Candy (30 page)
“So,” she said, “how are you?”
“Not too bad, I suppose…how about you?”
“I’ve been worse.” She looked down at the tip of her cigarette for a moment, then her eyes came back to me. “It’s been a long time…”
“Yeah…”
“Four months.”
“I know.”
She lowered her eyes again. I watched her fiddling nervously with her cigarette—rolling it, tapping it, flicking ash to the ground—and I didn’t know what to do. It was really strange. I’d spent so long thinking about this moment, thinking of all the things I wanted to say, but now that I was here…none of it seemed to matter. It was all just words. Noise. Nothing. I wished I could be inside Candy’s head—just
be
there…feeling what she felt…knowing what she thought…being together without any words…
“How’s Gina?” she asked quietly.
“She’s OK…she still gets a bit shaky sometimes, but I think she’s going to be all right. She’s getting married to Mike next year.”
“Really? That’s great.”
“My dad doesn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know…he’s just a bit…I don’t know. He gets a bit funny about things sometimes—”
“Is he here? Did he come with you?”
“No, he was busy…I came on the train. How about
your
parents? Have you seen them?”
“Yeah, they visit me every other week.”
“How’s it going?”
“I don’t know…” She put out her cigarette and immediately lit another one. “They want me to go back and live with them…maybe go to college or something…”
“Can you do that?”
“What—go to college?”
“No…I mean, can you leave here?”
“Not at the moment. I’m still being assessed. It’s part of the bail conditions.”
“Assessed?”
“Yeah…” She looked at me. “Psychiatric assessment…it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just stuff I have to do, you know…it’ll probably help at the trial…counseling, rehab—that kind of thing.” She paused for a moment, staring blankly at the table, and that’s when I noticed her fingernails. They were all chewed up, bitten down to the quick, red and ugly and raw. They never used to be like that. “It’s
supposed
to help, anyway,” she said suddenly.
“What is?”
“What?”
“What’s supposed to help?”
“I just
told
you,” she said impatiently, “the assessment, the counseling…all the
shit
I have to go through every day.” She darted a glance across the garden, then leaned
across the table and lowered her voice. “They’ll acquit me, anyway—self-defense…and even if they don’t, the most I’ll get done for is manslaughter. I’ll probably be out in a couple of months.” She stared at me. “Did you tell the cops about Mason?”
“Who?”
“Mason—the driver…the guy I shot…”
“I said I didn’t see anything.”
“Good…” She frowned. “What was I saying?”
“Uh…?”
“Yeah, I don’t
need
to be here…It’s no good for me. Did they tell you what happened?”
“Uh…no,” I said.
“It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t feeling right…I got some stuff…I couldn’t help it…The guy down the corridor brought some back at the weekend…”
I really didn’t understand what was happening now. Her eyes were darting all over the place and she was giving me really weird looks. She seemed angry. Disturbed. Upset about something. And I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about—What
stuff
? What
guy?
What
corridor?
“It was the song,” she said. “They played it on the radio.”
“What song?”
“
My
song…your song…” Her face had stilled. “You should have
told
me.”
Now
I knew what she was talking about—my song, her song…“Candy”—The Katies’ first single. Jason had told me about it a couple of months ago. They’d recorded the demo without me, and the record company had liked it so much they’d signed the band—new bass player and all—and rushed out the song as a single. It wasn’t a
stunning success or anything, but it had been dribbling around the bottom of the charts for a while, and a couple of local radio stations had picked up on it, and The Katies had been featured in the national music press…
I ought to have been really pissed off, I suppose—they’d stolen my song, my words, my music…how
dare
they?—but I just couldn’t be bothered. I’d tried to get angry when Jason first told me, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t see the point, anyway. I couldn’t
prove
it was my song, could I? And even if I could…well, so what? It was only a song…
“I’m sorry,” I told Candy, “I didn’t know anything about it…I would have told you if I could—”
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“I know—”
“It’s about
me.
”
“Well, I know, but—”
“You said it was about me…That’s what you
said.
It’s
my
song…It’s only for me…You can’t sing it to anyone else…”
“I’m not…It’s nothing to
do
with me. I’m not singing anything—”
“I heard it on the radio…”
She was starting to cry.
“I
heard
it…”
I reached across the table and held her hand. It felt cold and stiff and unfamiliar. “It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to cry—”
“No,” she sobbed, “it’s
not
all right. It’s not…I’m not…I can’t
do
it…”
“You can’t do what?” I asked quietly.
“Anything…anything…I can’t
do
anything…”
Her tears were falling on the back of my hand, as cold as a winter rain…and I was there. I was
there.
Where I’d always wanted to be. But now it was somewhere else. It wasn’t the same.
Nothing can be the same.
Nothing
is.
The woman had rushed over from the other side of the garden, and now she was crouching down beside Candy, comforting her, muttering all the right words.
“It’s all right…Come on, now…It’s all right…” She turned to me, not unkindly, and said, “I think you’d better go now. She needs some rest.”
I nodded and stood up, steadying myself against the back of the chair. My legs were shaking. My throat was tight.
The sun was still blazing down.
I looked at Candy. She was trembling and pale, her eyes swollen with tears.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she whispered. “I’m really sorry…”
“It’s OK,” I told her. “It’s all right.”
We looked at each other for a moment longer, then she lowered her eyes, and I walked away.
It’s been almost six months now since that dull February day when I first met Candy, and I still find it hard to believe. When I’m sitting here at my window, just staring into the past, or when I’m lying on the floor, imagining all my skies, I often find myself drifting back to the beginning again, to those last few moments of my pre-Candy existence, when I was still just a boy…just a boy on a train, a boy with a lump, a boy in a starry black hat.
I was innocent then.
I didn’t know anything.
And, in a way, nothing much has changed—I still don’t know anything now.
I don’t know what’s happened with Candy.
I don’t know if she’s lost her mind.
I don’t know when I’ll be seeing her again.
The only difference now, for what it’s worth, is that I know that these things don’t matter. I know that I don’t
have
to know anything, and I know that I don’t have to feel frightened of not knowing—I just have to be here.
In love and faith.
I just have to believe.
It’s not easy—living in a void, living and dying inside your head…wanting what you want so much that you’d give up everything else to get it—but the time still passes, the days go on…and as long as there’s still a tomorrow, there’s always a chance.
I found out recently that Candy’s been moved from the Resident Adolescent Unit, but no one will tell me where she’s gone. I managed to track down her parents and I’ve been watching their house for a while, but she doesn’t seem to be there. Her mum and dad probably know where she is, but I’m not sure about asking them, and Mike seems fairly reluctant to help me anymore…which is fair enough, I suppose. So it looks like I’ll have to wait for the trial before I see her again. I don’t know when that’s going to be, and I don’t know if we’ll be allowed to talk to each other, anyway, but at least I’ll get to see her.
And then, afterward, when it’s all over…and if everything turns out OK…or even if it
doesn’t
turn out OK…
Well—who knows?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
GO THERE.
I Don’t Want to Be Crazy
SAMANTHA SCHUTZ
Kissing the Rain
KEVIN BROOKS
Lucas
KEVIN BROOKS
Martyn Pig
KEVIN BROOKS
Splintering
EIREANN CORRIGAN
You Remind Me of You
EIREANN CORRIGAN
Johnny Hazzard
EDDIE DE OLIVEIRA
Lucky
EDDIE DE OLIVEIRA
Born Confused
TANUJA DESAI HIDIER
Dirty Liar
BRIAN JAMES
Perfect World
BRIAN JAMES
Pure Sunshine
BRIAN JAMES
Tomorrow, Maybe
BRIAN JAMES
The Dating Diaries
KRISTEN KEMP
I Will Survive
KRISTEN KEMP
Heavy Metal and You
CHRISTOPHER KROVATIN
Cut
PATRICIA MCCORMICK
Talking in the Dark
BILLY MERRELL
Never Mind the Goldbergs
MATTHUE ROTH
Nowhere Fast
KEVIN WALTMAN
Crashing
CHRIS WOODING
Kerosene
CHRIS WOODING
Fighting Ruben Wolfe
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
MARKUS ZUSAK
Where We Are, What We See
EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN
You Are Here, This Is Now
EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN
…Candy
Q: Where did the idea for
Candy
come from?
A: A long story. The short version is: I was writing another book which included elements of the underwodd—gangsters, vice, drugs, etc.—but for some reason the book wasn’t quite working. So after struggling with it for months and months, I decided to leave it for a while and try something else. Someone suggested I should write a love story. At first I thought,
Love story? Hugs and kisses?
No,
I don’t think so.
But then I started thinking about it, and it struck me that there aren’t many love stories told from the boy’s point of view, as if boys don’t fall in love…which they do, of course. They fall in love, and then they go mad—because boys can’t talk about falling in love, so it all gets bottled up inside…the weirdness, the fear, the thrill, the confusion. So I just took that idea, and started mixing it up with some of the stuff and some of the characters I’d been thinking about for the book that didn’t work, and gradually the story of
Candy
came together.
Q: Music plays a large part in this book, and you write with great authority about playing bass and composing songs. Do you share Joe’s passion for guitar?
A: Yes, definitely. For about ten or twelve years my life was all about music—playing in bands, writing songs, recording, trying to make it in the music business. I loved the process of writing songs, and I still do, and I really enjoyed writing about it. Although writing songs is in some ways very different to writing books, the two processes actually share a lot of underlying features—the use of rhythm and tone, the expression and creation of feeling, recurring themes, wariations on themes, and so on.
I still love playing the guitar, making up songs, and although I really
love
everything about writing books, I occasionally miss the incredible thrill of being on stage and playing guitar
extremely
loudly.
Q: One of the things that makes this novel so compelling is that Candy’s story is not told from her point of view—rather, we see her from the perspective of Joe, the comparatively ordinary boy who is in love with her and believes he can save her. Why did you choose to tell the story this way?
A: Firstly, because I wanted to look at the whole “falling in love” thing from a boy’s point of view, and to do that I needed to get into Joe’s head (and his heart). But I also wanted to tell Candy’s story from an ordinary, outsider’s perspective, as this allowed me to develop her as a person—i.e., we start off seeing her as Joe sees her, as just a nice attractive girl, but as the story goes on and Joe gets to know her and her world, we begin to see Candy as what she is, what she does, where she came from, what she
really
is…so her character and her story develop through Joe, and because we’re
with
him, we get to know the real Candy in the same progressive way that he does.