Flick (13 page)

TOO BORED TO CONTINUE, TOO BORED TO NOT

A guy dies outside Ritzies at the weekend and none of us feel like going out. I've arranged with Kyle for him to sort out a buyer so I have to wait for word from him, which, suffice to say, isn't reassuring enough to lift my mood, and to top it off there's still a weird barrier between me and Rainbow from the other night that I know is completely my, or perhaps Fez's, fault, so she takes a shift at work (she waits tables at a café on Ness pier) and I go at Ash's on Friday. I read in the paper that the dead guy was thirty-two. He was stabbed twice, then hit by a car. So. I go to Ash's and chew gum and she talks about how she knew him, through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a fuck.

The usual suspects are there, at Ash's, and we talk about the same shit we usually do. It didn't used to be like this, surface talking and interrupting eye contact so nothing gets too serious. I used to be honest, I used to have intimate friendships, I used to tell Ash everything going on in my head, I used to give Mike real answers and real time together, before this year and smoking weed and giving up on things I used to care about, like school, and finishing all the levels on Tekken, and not doing drugs, and not swearing in front of my parents. When did all that stop? Was there an exact moment? Or did it all slowly become normality? It's all getting blurry in my head, not helped too by being pretty drunk already by eight p.m. Sat in Ashley's, I think about when and why and how I've changed, and I realize there have been several occasions over the past few years that for some reason I remember more vividly than others, moments where reality just appeared to part and slip a little, falling away from itself to reveal a new shape of existence.

About two years ago, Ash and I started to flirt. You don't flirt when you're kids, but at thirteen she told me she'd blown her boyfriend and then I made a crack about her twat. We continued from there, and where we used to be like siblings, now we only ever banter about stuff, we don't really talk.

I felt like shit one day in a Tech lesson when I had been up the night before 'cause Dad was screaming at Mum and I'm the only one that'll scream back. There was a test in the lesson and we marked them straight after we did them. I didn't get an A. I got a D. That might not seem like a big deal now, but I always got A's before this year. The teacher told me in front of everyone that she was disappointed in me, and I exploded at her, livid. I said she should've fucking warned us about the test. I said she was a bitch. I threw my workbooks onto the floor and earned my first serious after-school detention. I gave up. I felt myself, in that lesson, giving up. I used to try so hard. And still nothing came of it, no one was on my side.

I am so tired of this shit, I told myself. Fuck school.

Last October, Mike knocked on my door to see if I wanted to come work my way through all the video games he'd got for his birthday. He stood there holding a few of them and looking like a little kid, while behind me, from inside my house, Danny, stinking like a skunk, approached and said hi. I told Mike I was going out with the lads. He knew what that meant. We were off to Langrick, to Danny's place, to get stoned. I asked him to join us. He said no, blushed minutely and walked back across the estate to his house. Danny didn't notice, but something between me and Mike changed just then, and he didn't come round to my house alone anymore. We used to spend hours at the weekend playing video games, or fucking about in the woods, or even doing our homework together. Now I generally just see him with the gang.

In fact, I tend to only hang out in a gang now. That way you don't have any heart-to-hearts, you don't get down to the truth of the matter. I don't accidentally tell anyone I think I've fucked up somewhere, that I think I might be fucking up right now.

Ash interrupts my train of thought to ask me about Rainbow, hoping we've broken up so she could get fucked. I say she's fine, then loudly in my head: I'm in love with her. I look around to make sure it stayed in my head. Ashley's yawning and picking her nails; Daisy and Trix, let out for the night by her boring-as-shit older man, smoke cigarettes; Jamie, Mike and Limbo flip through the adults-only channels on the telly; Ella and Josh whisper angrily at each other outside the door. It did. And I am. I feel weirdly like crying and, less weirdly, like going to sleep, but do neither.

“Here, Flick, check out the rack on that!” Jamie, gesturing at the screen.

“Shut up, Jamie.”

“Someone's in a mood,” he says. “You had a fight with the fruitloop?”

“She's not a fucking fruitloop.”

“Her parents are both lezzers.” Limbo smirks.

I kick him. “Well it wouldn't work if only one of them was, would it?”

“Well, these things are genetic. Her brother is too.”

I rub my eyes and groan. “There are so many things wrong with that statement, Limbo, I don't think I can comment.”

“Bollocks.” He settles on a channel. “You just haven't got a comeback.”

“I bloody have, it'd just be wasted on you.”

“Yeah,” Jamie laughs. “He hasn't got a comeback.”

“For one thing,” I snap, “two women cannot make a baby so Rainbow is adopted from an orphanage, and unrelated to her brother too, so thanks for being so sensitive.” In actual fact Rainbow is totally fine about the whole adoption thing, but I'm trying to win a stupid argument so I'll try anything—guilt, shame, etc. etc. “For another, I don't think it is genetic actually, is it? It's not proven in any case. And lastly you'd know two minuses make a plus if you weren't such a thick twat.” I'm half-joking.

Mike, who has been quietly starting up the Xbox, snorts and pipes up, “Flick's got his knickers in a twist.” For some unfathomable reason they piss themselves.

Everyone's talking shit and I decide to ignore them. I'm sat on the sofa and I spy a suitcase behind me and start playing with it. I pick up the one and only TV remote, throw it casually in the suitcase and flick the two levers which allow me to reset the numbers on the lock. I close my eyes and spin the metal rings randomly around, shut the suitcase, and put it back behind the sofa without looking, so I can't give the combination away even under torture. I sit smugly on the sofa. That'll teach them all to be wankers.

Nothing. Else. Happens. I walk back home early, around eleven, and play on the PS2 'til I'm too bored to continue. I lie in bed, eat a bit, hate my end-of-the-day combo of near-convex chest and soft belly (how? how the fuck does that happen?), do some push-ups, stare out of the window, think about smoking, can't be bothered, roll over and go to sleep.

MY FAMILY AND THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPION

Mornings are either brilliant, perfect hours of heat and softness and feeling like you're rolling stoned in a fluffy cloud usually precipitating a half-conscious wank, or bastards, where everything is sharp and too stark for your drugged brain. Your alarm clock gives you a panic attack, the sun blinds you and it's so cold your dick shrivels up and dies in protest. This particular morning, the day after the dead-guy incident, I slept for about ten hours and, half-unconscious, am feeling in the dreamy mist of the former when I roll over onto a piece of paper that spells the latter.

“OW.” A crumpled corner pokes my closed right eyelid. “What the fuuuu—?” I roll away from it, back into my own drool. “Ohhhhh.”

“Morning love,” it reads once I've snatched it from under my left shoulder and wiped it dry. “Don't come down naked, Uncle Burt's here. He's brought his chess set. Love, Mum.” I squint at a smaller line, quickly scribbled onto the bottom of the note. “PS: Don't wank either,” dash, “new hearing aid.”

Fuck. Fuckety-fuckety-fuck. This is all my brain thinks before it shuts down for what feels like another hour but is actually, when I check the clock, ten minutes. Uncle Burt is my only relative I know apart from Mum, Dad, Tommo and Tee, particularly 'cause my parents don't get along with any of my numerous aunts and uncles, except for Mum's oldest brother, Burt, who is essentially harmless. He's very clean, eats according to a timetable (it's Saturday so today it's one piece of toast with marmalade for lunch and shepherd's pie for dinner), pees every twenty minutes and plays chess three times a day, every day, on one of his always-polished, hard-carved antique chess sets. Mam says one day, if I'm lucky, I might inherit them all.

Mam has been annoyed with me of late, regarding my behavior with Uncle Burt, because (don't laugh) I used to be his regular chess partner. I'd even go down to the club with him, basically a pub used solely for retired military personnel, and him and me would batter all the rest of his rickety old navy buddies, who would then shake their walking sticks at me in contempt loosely disguised as humor as I picked up all their cash. Burt used to make them bet on every game he had, but when they got wise to the fact he won all the time, he brought in my innocent little eleven-year-old face to clear their pockets clean.

I haven't played with him in more than a year though. He used to call for me all the time and I'd race round on my bike. Now though I beg off, more often than not. Burt says it's just because I've turned into a teenager and I don't want to get out of bed on a Saturday morning for the club chess-off, but in truth it's because most Saturday mornings I've only just got to bed and would still be half-cut if I got up again before noon. Sometimes I think Mam knows. Sometimes I reckon she must hear me, stumbling in the back door at four in the morning. Sometimes I think she's too busy to notice, ever at Tommo's, or at work, or keeping up with all the American crime dramas on Channel 5.

Burt still comes round sometimes, bugs me about playing, says I could be a world champion. It's not the only wasted talent I've ever had, I told him, laughing once. He gave me a strange look, hurt pride and a bit of sadness. Burt only got to the nationals, he'll tell me over and over again. He could have been a “chess celebrity,” as he puts it.

Now . . . Rainbow knows me mam to say hello to, and she likes her, but this is why I don't want Rainbow to meet my family properly. Don't get me wrong, they're all really nice people, it's just . . . they're a fucking motley crew of characters.

“WILL!” A sweet little voice from downstairs. My lovely mam.

“YEAH?”

“D'you want some toast with marmalade?”

I roll my eyes back into my head and turn my whole body so my face dives into my pillow. Fuck me, I'm knackered. “Yeeeeeeeah,” I mumble, my mouth buried in the jungle-pattern fabric I've had since I was seven. “I'll come down for it.”

“WHAT?”

I lift my head up. “I'LL COME DOWN FOR IT.”

“Okay, love, it's on the table,” Mum singsongs back.

When I get down to the kitchen Burt is sat at our Formica table already halfway through his toast. His top button is done up, his tie pushed severely up to his neck. He wears a V-neck sweater, neatly ironed dark blue trousers and lace-up shoes, just like he reckons an old sailor should. He salutes me whenever he sees me, and he always carries a packet of Werther's Originals. The effect is old-fashioned, endearing and a little sad. I feel bad for him that he hasn't found anyone to love and now he's nearing sixty and retired from the navy and living alone in his bungalow on the Brighowgate road in Ness-on-Sea. But maybe he's gay. Then I guess his being alone is even more sad in some ways. Round here I'd imagine if you were gay you could feel really, really alone. Ostracized. That's right, I know how to use a thesaurus. I'm not thick, you know.

“There's plenty of marmalade, Burt,” Mam says.

“Ah,” he says.

“Sit down, Will. There's your knife. Tea, Burt?”

“Ah,” he says. Burt doesn't speak much unless he gets onto chess. We've had some long discussions about chess, me and him, the tactics, the mind games, the glory. Tommo doesn't have much patience for that sort of thing, but I like to listen. I listen to my mam when she needs to talk to someone, I listened to my grandparents (until they died), I listen to Uncle Burt. It's like Kyle's mam. If you call his house she'll never let you off the phone, but she's just lonely. Everybody needs someone to talk to.

“Will.” Burt starts up, harrumphing politely. “Did I ever tell you about the time I played Anatoly Karpov?”

“Aye, Uncle Burt, you did . . .”

Mum winks at me conspiratorially and we both sit down to listen to how Burt met the former world champion in a shorefront restaurant when he was on a navy frigate docking for a refuel in Malaysia, and challenged poor Anatoly to a friendly match. Burt swears blind he beat him, but even Mam doesn't know what to believe. He can tell a tall tale, can Burt, and now with his memory going I'm not sure whether he can tell what's true or not. Still, we've heard the story before and me and Mam chime in on the punch lines, grinning at each other.

It's familial and warm, and I feel a surge of love for my mum and my uncle. We finish Uncle Burt's story in chorus: “. . . and he would never admit it, but I took the bloody wind out his bloody sails!”

Mam looks over at me as Burt nips to the loo. “When's the last time you've seen him then, mister?”

“Not long, Mam,” I lie into my cuppa. “Don't get at me.”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“I've got a lot on.”

“Oh yeah, busy at work is it?” she mumbles sarcastically, avoiding eye contact.

I finish my tea and gasp with pleasure. “You're not wrong, lass! Paperwork is piling up. Really got to get on top of my accounting, get my millions in order.”

She rolls her eyes. “Get away!” There's a pause and I know she wants to say something more but is resisting. I don't know why but she hates to tell me off. Perhaps it's because I'm so charming. She clears her throat and says quietly, “He's been getting worse since you haven't been playing with him, you know.”

“He could still wallop you in a move or two.”

She giggles. “Shut it.”

Then she gets all serious and says some stuff about his health, his looking a bit frail, his memory going. “He keeps repeating himself. I don't like it. He's my brother . . .” She trails off and looks away out the window, as if remembering something, as the loo flushes in the background. Before Burt comes back she looks deep into her mug and whispers, as if talking to no one, “Keeps telling me how to bluff my opponent into falling for fool's mate, as if he hasn't told me a million times, when we were kids and since. It's all about body language, he says. I bloody know, I say every time. He's too young to have his memory go. I don't like it at all.”

Burt's shuffling back into the room, and I don't know what to tell her and I don't know how to feel. I guess he has been more gentle and forgetful lately, but I don't want to see it or think about it. I turn my head away from Mam, start to clear my plate, and before Burt sits down, I say, practically, “It happens to the best of us,” meaning “Pull yourself together, Mam.” I sound, for a minute, like Tommo, like a man, like Dad telling Mam to shut up and stop getting emotional. I stick my dishes in the sink, feeling my cheeks turning inexplicably red, and turn back to the table. “Another cup of tea, Burt?”

“Ah,” says Burt.

Mam glares at me, as if I'm part of the problem. I can't bloody fix anything, I want to tell her, at the same time as wishing I'd given her a hug.

There is an uncomfortable silence while we wait for the kettle to boil, during which Uncle Burt farts, and the phone starts ringing. I make a subtle but assertive dash for it, leaving Mam to fill the teapot.

Family. You love 'em, but sometimes you have to leave 'em.