Wasted

by Nicola Morgan

  “Yeah, well, you’re seeing two of everything, Tommy,” says Jack.

  But of course, Jack will do it. One last turn. And then they’ll stop, they agree.

  “Let me spin the coin,” says Jess. They wait for her. She holds out her hand for someone to give her the coin. “Well, who’s got it?”

  “Tommy, you had it last.”

  “Well, I haven’t got it now.” Tommy vaguely looks around him. They all search but no one can find it.

  “Just use another one,” says Ella.

  Jess takes the one from her back pocket. Jack’s coin. The one she’s been keeping safe. Maybe if she hadn’t been drinking, she’d have kept it safe still.

  “Jack?”

  He hesitates.

  “What’s the big deal?” asks Chris. He looks from Jack to Jess. Their faces look oddly serious. Intent.

  Still Jack hesitates. It is as though the words will not come from his mouth. In his head he is stuck; his brain will not send the instruction to the mouth. Yes? Or No? It’s simple and yet, as he very well knows, not so simple. Because it may well make a difference, and he will never know.

  “It won’t make any difference which coin you use,” says someone.

  “You have no idea if it will or won’t.”

  “It’s just a coin, Jack, for Christ’s sake. It’s just a coin. Like, game, you know? As in game?” Tommy has a headache. He has no time for his friend’s pointless hang-ups. He has known Jack for a long time, has seen him obsess about this damned coin – not that Tommy knows that this is not the original coin. But if he did, it would make no difference: a coin is a coin and simply the best way we have to imitate randomness. Chance. Luck. Tommy doesn’t care what you call it. Tommy is like most people.

  Jack stares at Tommy for what seems a long time. Jess kneels down, touches his arm. “Hey, Jack, don’t spoil things. I don’t mind what coin we use. Maybe let’s not even play, hey? It’s late. Maybe we should go home soon? I’m getting a bit cold anyway.”

  And after a moment Jack relaxes. Shrugs. “It’s OK. Let’s do it. As you say, Tommy, it won’t make any difference, will it?” And he pours himself a small shot of vodka, knocking it back. “Go for it, Jess. Spin that coin. And make it a good spin.”

  He puts his hand on hers to slant her fingers the right way, watches as she balances the coin in just the place where he has taught her. And she spins.

  It is a good spin. It is beautiful. The firelight catches it, the wind catches it, Jack blows a kiss towards her and the kiss catches it. The coin flies high, hovers, tumbles down, and Jack calls heads.

  It is tails. He stands up, runs his hands through his hair. “So, what’s it to be?”

  “Skinny-dipping,” says someone.

  “Easy,” says Jack. “I could do with washing all this smoke off me.” He kicks off his shoes. There is wolf-whistling as he strips off: rugby shirt, T-shirt, trainers, socks, jeans. Chris puts his hands over Jess’s eyes. There is laughter again. The wind catches the flames and they stretch and lean. Jess hugs her knees.

  There are the jet skis, far away in the distance. Light plays over the water like two tiny Tinkerbells. Everyone watches and laughs as Jack runs towards the water, splashes through the first shallow frothy breakers, and dives forward smooth as a porpoise.

  There is a moment of emptiness. It is a fraction of space, when one thing ends and another begins. Laughter stops, punched in the face, shocked.

  Jess’s body freezes.

  Breath holds.

  One jet ski.

  It is coming.

  Straight

  towards

  the beach.

  Jack is standing now,

  his back to the sea,

  grinning.

  The rider’s face

  laughing,

  but then

  terrified,

  trying to turn.

  Screaming.

  A spray of froth.

  A flash

  of red.

  Jack.

  CHAPTER 42

  SPLINTERS OF TIME

  TIME moves backwards. Splinters. It is impossible to say what happens first. The jet ski almost misses Jack. It catches him a glancing blow and his rag-doll body is flung through the air, before landing in the shallows.

  Jess cannot scream. Or breathe.

  A body flies from the jet ski. The jet ski hits the body in the air before skimming onto the beach.

  Jack swallows bitter water.

  Blood.

  The coin digs into Jess’s hand, bruising it.

  People run towards the water’s edge.

  Someone dials 999. Three others do the same. They cannot see the buttons. Fingers are all thick and useless. They shake.

  Jess is at the water’s edge ahead of them. Her mind is full of one word only:

  No!

  CHAPTER 43

  SCREAMING

  IF…

  If Jack had not met Jess, she would be somewhere else entirely. She would be nowhere near this beach with its faraway town lights, running screaming along the shingle towards the human heap that sprawls in the froth, her clothes sticky with sweat and sea spray and vodka and grimy with wood smoke.

  Jack wouldn’t be here either. And there’s the dilemma. To live without pain or to live without joy.

  They move him gently. His back or neck might be injured and they know to be careful of that, but they cannot leave him face down in the water. They do the best they can and wait for sirens. All are cold, shocked, holding on to themselves, just. Some are silent, others talk occasionally, quietly; one girl is crying, another has her fist pressed to her mouth. Jack is on his side, with as many rugs and bits of clothing as they can find to cover him. They know he is breathing and someone has found a pulse. They keep checking.

  It is hard to be sure about a pulse when their own hearts are beating so loud in their ears, and their fingers feel dead. But they are as sure as they can be.

  Everyone is very sober now. Tommy stares. He almost cannot move. His face is ashen in the darkness.

  Jack must not die. They will not let him.

  Jess holds his hand. She pummels it and presses it and wills it to respond. But it doesn’t. She talks to him. Come on, Jack. Come on, Jack. Please.

  Kelly lies a little way off, where she, too, has been pulled from the water. Someone has covered her body with a picnic rug but Jess has already seen it. She had to jump over it as she ran to Jack. A dead body is a strange thing, she discovers. And horrible. Kelly is waxy in her moonlit death. The neck is rather obviously broken. And there is blood. A piece of seaweed is entangled in her hair. Her face is greyer than a human’s should be, fish-like, and damp.

  All the muscles in Jess’s face are tight. Her chest is crushed. She wonders if her head might burst or her heart actually break. She keeps forgetting to breathe. From her mouth comes a strange sound and she realizes that teeth actually do chatter with cold and fear.

  The other jet ski has now been ridden carefully onto the beach – bit too late to think about being careful now – and a boy is running towards them all. His face looks terrible.

  Jess turns away. She knows it is Simon and she wishes never to see him again or speak to him or anything at all. He should have stayed out of her life and he should stay out now.

  She can only think of Jack.

  Sirens.

  A sob rises in her throat.

  Her fingers are crossed. If she prayed, she’d pray. She prays anyway.

  If there was a ladder, she’d avoid it.

  There isn’t.

  CHAPTER 44

  WAITING

  JESS is spinning a coin. Not actually playing Jack’s Game yet, because if you’re going to play you have to be very sure. Heads or tails, win or lose, life or death: playing the game changes things and you can’t escape its rules. Jess knows that now.

  She thinks – because she has thought about this quite a lot in the last day and a bit – that if there’s a God, He must
play Jack’s Game. It’s not much of an explanation.

  Jess is sitting in a horrible waiting room the colour of old white socks. Waiting. The waiting is awful. She needs her guitar, but it wouldn’t exactly be appropriate. On the floor is a grubby doll with no clothes and one leg. It lies there with its blue eyes open. It looks shocked, or dead. There is pen scribbled on its stomach and someone has tried to cut its hair. Jess remembers doing that to a doll once.

  Jess should be starting a new life now. And perhaps, in a way, she is. For she won’t be the same after this, whatever happens.

  A flash of anger crosses her mind. She thinks that Kelly… But no, best not to think like that. She is not prone to violent thoughts. But she is in a state of shock, and strange feelings are stirring. She tries to think about anything else.

  The bracelet she’s wearing. A birthday present from her best friend, Chloe. That was a good day: her mum remembered to rustle up a cake – all the way from Mrs Beaton’s Tea Shoppe – and they ate it on the beach, digging their bare heels into the shingle and breathing the seashell air. Her dad phoned and sent the usual money.

  But Jess is scared and it’s hard to keep her mind on such things as cake, though she must try. And so: it was a fantastic cake; she and her mum used their fingers to scrape the chocolate icing off the wrapping; they have the best cakes in Mrs Beaton’s Tea Shoppe.

  That Kelly deserved to die? But what does deserve have to do with it? The world would be a strange place if everyone got what they deserved.

  Keep spinning the coin, Jess. It will help. Focus on the coin. Don’t drop it. That’s better.

  Every time she thinks about Jack, her skin shrinks, goose-bumping. She wants to see him. He’s still unconscious and no one knows how long that will be the case, what he’ll be like when he wakes. He’s lucky to be alive, the doctors say.

  His dad is with him now. A nurse said she’d come to the waiting room and get Jess as soon as possible. It’s earlier than official visiting hours – she’d slipped out of the house when her mum was still asleep. Left a note, fed Spike. Some things don’t change.

  Mind you, visiting hours don’t really count for patients like Jack. This is a special waiting room. You don’t get to be in here if you’re waiting for someone with a broken finger.

  Jess is trying to make a decision. Does she dare play the game? The sensible part of her knows that she shouldn’t. After all, she’d managed to stop Jack taking it so seriously. But Jack’s Game is serious and perhaps it’s all she can do now. Maybe all the spirits and gods and everything else that has a say in the world watch when you play. She is confused and alone and needing him to take the decision away, but when she thinks back to the newspaper stories on his bedroom wall, she knows what he would do.

  Maybe he was right all along. Maybe there’s a risk in not doing it. But if so, there’s an equal risk in doing it. Jess is more than confused and alone. She is barely holding herself together. If she breathes too hard, she may shatter into a million pieces.

  She glances at the clock. Still spinning the coin. With remarkable skill, considering that she’s only been practising for two weeks. It almost ripples across her fingers, weaving in and out, a life of its own. Left hand as good as the right. That’ll be the piano-playing, and guitar. Someone comes through the door. A woman. Her eyes are puffy. She grips the hand of a bewildered child with chocolate on its face. Jess doesn’t want to look at her, but she’s drawn by her grief. She needs to know what it feels like and yet she is afraid of it. The woman picks up the dead doll and gives it to the child, who grins and grabs it by its remaining leg. Jess thinks that if she was the child’s mother she’d make her daughter clean and dress it and learn how to love it in more ways than just holding on. The door clunks shut and the air settles again.

  Jess rummages in her bag and gets out her iPod, plugs her ear-things in and retreats into her music. Their music. Her senses merge. She closes her eyes, keeps the outside out: the Kelly Gang, the smell, the being really scared. Yesterday. Saturday. Everything. Her mum should be here. Her dad. Someone. A girl shouldn’t be here on her own. But then Jess hasn’t told anyone she was coming so early, so you can hardly blame them. Her friends were here with her most of yesterday – Chloe, Farah, and others, all in a kind of rota as though they’d worked it out – and Jack’s friends – Ella, Chris, Tommy, looking hellish. They all looked hellish. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing compared to how they feel inside.

  How do they feel? Numb. People say that nothing feels real when something terrible happens. They are wrong. This feels real. It sickens with its reality.

  She opens her eyes suddenly, rips out the ear-things. Breathe slowly, Jess. Almost lost it there. Maybe music is not such a good idea right now. Maybe you should read a magazine, something shallow that won’t slice its way deeper than skin.

  Actually, apart from the old sock colour, the room’s not that bad. Soft chairs. Free tea and coffee. Plants. A fish tank. They’ve made an effort, just to stop you thinking. Box of tissues. Cushions. You can’t hear sounds from outside, except when the door opens, though there’s a buzzing of air-con. It’s designed to help you forget where you are. So there’s a magazine on sailing and one on houses. And some children’s books and toys. She picks up a board book for babies or toddlers or whatever and looks at pictures of diggers and cranes and just does not allow herself to think of what’s past that door and what will happen when she is told to walk through it.

  Jess is not going to play the game, she decides, suddenly. It would be wrong. It would be falling into the trap of believing it will make a difference. After all, if he hadn’t played with luck, or whatever it is, Jack wouldn’t be here now.

  And yet – it’s that word again: if. If I hadn’t done that… But that’s a world that doesn’t exist. Might as well imagine waking up as a cockroach – it’s that unreal and pointless. So, Jess chooses not to play. She’ll never know whether it will make any difference but that is what she must accept.

  She continues to let the coin spin through the air though, because it’s rhythmical and beautiful, because it takes her mind off everything else, and because she’s not thinking. Just playing but not really playing.

  The door opens. A nurse stands there. Looking at Jess. If there’s a smile, it’s an uncertain smile. She’s just being friendly, not actually saying anything about Jack. Jess’s eyes search the nurse’s face, trying to scrape meaning out of what she sees there. She tries to listen to the woman’s body language, to read her mind with every sense. It doesn’t work.

  “You can come and see him now. But don’t be shocked when you get in there. It will seem shocking at first – everyone’s the same. I’ll help you – I’ll explain everything I can. Come on.”

  Jess’s heart flips. It thumps. Her skin crawls cold. The coin spins through the air and she does not catch it. She stands up, quickly. The coin tumbles towards the ground.

  “Don’t be scared, love,” says the nurse, walking towards her. “I’ll be with you.”

  The coin lands. It rolls. Jess does not look at it. She is not thinking of it. It is nothing. She hurries towards the door, stuffing her iPod into her pocket.

  “Is he…? How…?” Her mouth is dry, her voice perforated, the air coming out oddly.

  “It’s early days, love. But we’re hopeful.”

  Hopeful. Hopeful. Full of hope. It doesn’t feel like being full of hope. It feels like something so fragile that it cannot be stronger than a thread of smoke.

  Jess’s knees feel like that too.

  Behind her, the coin rolls. Unseen.

  Jess walks through the door. The nurse lets her go first.

  The coin rolls near the wall. It gently hits the skirting board at an angle. It wobbles. Stops. Upright, against the wall, wedged in the crevice where the thin carpet slopes slightly.

  It stays there. Neither heads nor tails. What do the rules say about that? Jess isn’t playing but, playing or not playing, the result will surely be the same.


  CHAPTER 45

  WIRES AND MACHINES

  JESS is rigid as she walks through the glass doors. A small broken sound slips from her lips. The nurse squeezes her arm. Jack’s dad looks up, smiles at her. He is holding one of his son’s hands.

  And everywhere there are tubes. They snake across the body, which is naked from the waist upwards. A bruise spreads from under a dressing. Other dressings patchwork the left side of the torso and that arm is fully bandaged. Bright white tapes spiral around the head and something protrudes from the throat, fixed with more tapes. There is blood, which Jess tries not to look at, and yellow stuff painted on carelessly.

  The face is so swollen that she cannot see Jack in it. Bruises pool beneath the eyes.

  With rhythmic clunking that seems too slow, a machine pushes air into his lungs through a tube the size of a fat finger. Screens by the bed show green zigzag lines. Jess will not look at them. Something beeps slowly. Between each beep is a silence that is fractionally too long for comfort. You can’t not listen to it.

  Jess cannot speak. She tries but the right bits are not working. If she speaks she will cry. Please, Jack, Jack, oh, Jack, wake up. She so needs him to speak to her. For everything to be as it was before. Before she spun the coin and Jack had to do the forfeit. It would be so simple. She would do something fractionally different – spin it differently, use a different coin, delay him, hold him back with a kiss. He only needed to be in a slightly different place.

  It’s easy to see the sequence of events that brought him here, the causes. But was there any point at which they could have known in advance? After all, if we can see afterwards that a caused b, then surely all we needed to do was know or guess that a would cause b and just stop it happening?

  Jack’s dad beckons her to sit by him. The nurse finds a chair. Another nurse is doing something, making notes, reading screens. Everything seems very controlled. Jess  sits.

  The smell of antiseptic comforts her, and yet, something like a mask, it frightens her too.

  Jack’s dad takes her hand and puts it on Jack’s.