Solitaire, Part 2 of 3 (7 page)

I show this one to Michael.

“What a
fantastic
question,” he says.

I fail to see how it’s a fantastic question, so I delete it, just like I did the other one.

I don’t know what the time is, but it’s getting dark now. We go back to the Dying Sun. A little further along the cliff is Michael’s house, glowing against the sky. This clifftop really is the best place in the world. The best end of the universe.

We balance on the edge, letting the wind flow past our ears. I dangle my legs off and, after some persuasion, so does he.

“The sun’s setting,” he says.

“The sun also rises,” I say, before I can stop myself.

His head turns like a robot. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“Say that again.”

“Say what?”

“What you just said.”

I sigh. “
The Sun Also Rises
.”

“And who, might I ask, wrote that literary gem?”

I sigh again. “Ernest Hemingway.”

He starts shaking his head. “You hate literature. You hate it. You can’t even bring yourself to read
Pride and Prejudice
.”

“…”

“Name three other Hemingway novels.”

“Really? You’re really going to ask me to do that?”

He smiles.

I roll my eyes. “
For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Old Man and the Sea. A Farewell to Arms
.”

His mouth opens in astonishment.

“It’s not like I’ve read any of them.”

“Now I’m going to have to test you.”

“Jesus.”

“Who wrote
The Bell Jar
?”

“…”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know it, Spring.”

That’s the first time he’s called me by my surname only. I’m not sure what this says about our relationship.

“Fine. Sylvia Plath.”

“Who wrote
The Catcher in the Rye
?”

“J.D. Salinger. You’re giving me really easy ones.”

“Okay then. Who wrote
Endgame
?”

“Samuel Beckett.”

“
A Room of One’s Own
?”

“Virginia Woolf.”

He gives me a long look. “
The Beautiful and Damned.
”

I want to stop myself saying the answers, but I can’t. I can’t lie to him.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

He shakes his head. “You know all the names to books, but you haven’t read a single one. It’s like it’s raining money, but you refuse to catch a single coin.”

I know that, if I persisted past the first few pages, I would probably enjoy some books, but I don’t. I can’t read books because I know that none of it is real. Yeah, I’m a hypocrite. Films aren’t real, but I love them. But books – they’re different. When you watch a film, you’re sort of an outsider looking in. With a book – you’re right there. You are inside. You are the main character.

A minute later, he asks, “Have you ever had a boyfriend, Tori?”

I snort. “Clearly not.”

“Don’t say that. You’re a sexy beast. You could easily have had a boyfriend.”

I am not a sexy beast in any way whatsoever.

I put on an accent. “I’m a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man.”

This actually makes Michael laugh so hard that he has to roll over and hide his face in his hands, which makes me laugh too. We continue laughing hysterically until the sun is almost completely gone.

Once we calm down, Michael lies back in the grass.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but Becky doesn’t really seem to hang around you much at school. I mean, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t guess that you were best friends.” He looks at me. “You don’t really talk to each other very much.”

I cross my legs. Another sudden topic change. “Yeah … she … I don’t know. Maybe that’s why we are best friends. Because we don’t need to talk much any more.” I look back at him stretched out. His arm is laid over his forehead, his hair is splayed out in the dark and the remaining light swirls in kaleidoscope shapes in his blue eye. I look away. “She has a lot more friends than me, I guess. But that’s all right. I don’t mind. It’s understandable. I’m quite boring. I mean, she’d have a really boring life if she just hung around with me all the time.”

“You’re not boring. You’re the epitome of not-boring.”

Pause.

“I think you’re a really good friend,” he says. I turn again. He smiles at me and it reminds me of his expression on the day we met – wild, shining, something not quite reachable about it. “Becky is really lucky to have someone like you.”

I would be nothing without Becky, I think. Even though things are different now. Sometimes it makes me tear up thinking about how much I love her.

“It’s the other way round,” I say.

The clouds have mostly cleared now. The sky is orange at the horizon, leading up to a dark blue above our heads. It looks like a portal. I start thinking about the
Star Wars
film we watched earlier. I wanted to be a Jedi so badly when I was a kid. My lightsaber would have been green.

“I should go home,” I say eventually. “I didn’t tell my parents I was going out.”

“Ah. Right.” We both stand up. “I’ll walk home with you.”

“You really don’t have to.”

But he does anyway.

WHEN WE ARRIVE
outside my house, the sky is black and there are no stars.

Michael turns and puts his arms round me. It takes me by surprise so I don’t have time to react and my arms are once again trapped at my sides.

“I had a really good day,” he says, holding me.

“So did I.”

He lets go. “Do you think we’re friends now?”

I hesitate. I can’t think why. I hesitate for no reason.

I will regret what I say next almost as soon as I say it.

“It’s like,” I say, “you really … you really want to be friends with me.”

He looks slightly embarrassed, almost apologetic.

“It’s like you’re doing it for yourself,” I say.

“All friendships are selfish. Maybe if we were all selfless, we would leave each other alone.”

“Sometimes that’s better.”

This hurts him. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m pushing his temporary happiness out. “Is it?”

I don’t know why I can’t just say that we’re friends and be done with it.

“What is this? This whole thing. I met you, like, two weeks ago. None of this makes any sense. I don’t understand why you want to be friends with me.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“Last time?”

“Why are you making this so complicated? We’re not six years old.”

I say, “I’m just awful at – I’m – I don’t know.”

His mouth turns down.

“I don’t know what to say,” I say.

“It’s all right.” He takes off his glasses to wipe them with his jumper sleeve. I’ve never seen him without his glasses on. “It’s fine.” And then, as he replaces his glasses, all the sadness disintegrates, and what’s left underneath is the real Michael, the fire, the boy who skates, the boy who followed me to a restaurant to tell me something he couldn’t remember, the boy who has nothing better to do than force me to get out of the house and live.

“Is it time for me to give up?” he asks and then answers. “No, it’s not.”

“You sound like you’re in love with me,” I say. “For God’s sake.”

“There is no reason why I couldn’t be in love with you.”

“You implied that you’re gay.”

“That’s entirely subjective.”

“Are you then?”

“Am I gay?”

“Are you in love with me?”

He winks. “
It’s a mystery
.”

“I’m going to take that as a no.”

“Of course you are. Of course you’re going to take that as a no. You didn’t even need to ask me that question, did you?”

He’s annoying me now. A lot. “Jesus fucking Christ! I know I’m a stupid, twattish pessimist, but stop acting like I’m some kind of manically depressed psychopath!”

And then suddenly – like a wind change or a bump in the road or the moment that makes you scream in a horror film – suddenly he’s an entirely different person. His smile dies and the blue and green of his eyes darken. He clenches his fist and he snarls, he actually
snarls
at me.

“Maybe you
are
a
manically depressed psychopath
.”

I freeze, stunned, wanting to be sick.

“Fine.”

I turn round

and go into the house

and shut the door.

Charlie is at Nick’s for once. I go to his room and lie down. He has a world map next to his bed with certain places circled. Prague. Kyoto. Seattle. There are also several pictures of him with Nick. Nick and Charlie on the London Eye. Nick and Charlie at a rugby match. Nick and Charlie at the beach. His bedroom is so tidy. Obsessively tidy. It smells of cleaning spray. I look at the book he’s reading, which is beside his pillow. It’s called
Less Than Zero
and is by Bret Easton Ellis. Charlie talked to me about it once. He said that he liked it because it’s the sort of book that makes you understand people a little better, and he also said it helped him understand
me
a little better. I didn’t really believe him because I think that novels can very easily brainwash people, and apparently Bret Easton Ellis is infamous on Twitter.

In his bedside table is a drawer which used to have all these chocolate bars stacked and ordered inside, but Mum found them and threw them away a few weeks before he had to go to hospital the first time. Now there are lots of books in the drawer. A lot that Dad’s obviously given to him. I shut the drawer.

I go get my laptop and bring it into Charlie’s room and scroll through some blogs.

I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?

I’m angry that Michael said that stuff. I hate that he said that stuff. But I said stupid stuff too. I sit and I wonder whether Michael is going to talk to me tomorrow. This is probably my fault. Everything is my fault.

I wonder how much Becky will talk about Ben tomorrow. A lot. I think about who else I could hang around with. There isn’t anyone. I think about how I do not want to leave this house ever again. I think about whether I had any homework to do this weekend. I think about what a dreadful person I am.

I put on
Amélie
which is the best foreign film in the history of cinema. I tell you, this is one of the
original
indie films. It gets romance
right
. You can tell that it’s
genuine
. It’s not just like “she’s pretty, he’s handsome, they both hate each other, then they realise there’s another side to both of them, they start to like each other, love declaration, the end”. Amélie’s romance is meaningful. It’s not fake, it’s believable. It’s
real.

I go downstairs. Mum is on the computer. I tell her goodnight, but it takes her at least twenty seconds to hear me, so I just head back upstairs with a glass of diet lemonade.

BECKY IS WITH
Ben Hope at school. They are together now. They’re together in the common room and they’re smiling a lot. After I’ve been sitting nearby on a swivel chair for several minutes, Becky finally notices that I’m here.

“Hey!” She beams at me, but the greeting sounds forced.

“Morning.” Becky and Ben are also sitting, Becky’s legs up on Ben’s lap.

“I don’t think I’ve spoken to you before,” says Ben. He is so attractive that I feel extra awkward. I hate that. “What’s your name?”

“Tori Spring,” I say. “I’m in your maths. And English.”

“Oh, right, yeah, I thought I’d seen you!” I don’t think he’s seen me. “Yeah. I’m Ben.”

“Yeah.”

We sit there for a bit, him expecting me to continue the conversation. He clearly does not know me well.

“Wait. Tori
Spring
?” He squints at me. “Are … are you
Charlie
Spring’s sister?”

“Yeah.”

“Charlie Spring … who goes out with Nick Nelson?”

“Yeah.”

Instantly, all traces of smarminess drop from his face, leaving only a kind of strangled anxiety. For a moment, it’s almost as if he’s searching for some reaction from me. But then it’s gone. “Cool. Yeah, I saw him around at Truham.”

I nod. “Cool.”

“You knew Charlie Spring?” asks Becky.

Ben fiddles with his shirt buttons. “Not closely. Just saw him around, you know. Small world, innit!”

“Yeah,” I say and then mutter, “
innit.
”

Becky is staring at me with a strange expression. I stare back at her, trying to telepathically tell her that I don’t want to be here.

“Tori,” says Becky, “did you do the sociology homework?”

“Yeah. Did you?”

She grins sheepishly and glances sideways at Ben. They exchange a cheeky look.

“We were busy,” she giggles.

I try not to think about the connotations of the word ‘busy’.

Evelyn has been here the whole time, faced away from us, chatting to some other Year 12s who I don’t talk to. At this point, she spins round on her chair, rolls her eyes at Ben and Becky and says, “Ugh, why are you guys so
adorable
?”

I look at her. She has a very peculiar hairstyle today, which only emphasises her hipster originality. She’s wearing chunky earrings and her nails are black. I know that it shouldn’t matter what you look like, or how you dress yourself, and I try very hard not to judge her, but I am a very bad person, so I fail miserably.

I rummage around in my bag, find my homework and give it to Becky.

“Just give it back in sociology,” I say.

“
Aw.
” She takes the piece of paper. “You are
fabulous
. Thanks, hun.”

Becky has never called me ‘hun’ in my entire life. She has called me ‘man’. She has called me ‘mate’. She has called me ‘dude’ a hundred billion times. But she has never, ever called me ‘hun’.

The pips go and I leave without saying bye.

Lucas comes up to me at break while I’m sorting out my books at my locker. He tries to start a conversation and, to be fair, just because I feel sorry for him most of the time, I try really hard to talk to him. By ‘try really hard’ I mean that I don’t just ignore him. I feel like his hair has grown since Friday.

We get talking about Becky’s party.