Banjo
Banjo has dinner at Paula and Henry’s because he doesn’t want their food going to waste. Then he makes his way to Kyle’s house. It’s one of those silly little posh-boy estates in Stewartfield, so it takes a good fifteen minutes by bike.
‘Banjo!’ about six guys cheer when he comes in.
Banjo jumps. Kyle just slings an arm around Banjo’s shoulders and drags him through the front door.
Banjo shoves him off, instantly tense and ready for the oncoming mockery, but everyone laughs.
Truth be told, Banjo’s never been to a proper party. Never exactly got close enough to anyone for an invite.
He kind of expected smoke and mirrors or something, laser beams and disco balls. Instead it’s just like being in someone else’s house except with twenty other people. Awkward, cramped, and a bit boring.
He takes the drink Kyle hands him until he finds it’s foul.
‘Fuck is this?’ His face contorts after a sip.
‘Never had vodka?’ Kyle asks, face all innocence. 85
‘Naw, ’cause am no’ eighteen!’ Banjo shoves the cup back. The terror tightens around him like a hand going for his throat. He mostly avoids that kind of stuff. Maybe he’s never had alcohol, but he’s known other things. He can’t go there. Curled up and shaking out of his mind. He wants to shove fingers down his throat.
‘You a wee grass, aye?’ Kyle asks with a grin, trying and failing to sound Scots.
‘Ha,’ Banjo states, dry. ‘Got lemonade?’
‘Knock yourself out.’ Kyle waves towards the kitchen.
Banjo finds some in the fridge, then finds a quiet corner to drink it.
He feels as if he’s on display. As if everyone’s watching him. There are some girls here, too. Banjo didn’t know Kyle had any friends that were girls, but then again he didn’t know Kyle knew Alena.
Still, it looks like everyone is standing around in circles, laughing, staring at him. They aren’t, obviously, because they’ve got their own lives and Saturday nights. But it feels like they are.
After a while Banjo wanders into the garden. Of course Kyle has a swimming pool, the idiot. It’s not even big. It’s sort of pathetic-looking, swallowing up the already small space available, just so wildly out of place beside the shed and the bushes.
There’s nobody to talk to out here. It smells like wet grass and salty chlorine, better than sweat and perfume and alcohol. He breathes in, eyelids fluttering shut. 86
‘Found him!’ Kyle shouts.
Banjo whips around. He frowns, confused. ‘Why ye
looken’?’
‘Because yar an aggressive sonovabitch,’ Kyle imitates Banjo as he saunters over. A few other guys follow. This type of grin comes over Kyle’s face that makes Banjo uneasy. He’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop all night – now Banjo can feel it sinking straight through him.
‘That right?’ Banjo asks.
‘Yeah,’ Kyle says. ‘Look, I’ve no issue with you. I’ve just got two requests and we’re gold.’
Banjo cocks a brow. ‘Oh, aye?’
‘Yeah.’ Kyle nods, holds up a fist, and pops a thumb out. ‘First, quit the team.’
Banjo scoffs. Kyle doesn’t.
Right. This is why Banjo was invited.
‘Whit’s aw this?’ Banjo laughs, gesturing around, even as bitter vines of embarrassment coil in his gut. ‘Sweet talk?’
Kyle shrugs.
‘The second?’ Banjo asks.
Kyle’s index finger appears. ‘Stay away from Alena.’
Banjo doesn’t laugh at that one. He looks at the guys behind Kyle. Are you hearing this? his face says.
But they stare back, serious as a heart attack.
‘Whut ye gonnae dae?’ Banjo’s curious now, actually.
‘Can do a few things.’ Kyle’s lip curls back in a smiling sneer, and with everyone behind him it’s clear what he means. 87
‘Nice.’ Banjo grits his teeth trying to calm down, really trying not to combust. ‘So, whut, she yer property?’
‘Nah, nah.’ Kyle pulls a face. ‘She’s used goods, mate. It’s unhygienic. I’m looking out for you, actually.’
It goes through bone and hits pure nerve.
‘Ye utter fuckin’—’ Banjo storms up; the rage is in his blood system now.
But Kyle just laughs, the other guys laugh, like life just gets so funny sometimes. More people have come outside. It’s basically the whole party here to spectate.
Banjo can only hear the white rush of blood in his ears as he goes to swing.
Yet Kyle expects it; pushes him backwards with ease.
Banjo staggers and trips.
There’s this second of weightless nothing before his back hits ice cold. The pool water closes over him: invades his mouth, nose, ears, eyes. Banjo tries to breathe like an utter fucking idiot, because nobody breathes underwater, nobody would even try to. The water burns his insides, scorches up his throat and into his head, and he can’t move, he can’t see, he can’t swim.
Fuck. He can’t swim. He’s never once—
Banjo’s stomach heaves. He throws up. But it doesn’t go anywhere, it stays in his mouth, down his throat and inside his nostrils, burning his brain like acid because it’s everywhere.
He’s going to die. He’ll die in this pool with everyone laughing until his body floats to the surface and they realise the thrashing 88wasn’t a joke, and everyone will scream because he drowned, he’s dead—
Something grips him and yanks him up.
Banjo coughs a ragged inhale when he breaks the surface. It sounds wretched, like a strangled animal. Snot and vomit run down his chin and blister his whole throat. He thrashes his limbs, trying to find something to grab. He can’t hear anything but a gaggle of noise, bright lights, voices shouting, he’s shivering, shaking—
He’s shoved on to the tiles.
‘Fucking piece of shit!’ Devlin pierces his eardrums. ‘The fuck you push him in for? You wait to see if he can swim!’
‘Aw, Christ, he’s been sick in the pool,’ Kyle babbles. ‘Right in the water, my dad will kill me—’
‘Think it’s funny? He could’ve drowned!’
‘Jesus, it’s everywhere—’
Banjo shudders and throws up again on the concrete.
*
They get him a change of clothes. Truth be told, nobody is happy about it. His near-death experience seems to have put a bit of a dampener on the party. It wasn’t very funny after all, big surprise. One of Kyle’s pals chucks a T-shirt and shorts at him while Kyle tries to fish out the gunk in the pool. The clothes are too big and smell strange, but better than his soaked ones.
Once Banjo’s thrown up all the pool water he managed to swallow, Devlin finds him. ‘You okay?’ he asks outside the bathroom door. 89
Banjo rests his head against the toilet lid for a moment. The porcelain is utterly pristine. Someone cleans on their hands and knees for the glory of this thing.
‘Fine.’ He breathes through his mouth because air through his nose feels like a knife to the brain.
Devlin is quiet. ‘Well, if everyone knew you from the fight, this’ll make the headlines,’ he tries. ‘Sunday papers.’
Banjo chuckles. ‘Fame came too fucken early, I’ll tell them.’
Devlin barks a laugh. Banjo half laughs, half chokes on sick.
Devlin hovers at the door.
‘Am fine, Devlin,’ Banjo states, because he doesn’t want Devlin listening in to this intimate fucking situation.
‘Right.’ Devlin scampers off.
Banjo presses his forearms to the lid and rides the waves of nausea until they stop. Then he walks down the stairs and leaves out the front entrance, because fuck it.
‘Banjo? You good?’ Finlay’s mouth is at the bottom of the door frame, his fingers at either side. Banjo wants to reach up and open the door. He wants to let Finlay inside. He doesn’t have the strength, though. His arm drops weakly on the second attempt. He exhales sour breath back into his own face and tries to keep his head still, his cheek to the bathroom floor, because if he lifts it he’ll be sick.
He knows he could take some painkillers and stop the nausea, but the cause is hardly the fucking cure. 90
‘Am good,’ he croaks eventually.
Finlay stays on the floor. Somehow he can always tell the difference between good, so please go and good, but please stay.