An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (6 page)

              I looked up dismally, watching Jenny open the letter. I thought for a moment that I should have eaten it as soon as I had it, but then reasoned that she would have probably ripped open my stomach and retrieved the letter anyway.

              ‘It’s you?’ she said, waving the note accusingly.

              ‘No, not me,’ I said, keen to worm my way out of the situation. ‘Someone else, I’m helping them. I mean, not
helping
them,
I’m, I’m
, I’m trying to show them -- yeah, that’s it -- I’m trying to show them that animal murder is wrong, and that you shouldn’t--’

              ‘It says your name, Kieran,’ Jenny turned over the letter and thrust her finger at the hastily scribbled word at the bottom.

              ‘
Another
Kieran,’ I said.

              Jenny glared at me, as if she were trying to bore holes into me with her eyes. She sighed heavily, lifted the note to her face again, and, keeping one eye on me in case I tried anything, she read:
‘I don’t like you, I made a mistake. I don’t want to go out with you anymore.’

              I pulled myself up from the floor and slowly rubbed my right elbow which burned with a steady pain. I cleared my throat and grinned at Jenny. ‘Okay, it was me.’

              ‘No,
you don’t say
,’ she spat sarcastically.

              ‘But it went to the wrong person. I mean, not
that
one, that one was supposed to go to you, coz I really don’t want to be your boyfriend. You’re nice I’m sure, but not my type, I’m not even sure I
have
a type but if I did,’ I paused, scratching my head and gauging a reaction, there wasn’t one. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be you. It wouldn’t really be Laura either but the letter, the
other
letter, was supposed to go to
her
, not Lenny. I didn’t kill his cat, I didn’t even know he
had
a cat, and as for the blood, well.’ I held up my thumb, the blood had been sucked dry. ‘Well, there
was
blood there before, there isn’t now. Never mind, just please don’t tell anyone.’ I finished.

              Her anger had turned into realisation, more of the fact that I was too stupid to be a taunting serial killer than anything else, but it was better than nothing.

              ‘Please,’ I repeated, sensing trouble in the silence. ‘I’ll be your boyfriend.’

              ‘Don’t worry,’ she said softly, the anger completely gone now. ‘I won’t say anything,’

              ‘
Phew
, thank you.’ I wiped an imaginary line of sweat from my forehead. ‘I don’t have to be your boyfriend though do I?’

              She shook her head and handed me the letter. ‘This has made me realise how much I like Lenny. I want to be his girlfriend again.’

              I folded the note, tore it through the middle several times and then scrunched up the pieces before sticking them into my pocket. It would have made more sense to do it over a bin, something I realised when picking a few stray pieces up from the floor, but I managed to get the majority in my pocket regardless.

              ‘So, some good came of all this then,’ I declared happily. I scuttled towards the door, eager to get out before she changed her mind. ‘What are you going to tell Lenny about the animal murderer?’ I asked.

              Jenny shrugged. It seemed she wasn’t going to tell him anything. That was good enough for me.

3

Lizzie

              During every summer holiday, without fail, my parents took me on holiday to a fairly dim caravan site. It usually rained and we seemed to spend the majority of the holiday bungled into a small caravan watching a tiny pixelated television and eating microwave meals.

              There was nothing to do except play board games and wait for the rain to stop, after which we would move on to the arcades, walk the beaches or play in the park.

              The arcades were cheap, claustrophobic and rang with the incessant noises of luck and misfortune. The beaches were stony, dirty and rife with seaweed. The local bars stank of fake tan and tears and were packed with middle-aged women beyond their prime and older men too drunk or decrepit to try and chat them up. The poorly maintained parks were months away from becoming death traps. The gift shops stacked items designed for local use -- plastic footballs, buckets & spades, kites -- which weren’t made to last beyond purchase. Bingo halls oozed with the melancholy of despairing tourists with nothing better to do, and, in the onsite club, the finger of an apathetic bartender perpetually hit rewind/play on a Hi-fi haunted by the ghosts of Discos long since dead.

              It was the epitome of a classic British holiday. It was miserable, gloomy and depressing. I loved it.

              I saw everything through rose tinted spectacles and adored it all. Through the ages of five to ten I looked forward to those holidays more than Christmas. I loved to fly my kite in the fields, come home to the
ping
of a microwave and tuck in whilst watching the television fire a blizzard over whatever was on.

              I loved to blow my parent’s money on the arcade games and penny-slots. I liked the rocky beaches, the pier which was cold and windswept even in the height of summer, and the sweet shops that stamped a local logo on every product and sold it for twice as much.

              I made friends in the parks, vowed to be their friend forever and then promptly forgot their names the instant we left, and I played bingo with old people who tried to give me sweets and persuade me they used to be young once.

              It was a highlight of my childhood, but I had no interest in it when I was eleven and another trip to the caravan site was arranged. I wanted to stay home; I wanted to play with my friends in the fields by the house. Two weeks felt like a really long time, and I didn’t want to miss anything.

              I had no choice in the matter and that put me in a bad mood on the two hour car journey. I gave my parents the silent treatment the whole way; they were delighted with the break.

              We left just after dawn and when the car pulled into the caravan site it was still pleasantly warm outside. The sun belted down beats of bright hot light through the back window. I shaded my eyes from the glare as the car weaved through the mass of caravans and pulled up alongside the one we had rented.

              My dad jumped out of the car first, desperate to stretch after a couple of hours behind the wheel. My mother was still half asleep and took her time. I darted out before her, eager to show them both that I was still annoyed.

              ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said, quickly regretting it.

              ‘Oh, you’re talking now are you?’ Dad beamed at me. He had tiny wrinkles on his chin, his forehead and his cheeks, these stretched with individual grins when he smiled. His stubbled beard -- flecked with differing stages of grey, white and silver -- reflected the sunlight and glistened at me.

              ‘I--I--no,’ I stuttered defiantly, storming off.

              A boundary of trees and thickets lined the caravan site; I cut through these and entered onto a small park which sat at the edge of a large empty field.

              A carpet of gravel chips covered the floor of the park, with patches of softened tarmac under the equipment.

              A set of swings in the centre of the park was the only fully intact piece of equipment. The climbing frame in the corner was rusted and looked unstable. The rocking horses next to it hadn’t rocked for many years. Three rungs had been plucked from the centre of the monkey bars, denying even the most limber of primates a fighting chance. The sandpit was more stone than sand; the slide was streaked with what looked like mud, but could have been something much worse; the merry-go-round didn’t
go
at all.

              A small blonde girl was sitting on the swings. She had turned her head sideways to look at me as I surveyed the broken park. She had a smile that stretched from ear to ear. I could almost see her iridescent eyes twinkling under the glare of the sun.

              Despite -- or perhaps because of -- my experiences with Kerry and Jenny, I had never warmed to the opposite sex. I had never found my first crush, had never experienced something I still wasn’t sure was real, but when I set eyes on the little blonde girl, swinging gently back and forth, her hair lifting and relaxing in the faint breeze, I knew that things were about to change.

              ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name is Lizzie, what’s yours?’

              I tried to reply but the words caught in my throat. I coughed, cleared and repeated as best I could: ‘Kieran.’

              She continued smiling, her eyes never leaving my face. ‘Do you want to swing with me Kieran?’ she asked pleasantly.

              I took a seat on the swing next to hers, she watched me while I tucked myself in between the chains. Then she turned to face ahead, out over the expansive fields which stretched to the horizon.

              ‘It’s a lovely day isn’t it?’ she said.

              I grunted in reply, unable to take my eyes off her. I wanted to talk to her; I wanted to tell her everything about myself. I wanted to ask her an infinite amount of questions, to find out everything I could about her. Where did she come from? What school did she go to? What year was she in?

              We swung side by side for a while. Every now and then she would glance at me and pick up the pace with a smile. Then she would giggle when I tried to match her swing for swing.

              I didn’t know what she found amusing but I was entranced by her laugh and I giggled along with her, happily watching her features explode into delight.

              I wanted to stare at her without interruption but didn’t want to come across as weird. I tried to get as many looks as I could, sneaking sly glances when she wasn’t looking, admiring her smile, the dimples on her fair cheeks, the shine in her glistening hair, the brightness in her eyes. I turned away when I saw her head moving to me, not realising that she was trying to sneak the same covert looks at me.

              I felt so comfortable with her. So happy. It didn’t dawn on me that we had been sitting in total silence for ten minutes until she spoke again.

              ‘How old are you Kieran?’

              ‘Eleven,’ I said, locking eyes with her. ‘You?’

              ‘I’m eleven as well.’

              ‘Okay.’

              ‘Isn’t that weird?’

              ‘It is yes,’ I said, happy to believe it was because she said it was.

              We swung side by side in silence. The bright morning began to fade to a dull afternoon. A thick veil covered the sun and the merriment it had brought. A greyness descended on the horizon that my new friend loved to adore.

              ‘I have to go,’ I felt her swing stop and jolt as she suddenly jumped. She stood at the base of the swing-set, one arm wrapped around the support pole, her body leaning towards me. ‘Goodbye Kieran.’

              I didn’t want her to go, but I was still bathing in the joy of meeting her and I was sure I’d see her again. ‘Goodbye Lizzie.’

              She giggled one last time, then she turned and ran away. The quickening gloom of the depressing afternoon rained shadows behind her as she cut into the trees and disappeared.

              I walked back to the caravan with a skip in my step. The day had drawn cold and depressing, but I still felt a warm glow bathing my skin.

              My parents were hovering around the kitchen when I strode through the door and greeted them with a fresh face.

              They looked at each other. My fathers’ eyebrows were raised. My mother shrugged her shoulders with a
meh
expression. ‘Dinner is ready soon,’ she told me, brushing past my dad and busying herself by buttering bread.

              ‘What’s got into you?’ Dad quizzed, remaining still and keeping his eyes on me as Mum danced around him with muted sounds of frustration.

              ‘Nothing,’ I replied with a smile.

              I slid past them both and strode into the main room. I picked up a magazine and plonked down on the sofa which stretched across and around the back end of the caravan like a tartan scarf.

              Dad followed me. He sat down with a loud exhalation and turned to stare at me. After twenty-seconds of uninterrupted comical glaring he joked: ‘If you’re on drugs you can tell me you know.’

              I lowered the magazine and laughed a muffled response. ‘If I was on drugs I would
never
tell you.’

              ‘Why not?’ he feigned surprise and hurt. ‘You’d be missing out. We could share. I have a cupboard full back home.’

              ‘Really?’

              ‘Sure. Uppers, downers, lefters, righters. I got the lot.’

              I raised my eyebrows and lowered my head, gesturing that I wasn’t impressed with his attempt at humour.