DEAD GOOD (23 page)

And when Amber agreed that I needed cheering up, this so wasn’t on my Wish List of things to make me feel more cheerful. In fact after the bathroom scene the other night, there’s not a great deal other than Leo coming back to life again that will cheer me up I don’t think. I wonder, ridiculously if there’re any support groups on line for stupid girls who’ve fallen in love with ghosts. Or maybe there’s a tablet you can take to get over it?

‘I’m serious, Maddie – really serious!’ Amber is doing her very best impersonation of Pingu in the Social Area. She’s stood still approximately twice during this, her Big Reveal and she’s beginning to make me feel a bit nauseous with all the pacing and squealing she’s been doing.

‘So let me get this straight,’ I say watching her from the comfort of a squashy chair. ‘You’ve spoken to Justin Blathe and he’s told you that Ed Loake wants to ask me out?’ I’m starting to feel hot and weird now. This is mental. Madness. Rewind twenty four hours and I’d have been doing a pretty passable impersonation of Pingu’s best friend right here with Amber but now? Now I’m not sure I want the prize I thought I coveted all these years.

My mum’s voice appears like the Devil’s Advocate on my shoulder and she’s telling me it’s just “typical Maddie. Desperate for something until it’s offered up on a plate and then it’s just too easy and not challenging enough”. I shrug her off, watch her brush herself down angrily from the floor and then kick her out of the room before she has a chance to even think about saying I told you so.

‘So?’ Amber is suffused with an inner glow of romantic notions and I know she fully expects me to participate in this to the enth degree. After all, she’s been with me the whole way with this dumb Ed Loake fixation, hasn’t she? She’ll be selling tickets and choosing a prom dress to wear to our very own ‘Going Out’ ceremony once she’s heard me squeal how thrilled I am and how absolutely beside myself with elation I am at being ‘chosen’ by Ed Loake – finally. Finally. After all this waiting. He’s mine for the taking. The asking. The agreeing of, anyway. Apparently.

Wait a minute. Has she got the right information after all? I mean, this all sounds a bit suspicious if you ask me.

‘Why?’ I ask.

Amber stops pacing and stares down at me. ‘Why?’ she repeats. ‘Do you seriously care why? I mean isn’t this what you’ve always dreamed of? The one things that gets you through Double History and Double English and…’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know all that, Amb – but doesn’t it strike you as being a bit – well…’

‘A bit what?’ Amber is practically hyperventilating with excitement but for the life of me I can’t muster a microgram of it in support – which I know I should be doing. All I can feel, see, hear, is Leo. His mouth on my mouth and the way everything just felt so, so… right. Like it was meant to happen. Not like this.. this long, drawn-out, eventual situation happening after years of desperately wanting it and imagining it to be between me and Ed Loake. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about him. Do I? I don’t think I’ve even ever seen him crack a smile unless it was at the expense of somebody else’s misfortune. And is it really masterful the way he lopes about the school and lolls up against walls staring at everyone from under his eyebrows or is he just being all superior and patronising and gross? I’ve never thought it through properly before. Oh god, have I made a grave error of judgment based on his emerald eyes alone?

‘Oh for god’s sake, Maddie, what’s the matter with you?’ Amber looks positively crestfallen. But, bless her – she’s had to endure years of me droning on about how green Ed Loakes’ eyes are and how fit he looks in his cricket whites in the summer and how great he looks draped around the (approximately twelve at the last count) girls he’s been out with since we’ve been at school together. And how I wish I could be at least just one of his many conquests and how maybe I’d loose my virginity to him because he’s always been the one - if only he could just see it and realise it.

And Amber’s always supported me through these mad schemes of daydreams and fantasies and it would be very wrong of me to let her down right now, wouldn’t it? At this, the eleventh hour. And if she has got the information right and Ed Loake does want to ask me out then apparently he wants to do it at the end of lunch break just inside the Arts Centre by the Macbeth display on the left hand wall.

‘That’s a pretty precise instruction,’ I say, trying not to laugh when she repeats what apparently she was told. ‘Almost like a military operation. Are you sure that’s what Justin said?’ I eye Amber suspiciously who nods frantically, looking like she might just pee herself with the excitement of the whole thing.

‘Okay,’ I concede, standing up. ‘Okay, then… if.. and this is a big IF..’

Amber practically throws herself at me in a huge bear hug and tries to bounce me up and down with her, which I am not hugely prepared to do right now. I don’t feel the least bit like bouncing.

‘IF I decide to meet him there, then I don’t have to agree to go out with him, okay?’

Amber’s eyes almost disappear under her eyebrows with the frown she shoots me. ‘Have you gone mad!’ she screeches so that at least three other groups all turn their heads towards us to see what the fuss is. ‘This is your dream! Your goal! The one thing in life you always wanted – this is the… oh. What’s the….. ah… wait a minute… this is something to do with Ghos….’

‘Sssshhh!!!’ I grab her by her hand and pull her over to a radiator. ‘This has absolutely nothing to do with Leo or anything else – it’s just… I’m just…. I’m not sure that I…. I haven’t had time to think it through properly that’s all. Now let me go!’

‘You grabbed MY hand I think you’ll find,’ Amber hisses wildly back at me, shaking her hand free; her face flushed with annoyance. ‘And this has EVERYTHING to do with your ghosty friend Leo – and you know it – you just don’t want to admit it!’

I can feel tears arriving at the duct station and I refuse to allow them through. Amber, however, knows me too well and takes my hand back again. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Tell me what’s happened. Something’s happened. I know it has.’

And then, rather fortuitously I am indeed, saved by the bell.

All through History I sit and stare at the back of Ed Loakes’ head. Whenever I notice his shoulders start to move up and down with laughter or he turns to either side of his seat to talk to someone, I just whip my head back down and concentrate on my writing. Although I can’t properly concentrate on anything really. And where the hell has Leo been all morning? He’s normally right here, in my face… oh god I wish I hadn’t had that thought because now all I can see IS him in my face – on my face – our faces so close together that I can’t breathe and don’t want to breathe and it’s all I can do to stop myself from floating away off my chair and back into that heavenly place I found myself visiting last night.

‘He’s got great comic timing, your brother,’ Leo smirks at me from the window ledge where he’s sitting and my heart leaps so far into my mouth I think I might gag. Shit. I hope he didn’t hear what I was just thinking and remembering – and… well, actually I don’t mind that much, I just wish he hadn’t just flippin’ appeared during a History lesson. I’d much rather us be alone together somewhere… oh… now, for goodness sake shut up, Maddie, shut up, shut up. Concentrate. I feel my face begin to warm up and as I stare over at him, I notice the hands on the clock behind his head. Which I can see through his head. It’s nearly half past. Nearly lunch time. End of lunch will follow lunch. As sure as night follows day. Oh god.

He turns and looks at the clock too. ‘Somewhere you’d rather be?’ he teases and I hate him. For sitting there and being in the way of the clock and for just simply existing in my complicated life right now. He’s distracting me. He’s making me think all sorts of things I’m not supposed to be thinking right now. And he’s…

‘Nonna’s squaring herself up for full-on red sauce pasta tonight,’ he grins. ‘I thought I’d better let you know. Oh, and I’ve been trying to find the old key to the house but Ihaven’t a clue where it could be. I’ve looked in all the obvious places but I can’t for the life… death…. uh-oh… teacher alert.’

‘Are we keeping you from something?’ Mr Mason says sternly, levelling up between me and the wall where the clock is. And Leo is. Was - I mean. He’s gone now. But I can still feel him here somehow. But he can’t be or I’d see him. It’s stupid, right?

‘Sorry,’ I mouth. ‘I thought I saw something.’

As I turn back to face the front, all heads which have been watching me, also Mexican-wave back to the front although Ed Loake takes slightly longer to adjust his gaze. His eyes remain on me for a few seconds longer than everyone else’s, then I see the back of his head again and the moment is gone. But I felt nothing. My heart remained at a steady pace and my mind didn’t float off to the heavens and I certainly didn’t see anything in my silly daydreamy head like I usually do – apart from the misty memory of Leo’s frame on the window ledge right by me.

The lunch time bell rings and this time the noise is like a slap round the face which brings me right back down to earth.

thirty-one

Amber is my chaperone at lunch time. In fact I keep her pretty much glued to me for the whole forty-five minutes and when there’s only five minutes left before end of break, I start to feel proper sick. I don’t know if I can go through with this. I really don’t.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Amber encourages. ‘People ask other people out every day. People say yes every day. It’s life. You’re just not used to it – that’s all. Come on. It’s exciting!’

‘Where’re we off to?’ Leo appears behind us and give me an almost full-on heart attack. ‘Can I come too?’

‘Oh, Leo – it’s not a good time,’ I try to snarl as my insides scramble about like puppies in a ball-pond. ‘This is girl-time.’

Realising that we have ghostly company, Amber does a cheeky ‘so there’ nod in the general direction of Leo and he smirks back sexily which does nothing to help my insides. Really, could this get any more complicated? I should have remembered to bring some deodorant with me today – all this sweating and hyperventilating is doing nothing for my sweet-smellingness. I shall be lucky if I end up with any kind of friend at this rate, let alone a friend of the boy-variety.

‘Oooh – sounds like I might have missed something.’ Leo must’ve heard my last thought as he proceeds to bound through us and then walks backwards in front of us. I love it when he does this. Usually. It’s become his trademark. Well, it has to me. He grins maddeningly at me. ‘Tell me – what’s happened whilst I’ve been back at base camp trying to work out some more limbo-defying, Into the Light tactics?’

We are both silent. Probably for entirely different but alarmingly similar-based reasons. Leo looks anxious.

‘What?’ he repeats. ‘Ladies?’ and then Amber stops us all as we halt in front of the Arts Centre corridor. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to say to her. I just know I have to see this thing through and do whatever feels right at the time. I can feel them watching as I pull open the connecting door and make my way over to the Macbeth display on the left. Amber stays with him and I can’t look back. I have to keep going. I can see Ed not three metres away from me and he’s leaning on the radiator, his back pressed against the wall, a History book in his hands. He looks prepared. But is he?

‘He-ey, Mads…’ Ed turns slowly as he hears me approach. And I’m somewhat satisfied to note that he doesn’t even move off the radiator. He stays glued to it in his usual relaxed pose and just raises his head to greet me. I smile back, at least I hope I do and walk closer.

I feel a bit dejected for the rest of the day. Well, it’s not everyday you get asked out by the boy (you’ve always thought) of your dreams, and you’ve had to say thanks very much but things are a bit complicated right now. He didn’t answer, so I don’t know whether he was hurt or peed off, to be honest. I couldn’t even look him in the face. I mean how do you explain that you’d rather be with a dead guy?

Amber was almost as speechless as Ed. She made a few squawking noises and flapped her hands about a bit. I suppose she knows there’s not much she can do to persuade me to go out with somebody I don’t really want to. Is there?

When I get home Dad’s just logging off the computer and he looks happier than I’ve seen him for ages. I think it must be months since he’s had a proper purpose – so if giving Leo’s uncle a hand with his accounts at the restaurant is helping put his life back on track, then so be it. It’s going to make all our lives feel that much better if dad’s happier, isn’t it? And we so need some better stuff to happen to us after all the crap of lately. I mean, taking dead people out of the equation here (God how I wish I could) where is the problem? The whole sum should really be: