by Alexis Hall
“Do not,” Ellery warned me, “even think about wearing that here.”
The box from my family turned out to mainly contain a quilt for Nik that Mum had made him. We laid it over his bed, and the room seemed instantly less antiseptic, while he had some emotions he felt obviously more comfortable sharing with the window.
“She really didn’t have to do that,” he muttered finally.
I smoothed down the edges of the quilt and made sure it was hanging evenly. Mum had gone for geometric patterns in shades of blue—very bold, and subtly masculine. “Yeah, it’s a present for you, so definitionally she didn’t.”
He snuffled.
“Listen…” I flipped open the card, which had a picture of a polar bear on it:
Dear Nik, Thank you so much for taking such good care of our Arden at Oxford. You deserve a medal but we thought this would be warmer, and the Internet tells us it’s very cold in Boston. Lots of love and Happy Christmas, Iris, Hazel, and Rabbie.
“You’ll say thank you for me, right?” said Nik, still to the window.
I nudged gently against his shoulder. “No way. I’m going to make them think you’re ungrateful so they stop liking you.”
There was a card for me too. This one had a picture of a cartoon squirrel on it, and said:
Our favourite Ardy, we thought long and hard about what to get you this year, and then realised there was nothing we could give our twenty-something–making-his-way-in-the world that would be better than cold hard cash. So we’ve sent you some direct to your bank account. And also some socks. But these do not count as legal tender, so they are enclosed. We nearly sent pants as well but we have decided you are old enough now that it would be creepy. Which is our way of saying: Buy your own damn pants. All our love, Mum, Hazel, and Rabbie.
The socks were another Mum special: They were super soft and came in all the colours of the rainbow. I donated the dark purple pair to Ellery, in case she felt left out, and she put them on straightaway. Such was the power of Mum’s socks.
And the box, which I think we were all starting to believe was actually a dimension to a pocket plane of presents, still wasn’t empty. The was a stocking each for Nik and me (although I shared mine with Ellery), stuffed with the usual assortment of chocolate coins, tangerines, funny little puzzles that Rabbie had found or made, card games, seaglass, pocket books, stationery, and—of course—a Rubik’s Cube for me. I groaned as Ellery unwrapped it.
“What’s the matter?”
“They do this every year. The fucking bastards.”
Nik tilted his head quizzically. “Give you a Rubik’s Cube? Wow, yeah, your family are total monsters.”
“I hate the damn things. I can’t do them. I might, when I was younger, have legitimately thrown tantrums over them. But”—I grit my teeth—“I can’t stop fiddling with them.”
“You do know there’s a trick to them, right?”
“OMG, yes. I know there’s a trick to them. I have read the Internet. I have followed step-by-step instructions on YouTube. I still can’t fucking do them.”
“Pass it here,” said Nik, already insufferable. And Ellery threw him the small, plastic bane of my life. A flurry of clicks followed. And within about thirty seconds, he smugly placed a completed Rubik’s Cube on the bedside table. “Boom baby.”
Ellery stared at it for a long moment. “I can’t decide if that was weirdly sexy.”
“You”—I glared at Nik, who was making zero attempt to pretend he wasn’t laughing at me—“engineering dick.”
He fluttered his lashes. “I’m saving you, Arden. Saving you from yourself.”
“I’m just going to get in this box and mail myself back to England.”
“Don’t do that.” Ellery had crept over and was peering into the depths. “There’s still stuff inside.”
And she was correct: Right down at the bottom, lovingly cushioned in tissue paper, was a lavish assortment of all my favourite goodies. Shortbread, tablet, some mini-Dundee cakes, Tunnock’s caramel wafers, packets of Soor plooms, a bottle of Rabbie’s homemade mead, and oh joy of joys, even a couple of cans of Irn-Bru. I cracked one open and took a deep draught of rusty orange fizziness.
“Ahhhhh.”
“You know,” Nik told me, “the fact you actually like that stuff makes me genuinely doubt you’re English.”
I made an unseemly, if inevitable, noise. “I was raised on it. It is literally magic.”
Ellery made a let me try it gesture. It was probably the first time I’d ever seen her look shocked. “That is…horrible.”
“Yes.” My eyes fluttered in Irn-Brugasmic bliss. “Yes it is.”
We were quiet for a while, preoccupied with eating and drinking in that lazy Christmas afternoon way when you aren’t really hungry or thirsty but it’s satisfying to keep doing both anyway.
Eventually, Ellery looked up from the packet of Soor plooms she’d commandeered, and said slightly wistfully, “Your family’s really nice.”
“They’re the best.” Suddenly, I realised this wasn’t the most tactful thing to be saying in front of Ellery and Nik, since they both had pretty strained home lives. “But family can be who you choose, not just the people you’re stuck with.”
She made a contemptuous noise. “Screw family.”
“Not a traditional toast by any means.” Nik had made significant inroads into the mead. “But I’ll drink to it.”
“Family leave you. Let you down. Fuck you up.” But then Ellery paused, her lips curling into a smile. “Friends, though. Maybe they’re worth something.”
I hoisted up my second can of Irn-Bru, and Nik waved the mead bottle. “Friends,” we chorused.
Aluminium against glass was more of a clunk than a clink. But it still counted.
* * *
Ellery’s nocturnal ramblings must have finally caught up with her, because she fell asleep a few hours later, sausage-rolled in Mum’s quilt. I was on the floor next to Nik, my head resting against his leg, while he absently curled my hair around his fingers—something he’d often done at Oxford while he was thinking.
“Arden,” he said softly, “what am I going to do?”
I twisted so I was looking up at him. “Do?”
“Yeah after”—he made a helpless gesture—“this. When I reach my highest level of functionality.”
“I thought you were going to MIT.”
“That was before.”
I opened my mouth. Then closed it again. Then tried anyway. “I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding bad but…what’s changed? I mean, I’m aware you have a disability now, not least because”—I risked a grin and he pulled my hair in return—“you won’t shut up about it, but I’m not sure why that would affect what you want to do with your life.”
“I know I was in a bad mood the other day, but I wasn’t lying when I said I’d changed. That this stuff changes you. I just”—he sighed—“I can’t figure what still belongs to me.”
“Whatever you want to, surely.” He didn’t reply, so I asked instead, “What would you do if you didn’t stay here?”
“Go back to England, probably? My parents would take care of me if I let them. They’d probably literally come on the parquet over making their house accessible for their differently abled second son.”
“That sounds gross.”
“They are gross. It’d be nice to be closer to you again, though. Except I’d have to pretend Poppy didn’t exist.”
“And,” I pointed out, “you want to be…some kind of boring and complicated engineer that I don’t understand.”
He gazed at me, new shadows in his eyes. “But what if I can’t?”
“You never asked that question when you could walk.”
“I didn’t know what hurt was before.” He slid his fingers up the nape of my neck, his touch so gentle compared to his words. “I guess I learned how to be scared. How to fail.”
“To…truly want something,” I heard myself say, “is to make yourse
lf vulnerable.”
“Um. Where did that come from?”
“Caspian.”
He scowled. “And I’m supposed to take life advice from the guy who broke your heart?”
“Maybe if it’s good life advice?” I nuzzled into his leg. “I think he’s right, you know. I mean, you haven’t failed—to fail you have to do something, and someone else I love said that—and I don’t believe you’re as scared as you think. I think you just realised how much you want to go MIT and that’s freaked you out. Because when you want something, you know you can lose it, whether you get hit by cars or not.”
He was quiet awhile. And then said, “The thing is, I just don’t know anymore.”
I turned, and folded my elbows over his knees, so I could look at him properly. Both eyes. “And that’s okay. Whatever you do—whether that’s staying here or coming back to England or moving to, like, Mars—you know I will always be there for you.”
“Thanks.” He flicked a finger lightly against my nose.
“And,” I went on, “I will always love you—”
Nik, in the fashion of most tragically heterosexual men, wasn’t very good at emotions. Even when he needed them. He blushed. “So gay.”
“So gay,” I agreed, laughing. “Although I heard there’s been some new legislation, so now the straights are allowed to have feelings too.”
“Sorry.” He was still blushing—all the way up to his ears. “I mean, I…y’know…I”—he seemed to get something caught in his throat—“you too.”
I shook my head. “How do you people function? But seriously, Nik. I love you and I believe in you and I’ll support you no matter what you do. And I know you say you’ve changed, and probably you have, but when it comes down to the colours of your dreams, and whatever makes your heart fly, and the things that really matter, you always get to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“What you take with you and what you leave behind.” I let out a shaky breath. “Because that’s all change is.”
Nik leaned down and pressed his brow briefly to mine. “I hope you’re right.”
I tried to smile. I hoped so too.
Chapter 22
In Kinlochbervie, the days between Christmas and New Year’s lumbered along like concussed camels. I actually kind of enjoyed them, getting up late, falling asleep on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon, eating Terry’s Chocolate Orange for breakfast, and turkey sandwiches for dinner, watching movies we’d seen about a million times before because nobody could be bothered to change the channel, and embarking on our annual game of Twilight Imperium, only for it to take six hours just to set up, and another six to read the instructions, by which time we’d all forgotten why we’d ever thought it was a good idea to try and play it in the first place.
But things ended up getting pretty busy in Boston. Poppy and her boyfriend arrived the day after Boxing Day, full of apologies for not having been able to make it out any earlier. At least, Poppy was full of apologies. Colt just stood there looking strong and silent and like he was going to be the cowboy from The Big Lebowski, give or take twenty years. They’d also secretly, and quite spontaneously, got married—Poppy had a piece of braided corn on her fourth finger—which meant that every gossip outlet in the world knew about it. Or were, at least, speculating rampantly. She seemed happy, though. And her husband had this honey-slow smile that he only ever gave to her, so I guess he was too.
Ellery and I departed on the thirty-first, leaving Nik to his sister, and a gaggle of his MIT friends who’d arrived for New Year’s. What we’d discussed on Christmas Day hadn’t come up again (though we had managed to finish Citadel of Chaos and Creature of Havoc), but when Poppy had talked about buying a place in Boston, Nik hadn’t immediately shut it down—so I took that as a good sign. It was hard, of course, saying goodbye, but as I clung to him and made no attempt to be brave about it, I knew with a deep, abiding certainty he was going to be okay. Nik was golden. He always had been. And I trusted him to find his happiness—wherever it lay.
Ellery and I were subdued on the return flight. I guess we’d both had our reasons for wanting to get away for a bit, but that was the thing about getting away: At some point, you had to come back, and everything you’d left behind would still be waiting. Which, now that I thought about it, was mostly awesome in my case. I had a job I loved, and was currently kicking ass at, somewhere to live that was actually within my budget, and people who cared about me, including one I was enthusiastically sexing. And yes, there was still the Caspian thing, wedged into my soft tissue like a piece of broken tooth, but it was New Year’s Eve. Wasn’t that the perfect time to let go of the past, make a fresh start, blah blah, blah?
Maybe I could even listen to my own damn advice. Choose what to take and what to leave behind, I’d told Nik. Wasn’t it about time I left Caspian behind? I could hold on to the good stuff—everything he’d taught me and shown me and given me. But I also needed to let go, move on, get the fuck over him. And admittedly, I’d been telling myself that for months. But then, having him get engaged in my face and being invited to dinner with his frustratingly-more-human-than-I-wanted-to-admit boyfriend hadn’t exactly made it easy. If you squinted at it funny, it was almost like Caspian was having as much trouble forgetting about me as I was forgetting about him.
Still. That was his problem. It wasn’t going to be mine. And there’d be no more weird interviews, or ambiguous encounters, or double-edged comments that made me think I had a chance. I was officially done.
Tomorrow was the first day of…the next bit of my life.
* * *
Between an inevitable string of delays and terrible traffic on the M1, we didn’t make it back until nearly ten o’clock at night. London was sullen and drizzly, its lights tepid smears through the greying haze, and we’d turned off the heating while we were away, so the warehouse greeted us with a belch of frigid air the moment we opened the door. Mmm. Homey.
Yanking my wheelie over the threshold, I stumbled to the sofa and slumped onto it, still in my coat and scarf. Probably I would end up sleeping in them too.
“Want to see the fireworks?” asked Ellery.
I shook my head. “I’m pretty tired.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Want to get fucked up?”
“I’m not sure I need help with that right now.”
She vanished into her bedroom and reappeared, a plastic baggie of white powder dangling from between her fingertips. “It’s good shit. Best Colombian.”
“Given I genuinely can’t tell anymore when people are talking about coffee and when they’re talking about drugs, I don’t think this is the lifestyle for me.”
Ellery sat down next to me, tucking her booted feet under her. “It’ll be way better than coffee.”
“I’ve never actually”—I waved my hands unhelpfully—“used cocaine before.”
“Are you sure? Because you’ve got the lingo down.”
“Oh, shut up. And also there’s the nose issue.”
She gave me one of her slow, contemptuous blinks. “The nose issue?”
“Yes. The nose issue. I don’t want to put things up my nose. My nose is a one-way street.”
“You know that’s what fundamentalists say about anal sex.”
“Okay, but listen.” I pulled myself into a more alert position. “I’ve had anal sex and it’s amazing. Once, when I was little, Hazel made me laugh while I was drinking a glass of milk and it went up my nose and it was one of the most horrible things that has ever happened to me.”
“But did you get high afterwards?”
“Obviously not. It just made my entire head hurt from the inside of my face.”
Ellery shrugged. “That’s the difference.”
I was not convinced.
“Coke’s an anaesthetic. The worst you’ll feel is numb.” She uncurled and emptied the contents of the bag onto the table, cutting the powder expertly with the edge of her Coutts of London bank card. “Anyway, it’s u
p to you.”
Urgh. Decisions. I mean, I knew impulsively experimenting with Class A drugs was a bad idea. But in that exact moment, squashed between a past I couldn’t change and a future I wasn’t sure I was ready for, it was hard to care.
Ellery was shaping the lines now. And I was half hypnotised by the precision of her movements, the ephemeral elegance of the paths she drew in dust upon our coffee table, wondering if I’d fallen nonconsensually into a Hollinghurst novel. “You know, it’s okay,” she said, “to want a break from everything being shitty all the time.”
“It wouldn’t be real, though.”
“No feelings are real.” She caught my eye a moment, one of those scalpel glances. “Or all of them are.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “I’m in.”
Last month’s issue of Milieu had been languishing on the arm of the sofa. Ellery grabbed it, ripped out a page, rolled it into a thin tube, and handed it to me. “Be my guest.”
“Um”—my bravado had apparently evaporated like kettle steam—“what do I…do?”
“Stick it up your nose and inhale. It’s not complicated.”
I wasn’t, in all honesty, the most physically coordinated person when I was nervous, but I took heart from the fact my body had been breathing successfully for nearly twenty-two years. And that was all this was, right? Breathing with some extra powder thrown in. Also, I’d seen The Wolf of Wall Street. I could do this.
Here’s something they don’t tell you about taking drugs: It’s really undignified. Like, you have to be in a bad way already not to balk at the ways you get the stuff inside you. It made me feel super sorry for heroin addicts, I mean above and beyond the fact they were addicted to heroin. Anyway, I put the magazine up my nose, bent over the table, and y’know, inhaled. And for the record, Ellery was wrong. It did hurt—this weird brain flash like a backward sneeze, followed by the buzz of spiking adrenaline, and then this numbness spreading from my nose.