Solitaire, Part 3 of 3 (4 page)

Sunday 24th August

Up at the crack of 10.30am. Becky et moi went to the cinema today and saw Pirates of the Carribean (is that how you spell it???) 2 and OMG it was SO GOOD. Becky thinks Orlando Bloom is the fittest but I like Johnny Depp best. He is hilarious and brilliant. Then we went to get pizza in the high street she had Hawaiian but obviously mine was plain cheese. YUM! She’s coming round next week for a sleepover too, which is going to be so so fun. She says she needs to tell me about a boy that she likes!! And we’re going to eat so much food and stay up all night and watch films!!!!!

I put the diary back into the bottom of the drawer and sit calmly for several minutes. Then I get it out again and find a pair of scissors and start shredding it, cutting up the pages and the hard cover, slashing and ripping, until there’s just a confetti-like pile of paper shavings in my lap.

Also in the treasure box is an empty bubbles pot. Becky gave it to me for my birthday a long time ago. I used to love bubbles, even if I could never let go of the fact that they’re always empty inside. And then I remember the gif on the Solitaire blog. That’s another thing then. Another thing to add to the list: the violin video and
Star Wars
, all that bullshit. I look at the bubbles pot, feeling nothing. Or everything. I don’t know.

No. I
do
know.

Michael was right. He’s been right this whole time. Solitaire. Solitaire is … Solitaire is talking to me. Michael was
right
.

It doesn’t make any sense, but I know it’s me. It’s all been about me.

I run into the bathroom and throw up.

When I return, I shove away the box, shut the drawer and open another. This one is full of stationery. I test out all of my pens with wild squiggles on the pieces of paper and chuck those that don’t work under my bed, which is most of them. I’m humming loudly to cover up the sounds I’m hearing from the window, because I know that I’m making them up. My eyes keep tearing up then calming down then tearing up again, and I keep rubbing them so hard that I see sparkles even when they’re open.

I grab the scissors again and spend at least half an hour sitting in front of my mirror and trimming my split ends obsessively. Then I find a big black marker and I get this sudden urge to write something. So on my own arm, in the big black marker, I write ‘I AM VICTORIA ANNABEL SPRING’, partly because I can’t think of anything else to write, and partly because I’m feeling as if I need to remind myself that I actually have a middle name.

Solitaire is talking to me. Maybe deliberately, maybe not. But I’ve decided it’s on me, now, to do something about it. It’s all on me.

I move to my bedside table. I take out a few old pens and a few books I haven’t read, and my make-up wipes and my current diary which I don’t write in any more. I open it up, read a few of the entries and close it again. It’s very sad. Very clichéd teenager. I disgust myself. I close my eyes and hold my breath for as long as possible (forty-six seconds). I cry, consistently and pathetically, for a full twenty-three minutes. I turn on my laptop and scroll through my favourite blogs. I don’t post anything on my own blog. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

IT’S BEEN A
weird weekend. Not really knowing what to do, I stayed in bed for most of it, scrolling through the Internet, watching TV, etc., etc. Nick and Charlie came to have a ‘chat’ after lunch on Sunday and made me feel pretty bad for being a lazy slob. So my weekend concludes with Nick and Charlie dragging me to a local music festival at The Clay, which is a grassless field just over the river bridge, bordered by a scattering of trees and broken fences.

Nick and Charlie and I walk across the mud towards the crowds surrounding the stage. It’s not quite snowing yet, but I can feel it coming. Whoever thought that January was a good month for a music festival was probably a sadist.

The band, apparently some London indie band, is so loud that you can hear them from the other end of the high street. While there aren’t any actual lights, every other person appears to be holding a torch or carrying a glow stick, and towards the edge of the field is a violent bonfire. I feel significantly underprepared. I think about running back over the bridge and back up the high street and all the way home.

No. No running home.

“Are you all right?” shouts Charlie over the music. He and Nick are several paces ahead, Nick with a torch shining in my direction, blinding me.

“Are you sticking with us?” Nick points at the stage. “We’re going to go watch.”

“No,” I say.

Charlie just looks at me as I walk off. Nick pulls him away and they disappear into the crowd.

I disappear into the crowd too.

It’s pretty hot and I can’t see much – just the green and yellow of glow sticks and the lights of the stage. This band has been on for at least half an hour and The Clay is now more like The Swamp. Mud splatters my jeans. I keep seeing people I know from school and, every time I do, I give them a large, sarcastic wave. In the middle of the crowd, Evelyn shakes me by the shoulders and screams that she’s looking for her boyfriend. It really makes me dislike her.

After a while, I realise that I keep treading on bits of paper. They’re literally
everywhere
. I’m alone in the crowd when I decide to pick one up and look at it properly, lighting it up with my phone torch.

It’s a flyer. Black background. There’s a symbol in the middle in red: an upside-down heart, drawn in a scrawly sort of way so that it looks like the letter A, with a circle around it.

So that it sort of looks like the symbol for Anarchy.

Beneath the symbol is the word:

FRIDAY

My hands begin to shake.

Before I have time to think any more about what this might mean, I’m pushed right next to Becky, where she’s jumping up and down near the barrier with Lauren and Rita. Our eyes meet.

Lucas is there too, behind Rita. He’s wearing this shirt with little metal edges on the collar, underneath a grandad jumper and a large denim jacket. He’s also wearing Vans and rolled black jeans. Just looking at him makes me feel really sad.

I shove the FRIDAY flyer into my coat pocket.

He sees me over Rita’s shoulder and kind of cowers backwards, which must be pretty difficult in a crowd as packed at this. I point at my chest, not dropping my eyes. Then I point at him. Then I point towards the empty end of the field.

When he doesn’t move, I grab him by the arm and start to pull him backwards, out and away from the crowds and the throbbing speakers.

I’m reminded of when we were ten, or nine, or eight, in a similar situation – me pulling Lucas along by the arm. He never did anything by himself. I was always very good at doing things by myself. I guess I sort of
enjoyed
looking after him. There comes a point, though, when you can’t keep looking after other people any more. You have to start looking after yourself.

Then again, I guess I don’t do either of those things.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. We’ve broken out from the crowd and stopped a little way in front of the bonfire. Various groups of people wander past with drink bottles in their hands, laughing, though the area around the fire is largely empty.

“I’m doing things now,” I say. I take hold of his shoulder and lean forward, quite seriously. “Why –
when
did you turn into a hipster?”

He gently removes my hand from his shoulder. “I’m serious,” he says.

The band has stopped. There is momentary quiet, the air filled only with voices merging into one swirling noise. There are several of those flyers at my feet.

“I sat outside the café for a whole hour,” I say, hoping to make him feel really bad. “If you don’t tell me now why you’re avoiding me, then, like, we might as well just get it over with and stop being friends.”

He visibly stiffens and turns red, visible even in the dim light. It dawns on me that we’re never going to be best friends again.

“It’s …” he says, “it is very difficult … for me … to be around you …”

“
Why?
”

It takes him a while to answer. He smooths his hair to one side, and rubs his eye, and checks his collar isn’t turned up, and scratches his knee. And then he starts to laugh.

“You’re so funny, Victoria.” He shakes his head. “You’re just so funny.” At this, I get a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead, I descend into hysteria.

“For fuck’s
sake
! What are you
talking
about!?” I begin to shout, but you can’t really tell over the noise of the crowd. “You’re
insane
. I don’t know why you’re saying any of this to me. I don’t know why you decided you wanted to be BFFs all over again and now I don’t know why you won’t even look me in the eye, I don’t understand
anything
you’re doing or saying, and it’s
killing
me, because I already don’t understand a single thing about me or Michael or Becky or my brother or
anything
on this shitty planet. If you secretly hate me or something,
you need to spit it out.
I am asking you to give me
one
straight answer,
one
sentence that might sort at least
something
out in my head, but NO. You don’t care, do you!? You don’t give a SINGLE SHIT for my feelings or anyone else’s. You’re just like everyone else.”

“You’re wrong,” he says. “You’re wro—”

“Everyone’s got such dreadful
problems
.” I shake my head wildly, holding on to it with both hands. I start speaking in a posh voice for no reason. “Even you. Even perfect, innocent Lucas has
problems
.”

He’s staring at me in a kind of terrified confusion and it’s absolutely hilarious. I start to crack up.

“Maybe, like,
everyone
I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people.
Nothing
works out. Even when it’s someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother!” I grin wildly at him. “My brother, my little brother, he’s soooo perfect, but he’s – he doesn’t like food, like, literally doesn’t like food, or, I don’t know, he loves it. He loves it
so
much that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?”

I grab Lucas by one shoulder again so he understands.

“And then one day he got so fed up with himself, he was like, he was so annoyed, he hated how much he loved food, yeah, so he thought it would be better if there wasn’t any food.” I start laughing so much that my eyes water. “But that’s so silly! Because you’ve got to eat food or you’ll die, won’t you? So my brother, Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he—” I hold up my wrist and point at it— “he
hurt
himself. And he wrote me this card, telling me he was really sorry and all, but I shouldn’t be sad because he was actually really
happy
about it.”

I shake my head and laugh and laugh.

“And you know what just makes me want to
die
? The fact that, like, all that time, I
knew
it was coming, but I didn’t do
anything
. I didn’t even say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I’d been
imagining
it. Well, didn’t I get a nice surprise when I walked into the bathroom that day?”

There are tears running down my face.

“And you know what’s
literally
hilarious
? The card had a picture of a
cake
on it!”

He’s not saying anything and he doesn’t find it hilarious, which strikes me as odd. He makes this pained sound and turns at a sharp right angle and strides away. I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes and then I take that flyer out of my pocket and look at it, but the music has started again and I’m too cold and my brain doesn’t seem to be processing anything. Only that goddamn picture of that goddamn cake.

“VICTORIA? TORI? ARE
you there?”

Somebody is talking to me on the phone.

“Where are you? Are you all right?”

I am alone on the outskirts of the crowd. The music is gone. Everyone is waiting for the next band, and more and more people begin to join the crush, and it only takes a minute or two for me to be once again trapped in the heaving mass of bodies. The ground is covered in those flyers and people have started to pick them up. Everything is happening very fast.

“I’m fine,” I say at last. “Charlie, I’m fine. I’m just on the field.”

“Okay. Good. Nick and I are heading back to the car now. You need to come too.”

There’s a rustling as Nick takes the phone from Charlie.

“Tori. Listen to me. You need to get back to the car
right now
.”

But I can barely hear Nick.

I can barely hear Nick because something else is happening.

There’s a huge LED screen on the stage. Up until this point, it has been displaying decorative moving shapes, and occasionally the names of the songs being played.

Now it’s gone black, leaving only the dots of the glow sticks spread across the dark crowd. I begin to be jostled closer to the screen, the figures around me irresistibly drawn towards it. I turn away, intending to start to push out of the crowd, and that’s when I see it – there’s a figure, a boy figure, staring blankly from across the river. Is that Nick? I can’t tell.

“Something’s … something’s happening …” I say into the phone, twisting back towards the screen.

“Tori, you NEED to get back to the car. It’s going to get INSANE out there.”

The LED screen changes. It shines pure white, then blood red, then back to black.

“Tori? Hello? Can you hear me?”

There’s a tiny red dot in the centre of the screen.

“TORI!?”

It magnifies and takes shape.

It’s the upside-down heart.

The crowd screams as if Beyoncé has just graced the stage.

I press the red button on my phone.

And then a distorted, genderless voice begins.

“GOOD EVENING, SOLITAIRIANS.”