In the weeks that followed I stayed in my room and unravelled. I kept the curtains closed and put on the music that spoke to my mood. I didn’t read, didn’t write, didn’t draw, and I certainly didn’t look at the internet. I just shut down. My music rewound time, from Billie Eilish to Kate Tempest to Radiohead to Deftones to Leonard Cohen to Rachmaninoff.
I carried on eating because Mum knew that if she put a plate of honey toast beside me I would eat it, and if she put a cup of hot chocolate next to it I would drink that without even noticing.
I had, of course, known that I was going to die one day. Everyone works it out once they get to the age of about three and discover that even their beloved parents can’t promise otherwise. Parents have to admit that, yes, you will die but it will be a long, long time in the future, and, yes, admittedly, they will die too but you’ll be grown-up by then and probably have children of your own. I (along with everyone else in the world) just needed to come to terms with the fact that it was going to happen sooner than I’d planned, and also that it would be horrible in a way I couldn’t imagine, even though I thought about it all the time.
Merry Christmas!
The further out I zoomed my perspective, the calmer I became. I was born: that is an incredibly unlikely fact, right there. My life, in cosmic terms, would be over anyway, almost before it began, whatever happened. The whole of the human race was insignificant, if you looked from a wide enough distance. It took me a long time to get to that, and it was hard work keeping it up as a perspective, but it was the only thing I could do. Around me the world burned and rioted and fought and cried. Christmas came and went, and then, somehow, things carried on.
When I emerged in January, ready to go back to college and see what the remaining months might hold, I discovered that most people had found ways of dealing with what was happening. While I had been shut away, my mother had, in an unlikely turn of events, started going to church. It had started on Christmas Day; now, after a few weeks, she had decided the C of E was ‘too woolly’ in the face of oncoming catastrophe, and was going to look further afield. My stepfather, Sean, declared the whole thing was a hoax and wouldn’t happen (‘And if it’s not a hoax, it’s best to act as if it was’), and was carrying on as normal. Dad and Anneka had also opted to ignore it because they had small children and their days were busy enough to allow them to shut out that kind of thing. Most people, it turned out, were just getting on with it while making extravagant plans for the summer.
The coming summer was the last summer we would ever have. It was going to be filled with festivals and parties and trips and holidays and everyone doing the things they’d always wanted to do. It had been renamed the ‘end times’ by one magazine, which had stuck, and now it seemed that the whole planet was going to have a huge desperate party.
Not me, though, because I didn’t go to parties.
My tiny win turned out to be that I did find the courage to sign my name on the audition sheet for Romeo and Juliet on the first day back at college in January. If there were only a few months left, I felt I could at least try to use it for something. Even if that something was trivial to everyone else, it would be meaningful to me.
The changing of the atmosphere had, when I wasn’t looking, been named ‘the Creep’, and the term had been adopted by everyone. Similarly, the day the news broke was universally called twelve-twelve. I pictured the Creep day and night: that green cloud creeping across the planet, over land and sea, poisoning everything and everyone in its path until it was the only thing there was.
At college they said we still had to sit our summer exams and carry on as if things were normal. We had to leave all thoughts of impending doom at the door; and the oddest thing was that we did. We just carried on and hoped for the best, because you can’t panic for long before you run right out of energy and decide to do something normal instead to give your mind and soul a break.
I did, however, have one thing I needed to do. As soon as I got home from my first day back at college, I went to my room and tapped an email into my phone.
Dear Zoe,
Hello! I know we’re barely really ‘friends’. I know you don’t really notice me. If you were trying to lull yourself to sleep by naming all the people in your drama class (or is it just me that does that?), I’d be the one you forgot. In the morning you’d wake up and say: ‘Olivia Lewis! That’s the one.’
But I am more interesting on the inside than I am on the outside. Am I? Is that a terrible thing to say? I’m not going to send this so it doesn’t matter. Yes, I think I’m more interesting inside than my boring outside would make you think. I’m just too shy to speak, even though we’re sixteen and I should have the world at my feet. What’s left of the world. At what will soon be the decomposing remains of my feet.
Oh God! I’m terrible at this! Shit. That was not romantic. I’m trying to throw caution to the wind and make a heartfelt declaration of love, but instead I’m talking about my feet rotting.
Zoe Adebayo, I have known you since we were four, and I’m in love with you. I know you’re with Elisha and that even if you weren’t you wouldn’t be interested in me, but I’m going to be brave and say it anyway. Zoe, I love you. It started in Year Eight, and here we are now in Year Twelve. You do the math! (Four years.) I love how kind you are, how confident. I love the way you dress – the vintage men’s jackets, the tea dresses, the clompy boots. I love your hair. I … am going to stop now before this sounds too weird. I love you. I do. That’s all.
I don’t expect this to change anything, but I wanted to tell you anyway. I’m not going to send this so it doesn’t matter, but I’m glad I’ve written it down. Maybe one day, perhaps in September, I’ll be able to tell you.
Love, proper love,
Libby xxx
I saved it to drafts. I started another one.
Hey Zoe,
Are you auditioning for the play? I’ve just signed up for it. I don’t usually dare to do this kind of stuff, but as times have changed I’m thinking what the hell.
Do you fancy meeting up and looking at the script?
Libby xxx
I saved that to drafts too.
Zoe,
Fancy a coffee?
Libby xxx
I saved them all, and figured that one day I would find a way to write one that I might actually be able to send. I knew she was auditioning for the play. I had written my name underneath hers a few hours ago, had stroked her name with my fingertip when no one was looking.
I would just have to turn up and see what happened.