I feel rude for leaving him. He might wake up and wonder where I am, but I can’t just stay and watch him sleep. I walk away and think of him still lying there, long eyelashes on his cheek, snoozing as if he was on cushions. It’s not till I reach the promenade that I remember the other one – his mad mate – and then as if my thoughts have conjured him, he appears, weaving across the path towards me. He comes right up and stands there, nose to nose, almost touching. He stinks, and his lips are outlined with a grey scum which flies out as he speaks. I keep my mouth closed.
‘I told you,’ he says. ‘Gotta message for you – stay away! Don’t wanta see you.’
I’d love to go, really I would, but he doesn’t move. The rank smell from his clothes is disgusting. I can’t hold my breath for ever.
‘I know what you want,’ he tells me. ‘But you can’t touch me – I’m telling you.’
His hands come up close to my face so the black nails are in front of my eyes. I could tell him right now if he’d listen – the last thing I want to do is touch him!
His mouth curls open again and he spits at me, ‘Get!’
I don’t need to be told twice. Pushing sideways, I dart away from him and walk fast, refusing to run. When I glance back he’s still there, unmoving. I let my breath out in a long sigh.
I go to school on Monday. I wasn’t going to, but I do. Maybe it was the idea of seeing Joe – that he might be thinking the same and turn up too – but from the moment I woke up I felt sure I could do it.
Dad says nothing when he sees me in my uniform. Maybe he doesn’t want to break the spell. He looks crumpled and hopeful, searching for something in my face. ‘You look nice,’ he says. ‘Have a good day.’ His eyes blink rapidly and the side of his thumb is bitten down. I have a sudden vision of him from long ago when his hair was longer and his smile was like a lightning flash. He’d juggle eggs before cracking them into the frying pan, never dropping a single one.
I nod at him. ‘I’ll try.’
I missed weeks of school after Sam died, and then there was the summer break. Since then it’s been hard to feel part of things. It’s like a roundabout you jump off when you’re little, that’s spinning too fast for you to get back on. There’s a sense of not knowing what’s changed, what happened while you were away.
I walk to school on my own, joining the clumps of other students heading the same way, and it doesn’t take me long to wish I hadn’t bothered. Not a single person talks to me and I’m so far behind in lessons it’s embarrassing. The nervous feeling coils in my stomach but I sit still through three lessons, and then it’s lunchtime. I find Joe in the canteen. He’s sitting alone, but when he sees me the expression on his face brightens and he waves me over. I sit and watch him eat chips – dropping them into his mouth so they don’t touch the sides and sipping his Coke soundlessly. Neither of us speaks, but it doesn’t seem to matter, and gradually the scared feeling dies down.
‘Not eating lunch?’ he asks me suddenly, and I shake my head.
‘You ought to,’ he tells me, and I say I will – next time. He shrugs and nods, chewing as if he has something important to say and the food’s in his way. I wait while he swallows the last chip and gets up, slipping his bag over one shoulder.
‘I think,’ says Joe, ‘that we were meant to meet. That you and I will make things happen.’
I look at him, and a shiver goes through me. ‘Hope so,’ I say.
Joe smiles. ‘Ready for the afternoon?’ he asks me, and I think I am.
I make it through to Friday, including a meeting with my History teacher, Mrs Rutland, who’s worried about me. She’s a tall woman with joints as knotty as balls of rope and legs so thin you think they’ll snap if she runs on them. The grapevine says her husband left her for someone else, and her eyes have that look about them that says she’s only holding things together by the fingernails. I know that look from my own mirror.
Because she seems to care, I talk about coursework and catching up, but it’s a relief when I see Joe waiting outside the window and she lets me go. He comes all the way to the bottom of my road again and then goes off, his flash of blonde hair bobbing up and down like a buoy on the ocean.
‘Log on,’ he calls after me. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’
I watch until he disappears and then run to the top of the road, not even noticing the slope. The sky is a whiteness that seems to suck me upwards as if a lid’s been taken off the world. I take a huge gulp of it and hurry indoors, skipping past the inner shop door where Mum’s talking to a customer. I dash upstairs, turn on the computer and wait:
‘Hey Coo’
‘Hey Joe’
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s going good, at least since I met you.’
‘It’s the same for me. I really like you.’
‘Want to go out sometime?’
‘Sure yes. That would be great.’
‘Why don’t we just get married now?’
‘Ha ha.’
Well, that’s how the conversation goes in my head. Stupid, I know, and sure enough, I wait for half an hour and he doesn’t log on. People never do what they say they will. In the end I shut down and go for dinner – sausages, onion gravy and a chocolate pudding that sticks to my mouth and still tastes afterwards.
‘I’m glad you came straight back,’ Mum says. ‘There are some nasty things happening. I don’t think you should wander about alone just now, especially after dark.’
‘Why?’ I say. ‘What things?’ But she says nothing, just clears the plates, while Dad finishes the pudding, glancing up after every mouthful to smile at me. I don’t know why it annoys me but it does, so I tell them I’m going upstairs to do my homework. Dad’s face falls. I wish I knew what he wants me to do – smile back? Climb on his lap and ask for a cuddle? Sometimes I wish I could, but tonight’s not one of them. I go up and take out my books, but I can’t face it. Instead I just sit, thinking about ‘nasty things’ as if we haven’t all seen enough of those to last a lifetime. In the end I give up and go to bed, lying awake for what seems like half the night listening to the muffled sounds from downstairs and outside. It’s always like this.
In the morning, when I turn the computer on for a quick check before I leave, there’s a message for me after all:
It’s nothing much, but it shows he didn’t forget. I feel a surge of energy and when I reach the kitchen, I’m smiling. ‘See you tomorrow?’ he said, and that meant today.