Wasted

by Nicola Morgan

  “Jess is here,” he says to his son. He turns to Jess. His eyes are pink-rimmed and very tired-looking. “Talk to him. He might be able to hear. Hearing’s the first sense to come back and we want Jack back now. I know he wants you here. You can help. By being here, talking to him. You OK, Jess? Come on, we can do this – we can.”

  She squeezes Jack’s hand. “Hi, Jack. It’s me. Jess.” Her voice sounds silly. Jack’s dad nods at her.

  “Go on, just talk to him. Just about anything. I’m going to get a coffee. Do you want one?”

  Jess shakes her head. She is still looking at Jack’s face. Is he in there? “No, thanks.”

  Jack. I’m here. It’s me. It’s Jess.

  She swallows. What can she say?

  I hope you’re not hurting in there. It looks … dramatic. Can you hear me?

  Hey, everyone’s thinking of you. Everyone.

  You’ve got so many cards here. Do you want me to read them? There’s even one from my mum. Pretty amazing, hey?

  And this one’s from Chris and Ella and Tommy. Tommy says he’s sorry he drank too much. Didn’t make any difference, did it?

  Jack, I love you. Saturday night was … so amazing. I don’t know a word for it. I felt so … happy. We played brilliantly, didn’t we? Do you remember?

  I’ve brought the recording Tommy made. It’s on my iPod. Do you want to hear it?

  Jess looks at the nurse. The nurse is frowning at the screen. Can I let him listen? The nurse nods.

  Floating. Warm. Fuzzy. Nice. Soft. Jess. Jesssssss.

  Beep.

  I feel her touch. Smile inside. Mouth woolly, not working. Try squeeze. Nothing. Never mind. Later. Jess. Lots time.

  Beep.

  Floating. Warm. Fuzzy. Nice. Soft. Mmmm.

  Smile. Inside. Mouth. Not. Working. At. All.

  Jess. Jess. Stay, Jess. I’m. Help. Help!

  Beep.

  Shiver. Heartbeat. Stuck. Slow. Slow. Sink.

  Spinning. That coin where is? I’m spinning, Jess. I’m flying. I see there you down. What doing? Come me with, Jess.

  Jess? Jess? Did you spin the coin? Again? Did you? And how did it land? Need to know.

  Here. We can listen to it together. Listen to the cheering, Jack.

  It’s my song, the one you liked. I remember the first time I sang it for you. How I felt when you told me it was beautiful. It’s all I ever wanted to do, to sing, and singing with you is just the best. You have to get better so we can sing again.

  Are you listening, Jack? Can you hear?

  Squeeze my hand. Anything. Just, please, just show me. Blink. Or anything. Please, Jack.

  I can’t…

  I need you back. You have to get better. You have to, Jack, please. You have to. Please! Please!

  NO! What’s happening?

  Don’t make me go! I’ll get his dad.

  It’s Jack. Something’s happening. Hurry!

  NO!

  Beep.

  Any coin, Jess. Doesn’t matter. Won’t make any. Difference. Real. Was wrong. Or if … never know. Nothing else. Knowing. Living. Love. Wrong.

  Help. Please, Jess, spin it. Can see two paths. One grey, one greyer. Can’t choose.

  Can’t choose. Drifting, Jess. Help. Spinning. Don’t … know … which … way … down. Dizzy. So dizzy. Cold.

  So cold.

  Can’t hear you, Jess. Can’t nothing. Dark.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  “STAND BACK.” Aaagh. “AGAIN.” Aaaagh. “COME ON, JACK!”

  Spin.

  Beautiful spin. So beautiful.

  And now we can only watch as the medical staff try to hurl the life back into Jack’s body. It is brutal, battering.

  There is nothing to lose now, and yet there is everything. His heart has stopped. It may start again. Or it may not.

  The doctors and nurses will do all they can. But in the end it will come down to tiny things that already exist – the state of Jack’s being: where his cells are, the precise level of every chemical in his body, the position of every particle, every nano-watt of electricity in his brain, the salts and the ions, the genes and the electrons, the enzymes and the amino acids.

  Jack’s life is in the balance, such a fragile balance that perhaps simply by watching him we may move a particle.

  With Jess and Jack’s dad, we watch through the glass door now. We see Jack’s poor body being shocked. And listen to him. He is asking us – anyone – to spin a coin, and Jess won’t do it, partly because she doesn’t know he’s asking.

  On such a small act of apparent chance does his life now rest.

  It’s not chance, of course. Jack was right about that. A coin will fall according to how it is spun. Good luck and bad luck are just what we call it.

  But there is something else: at this final moment, just when it might be too late, Jack has still not realized the important truth. He is still wrong.

  NOTE:

  Will you play Jack’s Game now? If you’re going to play you have to be very sure what you’re doing. Heads or tails, win or lose. Even with life and death. That’s the rules. Jack’s rules.

  A life hangs in the balance and either result is equally probable. Heads or tails. Which will it be?

  When you are ready, spin the coin – try to spin it beautifully, for this may make a difference; or it may not – and then see which path Jack and Jess’s lives will take.

  If your coin lands heads up, begin reading chapter 46. If it’s tails, begin at chapter 47.

  CHAPTER 46

  HEADS

  SOME weeks later and August is sinking. A

  windless, sticky evening. Jess is walking along the beach. It is not easy for her to come here. The memories of that night are still too clear. Her crystal night. They will fade, but she cannot believe that yet.

  She had to come here. Often does. Searching for meaning in the air. Thinking. Looking for any sign that it might have been different… Or just needing to be in this place and not being able to stop herself coming. She feels close to Jack here. Jess hugs the memory close. Of Jack wrapping her in his arms on the beach before she spun the coin; of exploring the geography of his knuckles; the smell of him. And how at that moment she could know nothing of what was to come.

  The sea is calmer than it was that night. No wind ruffles it; the breakers hiss rather than roar. And the sky is rose-infused. Almost red.

  Red. She has thought about red a lot since then. Farantella. Things beginning with “w”. How they had laughed about Farantella with her silly prophecies, her nonsense. Because it was nonsense. Of course there was something red – if it hadn’t been Kelly’s top it would have been something else, something red at the prom, anything. She remembers, though she’d not noticed at the time, that Tommy was wearing a red T-shirt. You couldn’t go through a day or even an hour without seeing something red. Farantella was safe with that prophecy. And something beginning with “w”? Again, plenty of choice and you can say it was water if you really believe that stuff.

  Only a fool would make any connection, or someone looking for connections. It is all coincidence. If Farantella had said blue, we’d have said it was Jack’s jeans, or if she’d said the letter “s” it would have been the sea or the sand or the seashell smell and smoke and sweat.

  But if they had really believed Farantella, it wouldn’t have made any difference: Jess knows this, though she cannot exactly explain it. She doesn’t know if they could have changed anything, but not knowing is something you just have to deal with. Otherwise it would just be Oedipus all over again. The more she comes here, the more her thoughts clarify: that there was no other way. Too much was out of their control. They could only make small decisions about their present. The future is always another world and meddling with it is dangerous. Just trying to measure it changes it. This is just beginning to make sense. Or more sense than Schrödinger’s cat, she thinks, remembering how she’d failed to understand the meaning of that.

  In her pocket, Jess has p
etals from Jack’s garden, from the roses by the seat where they’d sat together. Where they’d kissed. A choking feeling rises in her throat and she swallows it down.

  Leaving her shoes safe on the sand, she walks to the water’s edge, churning the surf with her feet. Funny how strong it is, such shallow water. The waves fizz over her shins and knees, stinging, shingly, and gaspingly cold at first.

  Jess looks out into the distance. The horizon is clear. No jet skis, no boats. Just endless layers of sky, the waves merging into them. She closes her eyes, takes the petals from her pocket, thrusts her face into them and inhales their scent before throwing them all from her. One or two stick to her hands and she shakes them off. They are carried here and there on wave and air.

  Then she takes a coin from her pocket and she throws it with all her strength, as far as she can, and she watches it spiral high, before it arcs down and disappears with no splash that she can see.

  Gone.

  It’s not Jack’s coin, of course – that was picked up later by the nurse, who had planned to give it back to Jess, but had then forgotten in the panic of Jack’s death. Afterwards, giving it back to the poor boy’s girlfriend would have seemed … pointless. No one will ever know which way it would have landed if it had been spun again. The coin Jess throws away now is just any coin, symbolic of all coins. But then Jack’s coin was only Jack’s new coin, nothing special. And what’s a coin anyway?

  The coin is gone. And Jess is glad. She is angry too, and sad, but throwing the coin away is a kind of freedom. If only she had made Jack do that long ago. But then there is no way of knowing what would have been different.

  Jess has learnt a truth that Jack never found, with all his philosophy, his cleverness, his intensity, his equilibrium: that fate, like many things, only has power if you believe in it. It is like fairies. Fit for stories. It is to think about but not to live by.

  Jess cannot see further than her footsteps home that hot damp evening. She cannot know the things that may or may not happen to her in the rest of her life. But we can guess a little because, looking down, we can see something more than her.

  We see her arrive home, tired and red-eyed. Sylvia is sober – she has been ever since Jack and that other girl died. (This may not last but it is a hopeful start. It could be the necessary shock treatment.) Sylvia is needed now; she has a job to do, which may be enough to keep her on the right road. Jess’s father, Lorenzo, who will never know how nearly he died himself and how that might have changed things for Jess – for certainly her prom night would have been somewhat different if her father had died a few days before – he is there too; he is staying to help Sylvia till their daughter gets her life back on track. It is kind of him and perhaps unexpected, but actually Lorenzo has discovered, in a difficult conversation with Sam at the funeral, that there is much more to loving his daughter than buying her flowers and champagne and a bracelet. Of course, he is not going to go back to Sylvia, not properly – this is no fairy story and it would do no one any good anyway – but Jess no longer needs to be the thing they fight over. Jess is now something for them to care about together. Until she is ready to move on.

  Jess and her mother must look for new roles to grow into. Daughter and mother. They must heal the earthquake crack between them, though perhaps it may have to split a little wider before that can happen.

  Death makes you think. It’s a beginning.

  And there is Spike. Spike spends a lot of time now in Jess’s room, curled up into the smell of her. Jess spends much time with her face in Spike’s fur. Spike is not fearful and skin-prickly any more and he purrs easily in his cat dreams. When she comes home from her beach walk, he is there at the door with his coiling back and she picks him up. Together they crush the blowsy roses as they brush past and she inhales the scent of them.

  Over the weeks and months, they will surely all see Jess begin to live again. To find her own equilibrium. Perhaps she will go to college; perhaps she and Chris, Ella and Tommy will start a band again, find another guitarist. Of course, it won’t be the same. But then, nothing ever is.

  Chances are that Jess will meet someone else one day. Fall in love again. And that won’t be the same either, of course. But it could be just as good. It will depend on many things, like Jess finding a place to keep Jack safely in her memory. This she will do because she is Jess, and strong.

  One thing’s for certain: she will be changed by her loss. But it will not destroy her: of that we can be confident. She will not be able to sing her song without sadness creeping from the shadows, though this will get less and less until it crushes her no more than a petal might her breath. She will not be able to do many things without thinking of Jack and the smell of him as she buried her face in his neck that night. But she will be happy again soon if she will let herself be. There will come a time when she can touch his picture and smile.

  Will she find a way to forgive Kelly? After all, if Kelly could have done things differently, she would have done. Kelly was not properly bad. She was nothing more than a silly, misguided version of the person she might have become if circumstances had been different. If she’d made some different choices or known more or been stronger or different.

  So, Jess will live again. Her life will spin like a coin and some things she will have a choice in and others she won’t. She has to believe that. Because nothing makes better sense than this: that nothing is until it is and that everything is possible until it isn’t.

  Jess is beginning to know that.

  CHAPTER 47

  TAILS

  SOME weeks later and August is sinking. A windless, sticky evening. Jess is walking along the beach. It is not easy for her to come here. The memories of that night are still too clear. Her crystal night. They will fade, but she cannot believe that yet.

  She had to come here. Often does. Searching for meaning in the air. Thinking. Looking for any sign that it might have been different if only… Or just needing to be in this place and not being able to stop herself coming. Jess hugs the memory close. Of Jack wrapping her in his arms on the beach before she spun the coin; of exploring the geography of his knuckles; the smell of him. It is odd how she needs to come here and find meaning. And how at that moment she knew nothing of what was to come. And how as soon as she starts to wonder what if I had known, she cannot make sense of it.

  The sea is calmer than it was that night. No wind ruffles it; the breakers hiss rather than roar. And the sky is rose-infused. Almost red.

  Red. She has thought about red a lot since then. Farantella. Things beginning with “w”. How they had laughed. Though they don’t laugh about it now. About Farantella with her silly prophecies, her nonsense. Because it was nonsense. Of course there was something red – if it hadn’t been Kelly’s top it would have been something else, something red at the prom, anything. She remembers, though she’d not noticed at the time, that Tommy was wearing a red T-shirt. You couldn’t go through a day or even an hour without seeing something red. Farantella was safe with that prophecy. And something beginning with “w”? Again, plenty of choice and you can say it was water if you really believe that stuff. And it’s really hard not to: But they must try not to. Because that way madness lies.

  Only a fool would make any connection, or someone looking for connections. It is all coincidence. If Farantella had said orange, we’d have said it was the fire, or if she’d said the letter “j” it would have been the jet skis or “c” would have been coin or “k” would certainly have been Kelly.

  But if they had believed Farantella, would it have made any difference? Could they have changed anything? Wouldn’t it just have been Oedipus all over? They’ve talked about it since, though not easily. Sometimes these conversations end when Jack becomes very quiet, and touches his head where the scar is visible through his shaven hair. Other times, they seem to move a little further towards a kind of peace.

  Leaving her shoes safe on the sand, she walks to the water’s edge, her feet churning the surf
. Funny how strong it is, such shallow water. The waves fizz over her shins and knees, stinging, shingly, and gaspingly cold at first.

  Jess looks out into the distance. She cannot shake off the heaviness. The horizon is clear. No jet skis, no boats. Just endless layers of sky, the waves merging into them. But this time she has come here for a special purpose: she takes a coin from her pocket and she throws it with all her strength, as far as she can, and she watches it spiral high, before it arcs down and disappears with no splash that she can see.

  Gone. It should make her feel better but it doesn’t.

  It’s Jack’s coin – it had been picked up by the nurse, who had handed it to Jess a couple of days after Jack came round. And Jess had been embarrassed when she took it, almost as if she was being paid for Jack’s life.

  Jack kept asking about it, though he has begun to ask less now, some six or more weeks later. Jess thinks he is beginning to forget, but he is not. It is still inside him and could eat away at him, if he lets it. Or if she lets him let it.

  No one will ever know which way it would have landed if it had been spun again. And although any coin would do just as well, Jess is throwing this one away to symbolize all coins. For what’s a coin anyway?

  The coin is gone. And Jess is glad. She is angry too, angry that because of a coin they had to go through all this. She wishes she had made Jack throw it away long ago.

  If only.

  It could have been so much worse: he could have died, and Jess knows how nearly he did. She cringes inside when she remembers that terrible moment when his heart stopped and they thought it would never start again. Jack feels this too. He cannot say it but there is a blackness where that moment is.