Drop (29 page)

This seemed kind of, you know, you. I x

I think I like him a little bit more every time I see him.

Ten minutes pass. My phone rings.

“I’ve got a surprise for you. A birthday present,” he says.

“You were just here.”

“You see, you weren’t expecting it.”

“You’re such a dork. Where did you go?”

“Your front garden.” I move to the window and look out. Roll my eyes. “Seriously, your neighbour thinks I’m a stalker or something. I can see her picking up the phone. Quick. You really should come let me in.”

Back in my room, Isaac perches on the corner of the bed. I swing round on my chair to face him. “So?” I ask, intrigued.

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?” He stretches his arms and leans back onto the duvet, eyes closed and smiling. I glimpse a sliver of lean tummy. All that running must be paying off.

“Suppose not,” I say.

He looks pleased with himself. Bursting with energy. He jumps up and leans over to grab the pink heart-shaped Post-it notes on the desk behind me and I can smell his scent, lemons and coconut. “Have you got exams tomorrow?” he says.

“Nope. Why?” I ask but he doesn’t reply.

I watch him scribble away and I’m too eager to wait for him to finish, so move next to him on the bed. I read aloud as he writes:

“Meet me at the river at midday tomorrow. Bring goggles (supplied),”
I say, in my best secret-agent voice, before adding my own contribution: “Come alone. Wait for my signal. The rabbit is in the burrow. The eagle has landed. Project Birthday is a go. I repeat, Project Birthday is a go.”

“It doesn’t say that,” he says, then draws a map. “Meet me here.” An arrow points to the riverbank, by the picnic area in the park. He adds a stickman doodle of himself with a speech bubble saying, “Please come.”

“I never knew you were an artist,” I say. “It’s realistic. You’ve really captured your crude wavy lines.”

Isaac reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a pair of goggles like the ones in the school Chemistry lab.

“What are the goggles for? You loco now?” I ask.

“Patience, Carla.”

“Sounds ominous. I mean, will I be walking into a
Shallow Grave
situation here? Should I bring my shovel?”

“Just come!”

The next morning is bright and clear, but my thoughts are clouded. What’s Isaac planned? Why the goggles? I texted him a few times last night but he wouldn’t give up any details.
Patience
, he said, and,
This is going to be so good.
Annoyingly cryptic and painfully tantalizing in equal measure. It’s 11.34 a.m. I’m ready to go, perched on the edge of my bed, excited. It’s silly but I feel like a kid going to the zoo for the first time, or to the pet shop to get my first hamster. Something awesome is about to happen, I know it. I grab my bag, shove the goggles in and head out. I’m barely aware of the streets and trees melting by. My racing mind drives me forwards, feet moving of their own accord. Nearing the river, I notice something amazing, phenomenal. This, fuck, this is
something else.

I can’t believe my eyes.

Hundreds of butterflies form a sea of white on the muddy ground, their wings illuminated by the bright sun. The creatures line the footpath so densely, I can’t see how to get past. This is
mental
. I shout for Isaac but hear only the low hum of multiple insects, closely packed and clambering over one another. Their long antennae twist and jerk, tiny rods receiving signals like TV aerials – but what transmission has drawn them here?

I edge towards the water, careful not to crush the pearly ocean underfoot. So exhilarated by the fantastical sight, I almost forget I’m looking for Isaac. It’s really beautiful. I mean freaking, stuff-of-dreams-magical-realm-epic-movie-scene beautiful
. Did he do all this? No. How could he?

“Do you like it?”

I look around but I can’t see him anywhere. “Where are you?”

“Answer the question!”

“I love it!”

A tap on the shoulder makes me jump. I turn to see Isaac dangling upside down, legs hooked over a thick tree branch.

“Hello,” he says.

“How did you do this?”

Isaac hoists himself up, slowly lowers his legs and swings carefully to the ground, so as to miss the butterflies. Dust puffs up where he lands and a few fly off into the treetops.

“Fireworks,” he says.

“I don’t understand.”

Isaac just grins and takes my hand, leading me away from the butterflies.

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll come back. I need to show you something.”

Further down the riverbank, he stops. “When I was doing Chemistry GCSE, we came here to do an experiment. Not strictly school-endorsed.”

He puts on a pair of safety gloves, then takes a small white pot from his pocket.

“Look, Isaac, I’m done with drugs.”

He smiles. “It’s not a rock of coke. It’s sodium. Better put on your goggles.”

I do as I’m told. Isaac takes out a pair of tweezers and grips the sodium.

“Stand back.”

Chemistry lessons have taught me that sodium is a soft, waxy, silver-white, metallic element. Highly reactive. Oxidizes rapidly when exposed to air. Reacts violently with water. Bloody punch-drunk violently. A smallish bomb.

“Isn’t this dangerous?”

“Maybe a little. But what’s life without a little risk? Ready?”

Isaac’s eyes widen with a mock look of terror.

“Dun-duuun-duuuuuuun!”
He throws the rock into the river and it spits and glows white before exploding. Sparkles rain down.

“That’s very cool. But I don’t get what it has to do with the butterflies.”

“Elementary, my dear Carla. A bunch of us stole thirty grams from school and threw it in the river one night. It was pretty awesome. It was only when I went back the next day that I noticed all the butterflies. When it exploded it left salt on the riverbank.”

The salt called the butterflies down from the sky. What a birthday present.

I may be about to fail Biology, but I know about butterflies. I know they’re champion drinkers. They can drink and void continuously for hours. They do it for the nutrients. The males use the dissolved salts and minerals to make pheromones. They crave sodium like pregnant women crave ice-cream and gherkins. They fill up and move on. And it doesn’t hurt them at all. They do it in spectacular fashion, often consuming hundreds of times their body mass. To keep up, a human would have to drink about twelve thousand gallons a second. This isn’t eating a handful of peanuts at a bar, this is a tankerful of seawater hooked directly to your veins. I like butterflies because they are pretty and graceful and remind me of the sycamore seeds floating down. I like them for the way they look, but you have to respect the science behind that.
Twelve thousand gallons a second.

“So you did it again last night? How come you didn’t get caught? People get jumpy these days when they hear loud noises.”

“I just used some sea salt from Dad’s business. Sprinkled it around. I’ve given up my life of crime and don’t fancy losing an arm in a big bang. Plus last time we all got three weeks’ detention for nicking from the lab. Think we’d have been expelled if Dad hadn’t been catering for a school fundraiser that same month.”

“What about that bit you threw in the river?”

“Internet.”

He walks me back towards the butterflies.

“I’m chuffed that it actually worked,” he says. “I thought I might be bringing you out here to see, well, nothing, except a slightly salty mud patch.”

A low branch curves out over the water. Isaac takes my hand as I climb onto it.

“You should be helping me keep
my
balance, gymnast girl.”

The butterflies dance around us.

“Happy birthday,” he says.

And I think,
This is a perfect moment.

After exams finish, summer officially starts. Free from school, I hardly see Finn. I get lost in London, which is so big you could go months without seeing the same face twice if you avoid certain haunts: the park, the cinema, the clubs. I feel like … I’m resting. Finally, I’m getting my breath back. The weeks melt away until suddenly results day approaches like a train rounding a bend in the track. I can see its headlights growing larger. I’m waiting on the platform but secretly hoping this particular train
doesn’t stop here
. Whichever way you look at it, tomorrow is going to be a momentously craptacular day. Judgement Day: Apocalypse. Fire and brimstone. There’s no avoiding it.

I haven’t seriously considered going with Georgia and the others to the big-results-day-blow-out in Brighton because I can’t think of a single plus point to the excursion. But when Isaac brings it up I feel the balance begin to tip in its favour.

“I thought we could go together.”

“Not your brightest idea ever.”

“We don’t have to hang around with those guys. We’ll do our own thing, go to the beach, chill out. Celebrate.”

“I might just have done enough to scrape through but I can’t see a big fanfare being necessary.”

“I’ll buy you an ice-cream.”

“With a flake?”

“And fudge sauce.”

“Hot fudge sauce?”

“Course.”

I grin. “Tempting, but … no. The last thing I want to do is watch Finn parade about with Miss Swish-Swish” – I flip my hair – “you know what I’m talking about. And then hang about with a bunch of people who haven’t – apart from Georgia – said one word to me since I was ousted from the group. It would feel fake.”

“
I’ve
talked to you.”

“That’s different. You’re not like them. You’re like … a stand-alone.”

“A loner, you mean.”

“No, someone who doesn’t need all those others around to congratulate you on your awesomeness. You’re just great the way you are.”

“Is that a compliment, Miss Carroll? Because it sounds like it’s trying to be one.”

“It is what it is.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to stand alone this time. I could do with the company.”

“It’d be too weird.” But then I think of all the lovely things Isaac has done for me recently, and all without hope or agenda. The butterflies, the encouragement, protecting me from those boys in the park. If he can do all that, maybe I can take a little weirdness for him. He deserves it. “OK, I’ll come. But don’t leave me on my own with them.”

“Done.”

I pack a rucksack with a hoodie, a change of underwear and some make-up. I’ve given up styling my hair and reverted to my original barely contained frizzy blob. I’m done trying to be someone else. The plan is to spend the day at the beach, head to a club on the seafront in the evening, then back to the hostel. Isaac picks me up and we drive down to Brighton, me singing along to all the power ballads on Magic radio and him rolling his eyes. The car clunks and shudders a few times on the way and at times I think we won’t make it. But we do.

“She’s on her last legs. My beautiful car. Had her since I passed.”

“So, one whole year.”

“What can I say? Couldn’t afford a Bugatti, had to make do.”

“What’s a Bugatti?”

“Oh, my dear Carla, you have so much to learn.”

“Maybe you could teach me?”

“About cars?”

“No. To drive. When you’re back from uni in the summer. Then maybe I could come and visit you. Remember, I used to live in Nottingham. Could show you around.”

Isaac has aced his exams and got into his first-choice uni. I’m glad for him, but kind of sad he’ll be leaving soon.

We go to the beach first, before the hostel, because I want to see and smell the sea. The sun’s high and people are milling about, swimming, lazing, content. But although the day is golden and I’m out of the shackles of school and home, I can’t let myself be happy.

I picked up my results envelope from school this morning. All around me people cried and laughed and hugged and felt proud. I don’t dare open my letter. It’s in my back pocket, crumpled, hopefully vaporizing out of existence.

“Do you want me to open it?” Isaac asks.

“No.”

“Well, then, are
you
going to open it?”

“Nope.”