Heartache High (5 page)

Odd people in
the groups would briefly glance at her, giving her the amused or
sorry looks that they’d given me in the laboratory when I’d first
begun to realise they were there.

She walked right
past me, like I wasn’t there.

She opened the
door to a classroom, looked in on what was a full class, then
turned away with a puzzled, anxious frown.

Should I
approach her, help her out?

Oh sure; like
I
want to be the one who has to tell her, ‘Hi, welcome to
Heartache High; by the way, did you know that you can never
leave?’

*

The class I
choose is one where you just begin to pour out all your thoughts
into a notebook.

It’s supposed to
work as a purging exercise, getting out of your system all the
negative thoughts you have about yourself, trying to come to terms
with your – ultimately – self-inflicted misery.

The aim is to
come up with at least an essay or a discussion that can be used to
help others deal with their own problems.

Now and again,
someone stands up in front of the class, some more confidently than
others, some quite shy and almost stuttering through their
words.

They’ll put
forward an idea they’ve had about, say, what led them into stupidly
falling in love with someone who was never going to return that
love. Or explaining whatever selfish thing they did that ended up
with them forever losing their soul mate.

Then it’s open
to discussion, no holds barred.

It’s not until
the third day here that I stand up in front of the
class.

As soon as I get
up there, I regret it.

I want to back
down, to retire into my own little world once more.

But it’s a class
of people who perfectly understand what I’m going
through.

They can read my
nervousness in my faltering actions.

‘That’s okay
Steph,’ a guy called Billy says loudly yet kindly, ‘chances are you
won’t be saying something we haven’t all lived through. Spill it
all out; for your own good.’

‘It’s this guy,
this guy called Iain…Iain Sinclair…’

*

When I’ve
finished describing my ‘relationship’ with Iain, I cry.

Everyone claps.
Some of the girls, even some of the boys, are crying along with
me.

Everyone seems
affected by my tale.

Because they’ve
all been affected, of course, in an almost similar way
themselves.

As I make my way
back to my seat, there are supportive cries of ‘Well done
Steph.’

They all
appreciate my bravery in standing up there and letting all my agony
pour out.

All apart from
one boy.

He’s wandering
around the class, unable to see me, incapable of seeing any of
us.

He’s been
wandering around like this now for just over two days.

Jassy says it’s
not unusual.

She knew one
girl who continued to aimlessly wander around for almost a month
before she began to realise anyone else was here.

‘It’s part of
the condition,’ Dave had said. ‘The state we’re in when we arrive
here. So locked up in the little compartment of our brain we’ve
retreated to, cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world
because we prefer living in our dream world. A little, self-created
compartment where we can think endlessly about whoever we’ve made
the mistake of falling in love with.’

When one of
these ‘Wanderers’ (as everyone calls them) finally wakes up to
everything going on around them, it’s quite an emotional
experience, especially for anyone like me who only recently went
through exactly the same thing.

Yesterday, the
girl I’d seen reading the carved lettering above the porch had
finally begun to see the rest of the students.

At first, she’d
looked terrified.

Anyone close by
quickly tried to reassure her that everything was okay. That she
was amongst friends. Much as Jassy and Dave had kindly helped me
adjust to the shock of seeing what originally appeared to be
ghosts.

But she’d broken
down in tears.

Then she’d
become hysterical, moving away in terror from anyone attempting to
console her.

She’d run out of
the room. I could still hear her wailing screams as she’d hurtled
down the corridor.

Later, I saw her
coming out of the surrounding woods.

She walked
across the lawns in a daze.

I even wondered
if, somehow, she had returned to the oblivious state she’d been in
when she’d first arrived here.

But no; I could
tell by the way she moved to avoid people that she could still see
them.

She just didn’t
want to know them.

She preferred
living in her own little world.

*

My dreams of
Iain have been getting wilder.

I’m even
slipping into daydreams of him throughout the day.

When they start,
they’re so powerful, so intrusive, I have to walk out of whatever
class I’m attending.

I can’t control
them.

I know I should
be able to.

I know that’s
the whole point of the classes; to come to terms with what we’ve
been suffering. To try and find a reason why we’ve clung onto
nothing more than wishful thinking, rather than immersing ourselves
in the real world.

To work out why
we’ve been cursed in this way, simply because we’ve fallen in
love.

We’ve each got
our favourite classes.

Jassy, she likes
comparing what we’re going through with mythological and fairy
tales. All of which she regards as being ‘the collective
consciousness of human emotions and conditions’.

Yeah, me too
Jassy.

Dave loves
trying to work out the physics of Heartache High; like how and
where it exists in relation to the world we’ve left
behind.

(Everything we
study here comes from the collective knowledge of all the students.
There aren’t any reference books to be found anywhere.)

Me, I decide I
prefer writing my thoughts down. Even though, when it comes to
using the old typewriters we have here, I discover I have dyslexic
fingers.

I have to retype
each line about five times.

Each page is so
thick with correction fluid, it cracks when I pick one
up.

I call it my
primer; my
Heartache High’s Primer for Students.

Writing all my
thoughts down, discussing what I’ve written with the others, trying
to work out a way of helping others come to terms and resolve what
they’re going through – I find it all quite cathartic.

That’s one of
Jassy’s words by the way, cathartic.

‘It means
cleansing, a purgative; from the Greek
kathartikos
.’

I even begin to
flatter myself that I’m following my own advice and thinking less
and less of Iain; but I’m kidding myself.

I can’t let him
go.

I don’t want to
let him go.

He’s the only
real pleasure I have; thinking of being with him, of loving him, of
feeling his love for me.

My
love.

My
curse.

*

I can feel his
touch.

I can feel his
kisses.

It’s
torture.

It’s
bliss.

When I say I can
feel his touch, I mean my skin tingles, it heats up.

My mouth
responds to the sense of his lips against mine.

It’s
embarrassing if anyone’s around to see me.

But I can’t stop
it.

I don’t want it
to stop.

I don’t want it
to ever stop.

I head off back
to my room.

Where I can
enjoy the sense of being alone with Iain.

*

 ‘
Steph; we’re worried about you.’

It’s
Dave.

He and Jassy
have ‘accidently’ run into me as I make my way back to my room from
the refectory.

I’m not in the
middle of a day dream.

But I’m hoping
that, once I get back to my room, I can begin to experience
one.

It’s like a
drug.

A drug I can’t
resist.

The most
powerful drug known to man (and woman).

Love.

It’s probably
the most destructive drug too.

‘It’s not
unusual; we’ve seen it before,’ Jassy says, giving me the kindest
smile she can muster.

‘A regression,’
Dave adds, like he’s Heartache High’s resident psychiatrist. ‘A
retreating back into your imagination, where you feel most secure,
most rewarded.’

I’m a bit
irritated by their way of talking down to me, like I’m some idiot
who needs their help.

But I’m also
flattered that they like me enough to notice that I’m not working
things out as well as I’ve been making out in the classes I’ve
attended.

Flattered, too,
that they want to try and help.

I am an idiot,
after all, aren’t I?

‘I can’t control
it anymore’ I admit. ‘I know it’s crazy, just living in my
imagination like this rather than getting out and enjoying myself.
But it just seems so incredibly real to me. It doesn’t seem like a
dream; it feels like I’m really there with him.’

Jassy slips a
friendly arm around my waist.

‘Don’t go
beating yourself up about it girl! You’d be surprised how many
people here still hold a candle for the person they’ve left
behind.’

‘Yet we don’t
think of our parents, our brother and sisters – how crazy is that,
eh?’

As soon as Dave
says it, I realise he’s right; I’ve hardly spent a moment thinking
of how I miss mum and dad.

Yet when it
comes to Iain – a man who never returned my love, someone who
always ignored me – I can’t stop thinking of him.

‘It’s like it’s
part of our curse,’ Jassy says. ‘Like Prometheus, having to
eternally endure having his liver torn out day after
day.’

‘And there, I
think, Jassy has hit upon something.’

Dave touches the
edges of his glasses, the mark of the professor deep in
thought.

‘Some people
actually quite enjoy being here, regarding it as a punishment for
their inability to secure their love. For others, it’s like a form
of self-harm; you know, where someone deliberately cuts themselves,
as it’s a pain they feel to be in more control of.’

‘I can hardly
say I’m in control of
my
pain. It’s controlling
me
.
And I enjoy it; that’s why I don’t
want
to control
it.’

‘We all still
suffer it to some extent Steph,’ Jassy confesses. ‘Our world can
never be perfect, if our loved one can’t be a part of it. Therefore
we can only create a semblance of the perfect world we desire in
our imaginations.’

‘Wow,’ I
chuckle, ‘trust me to make friends with Mr and Mrs Freud here,
eh?’

They smile,
laugh.

‘Me and Jassy,
we’re friends,’ Dave says. ‘Amazingly good friends; I’ve never met
anyone as wonderful as Jassy. Even the girl I still pine for can’t
compare to her.’

Jassy looks at
him. She nods in agreement, like she knows where he’s going with
this.

‘But we could
never be lovers, Steph,’ she says.

‘Let alone Mr
and Mrs,’ Dave adds bleakly.

*

Jassy and Dave’s
talk should have warned me to at least try and bring my daydreams
under more control.

But, truth is, I
don’t want to.

At last, I’m
with Iain.

Okay, okay; so I
know I’m not
really
with him.

But it
feels
like I am.

It’s the nearest
I’m ever going to get to being with him.

I can’t give
that up.

I still love
him.

I’m an
idiot.

But when I’m
dreaming of him, I’m a
happy
idiot.

*

Iain’s
shocked.

I can see it in
his face.

The way he’s
embarrassed.

He’s embarrassed
for
me
.

The way I’m
acting.

Coming on to him
like…like, well, I don’t know how to describe it!