Chapter 19: “I’m not sending him down for something he didn’t do.”
“Luca! Hurry up, or you’ll be late!”
Luca didn’t move. He was sitting on the side of his bed, staring at his phone. Stay away saturday, gayboy. And now it was Saturday—and his swimming kit was in its bag and ready to go.
For the first time, Luca was scared of going.
He’d never been scared of going to swimming—or anywhere else, for that matter. He was a Jensen, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t scared of going places or doing stuff.
Only…only he was now.
Stay away saturday, gayboy.
He was scared of what Jack would do if Luca showed up anyway. Jack was unstable. Way beyond unstable, he was actively fucked up in the head, and some petty homophobic bully was one thing, but a kid who was totally off his rocker and made references to being touched up by some creepy weirdo? That was a whole new ball game. And now he was sending threats by Facebook just because Luca had deigned to get on the same bus, and…
Ignoring it wasn’t looking like an option. Tav was getting close to reporting it without Luca’s say-so anyway, and that would be a row Luca didn’t want, and Jack…Jack wasn’t letting it be ignored either. He kept coming back around, again and again, and Luca didn’t know what to do anymore.
He couldn’t let Jack just go to prison instead of getting a psychiatrist or whatever, but…he couldn’t change his whole life around to keep out of Jack’s way like this either.
“Luca! Now, please!”
Luca deleted the message, and steeled himself. His legs felt stiff as he rose from the mattress. His shoulders were knotted. His stomach was clenched harder than it had been those terrifying seconds right after he and Tav had kissed for the very first time.
“Coming!” he yelled, hefting his kit bag over his shoulder and kicking Paolo’s bed on his way past. Paolo was, as usual, still in it, buried under a mountain of blankets and either asleep or dead. Luca envied him.
Mamma was waiting in the hall, Angelo’s ear clamped between finger and thumb. The sight of his younger brother squirming and whining to get out of having to visit the orthodontist lifted Luca’s spirits briefly, and he told horror stories of the moulds getting stuck to your teeth and having to be taken out with an electric drill all the way into town, enjoying the steady progress of Angelo’s face from red to green to white. Like a weird traffic light. Only—
Only passing the time meant passing the time, and way too soon, Mamma pulled up on Arundel Gate and kissed him on the cheek. “Have fun, darling,” she said encouragingly, and then Luca was standing on the cold, windy pavement, clutching his bag and feeling kind of like someone about to be hanged.
Or stabbed in the guts.
The city centre was busy—the post-Christmas sales rush—but the chaos was distant, like Luca was already underwater. He could feel his heart beating too hard in his chest; he felt stiff and awkward as he walked. He wanted to turn around and go home, just lie to Mamma and say he’d been and instead waste time pissing around town, but…
But that would be letting that little maggot chase him out. And Luca wasn’t that kind of a kid, he was never gonna be that kind of a kid…
The heavy warmth of the leisure centre, though, was calming. Luca caught up to David’s familiar figure on the stairs, and they fell into easy step debating the top five dirtiest tackles of the Boxing Day matches. David’s blind refusal to understand why burying your boots in someone’s thigh was against the rules calmed Luca’s nerves a bit, and by the time they’d gotten into the changing rooms and joined some of the other lads, Luca was beginning to feel more confident.
What was Jack gonna do, anyway? Stab him in a swimming pool full of mums?
“Alright, Luca,” Aaron said, swanning in not five minutes after Luca and David. “Dress rehearsals start in March, you in for a couple of those?”
“Uh-huh,” Luca said. “Tav’s having jealous snits, mind.”
“What, you not allowed to hang out with other lads now?” David sniggered, apparently unaware of the exact reason Luca was getting involved.
“Hey, I’d tempt anyone,” Aaron smirked; Luca rolled his eyes and hit him.
“You wish, Kowalski.”
“Better not start tempting him, last thing we need’s a randy fairy on the team!”
Luca flinched, his fingers clattering on the metal locker door at David’s jeer. His brain stalled. The fuck? Why did that bother him, all his brothers and Aaron and Tav had said similar things before. But—
But it sounded just like Jack for a moment, and it rattled Luca in a way he didn’t like.
“You alright?” Aaron asked quietly as Luca fumbled with his kit bag.
“Yeah.”
“You get dropped off, like? We can head back together after, if you want.”
“I’m fine, Az.”
“You just look a bit funny.”
“What’s it to you how I look?” Luca attempted, but the jeer felt a little flat, and Aaron’s squint said he was being seen through.
“Nothi―”
“Alright, Collins.”
The bang of the changing room door and the amiable greeting from one of the other boys caught Luca’s attention, but the sudden, sharp silence made his blood run cold. All at once, Luca was both afraid, and angry with himself for being afraid. So he squared his shoulders and turned on his heels, folding his arms over his chest and meeting Jack’s scowl with a glower of his own.
“What.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jack snarled.
“Fuckin’ swimming. What about you?”
“I told you not to come.”
It was like the rest of the team didn’t exist. Luca didn’t dare break eye contact, and Jack—although he tossed his bag onto a bench and unzipped his jacket, was zeroed in on Luca in a way that made the hairs on Luca’s arms stand on end.
“Dunno what kinky shit you’re into, Collins, but I don’t follow your orders.” Being both an older and a younger brother had made Luca able to bluff with ease, and despite the impotent anger, the tart tang of shame around the edges of his brain that this moron had somehow gotten one over him and seized some power in this stupid fucking game, his voice sounded—even to him—arrogant and bored.
“Go.”
“You what?”
“I said go,” Jack repeated. The other boys hovered uncertainly, but Aaron and David had both closed ranks to Luca’s shoulders, and Luca took a fortified breath. Aaron looked steely. David looked a little more confused, but determinedly hostile all the same.
“Like hell I’m going,” Luca said. “You got a problem with a pouf on the team, you need to fuck off and get your head out your arse. I’m here to swim. I’m not going nowhere.”
“What the fuck is going on?” David asked.
“Jack, mate, leave it,” one of the other boys said. “It’s just Jensen, Jensen’s sound―”
“He’s a fucking faggot, and I won’t have his kind here—I warned you, I fucking told you, and you’re still fucking here!”
“What’s your problem, mate, he’s taken up wi’ that Chris in Jan Krawczyk’s tutor group…”
“Yeah, Jack, lay off already, who d’you reckon you are anyway, you’re new―”
“I know there’s a fucking faggot on this fucking team and I―”
“Don’t fucking call him a faggot, twat,” one of the other boys—a lad called Ryan that Luca had never so much as spoken to outside of the club, and was in the year below them anyway—sneered, and he shot out a hand to shove at Jack’s shoulder.
“I told you to stay away!” Jack bellowed, and his hand vanished into his unzipped jacket. “I told you, I fucking told you―”
The changing room erupted; the flick-knife flashed under the sickly halogen lights, and Luca’s back slammed into the wall of locker doors as Aaron and David shoved him back as one. Both doors—one to the foyer and one to the pool—banged loudly, and the bolshy kid, Ryan, la
shed out with a fist, smashing into Jack’s jaw from the side. A couple of men came rampaging over from the showers in their wet trunks, all the noise bouncing off the walls until it was dizzying. Coach arrived with a shrill shriek of the whistle, and the knife had gone somewhere but Luca couldn’t tell where in the ruckus, and then Aaron’s hand was on his shoulder and he was being steered off into one corner of the changing room, and―
A flush of hot, furious shame boiled up Luca’s stomach and into his guts, and he twisted away from Aaron’s hands and grabbed for his kit bag. He didn’t need Aaron to fucking protect him. He didn’t need anyone to protect him, he wasn’t some pathetic little kid who needed their hand holding. He shouldn’t need defending, he was a Jensen! He should be able to defend himself.
He grabbed his bag and bolted. As he fled up the stairs, a burly security guard and Coach were wrestling the knife out of Jack’s hands in the corridor, both shouting at him, and Jack shouting back, face red and voice hoarse and shrill with fury.
“You fucking steer clear of me, Jensen!” he bellowed after Luca, who didn’t dare look back. “F’you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of here, you fucking queer!”
Luca reached the top of the stairs, and ran.
* * * *
The living room went blue.
For a brief moment, Tav blinked stupidly at the running kit he was hanging up to dry on the radiator, wondering if he was having a weird stroke or something, then he looked up. The colour was spinning, and outside he could see a blue light on a white roof. Police car. Outside Luca’s house.
He abandoned the laundry basket—let Mam yell, so what—and stuffed his feet into his trainers before heading over the road. Two policewomen were knocking on the front door, one leggy and ginger, the other so tiny she couldn’t be real. Tav let himself in the side gate and went around the back, hoping it was just Angelo being a dick again and nothing to do with Luca, but…but there was a funny feeling in his stomach, and somehow Tav knew he wasn’t going to get what he wanted this time.
And sure enough, by the time he’d popped open the back door and followed the voices into the living room—where, upon his entrance, nobody so much as gave him a second glance and he dropped onto the sofa beside Luca without a word—the policewomen were in the house, too, notebooks open, and Mr. Jensen was leaning against the wall, arms folded and glowering at Luca. Mamma Alessandra wasn’t there, but Antonio was, and even Paolo—albeit in a fluffy dressing gown and mismatched socks—was lurking in a corner.
Oh, shit.
“What’s happened?” Tav asked, squeezing Luca’s knee.
“Nothing,” Luca said shortly.
“It’s not nothing,” Antonio grunted.
“It is, this is unnecessary.”
“How about we start from the beginning?” the tiny policewoman asked. Up close, she was older—and shorter—than Tav had originally thought, with a round, kindly face. “I believe you called us, Mr. Jensen?”
“I did,” Mr. Jensen grunted. “And it’s Paul.”
“Alright, Paul, why don’t you start from the beginning for me?”
“Our Luca―” The leggy, ginger policewoman began to scribble in her notebook immediately; her colleague didn’t so much as twitch. “―goes to swimming club several times a week; it’s run by Derek Cooper. Cooper rang me about half an hour ago to tell me there’d been a fight in the changing rooms and one of the other lads—Collins, Collinson, something like that—had gotten into an argument with our Luca and pulled a knife on him.”
“What?!” Tav demanded, his hand tightening on Luca’s kneecap. Luca huffed and prised it off again.
“Was just a row,” he grumbled.
“Can it, boy,” Mr. Jensen snapped. “I sent our Antonio to pick him up, and when we grilled Luca about the incident, he admitted it’s the second time this kid’s threatened him with a knife, and he’s been bullying Luca at school because he’s gay.”
“It’s just Jack being a knob, it doesn’t mean you had to call the police,” Luca groused. He had his arms folded over his chest like a sulky child, and Tav suddenly wanted to hit him.
“You should have told the police at New Year!”
“What happened at New Year?” the short copper asked.
“Tav!” Luca snapped.
“Jack threatened Luca with a knife after he saw us snogging in the trees,” Tav said ruthlessly.
“For fuck’s sake―!”
“Language!”
“You should have told them then!” Tav argued hotly. “It’s not fucking bullying anymore, Luca, he’s tried to stab you twice. He needs locking up!”
“Did you see that New Year incident?” the policewoman asked.
“No,” Tav admitted. “But Luca told me the next morning, and he were right shook up and everything. And he’s been ragging on Luca for months, been telling him to quit swimming and stay away from school ‘cause Jack hates queers―”
“This is blowing everything out of prop―”
“Luca, if you know what’s good for you, shut up,” Antonio snarled.
“Don’t you tell me to―”
“Shut it!”
Mr. Jensen’s bellow was enough to make Tav’s balls crawl up inside his body, turn into ovaries, and hide forever. Even the ginger policewoman jumped, nearly dropping her pen. The whole room seemed to shiver.
“Luca, you will tell the officers the truth. This is serious. I don’t often agree with your hotheaded idiot of a boyfriend, but this time I do: this is not bullying. This is not a childish disagreement. This isn’t even an idiot spouting bigoted ideas his parents probably taught him—this is dangerous, and you have been hiding it from us.”
Luca swallowed, his throat working. The short policewoman cleared her throat quietly. “Luca,” she said softly, “if this Jack has been targeting you due to your sexuality, it’s a hate crime.”
“So.”
“It’s unacceptable,” she said firmly. “Your sexual preferences are absolutely no reason to threaten you in any way, and using a weapon to make those threats is extremely dangerous.”
“So?” Luca repeated belligerently. “All you’ll do is lock him up. And he doesn’t need locking up, someone’s fucked him up and he needs help, I told him that and I told the school counsellor, and―”
“What do you mean, someone’s fucked him up?” Somehow, her soft voice echoing the word ‘fucked’ was inappropriately funny, and Tav had to bite at the corner of his mouth.
“He’s said stuff. He’s afraid of me. Like, he’s actually afraid, he’s not just a bigot with a big mouth, he’s actually freaked out by me―”
“That’s no fucking excuse to knife you,” Antonio snarled.
“You’re not fucking listening!” Luca snapped. “Jack’s got something wrong and he needs help, not―”
“Bully for Jack, I need my kid brother not getting knifed in swimming pools!”
“I’m seventeen, you fucktard!”
“If either one of you say one more word, I will take the arrest and belt both of you!” Paul thundered. The policewomen were both suddenly extremely interested in their notebooks. “Antonio, shut your gob. Luca, tell the truth. Did he pull a knife on you in the changing rooms because you’re gay?”
Luca clenched his jaw. “No comment.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Antonio, shut up.”
“Whole team was there, you don’t need me to say shit,” Luca said angrily. There was a muscle fluttering in his jaw. “I’m not running to the cops like a scared little bitch, and it’s not fair to just lock him up and not get him a shrink and lock up whoever fucked him up in the first place. I can handle Jack.”
“Yeah, you’ve been doing a stellar job so far,” Tav said, exasperated. “It’s gone too fucking far, Luca, just shop him out and get rid of him before he gets rid of you!”
“He hasn’t got the balls to actually do it,” Luca snorted, shrugging off Tav’s hand like it was dirty. “He was a to
tal pussy the first time, and second he got nowhere near me, I don’t even reckon he realised he’d pulled it.”
“So he has pulled a knife on you twice.”
Luca surged to his feet, hands balled into fists and shaking. “Whole team saw. Ask them, ask Tav, he’s apparently willing to grass to the cops, everyone knows Jack hates faggots and benders, but I’m not actually a cunt and I reckon there’s a decent guy under whatever’s making him scared, so I’m not saying nothing and―” His voice rose impressively as Mr. Jensen opened his mouth. “―I ain’t saying nothing!”
He turned on his heel and stormed out. Antonio half-rose, but—to Tav’s surprise—Paolo shot out a hand and staggered to his feet.
“I’ll see to him,” he said. “You lot’ll just end up sending him into orbit right now.”
Mr. Jensen sighed heavily through his nose. “He’s not to leave the house,” he grunted. Paolo nodded before slouching out, and Tav chewed on his lip.
“I can’t tell you about the knife, I never seen it,” he said quietly to the policewomen, “but I’ll tell you about the history of it all. If,” he added, glancing at Mr. Jensen, “you won’t tell him I told.”
Slowly, Mr. Jensen nodded.
* * * *
The bedroom door opened and closed again, but then a familiar shuffle sounded on the attic stairs, and Luca unclenched his fists.
“S’it safe?” Paolo asked.
“Maybe.”
He shuffled a bit higher, then sprawled at the top of the steps. Luca ignored his brother, sprawled out on his bed on his stomach and hugging his pillow under his chest. He was torn between storming out and going swimming—hang Jack, he’d go to the Heeley pool if he had to—or trashing their room. Paolo’s stuff could bite the dust, too, for getting involved downstairs.
“I gerrit.”
“What?” Luca snapped.
“I get it,” Paolo repeated.
“You get what?”
“That you wanna help this kid, ‘stead of condemn him.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” Paolo’s voice was low and easy, and Luca found himself relaxing slightly. “You did same wi’ your Tav. Mamma didn’t like him very much when you made friends with him, you remember? Only you could see someone else under the thuggish behaviour and you turned him around pretty good. You were the same then. Wanted to help him, wanted to shake him out of his stupidity, wouldn’t listen to Dad and Mamma telling you the kid was shitty news and even his own mam couldn’t cope.”
The Italian Word for Kisses Page 18