Bitter Sixteen

by Stefan Mohamed

  I shake my head and pull a Samurai sword out of my guitar. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Bisecting you from your nuts to your noggin ought to do.’ And I smile as Zach gulps.

  But this wasn’t a titanic battle of mortal foes. It was five lads in the dark in a small Welsh town eight miles away from another small Welsh town. Violence was inevitable, but not balletic kung-fu violence with liberal doses of slow motion. Dirty punches. Part of me – more than part of me, actually, most of me – wanted to just say sod it and rise into the air, psychically yanking their feet from under them and spinning them around, daring them to ever so much as look at me funny again . . .

  Can’t.

  Shouldn’t.

  But I wanna . . .

  ‘Yeah, drama poof,’ said Zach, bringing me crashing back to reality.

  ‘Word of advice, guys,’ I said. ‘Improv? Not your game.’

  Witty banter exhausted, Zach threw the opening punch. Right into my chin. It hurt, and his minions all laughed, but then I headbutted him in the face extremely hard and heard a crack, and the laughter stopped. I wasn’t sure if his nose had broken or not, but a gratifying quantity of blood came out and he stumbled backwards, making a noise that sounded like bwah. Now George hit me in the face and it knocked me off balance for a second, giving both the Sams the chance to hold me still as Zach came for me, blood streaming from his nose, screaming curses. He punched me in the stomach and I brought both feet off the ground, planted them on his chest and kicked off. The two Sams and I hurtled backwards and they fell to the ground, losing control of me. I turned a perfect backflip and landed on my feet and took a second to think how unbelievably freaking cool that must have looked before Zach ran towards me. This time I hit him really hard and he spun sideways, smacked into a wall and fell to the ground. George was running at me too. He threw a punch and I dodged it, grabbed his arm and swung him. I had very little actual physical strength so I channelled some brain energy into the swing to give it some oomph, causing George to hit the wall rather harder than I had intended. Oh well. Rather him than me.

  At this point the two Sams exchanged panicked glances and ran away, which was a relief, and I steadied my breathing, dusted myself off and walked past Zach, back towards school. No puns occurred to me, unfortunately.

  He threw the first punch, I thought as I lay in bed that night, mulling over what had happened. They’d deserved what they’d got. I’d even go as far as to say that it has been satisfying. And I hadn’t cheated . . . not exactly.

  I hadn’t even told Daryl yet. I was waiting for the dream. The bones. The blood. The dream I’d been having on and off for a while. It felt like a message. A prologue. Maybe the fight had been chapter one. I didn’t know how keen I was for chapter two.

  There were no repercussions from the fight with the Fantastic Four, but word got around. Everyone always found out about stuff like that. I was treated with extra disdain by the people who liked Zach, and I got extra smiles and pats on the back from people who didn’t like him. The other three, George and the two Sams, were superfluous, background noise. Cardboard cutouts. No-one paid them much attention because they weren’t really there. People paid attention to Zach because despite being a grade-A arsehole he had a level of Neanderthal charisma that appealed to fellow Neanderthals and gave him power. I’d taken it away briefly and that was good, but I was happy for that to be the end of it.

  December arrived without further incident, but as the nights got colder and sporadic snow showers began, my night-time training sessions became more difficult. Eventually, after a frost-bitten encounter with a rather large dog who didn’t take kindly to being attacked with psychically-propelled snowballs, I gave up on them altogether, and settled for digging out my old Lego and building models with my mind. Daryl didn’t like the cold and spent most of his time indoors watching DVDs.

  Romeo and Juliet kept getting better. Mark Topp, who was playing Tybalt, was doing his evil part very well and Kloe was way ahead of me in terms of character nuances. In fact, apart from a few of the year nines, who were still horsing around far too much during the opening fight, everybody was pulling their weight. We had remodelled Friar Lawrence as a sort of comedy pimp and he always had everybody laughing, and Paris was a practically invisible beige-wearing man who spent more time texting than looking at people. Miss Stevenson’s experiments were all interesting and, so far, successful.

  The final lesson of term was English. Our teacher had been kept away by the snow because he lived in the hills, and we had a supply teacher who hadn’t been given anything to work with, so everyone was just sitting around doing whatever, exchanging Christmas cards and chatting away. I was sitting by myself, absently doodling some kung-fu snowmen, and half-listening to two boys discussing some creepy Internet thing they were surreptitiously viewing under the table on a phone. ‘It’s blatantly bollocks,’ said Reuben. ‘Smiling Joe’s fake. Like Slender Man, or something.’

  ‘Who cares?’ said Jack. ‘It’s wicked. Read this bit, the way he eats them —’

  ‘Stanly?’

  I looked up. Kloe was smiling down at me, holding a handful of Christmas cards in red envelopes. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘You seemed deep in thought.’

  ‘Deep. Yeah. Thoroughly submerged.’ We laughed only a little bit awkwardly – considering how close our characters were in the play, we hadn’t exchanged much in the way of real-world dialogue.

  Kloe shuffled through her cards and handed one to me. I noticed that she’d spelled my name right, which was impressive. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Thanks! I um . . . sorry, I don’t really do Christmas cards . . .’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I know it’s pretty naff. I just, you know, I quite like it, as it’s our last year and everything.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said. What’s a funny thing to say? What’s a Christmas pun? Do girls like puns? Are puns a good thing?

  ‘Well, merry Christmas,’ she said. ‘See you in January!’

  ‘Yeah, you too,’ I smiled. WHAT’S A FUNNY THING TO SAY?! ‘I mean, merry Christmas too.’ TOO LATE, YOU KNOB.

  Kloe smiled and walked away and I opened my card. It was very tasteful: a silhouette of a Bethlehem-esque scene beneath bright starlight. Inside, the message read MERRY CHRISTMAS ROMEO. LOVE KLOE. XX

  Two kisses. What did that mean?

  Probably nothing.

  Probably definitely nothing.

  All the same, I managed to sneak a glance at a few other boys’ cards, and none of them had more than one kiss. Some had none.

  Probably definitely nothing.

  Nothing or not, I felt a warm maple-syrup bubble in my stomach. And as I sat on the bus home, watching the freezing confetti fall, I thought about Kloe and smiled to myself.

  ‘Two kisses,’ said Daryl. ‘Wow. I mean . . . Jesus. That’s amazing.’

  ‘Oh, cheers,’ I said sarcastically, sprawled on my bed and breathing in the smell of holidays.

  ‘Not what I meant,’ said Daryl. ‘It’s just . . . have you ever had a girlfriend before?’

  ‘Not really. I mean . . . no.’

  ‘And suddenly some hottie comes onto you out of nowhere?’

  ‘Not really out of nowhere. We’re in the play together. And, y’know. She’s nice.’

  ‘Aha! So you’re sweet on this slice of woman!’

  I didn’t make eye contact, just lazily played with my guitar, fiddling with the strings without touching them, trying to play a complex riff without much effort or success. Finally I said, ‘Look, it’s obviously nothing. It’s all just because of the play. It’s a weird situation, she’s a pretty girl and we’re both having to act out these romantic scenes, and obviously people bond in those situations. And . . . and it’s not like she’d have given me a card if we weren’t in the play together.’ I was right.
She wouldn’t have. ‘We’d never exchanged a word before we were cast.’

  ‘I thought you said she gave cards to everyone?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Most of the people in our class seemed to have them.’

  ‘But you’re the only one who got two kisses.’

  ‘Only based on the small sample I took. And it might just be an extra kiss for being a good actor. Or something.’ Or was it? I asked myself. Shut up, I replied.

  Daryl sniggered. ‘Hmm. Yeah. OK.’

  ‘Do you think I should have got her number?’ I said.

  ‘Why? Would you have called her?’

  ‘Probably . . . maybe . . . not.’

  ‘Maybe you could get her a Christmas present. Girls like presents, or so I’m told.’

  ‘She lives one town away. How would I get it to her?’

  Daryl shook his head. ‘You can be dense on an epic scale when the mood takes you. Can you fly or not?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Going to get her a present?’

  I grabbed a pillow with my mind and hit him with it. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Should I get her something if I’m not sure if I like her?’

  ‘Imagine if you don’t,’ said Daryl, ‘and then you realise that you do like her when the opportunity’s passed you by. You’ll be royally hacked off to say the least.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘How come you’re so insightful? Have you ever had a meaningful relationship?’

  Daryl shrugged. ‘Only with Buffy. And Faith. Also Scarlett Johansson. Rrruff.’

  I laughed and later we ate fish and chips and went out for a walk. I showed him some flying and we talked about girls and films and magic. If that night was an indicator of how my life was going to proceed, I was in for a fairly sweet ride.

  I was standing on top of the London Eye, looking across the city, and I could see people moving like zombies on the gridded streets. Smoke rose in vicious colours from the manhole covers and I had a headache. I gritted my teeth, and far below somebody exploded like a pinãta. Multi-coloured viscera soaked the other passers-by but they ignored it, carrying on with their mundane business. I felt another stab of pain and screamed and some more people burst like sacks of fat. I fell to my knees and a building split in two, crumbling into nothing. All around me the city was falling apart and people were becoming piles of gore.

  I opened my eyes, salt water cooling on my face. I wiped it away and my room swam into focus. The sky was clear and moonlight hung from cobwebs like liquid nitrogen dew. I sat up and switched on my lamp. Daryl didn’t stir. I looked up at the trees that I had drawn on the walls. They were moving, swaying in a breeze that couldn’t be. I blinked and rubbed my damp eyes and still the trees moved, and things were moving between them, zipping like bees, leaping from branch to branch so fast that I couldn’t see them. I shook my head and thought no, and the trees all caught fire. The flames spread across my ceiling, engulfing my room. My skin burned, became ash and I dissolved into —

  I woke up. It was ten o’clock in the morning and Daryl was watching Trainspotting. I sat up, brushing sleep from my eyes, and looked at the trees. Still. No fire. I shook my head and psychically lobbed some balled-up socks at Daryl. ‘Bit early for heroin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Choose life,’ said Daryl, in an impeccable Scottish accent. ‘Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose —’

  ‘— Breakfast,’ I said, sliding out of bed.

  Daryl shrugged. ‘That works too.’

  I pulled on a T-shirt and some trousers and went downstairs. Mum was out and my dad was having a smoke on the patio. I made some fried eggs on toast and took them upstairs and while I ate them I drew pictures on my sketch pad, colouring them in with a mixture of pencil crayon and felt tip. Decaying zombies and yellow rabbits. Ghosts. A monkey juggling stars. Mushroom people with swords. Trees.

  ‘So, what are we gong to do today?’ asked Daryl.

  I shrugged. ‘Dunno. Eat chocolate and watch DVDs, probably.’

  Daryl tutted.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just thought maybe you’d be doing something a bit more . . . power-related?’

  ‘What is it with you and vicarious fun?’ I asked.

  ‘I just like watching you fly! That’s all. Jesus.’

  ‘Well, what if I don’t fancy it?’

  ‘That’s fine. Fine, I don’t mind.’

  I dabbed the last crust in a bit of spilled yolk and finished it, then took my plate downstairs and washed my hands. When I got back to my room Daryl was reading a magazine, and I unpacked my guitar, hooked it up to the amplifier and started to play.

  I had been twiddling for about half an hour when Daryl said, ‘Have you thought any more about London?’

  ‘Haven’t asked Dad about the driving lessons yet.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Dunno.’ I tried a series of chords and the amplifier projected a horrible discordant mess, so I switched it off, bored. ‘He doesn’t seem to like me much lately.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to ask for the lessons,’ said Daryl. ‘Male bonding and so on.’

  ‘I’ll ask him on Christmas day,’ I said. ‘It’s the one day of the year he’s guaranteed to be in a good mood otherwise Mum’ll divorce him.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Daryl shifted on the bed, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. I just . . . thinking about it, I’m not sure it’s actually that good an idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Going to London.’

  ‘Why? You were advocating it something fierce before. I thought maybe you’d got a job with the Tourist Board without telling me.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘Dunno. It’s just a long way away. And ever so slightly different from this little rural timewarp.’

  ‘I’m not going to go without a good reason,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t feel the call of epic superhero destiny?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Kind of. Seems a waste not to try to use the powers for good, rather than delivering post or building extensions. I just don’t know how the hell it would work. And plus . . .’ I thought about Kloe. ‘I might be developing a potential reason to stay. So we’ll see.’

  At about five o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  Click. They’d hung up, whoever they were. I tried to re-dial, but the number was withheld. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What?’ asked Daryl.

  ‘Mystery caller,’ I said. ‘Didn’t leave a number.’

  ‘Ooooh. I bet it was Kloe.’

  ‘I doubt it. She hasn’t got the number.’

  ‘Could have looked it up in the phone book,’ said Daryl, as if I were a dunce.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’

  ‘Eddie, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I put the phone back in its cradle and picked up my guitar again. Daryl watched me for a few minutes, then went over to the DVDs and scrutinised them. ‘So,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do tonight?’

  ‘The same thing we do every night,’ said Daryl. ‘Try to take over the world.’

  I laughed just south of hysterically for about eight seconds, then shook my head. ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Daryl. ‘I’m sorry. Narf.’

  Chapter Six

  CHRISTMAS EVE ARRIVED and I sat and stared at the phone, debating whether or not to call Kloe. I didn’t have her mobile number, but I’d decided to follow the advice of Daryl the Great Dog Detective and look in the phone book, and had found her house number. I picked up then immediately replace
d the receiver about six times before an angel finally appeared on my left shoulder and said, in a weary voice, ‘For God’s sake. This is ridiculous. Just call, see if she’s there, ask if maybe she fancies meeting up at some point over Christmas. You can always dress it up as a private rehearsal for the play.’

  The devil on my right shoulder, who seemed more neurotic than Satanic, scrunched up its face. ‘What if she’s not there? What if you have to talk to her parents?’

  ‘So what?’ asked the angel, belligerently. ‘Say you’ll call back!’

  ‘But it’ll be embarrassing.’

  ‘Screw “embarrassing” you wimp! Two kisses! Are you a Hulk or a Hobbit?’

  ‘They’re taking Stanly to Isengard —’

  ‘Shut up and phone her. And stop manifesting your internal conflicts.’

  They vanished and I dialled, and nobody answered, and I bottled it and didn’t try again.

  ‘Did you ask her if she called on Saturday?’ asked Daryl, when I returned to my room.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going to meet up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you actually speak to her?’

  ‘No.’

  Daryl shrugged. ‘Oh well.’

  ‘Oh well? It was your idea. Ish.’

  ‘Yeah, emphasis on the “ish”. Obviously I don’t want you to throw away this potentially golden opportunity, but y’know. Your destiny is in your hands, farm boy.’

  ‘Sod this,’ I said. ‘We aren’t having this conversation.’

  ‘Cool. Whatever, kiddo. Your density will bring you to her.’ Daryl began to dance in a lopsided, dog-like way. ‘“I’m not Peter Pan, I don’t BEEP with fairies, but I bust more rhymes than virgin cherries” . . .’

  I threw a cushion at him with my mind. ‘Numpty.’

  ‘Is what it is, yo.’