“Right.”
Silence. Paranoia descended.
“I wish you’d been there.”
Paranoia evaporated.
He had weird but fit arms too – all veiny and bulgy and cold in his band T-shirt and no coat on. I wanted to stroke his arm – the urge to touch him was overpowering. I lightly stroked it, sending ricochets of electricity running up my hand.
Guy coughed and took his arm away.
Paranoia descended.
I pretended I hadn’t noticed and watched him from the corner of my eyes. He rummaged in his jeans pocket, withdrew a battered-looking roll-up, lit it, and took a deep pull. He blew the smoke into my face and laughed while I coughed.
“That’s not funny, arsehole.”
He laughed harder and put his arm back around me.
Paranoia evaporated.
Just as we got closer to college, he pulled me into an alleyway.
“We’re going to be late,” I said, but Guy silenced me with his mouth. For someone so permanently stoned, he had a lot of energy. He pushed me back against a moss-covered garden fence and kept pushing my body further into it as he kissed my mouth and my face and then my neck – which was basically the best feeling that had ever happened to me. I kissed him back – tentatively copying what he was doing and responding to his moans.
“Today can’t go quick enough,” he whispered in my ear. “I can’t wait to get you in my bed.”
Initial thought
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Next thought
This is what you want, Evie. To be like everybody else. He is treating you like a normal girl, and normal girls get into bed with guys that look like Guy.
I tried to whisper back but croaked on the first word. “I can’t wait either.”
More kisses. The warning bell – signalling college started in ten minutes – echoed in the distance. I reluctantly pulled Guy’s mouth off my neck. “We need to go.”
“No, we don’t.” His lips returned right back to where they had been.
“We’ll be late.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t like being late.”
He stepped back and gave me a smirk. “You’re such a geek.”
Guy turned and walked off towards college. I stood, panicking – my neck thinking, Oi, where have those lips gone?
“Hey,” I called, paranoia descending around me again. “Where are you going?”
“To college,” he answered, looking ahead. “Model student Evelyn can’t ever be late.”
“I can be late! I can so be late.”
I didn’t want to be late, but I didn’t want Guy not-looking at me either.
“Well I don’t want to be late now.”
He didn’t put his arm back around me and – when we got through the college gates – I swear he stepped away from me. Or maybe he didn’t. That was the thing, I could never trust my judgements. There was, at least, a person-sized gap between us though – that was a fact. Guy walked quickly and soon we were inside, pupils trickling past lockers, clutching folders as they funnelled down the corridors. I stopped, waiting for a romantic farewell, or at least a goodbye.
Guy walked straight ahead, down the corridor, until he was swallowed by people.
I touched my lips. “Bye then,” I said to myself, not knowing what to make of it all.
The bell rang. Classes were beginning.
I got a feeling in my tummy. An urge to wash it away.
I was late to sociology.
Thirty-eight
Oli was back.
He sat in his usual chair in our film studies classroom, next to me, all rigid and poker-straight.
My heart cut free from its arteries and plopped down to my feet, like it was filled with molten lead. Guilt took its place and began pumping turmoil around my veins.
I took my time getting to my desk, feeling awful with every step – replaying our date…my shameful behaviour.
“Hi,” I said shyly.
“Oh, hi, Evie.”
Oli looked up and it was like looking at myself. His eyes were overly wide with earnest me?-I’m-all-right-really false conviction, his hands twisted in and over themselves like he was holding an invisible fireball, his eyes darted and flitted as he overloaded on all the new information, and his leg jiggled so hard under the desk he kept accidentally bashing it with his knee, making his biro roll off.
“You’re back,” I said, knowing how hard today must be, how he would’ve counted down the date on his calendar with his therapist, how exhausting it would be…though of course it wouldn’t be as knackering as the realization you have to keep doing it, again and again until, hopefully, it’s not scary any more.
“Yeah, I’m back. I…er…wasn’t well.”
I nodded and sat down. “That sucks, are you feeling better?”
A big beaming fake grin. “Oh, yes, much better, thanks.”
Brian bowled in and launched into an inappropriate monologue about how hard he’d partied over the weekend. Oli’s leg was like jelly next to mine. He must’ve been burning about five hundred calories a minute by jittering it so much.
My leg started bouncing too. This is what I was worried about.
BAD THOUGHT
It’s contagious, you’re catching his crazy.
WORSE THOUGHT
Or maybe he’s catching yours?
Brian started half-lecturing us about product placement. I absent-mindedly reached into my bag and got out some antibacterial hand gel. Mum’d forgotten to check my bag.
Oli saw me rub it into my hands. My chapped, flaking hands.
“You, er, got a cold?” he whispered.
“Me?” I looked down at what I was doing; I’d barely realized. “Oh, no. It’s just my hands…they’re, er…not taking to winter very well.”
He stared at them in a way that made me feel naked. They really were a mess – when had they gotten like that? There was hardly any skin left around my thumbnail – I’d picked it all off. My hands were just peeling skin and open, weeping, angry sores. The skin that was left was so dry it was almost reptilian – scaled with white dusty bits of flake. Angry red skin glistened through thin patches I’d worn down through washing.
How hadn’t Guy noticed this? My hands had been all over his body, all over his hands?
“Evelyn? Are you okay?”
Oli’s basil eyes pierced into me and I wanted to cry. His own nerves had vanished, transferred into concern for me. He wasn’t looking at me in disgust, or confusion. He looked from my hands, to my terrified face, in complete understanding.
He’d worked it out. He knew. Broken people are like homing missiles to one another.
But I wasn’t broken, I was fine. And I couldn’t handle him staring at me like that.
I pushed my chair back and stood abruptly.
“Evie?” Oli asked.
“Where you off to?” Brian barked.
I couldn’t stay. I was suffocating, in Oli’s pity, in the thought of everyone’s pity. When they knew…when they found out – the pity always comes first…followed by the annoyance that you’re not better yet, even though they’ve been so understanding.
“I don’t feel well.” I gathered everything back into my bag and hoicked it onto my shoulder. It wasn’t a lie.
“Well, go on then.” Brian dismissed me with a flutter of his gnarly hand.
I fled.
I paced the empty corridors, trying to make peace with my thoughts. It was strange wandering round with everyone in lessons – living their lives, not worrying about touching street lights and washing the filth off them. I peered into a few windows and just watched classes taking place. I stared at students, wishing I was them, wishing I had their brains, wishing I had their inconsequential problems. Wishing I even had their totally consequential problems. As long as they weren’t mine.
If my mum had cancer, or Dad got hit by a car or something, it wouldn’t be my fault. It would be horrific but it also wouldn’t be anything to do with me. It would’ve happened because life is cruel and unfair and shit happens sometimes. But me… Me and my problems, they only existed because I wasn’t strong enough. Because I was weak and couldn’t pull myself together like everyone else did. I know Sarah wouldn’t agree, but that’s how it felt…