The Apple Tart of Hope (11 page)

They probably should have told me to stop, but they didn't say a single word—not even when I picked up a mug and threw it on the floor.

If someone who is a friend of yours goes missing, it's important that you go home to recognize what they meant to you. You have to go back to the places where they last were to find out what happened.

It was funny how much work Mum and Dad had done to get me over here, and now we were going to go home anyway, because of Oscar. And for a short while, I'd wondered if I was going to have to have a big fight about it, but I didn't even have to say a word. My parents had agreed that getting home and paying respects to Oscar's dad and to Stevie were more important things to do than for my dad to finish his time here.

“Sometimes things happen and you need to jettison your own priorities,” he'd said to me. I was glad that my parents knew it was the right thing to do. They'd already booked the flights. Two days later, we were packed and the details had been taken care of.

A big part of Dad's research project got handed over to this guy called Jerry Nolan. I said sorry, but Dad said I wasn't to give it another thought. This wasn't my fault, he said, and I didn't have the heart to start explaining how much of it was. He went on about how research projects would come and go, and that none of that mattered right now because they wanted to focus on me, and how I was feeling.

I loved my dad even in the confusing mist that surrounded me during those days. My mum kept stroking my forehead as if I was a really small kid. It was a little bit annoying and not much help or anything, but I didn't say a word to her about it because when someone is trying to comfort you they sometimes need to do quite useless annoying things and you shouldn't stop them.

And for the whole time, nobody asked me to do anything. They didn't get cross with me if I didn't answer them. They stopped giving me the usual instructions, such as pick up after yourself or do your homework or brush your hair. The one time I could have done with a few mundane activities to take my mind off things, was the one time they let me sit in the corner doing nothing.

A couple of my Kiwi classmates called in to say good-bye. They stood around looking awkward and some of them said stuff such as how sorry they were to have heard about my best friend back in Ireland. That was no comfort either, even though I knew they were trying to be nice. They didn't know Oscar.

The things that were in my head were wrapped up, muffled and distant and I couldn't talk to anyone about them. Mostly I sat on my own trying to imagine what I was going to say to everyone when I got back. I was glad when it was time to get a taxi to the airport.

New Zealanders are probably the most cheerful people on the planet. When you've heard that your best friend is missing, being surrounded by cheerful people is enough to drive you insane. My parents drew a protective circle around me, telling me they were here for me and they loved me and that everything was going to be okay. But everything was not okay, and everything was never going to be okay ever again.

We got home on a gray morning. The rain was like pins on my face and the wind wrapped itself around me like an unpleasantly damp
blanket doing the opposite of what blankets are supposed to do. Paloma and her mother were still living in our house so we had to rent an apartment.

Paloma's mum left flowers in the hall of our new place, and a note saying how sorry they were that we had to cut the trip short, and asking were we absolutely sure that we didn't need the house back, and how awful the circumstances of our return must feel. My parents kept going on about what lovely people Mrs. Killealy and her daughter seemed to be.

My new temporary room was so bare it had an echo. My hoodies were packed up in some storage unit. I didn't even have a cardigan. I walked past my old house and glanced up at my window to see if I could see her. I peered into Oscar and Stevie's house, and I looked over at our cherry tree and up at Oscar's window too where the curtains were drawn and the light was off. The chill of his absence was like a big stone, and I had to turn my face away.

Barney had asked me to start from the beginning.

“The beginning of what?” I asked him, and he said, “Try to think of when things started to go wrong. Go back to the moment when you set off along this path, this path where you, you fine young fellow, you charming boy, thought a good option would be to drown yourself in the sea. Have a think about it before you start talking. I have plenty of time.”

And he rustled around the cluttered living room with the big, soft, broken sofa in the middle of it, and he sat in another big chair right next to it and looked straight at me. He had no computer or phone or iPad or even a TV as far as I could see. Towers of dusty books surrounded us.

I could feel something that I hadn't felt for a long time. Something quiet and difficult to spot, but it was the feeling that you get when someone is listening to you. Really listening carefully. And it makes you want to tell things exactly the right way. It makes you want to take your time and explain and get it right.

I told him how much I'd missed Meg, but also how Paloma Killealy was a great new arrival in the neighborhood, and how
everybody liked having her around and how nice her hair was and how everyone thought she was beautiful.

“Okay, then, let's start with Paloma,” he'd suggested, which I supposed was as good a place as any.

“I may have taught her a lot of stuff that I am quite good at explaining, but she taught me a lot too.

“In particular, the thing that sticks in my mind most is what she told me when she first arrived about a thing called The Ratio. It's a useful thing for anyone to be aware of, and if it hadn't been for her, I'd never have known about it.”

“The Ratio?” said Barney, quietly building up the little fire, slowly placing sticks in a pile and then balancing a big wooden block on top of them.

“Yes,” I replied. “The Ratio. Paloma knew a lot about it because she'd moved a total of seven times since she started school. You learn stuff when you move around like that. Not everyone knows about The Ratio, but it's always the same—no matter what school you go to.”

Paloma said it was kind of a universal rule. If you've ever been at school, like ever in your whole life, you should have some inkling, some vague idea that it exists.

For any class of average size, this is roughly the way it goes:

There'll usually be four or five alphas: top dogs, people like Andy and Greg, she told me. They'll walk in slow motion, like astronauts, and they never have to move out of anyone's way. Their lockers are always closest to the door. They don't have to wait in the queue and everyone looks at them when they pass by. Each of the alphas has one or two hangers-on. Nobody really quite understands what's in it for the hangers-on, but they are faithful and true in the way that alphas don't ever seem to deserve.

Invisibles are another group: around seven smart, decent,
quiet, good kids who no one takes much notice of and whose names Paloma predicted everyone would forget within a year of leaving school. And then the “actives” are five cheerful souls who never seem to notice the underbelly that lurks like a watchful reptile in every class. They throw themselves into ten-kilometer runs and colors days and events designed to make school look like a wholesome, simple, happy, straightforward place.

There are three or four serious messers—their sequence on the ladder changes daily: they'll lose their popularity in a split second by flicking a spitball at some target, and accidentally hitting Andy Fewer.

There is a small bunch of outliers: the punky, kohl-eyed, T-shirted, pink-haired, black-booted, notebook-writing, music-listening crew, never quite knowing where they fit in and not being sure if they ever want to.

And that's pretty much it. Except for one more. One other person. The person on the bottom. Nobody wants to be a member of this sad little one-man club, but somebody always is.

“Sounds complicated,” I'd said.

“That's because it is,” she'd replied. “Knowing The Ratio is vital,” she claimed.

“Is it?” I asked her. I told her that our class was not like that. Everyone got on with each other. We didn't have any outliers and certainly nobody who was the “bottom one.”

“Oh yes, you do,” she said, “or if you don't, you will.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

Even as we spoke, I'd already started to worry that I might be missing something. I kept suggesting that maybe The Ratio existed in other places, like the places she had been, but I hadn't seen any evidence of it here. And I remember she'd slid a flat stick of chewing
gum out of its foil and pointed it at me as if it was a wand, to help emphasize the next bit of the lesson.

“Oscar, you're wrong. The Ratio is everywhere. You need to challenge every single one of the things you think are true. There are surface impressions and then there's the reality that sits beneath that surface. Someone like you might be innocent enough to think that studying math and English and science and geography and history are the most important things you need to do to get ahead at school. That's probably what you've been told.

“But listen to me, Oscar, I'm doing you a massive favor by telling you what I know: it's much, much more important to study The Ratio. That's what you really need to understand. It's where the power lies: it's all about who you can afford to annoy, and who you can't. Where you are, and how likely you are to move. How stable your position is. At the moment, that's up in the air for me because this is the beginning—because I'm new.

“You may think that a casual conversation with a harmless-looking person is of no consequence, but you've got to be incredibly careful. The decisions you make matter. They matter very much. And if you get in too deep, it's difficult to go back.

“No one's going to be able to help you if you get stuck in the wrong category. Look at me, Oscar,” she said, and she held me by the shoulders and I could feel her slender fingers kind of digging into me—she spoke as if this was the most important thing I was probably ever going to learn.

“These things do
not
work themselves out. This will not pass. Do take notice. Take a
lot
of notice. This is the rest of your
life
we're talking about. This is not something simple.”

“So are you studying the form at the moment? Have you placed everyone in one of your categories already?”

“Me? Oh goodness no, Oscar,” Paloma replied, using this old-fashioned kind of voice and raising her perfect eyebrows in a high, indignant arch.

“This is the world order I'm talking about. This doesn't come from
me
! Come on, I wouldn't take it on myself to label anyone in that way. All I'm saying is that's what people do. But me? Don't you know me by now? Can't you see that I just want to be everyone's friend?”

Barney said that in his opinion, a thing like The Ratio only existed if people believed in it.

“I know,” I replied. “I mean, I had completely thought that too. At first I'd thought she had it wrong. I thought she was applying some random set of rules to her new environment, the same way she had when she thought boys were supposed to take girls to The Energizer and stuff like that. I kept trying to tell her that The Ratio didn't exist here, but she kept telling me that it did. It was everywhere, she said; it's basically the way human beings work.

“And you see, Barney, it turns out she was right. It turns out that there'd been a vacancy for the Person At The Bottom, and not long after she'd briefed me about it, I was the one who filled it. I must have been the naivest person on the planet—thinking that everyone got along with everyone else—liking the people in my class and assuming that they liked me. But our links with one another had been damaged and poisoned somehow, and it's funny, but no sooner had Paloma told me about The Ratio, than I started to notice it. You see, Barney, coincidentally, it was right then that everything started to go wrong.”

“Doesn't sound like a coincidence to me,” said Barney.

Barney said that everyone must be worried. But I'd put my head in my hands, then, and I'd said, “Please, please don't make me go back.”

That's when he said I could stay as long as I wanted.

“No pressure in the slightest, my dear boy,” is what he said.

And so I started living in his house, which was the messiest house I'd ever been in, in my entire life.

After a couple of nights I got used to hearing him leaving late at night when he thought I was asleep, and in the mornings he always had new information, not that I was too thrilled to hear some of it—seeing as it was about posters with my face on them and newspaper articles about my disappearance. I was interested in the Day of Prayer for Oscar Dunleavy they'd had, though. Barney'd said that everyone in my class had been right up at the front and how everyone had said how terrible it was that I had gone.