by Alice Oseman
“You’re so amazingly intelligent,” Daniel said. “Did you get your four A’s?”
“Yep. Did you?”
“Yup.”
“Nice.” Then I shook my head. “So where are we going? I’m not exactly dressed to go out.”
Daniel was walking a couple of steps ahead. He spun round and started walking backwards, looking at me, his face brought out of the dark by the streetlamps.
“We thought we’d camp in the field,” he said.
“Is that legal?”
“Probably not.”
“Aw, you’re breaking a rule! I’m so proud.”
He just turned away from me. Hilarious.
“I haven’t seen you and Aled hanging out much this summer,” I said.
He didn’t look at me. “So?”
“I don’t know. Have you been on holiday?”
He laughed. “I wish.”
“You said you hadn’t seen much of him.”
“When did I say that?”
“Erm.” I was getting the sense that I was venturing into awkward territory. “You know, before my history exam, you came to talk to me …”
“Oh. No, we’ve just been busy. I work, like, five days a week at Frankie & Benny’s in town. And you know he’s not very good at replying to texts.”
He always replied to my texts, but I didn’t say that to Daniel.
“How’d you two get so close anyway?” he said with a frown.
“I rescued him from a club,” I said, and Daniel didn’t say anything. He looked away and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
The sky wasn’t quite black yet, it was still sort of dark blue and hazy, but you could see the moon and a few stars, which was nice, I guess. We climbed over the stile and into the empty field next to the village and I was struck by how quiet it was. There wasn’t any wind, any cars, any anything. I felt like I hadn’t been anywhere so quiet my whole life, even though I’ve lived here, in the countryside, since I was born.
In a patch of dry earth in the middle of the field was a small campfire and next to that was a large tent, and next to that was Aled Last, his whole body glowing gold from the fire. He was wearing his actual school uniform, which fitted him, because he’d worn it within the past two months, but it still looked sort of odd on him, probably because I was used to seeing him dressed in interestingly-coloured shorts and oversized knitwear.
How was he eighteen? How could anyone I knew possibly be eighteen years old?
I ran past Daniel and his ankle swingers, ran through the grass, and fell on top of Aled.
An hour later and we were three quarters of the way through a bottle of vodka, which did not bode well for me because alcohol just makes me fall asleep.
Aled had opened his present – it was a radio shaped like a skyscraper. The windows lit up in time with the audio that was playing. He told me that it was the best thing he’d ever seen in his whole life, which was probably a lie, but I was glad he liked it. It was battery-operated so we put Radio 1 on in the background and there was some kind of electronic-themed show going on, lots of mellow synth and low bass. The lights of the town and the power station flickered in the distance.
Daniel took one look at it and then said, “Jesus fucking Christ. You know about Universe City, don’t you.”
Drunk Daniel was only more sarcastic and more sweary and more patronising than Sober Daniel, but somehow that made it easier to laugh at him rather than punch him in the face.
“Er,” I said.
“Er,” Aled said.
“Don’t er me, I can see right through you both.” Daniel threw his head back and laughed. “Well, it was only a matter of time before someone worked it out.” He leaned towards me. “How long’ve you been listening? Were you there when I used to play bass in the theme tune?”
I laughed. “You play bass?”
“Not any more.”
Aled interrupted before I could say anything else. For the last half an hour he’d been setting a stick alight and making shapes with the fire in the air like a sparkler. “She’s the new artist.”
Daniel frowned. “Artist?”
“Yeah, she made the gif for last week’s episode.”
“Oh.” Daniel’s voice quietened a little. “I haven’t listened to last week’s yet.”
Aled grinned. “You’re such a fake fan.”
“Shut up, I’m obviously a fan.”
“Fake fan.”
“I was the first person to even subscribe.”
“Fake fan.”
Daniel chucked a handful of dirt at Aled and Aled laughed and rolled over to avoid it.
This whole evening was silly. I didn’t really understand why we were hanging out. Aled wasn’t in my year group; he didn’t go to my school. Daniel didn’t even like me. What sort of a friendship group is two boys and one girl?
Daniel and Aled started talking about their results.
“I’m just … really relieved,” Daniel was saying. “Like, getting into a good uni to do biology … I’ve wanted it for, like, six years. I’d hate myself if I messed it up now.”
“I’m really pleased for you,” said Aled, who was lying on his side, still poking a stick into the fire.
“You must be really pleased for you though.”
“Haha, yeah, I don’t know,” said Aled, which I didn’t really get. Why wouldn’t he be pleased about his results? “It’s good. I just don’t think I care about anything that much.”
“You care about Universe City,” I said.
Aled glanced at me. “Ah, yeah. Okay. That’s true.”
I could feel myself getting tired and my eyes shutting. Carys popped into my head – we’d got drunk like this on the same day two years ago, results night, at that house party. That had been a bad night.
When exactly was I going to bring Carys up with Aled?
“Well, I saw a lot of people crying about their grades this morning, so I think you should be celebrating,” said Daniel. He passed the vodka and Coke bottles to Aled. “Drink up, birthday boy.”
I knew I’d reach the next level of drunk soon where I’d say stuff I’d regret later. Maybe I’d fall asleep before then, but maybe I wouldn’t. I ripped some grass out of the ground and started scattering it into the fire.
KANYE WOULDN’T HAVE LIKED IT
We were in a field and then we weren’t and then we were again – somehow I’d acquired a blanket and Aled and I were singing along to Kanye West. Aled knew the full rap but I didn’t, so he gave a dramatic performance in front of the stars. It was warm and the sky was lovely. Kanye wouldn’t have liked it.
We were in the tent and Daniel had fallen asleep after throwing up in the brambles and staggering back to us with a giant scratch all up one arm and Aled was saying, Aled is saying, “On the one hand I’m thinking yeah this work is important, like, it’s really important that I get the grades and get accepted, but on the other hand my brain is just like, I don’t know, I just don’t care, it’ll all be all right in the end or something, like, so it’s getting to the point where I just don’t do any work if I don’t have to, I only do the things I have to do, but I just don’t care? I don’t know, this doesn’t make any sense …” For some reason I keep nodding and smiling and saying, “Yeah.”
I’m asking Aled, “Who’s February Friday?”
But he’s saying, “I can’t tell you!”
And I’m saying, “But we’re friends!”
And he’s saying, “That’s irrelevant!”
“Are you in love with them? Like the fandom says?”
He laughs and doesn’t answer.
We’re standing in the middle of the field seeing who can scream the loudest.
We’re taking blurry night-time photos and tweeting them to each other, and I’m wondering whether this is a good idea, even though I know no one would be able to make out our faces, but somehow struggling to do anything about it.
RADIO @UniverseCity
@touloser toulouse candid [b
lurry photo of her with a double-chin]
*toulouse* @touloser
@UniverseCity Radio revealed [blurry photo of Aled’s shoes]
We’re lying in the grass.
I say, “I think I can hear a fox.”
Aled says, “The voice inside my head is Radio’s voice.”
I say, “How are you not cold?”
Aled says, “I stopped feeling anything ages ago.”
We’re lying in the tent.
I say, “I used to get these really bad nightmares called night terrors where you wake up and you still think you’re in the nightmare.”
Aled says, “Every night I get chest pains and I’m convinced I’m gonna die.”
I say, “You’re not supposed to get them once you’re a teenager.”
Aled says, “Chest pains or night terrors?”
We’ve been trying to record an episode of Universe City for the past ten minutes, but all that’s happened so far is Aled and I have played a game of tag, resulting in me falling on him again (by accident this time). I spent a good few minutes pretending to be a character I made up on the spot and called ‘Toulouse’, like my Internet identity, and now all three of us are playing Never Have I Ever.
“Never have I ever …” Aled taps his chin. “Never have I ever farted and blamed it on someone else.”
Daniel groans and I laugh and both of us take a swig of our drinks.
“You haven’t done that?” I ask Aled.
“No, I’m not that shameless. I take responsibility for my actions.”
“Fine. Never have I ever …” I look between the pair. “Broken curfew.”
Daniel laughs and says, “You are lame,” and takes a drink, but Aled shoots him a look and says, “I’m lame as well then,” and Daniel immediately looks guilty.
“Never have I ever …” Daniel taps his bottle. “… said ‘I love you’ and didn’t mean it.”
I make a long ‘Oooooh’ sound. Aled raises his cup as if to take a drink, but then seemingly changes his mind and rubs his eye instead, or maybe he’d just needed to rub his eye in the first place. Neither of us drink.
“Okay, never have I ever …” Aled pauses then, and his eyes glaze over. “Never have I ever wanted to go to university.”
Daniel and I don’t say anything for a moment, and then Daniel laughs like Aled’s probably joking, and then Aled laughs like he’s probably joking too, but I don’t know what to do, because it doesn’t feel like Aled is joking at all.
I doze off not long after that in the tent and then wake up to find Daniel sleeping next to me but Aled nowhere, and I stumble out of the tent to see him walking in circles in the grass, his phone close to his mouth, mumbling things I can’t quite hear properly. I wander over to him and ask, “What are you saying?” and he looks up and his whole body flinches and he says, “Jesus Christ, I didn’t hear you coming,” and then both of us forget what we were talking about.
Daniel wakes up to sing ‘Nothing Left For Us’ with us. The visuals are just blurry shapes – us running across the landscape in the dark, flashes of eyes, flashes of skin. We post the episode to YouTube before we change our minds.
Daniel and I lie next to each other and he says, “One day, when I was five, some girl made fun of my real name, like, all day. She was just running round the playground screaming “DAE-SUNG, DAE-SUNG, DAE-SUNG, DAE-SUNG’S GOT A STUPID NAME,” in a really silly voice and it made me so upset, like, I was crying and my teacher had to call my mum. And I was still crying when my mum came to pick me up. My mum’s honestly the sweetest lady in the world, and she took me home and said to me, “How about we give you a real English name, huh? We live in England now and you’re an English boy.” Which made me really happy at the time. And she told my school to change my name in the register to Daniel and that was that.”
I nod at him. “Do you wish people called you Dae-Sung?”
“Yeah. I know my mum had good intentions but ‘Daniel’ feels like a lie. I might change it back once I get to university …”
“I wish I had an Ethiopian name sometimes,” I say. “Or just an East African name … I wish I was closer to my ethnicity in general, really.”
Daniel rolls his head towards me. “What about your parents? Aren’t they …?”
“My mum’s white. My dad’s Ethiopian but he and my mum got divorced when I was four and he lives in Scotland now with his own family. We still talk on the phone fairly often but I only see him a few times a year, and I hardly ever see my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins from that side of the family. I just wish I felt closer to them … sometimes I feel like I’m the only black person I know. Like, my dad’s surname is Mengesha. I wish I was Frances Mengesha.”
“Frances Mengesha. That sounds good.”
“I know, right.”
“Your initials would be FM. Like FM radio.”
We can still hear the fox. It sounds like someone being brutally murdered.
Aled lies down next to the fire and closes his eyes and Daniel rolls over and kneels up and puts his hands flat on the grass on each side of Aled’s face and leans over him. Aled opens his eyes but can’t keep eye contact. His eyes scrunch up as he laughs and rolls over, pushing Daniel away.
I go to investigate the fox, I head towards the sound, towards the National Trust footpath through the woods, and you think I’d be scared or something, in the dark in the woods in the night, but I’m not.
I almost make it there when a person starts walking towards me, and that’s when I get scared, shit scared, I nearly fall over or turn and run, but then I shine my phone light on the person, and it’s legitimately Carys Last, wandering around in the dark in the middle of the night, and I’m like:
“Jesus Christ.”
No – wait. It’s not her. It’s just a dream.
Wait, am I asleep now?
“Not him,” Carys says. “It’s me.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Jesus because she looks like she’s walking out of heaven itself, or maybe it’s just my phone torch shining on her skin and her platinum hair.
I wasn’t dreaming. This did happen, two years ago, on results night.
We’d been at a house party. She’d wandered off into the woods.
Why am I remembering this now?
“Are you, like … a were-fox?” I asked her.
“No, I just like wildlife,” she said. “At night.”
“You shouldn’t walk around in the dark at night.”
“Neither should you.”
“Well, shit. You got me there.”
Maybe nothing was happening.
We’d been drinking. Me especially. And we’d been to a lot of house parties before this. I was getting used to the way people would just pass out one by one or throw up in plant pots. I was getting used to the group of boys who would always sit in the garden and smoke weed because, well, I don’t really know why they did it. I was getting used to the way people got off with each other without a second thought, even if it made me feel disgusting to even watch it happen.
We walked back to the party together. It was two, maybe three in the morning.
We walked through the back garden gate and past some bodies in the grass.
She’d been so quiet that day. Quiet and sad.
We sat down on a sofa in the lounge. It was so dark inside we could barely see each other.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said.
I didn’t push it, but after a moment, she continued.
“I’m jealous of you,” said Carys.
“What? Why?”
“How d’you just … slide through life like that? Friends, school, family …” She shook her head. “How d’you just slide through it all without fucking up.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“You’ve got so much more power than you think you do,” she said. “But you just waste it. You just do whatever anyone else says.”
I sti
ll didn’t know what she was talking about, so I just said, “You’re weird for fifteen.”
“Ha. You sound like an adult.”
I frowned. “You’re the one being patronising as fuck.”
“You get sweary when you’re drunk.”
“I’m always sweary inside my head.”
“Everyone’s different inside their head.”
“You’re so …”
Suddenly we’re by the fire and Aled’s asleep next to Daniel in the tent and time keeps skipping. How did we get here? Is Carys actually here? In the gold light of the fire she looks demonic. “Why are you like this?” I ask her.
“I want …” She has a drink in her hand; where did that come from? This isn’t really happening. This didn’t really happen. “I just want somebody to listen to me.”
I don’t remember when she left or anything else she said apart from two minutes later when she stood up and said, “Nobody listens to me.”
BLANKET BUNDLE
We were lying down on Aled’s living-room carpet. The tent had been a bad idea – it was cold and we’d run out of water and none of us wanted to pee outdoors – so we stumbled inside. We must have done, I guess. I don’t remember it happening. I just remember Aled muttering something about his mum being away with family for a few days, which was weird, because why wouldn’t you be with your son on his birthday?
Daniel fell asleep again on the sofa and Aled and I huddled up on the floor. We had blankets on top of us and all the lights were off and all I could see of Aled was his pale eyes, all I could hear was a low synth rumble coming from the skyscraper radio. I couldn’t quite believe how much I seriously loved Aled Last, even if it wasn’t in the ideal way that would make it socially acceptable for us to live together until we die.
Aled rolled over so he was facing me.
“Did you hang out with Carys much?” he asked, his voice barely above a murmur. “Apart from on the train.”
We hadn’t talked about Carys before.
“We weren’t really friends, to be honest,” I lied. “We hung out when I was in Year 10, but we weren’t really friends.”