He licks his forefinger. “Take your punishment like a man, Dylan.” I sit perfectly still while he waggles a wet digit in my ear. Becks yips at us and chases his tail, wanting to show that he can pull off slapstick humour too.
“Am I still one of the Incredible Twat Brothers?” I ask.
“The twattiest.” He nods.
So I dive straight in. I tell him about my encounter with Raj, leaving out the part with George and the aborted BJ in the cubicle, because there’s only so much shame a boy can bear. Mike listens, fussing with Becks, throwing him bits of stick. Then I tell him about my renewed certainty that whatever scared you over the Christmas break must be connected to the thing that freaked you out at the Easter dance. He nods, thoughtful, so I know these aren’t just drunken ramblings.
“I should get home,” I say. “Another page from the journal might have turned up. You know, it’s crazy, but it doesn’t feel as if this thing only started two days ago. It feels like I’ve been receiving these pages forever.”
Mike shoots me an uncertain glance. “Dylan, you know that none of this is going to bring El back.”
“Jesus, Mike.” I stare at him. “I get that I’m an idiot, but I’m not that stupid.”
He runs a hand under his baseball cap and fixes his eyes on the old church, the western elevation black as night in the morning glare.
“I don’t know, mate. All this stuff, it’s like it’s freezing you in the moment. You’re not grieving, not properly. You’re—”
“Not moving on?” I don’t want to argue, not when we’ve only just made up; and anyway, I don’t have the energy for this. “Listen, I’m not letting this go,” I tell him. “I won’t ever stop, Mike, not until I find out what happened to him. If I don’t understand what scared him, I think I’ll go mad. But you don’t have to help me.” I reach out and rub his shoulder, and feel sharp bone where healthy muscle once sat. “I can do this on my own.”
He breathes deeply, and despite what I’ve just said, I feel kind of terrified, because I honestly don’t think Icando this on my own.
“Then we go on,” he says at last.
He puts down his tea and rummages in his coat pocket, bringing out his phone. “Now you’ve stopped being a colossal dick, there’s something you need to see.” He thumbs his gallery and brings up a blurry image. “You were so focused on El and that Raj kid that you didn’t see what was going on in the background of the shot. I tried to tell you in the bar, but you weren’t having it. Now look, I don’t know what this means, but it’s weird, right?”
He hands me the phone and points to a figure in the background of the video snapshot. At first I don’t understand what he’s trying to show me. And then I recognize the wavy hair that almost curtains his eyes, and that weirdly defensive way he always stands, one arm draped across his stomach. He’s half-turned away from El and Raj, as if he isn’t really interested in what’s going on. Except that would be odd in itself, because practically everyone else in the place is gawping at the show. And anyway, the act isn’t convincing, because Ollie Reynolds is filming the whole thing on his phone.
I turn to Mike and see my disbelief reflected back at me.
“What the hell does this mean?”
I sit on a tombstone, hands between my knees, breath billowing. There’s hardly any wind and the countryside all around is crisp and white and still. Even the abandoned church, which is always creaking and groaning, keeps its silence. I check the road for the fiftieth time. No car belching its way down the lane, bringing El back to me. I kick my toe against all the junk at my feet and pray he’ll show up soon and tell me what I did wrong.
For twelve days we were happy. Julia had started her treatment and was doing well, Ellis was working hard on his sculpture, and we were grabbing every second we could to be together. Twelve days of free periods when we’d race back to mine before my parents got home and tear off each other’s clothes. Twelve days in which we talked politics and movies and music and history and all the weird stuff I thought I’d never share with anyone. Twelve days in which we didn’t talk at all, but just lay there, lost in each other.
Okay, so we had the odd disagreement. El couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to tell my parents. He hadn’t met them properly yet, but from everything I told him I guess they sounded fairly cool. I just couldn’t make him understand what telling them might mean for us. Anyway, he accepted my decision and assured me that, whenever it felt right, he’d be there for me.
Then term ended and everything changed. We were supposed to meet the following day. The new Star Wars movie was out and I’d convinced El that adventures a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away were not just for little kids. In fact, they weren’t for little kids at all, and if some snot-nosed brat started talking during a lightsaber battle? Well, I would not be held responsible for my actions. El laughed and promised he’d be there.
He never showed. I called and texted. Nothing. It was weird. I thought about calling Mike and offering him El’s ticket, but two things stopped me: first, Mike hadn’t been feeling all that great and was off school the whole last week of term; and second, suddenly I was stupidly worried about my boyfriend. In the end, I abandoned the movie I’d been waiting two whole years to see and headed over to Mount Pleasant.
I wasn’t bothered about Julia being there because El had already told her about us, and of course she was cool. In fact she gave me this very random double Snickers bar as a coming-out present, even though I’m not out, and kissed my cheeks until it looked like I’d been mauled by a grizzly wearing Ruby Woo red (I now know heaps about lipstick, thanks to El). Anyway, I realized on the way over that Julia was on a late shift at the bakery.
The “123” on the door of 123 shuddered a little when I knocked. Just like with the phone, no answer. I was about to knock again when I glimpsed a shadow wavering under the door.
“El? El, it’s me.” The shadow froze. “Is everything okay? We were supposed to meet for the film, but if you’re not well…? Come on, El, this isn’t funny. Is it…” I tried to swallow but couldn’t. “Have I done something? Are you upset with me?”
Silent darkness under the door.
“C’mon, are you messing with me?” I tried on a grin but it slipped like water from my face. “Ellis, what have I done? Why won’t you talk to me?”
I’m Dylan McKee, I don’t make scenes, but right at that moment I started hammering on the door.
“El, please, just say something!”
But he didn’t, and in the end I had to stop because neighbours were poking their heads out of doorways and throwing glares at me.
Another twelve days passed, this time spent in hell. I texted and texted and texted, but the only messages I received were from Mike and a couple of kids at school asking about essay deadlines. So the days crawled by and I did what I could to reach out. I sent emails, even wrote a letter, and all the while the ingenious little torture device between my ears went into hyperdrive:Dylan, it was the sex. Hey, he tried his best, but there’s only so much he could do with a pure clueless virgin… Dylan, it was the comic-book stuff. You bored him rigid, and not in a good way… Dylan, it wasyou. Weird, klutzy, awkward little you. He came to his senses at last, that’s all.
