‘Forget it, yeah.’
The dog walker completes another lap. ‘But his car, now we’ve run off and—’
‘I was only planning to move it, to let him know I know. About her, about that place. That’s all.’
‘I didn’t even know you could drive.’
He snorts. ‘I think it’s pretty clear that I can’t,’ he says, smiling like it’s hard work. ‘But as soon as I heard the engine I just needed to … feel something.’ He whispers it, like he’s talking to himself. His eyes close and I immediately want to tell him all the things I should right now, like that I’m here for him when he wants to talk. I’m working out the best way to say it when his mouth opens and he breathes out hard. ‘Ugh,’ he says. ‘I’ve had enough aggro for one morning.’ And he gets up, like he’s decided himself this is the end of the matter.
He picks up his bike and looks up at the sky like he’s checking it’s still there. I feel so sad for him that his parents are separating but I feel worse for not knowing anything about it. In all this time I never thought to ask how things were and I’m kicking myself. He puts his foot down and steadies himself for me to climb up behind but I shake my head and amble along on the footpath instead. We don’t talk again until we’re on the other side of Camden Road.
As we round the corner into St Agnes Villas he bounces down the kerb. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he says, making a face. I shove his shoulder, pushing him further out on to the road in case he sees me smile. We’re by the recycling bins when he puts his foot down again. ‘Can I come back to yours?’
I walk on. ‘We don’t have any Coco Pops, just to warn you.’
‘But you eat them for dinner?’
‘No, that was Crunchy Nut and we only did it while Mum was sick.’ We were never allowed those cereals until the grapefruit, but then Dad couldn’t give us enough sugary crap. ‘Things change,’ I say. ‘I’m trying not to buy them these days. Arial can put away a family box within hours.’
He nods. ‘How old is she now?’
‘Ten.’ The age I was when I met you, I think.
He shakes his face like it hits him too. ‘What’s she up to?’
‘Gymnastics. And watching TV, often at the same time. If she’s not cartwheeling, she’s online, watching someone else upside down.’
He almost smiles at this and we make our way along the narrow path to our hall door in single file. He strolls inside, hopping on to the worktop by the sink, making everything look even smaller. I shake last night’s pizza boxes and slide the heaviest one towards him. ‘Knock yourself out. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, drying my wet cheeks with a towel, like I’m still dreaming. My head is like an upside-down triangle. Heart-shaped, I think, going from a wide, high forehead down to pointy chin, but I find it hard to look at my whole face without getting tripped up by the individual features. If I had to choose, my eyes might be my favourite, mostly cause of their green colour, but sometimes, especially in photos, they look too open and far apart, like an alien. Being green adds to the whole extraterrestrial thing. Best word to describe my hair is unexceptional; reddish brown, lank, not straight and not curly either, shoulder length and blah. Brows like caterpillars. It’s a fluke that people want them furry now. Mum once said I’d have been screwed in the nineties. The left one has a habit of rising up, cocking itself as though waiting for the answer to a difficult question. Like how in hell is Pez sitting out there eating cold pizza and how is having him here so normal and so strange at the same time? Like how did I not stop to think what might have been going on for him since we left? And how is it my heart won’t stop pounding and just looking at him is turning my insides out? Riddle me all of that, bushy brow.
I cross the living room to the kitchen, where Pez is poured over the counter, slathering butter on to toast with no sign of a plate. I manage to keep my mouth shut. ‘I still don’t eat mushrooms,’ he says, nodding to the open pizza box.
I let this go. There are too many words lined up in my mouth that need to come out, and eventually the only thing that does is ‘I can’t stop worrying about all the trouble you’re in.’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ he says, taking another slice of bread from the loaf and slotting it into the toaster. Then he does an exaggerated stretch, like he’s trying to look more relaxed than he is. He tosses a crust down. ‘I didn’t think you’d ever move back,’ he says, looking around.
I rest the kettle in the sink and everything goes very still. It’s time to say something important, like I’m sorry, but everything in my head is so clouded I don’t know where to start. ‘Dad says we stayed at Wendy’s three years longer than he planned.’ I try not to look at him, or his eyelashes, which are and have always been like a girl’s. By girl I mean a mascara model. Nothing like mine, which are half the length and poker straight.
‘You stopped posting your pictures,’ he says, and I freeze again. When I first got to Somerset I was obsessed with my new phone and I photographed everything. I’d post random shots of people and places like pieces of an obscure puzzle. It was nothing clever but it meant something to me and I’m so pleased to hear that he noticed. I wanted him to but he never mentioned anything. Besides, the subjects I wanted to photograph became less random and I wasn’t ready for him to notice that.
‘I was waiting to get a proper camera.’
‘So?’
‘So, I never managed to save enough. Got out of the habit, I guess.’
‘I used to think you posted them for me,’ he says, thumbing crumbs off the countertop. ‘Not for me, but to show me. Shit, that sounds stupid.’
Oh god. I did, at first. It was his encouragement I wanted the most. ‘But you never commented or anything?’
‘Like you did on my posts?’ he says, picking up the butter knife. He pops the toast up, but it’s not done and he pings it back down. ‘We should probably drop this,’ he says with another huge fake yawn.
‘Dad said the new Darkzone is amazing. Well, Luna is amazing, is what he really said.’ Pez is up, staring into our empty fridge, but then he shuts the door and turns around. I follow his eyes across the room, where Arial is standing in a corner, wearing pyjamas and last night’s ponytail.
‘Look at you!’ His voice is slow and quiet.
‘Your hair’s different,’ Arial says, then she finds my eyes like she’s checking something. I smile and she stuffs Eeyore under a cushion like she’s only realised he’s under her arm. She moves slowly forward, taking one step, then another, before wrapping her arms around Pez’s waist. He kind of makes as if to crouch down but his arms hang uselessly by his side and my body tenses. Why isn’t he hugging her? I’m about to say something when, very slowly, he places a hand on top of her hair and the two of them sway gently. I feel a sharp ache, like a stab of longing, wishing that he’d held me like that. Seconds later his hand moves away.
‘Where are your plaits?’ Arial says, pushing her own hair back off her face.
I jump off the counter. ‘Um … hang on. You said you barely remember this flat. How come you’re all over his old hairstyle all of a sudden?’
She points above our heads. ‘From the picture.’
Pez follows her hand to the fridge door, where his eyes register the photo of us and he shakes his face as though wondering how he could have missed it. His lips come apart. ‘When did she stick that up there?’ he asks, taking Arial’s hand and pulling her towards him. ‘For real.’
‘It’s always been there, every day of my life.’ She says it so earnestly, Pez fails at not smiling and so do I. He returns to the picture and then his fingertips lower down on to the stiff cream invitation underneath it. He spins back so quick his trainers squeak on the floor. ‘They’re getting married?’
‘Two weeks from today,’ I say, and soon there’s another squeak as he pivots again, his back curved as he leans down to read where Vetty plus one is written in large calligraphy across the middle. All of a sudden,
it’s blindingly clear that Pez needs to be there with us in Somerset. It’s obviously why Wendy gave me a plus one in the first place. With him in tow, things could be so different and maybe for the first time ever, I’d really feel like myself there. ‘Will you come with me?’ I ask.
He gives me that look, watching me as intensely as he did in Rochester Gardens half an hour ago, and it’s unsettling and exciting at the same time. Then he sniffs and throws his eyes upwards. ‘Somerset?’ he says. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like to think about that invite for another four years?’
I’m about to feel bad when Dad strolls in looking a hundred years old. ‘Christ,’ he says, slapping Pez affectionately on the back. ‘You’ve grown again since last week.’
Pez looks at me with a smile. ‘Welcome back,’ he says.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Dad says in his very dad way before moving off towards the coffee machine.
On his way to the door, Pez reaches into the pile of recycling left over from last night’s takeaway. ‘C’mere,’ he says, motioning to me. I make my way over and he opens my arms out long, then he places a small Sprite bottle on top of my head and waves his hand from the top of his hair to the top of the little green cap, back and forth. ‘I’m at least a bottle taller now,’ he whispers. I’m left holding the empty green plastic as he fumbles in the pocket of his jeans and glances at his phone. ‘Better go,’ he says. ‘But good to see you all.’
Arial’s face falls but I hide my disappointment better. Dad and Arial shout their goodbyes and then Dad switches the radio on. Next, the hall door opens to a flare of bright light rising over the wall behind Pez’s head and when he turns around, I’m desperate to put my arms around him like Arial did and I’m about to step forward when opens his mouth. ‘Time I faced the music,’ he says, reaching for his bike.
I watch him wheel off down the side entrance towards the road, whooshing himself along with his feet just like he did when he was nine.
6
Being in Pez’s room again is messing with my head. There are so many new details to take in at once. I’d prefer to be alone so I could soak them up properly in my own time. I sit deeper into the bed, looking around at the clothes strewn all over the floor and at the brand-new trainers spilling out from the wardrobe like it’s Foot Locker on a Saturday afternoon. I’m trying to seem like I don’t care too much about any of it while slowly running my fingers over his sheets. The Marvel Comics duvet cover has been replaced with a plain navy one that feels like it’s made of T-shirts, but I’m sure it’s the same bed I slept in on sleepovers. There used to be another mattress tucked in underneath. Luna would pull it out whenever I stayed, though more often than not we’d end up together in the top bed. It never felt weird then. Would it be weird now? I don’t want it to be.
‘So, what did Luna say when you got in?’
‘She’d gone back to bed,’ he says, whooshing back and forth on a wheelie chair. I picture him scooting around the room and the noise of it driving Luna crazy in the kitchen below, like it used to when we jumped around up here as kids. ‘But we’re having a talk tomorrow,’ he says, zapping a controller. He’s playing some shooter game on his Xbox but the sun shines in the window and the screen is at such an angle that I can’t tell which.
I sit up. ‘All of you?’
‘Yep. It got them in the same room again, which is something.’
‘So, he knows it was you?’
‘The spare car key was a bit of a giveaway.’
Shit. ‘Exactly how much trouble are you in?’
He sighs. ‘He’ll be gone again in a few days.’
‘Where’s he off to now?’
‘New York,’ he says, like it’s Brent Cross or Asda. I roll up a dirty sock I’ve just found. I go to throw it but I don’t. His phone buzzes and he leans over and looks at the screen before pushing it away again. Maybe it was Harland but I immediately wonder who else it might be.
‘Will he be away long?’
There’s a series of shooting sounds then he thwacks the controller off the desk and stands. ‘A while,’ he says, as the chair sails across the wooden floor without him.
That’s all I get. I’m not sure where to go from here so I look around some more. In the corner, in front of the mirror, a stack of three kettlebells makes my heart sink. ‘Are you staying at Kings for sixth form?’
He sits down beside me with a huff, then he picks his teeth. ‘Like he’d hear of me going anywhere else,’ he says, trying hard to reach something far back in his mouth that I’m not sure is there. Harland’s not famous in the way Luna is. He mostly does theatre and travels around the world doing important plays by playwrights with unpronounceable names. Dad says he gets good reviews but he’s one of those actors no one’s heard of. I heard Mum tell one of her friends that Harland was charismatic, but I could never work him out. Even when we were kids, he was super ambitious for Pez, sending him to an expensive school a long bus ride away, but then he was hardly around and when he was, I found all the pressure Pez was under a bit much, if I’m honest.
‘Did they let you back into Camden High?’ Pez asks, glaring at his phone screen now.
‘Eventually,’ I say. ‘Dad was freaking out until my acceptance letter arrived. So was I. You know, a bit.’
‘How did the exams go?’
‘They’re over.’ I say it quickly because it’s not GCSEs I want to talk about. I want to discuss how much we missed each other for the last four years, then I want to tell him how sorry I am and how I’m going to make it up to him. I want to convince him of the fun we’ll have at Wendy and Fran’s wedding and maybe by the time school starts we’ll be back to how things were, spending every day together, without hassle from anyone and no one having to second-guess themselves the whole time. ‘What A levels are you doing?’ I only ask this because he’s looking at me funny and it feels like I should say something.
‘Economics, maths, history,’ he says, flatly.
‘Not art?’
He blows out his cheeks. ‘The bloke who pretends to be other people for a living doesn’t want me to end up at some flaky art college.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t,’ he says, pulling at his bottom lip.
‘Have you told him how you feel?’ As soon as I’ve asked this it hits me that I’m not sure how Pez feels either.
‘Harland’s not interested in how I feel,’ he says, laughing in a way that makes me uneasy. ‘It’s all a game to him and he only cares if I’m winning.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ he says, and it’s immediately clear he gives plenty.
I stare at his desk and the headphones plugged into the back of his iMac. Then I spot a series of framed sketches of a boy on a bike and I can tell by the style that he drew these himself and I really want to see them up close. Tucked away on the desk, behind the empty Coke can and a dirty plate, I spot a stack of notebooks and his old Batman mug full of felt-tipped pens. Lots of people, myself included, like to draw, but Pez is the only person I know who can draw a picture of someone and really make it look like them, not some basic face with vaguely similar hair. He gets the likeness in people’s features exactly right. I want to ask him if he still draws Japanese comic figures and whether he’s done any more work on his squad of elemental superheroes.
Eminem and the football players whose names I probably never knew have been taken down from his wall and there are new faces now: SKEPTA SHUTDOWN is printed in huge letters on a poster above a blown-up flyer for a club night on City Road. Another has Stormzy with his shirt off, bent over a microphone. I churn words over in my mouth, then point up at the poster. ‘He still asking for me?’ I say, doing my best cheesy grin.
Pez’s eyes pinch. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Just having a laugh.’ He leans back and snorts. God, I feel like a dick. All I want to do is bridge this gap between us but I can’t figure out where I’m supposed to fit. It’
s like we’ve skipped from kids to something else but it’s not at all clear which steps we’ve missed and I’m making myself up as I go along and getting it all wrong. I don’t know how to be around him now. High up to my left I spot the Arsenal flag in pride of place above the door. That it’s still there is more of a relief than it probably should be, but the bookshelves, once stuffed full, are lined with video games and a stack of old football magazines on top.
‘Where have all your books gone?’
‘Mum gave them away.’
‘Um, why?’
He makes a face at the screen. ‘Because I’ve read them.’
Pez was so proud of those shelves once. He lined up everything he’d read in order. He was particular about it too and hated when I mixed them up or put books back out of sequence, which I did a lot, mostly to annoy him. Pez was obsessed with Harry Potter and series like Percy Jackson, Artemis Foul and Alex Rider, anything that went on and on and on. He’d only start a book if it had a sequel, preferably eight. I was the opposite. That kind of upfront commitment made me nervous. But I guess this was a while ago. The games were taking over even before I left. Still, I ask. ‘Read anything good lately?’
He shakes his head like I’ve said something stupid. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘You’re not disappointing me,’ I say, but this isn’t entirely true. It’s not so much him disappointing me, as how disappointed I feel about how different he seems. Especially when I feel just the same as I’ve always been. I find another rolled-up sock in the duvet and this time I toss it in his direction but it misses and lands on an enormous denim beanbag at the end of bed. On the shelf above it sits a large black camera. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and get up for a closer look.
‘We must have better things to talk about than A levels and books I’m not reading,’ he says.
All the Invisible Things Page 5