Black Rabbit Summer (7 page)

‘What kind of work?’

He shrugged. ‘Lighting, stage design… I don’t know. I’ll just see how it goes, I suppose.’

‘What about you, Nic?’ I said. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘You could sell onions,’ Pauly suggested.

Nic looked at him. ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea.’

He grinned.

Nic passed me the joint. I was already feeling pretty woozy from the drink, so I didn’t smoke much of it – just a couple of quick puffs – then I passed it across to Pauly.

‘What about Raymond?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t smoke.’

‘Why not?’ Pauly offered the joint to Raymond. ‘Come on, Rabbit, enjoy yourself.’

Raymond looked at me.

‘Do you want it?’ I asked him.

He shook his head.

‘He doesn’t want it,’ I told Pauly.

I could see Pauly thinking about having a laugh with Raymond, trying to persuade him to smoke the joint, and I could see him glancing at me, wondering what I’d do if he
did
start trying to persuade him… and in the end he just shrugged – who cares? – and gave up.

Eric smiled at Raymond. ‘How you doing over there, Ray?’

‘All right, thanks.’

‘Enjoying your rum?’

‘Not really.’

‘You want some Coke?’

‘Yeah.’

Eric passed him a can of Coke. ‘You looking forward to sixth-form college?’

‘Who, me?’ Raymond said.

‘Yeah.’

‘I suppose…’ He popped the Coke, took a long drink, then burped, and took another long drink.

‘Better?’ said Eric.

Raymond nodded. ‘It’s hot.’

Eric smiled again, then looked at me. ‘Are you definitely going then, Pete?’

‘To sixth-form college?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think so… I mean, as long as I get the results I need.’

‘What are you going to take?’ Nicole asked me.

‘English, Media Studies, and Law.’

‘Law?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know… I couldn’t think of anything else.’

‘I’m doing Art,’ Raymond said.

Nic looked at him. ‘You’re
crap
at Art.’

He smiled. ‘I know.’

It was true – Raymond
was
crap at Art. He couldn’t draw to save his life. He was an absolute genius at everything else – Physics, Maths, English, Chemistry – but for some weird reason he only wanted to study A-level Art.

Nic nudged me again and offered me the bottle of wine. ‘You want some of this?’

I looked at her, and just for a moment her face seemed to dissolve into a series of patterns and shapes… triangles, rectangles, bright red lines… and her skin seemed to be
rippling with energy. I closed my eyes for a second and shook my head.

‘Pete?’ I heard her say.

When I opened my eyes again, her face was back to normal.

‘Shit,’ I said, turning to Pauly. ‘What the hell’s in that joint?’

‘Uh?’

‘The joint… what is it?’

He grinned dozily at me, swaying slightly. ‘The joint?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s the juice,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The juju juice,’ he slurred, widening his eyes and taking another swig of tequila.

‘He’s out of it already,’ Nic said to me.

‘Yeah…’ I looked at her. ‘Are
you
feeling all right?’

‘I’m feeling fine,’ she said, putting her hand on my leg and smiling at me. ‘How are
you
feeling?’

My head kind of whirled for a moment, and I could feel tiny pinpricks where her hand was touching my leg. ‘I’m feeling pretty good, actually,’ I said. ‘Kind of… what’s the word?’

‘Warm?’

‘No.’

‘Hot?’

‘Velvety,’ I said.

‘
Velvety?
’

I smiled at her. ‘Yeah.’

‘What does
velvety
feel like?’

‘I don’t know… like velvet.’

We started laughing then, giggling away like overexcited kids. Nicole was laughing so much that she lost control and doubled over, clutching her belly, and as her head rolled briefly against
my thigh, I felt the weirdest sensation tingling up and down my leg. It was like… God knows. Like gossamer threads brushing against my skin.

‘What’s she doing down there, Boland?’ Pauly called out. ‘I mean, come
on
… get a room, for Christ’s sake!’

Nicole sat up quickly and glared at him. ‘Why do you always have to be such a twat, Pauly?’

He grinned at her. ‘Someone’s gotta do it.’

‘Yeah, and you’re the expert.’

Pauly winked at Eric. ‘Your sister thinks I’m a twat.’

Eric said nothing, just sat there puffing languidly on a cigarette.

Pauly blinked drunkenly at him. ‘You with anyone tonight?’

‘What?’

‘Are you
with
anyone?’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know… anyone…’

Eric just stared at him.

Pauly blinked again. He had a strange expression on his face – kind of trancey, a bit spaced out – and he didn’t seem to notice that Eric was getting annoyed with him. As Eric shook his head and turned away, Pauly carried on looking at him, grinning like a kid with a secret.

After a moment, he said, ‘You know Stella’s going to be there tonight, don’t you?’

Eric froze.

Pauly grinned.

Eric turned slowly and looked at him. ‘What did you say?’

‘Yeah,’ Pauly grinned again. ‘Stella Ross… she’s going to be at the fair –’

‘Who told you that?’ Eric said quietly.

Pauly shrugged. ‘I don’t know… someone… can’t remember. I just heard it somewhere…’

He was looking really out of it now – blinking all the time, his head wobbling from side to side, his eyes glazed. I watched him as he looked down at the ground, staring at nothing, and just for a moment he seemed incredibly sad. But then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and when he looked up again, the sadness had gone, and his grin was as manic as ever.

‘Stella Ross, eh?’ he leered at Eric. ‘I don’t suppose
you’ve
bothered downloading her pictures?’

Stella Ross was something of a local celebrity. Her father, Justin Ross, used to be the drummer in a band called Secret Saucer. They were one of those hippy groups that were really big in the early seventies – long hair, long songs, drum solos, dry ice… that kind of thing. By the time they split up – sometime in the eighties, I think – they’d sold about a trillion records and they were all living in big country mansions with recording studios in their basements and Ferraris parked in their driveways. That’s what Dad told me, anyway. He also told me that Justin Ross used to be a ‘hellraiser’ – taking drugs, smashing up hotel rooms – but about fifteen years ago he’d ‘seen the light’ (these are all Dad’s words, by the way, not mine), and he’d sold all his Ferraris and his country mansion, married a beautiful young model, and they’d set up home on a working farm in a little village about ten miles from St Leonard’s.

His wife, Sophie Hart, was also pretty rich, so together they were worth a huge heap of money. But Stella never saw any of it. She was their only daughter, and because they’d both seen the ugly side of celebrity (Sophie was an ex-hellraiser too), they were determined to bring Stella up as ‘normally’ as possible. Which is
why – despite their millions – Stella ended up at the same school as us.

I didn’t actually know her that well, but she was really good friends with Eric and Nic, and she shared their passion for acting. They performed in all the school plays and stuff, and they were always singing and dancing, dressing up, dreaming of the days when they’d all be big stars. Most of us thought that if any of them were going to make it, it’d be Nicole. Eric was always a bit too intense about everything, especially himself. Stella had the looks, but not much talent, and although her parents knew all the right people, they refused to do anything to help her, which
really
pissed Stella off. Nicole, though… well, Nicole didn’t need any help. She had everything – talent, looks, energy, confidence.

So it was a big surprise when Stella turned up at school one day and announced that she’d landed a part in a TV commercial. She was around fourteen at the time, and it turned out later that she’d got this part by getting all cosy with the sixteen-year-old son of one of her parents’ friends who just happened to be a well-known film director. The TV commercial was for a big supermarket chain. It was one of those serial adverts, the sort of thing that runs for a few months, then a new one comes out, but with the same characters, and then another one… like instalments in a stupid little story. This one featured an endearingly quirky family – father, mother, daughter, son. Stella played the daughter. Her character started off as a cute, but sassy, teenager – all sweetness and charm and innocence – but as the adverts developed, so did Stella’s cute little teenager, and within a year or so she was beginning to get the kind of tabloid attention that didn’t really fit in with the supermarket’s wholesome family image, so they dropped her from the
ads. Stella had already left school by then – I think she was being tutored at home – and the only time any of us saw her, including Eric and Nic, was when she was in the papers and on TV, which was pretty much all the time. She was doing all sorts of stuff by then – photo shoots for
Loaded
and
FHM
, chat shows, appearances in music videos – but mostly she was just famous for being Stella Ross. The Wild Child, the Fifteen-Year-Old Hellraiser, the Girl of Every Boy’s (and Every Man’s) Dreams.

About six months ago, after a wild night out at some swanky club in London on her sixteenth birthday, Stella ended up in a hotel room with a guy called Tiff. Tiff was a singer with a boy band called Thrill who’d recently come third in a second-rate talent show on cable TV. Apart from Stella and Tiff, no one really knows exactly what happened that night, but within a few days their relationship had broken up and a series of intimate photographs of Stella had appeared in a Sunday newspaper. They were pretty grainy pictures, shot on a mobile phone, and they didn’t really show very much – the newspaper edited out all the naughtiest bits – but suddenly the whole world was talking about them. The newspaper that published the pictures was one of those papers that’s always ranting and raving about paedophiles, and now here they were, happily showing pictures of a near-naked girl who’d only just turned sixteen.

So, of course, all the other newspapers went mad, calling them hypocrites, purveyors of filth, while at the same time showing edited versions of the photos themselves, just to let us see what they were talking about. And then another series of pictures appeared, this time on the Internet, and these weren’t edited at all, and so the story just kept going and going… and all the time, Stella got more and more famous…

And Eric and Nicole despised every second of it. They were jealous, for a start, especially Nicole. She’d always hated the whole famous-for-being-famous kind of thing, and what made it even worse for Nic was that Stella had been her friend. They’d dreamed of stardom together, they’d grown up imagining what it would be like, but now that Stella had actually made it, she didn’t want anything to do with Nicole. She didn’t call her. She didn’t text. She didn’t email. She didn’t return any of Nic’s messages. She acted as if she’d never even known her.

With Eric, though, it was slightly different. Just before she’d left school, around the time she was beginning to get famous, Stella had gone out with Eric a few times. They were both only fourteen then, so it wasn’t really a relationship or anything, they just used to meet up in town, maybe go to the pictures… that kind of thing. Then one night, at an end-of-term dance at school, we were all just hanging around at the back of the assembly hall, waiting for some crappy local band to come on, when all at once a side door opened and Stella came bursting in, crying her eyes out. The side door led out to the school grounds, so we all just assumed she’d been out there with Eric, doing whatever they did, and they’d had an argument or something. But then, a few minutes later, Eric came in through the side door too, and he looked incredibly calm. In fact, he looked almost serene. Without saying a word to anyone, he walked across the hall, got up on to the stage, and went over to the microphone. Everyone was watching him now, wondering what the hell he was doing… everyone, that is, except Stella. When Eric had come in, she’d given him the most hateful look I’d ever seen, and then as soon as she’d seen him getting up on the stage, she’d just turned round and stormed out. And when Eric started talking into the microphone, I understood why.

‘I don’t know if this is the right time or the right place,’ he’d announced, his voice booming out through the speakers, ‘and I’m not trying to make a big deal out of it or anything, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m gay.’

And that, in a very big nutshell, was what Pauly was talking about in the den that night. Eric and Stella, their history, the photographs of her on the Internet, the fact that Eric was gay… all that and more, and everything it meant, it was all there in that one stupid sentence:
Stella Ross, eh? I don’t suppose
you’ve
bothered downloading her pictures?

If Eric was offended by Pauly’s remark, he didn’t show it. He just stared at him for a moment, his eyes quietly thoughtful, then he shook his head and turned away.

Pauly looked over at me. ‘Have you seen them, Pete?’

‘Seen what?’

‘Stella’s pictures… the ones on the Internet.’

‘No,’ I lied.

He grinned. ‘I bet you have.’

‘Christ,’ Nicole muttered, passing me the joint again.

Pauly looked at her. ‘What?’

‘You…’

‘What
about
me?’

‘You’re
obsessed
with her.’

‘I’m not obsessed –’

‘Yes, you are. You’ve always been obsessed with her. Even before she started flashing her tits around –’

‘She doesn’t –’

‘Shit,’ said Nic, ‘you were having wet dreams about Stella Ross when you were twelve years old.’

Pauly wasn’t grinning any more. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said sulkily.

Nicole glared at him. ‘Yeah, you do.’

Everything went quiet then. Pauly went back to staring at the ground, Nicole lit a cigarette, I stubbed out the dead joint, and Raymond just sat there, gazing at nothing. Eric seemed worried about something. The cigarette in his hand had burned down to a stub, but he didn’t seem aware of it – he was just sitting there, staring into space, chewing intently on a thumbnail.