by C. J. Skuse
I looked up at him. ‘I love you too, Maximus Decimus Meridius.’
‘Oi,’ he said, with a bat of eyelids. ‘I’m trying to be meaningful here.’
‘I love you too, Max Alexander Rittman.’ I couldn’t say anything else. Why did looking at that photograph make me pine so much? Me and Max weren’t even going out then, just friends; friends who knew there was buried treasure on that island, and spent years looking for it. Friends who gurned for photos, who ate chips not caring about what we weighed, not caring whether our tans were even. That’s why I loved Max, I guessed. Because of what he represented. I’d hung around with various Beckys or Laurens at school and I knew girls at the track who did the same distances, but none of them were Max. He was my constant.
‘Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but to remain part of my character, part of the good in me, part of the evil…’
I couldn’t help it – I laughed. I was glad for the break in the tension in my throat. ‘You did not just come up with that.’
‘No, it’s from Great Expectations. I memorised it.’
‘My dad named me after her from that book.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. We’re all named after Dickens characters. David, Oliver, then me. Apparently Estella’s a right bitch in the book too.’ I laughed an ugly laugh and I hated myself for it.
‘You’re always so hard on yourself.’
‘It’s the athlete in me. Nothing’s ever good enough. Everything can be improved.’
‘How come I didn’t know that about your name?’
I swallowed as tears stung my eyes. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. ‘There’s lots of things you don’t know about me.’
Stroking my hand, he stared at me. There was meaning in that stare. I tensed up, flaring with realisation; tonight wasn’t just about ‘marking the occasion’. This was a prelude – he wanted us to try sex again. Here. Tonight. I pulled away.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ I scratched my arm. ‘My hives are up. I had a satsuma earlier, it’s probably that. I need to cool down. Do you fancy a dip in the pool?’
‘Sure.’ He blew out the Yankee Candle and we both scraped back our chairs on the hardwood floor and walked out of the café, through the sliding doors and into the night.
Hidden between all the rose beds and ferns, bronze statues, ceramic ladybirds and smirking Buddhas, lay the large rectangular pool with the statue in the middle; a laughing pearl fisherman, spouting water from his ears. It all looked so beautiful, lit by outdoor nightlights, making the water look as appealing as an icy blue cocktail on a hot beach. People had thrown coins in, and the bottom was green with algae in patches, but otherwise it was quite clear. A string of lights that looked like blue ice cubes hung around the edge of the pool.
Max had known me when I swam – in the days when my dad used to call me ‘Little Fish’ because I could hold my breath underwater for a whole minute. Now, I was ‘Volcano Girl’ – the Commonwealth Games hopeful with a county record for the 400 metres. In the days before dieting and 6 a.m. jogs got their claws into me, I’d loved to swim. But I didn’t even own a costume any more. And Dad hadn’t called me Little Fish for years.
‘Good idea, this,’ said Max, kicking off his trainers and ruffling his socks down over his feet. ‘I didn’t shower after football.’ He pulled his T-shirt up over his back. I took off my top and skirt, until I had on only my black sports bra and Snoopy knickers. It never used to bother me that my underwear didn’t match.
I got in as Max lowered himself beneath the surface. I watched his body shimmer through the blue water until he bobbed up in front of me with a smile, a dolphin expecting chum. He put his hands on the ledge, either side of me.
‘Hello,’ he said, droplets of water peppering his skin all over.
‘It’s colder than I thought.’ I shivered. His hair looked darker when it was wet.
‘Your rash any better?’
I looked down at my elbow creases. ‘Yeah.’
I hugged him towards me and we stayed like that until he pulled back and kissed me in a desperate smash of lips and tongues and teeth. I wanted to lie down with him and just kiss, stroking his bare back like I sometimes did. I liked the feel of his body against me, and I felt safe, holding him. That was all I wanted to do. But he wanted more. He was so ready. I’d thought that if I kissed him long enough I would be ready too—that I’d get the feeling. The hunger. The throb between my legs. But it wasn’t there. There was something in the way.
‘Come on,’ I said, and started moving away from him, climbing out of the pool.
‘Where are we going now?’ he said.
‘Where do you think?’ I said, reaching over for his hand.
He scrunched his face up. ‘I better stay here. Got a kind of – situation going on.’
‘It’s because of that. Come on.
We padded through to Garden Furnishings to grab some picnic blankets, and then back out between the foliage towards the sheds, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We chose a two-storey Wendy house with window boxes then we spread out the blankets on the floor and lay down. Our breaths were hot. Our skin was wet. He moved on top of me and kissed me all over my face, gentle as a moth bumping a light bulb.
‘You’re shaking like a jelly,’ he chuckled.
‘I’m fine. I’m just cold.’
Maybe it would be all right this time. It was no big deal. Everyone did it. I stroked across the span of his back, his skin as soft as catmint.
Before my brain could catch up with my body, I moved him away and reached down to peel off my wet Snoopy pants. I flung them outside the shed and they landed with a splat on the path. It would be all right.
‘Are you sure you want to?’ Smiling like Christmas had just arrived, he started wriggling out of his boxers.
‘Come on, quickly. Before I change my mind.’
I couldn’t have felt less in the mood than if he was measuring me up for my coffin.
‘Why do we have to be quick? We’ve got all night.’
‘Before I lose my nerve then,’ I laughed, and shuffled back underneath him. I didn’t want to think too much about it this time. I just wanted it done.
‘Ella, if you don’t want to . . .’
‘No I do, I do want to. Please. Come on.’
‘I haven’t got any condoms.’
‘I don’t care this time. Come on, please – quickly. Kiss me again.’
As we kissed, Max’s hands were in my hair, then at my neck, my side, around my hips and my bottom before one of them sneaked around the front. He was going ‘there’.
‘Kiss me again.’
I kept my eyes open. I wasn’t worried. This was Max and he loved me. I was safe in his arms. We both wanted this.
‘You smell so good.’
‘You do too,’ I said in breaths, even though the only thing I could smell was the intense spicy smell of the wooden shed. ‘Tell me you love me.’
His fingers were going deeper. ‘I love you so much, Ella. God, I want you.’ He un-clicked my sports bra and pulled it off. ‘I want you so badly.’
I held his head against my neck as my tears rolled down my cheeks into my ears. The necklace had slid down – the bear was resting on my sweaty shoulder, looking at me.
His tongue flicked inside my mouth. ‘I want you so much.’
I slid my hand into his hair and grabbed a tuft. Any second now, I’d want this too.
‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. Silently, a dragon roared in my belly. Max wriggled about, positioning himself so every inch of his naked body was against some naked part of mine. ‘Kinda need you to open your legs a bit though, Ells,’ he laughed.
I was lying like a corpse. ‘Oh sorry.’
Oh God, this was it. We were actually going to do it. I wasn’t going to be scared. I grabbed on to his back. I looked up through the roof of the Wendy house, and through a crack in the wood I saw starlight. I drew up my knee
s. He was going to put it inside me. Any second now. The starlight grew blurry in my eyes.
I closed my eyes and found a memory. Fallon and me, dancing on rocks, laughing so hard about something. Max and Zane were pulling at branches in the woods – making a den. Corey was sitting on a pebble beach, trying to catch a fish with a stick and some string. We were best friends who danced, built dens, fished, had picnics and swam whole summers away. And we had the best big sister to look after us and tell us stories.
‘Who wants to hear my new story? I just finished it.’
‘Me! Me! Me! I do! I do!’
‘Right, get over here, then.’
There weren’t always five of us. Sometimes, it had been six.
Then I realised where we were. We were on the island – the sea had swallowed the land. I looked around. I was alone. They’d all gone. I was stuck there, forever screaming.
‘Ella?’
With a jolt of panic, I was wrenched back to now, back to the hard shed floor, Max’s heavy body on top of me, waiting for the pain I knew was coming.
‘Ella?’
I was panting. ‘Just do it, Max. Do it, please. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.’
But I wasn’t ready. I was crying. The only thing I was ready to do at that moment was vomit. And just as he pulled away from me, a thick surge raced up my throat.
‘Oh God,’ I managed to squeak, lunging for the open shed door as everything I’d eaten that day erupted from my mouth before I’d reached the nearest bush.
How to Kill a Moment, by Estella Grace Newhall.
For the next minute, the only sound was me yacking into a yucca. When I was done, I looked behind me. Max was sitting on an upturned flowerpot. Naked and embarrassed, just like Adam. And there was I. Naked and embarrassed, just like Eve. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll get our clothes.’ He stood up, snatched up his sodden boxers from the path and walked back towards the pool.
I followed him. ‘I feel better now.’
He turned around, his eyes as sad as I’d ever seen them, and grabbed his trousers from a bronze giraffe’s ear, scrabbling them on. A plastic sachet fell out of his back pocket. I picked it up, but before I could look at it, he snatched it away.
‘What was that?’
He stashed the packet back in his jeans. ‘Condoms.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t have any?’
He didn’t answer.
‘I hate that I keep doing this to you.’
‘All you had to say was no!’ he yelled. ‘Have I ever pressured you? Why do you even lead me down the road if you can’t go there?’
‘I thought it would be OK this time.’
‘You thought that last time. And the time before that. And every time, we end up like this – having a massive barney.’ He trailed off and scratched his head on both sides, like he was trying to scratch his brain out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
He was so angry. He’d never been this angry before. I saw what I was doing to him, his strange fury, and I hated myself even more. I started gathering up my clothes. It wasn’t until I’d laced my trainers and he was sitting on the edge of the pool with a roll-up that he spoke again.
‘I Googled it,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Genophobia. It’s a proper thing.’
I sat down next to him on the edge of the pool. ‘Is there a cure?’
He rubbed his mouth and reached for my hand. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘We’ll be OK though, won’t we?’
He surrounded me in a hug. ‘Yeah. ’Course we will.’
‘Did you talk to anyone about it?’
3
Thumping Good Fun
I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was finding it more difficult to keep it to myself. The relationship was becoming so one-sided. He started sexting me just before Christmas last year – this picture of him naked except for a bath towel, and a text saying Wanna see beneath, my beautiful? Wink wink.
I didn’t know how to reply. I’d seen his you-know-what a few times before but it was never something I wanted to see, and certainly not in an excited state. So I kept sending back jokey answers, like No you’re all right, I’ve just eaten. Wink wink.
Then he sent back I’m in bed, just thinkin bout my baby.
So I sent back I’m in bed trying to remember if I put the bins out.
So he stopped, just like that. I liked the kissing and the hugging. I loved tiny, insignificant things we did like playing Round and Round the Garden on each other’s palms. I loved us playing with each other’s hair and I loved how he always sent me text kisses first thing in the morning and last thing at night – but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want dicktures, I didn’t want sex aids he said he’d order me off the internet or him nibbling my neck or pressing against me. For me that was love with a grenade attached – it said I love you so much, I want to hurt you.
If things had been different, maybe it would have turned me on. Maybe we’d have booty-called each other from our beds, like he said his mates did with random women on Snapchat and Skype. But things weren’t different. Things were the way they were.
I had a bit of a meltdown about it at training the next morning.
‘Come on, don’t let me down, keep going, work through it, work through it…’
The sweltering sun attacked us like a baying crowd as we climbed the east-facing slope of Brynstan Hill. My body did as Pete was yelling at it to do, but my head was everywhere – on the white butterflies shimmering through the long grass, the sheep lying in the shade, the tractor ambling along in a faraway meadow. The distant cars. Hay bales wrapped in shiny black plastic, like large body bags.
‘Come on. Push it, Ella, push it! All the way now, all the way…’
Sweat streamed down my face, and the taste of tiny flies and hot hay clogged my nose and my throat. Pete pushed me harder and harder up the hill, until all my willpower left me and I stopped and bent over to grab my ankles and catch my breath.
‘What are you doing? We’re nowhere near the top yet,’ he panted.
‘I’ve had enough,’ I gasped, reaching behind me for the Evian in my rucksack.
‘Come on, just a bit further. You’ve got to punch through it.’
I shook my head, chugging down the cool water like I’d crossed a desert. ‘I don’t want to do any more today.’ I swigged again and bent over, every muscle torn up and my lungs aching when I breathed in or out. ‘I hate this damn hill.’
‘You have been keeping up with your diet, haven’t you?’
I said nothing, wiping my face on my T-shirt hem.
‘You’re sluggish today. Perhaps we should look at reeling back on the carbs.’
‘OK, I had a day off yesterday. My dad made me a bacon sandwich. It’s not a crime.’
Pete Hamlin had been our school’s Teacher You Most Want to Bang – they called him the Pied Piper, cos wherever he went there was always a line of girls following him. I wasn’t interested in him that way, but I could see that he was good-looking. He was twenty-five, with a big, happy smile, and he spoke with a posh accent, like he’d done ten years’ training with the Royal Shakespeare Company. We talked a lot. I knew he wanted to move back to London, that he liked going to see plays but hated the cinema, even that he still carried a picture of his ex-girlfriend in his wallet. We’d run up Brynstan Hill like coach and student, but we’d come back down as friends, chatting about music and books.
‘Come on then. Back at it.’
I shook my head. ‘This is as far as I want to go today.’
‘That’s not an athlete talking, Estella.’
I started undoing the Velcro on my running gloves but left them on. ‘Yeah well, maybe I don’t want to be an athlete today, Peter.’
‘This isn’t like you. Where’s my Volcano Girl?’
‘Extinct,’ I said, and started walking back down the hill.
The local paper had started the whole Volcano Girl thing, because of the way I ‘erupted�
� out of the blocks on the track. I didn’t mind it. It was pretty apt if you think about it.
‘Ella, I’m being paid a lot of money to train you.’
‘Then what do you care?’ I stopped walking. ‘Why can’t we just say we ran, just for once? Why do we always have to bloody run everywhere?’
He laughed and started back down the hill to where I was standing. ‘Uh, well, there’s this little thing called the Commonwealth Games? And the fact that you’re the best runner in the county, probably the best runner in the South-West when you set your mind to it? That enough for you to be going on with? Come on, I’ll race you to the top.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘I’ll give you a head start.’
That was when I blew. ‘WHY DOESN’T ANYONE EVER LISTEN TO ME?’
I didn’t look at him. I marched back down the hill like a belligerent Grand Old Duke of York; my one man staying exactly where he was. For a while. Until I heard his footsteps coming up behind me.
‘Is it your dad? He’s still in remission, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, my dad’s OK. Well, at the moment he is.’
‘Has your mum called again? Your brothers? You’re always fractious whenever they’ve been in touch.’
‘No.’ I sat down on the grass, narrowly avoiding a pat of dried sheep crap. I felt like crying so badly it was hurting my neck. I chugged back some more water to drown it.
He sat down next to me. ‘Is it leaving school? I know it’s a big step, sixth form, but you’ll be all right. You should be excited about it. I think you’ll do well.’
‘It’s not any of that.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, like he was settling in for a good movie. ‘Come on, we need to clear out your brain, otherwise you’re not going to get the most out of this. You may as well go home and eat twelve Krispy Kremes and a Nando’s for all the good it’s going to do.’
‘You can’t eat Nando’s at home,’ I said.
‘You can,’ he argued. ‘They’ve got it in Waitrose. I’ve tried their pervy sauce. Believe me, it is all the noms.’
A smile tore at my lips. ‘It’s peri-peri sauce. And don’t speak young. It sounds weird.’