“I’m fine, Dylan. Really, I am.”
“And your chemo? You still at the hospital?”
“Oh, the wondrous world of chemo? Yeah, today was actually all kinds of mad. In the end they had to… Ah crap. Hold on.” I can hear Mike’s mum – not her words, but I’d know that distant mumble anywhere. Carol’s like the Godzilla of mums – scary, but in a kind of awesome and iconic way, and if you’re one of her scaly lizard babies she’ll protect you with her life. Luckily, I’ve been counted as an honorary Berrington ever since I kissed Mike when he fell over and started bawling at his fourth birthday party. I actually can’t wait to tell Carol my news, even though I’m pretty sure she’s already guessed. Mike comes back on the line. “Sorry, buddy. So yeah, grim day. I’ll tell you all about it later. Might make you smile or maybe burst a vessel. My dad nearly took someone’s head off. But look, Dylan, I really have to go. Come over tomorrow, yeah? I haven’t said a word to Mum or Dad, but I know they’ll bake you a freaking cake or sign us all up for Pride or something.”
“It’s a date.”
“Night, Bumboy.”
“Night, Bitch.”
He hangs up. He sounds okay. Really. Just a bit tired.
I head back into the dance.
And for a moment I just watch Ellis. My heart’s still full of Mike, of all the fears we’ve never expressed since he told me his diagnosis, and it helps a little to watch El. Watch him and know that, whatever happens next with my oldest friend, this person will help us through it, just by being there.
More people are on the dance floor now. I can’t help grinning as some of the football team start dancing with each other, mimicking my and El’s moves. There’s no sting in it. They’re laughing and pretending to make out, and it feels like a kind of tribute. In a weird way, I’m sort of proud. It’s something like progress, right? A little step for Ferrivale High. Maybe next year there’ll be more out kids dancing together and there’ll be no parody in it at all.
I switch from the boys whispering fake sweet nothings to each other to El. He’s working the room in his usual easy way. It always amazes me how he can flit between these groups and be accepted by almost all of them. Now he’s laughing and joking with Gemma and the committee witches. Now he’s huddled up with the rugby lads, cackling over some sports reference I’d never get. Now he’s with the library kids, probably talking the latest queer fiction and wondering whether Jane Austen was just a teeny bit bi. Then he’s high-fiving this grinning parade of teachers – Dementor Harper, sweat-rings Robarts, little Miss Buchanan with her adorable moustache, Mr Morris, our history teacher, only skipping art teacher Mr Denman, just back from sick leave, who stood up too late. Sure he gets a couple of weird looks here and there, but he deals as El always deals – he makes them all silently ashamed with the hugeness of his heart.
I rock back against the monkey bars and think:What now?Everything in the past four months has been about me and El and making sure no one knows. Not gonna lie, it’s been exhausting. But none of that effort is needed any more. I guess we can justbe. We’ve got final exams coming up, then, if we get the grades (please God!) we’ll be heading to Bristol in September. We decided way back we’d ditch halls and get a little student flat together. A cosy crib for two. Maybe we’ll adopt a feral cat or try not to kill a goldfish for a month or two, and we’ll be ultra-sociable with uni clubs and stuff, but it’ll be our first real chance to exist properly together, as a couple. I get excited just thinking about it. But first there’s summer, and all the possibilities of summer: El dragging me to gigs and galleries; me dragging him to comic book conventions and my favourite medieval castles and battlefields. Late nights, late mornings, breakfast in bed, reading, sketching, touching.
Me and El.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Another of El’s whiplash moments. I’d been watching Mitchell Harrison and Joe Cotterill slow-waltzing to “Uptown Funk”, laughing my head off, when suddenly he’s there, right in front of me. And he’s different. Ellis without at least a trace of a smile is always disconcerting. It’s like you can finally see that darkness he trailed with him from Birmingham all those long months ago.
“What’s the matter?” I say, catching at his sleeve.
“It’s nothing. Just, let’s go, okay?”
He looks over his shoulder, but I’m not sure where his eyes are focused: the committee girls; the footie lads; the library geeks; the teachers. All I know is that when he looks back at me, those perfect pink lips are trembling.
“Please can we go?” he repeats.
An unnamed fear, strange and yet horribly familiar, grips my heart. I’ve seen Ellis like this before – back in those dark days over Christmas when he inexplicably vanished on me. I won’t go through the pain and fear of that miserable week again. I won’t. We have to talk.
We’re in the car, not moving. El sits silently in the driver’s seat, his fingers plucking and twisting at his pearls. He looks…I don’t know. The best I can come up with is lost. His eyes are huge and blank and it feels as if he isn’t seeing me at all.
When I reach out to touch him he flinches, like I’ve scorched him with a cigarette. He looks down at my hand and swivels sideways in his seat, arching his back until his shoulders are almost touching the ceiling, as if being anywhere near me disgusts him in some way.
“El, Jesus, what the hell’s going on?”
There’s a weird sort of pleading in my voice, and I don’t like it. It scares me that I’ve done something, today of all days, that has made him hate me. What the hell that could be, I’ve no idea. My mind flips back over the past thirty minutes or so. It can’t be me heading off to talk with Mike, he can’t be jealous of that. El has always understood the me-and-Mike thing. So has someone said something to him? Something awful about me? I’m now tearing through my entire school career, hunting for some deep dark secret that I’ve never confided to El. But that’s impossible. The only secret I’ve ever had that’s been a source of inner shame was exposed this morning, and, Jesus, it was El himself who taught me there was no shame in that at all.
Okay, so maybe it isn’t a secret. Maybe it’s a lie. Have I been kidding myself? All those pats on the back and the football team fake-smooching on the dance floor – maybe therewasan edge to it after all, and I was just so caught up in the giddiness of this awful, wonderful day that I misinterpreted it. Has some nasty whisper been invented?
My brain vomits up a trove of poisonous gems:
You know McKee’s a secret slut, don’t you, Ellis? Sucked off half the footie lads before you rolled into town.
I heard he’s been two-timing you with[insert name here]and they’re gonna break it to you soon.
Ellis, man, wake up. He isn’t even gay. He just tried it out for a laugh. You know, like a phase?
Funny how the brain works. I know deep down that it’s all complete bullshit, but each of these imaginary conversations seems more plausible than the last. I even start thinking up ways to counter them:
