Golden Boy (26 page)

I
saw Sylvie when I was coming out of the door of the new school building with Marc and Carl earlier today. We had been in the music room. Carl plays guitar, so we were listening to him. Marc was mucking about on the drums. He’s terrible. It was giving me a headache, but it was good too, to just mess about. It gets my mind off stuff. I just want to feel normal. I just want to feel kind of drunk. But I’m not really a bad boy. I was tubing Smarties instead of drinking. Tubing is where you put the whole tube in your mouth and basically drink the sweets.

So it was coming close to the end of lunchtime. I’ve been letting my homework slide a bit, I really should have been doing it. It’s only two weeks, though, and then it’ll be over. I’ll be able to think clearly again without feeling in pain, like my brain is my twisted guts. We headed out of the music room towards afternoon registration. The bell starts ringing as Carl is pulling open the door of the new block.

‘Heeeey Sylvie,’ I hear him say. ‘How you doing?’

‘Err, alright,’ she says, looking him up and down like he’s an alien.

‘Sylvie! Sister from another mister,’ says Marc. ‘Up high!’ He raises his palm. Sylvie just looks at it.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

She does her funny, smirky, to-the-right-side-of-her-mouth grin and slaps Marc’s palm with her own. ‘S’OK,’ she says to me.

I smile but I blush at the same time. Imagine if her parents knew what I was, what had happened. They’d throw up more than I’ve been doing.

‘Hey, Marc, we have that thiiing,’ Carl drawls.

‘Ohhhh.’ Marc nods. ‘That thiiiiiiiing.’ He draws it out comically. They leave Sylvie and me standing by the door and run off across the quad. I rock back on my right foot.

‘Hi,’ I say shyly, not looking at her.

‘Hi,’ she says.

She looks me all over, my face, my hair, my eyes, my neck, my chest and all the way down my body. I don’t like that. I shift on my feet and drop my head down, suddenly needing to swallow and finding it difficult.

She moves in closer to me, slowly. Her arm slides around my neck from the left side, her breasts meet my chest. She’s warm and soft and inviting. I slip my hand automatically around her waist.

‘I don’t know why you’re being so shy, but it’s a frickin’ massive turn-on,’ she says.

I grin helplessly, as she leans in and slips her tongue between my lips. Her own lips close around my top one. I can feel myself getting hard. She presses her body against mine, pulling my head to her with her arm. Kissing Sylvie Clark is totally delicious. I wrap my other arm around her and pull her closer, then lift her up off the ground and towards me, leaning back. She shrieks and laughs in my mouth, still kissing me.

I drop her to the ground and she backs away a little.

‘You look so pretty today,’ she says.

‘Pretty?’ I say.

‘Pretty,’ she confirms.

We look at each other for a little. I study her skin, the little freckles on her nose, the wide lips.

If she knew what you are
, says my brain,
she would freak out. She would tell people. She would tell her next boyfriend, the one after you
.

No, I say.

Yes. The one after you.

Shh.

Max, you’re disgusting.

How come it’s ‘you’ and not ‘us’ all of a sudden? I ask my brain.

There’s no answer.

‘Max?’ Sylvie is looking at me quizzically. She laughs. ‘Dreaming of me, are we?’

I press my lips together. I have to tell her I can’t see her. It’s not fair to her. If she knew what I was, she wouldn’t want to go out with me. If this gets out – if it blows up – everyone will talk about her too. She’ll be the person who went out with the knocked-up hermaphrodite.

Oh god
, I think, the thought making me feel like being sick.

‘You want to come round tonight?’ she says.

I open my mouth. I close it again. ‘Um, I can’t. Another dinner thing with my dad.’

‘Ah, the wining and dining phase of the campaign. Are you schmooze-ready?’

I shrug and smile.

‘Well . . .’ She leans in to me. ‘You just tell me when you want to hang out again, OK?’

I swallow and keep my mouth shut. But our faces are close together, and I look into her lovely eyes and she looks back at mine and I nod.

She leans away slightly, then screws up her nose. ‘I was trying not to ask you this, but can I just grab your arse?’

I let out a quick, shocked laugh, then blush. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’ she says teasingly. She leans in, checking down the corridor behind me to make sure nobody is coming, puts her arms around me and gropes my bum.

‘Mmm,’ I say, suddenly feeling really turned on. I drop my head to her shoulder and hug the top of her back, my arms over her arms. I giggle into her neck.

‘Oh my god!’ she shouts, whirling away from me, passing by me into the new block. ‘So hot. SO hot!’

I laugh, watching her go.

She turns towards me, walking backwards. ‘Bye,’ she says.

‘Bye,’ I say, helplessly, and give her a little wave.

You didn’t tell her
, my brain says.

No.

I watch her go, biting my lip. Sylvie Clark is phenomenally sexy. I press my head against the door handle and moan in frustration. Fuck.

I think about it in bed later that afternoon, which I go to as soon as I get home, like I have every day this week. I’ve been so tired recently. I should have told her, shouldn’t I? It’s lying not to tell her. I wouldn’t tell her about the baby or being what I am. I would just tell her I couldn’t see her. Maybe I could just tell her I couldn’t see her for a few weeks. But why would anyone say that?

Danny comes in, upset because he thinks I’m ill. I go to his bed with him and sleep for a bit, then wake up around eleven, throw up in the toilet, go back to my bed and sleep again. The phrase ‘morning sickness’ is a total misnomer.

Football tomorrow. That’s good. It’ll take my mind off it. Although if anyone asks me to run backwards, bend over, or collides with my stomach I will upchuck all the fuck over them.

‘
C
ome on, keep it up, boys!’ Mr Harvey booms across the field. We’re playing netball on the courts, but I’m sat out on the sidelines with Carla Hollis, waiting for our teacher to call for a substitute. Carla’s nice, and pretty weird, but we don’t take many of the same classes, so we don’t spend that much time together. We just hang out in Art and Games. Carla is sprawled on the cement next to me, making a sculpture out of gum that she is legitimately using for her Art GCSE.

‘You’re weird,’ Emma tells her.

‘I know,’ says Carla.

I smirk.

Over in the top field, the boys are jogging around in a group. Max is with them. I wave to him and he waves back. Carla nudges me and smiles. I told her about the other night.

‘So, Sylves,’ says Emma. ‘How good is Max?’

‘Huh?’

‘You
know
. . . Like, in bed,’ she says, winking. I make a face. ‘I don’t fuck and tell.’

She nods. ‘I knew it. You haven’t done it, have you?’

I roll my eyes. ‘Why?’

‘No reason,’ she says, looking at Laura. She shakes her head with an expression resembling audacity, and looks out over the field at Max.

‘He’s a good kisser, huh?’ murmurs Carla, from the ground next to me.

I nod. Carla got with Max last year.

‘He’s really nice,’ says Carla. ‘I like you two together. I think it’s a good thing.’

‘Why did you break up?’ I ask.

‘Ours was a temporary love.’ She sighs. ‘We met, we loved, we lost, and for about three hours we drove each other crazy.’ She grins at me. ‘I was on a brief break from Dean.’

‘Dean who works at the pizza place?’

‘Yeah. Like a really brief break. Like I left for three hours. He was so mad at Max, but they had a conversation and Max made him purr like a puddycat. He’s so the will-be politician.’

‘Who, Max? Nah.’

‘Like, totally,’ says Carla, pretending to be Emma. ‘Liiiiaaaiiike, tooooooootallyyyyy.’

Emma looks over and gives me a weird, sad look. She shakes her head and whispers something to Laura.

I shrug and look back at Max. ‘He’s just nice, that’s all.’

I’m trying to compose lines in my head. It’s harder when you like someone to write stuff. It’s easier when you hate someone. Hate breeds good material.

The guys are way over in the back field now, but I can still see blond hair mixing in between all the brunettes in my peripheral vision. There are very few proper blonds in our school.

I turn towards the netball game decisively, trying not to become one of those girls who stare at boys. I sure as shit do not want to become Emma
et al
. I have a life.

The ball bounces towards Carla and me, and we shrink away like it’s a bouncing bomb. I hate playing netball, especially in the cold. Your fingers ache. It’s hard to feel anything but pain when you catch the ball. Plus the girls who play it are super aggressive, like, steroid-aggressive. They whisper things to you under their breath and shove you whenever the umpire isn’t looking. Crazy, butch try-hards. I used to be good at netball at my old school, but ever since I came to secondary school I suck. Everyone’s bigger, faster, meaner, crazy-eyed. I don’t mind most of the time, but in sports class it’s really annoying. Last week I got tipped over by the centre player. My knees are still all scratched up. Still, that makes me look cool and punk.

‘Oi, Walker! Stand up straight and get running!’

As if involuntarily, my head snaps ninety degrees to my right and I stare over my shoulder. Max has stopped a little behind the group. He’s bent over double, as if he has a stitch. Mr Harvey comes closer to him.

‘Get on with it, you bloody wimp!’

He steps in next to Max and Max flinches away. Mr Harvey says something to him and he shakes his head, still bent double.

I hear the words ‘fucking hernia, have you?’ and ‘little queer’ drift across the field. Mr Harvey is a dick. A complete and utter dick. I have no idea why he is still employed. Even if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a dick, there are all the paedo rumours. But maybe every PE teacher has those, because they all did at my last school too. Maybe it’s expected. Maybe it’s a
prerequisit
e for the job.

‘Weeeak!’ Mr Harvey hisses at Max, and points directly off the field. Max is still clutching his stomach with one hand, the other pressed against his knee, keeping himself steady as he bends over. He shakes his head and moves slowly to the side of the field. Mr Harvey points again back at the school, telling Max to go inside.

Then Max yells at him. I can’t hear what he says, but Carl and Marc come over with some more of the boys and they start shouting at Mr Harvey.

I see Max getting more and more pissed off. His face is redder and his jaw is more . . . locked up kind of. Then, when he looks like he can’t take any more, he whirls around and spews on the ground behind him.

‘Oh, just great,’ I hear Mr Harvey say.

Carl leans over Max, with one hand on his back, but Max wipes his mouth and stands up and Carl’s hand falls off him, and Max leans towards Mr Harvey and cracks, his face meaner than I’ve ever seen it (come to think of it, I’ve never seen it mean), and shouts something at him. It’s short and sharp, and I don’t catch all of it, but what I do hear everyone across the field and on the courts hears, because no one ever says it:

‘Cunt!’

Literally everyone turns to look.

Mr Harvey glares at all of the boys on the field. ‘Detention!’ I hear him say, amongst a tirade of insults. Marc puts his arm under Max’s shoulder, and Carl continues shouting at Mr Harvey as Max grips his stomach and they begin to walk him slowly in. Max is loved, it has to be said. The other boys crowd behind the threesome and block Mr Harvey off from Max’s path. They are laughing and flipping Mr Harvey off, but Max looks in agony.

They’re nearing the courts now. I will Max to lift his head, but he doesn’t. He knows I’m here, and I deduce he’s avoiding me because he doesn’t want me to see him like this. Now, he doesn’t look angry. Now, his face is absolutely drained of colour. He looks exhausted.

‘D’you need to throw up?’ Marc asks.

‘Yeah,’ Max says quietly, in a kind of weak, confused voice.

I look over at Emma, and she raises her eyebrows at me and pouts her lips. I shake my head at her.

I have no idea what you mean, Crazy
, I say to her silently.

I watch through the strands of my hair as Max and his friends walk slowly down towards the school.