Without her, I guess I’ll just stand here on the step and watch the clouds gather and burst. Water will run in rivulets down the kitchen window and another day will begin to collapse around me. Is that living? Is it even anything?
A door opens and shuts next door. There’s the heavy tread of boots on mud. I walk across and stick my head over the fence.
‘Hello again!’
Adam puts his hand to his chest as if I gave him a heart attack. ‘Jesus! You scared me!’
‘Sorry.’
He’s not dressed for gardening. He’s wearing a leather jacket and jeans and he’s carrying a motorcycle helmet.
‘Are you going out?’
‘Yeah.’
We both look at his bike. It’s down by the shed, tied up. It’s red and silver. It looks as if it’d bolt if you let it free.
‘It’s a nice bike.’
He nods. ‘I just got it fixed.’
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘It got knocked over and the forks got twisted. Do you know about bikes?’
I think about lying, but it’s the kind of lie that would catch you out very quickly. ‘Not really. I’ve always wanted to go on one though.’
He gives me an odd look. It makes me wonder what I look like. Yesterday I looked like a smack-head because my skin seemed to be turning yellow. I put earrings in last night to try and counteract the effect, but I forgot to check my face this morning. Anything could’ve happened during the night. I feel a bit uncomfortable with him looking at me like that.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘There’s something I should probably tell you.’
I can tell by the discomfort in his voice what it’ll be, and I want to save him from it.
‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘My dad’s a real blabbermouth. Even strangers look at me with pity these days.’
‘Really?’ He looks startled. ‘It’s just I hadn’t seen you around for a while, so I asked your brother if you were OK. It was him who told me.’
I look at my feet, at a patch of lawn in front of my feet, at the gap between the grass and the bottom of the fence.
‘I thought you had diabetes. You know, when you fainted that time. I didn’t realize.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I mean, I was very sorry when he told me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It felt important to tell you I know.’
‘Thanks.’
Our words sound very loud. They take up all the room in my head and sit there echoing back at me.
Eventually I say, ‘People tend to get a bit freaked when they find out, like they just can’t bear it.’ He nods, as if he knows this. ‘But it’s not as if I’m going to drop dead this very second. I’ve got a whole list of things I’m going to do first.’
I didn’t know I was going to tell him this. It surprises me. It also surprises me when he smiles.
‘Like what?’ he says.
I’m certainly not telling him about Jake or about jumping in the river. ‘Well, drugs are next.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Yeah, and I don’t mean aspirin.’
He laughs. ‘No, I didn’t think you did.’
‘My friend’s going to get me some E.’
‘Ecstasy? You should take mushrooms, they’re better.’
‘They make you hallucinate, don’t they? I don’t want skeletons rushing at me.’
‘You’ll feel dreamy, not trippy.’
That’s not very reassuring because I don’t think my dreams are like other people’s. I end up in desolate places that are hard to get back from. I wake up hot and thirsty.
‘I can get you some if you want,’ he says.
‘You can?’
‘Today if you like.’
‘Today?’
‘No time like the present.’
‘I promised my friend I wouldn’t do anything without her.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a lot to promise.’
I look away and up to the house. Dad’ll be up soon and straight onto his computer. Cal will be off to school. ‘I could ring her, see if she can come over.’
He zips up his jacket. ‘All right.’
‘Where are you going to get them from?’
A slow smile lifts the edges of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll take you out on the bike and show you.’ He backs off down the path, still smiling. I’m held by his eyes, pale green in this early light.
Fourteen
‘Where do you reckon he gets them from, Zoey?’
She yawns hugely. ‘Legoland?’ she says. ‘Toytown?’
‘Why are you being so horrible?’
She turns on the bed and looks at me. ‘Because he’s boring and ugly and you’ve got me, so I don’t know why you’re even interested. You shouldn’t have asked him for drugs. I told you I’d get them.’
‘You haven’t exactly been around.’
‘Last time I looked, you were flat on your back in hospital and I was visiting you!’
‘And last time I looked, I was only there because you told me to jump in a river!’
She sticks her tongue out, so I turn back to the window. Adam got home ages ago, went inside for half an hour, then came back out and started raking leaves. I thought he’d have knocked on the door by now. Maybe we’re supposed to go to him.
Zoey comes to stand beside me and we watch him together. Every time he loads leaves onto the wheelbarrow, dozens of them fly off again in the wind and settle back on the lawn.
‘Hasn’t he got anything better to do?’
I knew she’d think that. She doesn’t have much patience for anything she has to wait for. If she planted a seed, she’d have to dig it back up and look at it every day to see if it was growing yet.
‘He’s gardening.’
She gives me a withering look. ‘Is he retarded?’
‘No!’
‘Shouldn’t he be at college or something?’
‘I think he looks after his mum.’
She looks at me with plotting eyes. ‘You fancy him.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do. You’re secretly in love with him. You know stuff about him you couldn’t possibly know if you didn’t care.’
I shake my head, try to put her off the scent. She’ll play with it now, make it bigger than it would have been without her.
‘Do you stand here every day spying on him?’
‘No.’
‘I bet you do. I’m going to ask him if he fancies you back.’
‘No, Zoey!’
She runs to the door laughing. ‘I’m going to ask him if he wants to marry you!’
‘Please, Zoey. Don’t mess it up.’
She walks slowly back across the room, shaking her head. ‘Tessa, I thought you understood the rules! Never let a bloke into your heart – it’s fatal.’
‘What about you and Scott?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
She smiles. ‘That’s just sex.’
‘No, it’s not. When you visited me at the hospital, you could barely drag your eyes from his face.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘It’s true.’
Zoey used to live her life as if the human race was about to become extinct, like nothing really mattered. But around Scott, she goes all soft and warm. Doesn’t she know this about herself?
She’s looking at me so seriously that I grab her face and kiss it, because I want her to smile again. Her lips are soft and she smells nice. It crosses my mind that it might be possible to suck some of her good white cells into me in this way, but she pushes me off before I have a chance to test my theory.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘Because you’re spoiling it. Now go and ask Adam if he’s got the mushrooms.’
‘You go.’
I laugh at her. ‘We’ll both go.’
She wipes her lips with her sleeve and looks confused. ‘OK, fine. Your bedroom’s starting to smell weird anyway.’
When Adam sees us coming across the lawn, he puts down his rake and walks over to meet us at the fence. I feel a bit dizzy as he gets closer. The garden seems brighter than before.