What the hell is wrong with me?
I keep glancing around the corner of my book. I watch them take a seat in the cafe area and order some complicated coffee creations. Gemma is yammering away…
“Oh God, Ellis, youmusthelp me pick a dress for the Easter dance. Yes, I know it’seonsaway, but I want something really spectac this year, and I would ask Kates or Suzie but they’ve got all the fashion sense of a colour-blind horse. Ha! I don’t even know what that means. Anyway, they’re always telling me they’re busy at weekends, which is total bullshit because I saw them out together at Nando’s last Saturday…” Her eyes flicker and she takes a long sip of her coffee. “Anyway, my mum’spromisedshe’ll take me shopping, but she’s mega busy with my big sister right now. Did I tell you my sister’s going to be a model? Not that I care. I’ve gotsomuch of my own stuff going on. But the thing is, I really, really,reallyneed you right now, Ellis. So please say you’ll be my shopping buddy?”
Draped over the table, Ellis has been using his little finger to make swirls in his drink. Then all of a sudden he bolts upright, licks the coffee from his pinkie, and zeroes in on me. I literally leap back behind my book.
My face is burning. My lips are parched. I want him to find me. Crap, no, I don’t want him to find me. I’ll just wait here, forever if needs be. A chair and a book, what else does a boy need to survive…?
Long elegant fingers grasp the top of my book and slide it out of my hands. I look up into an overpowering smile.
“Oh. Hey, Ellis.”
“Hello, Frecks.”
He holds the book above me, almost daring me to make a grab for it.
“So, Frecks, I have a serious question. Will you promise to answer it honestly?”
This is it. He’s going to ask if I’m gay. And I’m going to tell him. If I don’t, I think I’ll explode and take half of Ferrivale with me, just like Jean Grey when she becomes Dark Phoenix in— Oh shut up, nerd brain!
“I will answer honestly, yes,” I tell him.
“Okay.” He takes a breath. “So here’s the thing: were you always this rubbish at hide-and-seek?”
I know I’m in my bedroom, sitting at my desk, staring into space – a bit like Professor X in his Cerebro mind machine – but mostly I’m with you, El. In the car. In the lake.
“Hands at nine and three on the steering wheel,” you tell me in your best driving instructor’s voice. “Then mirror, signal…”
My elbows splosh in the freezing water as I take a grip on the wheel. I angle the rear-view mirror and see our picnic hamper floating above the back seats, reeds dancing outside the windows like mermaid hair.
“Manoeuvre.”
Your hand creeps across my lap and dips into that sweet spot of my inner thigh. I close my eyes and you giggle. It’s a horrible, burbling sound, not a bit like your usual laughter. I turn and look at you. You’ve taken back your hand and you’re twirling your pearls, except when I look closer they aren’t pearls at all. They’re all exact copies of the tooth you lost the night you came out to your parents.
“Are you enjoying your latest episode, Mr Frecks?” A dribble of black lake water escapes your lips when you speak. It makes me want to scream. “You know what’s happening right now, don’t you? Course you do. I know my Prof. You’ll have done all your post-traumatic stress disorder research.” He reels off my symptoms on his fingers. “Flashbacks. Nightmares. Visual and auditory hallucinations. Avoiding places that remind you of me. Giving up on school and uni and everything that made you you. Anger, aggression, guilt, shame—”
“Stop it.” I want to take my hands from the wheel but I can’t. It wouldn’t be safe.
“A sense that you have no future.”
I notice the cheery snow globe on the dashboard, the cheeky little elf clutching his sack of presents. Remember the story we made up about him? Gangsta elf on the run? The water picks him up and he starts to float, just as the radio crackles into life. George Ezra. That deep, soulful voice singing about his own personal paradise…
And suddenly I’m back in my bedroom. April sunshine beats at the closed curtains. Dust motes spiral like atoms in a crematorium furnace. It’s been twenty-four hours since your funeral. Are you gone yet, El? Last night I was tempted to google how long it takes to burn a body, but just like when I thought about leaving home, I didn’t have the guts.
I twist on my swivel chair. I have nothing to do. No homework, no revision, no PowerPoint-illustrated argument to convince you that the doner kebab is among the finest of mankind’s achievements. What was my go-to activity in my pre-El days? Well, it’s worth a try. I drag my laptop across the desk, type a couple of gay porn comic sites into the address bar and unzip my jeans. I click and stare, click and stare. My gaze drifts from the computer to my desk and I picture the drawing you gave me at the Berringtons’ barbecue, currently taped on the underside of the drawer. Maybe it would inspire a burst of hardness, maybe it would leave me in a curled-up ball on the floor, heaving for air.
I snap my laptop shut, zip up my jeans, and head for the door. At the top of the stairs, I stop and listen. I still can’t look at my parents. Was I being unreasonable, expecting them to host your wake? Was that actually insane? I really don’t know any more. When I got home yesterday they gave me these shy smiles and asked how it had gone.
“They shoved him inside a cardboard coffin and put him in an oven,” I told them, and immediately hated myself. It was cruel, not only to my folks but to Julia. Your coffin was perfect, El.
Later Mum tried bringing me up a sandwich but I kept the door locked. I think you’d tear me a new one over that, but hey, you were always a better human being than I am. So I should just apologize, right? Yes, okay, El, do you ever get tired of always being the bigger person?
I start down the stairs, holding out my hand for yours as I go, because that’s how we rolled the night we told them. Final tactical mission briefing in my room, then I kissed you and we set out together, hand in hand, sallying forth to do battle with Barbara and Gordon. Except there was no battle. It worked out fine. Or at least you thought so. But between Mum bouncing up and down and Dad’s awkward hug, there was that look you didn’t catch, and I never told you because next to broken teeth and homelessness it seemed so small.
I’m almost at the kitchen door when Chris’s voice stops me in my tracks.
“Look, I don’t want to be mean, but Dylan is, what, seventeen?”
