Solitaire, Part 2 of 3 (2 page)

I found his number posted in my locker yesterday lunchtime. It was written on one of those Solitaire pink Post-its with an arrow drawn on it, except now he’d added his phone number and a smiley face. I
knew
that it was Michael. Who else would
it be?

There’s a long pause before he says: “I promise – I
swear
– that I am a completely real person. Here. On the earth. Living and breathing.”

He waits for me to say something and, when I don’t, he continues: “And I can understand why you would ask me that so I’m not offended or anything.”

“Okay. Thanks for … erm … clearing that up.”

I proceed to explain in the most nonchalant way I can muster that I am locked in an IT classroom.

“Lucky for you that I decided to turn up to help today,” he says. “I knew something like this would happen. This is why I had to give you my number. You’re totally a danger to yourself.”

And then he appears, strolling casually past, phone pressed to his ear, not even aware that I’m only metres from him.

I pound my hand repeatedly on the door window. Michael reverses several steps, uncharacteristically frowning, and peers at me. Then he grins, hangs up the phone and waves wildly.

“Tori! Hey!”

“Get me out,” I say, laying my hand flat against the window.

“Are you sure it’s locked?”

“No, I just
forgot
how to open a door.”

“I’ll open it if you do something for me first.”

I bash the window several more times, as if he’s some kind of animal and I’m trying to scare him into action. “I quite literally do not have time for this—”

“Just one thing.”

I stare at him, hoping that it’s strong enough to paralyse, if not kill him.

He shrugs at me, though I don’t know why. “Smile.”

I slowly shake my head. “What is wrong with you? You don’t understand what just happened to me.”

“If you prove to me you have the capacity to smile, I will believe that you are a human being and I will let you out.” He’s completely serious.

My hand drops. I could not be smiling any less than I am now. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Just let me out.”

“You asked me if I was a real person.” He adjusts his glasses and his voice suddenly quietens. It’s unnerving. “Did it occur to you that I might not believe that
you
are a real person?”

So I smile. I don’t know what it ends up looking like, but I move my cheek muscles and wrench the sides of my mouth up a little to make the crescent-moon shape with my lips. Michael’s reaction reveals that he had not, in fact, expected me to do it. I immediately regret giving in. His eyes stretch wide and his own smile drops and is gone.

“Holy crap,” he says. “That was actually really difficult for you.”

I let it go. “All right. We’re both real. Turn the lock.”

And he does.

We look at each other, and then I start to barge past him, but he steps in front of me, placing his hands on each side of the doorframe.

“
What?
” I’m going to have a breakdown. This guy. Jesus Christ.

“Why were you locked in an IT room?” he asks. His eyes are so wide. Is he … is he
concerned
? “What happened in there?”

I glance to one side. I don’t really want to look him in the eyes. “Solitaire hacked the whiteboard. Sent round a message to the prefects. And a video.”

Michael gasps like a cartoon. He removes his hands from the doorframe and places them on my shoulders. I cower backwards.

“What did it say?” he asks, half amazed, half terrified. “What was the video?”

In any other situation, I don’t think I’d bother telling him. I mean, who cares, right?

“Go look for yourself,” I mutter.

I step back into the room and he skips round me towards the projector computer.

“It’s just something stupid,” I say, collapsing on to a swivel chair next to him. “And actually you won’t be able to do anything on that computer anyw—”

But Michael is moving the mouse totally normally, flying the cursor back towards the Word document.

He reads the entire message aloud.

“Patience kills,” he mumbles. “
Patience kills
.”

He then insists that we watch the video, which I agree to mostly because I thought it was so lovely the first time. When it finishes, he says, “You thought that was ‘just something stupid’?”

There’s a pause.

“I can play the violin,” I say.

“Seriously?”

“Er, yeah. Well, not any more. I stopped practising a few years ago.”

Michael gives me this weird look. But then it’s gone and suddenly he’s impressed. “You know, I bet they’ve hacked the whole school. That is absolutely outstanding.”

Before I have a chance to disagree, he’s opened up Internet Explorer and typed in solitaire.co.uk.

The Solitaire blog pops up. With a new text post at the top of the screen.

Michael breathes so loudly I can hear him.

00:30 11th January

Solitairians.

The first Solitaire meet-up will take place on Saturday 22nd January, 8pm onwards, at the third house from the river bridge.

All are welcome.

When I look up at Michael, he is carefully taking a photograph of the post on his phone.

“This is gold,” he says. “This is the best discovery I’ve made all day.”

“It’s only half past seven,” I say.

“It’s important to make lots of discoveries every day.” He stands back up. “That’s what makes one day different from the next.”

If that statement is true, that explains a lot of things about my life.

“You look so freaked out.” Michael sits down in the chair next to me and leans forward so that his face is parallel to my own. “We made progress. Be excited!”

“Progress? Progress with what?”

He frowns. “The Solitaire investigation. We have made a significant leap forward here.”

“Oh.”

“You still don’t sound excited.”

“Can you imagine me being excited about anything?”

“Yes, I can actually.”

I glare at his stupid, smug face. He starts tapping his fingers together.

“Anyway,” he says, “we’re going to their meet-up.”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Er, we are?”

“
Er
, yeah. It’s next Saturday. I will drag you there if I have to.”

“Why do you want to go? What is the point of this?”

He opens his eyes very wide. “You aren’t curious?”

He’s delusional. He’s more delusional than I am and that’s saying something.

“Um, look,” I say. “It’s perfectly okay to hang out, like, if you want. But I don’t care about Solitaire and, to be totally honest, I don’t really want to get involved. So, er, yeah. Sorry.”

He gives me a long look. “Interesting.”

I say nothing.

“They locked you in this room,” he says, “and you still don’t care. Why not consider it this way: they’re the evil criminal organisation and you’re Sherlock Holmes. I’ll be John Watson. But we’ve got to be the Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman Sherlock and Watson because the BBC Sherlock is infinitely greater than all other adaptations.”

I stare at him.

“It’s the only adaptation that gets the bromance
right.
”

“You’re a
fangirl
,” I whisper, with mock horror.

Another pause, in which I abruptly wonder whether the Sherlock fandom is right and there really is sexual tension between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Eventually, we get up and leave. Or at least I do. And he follows, shutting the door behind him. For the first time, I realise that he’s wearing just his shirt, tie and trousers, no jumper or blazer.

“Aren’t you cold?” I say.

He blinks at me. His glasses are enormous. His hair is so neat that it’s almost made of stone. “Why, are you?”

We head down the corridor and, after we’ve almost reached the end, I notice that Michael is no longer at my heels. I turn round. He has stopped directly in front of C16 and opened it up.

He frowns. It looks a little odd on his face.

“What?” I ask.

It takes him longer than it should to answer. “Nothing,” he says. “I thought there would be something here, but there’s nothing.”

Before I have a chance to question what the bloody hell he’s talking about, someone behind me cries, “Tori!”

I spin back round. Zelda is striding towards me with an expression on her face that will one day provide her with premature wrinkles. “Tori! Have you found anything?”

I think about whether to lie or not.

“No, we didn’t find anything. Sorry.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

I turn back to Michael. Or the space where Michael had been standing. But he’s not there. Only then do I wonder what it really was that made him decide to turn up at school at half past seven in the morning.

I SPEND THE
rest of the day thinking about what Michael had said in front of C16. Later on, I go back to have a look myself, but he was right – there’s nothing.

I guess getting locked in an IT room kind of shook me up.

I don’t tell Becky about any of the Solitaire stuff. She’s very busy spreading the word about her fancy-dress birthday party which is to be held on Friday, and I don’t think she’d really care much.

At lunch, Lucas finds me in the common room. I’m trying to read another chapter of
Pride and Prejudice
,
but I think I’m just going to watch the film version because this book is brain-melting. The common room is pretty empty – everyone’s probably walked up to Asda because the food in our school is prison food.

“All right?” Lucas says, seating himself at my table. I hate that. “All right.” I mean, is it a greeting or a question? Do you respond with “good, thanks” or “hello”?

“Not too bad,” I say, sitting up a little. “You?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

I can physically feel him searching for something to say. After a stupidly long pause, he reaches towards me and taps the book I’m holding. “You hate reading, right? Why don’t you just watch the film?”

I blink at him and say, “Er, I don’t know.”

After another stupidly long pause, he asks, “You going to Becky’s on Friday?”

What a dumb question.

“Er, yeah,” I say. “I assume you are too.”

“Yes, yeah. Who are you dressing up as?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He nods as if what I’ve said actually means something.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll look good,” he says and then quickly adds, “because, you know, when we were little, you were really into dressing up and stuff.”

I don’t remember ever dressing up as anything except a Jedi. I shrug at Lucas. “I’ll find something.”

And then he just turns bright red, like he does, and sits there watching me attempt to read for some time. So awkward. Jesus Christ. Eventually, he gets out his phone and starts texting and, when he goes off to talk to Evelyn, I get to wondering why he is always hovering around like some ghost who doesn’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want to talk to him really. I mean, I thought that it’d be nice to try and rekindle this friendship, but it’s too hard. I don’t want to talk to anyone.

Of course, I tell Charlie everything when we get home. He doesn’t know what to say about Solitaire’s mysterious message. Instead, he tells me I should stop talking to Michael so much. I am not sure what I think about that.

At dinner, Dad asks, “How’d it go this morning?”

“We didn’t find anything,” I say. Another lie. I must be borderline pathological.

Dad starts talking about another book that he’s going to lend me. He’s always lending me books. Dad went to university when he was thirty-two and did an English literature degree. He now works in IT. Nevertheless, he’s always hoping that I’ll turn out to be some philosophical thinker who has read a lot of Chekhov and James Joyce. Coming out as a book-hater to my dad is comparable to coming out as gay to homophobic parents. I’ve never been able to tell him, and he’s lent me so many books now that it’s just too late to repair the damage.

Anyway, this time it’s
Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka. I nod and smile and try to sound a little interested, but it probably isn’t at all convincing.

Charlie quickly changes the subject by telling us about some film he and Nick watched at the weekend,
An Education
, which from Charlie’s description sounds like a total mockery and patronisation of teenage girls worldwide. Oliver then tells us about his new toy tractor and why it’s so much more majestic than all his other toy tractors. To Mum and Dad’s delight, we finish dinner within one hour, which must be a new record.

“Well done, Charlie! Great job!” says Dad, slapping him on the back, but Charlie just winces away from him. Mum nods and smiles, which is about as expressive as she gets. It’s like Charlie’s won the Nobel Prize. He escapes the kitchen without saying a word, and comes to watch
The Big Bang Theory
with me. It’s not a very funny programme, but I still seem to watch at least one episode every single day.

“Who would I be,” I ask at one point, “if I were any of
The Big Bang Theory
characters?”

“Sheldon,” says Charlie without hesitation. “But, like, not as loud about your views.”

I turn my head towards him. “Wow. I’m offended.”

Charlie snorts. “He’s the only reason this show is any good, Victoria.”

I think about this and then nod. “That’s probably true.”

Charlie lies still on the sofa, and I watch him for a minute. His eyes are sort of glazed, like he’s not really watching the TV, and he’s fiddling with his shirt sleeves. Charlie always wears long-sleeved shirts these days.

“Who would I be?” he asks.

I stroke my chin thoughtfully, before declaring, “Howard. Definitely. Because you’re always chatting up the ladies …”

Charlie chucks a cushion at me from the other sofa. I scream and cower in the corner, before hurling a barrage of cushions back at him.

Tonight I watch the Keira Knightley
Pride and Prejudice
and find it to be almost as dreadful as the book. The only tolerable character is Mr Darcy. I don’t see why Elizabeth finds him proud at the beginning because it’s quite clearly obvious that he’s just shy. Any normal human being should be able to identify that as shyness and feel sorry for the poor guy because he’s dreadful at parties and social gatherings. It’s not really his fault. It’s just the way he is.