by Chris Vick
I tried to imagine what she might be thinking. But I couldn’t.
“Thanks,” she said eventually, turning to me. “Thanks for looking after me.”
She was back, not slurring her words, not speaking like a motor-mouth either. Still wide-eyed, but seeing me.
“You all right?” I said.
“Better now, Kook. I was right out of it and I felt… I feel….” She stopped, to check how she was feeling. “I still am. I’m on one. But it’s different. I’m like… here… now. Really here, really now. But I was gone back there.” She paused a second, rewinding whatever memories she had of the chaos we’d just left. “What happened?”
What happened? Had she really asked me what happened?
I told her. Dancing. Mick. Fighting.
“That’s heavy,” she said, and let out a long whistle. “I think I fell over when it started. I was on the floor, trying not to be sick. I crawled through all these legs. Then… I dunno.”
“You don’t know?” I said. The way she was talking; it was casual. She didn’t seem that bothered.
“What were you doing?” I said. “What was all that with Mick?”
She frowned like she didn’t understand.
“Dunno,” she said.
That made me mad. I was angry with her. I was worried about her. I hated her. I wanted to get away. I wanted to be with her. All at once.
I didn’t know what I felt. A whole storm of things. But she was just cool. As ever. And that made it worse.
I was straightening up by then, not so drunk. But I wished I was out of it. I wished I could knock back more vodka.
“You don’t know?” I said, again.
“What do you want from me, Kook?” She glared at me, challenging.
“After the island… when we kissed…” I give up, I thought. I just give up. Whatever I wanted, she wasn’t going to give it. “Look, it’s okay,” I said, “if you like Mick. I just… got it wrong, that’s all.”
“You didn’t. He’s nothing. I dunno what I was doing. Can’t remember. Just having a laugh.”
Having. A. Laugh.
She smiled and put her hand on my head, and through my hair.
“Then why…?” I stopped myself saying any more. I pushed her hand away. She put it back.
“I don’t know, Sam. Pushing you away, maybe. Seeing how much he liked me? Trying to make you jealous? I don’t know about you, Sam. You’re posh… You’re … you’re not like us and you’ll leave us behind one day, won’t you? And… I don’t always know why I do things. I just do them. Look… I like you, okay. Is that what you want to hear, you annoying, fat pain in the bum? I like you; I really like you… but… I’m not who you think I am. You don’t want to get involved with me. I’m a fuck-up.”
“Too late,” I said.
“Do you hate me?”
“No. I don’t know. No…”
“Happy birthday,” she said, and leant over and kissed me. There was still a faint reek of sick off her. I didn’t care.
“Pretty freaky birthday,” I said.
“Oh yeah.” Jade started fumbling in her coat pockets. “I meant to give you this at the end of the night. Didn’t think it’d be like this though.” She gave me a small box wrapped up in paper. It was Sellotaped tight. I had to tear at it with my teeth to get it open.
Inside the box something was scrunched up in tissue paper.
A cold, smooth stone, like a small pebble.
We passed through a village. Quiet, cold and asleep. In the orange glow of the streetlights, I could see the soft green stone.
A piece of Jade.
Of course. What else?
I kissed her then. She kissed me back. We held each other tight. It was more than a kiss. It became something else. Something that had me breathing hard, with my hands inside her coat, finding the dress, and the soft skin beneath it.
WE HAD TO STOP when the van stopped.
Dreadman dropped us on the road, a few miles from home.
We had our sleeping bags. But we didn’t have anywhere to sleep. We couldn’t just pitch up at home, not with Jade like she was. We’d have to walk all night. No bad thing, maybe. I was still a bit drunk, maybe a bit stoned, though nowhere near as much as I had been. And Jade? She was still high as the stars.
We went to Penford beach, just round the corner from Tin-mines. It was what we needed. Somewhere quiet and dark, well away from any houses or people. A good place for Jade to run off her craziness. We needed to keep moving too. It was bone-biting cold.
She was still whizzing from whatever it was Mick had given her. That was okay. She was safe, she could go as nuts as she liked, but she was being a headcase, now she’d got over the booze. The stuff was stronger than drink and spliffs; it was going to last a while. Turbo-charged Jade. Super Jade. She ran around on the sand, arms spread out, spinning, dancing to whatever bonkers tune was playing in her head.
“Look, Kook, look,” she said.
“Yeah, I see you,” I said, shaking my head and laughing.
“Not me, this!” she said, opening her arms to the beach, the black sea, the night packed with stars.
“Yeah, it’s cool.”
“Cool?” She marched right up to me, held me by the coat collar, putting her face so close to mine I felt her warm breath on my mouth. Hot metal liquid exploded in my stomach and filled my whole body. Were we going to kiss again? I was still going from the snog we’d had in the back of the van. It had been getting even better when Dreadman stopped and booted us out.
I leant forward. She pulled away. No more than a breath away. But enough to give me a ‘not right now’ signal. Maybe she wasn’t that out of it. I wanted to kiss her so bad it was hurting. And the booze and spliff were still working on me and making me that little bit hornier, and braver too. I took her hands off my coat and held them.
“It’s beyooootiful, Kook, and… and sooo intense, but good intense,” she whispered. “Why is it so intense, Sam? Why?”
“Cuz you’ve had a bucket of drugs, Jade.”
“Oh. Right… Sam?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s get some more?”
We were on the beach, at fucked-up o’clock in the morning, with Jade off her face. And she wanted more. I laughed. Yeah, that was funny.
“What’s cracking you up?” she said.
“You.” I pulled her a bit, towards me, but just as our lips touched, she laughed, slipped away and was off, running to the shore and back again, playing chicken with the tiny waves.
She stopped suddenly, up to her ankles in the freezing water. I don’t think she even felt the cold.
“Come in, Kook. Let’s go swimming!” she shouted.
I’d had enough. I went and grabbed her hands and pulled her out of the water.
“No way,” I said, speaking to her like she was a kid – a really stupid one. “That would be mental.”
“Jesus, Sam. I’m just kidding!” She rolled her eyes, adding, “And you’re being mean.”
“You’re off on one.”
“Am I being a dick?” she said.
“Honest?”
“Yeah.”
“Unreal. Off the scale. But pretty funny.”
“And you’re looking after me.”
“Someone has to.”
“Sorry.” She frowned and bit her lip, trying to look cute. It worked.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, thinking, It’s Mick’s.
She tried to pull away, but I kept hold of her hands. When she sussed I wasn’t letting go, she leant away from me, arching her whole body backwards so she was facing the sky, with her mouth wide open.
“Woooooooow,” she said.
There was no moon. No clouds. Just stars. Thousands of them. Like someone had taken handfuls of white sand and thrown them over a black sheet.
It was minutes before she spoke again.
“Science stuff, Kook. Now.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How m
any stars are there?”
I pulled her upright, leant down and picked up a handful of sand, then I took her hands, opened them and put the sand on her palms. I spread the sand around with my finger. Then I got my phone out and used the display as a torch.
“How many grains of sand in your hand?” I said. She shrugged. “As many as in the sky?” She looked up again. The sky wasn’t a dark thing. It was blue-white milk, it was so thick with stars. She looked back at the sand in her palms, leaning right over them. I swear she was counting the grains.
“I dunno,” she said.
“There’s more stars than grains of sand.”
“More than the sand in my hands?”
“More stars in space than all the sand on all the beaches in the world.”
She screwed up her face, and looked me in the eyes, suspicious. “Is that true, Kook?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Holy fuckerama.”
“Yeah, holy fuckerama.” In the phone’s light I could see wonder in her wide eyes. She smiled, like we’d shared the most amazing secret.
We were close, huddled around the phone like it was a candle. I leant my forehead on hers and that hot metal liquid flooded through me again.
I put my hands on her cold cheeks and kissed her. She just stood there for a moment, frozen. I thought I’d blown it. But then she dropped the sand and was kissing me back, pressing hard with her lips. Jade holding my coat. My hands in her hair.
She broke away. “Let’s go to Tin-mines,” she said. She was breathy now. Breathless. Nervy. “We can make a fire.”
I knew what it meant. I knew what was going to happen.
We kissed again. We picked up our bags from the beach and walked hand in hand across the sand to the cliff path.
*
The key to the mines was hidden in the rocks.
We got into the den. It was dry and warm. And totally dark.
I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I’d suddenly run out of words. So I got busy making the fire.
Behind the boards and wetsuits I found driftwood. Piles of it we’d collected from the beaches in autumn, and dried over the weeks. Then newspaper, then matches. And rugs, and blankets.
She held the phone, giving me enough light to make the fire.
It was only when I lit it that I realised how cold I was. My hands were shaking. But maybe that wasn’t just the cold.
I knelt, feeding the fire, watching the smoke rise and creep along the ceiling and out of the mine entrance, while Jade got some of the rugs and blankets and heaped them by the fire. She got our sleeping bags and opened them up. For us to sit on.
To lie on?
The fire flared up quickly. Soon there was a wall of orange flames and smoke between us and the world. Home, school, Big G and the others, the fight, Billy and Tel. It was all gone. Mick was gone. There was just us, now, here, locked into our own little world by the wall of flames. And as the flames got higher, the inside of the mine was lit up. And we could see each other.
We sat side by side, not speaking. We didn’t look at each other much, apart from just to give quick little smiles. We didn’t talk. And we never didn’t talk.
She hugged her legs, hiding most of her face, so her green eyes stared at the flames over her knees. She watched the fire like it was hypnotising her.
She’d calmed down. She wasn’t out of it any more. She wasn’t Super Jade.
The silence was deep as the mine. Deep as the sea. I wasn’t used to Jade being shy. But she was. She was quiet. Straightened out. A different girl from the one on the beach. A different girl to the one I knew.
What now? Was it too late?
“Sam…” she said, quietly, turning towards me, resting her head on her knee.
“Yeah?”
She didn’t say anything else. Shadows and golden light danced in her eyes.
I edged closer, shuffling. Just the sound of me moving toward her was killingly loud. My heart was thumping through my whole body.
Closer.
We kissed. And kissed. I tasted the salt on her lips. And kissed. More and more. We couldn’t stop.
“But you’re…” I started. I was going say “out of it”. But she shut me up with kisses.
“It’s okay, Sam. I’m okay.”
Then…
Her stretching out and lying down, us getting closer, not just our lips, our bodies. Together. Hands fumbling through clothes, looking for warm skin. My head spinning.
She pulled at my clothes and at me. And I did the same. Fiddling with belts and buttons, shuffling out of jumpers, T’s, jeans. Her dress.
Soon there wasn’t any more fumbling with clothes, and there was a lot of warm skin. Feeling the places where there’d be bruises. Her hands across them. Hurting.
Then it was just a whole storm of kissing and tumbling.
“I haven’t got any—” I started.
“It’s okay, Sam. I do,” she said.
I looked at her. “Oh. Oh, right.”
She punched my arm. “Not like that. Just… I was thinking of you. You know?”
I didn’t know if it was true, but I wanted it to be.
She got one from her bag. I put it on. Then…
I thought it would just happen, by itself, like we’d just fall into one another. Just magically get it together.
But she helped me, put her hand down my chest, my stomach. Lower. Guiding me, letting me know what was happening.
Jade wasn’t shy. She looked at me the whole time.
The hot metal liquid burned me up.
*
Afterwards, we lay by the fire, in a mess of rugs and sleeping bags, holding each other tight.
Lots of giggling, lots of kissing. We couldn’t stop.
“Holy fuckerama,” I said breaking away.
“Yeah, holy fuckerama,” she said.
And we smiled, and grinned and laughed, like we’d shared the most amazing secret.
“What was that?” I said.
“Don’t you know?” she said, smiling, with her arms tight around me, playing with the hair at the back of my neck.
“We…?”
“Go on, what?”
And it wasn’t just about Jade right then, it was also that I’d…
Done It. Lost my virginity.
“We had sex,” I said, sounding way more pleased, and way less cool, than I meant to.
“No. We didn’t,” she said, seriously, like it was a fact.
“Didn’t we?” I said, thinking, What?
“People in biology books have sex.”
“Oh right.” We laughed again. Kissed again.
“We fucked?” I said.
She whacked me on the back of the head. “No, Kook! Way too porno.”
“Made love?”
“Get real.”
“Shagged?”
“Animals shag. And slappers in night-club car parks.”
“What. What did we do then?”
She slid down my body and rested her head on my chest, using me as a pillow.
“Dunno if there is a word, Kook. Not a good one, leastways.”
We were quiet then, for a long time. The crackling of the fire and the rush of the sea on the nearby beaches – they made a pretty good soundtrack right then, to us just lying there.
“That was your first time, wasn’t it?” she said, after a bit, quietly, and I was glad she wasn’t looking me in the eyes right then. I knew I didn’t need to ask if it was her first time. And I was thinking, Shit, what did I do wrong?
“Was it… okay?” I asked. Wanting to know. Not wanting to know. She looked up, climbed on top of me. Lying on me, she rested her chin just below my neck, with her whole body on top of mine. Her boobs squashed into me, my hand on her back. That liquid fire was inside me again. Stirring. She smiled. That smile of hers that was kind and mean, like there was something about me she always found a bit funny.
“Yeah, Kook, it was okay. It’s just… you were pretty eager, weren
’t you?”
“Is that bad?” I asked, worrying I’d got the whole thing wrong. Maybe I just thought it had been great, maybe that was just me. But her eyes told me not to worry. That it was okay. That everything was okay.
“Don’t panic, Kook. Eager’s good. Just slow down a bit next time.”
I almost got up and did a dance. There was a next time?
“Happy birthday,” she said, kissing me.
*
We started kissing. And that wasn’t an end to things, it was a beginning. Over the hours we did it again.
Less eager. More slow.
*
I shoved loads of wood on the fire. Piled up the rest, so I could lean over and put a log on whenever it died down. We wrapped up tight in the sleeping bags, with the fire in front of her and me behind her, staring at the arm I had wrapped round her, stroking the hairs.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “Your body, brown, muscles… fire skin,” she whispered, just as she fell asleep.
I didn’t sleep. I looked at the fire, and at Jade, breathing.
I was sixteen. And me and Jade were together. And we’d done it.
I was thinking, it wasn’t like in porn, it was like … I couldn’t say any of those words in my head and fit them to what we’d done.
Jade was right about that.
WE WERE WOKEN by the morning light and a fresh breeze.
All the firewood was used up and the cold was getting in the mine and trying to get in our bones, so I dressed and packed up quick. Jade pulled her clothes on, then sat in the mine entrance, wrapping herself in the sleeping bag.
Outside, the light stung my eyeballs. Everything was hyper. More real, somehow. The sea was bluer, the ashes of the fire burned like a sunset, the wind gentle but crisp. And Jade, more beautiful than ever. Even with sunken eyes and crow’s nest hair.
We couldn’t go home. Not straight away. I needed to make out to Mum I’d been away. I needed to keep that lie going. And as for Jade…
“What time d’you need to get back?” I said. She shrugged, looking away. “Well, what did you tell your dad?”
“Said I was going out. Didn’t know we’d be out all night, did I?” She laid one of those little smiles on me.
“He’ll be worried,” I said.
“He’ll have drunk himself stupid last night, ’specting me to pitch up later. He won’t be out of bed till midday. If he kicks off, I’ll just say I was out early this morning.”