Wasted (21 page)

It's funny how it gets to you. Special days. Although this is Jess's prom, it marks the end of Jack's schooldays too. And how can he think of this without thinking of that awful first day?

But he must not think about it too much. It screws you up if you let your mind dwell too much on pain, he knows. And so he enters the house and flings a few prawns and spices together to make his favourite curry. Pours a glass of wine and sits down to see if there's anything worth watching on TV. If not, it'll be a DVD. It won't make much difference one way or the other: it's going to be a long evening.

But the forecast for tomorrow is perfect for surfing, so he looks forward to that.

SYLVIA
is drunk. She wasn't planning to be, but she is remembering Jess's face as she opened the bracelet and money from her father, after breakfast that morning. And then the flowers and champagne had arrived, bigger and more expensive flowers than Sylvia's. Of course, Jess is allowed to be happy. Sylvia knows her reaction is irrational. But that's the whole point about being Sylvia.

Now she is staring at the bottom of an empty glass, wondering who emptied it. And if we stay and watch for too long, we may see a tear fall, and we will be torn between pity and irritation.

SPIKE
jumps in through the catflap. He has been hunting hot summer mice in the night. But suddenly he feels a need to be home. Softly, he slips through the kitchen and up the stairs, straight into Jess's room.

It is very empty. He sniffs the air. He does not like it. Something. What it is he does not know but his back feels all itchy. A shiver runs along it. His hairs stand on end. The tip of his tail flicks from side to side.

He pads to the window, leaps onto the windowsill, weaving between the photos and fat candles, and looks out. The night is thick and warm but not quite dark. It won't be. It's that time of year. Good for hunting.

Spike jumps down and then onto Jess's bed, where he pummels the duvet before he curls himself round and round and round into the smell of her. Still unrelaxed, he begins to wash. It is comforting and rhythmical. But it is not enough.

Eventually, Spike falls into a troubled sleep, and in that sleep his whiskers twitch. There is a pricking of his hackles. He dreams, and in those dreams something nasty this way comes.

JESS
is losing her place in space. Every part of her is unravelling in the lights, the dancing shadows, the music that is so loud that it rocks her cells. It is hard not to scream with pure, raw joy. Her heart is so full that it hurts. This is power. It is better than anything.

She sings in bare feet. It feels more real, gives her more balance. Her black leggings make her legs look even longer than they are. Her hair is beginning to straggle, sweaty tendrils hanging over her eyes and sticking to her cheeks. There is the feel of it on her bare shoulders.

She knows they are playing better than ever in rehearsal. It's obvious from the dancers, the whooping at the end of each song, as the music crashes and hurls itself at them, or fades into a soft fractional silence. There is Jack, his swooping hair wild, just as she loves it, the streaks glinting in the spotlights, his eyes bright, shoulders crouched over the instrument as his long thin guitarist's fingers find each chord. The volume shakes her bones: it is physical.

So hard do they concentrate that it is easy to forget, mostly, that among the dancers are Kelly, Samantha and Charlie, stringing along whichever boys they are playing with that night. Simon may be there, though he does not go to Northseas High. But none of that matters, not to Jess and Jack, who are wrapped up in music. For Chris, Ella and Tommy, as well, the Kelly thing is not worth thinking about. This is not her night. This is the night for Schrödinger's Cats.

Between two songs, while Jack and Chris make adjustments to their guitars, Jess takes a couple of mouthfuls of water; she looks out over the audience, blinking against the spotlights. People are watching her and she loves that feel of their eyes. Among them are Chloe and Farah, with Paul and Marco; and there's Abby and Christa and Toni and … is that Dan with blue hair? They wave at her and shout, and she grins back, doing a thumbs-up. Farah makes gestures towards Jack, a face of approval, and Jess catches Jack's look, grins again. Her heart tumbles and if she could see her own eyes she would see the pupils widen.

The night spins along. Faster. And no one is predicting anything. They are happy in the moment and are looking no further.

Soon it is time for her song. Jess moves to the front of the stage, where someone has put her stool. The floor is dusty beneath her feet. She barely hears Jack introducing her, just senses the settling of the audience. The wolf-whistles. Her heart begins to race – she can hear it in her head. She must steady it. Deep breaths. Sip of water. Take your time.

There's a crash at the back of the hall. Broken glass. A murmur from the floor, people turning. Kelly's head is thrown back and laughing. She stumbles. Shouts something, nothing. Two teachers move towards the commotion and there is some kind of argument. Jess puts it aside and focuses on what she is there for. Those losers can't touch her. They are not part of this, nor of any part of her life. She will shut them out of everything.

Jess takes the guitar and adjusts the strap around her neck. Looks at Jack. A bubble of breath ticks in her throat. He is sitting a little way from her, holding the sand-shaker, ready when she is, ready to keep to her beat. His shirt sticks to his body with sweat; his thin tie is loosened around his throat. Jess perches on the stool, one bare foot on a crossbar, the other on the floor. Uses her toes to balance perfectly. She feels the hard wood under her skin.

Tommy is gently skiffling the drums, his black hair sweaty on his forehead; Ella is fingering the keyboard and rippling clever rhythms while they wait.

They are all ready. Silence. Jess makes eye contact with each of them, a small nod.
Two – three – four
and into the shifting hush she strums the first chord and begins to sing. “The Colour of Loss”. And the band plays around her, softly, so that her voice is swept over them.

Noise at the back of the hall.
Ignore it
.
Kelly will not spoil this.

As she flows into her song, squeezes out the emotion of the words, blends the tones, this time, at last, she
is
thinking about the meaning while she sings. She wonders,
Is grief ever beautiful? Or is it, in fact, always dark?
This time it wrings her out, marbles her with a sadness she has never experienced but can now imagine all too well. It's not just a song any more.

And as she finishes that chorus one last time and the noise of the crowd swells, she looks at Jack and she can tell that she has touched something in him. Perhaps because of the emotion of the night, perhaps because she understands now about his mother. Who knows, but certainly this is a moment where there is more meaning than can be spoken.

“If I had known…” But what she realizes in that moment is that you can't. To imagine knowing the future is like imagining waking up in the morning and you're a cockroach: not worth thinking about because it wouldn't be this world, and you wouldn't be you. You'd be a cockroach in another world.

Pretty pointless. Unlike this world, the real one, the only one, the one in which you have to make choices.

STRANGE
hot tears and the smell of Jack as Jess buries her face in his neck. Feeling faint. She lifts her mouth to his. His hand on her back, crushing her to him. His lips on hers, his tongue. Fingers beneath her chin, holding her up. She is pressed against a wall as a warm night wind blows around them, chilling the sweat on her arms. Jess shivers.

“You are brilliant. Beautiful.” He wipes a tear from her cheek. “And silly.”

Ella is calling them. “Are you two coming or not?”

They disentangle themselves, more or less, and walk together towards where Ella is waiting with Chris, Tommy and some others. Jess has already said goodbye to some of her friends – they're going to a club and maybe a party in someone's house. Jack and Jess are off to the beach with a different crowd. Bonfire, some chips from the chippy on their way, a few drinks, watch the stars, toast marshmallows. They've even brought the marshmallows with them – “Hanging on to our childhoods a bit longer,” Ella had said. An after-show beach party was the plan. And on such a warm night, with a soft Saharan wind, Jess can think of nothing better. She wants fresh air, not the staleness of a hundred other people. Yes, she'd have liked her other friends to come too but nothing matters more than being with Jack, and she will see them again often anyway. It is not goodbye. But she wants to keep hold of every moment of this night.

She has the coin in her back pocket, because Jack made sure she had it with her before she left her house all those hours ago.

“Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“Just in case we
decide
to use it, of course.” And he grinned at her, his hair swooping over one eye. He'd done a complicated job with the styling gel for this evening. Now, of course, his hair is all over the place. Well, it is always all over place, but now this is chaotically so, rather than designed.

And now, at one in the morning and the sky ebony clear, eating fat chips from paper steamy with vinegar, he is not thinking about the coin. He is not thinking about the game which has ruled the last few years of his life. Or the stories of people like Tommy Allsup and the guy who'd been killed by a tortoise falling on his head. It is an exaggeration to say he has forgotten – rather, he has put it away in a cupboard and closed the door. It may be lurking but it is hidden. And the Farantella thing is concealed in shadows. Even Jack's done a pretty good job of dismissing her warning as nonsense. Logic appears to be winning.

A growing wind gusts around them, bringing a dry unexpected heat. There is the smell of seaweed and salt. The bars along the front fade far into the background as they all walk further along the beach, to the end, almost by the rocks.

The surf is strong tonight, smashing against the shore. Moonlight shines on the white froth as it stretches far out, curling and fuming.

Loudly they walk, all of them, along the sea wall away from the town. Though “walk” is quite the wrong word for what they do. They balance, teeter, joke around. They bowl along, like leaves skittering in a breeze.

Behind them, the noise and lights become tiny. Everyone jumps down onto the beach, some of them stumbling, others deliberately falling, kicking the sand with their toes. Ella runs towards the water's edge and Chris runs after her. They splash through the shallows. Jess has a sweatshirt and jeans on now and she has kicked off her shoes again. She is neither too hot nor too cold. Everything feels right. There are no shadows for Jess tonight. She has thoughts for no place but here, no time but now.

“Let's get the fire going,” says Tommy. And they look around for driftwood in the tidemarks and further away from the wall, in the stubby grasses where the beach ends. Soon, a sizeable pile has grown and Tommy has taken over the construction.

They are prepared with matches for the fire and a couple of rugs and plastic glasses and some bottles of cheap drink. Thought has gone into this evening. There are several small groups, who begin make their own fires along the beach. Tonight, the beach belongs to them, as the fluid friendships of recent years gather and separate like oil on water.

Soon Jack and Jess's group are sitting or lying around the crackling fire. Wood snaps and sparks. Wind tears the flames, ripping at them, wafting sharp smoke away. Jack has his arm around Jess and she leans against him. They are looking towards the sea, drinks in hands.

Jess is drinking vodka. Not much. And slowly. She has no desire to miss any moment of this night. Jack, too. Getting drunk is not part of their plan. He stretches for the bottle of lemonade and they top up their drinks with that. Some are drinking more, but everyone is in control. They talk and laugh and everything is more than usual: the sky is bigger, the stars more numerous, the crashing of the waves louder. And the flames surge higher as Tommy brings more and more wood. He is the King of the Wood-gatherers, he has decided.

Marshmallows are speared on to sticks and held over the flames. Sugar shrivels and drops and hisses. The tips of tongues test the burnt caramel. Soft squelching in the mouth, creamy fullness and a sweet taste. Melting marshmallow is great dipped in vodka, they discover.

The fire toasts their faces. Jack wipes a smoky smudge from Jess's nose.

“Let's play a game,” says Chris.

“Spin the bottle?” suggests Ella.

“Good idea,” calls someone from a nearby group, joining them.

“Need to finish it first.” And Tommy does. He tries spinning it but finds that you can't spin a bottle properly on a sandy beach. A frown corrugates his forehead as he struggles to change the laws of nature.

“Or something with dares.”

“Like what?”

“Tossing a coin,” says Ella. “You call and if you're wrong everyone else gets to choose a dare.”

Jack looks at Jess. She shrugs. It sounds like harmless fun. It could be. If we look back on it afterwards, we will not call it harmless fun, but that doesn't help us now.