by Alice Oseman
It’s true. We are.
Bliss lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Fine. Let’s just keep walking for now.’
And so we do.
Rowan and I end up at the back of the group, side by side.
‘Why?’ he murmurs. ‘Where did he go?’
I glance at him, and I can’t tell whether he’s crying or whether there’s just a raindrop falling down his cheek.
‘I can’t deal with you both leaving me,’ he says.
Am I really going to leave him?
I don’t know.
I don’t know any more.
I don’t know how long we’ve been walking when we finally come to a stop. We stopped shouting a while back. The light is quickly fading, and we all have our torches on now. The path ends, opening out into a seemingly interminable wheat field. Lister could have gone in any direction from here.
‘So now what?’ asks Jimmy.
No one speaks for a moment.
‘Maybe we should go back now,’ murmurs Rowan.
Jimmy immediately protests. ‘No, no. We can’t.’ And he’s right. We can’t go back. We can’t just leave Lister out here.
Bliss and Juliet don’t say anything.
‘You can go back,’ says Jimmy. ‘If you want. But I’m not.’
‘Where else are you going to look?’ asks Rowan. ‘He could be literally anywhere out there!’
‘We should just keep going,’ I say.
Everyone looks at me. Jimmy’s eyes light up.
‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding at me. ‘Yeah. If we spread out across the field, he might—’
‘It’s not safe,’ says Rowan.
‘Yeah, well, Lister isn’t safe,’ Jimmy shouts. ‘And it’s my fault! So I’m not going back until I find him.’
‘I’m staying too,’ I say. Jimmy glances at me again.
‘Well, we can’t just leave you here!’ says Rowan, looking at us both.
‘Choose, then,’ says Jimmy. ‘Stay or go.’
We’re all interrupted by a lightning flash, and then there’s a low rumble of thunder. The rain seems to start falling harder.
‘Hey, everyone,’ calls a voice. We all turn and spot Juliet crouched down by some bushes at the edge of the pathway. She stands back up and holds out an object. ‘Isn’t this what Lister was drinking earlier?’
We approach her. It’s a large, empty bottle of red wine. Jimmy takes it from her and looks at it, then looks into the bushes. They’ve been trampled on and pushed aside, creating a murky tunnel.
‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice a croaky whisper.
He drops the bottle and runs straight into the woods.
Everyone cries out, telling him to come back, but I don’t hesitate. I start running right after him.
Even without the light of my torch, I can see the exact path he’s taken. Flattened grass and still visible footprints in the mud. I call after him. He’s going to be dead, right? Something’s happened. I push through branches and thorns, feel them scratching at my skin, I don’t care, I don’t care any more. What have I done?
There’s someone behind me. Is it Rowan? I turn and – No. It’s Angel. She cares. Why is she doing this?
Why is she here with me?
Why did this happen?
‘We’ll find him,’ she says to me as we run, and it’s like a real-life angel has promised, a real-life angel knows exactly what is going to happen for the rest of time.
We burst out of the brambles and Angel grabs the back of my shirt just before I topple down a slope – we’ve reached the river, though it’s shallow here, only a few centimetres deep, more of a creek than a river. The bank is both high and steep, and the mud is smeared like somebody has slid down it, and so we look over the edge, both of us, and there at the bottom, lying in the shallows of the water and covered in mud, is Lister Bird, with my knife embedded in the left side of his stomach.
Jimmy freezes, unable to do anything but stare down at Lister and the knife. I stop thinking entirely. I step down, digging my shoes carefully into the mud before transferring my weight so that I don’t slip, and start climbing slowly down the bank.
He must have slipped and fallen. Probably drunk. Did he fall onto the knife? Was he holding it when he fell?
As I get closer, the more I can analyse the situation. His head isn’t in the water, thank God, but his eyes are closed. Once I get even closer, almost at the edge of the creek, I can see his chest moving up and down. Faintly, but definitely moving.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
‘He’s-he’s alive,’ I call back to Jimmy. I shoot a quick look behind me. Jimmy’s already climbing down after me – a lot slower than me, but he’s on his way.
I turn back to Lister and look down at his body. The knife is definitely inside him. Oh God. Oh shit. Are there any important organs there? It’s kind of in his side. Is that where the kidneys are? Intestines? Oh God, I got a D in biology GCSE.
I shine my phone torch on him. It isn’t just mud all over him. It’s blood too.
‘No no no no no.’ Jimmy’s voice breaks through my frantic thoughts as he scrambles to reach Lister. ‘Why-why did he have the knife?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
I start patting Lister’s face. Need to keep him awake, right? I don’t know. I’m running through all the thriller films I’ve seen in my head.
Lister stirs and his eyes flutter open. There’s a small moment where he might just be waking up from an afternoon nap, but then it hits him all at once. He makes a horrible screaming noise in the back of his throat and tears start rolling out of his eyes.
‘It’s okay, we’re here,’ I say, but he’s started shaking violently, and nothing is okay at all.
‘H-hurts …’ His voice is so small it’s almost inaudible over the rushing water.
Jimmy crawls to the other side of Lister so he’s sitting in the creek. He starts stroking Lister’s hair, saying, ‘It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay,’ but his voice is shaking and he doesn’t sound sure at all.
I shine my torch over the rest of his body. His leg seems to be twisted at a strange angle. It makes my stomach lurch just looking at it. How long has he been lying here?
‘I think he’s broken his leg as well,’ I say, but this just seems to panic Lister more.
‘Do we take the knife out?’ says Jimmy, looking at me wildly.
‘Won’t that just make him bleed more?’
‘I don’t know!? It can’t be good that it’s in there! He’s shaking; it’s cutting him!’
He’s right. Now that Lister’s awake, every time he moves, the knife is digging into him a little harder.
There’s no time for us to argue.
‘We can’t take the knife out,’ I say. ‘He might bleed to death. Just keep him calm so he doesn’t move too much.’
Jimmy takes Lister’s face in both his hands and turns it slightly so that Lister is looking at him.
‘P-please, p-please,’ Lister stammers, his voice little more than a whisper. His whole body is trembling from the cold, and I realise suddenly that it’s because he’s partially submerged in the icy water of the creek.
‘You’re gonna be okay,’ says Jimmy, lowering his face towards Lister. Lister’s eyes are wide now, wild, trying with all their might to focus on Jimmy. ‘Just keep looking at me.’
Jimmy flashes his eyes at me.
‘We-we need to get an ambulance,’ I say. I frantically wipe the rain off my phone with one hand and dial 999, but I can’t get a signal. I try again, and again, but my hands are shaking, and it won’t work. It’s not working, and I don’t know what to do.
Lister starts crying. It’s nothing like I ever imagined. It’s scrunched up and painful and makes me angry.
‘S-sorry,’ he croaks, rolling his head so that he’s resting on Jimmy’s legs. ‘I’m sorry … an accident …’
‘I know, I know. It’s okay.’ Jimmy keeps on stroking Lister’s hair.
Lister’s breathing gets a little calm
er, and I realise he’s passing out again. Jimmy slaps his face quite hard, and Lister’s eyes spring open again. ‘Stay awake, Lister, please stay awake.’
The sound of shoes slapping against mud interrupts him. I turn round and look up, only to see Rowan, Bliss and Juliet, staring down at the scene from the top of the bank.
‘Someone call 999!’ I shriek up at them, and Bliss whips out her phone without another word.
‘I j-just … wanted t-to help …’ Lister mumbles, his eyes starting to shut again. He’s losing too much blood. ‘You said … y-you hated y-yourself … Didn’t want you to … d-do anything … b-bad …’ His voice dies away into nothing.
‘I can’t get any signal!’ Bliss screams. Juliet gets her phone out too. Rowan skids down the riverbank and joins us at the bottom.
‘Why did he take the knife?’ Rowan breathes.
Jimmy shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Ambulance!’ Juliet yells into her phone. She must have got signal. Thank God.
Rowan pushes me aside as he crawls towards Lister’s face. ‘Come on, Allister, stay awake.’ He shakes him a little by the shoulder, but stops as soon as Lister lets out a high-pitched whimper. ‘We need to get him out of the water!’
‘We can’t,’ Jimmy snaps, ‘we can’t move him when he’s losing this much blood!’
‘M-my friend, he’s fallen down a slope. He’s broken his leg and he’s … he’s been impaled by … by something,’ Juliet stammers into her phone. The word ‘impaled’ makes me want to throw up.
‘Where are we?!’ Juliet shouts. Rowan shouts back the name of the area.
I stand up and step back. I’m just in the way, really. The rain is already cleaning the blood and mud from my hands.
‘They’re sending an air ambulance!’ Juliet shouts down at us.
Jimmy kneels in the water and lies down next to Lister, sliding his arm underneath Lister’s head. ‘There’s an ambulance coming. You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be okay.’
I step back further again and tread into the creek. It’s only just deep enough to reach my ankles. I kneel down and put my shaking hands in there, watching as the blood rushes away into the cold water.
Lister’s skin is ice cold by the time the ambulance arrives, and even though he’s breathing, we can’t get him to wake up. Everything after that happens in a blur. When we hear the air ambulance flying above us, Juliet and Bliss wave their phone torches towards it, hoping that they’ll notice where we are. What feels like hours later, though is only really a few minutes, two paramedics are strapping Lister to a board and heaving him up the riverbank.
We run with the paramedics out of the woodland to where the helicopter has landed in the field. We’re not allowed to go on the helicopter with him, and next thing I know Rowan’s holding me back, pulling me down into the wheat, while they take Lister away. No, I need to be with him, I need to be there in case, just in case he …
For a while, all I can do is sit there. And cry.
And pray.
‘but to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief; that is a fate more terrible than dying.’
– Joan of Arc
‘Here, I bought you a Sprite and a packet of Haribo,’ I say, holding the two items out to Juliet as I wander back from the nearby shop. We’re back at Rochester train station, though I barely recognise it at all.
Juliet accepts the items with a surprised laugh. She tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles at me. ‘How did you know I like Haribo?’
‘You definitely mentioned it like ten thousand times in our Facebook convos.’
‘Oh God, do I actually talk about Haribo that much?’
‘Yeah, yeah you do. I mean, maybe Haribo is your special internet friend.’
‘Wow. Too soon.’
Our train won’t be here for another twenty minutes, so we wander through and sit down in the waiting area. We sit in comfortable silence, Juliet munching on her Haribo and me taking sips from the milkshake I bought for myself, watching the people go by. I could definitely get into people watching. Wondering where that guy is going. What’s that woman worried about? What’s that person’s greatest fear? What’s their greatest desire?
I don’t know. Everything seems a bit more interesting to me now than it used to.
‘Did you get me anything?’ asks a voice, and I turn to my other side and smile at Bliss Lai.
‘Hell yeah, I did,’ I say, and pull a milkshake out of my bag. ‘Here you go, milk girl.’
‘Okay, “milk girl”, not the best nickname. But excellent choice.’ She unscrews it and takes a sip.
‘How’s our boy?’ asks Juliet, mid-chew.
I check my phone.
‘No new messages,’ I say.
We all stay silent for a moment. I take a deep breath and lean back in my chair.
Last night, Jimmy and Rowan left for the hospital in a taxi as soon as the road out of the village was reopened. Both of them were eerily silent. Jimmy wasn’t crying any more. We barely said goodbye even. Jimmy just looked at me as he reached the doorway, and then turned to go, and it struck me that I would probably never see him again.
Apart from in photos. And videos. And on the internet.
Rowan kept Bliss updated with texts. None of us – me, Juliet, Bliss and Piero – could sleep. Piero sat at the kitchen table with the radio on. Bliss and Juliet sat together by the window. I escaped into the study to pray. Pleading God to let him be okay.
We heard at 11 p.m. that they’d reached the hospital safely, and at 11.30 p.m. that Lister was already in surgery.
Then we heard nothing for over four hours.
And then, at 4 a.m., we had a call from a shaky, small voice. Jimmy.
Lister was going to be okay.
He’s gone in for more surgery this morning, on his leg this time, but he’s no longer on the verge of death. Jimmy and Rowan are still there, and somehow the fact that Lister is in hospital has made headline news, though no one seems to know exactly what happened.
No one in the world except us.
‘Doesn’t it all feel like a dream?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says Juliet. ‘Or a really bad fanfiction.’
We all laugh.
‘No one would have written Lister like that,’ I say.
‘Or Jimmy.’
‘Or Rowan, to be honest.’
‘Real life is weird,’ Juliet says.
‘Yeah.’
We sit in silence for a little longer, drinking and eating and watching the world.
What are we going to do now?
What’s life going to be like now?
‘So, you dumped Rowan?’ says Juliet. I realise that Juliet hasn’t talked to Bliss about that yet.
Bliss shrugs. ‘Yeah. We weren’t good together. We’ll still be friends, but …’ She pauses. ‘Actually, I think we’ll be a lot better as just friends.’
‘You think you’ll still talk to him, then?’ I ask.
Bliss frowns. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
She has a point.
‘Oh, hey, Angel, I got something for you too,’ says Juliet. She yanks her bag onto her knees and unzips it, rummages with one hand, and pulls out a folded-up piece of lined paper. I frown and open it up.
It’s a poem entitled ‘The Angel’, written in childish handwriting.
By Jimmy.
‘Piero gave it to us, actually,’ says Juliet. ‘I think … I think he knew we’d probably never see Jimmy again, and … he wanted us to have something as a keepsake.’
I can’t find any words.
I didn’t read the second verse of the poem before, so I read the full eight lines from start to finish.
When all was bad in Jimmy Land
He wished for someone to rescue him
To make him part of a famous band
And fight off things dark and grim
The Angel came down and said, ‘Now, now,
I can’t do everything for you, can I?’
Jimmy jumped up and said, ‘Then show me how!’
But the Angel flew off with a ‘Bye, bye!’
Juliet and Bliss peer over my shoulder.
‘I’m glad Rowan is in charge of lyrics,’ Juliet says. ‘No offence, but these are some dodgy rhythms.’
‘This is a sassy angel,’ Bliss says, nodding her head. ‘Absolutely savage. She’s like, see you later, bud. I got my own shit to do.’
‘Kind of motivational in its own special way,’ I say.
‘True,’ says Bliss.
I fold up the poem and put it in my bag.
At least I’ll always have that.
‘Guys,’ I say.
They both look at me.
‘My real name’s not Angel. It’s Fereshteh.’
Neither of them say anything for a moment.
Then Bliss says, ‘Well, fuck me.’
‘My real name’s not Juliet,’ says Juliet, and this makes me actually gasp out loud.
Bliss puts her hand over her mouth. ‘Fuck me.’
‘It’s Judith,’ says Juliet, wrinkling her nose. ‘And I really, really hate it.’
I’m too shocked to say anything.
Bliss looks from me to Juliet and then says, ‘Well, sorry to disappoint, but my name is actually Bliss and not, like, Veronica, or something.’
And then the three of us just start laughing. Really hard.
‘I’m coming home, Dad!’
‘For real this time?’
‘Yep.’ I nod against my phone. ‘For real.’
‘What’ve you been up to? You know I’m going to make you tell me everything when you get home. I need it for my novel.’
‘Dad … I think you’re supposed to make stuff up for novels. Not just use my life for inspiration.’
He laughs. It sounds warm.
‘You sure you’re okay, Fereshteh?’ he says. ‘Mum said you were very upset yesterday. Was this about your band boy going missing? I heard on the radio that they found him!’
‘Yeah. No. I mean …’ I sigh. ‘Some stuff has happened. But … I’m going to be okay. And me and Mum, we … I think everything’s going to be okay now.’