Forbidden (17 page)

When the sound of my footsteps reaches him, he veers off across the road, lengthening his stride stil further. Even as I draw level with him, straining for breath, he raises his arm and knocks away my outstretched hand.

‘Just leave it, wil you? Just go back and leave me the hel alone!’

‘Why?’ I shout back, gasping in icy air as the rain lances my hair and face with sharp, wet needles. ‘What on earth have I done that’s so awful? I crept up to surprise you. I wanted to tel you that Mum had come back and I’d cornered her into taking the kids to the cinema. When we started kissing, I just wanted to touch—’

‘D’you realize how fucking stupid that was? How dangerous? You can’t just suddenly do stuff like that!’

‘Lochie, I’m sorry. I thought we could at least touch each other. It doesn’t mean we would have gone any further—’

‘Oh, realy? Wel, you can forget your fucking fairy tale! Welcome to the real world!’ He turns briefly – long enough for me to make out a face mottled with fury. ‘If I hadn’t stopped it, d’you realize what would have happened? It’s not just disgusting, Maya, it’s fucking ilegal!’

‘Lochie, that’s crazy! Just because we can’t have sex doesn’t mean we can’t touch each other and—’ I reach out for him but he shoves my arm away again. Abruptly he turns down the aley towards the cemetery, only to find a padlocked fence at the end. With nowhere to go, he stil refuses to turn back towards me. Standing in the middle of the rain-soaked road, my hair whipping against my face, I watch him grab the wire-mesh fence, shake it dementedly, punch it with both hands, kick at it wildly.

‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ I scream at him, my fear suddenly replaced with anger. ‘Why would this have been such a big deal? How would this have been any different to what happened that time on the bed?’

He whirls round, crashing violently back into the fence. ‘Wel, maybe that was a fucking mistake too! But at least – at least then one of us wasn’t half undressed! And I’d have never – I’d have never let it go any further—’

‘I wasn’t planning to this time!’ I exclaim in astonishment.

He sags back against the netting suddenly, the fury dissipating into the night like the white breath from our mouths.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ he says, his voice hoarse and broken, and abruptly my anger is joined by a cold rush of fear. ‘It’s too painful, it’s too dangerous. I’m terrified – I’m just terrified of what we might end up doing.’

His despair feels almost tangible, draining the frozen air around us of every last shred of hope. I wrap my arms around myself and begin to shiver.

‘So what are you saying?’ My voice begins to rise. ‘If we can’t have sex, you’d rather we did nothing at al?’

‘I guess so.’ He stares at me, his green eyes suddenly hard in the lamplight. ‘Let’s face it, this is al pretty sick. Maybe the rest of the world’s right. Maybe we’re just a couple of fucked-up, emotionaly disturbed teenagers who just—’

He breaks off, pushing himself away from the fence as I slowly back away from him, pain and horror rushing through me like liquid ice.

‘Maya, wait – I didn’t mean that.’ His expression changes abruptly and he approaches me cautiously with his arm outstretched as if I’m a wild animal, ready to flee. ‘I – I didn’t mean that. I –

I’m not thinking straight. I got carried away. I need to calm down. Let’s just go somewhere and talk. Please . . .’

I shake my head and move in a wide arc around him, suddenly breaking away and hurling myself through a gap at the edge of the mesh.

Once inside, I turn into the bitter wind, heading up the darkened, cracked path, littered with the usual beer bottles, cigarette stubs and syringes. The glow of the streetlamps reaches me from a great distance, the sound of traffic fading to a distant murmur, the outlines of abandoned, broken gravestones nothing more than amorphous shapes in the dark. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t. I trusted him. I try to make sense of what just happened, to process Lochan’s words without completely faling apart. To somehow accept that the magic of that one night when we first kissed and the afternoon in my room was, to him, simply a dreadful, perverted mistake, to be filed away at the back of our minds until we can eventualy kid ourselves it never happened. I need to try to absorb Lochan’s true feelings about the situation – the feelings he has been hiding from me since this first started. And I need to work out how to survive this sudden revelation. But how can anything hurt so much? How can just those few words make me want to curl up and die?

‘Maya, come on.’ I hear his feet thudding on the path behind me and a scream begins to build in my throat. I have to be alone right now or I wil lose my mind, I will.

‘You know I didn’t mean any of that stuff! I was just embarrassed that I – that I nearly . . . you know. I was just scared of my own feelings, of what we might have done!’ He looks frantic and wild.

‘Please, just come back to the house. The others wil be back in a minute and they’l be worried.’

The fact that he thinks he can appeal to my sense of duty shows how little he understands the effect of his earlier words, the violence of the emotions coursing through me. He tries to grab my arm.

‘Get off me!’ I scream, my voice magnified in the silence of the cemetery. He recoils as if he’s been shot, shielding his face from the hysteria in my voice. ‘Maya, just try to calm down,’ he begs me, his voice shaking. ‘If anyone hears us, they’l—’

‘They’l what?’ I interrupt aggressively, whipping round to face him.

‘They’l think—’

‘Think what?’

‘They might think I’m attacking—’

‘Oh, it’s al about you!’ I scream at him, sobs threatening to explode in my throat. ‘This whole thing – it’s always been about you! What wil people think? How wil I look? How might I be judged?

Whatever feelings once existed between us clearly mean nothing to you compared to your pathetic fear of other people’s narrow-minded, bigoted, parochial prejudices that you once despised but now adopt as your own!’

‘No!’ he yels desperately, launching himself after me as I start striding off again. ‘It’s not like that

– it’s got nothing to do with that! Maya, please listen to me. You don’t understand! I just said those things because I feel like I’m going crazy: seeing you every day but never being able to – to hold you, to touch you when anyone else is around. I just want to take your hand, kiss you, hug you, without having to hide it al the time. Al those little things every other couple just takes for granted! I want to be free to do them without being terrified that someone wil catch us and force us apart, cal the police, take the kids away, destroy everything. I can’t bear it, don’t you understand? I want you to be my girlfriend, I want us to be free—’

‘Fine!’ I scream, tears springing from my eyes. ‘If it’s al so sick and twisted, if it’s causing you so much grief, then you’re right, we should just end it, right here, right now! That way at least you won’t have to walk around with some awful guilty conscience, thinking how disgusting we are for having these feelings for each other!’ Frantic now to get away, I break into a stumbling run.

‘For chrissakes!’ he yels after me. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? That’s the last thing I want!’

He tries to grab me again, tries to force me to slow down, but I can’t – I’m going to fal apart, break down in tears, and I refuse to have him or anyone else as my witness. Spinning round, I slam my hands against his chest and push him as hard as I can. ‘Just get away from me!’ I scream. ‘Why can’t you just leave me alone for five minutes? Please go home! You’re right, we should never have started this! So get away from me! Just give me some space and time to think!’

His eyes are frantic, his expression stricken. ‘But I was wrong! Why won’t you listen to me?

What I said was bulshit – I just lashed out in frustration, this is not what I want!’

‘Wel, it’s what I want!’ I shriek. ‘God forbid you should stay with me out of pity! Everything you said is true: we’re sick, we’re twisted, we’re deranged, and we have to end this now! So what the hel are you stil doing here? Go home to your normal, socialy acceptable life and we’l pretend nothing ever happened!’

I’ve completely lost it. Hammers pound against my skul and red lights zigzag in the darkness. But I’m afraid that if I don’t keep screaming at him in blind fury, I’m going to colapse in tears. And I don’t want him to see that: the last thing I want is for him to feel sorry for me, to feel he has to pretend to be in love with me, to realize I can’t live without him.

With a desperate cry, he moves towards me, reaching out for me again. I take a step back. ‘I mean it, Lochan! Go home! Don’t touch me or I’l shout for help!’

He withdraws his outstretched arm and steps back in defeat. Tears fil his eyes. ‘Maya, what the hel d’you want me to do?’

I take an uneven breath. ‘Just go,’ I say softly.

‘But don’t you understand?’ he says in quiet despair. ‘I want to be with you, no matter what. I love you—’

‘But not enough.’

We stare at each other. His hair is ruffled by the wind, his green eyes luminous in the darkness, the zip of his black jacket broken, revealing his grey T-shirt beneath. He shakes his head, his eyes scanning the dark cemetery around us as if searching for help. He looks back at me and a harsh sob escapes him. ‘Maya, that’s not true!’

‘You just caled our love sick and disgusting, Lochan,’ I remind him quietly. He claws at the sides of his face. ‘But I didn’t mean it!’ His chin starts to tremble. A sharp pain rises through me, filing my lungs, my throat, my head – so sharp I think I might colapse. ‘Then why would you say it? You meant it, and now so do I. You’re right, Lochan. You’ve made me see this whole sordid mess for what it is. Just a terrible mistake. We were both just bored, disturbed, lonely, frustrated – whatever. We were never in love—’

‘But we were!’ His voice cracks. He screws up his eyes and presses his fist against his mouth to muffle a sob. ‘We are!’

I look at him, numb. ‘Then how come it’s gone?’

He stares at me, aghast, tears wet on his cheeks. ‘W-what are you talking about?’

I take a steadying breath, bracing myself against an onslaught of tears. ‘I mean, Lochan, how come I don’t love you any more?’

Something inside me has broken. There are moments during the day when I just grind to a halt and simply cannot find the energy to draw another breath. I stand there, immobile, in front of the cooker, or in class, or listening to Wila read, and al the air exits my lungs and I cannot muster the strength to fil them again. If I keep breathing, then I have to keep living, and if I keep living, then I have to keep hurting, and I can’t – not like this. I try to divide the day up into sections, take it one hour at a time: get through first period, then second, then break, then third, then lunch . . . At home the hours are broken down into housework, homework supervision, dinner, bedtime, revision, bed. It’s the only time I’ve ever been grateful for the relentless routine. It keeps me going from one section to the next, and when I start to think too far ahead and feel myself crumble, I manage to reel myself in by teling myself, Just one more section, and then just one more after that. Get through today – you can fall apart tomorrow. Get through tomorrow, you can fall apart the day after . . .

When Maya told me she no longer loved me, I had no choice but to retreat, to retract. At first I told myself it was said in anger, a reaction to my own stupid words – my inane declaration that it had al been a sick mistake – but now I know differently. I play and replay that phrase in my head, wondering where on earth it came from when I never believed it for a single moment. It must have been the anger of the moment, my embarrassment and shame – shame at wanting more than I could ever have – that made me blurt out the most hurtful, hateful thing that came to mind. Instead of coping with my own misery and frustration, I’d turned on Maya, as if by blaming her I could absolve myself .

. .

But now, through my own stupidity and selfish cruelty, I have lost everything, degraded everything, even our friendship. Despite the sadness in her eyes, Maya has been very good at going back to normal, pretending everything is fine, being friendly while keeping her distance. No awkwardness that might alarm the others – in fact she is almost cheerful. So cheerful that at times I even wonder whether she is not secretly relieved it’s al over, whether she actualy does believe it was al a sick mistake, an aberration, born out of physical need. She has stopped loving me, Maya has stopped loving me . . . And this one thought is slowly eating away at my mind.

Concentrating at school has long become a thing of the past; now, to my horror, teachers notice me, and for al the wrong reasons. I barely manage half a page of trigonometry before realizing I have been sitting immobile, staring into space, for the best part of an hour. They ask me if I’m al right, if I need to see the nurse, what it is I don’t understand. I shake my head and avoid meeting their eyes, but without the counterbalance of top grades my reticence is no longer acceptable, and so they summon me to the front, demanding answers to questions on the board, afraid that I am faling behind, that I am going to let them down by failing to gain an A in their subject this summer. Summoned to the whiteboard in front of the whole class, I fumble my way through easy questions, make stupid mistakes, and watch the bewildered horror spread across the teachers’ faces as I return to my desk amidst jeers and laughter, al too conscious of the sniggers of satisfaction that Weirdo Whitely has finaly lost the plot.

In English we are doing Hamlet. I’ve read it a number of times so I don’t feel the need to even pretend to focus. Besides, Miss Azley and I have had a tacit agreement ever since her unfortunate pep talk: she does not pick on me in class so long as I volunteer an answer once in a while, usualy to help her out when no one else can come up with even the most asinine response. But today I am not playing bal: the double lesson is wel into its second hour and the now familiar ache in my chest has morphed into a stabbing pain. I drop my pen and stare out of the window, watching a length of broken TV cable twist and writhe in the wind.

‘. . . according to Freud, the personal crisis undergone by Hamlet awakens in him repressed incestuous desires.’ Miss Azley waves the book in the air and paces to and fro in front of the class, trying to keep everyone awake. I feel her gaze pause on the back of my head and I snap round from the window.

‘Which brings us to the Oedipus Complex, a term coined by Freud himself at the beginning of the twentieth century.’

‘You mean when a guy wants to have sex with his mum?’ someone asks, voice sick with disgust. Suddenly Miss Azley has their attention. The class is buzzing.

‘But that’s mental! Why would any guy want to fuck his own mum?’

‘Yeah, you hear about it on the news and stuff, though. Mums who fuck their sons, dads who fuck their daughters and their sons. Brothers and sisters who fuck each other—’

‘Language, please!’ Miss Azley protests.

‘That’s bulshit. Who would want to fuck – sorry, screw – their own parents?’

‘It’s caled incest, man.’

‘That’s when a guy rapes his sister, dickhead.’

There is a light flashing in my brain, like the head-lamps of a train in the dark.

‘No, it’s—’

‘OK, OK, we’re getting off topic here! Now remember, this is only one interpretation and has been refuted by many critics.’ As she stops to perch on the edge of her desk, Miss Azley’s eyes suddenly meet mine. ‘Lochan, nice to have you back with us. What do you think about Freud’s assertion that the Oedipus Complex was Hamlet’s primary motive for kiling his uncle?’

I stare at her. I’m suddenly deeply afraid. Through the instant silence, my face is scorched by an invisible flame. Gripped by panic bordering on hysteria, I worry, with a sickening lurch, that perhaps it is no coincidence Miss Azley has chosen me to open this discussion. When was the last time she picked on me to answer anything? When has the subject of incest ever come up before? Her eyes dril into mine, burning holes straight through to my brain. She isn’t smiling. No, this is planned –

contrived, premeditated and deliberate. She is waiting for my reaction . . . I suddenly recal how I ran into her outside the nurse’s office after Maya’s fal. She must have been there, helped bring her round, asked her questions. Maya hit her head, was possibly even suffering from concussion. What reason did she give for her faint? How much time elapsed between her fal and my arrival? In her confused state, what might Maya have said?

The eyes of the class are upon me. Every single person has turned round in their seat to gape. They too appear to be in on it somehow. It is al one giant set-up.

‘Lochan?’ Miss Azley has moved away from her desk. She is walking rapidly towards me, but for some extraordinary reason I cannot move. Time has stopped; time is racing. My desk rattles against me as if the ground is being shaken by an earthquake. My ears fil up with water and I focus on the humming in my head, the electric grid of my mind snapping and flashing with light. A strange sound fils the room. Everyone is frozen, staring, waiting to see what wil happen next, what terrible fate awaits me. Perhaps Social Services are already in the school. The world outside swels and presses in at the wals, trying to reach me, trying to eat me alive. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s happening like this

. . .

‘You need to come with me, Lochan, OK?’ Miss Azley’s voice is firm but not unkind. Perhaps she even feels some degree of pity. I am, after al, sick. Sick as wel as evil. Maya herself told me that’s what our love was.

Miss Azley’s hands cuff my wrists. ‘Can you stand? No? OK, just sit where you are. Reggie, would you run and fetch Mrs Shah and ask her to come immediately? The rest of you – library, right now, in silence please.’

The requiem of scraping chairs and clattering feet drowns me. Flashes of blinding colour and light. Miss Azley’s face blurs and fades before me. She is summoning the nurse, the other person involved in rescuing Maya from her fal. But something else is happening too. Beneath my arm, my desk continues to rattle. I look around, and everything appears to be moving, the wals of the emptying class threatening to topple down on us like a pack of cards. My heart keeps stopping and starting every few seconds, knocking wildly against the cage of my chest. Each time it stops, I feel this terrifying emptiness before the contraction returns with a flutter, then a violent thud. Oxygen is being drained from the room: my frantic efforts to breathe and remain conscious are in vain, darkness is slowly closing in. My shirt clings wetly to my back, rivulets of sweat running down my body, my neck, my face.

‘Lovey, it’s al right, it’s al right! Sit stil, don’t struggle, you’re going to be fine. Try and sit forward a bit. That’s it. Put your elbows on your knees and lean forward and it’l help your breathing. No, you’re fine where you are – hold stil, don’t try and get up. Wait, wait – al I’m doing is removing your tie and undoing your colar. Leila, what are you stil doing here?’

‘Oh, miss, is he gonna die?’ The voice is high-pitched with panic.

‘Of course not, don’t be sily! We’re just waiting for Mrs Shah to come and check him out. Lochan, listen to me now – are you asthmatic? Alergic to anything? Look at me – just nod or shake your head . . . Oh Christ. Leila, quickly, go through his bag, wil you? See if you can find an inhaler or tablets or something. Check his coat and blazer pockets. Look in his walet – see if you can find any kind of medical card . . .’

She is acting very strangely, Miss Azley, as if she’s stil pretending – pretending she doesn’t know. But I no longer have the strength to care. I just want this to stop. It’s too painful, these electric shots being fired through my chest and into my heart, al the muscles in my body spasming out of control, rocking the chair and shaking the desk, my body surrendering to some greater force.

‘Miss, miss, I can’t find no inhaler or nothing! But he’s got a sister in the lower sixth – maybe she’l know?’

Leila is making these odd, whimpering noises, like a dog being beaten. Yet when she moves away, the sounds grow closer. It can’t be Miss Azley, so there must be some animal, cowering in the corner .

. .

‘Lochan, hold my hand. Listen to me, love, listen. The nurse wil be here any second, OK? Help is on its way.’

Only when the whimpers intensify do I realize they are actualy coming from my own mouth. I am suddenly aware of the sound of my voice, scratching against the thin air like a saw.

‘Leila, yes, his sister, good idea. See if you can find her, wil you?’

Time hiccups; it is either later or sooner, I can’t tel which. The nurse has arrived, I’m not sure why

– I’m confused about everything now. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they are actualy trying to help me. Mrs Shah’s got a stethoscope in her ears and is puling open my shirt. I immediately lash out but Miss Azley grabs my arms and I am too weak to even push her away.

‘It’s al right, Lochan,’ she says, her voice low and soothing. ‘The nurse is just trying to help you. She’s not going to hurt you. OK?’

The sawing noise continues. I throw back my head and screw up my eyes and bite down to stop it. The pain in my chest is excruciating.

‘Lochan, can we get you off this chair?’ the nurse is asking. ‘Can you lie down on the floor so I can take a proper look at you?’

I cling to the desk. No. They are not going to pin me down.

‘Should I cal an ambulance?’ Miss Azley is asking.

‘It’s just a bad panic attack – he’s had them before. He’s hyperventilating and his pulse is wel over two hundred.’

She gives me a paper bag to breathe into. I twist and turn and try to push it away but I haven’t the strength. I have surrendered. I’m not even trying to struggle any more, but even so the nurse has to ask Miss Azley to hold the bag over my nose and mouth.

I watch it inflate and then crumple in front of me. Inflate and crumple, inflate and crumple, the crackling sound of paper filing the air. I try desperately to push it away – it feels like they’re suffocating me: there is no more oxygen left in the bag – but I have a dim recolection of breathing into a bag like this before, and it helping.

‘OK, Lochan, just listen to me now. You were breathing much too fast and taking in far too much oxygen, which is why your body is reacting like this. Keep breathing into the bag. That’s it – you’re doing much better already. Try to slow your breathing down. It’s just a panic attack, OK? Nothing more serious than that. You’re going to be fine . . .’

Breathing into the bag lasts for ever, or it takes less than a minute, a second, a milisecond; it takes so little time that it does not happen at al. I’m holding onto the side of my desk with my head resting against my outstretched arm. Everything is stil shaking around me, the desk vibrating beneath my cheek, but it’s getting easier to breathe – I am concentrating on regulating my breaths carefuly now and the paper bag lies discarded by my side. The electric shocks seem to be less frequent, and I’m beginning to see and hear and feel things around me more clearly: Miss Azley is sitting beside me, her hand rubbing the back of my damp shirt. The nurse is kneeling on the floor, her finger and thumb cold against my wrist, the stethoscope dangling from her ears. I notice her brown hair is greying at the roots. I can make out a sheet of my own scrawled handwriting beneath my cheek. The sawing noise has faded, replaced by short, sharp sounds like hiccups, similar to the ones Wila makes after a long crying jag. The pain in my chest is lifting. My heart is steadier now – an aching, rhythmical thud.

‘What happened?’

The familiar voice startles me and I struggle to sit up, my hand grasping feebly at the edge of the desk to stop myself from pitching forward. The jagged breaths intensify and I start shaking again. She’s standing right in front of me, between the nurse and the teacher, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth, blue eyes huge with fright. Relief at seeing her floods through me and I reach out for her franticaly, afraid she wil suddenly walk away.

‘Hey, Lochie, it’s al right, it’s al right, it’s al right.’ She takes my hand in hers, gripping it tightly.

‘What on earth happened?’ she asks the nurse again, panic threading her voice.

‘Nothing to worry about, love, just a panic attack. You can help by keeping nice and calm yourself. Why don’t you sit with him for a bit?’ Mrs Shah snaps her medical bag shut and moves out of sight, folowed by Miss Azley.