‘Steve?’
I stand in a crowded room of people, the speaker only inches from my feet, the music vibrating against the hardwood flooring by my brown suede flats. Bodies move beside me. Shifting. Swaying. Shuffling to the rhythm seeping out from the black cone, coated in ceramic and metal. They dance as if in slow motion. As if everything is in slow motion. Except me. I’m the only one moving at a normal pace through the crowd. I think I’m moving. Maybe my feet are still.
I don’t know. I can’t tell anymore.
When I open my mouth to say his name again, my voice gargles out, lost in a sea of spit and foreign sounds. My lips tingle. My tongue feels too big for the inside of my mouth. So I part my lips, and let it hang out a little.
I didn’t know it would feel like this.
I only took one pill. Washed it down with a gulp of cheap newsagent vodka. He said that I would feel relaxed. Confident. Normal again.
But I don’t feel normal. I feel…
Weird.
Where am I again?
I look over my shoulder. Left. Then right. A party. That’s right. I’m at a party.
Why am I here though?
‘Steve.’
Did I say that or think it? I don’t know.
I’m freezing all of a sudden. Is there a window open? My fingers trace the goosebumps all over my bare arms, right up to my shoulders, bones sticking out all over. I push into my skin but my fingers just sink in deeper. No bounce. No squish. Just taut skin over sharp bones.
‘Steve!’ This time it’s louder when it escapes my lips. A couple of heads in front of me turn towards me, to see where the voice came from. They look at me like I have two heads. Then they shake their heads and look away, like I disgust them.
The room starts spinning around me. I’m in a tumble dryer whipping round and round, being squeezed out until there’s nothing inside me. The floor beneath my shoes start rippling like an ocean wave, bobbing me up and down.
Up.
Down.
Steve.
There he is, standing in front of me. He’s wearing that jumper I bought him. It looks nice on him, brings out the blue in his eyes. I’m now touching it. It’s so soft. He holds me by the wrists and pushes me back away from him, but he doesn’t let go of me. He’s hurting me. No, he’s steadying me because I can’t stand still. He’s helping me. I think.
‘What are you doing here, Sophia?’
I reach up to touch the dimples by the corners of his mouth but he jerks his head back away from my fingertips.
‘I just want to talk,’ I splutter out, pitching forward onto him. He catches me and puts me back onto my feet, dropping his grip from my wrists. ‘You won’t take my calls. You won’t reply to my texts.’
He shakes his head and looks around the room to see who’s listening, who’s watching.
‘They’re always watching,’ I say, then start laughing.
He scrunches his face up like he’s also disgusted by me. ‘I got suspended, Sophia. I’m not going to graduate this year. I don’t even know whether I’ll be allowed to come back and repeat the year. Tomlinson is talking about expulsion.’
‘They made me tell. I would never have told, Steve,’ I beg, reaching up to him again.
‘Leave it be. Go home. You’re a total mess. It’s embarrassing.’ He starts to walk away.
‘Don’t go!’ I only mean to grab his arm, pull him back towards me, into me. But I lunge too quickly, and my hands shoot out too fast, too hard. I grab him by the hair instead and claw at his head. He shields his face from my twitching snapping fingertips, and shoves me gently. But the room was already moving too quickly for me, and I stumble back.
The floor is hard on my elbow, on my hipbone that now juts out from the waistband of my jeans. Laughter erupts all around me. People point while I lie on the floor. No one helps me up. No one extends a hand and supports me to get back onto my feet. No. They point. They laugh.
The floor is sticky, and my fingers where I hold my elbow are warm and wet. When I pull my hand away, I see blood on the tips. I’m bleeding. But I don’t feel the pain. All I feel is numb. Cold. Hot. I feel everything. I feel nothing.
I stumble onto my feet and limp to the door. It slams shut behind me, as a burst of cold air slaps me across the feet.
A car pulls up in front of the house. Gravel on the tyres. Stones tremble under the vibrations. From the car. From the music inside. From the heat burning inside my body.
It stops right in front of me, and the engine cuts out.
The door opens, slowly. A tall thin figure emerges from inside. It’s cloaked in a dark hoodie, dark jeans, Ugg boots to shield the cold from her toes. Her tummy protrudes, like the bones on my hips.
‘Sophia?’ Lucy walks over to me, car keys in her left hand. They jingle and clink as she gets nearer to my side. ‘Are you OK? You look like you’re going to throw up.’
She puts her arm around my shoulder and pulls me towards her car, but I jerk away.
‘Sophia, let me take you home.’
Everything around is still shifting, swaying, shuffling.
When she takes another step towards me, I jerk back and start running towards the side of the house, into the woods. I think she’s gone but she’s behind me.
Lucy stumbles over broken branches, dead crunchy leaves, around stark trees stripped bare from the cold wind. She calls my name. Over and over again. She begs me to stop, to slow down, to wait for her.
But I don’t stop. I don’t wait for her. I run as fast as I can, as far away from them as I can. Until finally, my feet reach the edge of the road.
But I don’t cross. I see them all. Their faces. Their sneers. I know this is high school and there is so much more yet to come, but right now, right at this very moment, I don’t want to wait for it to come. I can’t wait. And what if when it comes, when it finally comes, it’s the same? What if this is it? Are we really that different when we leave these doors at graduation? No. We’re the same. We carry the same hate. But this time we bring it out into the world, spreading it. Stretching it out as wide as it can possibly go. Passing it on to each other like a contagious disease. That’s what it is. A disease. And we transmit it like the common cold.
I don’t want to live in that world. I don’t want to get a day older, and know that life will always be this difficult, this cruel, this unchanging.
My body tingles. Butterflies flutter in my belly, diving down and swooping back up like a bird soaring high in the sky. That’s where I’ll be. Soaring high above in the sky. Looking down at everyone here, fighting with each other, hating each other.
My fingers graze the legs of my jeans, and my whole body trembles. I tip my head up to the sky, and feel the misty rain settle on my skin. Its coolness calms me. And when I open my eyes, tiny white stars sparkle above me. The sky really is so clear here. That’s why it’s a dark sky reserve, where thousands of people gather at the end of the month for the annual Dark Skies Festival. My mum took me once. We bundled up in our winter coats, mittens and boots, and gazed through telescopes at the vast darkness above us. A universe so infinite that it scares people. But not me. I’m soothed by it, knowing there’s so much more out there, beyond all this.
The trees rustle, a cool breeze running through them spilling out into the road towards me. When it reaches me, I shiver. Goose bumps surface on my arms, and I feel my skin against the thick jumper underneath. I feel everything tonight. Everything is so much softer, harder, cooler, hotter, louder. Everything is louder. The wind in the trees, the distant thumping of music behind me from Lee’s house, the rain on the ground. And the car down the road. I hear the car. It’s moving fast. Too fast. It’s icy tonight. If it brakes, it won’t be able to stop.
It won’t be able to stop.
I hear Lucy calling my name from behind me. She can’t keep up. She won’t reach me in time.
When I turn my head, I see the bright headlights coming towards me. And when I step out in front, I don’t feel the hate anymore.
I don’t feel anything anymore.