Never a Perfect Moment

by Cathy Cole

  Boys knew nothing, Polly thought.

  “Maybe she didn’t once,” she said. “But she does now. Believe me, Josh. Girls know this stuff.”

  Colour was stealing across Josh’s pale cheeks. “You think?”

  Polly thought of Lila’s miserable face. Of Ryan, lying face down in the water on that terrible night.

  “What have you got to lose?” she said. “Life is meant to be lived, right?”

  Josh stopped by the staffroom. “I’m going this way,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder. “See you later, OK?”

  “Are you going to ask her?” Polly pressed.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said with a little smile.

  Polly smiled back, feeling pleased. “Don’t leave it too long, will you? We all need to start having a little more fun around here,” she said, thinking of Ollie.

  THREE

  Polly was so deep in thought that she almost bumped into Rhi in the corridor.

  Rhi looked drained and there were visible circles beneath her eyes. Her hair, which usually framed her face in a dark and curly cloud, had been pulled back and secured with grips, as if leaving it loose would express unforgivable light-heartedness in the face of tragedy. She was still one of the prettiest girls in school, Polly reflected. Polly touched her own hair self-consciously, thinking again that it was a mistake to dye it black.

  Rhi’s expressive dark eyes were bright, and more curious than Polly had seen them in days. “What did Mr Cartwright want with you guys? Everyone’s been speculating like mad. Are you in trouble?”

  “Lila’s dad was here and just wanted to ask more questions about Ryan.”

  “I thought they’d asked all the questions by now,” said Rhi in surprise.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Polly said. “I guess they’re tying up loose ends and trying to close the case. I’m sure the whole family needs closure on this. It must be awful.”

  Rhi’s eyes looked as if they were reddening again.

  “I know it’s awful of me, but I’m so sick of the gloom,” Polly sighed, leaning back against the lockers. “We all need a night out at the Heartbeat or somewhere. It’s been ages since we met up and had any fun. Are you busy tonight?”

  Rhi looked at her strangely. “The Heartbeat Café’s still closed, Polly. Ryan’s whole family is in mourning. Besides, I don’t think we’re ready for it yet. It would feel too weird without Ryan there.”

  Polly wanted to kick herself. How could she have been so insensitive? “Of course,” she said awkwardly. “Stupid of me. It’s just … I want all this to go away, you know? Get back to normal.”

  Rhi looked at her hands. “When we lost my sister in the car crash, I wanted everything to go back to normal too,” she said quietly. “But it never did. When someone dies, nothing is the same, ever again.”

  Tears spilled down Rhi’s cheeks. Polly was appalled at herself. She’d put her foot in it twice, in as many seconds. That had to be some kind of record.

  “Rhi, I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly. “Can you forgive me for talking without thinking?”

  Rhi rubbed the tears from her face. “It’s not you. I feel like a leaky tap at the moment,” she said with a shaky laugh. “This whole thing with Ryan has brought back some really tough memories. And not just for me. For my parents as well.”

  Polly touched Rhi’s arm in sympathy. “Is it really bad at home?”

  “Pretty bad, yeah,” Rhi admitted. “Dad’s been spending time with Mr Jameson, helping him work through his grief. Maybe it’s helpful, being with someone who understands what it feels like to lose a child. But Dad’s coming home with all this extra grief on his shoulders. It’s hard to be around him just now. Mum’s not talking about it, but you can see on her face how much it’s affected her. She’s working even harder than she usually does, trying to pretend that everything’s OK.”

  “That must be so difficult.”

  Polly could hardly imagine what Rhi and her parents were going through. She found a tissue in her pocket and handed it over. Rhi took it gratefully.

  “Everything’s such a mess,” she sniffed into the tissue. “I wish I could rewind it all.”

  Polly knew exactly what Rhi meant. “None of this was your fault,” she reminded her friend.

  “Wasn’t it?” Rhi’s eyes were haunted. “You weren’t even up on the cliff when it happened, Polly. It was surreal. One minute we were all singing along to one of Brody’s songs and the firelight was flickering over the rocks – and then Ryan and Lila appeared and everything changed.”

  “Don’t go through it all again, Rhi—”

  “I have to,” Rhi interrupted. “I have to work out if I could have prevented it, you know? Max told Ryan not to jump. Ryan called him a chicken. I was sitting right there. I could have grabbed Ryan, maybe, or… ”

  “Please don’t, Rhi,” said Polly helplessly. “You can’t change any of it. It was an accident.”

  A bell rang somewhere overhead, signifying the start of afternoon classes. Rhi blew her nose and struggled to compose herself. Polly could hardly bear to see the misery on her friend’s face. She had to make Rhi smile again.

  “So the Heartbeat Café was one of my dumber ideas,” she said. “But I still think we should get together. Just the girls, maybe. You could all come over to my house. It would be good to talk, don’t you think? Properly. Not just for five minutes, snatched between school bells. We haven’t all been together since the day of Ryan’s funeral. That afternoon on the beach.”

  Polly could picture that day so clearly in her mind. She and Rhi, crossing the wind-blown beach to where Lila and Eve were standing beside the pretty memorial they had made for Ryan in the sand. Eve, telling them all that she was gay.

  “When you say ‘the girls’,” said Rhi, interrupting Polly’s train of thought, “does that include Eve?”

  “Yes,” said Polly. “We vowed on the beach that day that we would try and be better friends for each other, didn’t we? And although she’s a difficult person to be friends with, that means Eve too.”

  Rhi looked unhappy. “I’m not ready to spend time with Eve yet.”

  Polly frowned. “Why not? Because she’s gay?”

  “No, of course not. I don’t have a problem with that,” said Rhi, shaking her head. “It’s her lies. They’ve destroyed any feelings of friendship I used to have for her. She stole Max from me, Polly. She broke my heart. And then the next minute she says she’s gay! How can someone do that? Wreck a person’s life by taking their boyfriend, when they don’t even like boys? Why did she do it? Just to hurt me? Just to prove she could?”

  “It doesn’t make much sense,” Polly agreed. “But Eve’s never followed the rules, has she? She’ll be hurting over Ryan, just like we are. She needs us too.”

  Rhi sighed and started walking towards the classroom. “Are you coming or not?”

  More students were pouring through the corridors now, making their way to afternoon classes. Polly dodged through the crowd, trying to catch up with Rhi.

  “How are things with you and Max anyway?”

  Rhi teetered her hand from side to side. “We’re sort of dating again.”

  “That’s what you want,” Polly said. “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhi said with a shrug. “He wants to pick up where we left off, like the whole thing with Eve never happened. Like it didn’t matter. But I’m not so sure. The whole business with Ryan has reminded me that we only have one life, you know? Lila keeps telling me I can do better than Max.” She looked at Polly questioningly. “What do you think?”

  Polly had never much liked Max. He was too … charming was the word she wanted. Like all he had to do was smile and the world would fall into place, just the way he wanted it to. He’d so easily cheated on Rhi with Eve, and then just as easily persuaded Rhi to take him bac
k. It was like there were no consequences for him, like he didn’t even feel any guilt about what he’d done.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said diplomatically. “I’m not the one going out with him. But you can’t avoid the fact that he cheated on you, Rhi. Who’s to say he won’t do it again?”

  Rhi rubbed her hands through her hair. “I’ve dated him for so long,” she sighed. “We have all these shared memories, and he knows me so well. What if he’s the one, Polly? How do you know if the risk is worth it?”

  “That,” said Polly, “is an excellent question.”

  And I wish I knew the answer, she thought.

  FOUR

  Polly didn’t have a good night. The gloom at school hung over her like a cloud, and she found it almost impossible to think all the peaceful, calming things she needed to think about in order to fall asleep. She’d tried everything – having a bath, drinking hot chocolate, spraying her pillow with lavender mist. But every time she got close to drifting off, Josh’s horrified cry on discovering Ryan’s body came into her mind, a piercing howl of horror that brought her out in a cold sweat. The situation with Ollie didn’t help either. The more she thought about it, the more she felt anxious about their date on Friday. She had liked him for so long, but they were so different – physically and mentally. How would it ever work?

  Morning took a long time to arrive. Polly found herself getting up early, having breakfast before her mum was awake, and taking herself down the hill to school with almost half an hour to spare.

  She texted Eve and Lila as she walked.

  Everything OK? Worried about you.

  As she tapped send, she wondered uneasily if she’d hear from either of them before she saw them in class. She’d phoned them both the night before, and again before breakfast. Her calls had gone to voicemail. Four texts later and she still hadn’t had a reply. It was very unlike them both to leave a message unanswered. She didn’t like to think about what might have happened. Polly couldn’t help imagining worst-case scenarios, and tried not to let herself do it any more often than she had to. It was too disturbing.

  Pocketing her phone with a sigh, Polly switched her bag to her other shoulder. The wind seemed determined to blow her skirt over her head this morning. The coats of her fellow pedestrians billowed around them like the sails on the ships out in Heartside harbour. Clouds scudded through the sky, racing each other towards the cliffs that surrounded the bay.

  At the newsagent’s on the corner, Polly paused, checking the traffic. Looking to her right, her eye was caught by three brightly coloured pictures on the front of the Heartside Herald, flapping over its usual rail outside the newsagent’s door.

  It took a moment to register what she was seeing.

  Chief Murray looked harassed in his photo as he stepped out of the Heartside police station, flanked by two officers in uniform. In the facing picture, Eve’s father held up his hand to ward off the flashing bulbs of the photographers. The picture in the centre was a picture Polly had come to know well: Ryan, smart in school uniform and smiling through his overlong fringe at the world.

  ACCIDENTAL DEATH?

  Following the tragic death of Ryan Jameson (15) of Heartside Bay ten days ago in a cliff-jumping incident, Chief of Police Greg Murray issued the following statement: “Ryan Jameson’s death was a tragic accident that has cut out the heart of our community. We are united in our grief, and our condolences are extended to Ryan’s family.”

  The official verdict may be accidental death, but the Heartside Herald can reveal a very different side of the story. Our reporter was granted an exclusive interview yesterday with Ryan’s mother, Mrs Louise Jameson (42). He met with her in her cosily furnished apartment above the Jamesons’ family business, well-known local establishment the Heartbeat Café.

  Mrs Jameson, bearing up bravely under the weight of her terrible grief, issued the following statement: “Heartside Bay is a divided community, whatever Chief Murray says. There are the haves and the have-nots. We aren’t a wealthy family. Ryan suffered the consequences of this at school, where he was routinely excluded and teased for not fitting in. It was the reckless behaviour of Heartside Bay’s wilder, more privileged teenagers that drove Ryan to his death – among them, Chief Murray’s own daughter. What does that say about our so-called community?

  “Mayor Henry Somerstown, whose daughter held the extravagant, fatally unsupervised party on one of the uninhabited islands off the coast, has Ryan’s blood on his hands. I hope he can sleep at night. As a family, we will never sleep again.”

  Food for thought, readers. Are we a divided community, as Mrs Jameson alleges? How much longer can we allow our more privileged sector of youngsters to wreck lives in this way?

  The words swam before Polly’s eyes. Although she felt huge sympathy for Ryan’s mother, she also felt sick with disbelief at the injustice of what she was reading. She didn’t want to think ill of the dead, but the fact remained: Ryan had been the reckless one. They had warned him not to jump. No one had pushed him. No one had encouraged him. But he had jumped anyway.

  The world’s gone crazy, Polly thought numbly.

  She had been standing for several moments on the street corner, gazing at the newspaper, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and stared at the screen.

  Ollie was calling.

  A flash of happiness ran through her. She savoured the sight of his name on her phone before a stab of guilt hit her. She shoved her phone back into her pocket, unanswered. She had no right to feel happy. Not with Ryan dead, a family destroyed and a newspaper telling lies about her friends.

  She shivered to think how Lila and Eve must be feeling today. The newspaper explained why they hadn’t answered their phones. They’d probably known the story was going to be printed.

  Her phone was still vibrating in her pocket. Polly gritted her teeth. She couldn’t answer it. She felt too guilty. Too nervous, if she was honest. Ollie would have to wait.

  She couldn’t go to school straight away. She needed air, and time to think. Changing direction, she shouldered her bag more securely and hurried across the street, her black hair swinging about her face, and headed for the beach.

  The wide swing of sand was empty this morning, the gulls having difficulty flying in a straight line. Polly’s skirt snapped about her legs like a whip. Reaching the water’s edge, she stood square on to the wind, letting it rip through her. Willing it to snatch away all the confusion and chaos of her life.

  The sight of the sea always calmed her. She’d spent hours down here after her parents’ divorce, when she and her mum had first moved to Heartside from California. Sitting on the sea wall and watching the tide felt familiar at a time when everything was changing. And she had spent time by the water after her break-up with her first boyfriend, Sam. Polly had to smile as she remembered the way they had met. The beach had played an important part in that as well. It seemed like ages ago, though. So much had happened since then. Getting to know Lila. The shock of learning her mother was gay and dating Polly’s history teacher, Ms Andrews. Then Ryan’s death. And now Ollie.

  When did life get so complicated? Will it ever be simple again? she wondered hopelessly.

  Maybe it never would.

  Wherever Ryan was now, at least he didn’t have to deal with life and its endless problems any more. In that respect, he was lucky. She shivered as she realized she didn’t really mean that at all.

  “Polly?”

  Polly froze. For the weirdest couple of seconds, she wondered if Ryan’s ghost was calling her across the waves.

  Someone grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into a tight embrace. Polly opened her mouth and let out a piercing scream, making the gulls above her head take fright and wheel away over the sea.

  FIVE

  “Hey,” Ollie said in surprise, grappling with Polly as she flailed at him with her fis
ts, shielding his face from her blows. “It’s me! What’s the matter? Why are you hitting me?”

  Polly stopped screaming abruptly as her face flushed bright scarlet. Ollie was the last person she had expected to see.

  He was so tall and handsome. The wind had brightened his cheeks and made his eyes sparkle. Standing beside him, Polly felt like a very small and ugly crab.

  “Ollie?” she stammered. She could hardly bring herself to look at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you when you didn’t answer your phone. You’re not going to hit me again,” he said cautiously, “are you?”

  “Of course not, I thought… ”

  Polly trailed off. What had she thought? That Ryan had come back from the dead and tried to drag her into the sea to join him? She really was cracking up.

  “What?” Ollie asked, looking curious.

  “Nothing,” said Polly, embarrassed. “Sorry I didn’t answer the phone. I was … thinking.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Ollie joked.

  Polly sighed inwardly. She knew he was joking, but sometimes she just wasn’t in the mood. She wanted someone who she could discuss her problems and thoughts with, but it didn’t seem like Ollie would ever be interested in that. He was so flippant about everything. That was the problem with Ollie and her. Right there, in a nutshell. Sure, her pulse raced when she looked into his eyes, but every conversation they had made her question whether they had enough in common to ever really work together.

  Ollie huddled into his coat. The wind was doing crazy things to his hair. “You saw the paper, right?”

  So Ollie had seen it too. Polly nodded. “It’s awful. And completely untrue.”

  “Not to Mrs Jameson.” Ollie looked sad. “She must really be suffering. It’s clear that she hates us all.”

  Ollie might not think much, but Polly knew his heart was in the right place. His arms were still round her. However hard she tried to reason herself out of this, she couldn’t help the fluttery feeling in her stomach at the warmth of him – the boy she’d had a crush on for such a long time.