Of everyone, she picked me. At first because I was the one who had a spare seat next to me, then because she liked all the things I said in class. We started a comic book together; she was an excellent drawer, and I wrote the jokes.
Peter was in Year 11, then, one of the big guys. Samantha thought he was pretty cool; I had to tell her otherwise. Peter started hanging around with us, and his mates, too, and suddenly I was popular, because I hung out with Year 11 guys. Next year they would be Year 12 guys. Samantha and I made good jokes together, and she helped me put make-up on, though it brought me out in blotches, and she laughed when I was funny so the guys did too.
In class we always sat together unless we were separated, and even then we made jokes across the room. Other people wanted to sit next to me and I always turned them down.
I felt part of the world for the first time. And when we had our first fight, that clinched it. Girls came up to me wanting to know what she'd done and I told them, but I didn't go all out. I'd seen it a hundred times; you fight, you bitch, you get back together. If you bitched a lot, your friendship was damaged. If you only bitched about the fight, nothing was hurt.
I think she might have told a few of my secrets. People had forgotten how my dad died; while most of them had been at primary school with me, it was a kids' memory. High school memory said I only had a Mum, but they didn't know why.
Samantha told them what had happened. I don't know why they thought they could be cruel about it; it had nothing to do with me. They called me "bullet-catcher", then "BC", for the rest of high school.
Samantha and I made up after every fight. I don't remember what a single one was about; they seemed to occur like a cyclone, a whirling mass which sucked me in and threw me out naked and bruised. I was not good at fighting like this; a good hard punch-up did it for me. Grudges and slights seemed foolish and dull. She was a good friend to have, though; always had great parties, I heard. Her mother threw her a surprise party once, invited everyone from school. I was very sick so I couldn't go, and that's what did happen. I couldn't stop shaking, vomiting. Mum tucked me into her bed and we read comics until the party was over.
Things were always fun. Science class was so dull Samantha and I talked all the way through. Ian Pope, who ended up a science teacher himself, tutt tutted like an engine running down.
Things changed when I left school to work and she went on to finish close to the top. I didn't see her much; I was learning about the real world and she stuck to gossip about school and the assignments she had.
When she came knocking at my door a month before my twenty-first birthday, I hadn't seen her in three years. Not since Mum died.
She wanted to stay for a while, because her boyfriend Murray kicked her out and she couldn't stand to live with her mum. Her brother Perry was there, the loser. Her sister Meredith was respectable, like Peter. Meredith was a lawyer, lived on her own and, so Samantha and I said, paid men to fuck her.
We had a great few weeks living together. She didn't care about the mess and the place got worse.
The first weekend after Samantha moved in, I had plans. We'd get up early and go shopping together, buy household things, because she knew about that sort of stuff. We'd buy sandwiches and beers and have lunch on the front porch where everyone could see us. Then we'd do something else. The pile of shit out the front; we'd ignore it.
But the fucking bitch wouldn't get up till after one. I had to eat left-over pizza.
"Time to get up, Samantha," I said one Saturday. It was 8.30 in the morning, a good sleep in. I was sick of waiting for her.
"Fuck off, Steve," she said, so I left her a bit longer. Ten o'clock I tried again, and eleven. At twelve I said Fuck it, and went out by myself. She was up when I got home at 1.30.
"Let's get one thing straight. I don't get woken up unless there's an important phone call, and it better be life or death," she said.
"Well, I won't be keeping quiet in my own house just because your sleep patterns are fucked."
"Yeah, well, just see if you can keep it down a bit, all right? Save the shouting for the afternoon."
"Morning's the best time for shouting," I said. Fucked if I was going to change my habits for her.
Peter came round to visit three times while she was there, without Maria. He even ignored the fact that he hates this house. We sat around the kitchen table and laughed at old times. Sometimes it was things I hadn't been involved with; things I didn't remember hearing about.
So we had a good time, though she could have been more discriminating with her friends. I have never seen a more appalling bunch. She had them over for dinner, eight plus Samantha and me, then another showed up and took my place! I was left in the kitchen eating leftovers. I did some cooking as well; added spice to this and salt to that. Quite an imaginative cook.
"She lives here," I heard Samantha say. I can always rely on her to stick up for me.
Sometimes Samantha and I didn't flush after a shit. We farted all the time. We ate takeaway. We only had the two of us.
Then, after a month, right in the middle of a great midnight horror movie (I don't remember which) she said, "Look, Steve, I can't stay here any more. It's been great, but I really have to get back to some kind of normal life. I'm twenty-one years old."
So was I, as of midnight.
"You probably want to get back to normal too," she said.
I shrugged. "Yeah," I said. "Where are you going to live?"
"Murray said he forgave me for fucking that guy. Isn't that great?"
"Yeah, great," I said. I didn't know what to do. We had been living the most normal life I'd ever lived over the last month.
I cleaned out Samantha's stinky room and found an empty diary of hers, no message for me.
I stashed it with my other precious things.
I stood by the house. I looked around me. What was it about this place that Dad had loved so much? Why did he care if we left?
I called Lee. He hadn't been over while Samantha was there. I think she scared him. We went out dancing, and we drank a lot as well. He always liked me to keep him supplied with a bit of dope; said it benefited both of us.
I got a bit carried away on the dance floor; span him round and round and round then let go. He went flying into the wall, I crashed into a table full of drinks.
In the process I gashed the back of my hand, a most impressive blood bath. Lee panicked when he saw it splattered on his own clothes.
"It's not your blood," I said. "You're not even hurt." He shrugged. He was hoping for an injury to justify his terror. He looked at me as if I was crazy, and he said, "I'll find my own way home."
Pathetic.
My Mum would never have forgotten my twentyfirst birthday. Every year she'd have a huge cake, even when it was just the two of us. We'd play music loud and I'd run about, and it always felt like there were plenty of people there. That's what should have happened.
With Samantha gone, and Lee mad at me, and Mum dead, and Peter too busy to see me, this is what did happen:
Pills. Peter found me. It's so crazy, the way a floppy body can kill you. Take the pills, slip into a coma, your head drops. Your air is cut off. If you vomit you die on that, or you die because you can't get any air. Or you fall down the stairs and break your leg.
• • •
I awoke in the room, my limbs heavy. The clicking was louder this time. Crickets in summer, the hoardings at a home game.
Peter's was the first face I saw; he smoked, blowing the smoke into the air, never taking his eyes off me.
"Help me, Peter. Find me." Clinging to him was Darren, still there. It was very smoky. Everyone smoked, all the faces I knew and didn't know. I was being smoked, mummified while I was still alive.
Some guy with a pipe, puff puff, keeping it alight while I got drunk with my detective.
I couldn't breathe, his smoke was noxious.
And a woman with her hair in a bun so tight she… the woman from the theatre. How did she ev
en remember me?
The room was crushed with people, click click and the smell of them. I looked for Samantha in the dark room, but she wasn't there. I meant nothing to her, then; I had no effect on her life.
My mouth was covered. I could taste dirty wool, the playground, it was the black jumper I'd taken for a gift when I was eleven. The boy twisted the arms around my neck.
Mr Meyerfeldt was there, glaring, but not his dog. Home eating my rubbish, I said, and I laughed, just a low chuckle, but they shrank with a hiss like vampires in the sunlight. I laughed again but it had to be real, not fearful.
The Krouskas were there, too, and that made me snarl, because I could not watch them fuck any more. Take it down, I snarled, the towel, so I can see, because he had a big dick and she loved it, give it to me baby. Next to them was Mrs Di Matteo, cheeks rouged like a corpse.
I had not yet tried to move. The smoke was so thick I thought perhaps they couldn't see me; though I could see them perfectly well, talking amongst themselves like old school friends.
I wriggled a finger and my whole arm lifted; I was as light as the smoke. I was smoke, but I wasn't. My body was still whole. I sat up and they came close. A woman with a red scarf, an old woman with white hair, a girl in a green uniform, a guy with neat shoes, all paraded for me, twisting, turning, pretzels of blood and sinew then back to normal. Mrs Adder, from when I was in the supermarket, a real snake's head, tongue, she sank her fangs into my ankle and I screamed, the pain. A bread knife sawing off my foot.
She slowly turned black. My blood was poison to her.
They danced around me, loyal subjects, a guy with a straggly ponytail, faces I didn't know, the newsagent guy, my boss, others from work whose existence I despised.
They danced and spun, the music was Ode to Joy, Da da da da Da Da da da, leaping and spinning, bowing to me. Samantha's friends were there, part of the worship, kissing me, dancing, spinning, loving.
Spitting.
Slicing.
Little holes in my legs. In my breasts. Maria was there leaping, naked, her pubic hair a neat triangle, dancing with Ray's girlfriend, the wonderful man who fixed my car, Ray, he wasn't there, but his girlfriend – sorry, fiancée – was, and she had no pubic hair at all, her flaps poking out like a cow's tongue.
There were people who walked like they had golden syrup on their soles but they came forward, and Mark was there, laughing at my scars, and Jason behind him. They all had rocks, and I curled to protect myself as the first one was launched, curled to give in but Peter found me.
Just like I asked him to.
I was brought back to life. They told me I had been in danger; that I had visitors and things to do. They told me about the events in the hospital, trying to make life interesting. But I had been in the room, mildew, shit and naphthalene, cold, and those faces peering over me. I had remembered the attention, forgotten the intention. I would not have gone back.
"Silly mistake," Peter told me in hospital. "Silly mistake."
Melissa was there, my old next-door neighbour.
"It's so lucky I was visiting Mum and Dad," she said. "Can you imagine if I wasn't? I wanted to see Steve. Mum said she was home, she was always home. But she didn't answer."
"It's all right," Peter said. "It's lucky you found her."
"I wasn't spying or anything. I was just worried. I worry about her, Peter."
"She's all right. It was just a silly mistake."
She found me. Not Peter.
I was not at my strongest. I quite liked being weak for a while; looked after, fed. But I didn't like to lie in bed with myself for too long. I resolved not to dig in the garden again. I didn't want to know any more what was in there.
I broke my resolution as soon as I could get a grip around the handle of a spade.
I also resolved not to slight anyone, ever. Unless I go back to the room I won't know how successful that resolution was.
Crutches leant against the foot of my bed for three days. They loomed over me. I could smell the wood of them, sweat, wood, dirt. It smelt like the floor of the gymnasium at school. It was a comforting smell. I recalled those moments of absolute solitude amongst the crowd, when for whatever reason – a dance step, a moment to wait while someone else performed, stretching exercises – I bent my head to the floor and let my forehead rest. My nose touching as well. My arms around my head to create a small, dark room all my own, and that smell, that wood smell which never faded.
I reached out and drew the crutches to me. I had imagined the smell; it didn't exist. I struggled down the corridor, looking for a bit of sun to sit in. From behind, a squeal, and my knees were belted forward so I collapsed to the floor. For a moment, the small dark room, the floor, the smell of pine and plastic, then I raised my head. The child was away; its mother helped me up.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "Such energy. We're visiting my husband…his father…just a minor accident but such a worry. We just can't keep an eye on them every second."
"You should," I said, but I smiled, because I did not want to be in this woman's dark room. She was a bruised thing; eyes black, arms yellow and purple. Bandages here and there. I saw the scene clearly: a child goes wild in an angry household, a wife had enough of the beatings and whack with a…
"What did you hit him with?" I said.
"Pardon?" she said.
"Your husband. What did you whack him with?"
"Oh, no, he fell over," she said. I was not slighted; I had a feeling she would be going to her dark room very soon.
It came as a shock. I realised I had not considered being slighted by the child. It was the parents. So my parents; how many of mine did they have? How many of Peter's? How had we made them suffer? What sort of dark room does my mother inhabit?
It was nice for people to be concerned about me. I went back to my job and everyone smiled at me but no one spoke. I accused Peter of telling them my secrets and he said, "I don't talk about it." Neither did anyone else. It was like it never happened. I got a card from the Grannies: Get well soon, as if I'd been sick but all that would be fixed.
I slowly got my breath back. It took days, days. I couldn't move or eat; people fussed about me, keeping me away from the room.
I heard them saying, "Oh, the poor thing. The poor dear." But I didn't feel sorry for myself at all. I had learnt something; I had knowledge which made life worthwhile. I had never believed in the soul. I thought you died, then you rotted, the end. But I had seen my soul, I saw it in another place, and I knew I had a future. It made me shudder.
All I had to do was ensure my future was a better place than the one I had seen.
My counsellor said I need time to sort out my issues. Useless, really. But Peter gave me sick leave, plenty of it, and I dealt with my issues by digging in my backyard. I found more bones, a tarnished gold chain, a tie bar, a wooden spoon handle and a small glass ball, with inclusions.
Auntie Jessie was the only person who believed what I had done. Auntie Jessie paid for us to go away together, soon after I got out of the hospital. Just for a week. Sometimes the look in her eye was that of Granny Searle's when she squeezed me too tight: We love you, Stevie.
We took a house on the beach and we walked, talked. Auntie Jessie cooked wonderful food: lobster mornay, paella, seafood soups we ate from giant bowls.
"Your dad had such plain tastes," Auntie Jessie said, but I knew that was only with her. With us he was adventurous.
"We're pretending we're in Spain," I said. I'd walked to the shops and collected some foreign beers.
"There's nothing wrong with pretending," Auntie Jessie said. "I pretend all the time. I'm hardly ever settled in reality."
"Does that make you feel better?"
"Not when I'm settled in reality," she said. We played a game of Chinese Chequers and she cheated to let me win; pretended a vagueness she would never have. She told me stories about how Mum and Dad met, details I hadn't learned before. She told me stories Dad had told her, strange stories, as if h
e lived in a fantasy world, too.
I told her about Eve, and about the dark room. She held my hand and didn't let go until we got in the car to drive home.
She loved to drive. "I could never understand my sisters, not wanting to drive. At least your Mum learnt, drove when she had to. Poor old Mike; the times he was summoned from work to take Ruth to the hairdresser."
"She wants me to do it. Can't remember I still don't have my license. Hates me when I tell her to call a cab."
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