The Apple Tart of Hope (9 page)

The thing was that Paloma was very impressed with my tarts, and I was glad. What she wasn't too keen on was me being chosen for the talent showcase “just like that” and when she had a chance to explain, I saw that she had a fair point. She'd clicked her long, slender, nail-polished fingers to illustrate how quickly and randomly the decision had been made.

“Surely someone shouldn't be chosen like that without giving other people a chance? Surely everyone should have the opportunity to show what they can do before the winner is selected?”

Mr. O'Leary was insistent.

“Quiet now, Paloma, please,” he'd said. “Of course, we don't
need a competition; we know who we're going to put forward from class 3R. Oscar. Oscar Dunleavy and his beautiful apple tarts with the exquisite motifs—they are amazing.”

“No one ever won a talent competition with
food
,” she'd objected.

“Yes, they did,” Alison Carthy had butted in. “A guy on
Britain's Got Talent
got through to the live shows with artistic toast.”

“Yeah, see, think about how ridiculous that even sounds. Apple tarts are equally weird and our whole class isn't just going to be the laughingstock of the school. If he gets through, the whole bloody world will be laughing at us. It's not fair. Other talented people are in this class. We should at least have a chance to show what we can do.”

Later, at the windows, Paloma said she hoped I appreciated where she was coming from. She hadn't meant to disrespect my skill, and she wanted me to realize that it was nothing personal.

“No offense,” she'd said. “I'm a hundred percent on your side when it comes to your talent. It's just that somebody needs to stand up for democracy and freedom of speech and fairness for all.”

Not bad things to stand up for, I agreed, when I'd had more of a chance to think about it.

He'd promised me that everything was going to be exactly the same. I'd heard him say it, and he'd been looking straight into my face sitting in the window where I thought he was always going to be waiting for me. But Oscar had lied to me and I knew that now, because everything was becoming completely different.

Someone else was in the middle of taking my place, living in my room, hanging out of my window, having huge long conversations with him, helping him with regional talent showcases, and talking to him about apple tarts and competitions and who knows what else, right there in the place where I used to be.

I didn't want to talk to him or email him or send him updates on what was going on. I wanted to punish him, I think. I wanted to punish him for making friends with someone, which goes to show what a horrible person I am. How could I have blamed him for doing that? Oscar was the friendliest guy I'd ever known. It was in his nature to make friends with people, especially new people who were starting at school and didn't know anybody. Newcomers, as everyone knows, are vulnerable and in need of decent treatment.

It was wrong of me to be so jealous. But the sting from those thousands of miles away was sharp and deep and it seemed to harden me and make me turn away from him, which, as I said, is a thing I'd never have predicted I'd have been capable of, until I did it.

Oscar wasn't put off by my lack of communication. He kept on writing, but I knew. I knew how different things had become, and from then on, I felt his sense of duty stamped on the messages he wrote—and that stung me too. He wasn't writing to me because he really wanted to, at least I didn't think he was. He was writing to me because he felt it was the right thing to do, seeing as I was so far away and seeing as he'd said he would.

Oscar, I'd thought bitterly, I don't need your duty. I'm going to show you how much I don't need you. Wait till you see how well I can do without you.

I wasn't able to stop thinking about the letter he'd accidentally got from me and how bloody
mortified
I was that he'd read it—and how even more completely embarrassed I was about how horrified he'd been at the idea of me being in love with him.

I couldn't blame him for not feeling the same way I did. Of course I couldn't—not logically. You can't force people to feel things they don't feel, or to say things they don't mean. But even though it was unreasonable to be angry with him and even though I tried hard not to be, I was, and it's why, even when I did get around to writing to him, this is what I said:

It was cheap and mean of me, I know. Oscar was magic and so were his tarts and everyone should have known that, especially me. But I was jealous and I wanted to hurt him and make him feel small for not liking me. And I didn't want him and Paloma to become the stars of 3R while I was away.

I wish I could take back those things I wrote.

Oscar replied almost instantly, saying he took my point about the tarts but that he didn't have a clue what I meant when I said we shouldn't write. He said he was going to keep writing to me because that's what friends do.

But I wasn't about to change my mind. I got a load more notes from him after that—little thoughts and ideas and reminders of things we'd said to each other. Our windows felt millions of miles away from where I was sitting right then, and the things we'd said to each other were misty to me, and my memories of them were warped and dented because of how far away I felt and because of the stupid letter. That stupid letter. The letter that was never supposed to be sent. The letter I never wanted him to read, especially now that I knew he didn't love me back.

I got a few more emails like that from him, but I didn't answer any of them. The last one I got was four words long.
Meg, where are you?
was all it said.

Two weeks after that was when the news came.

When I came into school on the first of February, my locker had PERV written in huge letters on it. Permanent black ink. “What the hell?” I said to Andy and Greg, who happened to be hanging around nearby.

Andy said, “We dunno, man, but people don't write stuff like that on your locker for no reason,” and Greg said, “You know, Oscar, if you'd liked her, all you had to do was tell her. I mean remember how she was practically offering herself to you at the start?” And then they shrugged their shoulders and I watched them walking away from me, jostling each other along the corridor.

Soon nobody was talking to me. People walked over to the other side of the corridors when they saw me. And they whispered and giggled quite a lot when I was around, and when I asked to borrow Terry Kelly's ruler, she threw it across the room in completely the other direction and someone else caught it and ran off.

I peered into the gym one Thursday after double math to see if class had started, and Brian Dillon walked by and said, “Perving
again are we, Oscar?” and I told him I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and he said, “Yeah right, I bet you don't,” and disappeared before I had a chance to ask him what he'd meant.

Amazing how quickly you can turn from an ordinary boy with no distinguishing features, to a weirdo with an apple-tart habit who hardly anyone would talk to.

I'd started to rethink my whole life—even before I knew the truth about myself. And after that . . . when I knew everything, nothing made sense anymore.

I never totally got the hang of jumping out of the window and scaling the tree. But the night I made my drastic decision, I'd flown down it like some lithe creature of the jungle. It's funny what misery and recklessness can do to improve your skills.

I headed as fast as I could toward my bike, which was shining at the gate where I always left it. It was a dark choice I'd made, and it was going to be irreversible, but I got surer and surer that it was what I was going to do. The pier has a massive drop at the end of it, right beside the long rusty ladder that stretches into the deep.