Another Life Altogether (46 page)

Just then Dizzy arrived, shuffling up to the bus stop without even looking at us.

“Hiya, Dizzy,” Tracey said brightly.

Dizzy, who was used to being either completely ignored by Tracey or the target of her insults, blinked at Tracey. Her brown eyes, magnified through the thick lenses of her glasses, made me think of the saucer-shaped stares of goldfish as they eased themselves beneath the water of our pond.

“You all right?” Tracey asked, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder.

Dizzy nodded cautiously. “Yeah.”

“Hey, why don’t you come and sit down here, on the bench.” Tracey pulled herself out of her slouch so there was more space between the two of us. “There’s plenty of room for you here,” she said, patting the wooden slats next to her and flashing Dizzy another smile.

Dizzy looked at me, as if seeking some hint as to why Tracey was being so uncharacteristically pleasant. I gave a little shrug. I had no idea
what had got into her. I could only think that perhaps making up with Greg had made her so happy that she was prepared to be warm and friendly toward even those she normally despised. “I’m fine here,” Dizzy concluded, taking a step back and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her scruffy anorak.

“Suit yourself,” Tracey said. “I just wanted to ask you something, that’s all. You’re still friends with Malcolm Clements, aren’t you?” Tracey’s tone was cheery, not a hint of a threat in it.

“Yeah.” Dizzy gave me another suspicious glance. Then, finding no clue there, she looked back at Tracey. “What about it?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just that I want you to give him a message. Can you do that?”

“I suppose so,” Dizzy said.

Naturally, I expected Tracey to issue another threat to Malcolm, or ask Dizzy to convey another slew of insults. So I was taken aback when I heard her speak to Dizzy in her sweetest tone. “Can you tell him that I want to apologize to him? That I’m sorry about what I said.”

“You are?” I burst out, unable to contain my surprise. This was certainly a first for Tracey. Particularly after the display she’d put on yesterday in the corridor after Ms. Hastings’s lesson, it came as quite a shock.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about what Ms. Hastings said yesterday and I realized that what I said to Malcolm wasn’t very nice.” Tracey regarded Dizzy with a look of unwrinkled sincerity. “I mean, calling him a poof and all that. It’s … well … I realize that Ms. Hastings is right—I shouldn’t use words like that.”

The idea that Tracey had given Ms. Hastings’s remarks such consideration warmed me. It wasn’t that I expected to confide in her about my confused feelings for Amanda, but the idea that she was even open to thinking about these things gave me a little thrill of hope.

“Will you tell him?” She looked at Dizzy expectantly.

Dizzy shrugged. “I’ll tell him. I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’ll tell him.”

Tracey beamed. “Thanks. Because I probably won’t see him in school. I haven’t got any lessons with him today.” She put her hand in one of her coat pockets and pulled out a packet of chewing gum. “Want a piece of chewy?” she said, offering the packet to Dizzy.

Dizzy shook her head, and Tracey took out a piece and started unwrapping it. Before she was done, though, she looked up at Dizzy, as if a thought had suddenly come to her. “Hey, maybe you could tell Malcolm I’d really like to make up for things by apologizing to his face? It’d be nice if we could clear the air. I’ll be by the gates, right after school. Can you tell him that?” Her voice was high, filled with eagerness. It seemed, amazingly, as if she really wanted to put things right.

“I don’t know if he’ll want to talk to you,” Dizzy responded. She was blinking fast, and I noticed how pale and sparse her eyelashes were. Under her glasses they looked frondlike and alive.

“Yeah, I understand. But, really, I do want him to know how bad I feel.”

Dizzy’s blinking eased. “I’ll definitely tell him,” she said.

A smile eased across Tracey’s face. “Thanks a lot. And, er … now that I’m saying this, I want to say I’m sorry for all the horrible things I said about you as well.” I was struck by the profound contrition in her voice and expression. I felt such warmth toward her. She might be hard-edged a lot of the time, but underneath she could be soft and caring, the kind of person you wanted as a best friend.

“Thanks, Tracey,” Dizzy said. The suspicious look fell completely from her face. A smile itched at the edges of her mouth.

“Yeah, well, don’t you forget to tell Malcolm that I want to say the same thing to him as well. I want him to know I mean it.” She finished pulling the wrapping off the chewing gum and popped it into her mouth. “Sure you don’t want a piece?” she said to Dizzy, offering her the packet again.

“Okay,” Dizzy said, moving closer to Tracey and taking a piece of gum.

“What are you up to, Tracey? Picking on Dizzy again?” It was
Amanda. Normally, I watched out for her approach, but I’d been so taken aback by Tracey’s dramatic change of heart that I hadn’t noticed her walking up the street. She was almost at the bus stop now. I was surprised to see her carrying a black suitcase. It had silver buckles on the sides and looked heavy. Before she reached us, she put the suitcase on the ground, took a deep breath, then switched hands to lug it the last few steps.

“I’m not picking on anybody,” Tracey said gruffly.

“That’ll be the day,” Amanda said. When she reached us, she dropped the suitcase onto the ground next to my satchel; it hit the pavement with an enormous thud. Then, panting, she fell onto the bench, in the space between Tracey and me. “Hiya, Jesse,” she said.

“Hiya.” There on the bench her body was pushed against mine. I shuffled uncomfortably. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, that?” Amanda said, looking down at the suitcase as if she’d only just noticed it there. “I’m going away for the weekend, to Leeds. It’s a trip with school, with my drama class. We’re going to see a couple of plays.”

I frowned at the suitcase. It was huge—a small adolescent could have folded herself into it and there would still be room for several items of clothing.

“Oh, I know,” she said, giving the suitcase a little kick. “I’ve never been very good at packing. I end up taking everything except the kitchen sink. That’s right, isn’t it, Tracey?” She turned to her sister, giving her a gentle dig with her elbow.

“How the bloody hell would I know?” Tracey said, slapping Amanda away. “And why would I care? You can go away forever for all I mind.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not, am I? I’m going for a weekend, on a school trip.”

“Which plays are you going to see?” I asked.

“You know what, Jesse,” Amanda said, her eyes still on Tracey, “I don’t really remember.” Then she turned to me, smiling. “Something by Shakespeare, I think. I’ll tell you when I get back, all right?”

“All right,” I said, hoping and fearing that we could sit like this, pressed together, when she returned and told me about her trip.

When the bus arrived, I leaped up and grabbed Amanda’s suitcase. “I’ll carry it on for you,” I said.

“No, Jesse, really—”

“It’s all right.” As I lifted the suitcase, Amanda bent down to pick up my satchel. “No,” I said, dropping the suitcase and snatching the satchel from her grasp. For a second, I clung to it, and then, realizing how odd this behavior probably seemed, I eased my grip and tried to evoke a more casual attitude as I slung the strap across my shoulder.

Amanda laughed. “What’s wrong, Jesse? Carrying top-secret documents for the government or something?”

“No,” I said, my face burning as the weight of all my letters to Amanda hung there at my side. “I just … I just didn’t want you to strain yourself. It’s very heavy.”

“Come on, Jesse,” Tracey said, pushing past me to join the rest of the little crowd as they climbed onto the bus. “Keep messing about like that and you’re going to make us late.”

“Maybe it’s best if we take our own bags, eh?” Amanda leaned across me to grasp the suitcase’s handle. She hoisted it up and made her way over to the bus. I followed behind, feeling like an idiot. As Amanda reached the door of the bus, she set the suitcase on the ground and turned to me. “Thanks, Jesse,” she said.

“For what?” I asked. After all, I hadn’t even helped her with her suitcase.

“For wanting to carry my case for me. And for just … well, for being so nice, so sweet.” She smiled.

I shrugged, but inside I was singing. Amanda still liked me. Despite knowing that I had tried to kiss her, despite everything she might suspect about my feelings for her, she still liked me.

Her expression became more serious. “Listen, Jesse, you take care, now, won’t you? Don’t let our Tracey pick on you. And don’t … well, you take care, all right?”

“I will,” I said, confused by the intensity in her face. The last time she looked at me like this was that night after the disco, when she had kissed me. For a moment, I felt awash in all the feelings I’d had then, wanting to reach out and run my hand over the impossible softness of her cheek, the sleekness of her hair. Instead, I watched as she turned to lift her suitcase again and struggled up the stairs. “Have a nice trip, Amanda!” I called after her as she struggled to the back of the bus.

AS SOON AS THE
bus pulled away from the bus stop, I looked at Tracey, excited. “You know, I think that’s really great what you said to Dizzy, Trace,” I said. “And I know Malcolm will be—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so bloody stupid, Jesse,” Tracey interrupted, shoving me against the window with both hands. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not going to say sorry to that stupid little tosspot. And that fat four-eyed lump Dizzy can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

“So why did you apologize to her? Why did you—” Tracey gave me an exasperated look. “God, Jesse, for somebody that’s supposed to be clever, you’re right bloody thick sometimes.”

“But I thought—”

“Yeah, I know what you thought.” She grinned, keeping her voice to an animated whisper. “And I suppose it was all right that you did, because that means I did a good job of convincing Dizzy as well. But I didn’t mean a bloody word of it.”

“You didn’t?” I tried not to reveal my pitching disappointment.

“Of course I didn’t. God, Jesse, don’t you know me by now?”

“So why did you say it?”

She looked at me, her face aglow. “Because I want to get him outside the school gates tonight. Because Stan and Greg are going to be there as well. And when that little poofter arrives they’re going to beat the living daylights out of him. It’s perfect, see. With goody-two-shoes Amanda gone on her stupid school trip, there’ll be nobody who’ll try to
stop them. Stan and Greg are going to teach that little queer a lesson that he will never forget.” She looked utterly gleeful. “Great, isn’t it?” she said, jostling me with her arm. When I didn’t respond, she jabbed me with her elbow. “Hey,” she said, “don’t you say a word to anybody about this, Jesse. I’m not telling anyone, not even the Debbies. They’ll never keep their mouths shut, and then that poof will find out. But you’re my best friend. I know you can keep a secret.”

I SAW MALCOLM
once that morning, across the playground as Tracey and I made our way to the gym for PE. Later, at lunchtime in the dining hall, I didn’t see him or Dizzy at their usual table by the door. During the afternoon break, I thought I caught sight of him moving among the crowds in the cloakroom in front of me and I had a momentary urge to push my way through all those uniformed bodies so that I could warn him not to go to the gates after school. But I didn’t. Instead, while Tracey became ever more excited as the end of the day approached, I felt my stomach fill with a sour and rising dread.

There had been only one occasion on which I had felt quite as torn as I did now, and that was in the cloakroom at the Christmas disco, when I watched Stan threaten to burn Kevin and beat up Malcolm, and gave Dizzy the opportunity to seek help by spraying the whiskey around the room. But even that surreptitious act had cost me dearly and, until Greg Loomis asked her to dance, I’d spent the rest of the evening convinced that Tracey would never be my friend again. I knew that if I did anything to help Malcolm escape her wrath today and Tracey found out she would never forgive me. But as the day went on I felt more and more uneasy, so that by the time our final lesson came along I realized, with sudden perfect clarity, that I did not want to see Malcolm hurt.

With only fifteen minutes left until the bell sounded the conclusion of our final lesson of the day, Tracey was finding it hard to concentrate on her work. “I can’t wait to see that little poofter’s face when he gets
it,” she said as she doodled in the textbook
The Wonders of Tudor England
, drawing an enormous fist that looked as if it were about to punch a ruffle-collared Sir Francis Drake right in the face. “Tracey,” I said cautiously.

“What?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t get Malcolm like this. I mean, Stan and Greg—well, they’re a lot bigger than him. They could really hurt him.”

She dropped her pen and looked at me, flabbergasted. “That’s the bloody point, Jesse.”

“But why? He hasn’t done anything to anyone. He hasn’t really done anything to you. He’s just being himself, he just—”

“Jesse, he’s a poof.”

“But Ms. Hastings said—”

Tracey batted my arm. “God, don’t tell me you actually listen to what that stupid hippie cow has to say? I told my dad what she said about that stuff and he was dead mad. Said she shouldn’t be filling our heads with all that rubbish. Said she needs a bloody good hiding.” She laughed. “God, I’d like to see that, I would.”

I looked at Tracey, at her grinning hunger, and I felt defeated. Short of betraying her and telling Malcolm not to show up at the school gates, there was nothing I could do. And that, I knew, was a step I was not prepared to take.

“Maybe he won’t be there,” I said. “Maybe he’ll realize that you’re just pretending to be sorry.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Tracey said. “But, whatever he thinks, I bet he ends up showing up. I know that little nancy boy. He might be weedy, might be a big bloody queer, but he likes a challenge and, even if he’s wetting his knickers, he doesn’t like to look as if he’s scared.”