In the end Mike comes to get me, pulling me out of the car with diverting talk about popcorn and horror movies. Mumzilla ruffles my hair and says it’s dinner first, then popcorn, which makes Mike wonder aloud if she might have been a torturer for the Inquisition in a previous life.
“Yes, Michael, I’m a bloodthirsty tyrant, and waiting thirty minutes for popcorn is my modern version of the rack. Now go and wash your hands.”
“Sadist.”
I’m about to follow Mike when Carol calls me back.
“I just got off the phone with your mum.”
“Is she okay?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m not sure how she could be. Look, I don’t know what’s happened tonight, and maybe it’s not my place to know, but one thing I’m certain about: your family love you.” Big Mike puts both hands on my shoulders and Carol lifts my chin, so I’m forced to look at her. “Even that idiot brother of yours likes you quite a lot. Now, I want you to give your mum a call tomorrow, just a few words to tell her you’re okay. It’s my only condition.”
“And she will kick your arse if you don’t,” Big Mike adds.
So I say I will, and I don’t think I’m lying.
We eat Mumzilla’s trademark dish: incredible home-made pizzas with curly fries. No one talks about the elephant in the room, even though it’s parading around the breakfast table, leaving huge steaming dumps in its wake. Big Mike regales us with his collection of lame dad jokes and we all laugh in the right places, mainly because we’ve heard the routine a million times before.
After dinner we head up to Mike’s room and grab our beanbags, bowls of warm popcorn nestled in our laps. After half an hour of serial-killer carnage, Mike pauses the movie.
“How’s stuff?” he asks.
“Stuff sucks.”
He nods and flips the remote like it’s a six-shooter in an old Wild West movie. He’s about to restart the film when I catch his eye.
“All this time, Mike, everything we’ve found out, every secret El kept from me, you know what I keep coming back to?”
“What?”
“It’s us. Something rotten in us. You know how we like to present ourselves in Ferrivale? This brilliant, modern, tolerant community? Just so lovely and friendly and accepting of everyone. So we’re super-nice to the gays but we’re also accepting of that church group that pushes theirIt’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Stevefliers through every letter box. But we can’t be okay with everything. In the end, we have to choose. And I’m not talking about freedom of speech – let the haters hate, let them post their fliers – butweneed to have some idea of what we stand for and what we oppose. Because if we don’t decide, then we leave these gaps where good people get swallowed up.
“We all wanted El to be something he could never be. And we thought us wanting that was somehow acceptable, but it’s not. It’s not about El fitting into some idea of what he should be. Tolerance isn’t conditional. It’s absolute. It’s not on your terms, it’s onhis. Even I wouldn’t accept El for who he was. Not at first. And that’s what makes kids like El feel rejected and puts them in danger, because we’re not strong enough to say, ‘This is where we as a community stand. Ellis Bell is one of us and we will look out for him. Even those among us who would never be his friend and don’t like his choices, we stand with him because he has a right to be whatever he chooses to be and he lives here, in this town, where our tolerance isn’t this shallow thing that makes us feel virtuous. It’s real. It’s powerful. It protects.’”
I don’t know where these words are coming from, but they feel like they go to the bone of me.
“We’re all responsible,” I say. “But I have to know who it was, Mike. Who left him to die like that? Who hated him that much? It’s killing me.”
Mike nods. He’s taken the amulet you gave him for his birthday from under his shirt and is stroking the protection symbol.
“Dylan, I just…” He looks away. “I wish I could help you.”
“You are helping.” I throw a cushion at his head; he doesn’t smile. “You’ve always helped me.”
Eventually, we continue with the movie. When it’s done, I unpack my night stuff and we make up the camp bed. Mike strips to his pants and T-shirt and turns off the light.
“Need anything?”
“No,” I lie. Because what I need, he can’t give me.
I’m still wide awake when Becks snuffles into the room and curls up beside me. I run my fingers through the white fur of his belly and he stretches up and licks my face. It doesn’t matter. It was already wet.
I wake to find Mike’s bed empty and Becks gone. The alarm clock on the window sill blinks back at me: 10.56 a.m. It seems unreal that your funeral was only four days ago. In that short time, I’ve learned so much more about you, El. Now I wonder if a fourth picture will find me here and what new secrets it might reveal.
It always makes me feel weirdly guilty when I sleep in at Mike’s, probably because the Berringtons have this “up and at ’em” attitude, though no one’s ever said anything. Wandering downstairs, I give Mumzilla a smile and sink into “Dylan’s seat” at the breakfast table. I’m instructed to sit and drink tea and eat toast. Sounds good.
“Don’t forget our deal,” she tells me, pouring tea from the arse-end of her comedy cow teapot. “Call your mum.”
