Mercy (12 page)

‘We cut the last period of class that day to, um, hang out at Coronado Beach,’ Richard begins tentatively, his eyes flicking away from the taller boy’s briefly.

‘Near that turn-off to the refinery,’ Ryan interrupts for my benefit, his own dark eyes unreadable, ‘but the next crossroads along, heading in the opposite direction.

It’s not a popular hangout because there’s a vicious reef just out past the shallows that gives the beach its name

— the Crowned One. Plus, the rip’s killed plenty over the years, and it’s a little too far from town. It’s probably polluted as well, given what goes on around there.’

I nod. Nice and isolated, then. I notice Richard doesn’t elaborate about what
hanging out
entails and we don’t ask.

‘And then we had a stupid argument about Corey’s 133

party,’ Richard continues, looking down at his scuffed, old-school high-tops. ‘Things kind of snowballed. About my friends, what we were going to do with our lives, where we were going to be in a few years, and by the time I dropped her home — around five forty, the sun hadn’t quite set yet, I remember — we weren’t talking any more. She just stormed off into the house, and I went and got off my face at Corey’s with a bunch of mates, like I always did whenever Lauren and I argued, and by the morning … it was too late. To say anything.

To change … anything.’

There’s a funny note in Richard’s voice, like a rising sob quickly tamped down, and I look up from my seat on the bench and look away again as I clock the wet sheen in the guy’s eyes. Seems genuine enough.

Ryan’s gaze meets mine. His look saying,
You believe
it?

It’s hard to say. Though, being me, there
is
one foolproof way to know for sure. A way Ryan neither knows about nor has any access to.

I steel myself, because, as I’ve indicated, what I’m about to do invites in the unwanted.

I look up into Richard Coates’ face and raise Carmen’s left hand reluctantly, taking hold of his wrist.

134

It’s surprisingly wiry and thin for someone capable of throwing himself and a quarter-tonne machine through complicated loops and arcs in the air.

My left hand begins to burn with that strange phantom pain, and I feel that building pressure behind my eyes. The boy doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t even react, his features as impassive as I know Carmen’s are. He just looks at where my fingers meet his skin, an unfathomable expression in his pale eyes as we flame into contact.

And I see … everything. Feel … everything. As he told it. And more.

Like what
hanging out
on Coronado Beach really meant to Lauren and Richard. The sun moving quickly across the sky towards the waterline, the waves racing in towards the land, as the hours pass through my mind’s eye in a blur, the wind rising steadily, whipping harsh sand through her hair, his, as they touched, then talked, then began to fight in earnest, voices rising, body language hardening, growing ugly. The last hours they spent together played out for my benefit. The whole shoreline empty of life, as if the two of them were the only people in the world, the first two people in creation.

It’s clear to me that although they hadn’t seen eye to eye on about ten thousand things, they’d had a love so 135

deep it was almost incendiary. Something truly enviable.

Though Lauren wanted more from Richard than he was prepared to give. He could have let things continue the way they were forever, mainly because he — like me —

doesn’t do normal either.

There’s a part of Richard Coates that isn’t earthbound, and Lauren had refused to acknowledge it.

I recognise it in him, because it’s in me, too.

Ryan doesn’t even know half the story.

When I finally let go of Richard’s wrist — for all I know, it might have been a single heartbeat or an hour

— all he does is tug the edge of his frayed cuff back over his tattooed arm. Unlike my contact with Ryan, or how I felt after his parents touched Carmen’s bare skin —

burned, excoriated, as if by acid — the connection with Richard was somehow … different. He
felt
it, my mind in his, I’m sure of it. And it gives me pause.

We stare at each other momentarily before looking away from the incomprehensible.

While Richard’s gaze is elsewhere, Ryan raises an eyebrow in my direction.

I think he’s telling the truth
, I mouth silently.

Ryan nods, a finality about it. I wonder why my opinion means so much to him, holds any weight at all.

136

After several attempts at polite conversation, Ryan and I drive away. I look back at Richard Coates, wandering his motorbike graveyard like a restless spirit, until he is lost to sight.

137

‘What happened to
you
?’ says Brenda nastily at my elbow when I return to Paradise High for the last period of the day, Maths. ‘We’ve been trying to track you down for
hours
.’

Her two, ever-present henchwomen take up unsmiling position on either side of me and I know they’ll be escorting me to my seat personally today.

After they work me over a little first. For a moment, I wonder if Brenda saw Ryan picking me up just past the school gates this morning, and wants to cause a scene just for the hell of it. But then I recall what went down at Mulvany’s the night before.

‘My meds reacted badly with the stuff Bailey slipped into my drink,’ I say apologetically in a little-girl voice, 138

hanging my head like I know Carmen would. ‘Ryan was soooo mad at me this morning. He was
dying
to get back to you last night and was pissed off at me big time when I finally came around.’

The lie works wonders. The crop haired brunette with the eyeliner and leather fetish and the horsy-faced dirty blonde with the impeccable French manicure fall back a step and Brenda is practically snuggling up to my right side with a delighted, ‘Really?’

‘I so
told
you,’ insists the brunette from behind us.

‘It was obvious.’

‘Kayla had it pegged,’ agrees the blonde. ‘He’s still into you in a
big
way.’

‘Shut up, Jackie,’ Brenda says impatiently. ‘What else did he say?’

We’re right outside the classroom now and I’m not even feeling guilty about what I say next, because this girl shouldn’t even be on my case. She’s Ryan’s unfinished business, not mine. He can deal with it.

‘You really should hear it from him,’ I urge guilelessly.

‘You two have
so
much to work out. All he can talk about is you. I’d give him a call. Today.’

Brenda nods eagerly, while part of me grins inside.

Good luck
.

139

When I’d left him that morning, Ryan had muttered something about checking out one of Port Marie’s only two churches, still fixated on his recent, fragmented dream. I knew he and his friend, the ice pick, would be pretty much incommunicado while it was still light.

‘Just one more thing,’ I say, as we head towards a bunch of empty desks up the back of the class, away from where Tiffany, Delia and the others are giving me snake eyes for cosying up to the locals and not making myself available for their collective wrath. ‘I’m curious, because I’m staying in Lauren’s room and I’m virtually
surrounded
by photos, and I know you two were besties

…’

Brenda’s ‘Yeah?’ is slightly less chilly than usual.

‘Was Lauren dating anyone when she disappeared?’

I say, keeping my little-girl act going. ‘It’s been bugging me which one was her boyfriend.’

There are pictures of Lauren and Richard together, but no pictures of Brenda and Richard together, or Richard with anyone else I’ve met at Paradise High so far, like Kayla, Jackie, Tod, Clint or Bailey. Plus, there are pictures of Lauren with a couple of other guys I haven’t seen around the halls. If Brenda truly was Lauren’s best friend, I figure she’d have a handle on what Lauren’s 140

love life had really been like. Maybe it was a lot more complicated than Ryan realised.

Brenda, still wrapped up in thoughts of her ex, is almost friendly when she replies. ‘Lauren never went for clean-cut guys, only the freaks. She was dating a loser called Richard when she was taken, a real short ass with even bigger loser-ass friends that I wouldn’t be seen
dead
with; and before that, a geeky mountaineering guy with a ponytail called Seth, who left town before she started seeing the motocross dwarf. Goes without saying I didn’t hang with him either. A choir nerd from Port Marie tried to ask her out just before she disappeared, but she told him things between her and Richard were pretty serious

— can you
believe
it? — and they couldn’t be anything more than friends. Ask him if you like. He’s doing this stupid Mahler concert with us. He’s a “soloist”, just like you are.’

She drawls the words
Mahler
and
soloist
as if they’re synonyms for something filthy and unspeakable that could get you arrested. Anyone other than me would take issue with it. But I could care less, because she’s just given me a lead that maybe Ryan has never followed up, never even known about.

The info about Seth the mountaineering geek 141

correlates with the pictures I’ve seen jammed into the right-hand bottom corner of Lauren’s mirror: of her with some incredibly tall and skinny outdoorsy type with a huge Adam’s apple, bushy ponytail, ginger stubble and a friendly expression. So I just need to look out for a round-faced, dark-haired, spectacle-wearing ‘choir nerd’

who’s singing one of the solos in the Mahler piece and who hails from Port Marie. Easy.

Maybe he can give us something more to work with.

He might even
be
the something everyone has failed to see all this time.

‘Well, thanks for satisfying my curiosity,’ I say mildly, as I slide into an empty seat by one of the windows. ‘You remember to call Ryan now. I can tell you’ve got
a lot
to talk over.’

Brenda smiles coyly as she cracks open her textbook.

‘Maybe you aren’t such a waste of space, after all,’ she replies kindly.

There
is
a God, because at the after-school rehearsal for the Mahler concert Mr Masson tells all the soloists to sit away from their usual choir stations and away from each other.

‘Sopranos and altos, spread yourselves out among 142

your opposite number. Spencer, Jonathan and Harley, do likewise among the boys.’

There’s outright laughter from most of the males in the room as three very different-looking boys stand up, red-faced, and fan out through the assembly hall, forcing their way past a sudden sea of extended legs, locked knees and folded arms.

My eyes pick out the dark-haired boy from Lauren’s photo straightaway. He’s of middling height and kitted out like a clothing-catalogue spread, from his side-parted hair and roundish glasses down to his neat navy blazer and polo shirt combination, stone-coloured, pleat-fronted chinos and boat shoes. He looks like the kind of kid who gets his head flushed down the toilet at least once a day by rival forces, and Richard Coates’

total opposite number. If Lauren went for freaks, this guy would have stood
no
chance.

I stand up as well, taking my place in the back row of the altos as close to the guy as it’s possible to get with a wall of snickering basses between us. A couple of girls make room for me with calculated indifference.

Tiffany Lazer is on the diagonally opposite side of the alto section from where I’m sitting, still simmering at her inability to get to me for the purposes of having it 143

out over last night’s case of
spotlightus interruptus
.

As Mr Masson moves to turn on the ancient sound system that serves as our ersatz symphony orchestra, Paul Stenborg raises one languid, beautiful hand from the sidelines and calls out pleasantly, ‘Just to up the degree of difficulty, Gerard, let’s have the soloists
stand
while the general chorus remains seated, hmmm? It will separate the, ah ha,
sheep
from the lambs.’

‘What a splendid idea, Paul,’ Mr Masson agrees brightly, clapping his hands as the seven of us rise with varying degrees of enthusiasm; four girls, three guys.

Tiffany, the only soloist still occupying a front-row seat, sweeps her shining helmet of blonde hair back over her shoulders and grins in anticipation. She shoots me a confident look over one shoulder that is designed to psych out the real Carmen. But I force Carmen to give her a brilliant, mega-watt smile in return, lips drawn right back over the teeth, and Tiffany’s expression curdles as she faces forward again.

Immediately, I let the lines of Carmen’s face go slack.

Part of me hopes she’ll keep up the pressure when I’m gone, but I have my doubts.

Ready when you are, bitch
, I think, taking a deep breath.

144

The boy from Lauren’s photo pushes up his glasses repeatedly and fiddles with the wristband of his watch, though neither needs any kind of adjusting. A nervous type, then, just like Carmen ordinarily would be. The other two boys are hardly any better, like a slapstick comedy duo with their obvious bobbing, shuffling and gulping. All three are totally surrounded by the enemy as far as the eye can see, and are being given no quarter.

Delia and the second St Joseph’s alto, Marisol, take their places among the sopranos nervously, like skittish thoroughbreds at the starting gates. The orchestra surges back to life, the entire room lurching into Part 1 with the fervour of a sick cat.

As we hit Figure 7, and I soar into my traffic-stopping solo without a shred of Carmen’s usual self-consciousness, I position myself so I can see the boy from Port Marie. I realise Lauren’s mystery friend is the faltering tenor who always makes his wobbly, half-assed entry after mine and before Tiffany, Delia and Marisol.