Toxic

by Nicci Cloke

  It doesn’t feel very fun though. I sigh and turn so that the water runs over my face. As if me or Nate would do that to Logan.

  I wonder if he’d even care.

  I suppose at least we’ve got today to look forward to. All of us hanging out on some fancy giant yacht, with free cocktails and pumping dance music, and then an amazing party on our own private island. A world – a whole galaxy – away from Kings Lyme.

  IT’S NOT EXACTLY the luxury experience I was expecting. When we turn up at the dock, there are crowds of people waiting to board the boat, and half of them look like they’re still up from last night – there’s plenty of smudged glow paint on show, and red eyes and bleary voices. People are leaning on their mates and some are singing and the whole vibe is less glamorous yacht party, more rowdy football match.

  The boat, by the way, isn’t very glamorous either.

  I mean, I’m not exactly an expert, but it’s not the kind of thing you see celebrities lounging on in magazines. It’s … a bit smaller than I was expecting, and although it used to be white, it’s now sort of rust-stained with a massive splash of something greenish-yellow down one side. Dance music blares from speakers somewhere while a guy dressed in a leopard-print vest and baggy shorts is hosing down the deck. I don’t even want to think why.

  Things are still a little bit weird between me and Logan. Everyone else has sort of given up teasing me about Nate – I don’t think any of them actually thought anything had happened; it was just Zack spurring everyone on because he thought it was funny. There’s the odd comment, in a sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge way but I’m just ignoring it now and Nate doesn’t seem that bothered either. When they don’t get a rise, the boys soon get bored.

  But Logan still hasn’t really spoken to me, or to anyone in fact. He’s been looking at his phone all day, and even when Zack and Dev try to get him involved in the conversation, he’s kind of distracted and distant. I can’t actually believe he’d think anything happened between Nate and me, but then maybe he’s still feeling uncomfortable about the whole me-throwing-myself-at-him thing.

  ‘Hmm, not exactly like they’ve borrowed the boat from Kanye, is it?’ JB says, appearing next to me with two bottles of beer. ‘Here, you’ll need this.’

  ‘Where’d you get these, you little genius?’ I ask, taking mine gratefully.

  ‘Some guy’s selling them out of a bucket over there,’ he says.

  ‘Smart,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, well, it looks like they’ll be able to make good use of the bucket later,’ JB says, gesturing towards the yellowy green stain on the side of the boat.

  ‘Probably for you!’ I say, laughing, and I give him a hug. ‘By the way, I totally spewed my guts up last night.’

  ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘Definitely a good thing – you’d feel like arse if you hadn’t.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I glance at him. ‘I was kind of a mess, wasn’t I?’

  JB shrugs. ‘You were fine. No big deal, don’t worry about it, babe.’ He glances at me. ‘You OK though?’

  ‘Yep.’ I take a big gulp of my beer, and I actually am OK. I’m not embarrassed and I’m not upset. I’m ready to have a really great day.

  The boat still turns out to be pretty exciting once we get on it. Yeah, OK, it’s not exactly top of the range or brand new, but there’s a DJ with decks up on the highest level and a bar, and then down in the cabin there’s all these beanbags and the lights are turned down (I decide it’s probably best not to think about what that might be an attempt to hide) and there’s another bar too. When we board we’re handed a plastic cocktail glass full of a bright pink drink, and behind the bar I can see them loading up super-soakers with ouzo.

  Making a mental note to avoid them, I turn away with my drink and bump smack into someone.

  ‘Whoa, sorry!’ I say, before I register it’s Logan, now with bright pink spots on his white T-shirt.

  ‘No, that was my fault,’ he says, and we both look at each other for a second. It’s definitely time to break the awkward ice here.

  ‘Logan, I –’ I start, but before I get any further, Zack comes barrelling over with one of the pink drinks clutched in each hand.

  ‘Let’s get this party started!’ he yells, lifting both of them above his head, and all the people round us cheer. With perfect timing, the DJ suddenly whacks the volume all the way up, just as the motor of the boat starts to whine and we start backing slowly out of the harbour.

  The party has officially started.

  I find JB and Nate by the railings, looking down at the water.

  ‘Hey, lover,’ Nate says, and I punch him in the arm.

  ‘Not funny.’

  There’s a shriek from the front of the boat, where a guy with no top and very small shorts is bending a girl in a cut-out swimsuit backwards over the railings. He’s laughing and she’s struggling so hard that her feet leave the deck, one of her jewelled flip-flops coming off. ‘I can’t swim,’ she yells, but all her friends are there, laughing, so nobody takes much notice. Maybe it’s no big deal, but I’m glad when another girl comes strolling back from the bar and, rolling her eyes, kicks the guy in the shin. He lets her friend go and as soon as she straightens up, she pushes him – ‘You twat’ – but she’s laughing too, so I guess she’s OK.

  I turn back and look at the beach getting slowly smaller as we head out to sea. The pink drink is surprisingly tasty and mine’s gone before I even really notice.

  ‘Another round?’ Nate asks me and JB, and we both nod – although I can’t help hoping JB doesn’t get too drunk too soon. I’m not that hungover but I still don’t fancy looking after someone who’s puking this early in the day.

  Dev comes bouncing over. ‘How sick is this?’ He hooks an arm round my neck and puts his face close to mine, his other hand stretched out to take a selfie. ‘Hopey, I think we’re actually in heaven.’

  My flip-flops are kind of sticking to the deck in heaven, but his enthusiasm is pretty infectious. He starts dancing to the song, his actual lamest, stolen-from-the-Nineties dance moves – brushing imaginary dust from his shoulders to the beat, a spot of thunderclapping, a full Running Man – and soon JB and I are in stitches. When Nate comes back with the drinks, we end up in a kind of impromptu dance-off, all of us taking a turn to do our cheesiest moves in the middle of our little circle. I pull out a weird lunge-airpunch-combo to all-round approval, and it’s only when I finish with a full-on knee-slide, like I’m six and at a wedding, that I realise we’ve drawn quite a crowd.

  I don’t even care; as Nate helps me up, I can’t stop laughing. I feel full of energy, like totally alive, here on this grubby boat in the middle of the sea with my friends around me. The music is pounding and everyone is grinning and happy, talking to each other and singing along. Someone has taken advantage of the sudden cluster of people to crowd-surf, which seems fairly risky given how close we are to open water. Girls in T-shirts branded with the logo of the tour company, Party Boat, start working their way around the deck with trays of shots and I take one and neck it, totally not caring that it’s about 2 p.m. and the whole day is ahead of us. Right now, this moment is all that matters, all I care about.

  WE ARRIVE AT the island an hour – and several shots – later. The sun is high up in a bright blue sky and so far I’ve avoided having the ouzo-filled super-soaker shoved down my throat.

  The others have not been so lucky. Logan, Nate and Dev are all sort of slouched against the railings, aniseed-breathed and dazed-looking, while JB (also ouzo free) is still bouncing around dancing with me and a stag party from Birmingham.

  When someone taps me on the shoulder, I turn, ready to push away any kind of plastic weapon filled with alcohol. But it’s Logan, a bit unsteady on his feet.

  ‘Where’s Zack?’ he shouts, and I notice that even though he’s quite drunk, his goofy drunk smile is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I yell over the music. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’

  We’re
almost at the shore now, the boat slowing right down as the captain navigates us alongside the jetty. A girl clambers up onto the railings and yells something that sounds like ‘Socks bitches are the best!’ and then jumps over the edge into the water.

  ‘Waheeeey!’ Half the stag party are straight over the railing after her, three cannonballs hitting the water hard. I feel like it’s a bit too shallow for that to be safe, but the mood is so high, and the pink drinks are warm in my belly, and it’s kind of hard to worry about health and safety. So I just laugh with everyone else when I see Dev hurtle past, his vest (neon yellow today) getting discarded on the deck as he goes, but his Wayfarers still on his face. He does this weird kind of deer hop over one of the chairs at the edge of the deck and clears the railings easily, letting out a high-pitched whoop as he disappears over the edge.

  ‘All right, no more jumping, guys,’ a rep in a Party Boat T-shirt yells, walking towards the railings. ‘It’s kinda shallow now and nothing kills a party faster than a broken spine. Besides, there’s still plenty of you who need to say hello to my little friend …’ He brandishes his super-soaker, which is an offensive green colour and has clearly been recently refilled with Greece’s finest aniseed annihilation. He pumps it a couple of times in a gross, graphic kind of way and then fires it at all of us. I shriek with everyone else as it hits me, although a girl next to me stretches up on her tiptoes and opens her mouth as wide as she can to catch the spray.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ she says when she sees me looking. ‘And it’s free, right?’

  I think that sounds like pretty valid advice, so when we clamber down the gangway onto the jetty and there’s a couple of bins full of beers and alcopops, I take a beer and then I take another one and wedge it in my bag.

  The island is small and not exactly like the kind of cartoon desert island I was picturing. There’s a bit of beach where we’ve just landed and then a building beyond that with toilets and what sort of looks like it might be a classroom or a canteen. The rest is kind of scrubby and wooded, the ground rocky and grey.

  But there’s a stage where the DJ from the boat is setting up, and the Party Boat reps are loading trays with beers and shots. Over to one side, two guys are setting up a keg with a siren attached. I kind of feel like I don’t want to know what’s going on with that.

  I’ve lost the guys, who all raced on shore to wee in the ‘privacy’ of the straggly trees beyond the beach. To be fair, I’m not above what Zack calls ‘squatting and squirting’ (gross), but also wasn’t above using the seen-better-days toilet on the boat – unlike those divas. I can pick out Dev’s vest between the trees – seriously, there are NASA satellites that could pick out Dev’s vest – but I’ve got no idea where the others are.

  It’s OK though, because I’ve still got that good buzzy feeling and it feels like everyone else does too. People are high-fiving and chest-bumping and kissing each other all over the shop, and it feels like some kind of special new community we’re all setting up on this crappy little island.

  Yeah, OK, maybe I’m a bit pissed.

  We weren’t moving that fast, out on the water, but without even that little bit of breeze, it’s hot. There’s a strong smell of seaweed, kind of cabbage-y, and a barbecue going at one end of the beach kicking up a lot of greasy smoke. The ouzo girl is next to me again and she looks approvingly at my extra beer.

  ‘I’m Ness,’ she says, grinning.

  ‘Hope.’

  ‘My advice is to steer clear of the chicken,’ she says, nodding towards the barbecue.

  ‘Noted.’ I offer up my open beer in a cheers. ‘Who are you here with?’

  She gestures towards a group of girls already setting up camp on the beach. ‘We just finished A levels.’

  ‘Nice.’ I raise my beer to her again, which is kind of lame. ‘We just did our AS’s.’

  ‘Oh, babe,’ Ness says. ‘It gets so much worse.’

  I laugh and we both drink to that.

  ‘Hey, come meet the others,’ she says. ‘They’ve got a prime spot.’ She squints at her friends. ‘And it also looks like they’ve stolen a bottle of something extremely green from somewhere.’

  I glance in the direction of Dev’s luminous vest but I can’t see it any more. I mean, it’s an island – how far can they go? ‘Yeah, sure,’ I say, and I follow her.

  Ness is tall and stunning – sandy blonde hair which is either natural or ridiculously good highlights, broad shoulders, the actual longest set of legs I’ve ever seen on a human before. And also unbelievably friendly, like pretty much everyone else in Malia – she spends the first five minutes introducing me to all of her friends, who are the nicest, most welcoming group of girls I’ve ever met. I get so many hugs that I lose track of everyone’s names but they don’t seem to care – they’re already pouring me a plastic cup of the green stuff, which turns out to be melon-flavoured and delicious.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re the knee-slide girl,’ Emily, the girl to my left, says. ‘You’re awesome!’

  I laugh, embarrassed. Wow, this melon stuff really is delicious. ‘Yeah, might have got carried away there.’

  ‘Are those guys your friends?’ she asks. She’s wearing this pretty, floaty kaftan sort of thing, with little silver beads that tinkle as she moves.

  ‘Yeah, I kind of crashed their lads’ holiday.’

  She raises an eyebrow. ‘No way? That’s so cool.’

  Is it? I didn’t really think it was that big a deal.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit sick of talking about tits and farting?’ one of the other girls, Hayley, asks me, reaching over to top up my glass. This melon stuff is sticky and thick; I think it’s probably meant to be drunk with a mixer.

  ‘A bit,’ I say, laughing. But that feels kind of unfair. Yeah, the boys do talk about that stuff, but not all the time. I’ve had some really good chats, especially with JB and Nate.

  ‘They’re probably on their best behaviour, with you around,’ Ness says, lying back on her elbows in the sand.

  I shake my head. ‘Don’t think so. They’re pretty used to me now.’

  ‘You’re one of the boys,’ Emily says, and we all say cheers to that.

  ‘Oh God,’ Hayley says, looking in the direction of a group of Party Boat staff. ‘Looks like they’re organising a game.’

  The game turns out to be a fifty-strong round of ‘Never Have I Ever’. I have never really understood the point of that game – without a lie detector, why would you ever own up?! But somehow I find myself getting caught up in it all. Some of the stuff is over the top – ‘I have never slept with my friend’s mum’ or ‘I have never had a gang bang’ or ‘I have never slept with identical twins’ – and others are clearly targeted at someone in particular – ‘I have never had sex on the top deck of the number 63 bus’ or ‘I have never pooed myself and blamed someone’s dog’. Everyone gets a bit hysterical with laughing and sun, so when the more generic stuff comes up – ‘I have never slept with a friend’ or ‘I have never had sex in someone else’s bed’ – everyone who has just drinks, obediently, as if there’s no other possible option.

  Dev works his way through the crowd, JB close behind, just in time for ‘I have never been drunk in public’ which gets a roar from everyone and a spontaneous drinks downing. Dev and JB manage to combine this with hugging me, which makes a sort of Hope sandwich with a side of spilt beer. The DJ turns the volume way up, so that the sand is practically jumping, and I’ve got Dev’s breath hot in one ear – ‘Where you been, babe? We missed yooooou’ – and JB’s in the other – ‘Dev’s pretty fucked up.’ I give Dev’s cheek a pinch while nodding to JB to show I’ve heard. He’s right – Dev’s pushed his sunglasses up on his head (of course, now that the sun’s at its fullest and there’s a legitimate reason to wear them) and his eyes are doing all kinds of weird things, pupils dilated and skittering about. He’s singing along to the song really loudly, his fist raised in the air, and he looks like he’s forgotten we’re here.

  ‘Did
he take something?’ I ask JB.

  JB bites his lip. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘We met these guys from Exeter in the woods. They had pills to sell.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah.’ JB shrugs. ‘C’mon, it’s no big deal. It’s not like we bought them from some random guy on the strip. These lads were really nice – they were like our age. They’re on them too, it’s totally fine.’

  I open my other beer and take a sip, stalling for time. I don’t know how to respond. It’s not like I don’t know the boys have dabbled with drugs before. Most of the girls too. We’re from a small town, without much to do; people find ways of keeping themselves entertained. I hear them brag about the stuff they’ve taken at the weekend each Monday at sixth form.

  I’ve never done it though.

  It’s not like I’m afraid of letting go – I’ve been drunk enough to streak through town; drunk enough to forget where I live; drunk enough to do things I can’t remember the next day. But something about the idea of it scares me. I think maybe it’s to do with losing control – at least when you’re drinking, you can tell you’re getting drunk. It seems like if you pop a pill, you just have to wait and see what happens. There’s no turning back. That freaks me out.

  Dev does look like he’s having a good time, at least, although I can see his jaw moving back and forth, his teeth clenched.

  ‘All right, party peeeeeeople!’ It’s Zack, never in need of a microphone, appearing beside us as the crowd melts away for him. He puts an arm round JB and Dev, enclosing me in the process, and when he pulls back I notice he keeps a hand just at the base of Dev’s neck – casual and friendly, but in control. He’s looking out for Dev, playing his daddy role. I wonder if he’s taken any of the pills from the Exeter boys.

  He glances down at me. ‘How you doing, Novak?’

  ‘I’m good.’ I really am. I’ve even forgiven him for goading the others into the whole me-and-Nate thing. ‘How about you, Conway?’

  ‘I am absolutely flying,’ he says, just as another Party Boat girl passes with a tray of shots. Zack bows to her before taking four in his massive hands. He offers me one, wedged between his pinky and ring finger, and I take it and down it. Someone must have just put a load more meat on the barbecue; I can smell the fat in the air, smoke drifting this way. I look over, feeling suddenly hungry. Zack notices straight away.