby.”
So of course he finds her pain exciting. It’s not wanting to hurt, it’s wanting to be in the place where pain happens.
“You know self-harming?” he says.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know self-harming. That your next cool idea?”
“People can do it without razors.”
“You don’t say.”
The lights change, the traffic rolls on up Friars Walk. Ahead is the tricky intersection where Station Road crosses and cars come from all directions.
“So just tell me, Toby. Where do I come in? I mean, like, what is this? What are we doing here? I’d just like to know.”
“Me too,” he says.
“Not good enough. Try harder.”
Now she’s negotiating the intersection, heading across into Southover Road. There are cars parked all down one side, which makes it a tight squeeze for two-way traffic. She has tears waiting in her eyes.
Bad situation. Trapped in a moving car, under pressure from demands you can’t meet. The urge to break out can make you crazy. Time to kick doors, break windows.
“Don’t push me,” he says.
“No, you owe me. You don’t just walk away. Jesus, did I ever ask you for a fucking thing? All I want to know is, do I exist for you? Do you have any feelings for me of any kind whatsoever? On the road again. Jesus!”
“What do you want, Carrie? I stay in Jack’s room for the rest of my life?”
“No! Of course you’ll go! I know that! I’m not a child!”
“Do you love anyone, Toby? Have you ever loved anyone?”
Why don’t you love me? Make me suffer more. Cut my arms with your blades.
“You tell me what that means,” he says, “I’ll tell you if I’ve got it.”
“It means it hurts to leave,” she says fiercely.
“You could put that in a song. Loving means it hurts to leave.”
She gasps at that, as if he’s hit her. The demon did that to her. Now she’s driving too fast.
“Leaving means it hurts to love,” he says. “Hurting means it loves to leave.”
He can’t help himself. The demon is running free and he must follow.
“On the road again,” she says, staring ahead as she drives. “On the road again. On the road again.”
Her mantra against pain. But she’s the one who summoned the demon. You get what you ask for in this world.
“You know what, Toby.” Talking fast now, driving fast. “This is all a joke, because I don’t do the girly thing, I don’t do flirting, I’m just fine being who I am. I’m not saying I’m any better than anyone else, I’m just saying I’m me and I’m good with that and I don’t dress up as not-me for anyone. And you show up and I’m, how about this? Here’s someone I can be me around, here’s someone who does a really good imitation of connecting with actual me. So I let myself think maybe connections do happen, maybe we’re not all me, maybe sometimes we can be us, and you give me this shit about being on the road again. And that’s quite a joke, isn’t it? That really is a good one. Because you’re going nowhere. So why do I care? I’m such a fucking mess-up, look at me, Jesus! Why don’t we just all roll over and die? I mean, what is there out there worth sticking round for? There’s no party, right? So why am I crying? Why am I humiliating myself when you don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself? Oh sure, I’ll put it in a song, I’ll put it all in a song. Only when I sing it you won’t be there to hear, you’ll be on the fucking road again—”
Rattle of noise, blur of motion, a boy on a bike smack across the front of the car, crump on the bonnet and punch through the air, bike spinning away, boy vaulting skyward, lands on a parked car, bounces, hits the tarmac, doesn’t move.
Carrie jams on the brakes, she’s uttering these small panic cries, “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” People appear out of nowhere, mobile phones out, calling for help, taking pictures. Toby’s out of the car, going to the boy.
“Don’t move him!” A passer-by, an instant expert. “Could’ve broken his back.”
“Crazy kid,” says another. “Accident waiting to happen.”
“Nothing you could do,” they say. “Came down Keere Street like a runaway train.”
Carrie out of the car now, shaking violently.
“Is he—is he . . .?”
The man who has taken charge says, “He’s breathing. He’s concussed.”
“Have they—has the—”
“Ambulance on its way.”
Toby says to Carrie, “Give me your phone.”
He calls Carrie’s mum, tells her briefly and clearly what’s happened.
“She’s coming right over,” he says to Carrie.
Carrie nods, white-faced, shivering. The sun shines out of a clear sky, glinting on the spokes of the buckled bike as it lies on its side in the road. From far away they hear the siren of an ambulance, faint at first, but growing louder. The boy’s body doesn’t move.