by Caias Ward
I mean, it wasn’t all my fault. But some of it was, and that was mostly down to the way I reacted to things. Looking back, even to stuff when I was young, I could see where I went wrong on some things. Some of it was damn stupid, too.
My phone rang. Trevor had it – he’d said he needed to call someone earlier, but it couldn’t be from his phone. Trevor held the phone out to me without looking at it, but pulled it away every time I grabbed for it. I managed to get it away from him after Emma slapped his hand.
Dad.
I had half a mind just to shut the phone off, or scream at him, but I remembered what I’d just been thinking about.
‘Excuse me,’ I said as I slid Emma off me and found a quiet hallway near the stairs. ‘Hello,’ I said calmly.
‘Andrew, where in God’s name are you?’
It was my dad alright, his voice going from Zero to Yelling in two point two seconds. I held the phone away, taking a moment to think of what to say next.
‘I’m OK, Dad. I’m out with friends.’
‘You really need to come home now.’ He lowered his yelling voice to ‘very concerned’, the one all parents use to trick their kids.
Or maybe he was concerned. Don’t assume he’s out to get you, I thought. I paused again before I spoke.
‘That’s not going to happen. I’m safe somewhere, and I’ll be home sometime soon. Tomorrow, during the day.’
‘Don’t you use that tone with me!’
I thought about it, pretty sure I didn’t use any ‘tone’. He was angry, and had a pretty good reason to be too, since I’d clocked him. I needed to head this off.
‘Dad, put Mum on.’
‘Your mum is very upset and in no condition to talk to you! You need to get home…’
‘Dad, either give the phone to Mum or I will be ending this call.’
Silence.
I continued, taking a breath first.
‘I’m willing to discuss all this another time,’ I said, being careful with the words, ‘but right now I need to be here, where I am. I’m safe at a friend’s place, and I’m going to be staying overnight. Now put Mum on and I will try to calm her down.’
Silence, then sobbing.
‘Mum?’
‘Andrew,’ a voice broke over the phone.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘just letting you know I’m somewhere safe, OK?’
More crying. Just as bad as at William’s funeral, actually.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘just breathe in deep a few times, and then we’ll talk, OK?’
The crying continued, followed by a few wheezing breaths. When I was sure she was listening again, I started speaking.
‘Mum, like I said, I’m safe. I’m with some friends and I’m going to be here the night, OK.’
Some sniffling over the phone again.
‘I need this time away,’ I said. ‘It’s been rough for everyone. There’s stuff we’re all going to have to talk about. But right now isn’t a good time for that. So I’m going to come back tomorrow and we’re going to sit down and talk about things, OK?’
‘OK,’ Mum managed to push out.
‘Just tell Dad I’m safe, inside, and that Newcastle just got a second goal.’
Mum laughed. Dad probably already knew, since he was such a fan. Shit though – he’d called during the game. He never let anything interrupt a Newcastle game. No emails, no phone calls… once, he’d made a director of a technology company watch the game with him while they worked on product guidelines. When I was younger we watched football all the time. Once, we went to Highbury to see Newcastle play Arsenal – that was William, Dad and me. Later on, when William was in the hospital, we’d sit and talk about the team, and that was about the only time we talked. It was one of the things Dad and I used to get away from everything that hurt. We’d just turn to football and hope for the best for William. It never lasted long, spending time with Dad, but it did happen.
There was good stuff. But it takes some digging and thinking about, and things happening, to bring it all out. But there was good stuff going on in our lives. Like the Newcastle games, and this dinner we had in Spain where the waiters went around with a pitcher of wine and poured it right into your mouth until you couldn’t drink any more. Dad drank the whole thing and they had to bring a second one out, which he got halfway through before he had to come up for air.
‘I’ll let him know,’ Mum said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘He shut the game off when he called you.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘We’ll work this out, OK?’
‘I love you, Andrew,’ she said, and that was the end of the call.
I’ve never been one to say ‘I love you’ or things like that. I think the only person I ever said it to was Sara, and even that caught her off guard. I always want to hear it, and I certainly feel it. However I just don’t usually say it though. I’d rather do stuff to show that I care about people. Some people just say it easily, and meanwhile they’re running around on their boyfriends and girlfriends, talking about them behind their backs, or trying to mess up their lives. That’s not love or caring about someone. That’s playing a game.
The phone rang again.
‘Mum, I said I’d be home tomorrow…’
‘Do I sound like your mother?’ Sara said with a laugh.
This is what I get for not looking at the screen before answering; Sara’s number was flashing on the display.
‘Hey baby doll!’
‘Greetings from the past!’ she yelled at me. ‘Whatcha doing?’
‘Just off the phone with the olds. I decked my Dad earlier today.’
‘Oh my God, you OK? What happened?’
‘Just a fight. I think it passed,’ I said. ‘We’re going to talk it out tomorrow when I get home.’
‘You’re actually going to talk to your parents about real things?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Just figure it’s time to try to work this all out. I’ve been a pain in the arse to them.’
‘Maybe you have, love.’
‘Gee, thanks…’
‘What I mean is that Will’s death bothered you, too, and you never really got to talk to them about it. Or talked about his life. So it’s good if you do.’
‘Yeah. There’s stuff I can do better.’
‘We can all do stuff better,’ Sara said. ‘Anyway, what are you up to tonight?’
‘I’m at Trevor’s house. We’re watching the Newcastle game.’
‘Ooh, is that girl Emma there? You should so have sex with her and take pics.’
I smiled. It was great to have a personal cheerleader in my life.
‘I could do that… but I don’t think it’s that kind of thing. She does like sitting in my lap though.’
‘Damn you, I want lap-sitting!’ she pouted over the phone.
‘You can sit on my lap when you visit next…’
‘No, I meant her in my lap!’
Well, at least Sara knows what she wants… which is everything.
‘Gee, thanks…’
‘Oh, I fully intend to share her. You can have her every other weekend.’
‘And you get her all the rest of the time?’ I asked.
‘We’ll send her away so that we have time together,’ she reassured me.
‘I love you, you know that?’ Easy for me to say to her, not so easy for me to say to anyone else.
‘Yep,’ she said cheerily. ‘So, just your soccer game today?’
‘Yes, football,’ I corrected her. ‘And a party tonight.’
‘You mean you are actually going out and interacting with people? They grow up so fast…’ She sniffed fake tears over the phone. I laughed at her.
‘You know that I actually do go out and do stuff, right?’
‘Yes, I know. But it’s my job to tease you about everything while hoping you take naked pictures of the girls you seduce.’
‘I’ll do what I can tonight, OK?’
‘You’d better,’ she warne
d, ‘or I’m just going to have to find myself another pretty gothed-up artist to play with.’
‘I love you too.’
And this is why Sara rocks so much. A sexy drugged angel asleep in bed with a soul as strong as steel. A voice of reason when I need one, a cheerleader and biggest fan the rest of the time. That’s love and understanding.
And I realised she wasn’t the only one who felt that way about me. Trevor, and Emma… and my olds. I might not have always understood the ways they tried to care, and they might not have been good at expressing it. But if Dad was willing to shut off Newcastle United to talk to me after I’d clocked him one, maybe it was a start.
Still, at that time all I wanted was to finish watching Newcastle paste Sunderland, with a cute girl in my lap.
Trev’s house is pretty big, but it’s still amazing how many people he can manage to get in it. He crammed about fifty people in there, not including the people in the yard. It was a good mix of people my age – uni students, mechanics from where Trev worked, and a few older people that fitted in well with the group. Like I said before, everyone ended up liking Trevor whether they wanted to or not.
I wasn’t much for crowds, so the party was stressing me out a bit. I tried to hang around the people I knew best, like Trevor, Emma and a few others. People were friendly enough; it’s just that when the mobs of people started to wade on in, I got a bit anxious. It’s not like I thought I was going to screw up when I said stuff. Just more like not quite knowing what to say and how it was going to sound.
‘You,’ Trevor grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, ‘need to drink a bit more.’ He put a beer in my hand.
‘You’re probably right,’ I laughed.
‘Relax,’ he shook me while he talked. ‘Nothing you do here will end up on the front page of the Daily Mail or the police blotter. That’s reserved for me.’
‘I’m not a crowd person.’
‘I know,’ Trevor said. ‘But don’t think of it as crowds. There just happen to be a few groups of a few groups. Focus on what’s right in front of you. Like these hoodlums all the way down from Newcastle,’ Trevor dragged me over to two husky, but cute girls. ‘They go to Northumbria University and play rugby, friends of my cousins.’ He introduced me to them. ‘Teresa, Melanie, this is Andrew. He’s an artist, so don’t hurt his hands or anything.’
‘Did you punch him?’ Teresa shot Trevor a look while she reached out to the bruise on my head. I resisted the urge to pull away from a surprisingly light touch.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know… “Trevor, you punched him? You’re a damn wanker, screw you, toss off, you bad bad man…”’ Trevor exaggerated his ranting to defuse anything the girls might be planning to say.
‘It’s OK, the boy’s tougher than he looks. Andrew, you should tell them how you popped your dad today. Have to run and finish setting something up.’
And there I was, dropped in the middle of things, just talking about stuff. And people listened, with a small crowd just getting in on things. Other people jumped in, from one of Trevor’s mates at work, talking about how he and his brother went through a plate glass window in a fight, to Teresa showing off the scar she got in a pretty nasty rugby game.
People listened to what I said, and they cracked on me too. But I didn’t get mad at the make-up cracks or the getting a ‘real man’s job’ cracks. I either let it slide or threw back at them that they were just upset because I was prettier than their girlfriends. Everyone laughed, everyone drank, everyone had fun. I just mingled, talking to and listening to everyone, taking a little time to tease Emma a bit, and watch Trevor move an impromptu wrestling match out to the yard…
And I fitted right in.
Part of that was just relaxing, and part of it was not caring what people thought. I wouldn’t see most of these people ever again, so what did anything matter? Besides, despite years of thinking otherwise, most people weren’t actively trying to mess with my day. They couldn’t know the stuff I was going through in my life, just like I didn’t know the stuff going on in theirs.
And as for the Hayden Smiths of the world who wanted to get a rise out of me, or the people just trying to cause trouble? Well, you’ll always run into those people, and you can either flip out over it or do your best to not let it bother you. Chances are you won’t be around those people for the rest of your life. For one thing, once school wraps up, Hayden’s going to be a distant memory. I mean, there will always be people like him, but there are far more people like Trevor and Emma and Sara in the world. If I come across a Hayden, I’ll just cross the street.
And people kept handing me beers. I was pretty good about holding my drink and I kept an eye on what I drank, but it’s one of the downsides of just fitting, I discovered, that people keep handing you drinks. I took my time with them, and ate stuff to slow down the alcohol, but I could feel the buzz running through me. I avoided the urge to drunk-text Sara, even though I wanted her to know I was having a good time; she could call and I’d tell her all about it during the week.
‘You!’ Trevor grabbed me and pulled me away from his boss, who was looking to make a new logo for the auto shop and picking my brains.
‘What?’ I slurred, as Trevor pushed me up the stairs.
‘Got a surprise for you, like,’ Trevor laughed.
‘I’m not big on surprises,’ I said.
‘You’ll like this one,’ Trevor assured me. ‘I arranged it special. Consider it me making up for the bruise.’
We kept on going upstairs, to the top floor that Trevor had blocked off with a few chairs. He’d scrawled a note – OFF LIMITS OR I’LL STOMP YOU – it said, and taped it to a chair. We stopped at his dad’s bedroom, where Trevor had put my laptop so it wouldn’t get smashed by accident.
‘Gotta make sure we’re still good on beer,’ Trevor said. He turned the knob of the door and shoved me inside.
Trevor’s dad’s room was a shrine to Newcastle, from autographed pictures going back to the seventies, to a piece of St James’ Park in a shadow box. Caroline stood in front of the glass box, staring at it curiously.
‘Some guys are more serious about football than others,’ I mumbled.
Caroline jumped, not having realised I was there. I tried not to laugh, but she giggled first.
‘I got a call from Trevor out of the blue today,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how he got my number. Told me to show up without “that yob Hayden and his fools” because you wanted to talk to me.’
I’m going to kill Trevor, I thought. Or thank him. I don’t know which yet.
‘He got it off my phone today, I guess.’
‘You still have my number on your phone, Andrew?’
‘Yeah.’ I tried not to make eye contact. ‘Just never took it off.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Caroline said, her voice dropping.
Think quick…
‘And I thought I might, you know, want to call you again. Maybe see how you were doing.’
‘I’m good. Just another year of school and then uni.’
‘Yeah. The A Levels and then figuring out where to go…’
And then it was quiet. She didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. And in the back of my mind, Trevor and Sara were both screaming at me to do something.
‘We should have kept on seeing each other,’ I said. She nodded in agreement, even before I’d finished talking.
‘Why didn’t we?’ she said.
I thought about this for a moment. We had been so worried about what other people thought, and I had been going nuts dealing with my family, and I was just an idiot, and…
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Don’t care though. It’s the past.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling. ‘You still… I mean, you want to go out? I mean, sometime?’
‘Yeah.’
She sat on the bed. So did I. We talked. Beer was really getting to me, but I remember some of the stuff that happened – the good, and the bad. Mostly, it was just getting to know each other,
talking and seeing that we had stuff in common, like art and music. She was with Hayden’s crowd because everyone was nice to her, but it bothered her that they weren’t nice to me. Hayden also fancied her, even though he had a girlfriend, and that was causing all sorts of problems. I told her I didn’t give a damn what Hayden thought any more. And she was a great kisser, just like I remembered.
That was the good.
The bad was Hayden finding out about the party and finding out that I was upstairs. The bad was also Hayden finding the two of us wearing just enough clothing to spare the modesty of one person.
Like I said, I don’t remember much. I woke up the next morning next to Caroline. She assured me it hadn’t been anything other than us in the same bed sleeping. I was glad about that, because I wasn’t in a rush, and neither was she. My head hurt like hell, so the next hour was Caroline rubbing my temples and talking with me about lots of different things. We wandered downstairs to find most of the house trashed beyond recognition. This was a sign of a good party at Trevor’s, for whom success was based on how many people were passed out, and how many days it took him to clean up. At least Trevor had the sense to drag most of the drunks unable to get home into the house from the yard, neatly lining them up in the bar room downstairs.
‘So yeah, like, Hayden heard about the party,’ Trevor said between forkfuls of eggs, ‘and someone must have told him they saw you here, heading upstairs.’ He nodded at Caroline. ‘He brought a few of his mates with him, and he didn’t take it well finding you two in bed together. When I got upstairs, he had already got some good shots in on you.’
That explained why my stomach hurt so much. I looked under my shirt, seeing the ugly purple bruise along my ribs. Caroline gasped while Trevor shrugged it off.
‘But you got the better of him, Andrew.’
‘I did?’
‘Yeah,’ Trevor laughed. ‘Boot right in the marbles…’
Trevor then mimed the fight, including the part where I punted Hayden down the stairs while I was yelling ‘I don’t give a damn what you think!’ over and over again. I kept my head low, trying not to be too embarrassed when Trevor described how I vomited all over Hayden just as he tried to hit me with a lamp. Caroline smiled, remembering it and everything else all too well.