El shakes his head determinedly. “No, Dylan. It’s nothing to do with what happened back then.”
I don’t want to push this but I have to. “You promised you’d never shut me out like that again. El, youpromised.”
“And I’m not shutting you out,” he insists. “This thing, it’s different.”
“Well then…” My head’s reeling. I take a breath. “Is it someone else?”
“No, Dylan.” And when I try to look away he takes my chin and guides me back to him. “There is no one else. There won’teverbeanyone else. You dope.” He grins that crooked Ellis grin, brighter than Broadway neon, and the pain in his eyes becomes a memory. “Don’t you know by now? Right, here goes…I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this.” He laughs and makes a grab for my ribs with tickling fingers. “You’re the one, Dylan. You and your gorgeous freckles and your gingery hair and your moley bum and your geeky history stuff and your comic-book crap and your so-cute-it’s-actually-annoying shyness and your eternal klutziness and your passion for Starburst sweets andYOU.”
He releases me and I fall back into my seat, laughing, glowing.
El’s laughing too, and then his predictable switch kicks in.
“It’s you, Dylan,” he says, his voice almost cracking. “And I know you think for some insane reason you don’t deserve to be loved by me, but that makes you just about the most intelligent idiot I’ve ever met. I love you, Frecks. And it’s fairy-tale bullshit, I know, but I’ve sort of loved you ever since the first time I saw you.”
I sit there, stunned.
“You can’t have,” I say quietly. “All I was doing was standing gawping at you.”
El shakes his head. “You couldn’t see yourself. Your gawps are one of the best things about you. You know how everyone stared at me that first night at the bonfire? In I flounced, the new kid, all self-righteous and up for a row, and I got these looks of shock and laughter and instant hatred and weird admiration – the usual glorious rainbow. But you? You looked at me without any judgement or expectation at all. You just looked as if you’d like to say hello.”
“And I did.”
“And you did.”
Shadows pass the steamed-up windows. Kids lurching, giving each other piggybacks, seventeen-year-olds playing tag.
“You saved me that night. You have no idea, but that’s exactly what you did. The way it ended with my family. The screams and swearing and unholy shit they threw at me after I told them. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’m still me. I’m still Ellis. Still your son.’And then Dad knocked me to the floor and my mum stepped right over me and started packing my clothes. And I was just lying there, watching my little sister in her playpen. She didn’t cry or anything. She just squatted down in her nappy and reached through the bars with her chubby little arms and she picked up my tooth off the carpet and she…” He takes a huge swallow. “She held it out for me. ‘Ellis’s,’ she said. And then I was in the street and Dad was throwing tenners in my face and Mum was behind him shouting, ‘Don’t you ever come back!’” El looks at me, his expression so desolate it breaks my heart. “You know how you cope with that, Dylan? You either become more you than you’ve ever been before, or you curl up and die. But it’s a hard act, you know? Straining all the time to be who you need to be. And then I came here and I got up that stupid petition—”
“It wasn’t stupid,” I tell him.
“And I see this cute comic-book geek,” he continues, “his face glowing in the bonfire light. I ask him to sign my petition. And he does. And while he’s signing, I can see he just wants to say hello. Because he really would like to know me… Ha! You scared the crap of me, you know?”
“Wait.Iscaredyou?”
He laughs and presses his forefinger to my nose. “Yes, Frecks. Because I thought, what if he gets to know me and I disappoint him?”
“You’re an idiot,” I laugh.
“I don’t know.” He turns and draws a perfect circle on the driver window. “I’m pretty good at disappointing people.”
“You won’t.” I grab his shoulder, but he keeps his back turned. “It’s us now. Just us. You and me, El, forever.”
He sighs. “No such thing as forever, Frecks.”
We’ve been driving for five minutes or so when I circle us back round to the fear that still gnaws inside me. When I start questioning him again, El cuts me short.
“Please, Dylan,” he sighs, “I swear I will be your servant for an entire week. You can ask me to do your homework, walk the dog, give you massages without me getting pouty and expecting one in return,ifyou just agree to drop it.”
“Ellis, I don’t have a dog for you to walk, I wouldn’t let you within a mile of my homework, and…well, okay, the massage thing might have swung it for you, but you matter more to me than scented oils and erections.”
He flaps a hand over his heart. “That is the single sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
But it’s my turn to jackknife the tone. “I want to know what happened. Listen, if some bastard upset you back there—”
“Enough.” He doesn’t shout but there’s a definite finality to the word. “Dylan, I don’t ask you for much. In fact, apart from the odd shoulder rub, I don’t really ask you for anything, but I’d just like this one thing: let it be. It’s done. Over. It doesn’t affect us.”
“Of course it bloody affects us,” I shoot back. “Do you even remember what state you were in ten minutes ago? You are fearless, El, I mean it, but right then it was like you were trapped inside a nightmare or something.”
