The Forevers

by Chris Whitaker

  Mae shook her head and began to walk the hallway.

  ‘Creep.’

  She stopped, turned and felt the silence fall.

  A path cleared for Hunter and Lexi.

  ‘You’re a creep,’ Hunter said. ‘Creeping on my boyfriend at lunch. Like he’d look at you.’

  Mae saw kids watching as Hunter played for them.

  ‘Hugo said you didn’t scream when you found Abi. You didn’t cry. I always said you were a weirdo. A freak.’

  A younger girl crossed towards them, a streak of sunburn across her nose, her hair neatly parted down the centre.

  ‘You’re the head girl.’

  Hunter placed a hand on her hip and fixed a smile in place.

  ‘I was told I could come to you if I needed guidance.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Hunter said. ‘Fuck off, you little shit. You’ll be dead in a month.’

  The girl fought back tears and sloped towards the toilets as Felix came to stand beside Mae.

  ‘You think Hugo sees you,’ Hunter said, stepping ever closer, ‘but there’s a name for girls like you.’

  ‘Slut?’ Felix offered.

  Mae frowned at him.

  ‘Nothing,’ Hunter whispered. ‘Just like Abi Manton.’

  ‘I thought Abi was part of your cult.’

  Hunter raised her voice. ‘Abi was troubled. I tried to counsel her.’

  Mae got it then. They cried when they needed to, but now Hunter Silver wanted no further part of Abi Manton. Hunter sometimes led assemblies, stood at the front and preached courage and resolve. Abi’s death had pissed on her parade. Hunter’s group were fallible, just like the mortals.

  She whispered again. ‘Abi killed herself, maybe you’ll be next.’

  ‘I’m thinking an overdose,’ Lexi said, running a hand through her hair, so long it stopped just short of her knees. Her mother was the town pharmacist, her boyfriend, Callum, played rugby. She fit neatly beside Hunter.

  Hunter smiled. ‘Or maybe you’ll slit your wrists. Maybe your crazy grandmother will find you in the bathtub, the water all red.’

  Mae tensed a little as Felix shook his head.

  They turned to see Mr Starling, the science teacher. Hunter and Lexi linked arms and walked out into the sunshine, Mae and Felix slowly followed.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Mae nodded. A lifetime of Hunter, a lifetime of being reminded of her place, like she wasn’t acutely aware.

  ‘You know I had your back, right.’

  ‘Yeah, way back.’

  ‘Seriously. And if Hugo or Liam jump in I’ll mess them up. You know I’ve been learning karate online. Every night at eleven I webcam with Tenaka. He’s old but deadly. He doesn’t stop till I’m proper sweating.’

  ‘One-on-one time with an old man who gets you sweaty in your bedroom? You do know you’re being groomed.’

  Mr Starling led them to the football pitch. He was old, his skin a shade darker than Felix’s. His brown tasselled loafers sank into the leaves. He spoke briefly of Abi, told them he was sorry and said it with tears in his eyes. And then he clapped his hands and handed out helium-filled balloons and marker pens.

  ‘The International Astronomical Union once stated that asteroids’ names had to begin with the year they were discovered, and traditionally they were named after Greek gods, but you can call yours pretty much anything you like.’

  They formed a large circle and held their asteroids in the air. Mr Starling read out some of the names.

  Invincible.

  Hercules.

  Hugo snatched Jeet Patel’s balloon and scrawled Bitch on it as Jeet rolled his eyes like he was in on the joke.

  Mae glanced at them, kids like Jeet and Sally Sweeny. And Sullivan Reed, who stood apart, always, his cheek so badly scarred he took to standing side on.

  ‘Imagine your asteroids are hurtling through space. Some of them are the size of pebbles. Some are the size of cars. Some collide and pass harmlessly by us.’ He popped a couple of asteroids with his pencil. ‘Solar storms can make them change direction.’ He popped more. ‘Some will hit other planets, or add more craters to our moon.’

  ‘What about that massive asteroid?’ Hugo said, pointing at Sally Sweeny, who turned away.

  ‘So that’s it, we just go on without Abi,’ Felix said. ‘One assembly, and then back to class.’

  ‘Sergeant Walters will go with suicide. James and Melissa, the Death Tree – they laid the groundwork.’

  ‘That was a pact. This was Abi Manton. Our Abi.’

  ‘Remind me when you last spoke to her?’

  Felix looked down. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re Forevers.’

  ‘We’re nothing, Felix. Just ask Hunter. The Forevers was childish crap.’

  ‘I know you don’t mean that.’

  Mr Starling quieted them. ‘Some of these asteroids have burned up. But a few larger ones remain intact. And those are the ones that will hit Earth. But you can see how they’ve been reduced in size. They may land in the sea or the desert or even a city. But the odds are small, and when it does happen it’s rare that human lives are lost.’

  He popped all but Mae’s asteroid.

  ‘So that leaves one,’ he said.

  ‘And how big is that that one?’ Jeet Patel asked.

  They gathered around and looked at it.

  Mr Starling stuttered, ‘It’s … It’s the size of … It’s seventy miles wide.’

  Everyone sobered, even Liam and Hugo, Candice and Hunter.

  Mae let the balloon go.

  They watched it float gently towards the clouds.

  Just high enough that they could still read the name scrawled across it.

  SELENA.

  8

  Mae wasn’t sure how she got to the gates.

  One minute she was walking towards home, the next she was on Ocean Drive, staring at the solid wood, the number thirteen, the sprawling glass beach house behind.

  Abi’s father led her through to a galleried kitchen, the picture windows filled with breaking waves. She looked around for some kind of trace, anything that hinted at the family whose table she used to eat at, whose daughter was closer than a sister. She found nothing.

  Luke Manton drank straight from a bottle of vodka, his voice mechanical, the words so leaden they fell from his mouth and shattered on the perfect stone floor.

  ‘It’s supposed to lessen it. Less than a month to go. People live through worse. Kids get cancer. You believe in heaven, Mae?’

  ‘No,’ she said, cold.

  Laid out on the counter were stacks of photographs.

  At the window she saw the obligatory telescope.

  ‘Money.’ He waved a hand around like he was answering a question. ‘Maybe it made Lydia happy.’

  Lydia Manton drove Abi the short distance to school the day she got her new Benz, stood at the gates the day she got her new lips.

  The phone rang and he moved into the hallway.

  Mae grabbed the vodka bottle and drank, that familiar heat warming her throat and her cheeks. She picked up photos. Some were from holidays over the years. A young Abi smiling in front of a caravan. A more recent shot, Abi standing on a large terrace, an infinity pool disappeared into crystal ocean behind her.

  ‘That was Abi’s personal trainer,’ Luke Manton said as he came back in.’ ‘Everyone calls, like there’s anything left to say.’

  Abi had a trainer. Mae wondered what had happened to the girl that used to eat a whole tub of ice cream when they watched a movie, the girl who dressed in worn jeans and didn’t so much as glance in a mirror before she left the house.

  Mae picked up a brochure. ‘The bunkers, will they work?’

  He drank again. ‘Nowhere in Europe. Maybe we should’ve gone before they closed the borders. Maybe none of it matters.’ He pressed the bottle to his forehead like he was fighting a fever. ‘They wouldn’t … We didn’t see her till they got her to the hospital. But was … I know this is difficult, but was she okay? Wh
en you found her, was she –’

  Mae thought of the blood by Abi’s head. Her leg bent, the life gone from her eyes. ‘She looked peaceful.’

  He nodded like he saw through the lie but was still grateful, then fished out a photo of Mae and Abi, insisted she take it.

  ‘Do you know where Abi was, on the night?’ she asked.

  ‘She said she was going to see you. I’ve been going through her things. She was messy.’ He smiled. ‘Lydia was always telling her to tidy her bedroom. I found this in there.’ He held it up.

  The memory flooded her mind with such force she felt herself drowning. She and Abi walking along the beach at sunset, arms around each other, each carrying a bucket of shells. Most were broken crowns, shards stripped of colour. Abi would thread them, Mae would make the sign. Each summer they sold them to summer people from a small table by the marina. ASTEROID CHARMS.

  ‘You can take it. Please, Mae. She’d have wanted you to have it.’

  Mae took the bracelet and held it tightly. ‘Has Theodore stopped by?’

  ‘No. Just the other kid. With the … the scars.’

  ‘Sullivan Reed.’ She wondered at his connection to Abi.

  ‘Last night. He didn’t come in, just stood in the rain and looked at the house.’ He drank some more. ‘A month. I don’t even think I can make it through that.’ He cried then, his shoulders shaking as he buried his face in his hands.

  Lydia Manton breezed into the room, trailed by a strong smell of bleach. She stripped off rubber gloves, her cheeks slightly red like she’d been scrubbing away the pain. Luke shrugged off his wife’s hand. The sound of his cries followed Mae from their home. Whatever was coming could be no worse than what they had already been through.

  She headed towards the beach and threw the bracelet into the sea.

  And then she lay back on the sand and watched the day bleed out above her.

  Mr Starling told them to watch every sunset like it was a gift, to grasp every minute as tightly as they could. At the marina she saw a dozen others doing the same, couples holding hands, a little boy on his father’s shoulders.

  The last blazes of the last days of June. When it was time, when the water drowned the last rays of sun, she looked across the twilit coast and watched the boy from the white house ghost back into her life.

  In his dark suit and tie, he stopped by the water’s edge and kicked off his shoes. And then he looked up at the sky, and he walked into the water.

  Ankle deep.

  Knee deep.

  Mae sat up.

  He dived into a wave.

  She glanced around but saw the beach empty, the marina now quiet. As she got to her feet and crossed the warm sand, starlight met the waves, so dazzling she lost sight of him.

  Again she looked around wildly for someone to help.

  He emerged by the buoys. And then he sank.

  She scanned the water, mentally counting off seconds, each one lingered, each one told her it had been too long.

  Mae kicked off her shoes, then stripped off her jeans and T-shirt.

  The water was cold. She moved with purpose. A West girl, swimming in the sea was her childhood.

  She cut through gentle waves with silent grace, dropped beneath the water and powered her way towards the buoy.

  She looked around, treading water, the shore lights blinked. Mae dropped again, the salt burning her eyes as she felt the pressure build in her ears. When her lungs started to hurt she swam up.

  Another dive and she pulled herself deeper.

  For a moment their eyes met, the water like ink, she reached a hand out but he just watched her.

  She grabbed a fistful of his shirt, felt his hand on hers but kicked hard.

  He coughed as they met the air, the moonlight finding his flawless face.

  She clutched the buoy with her free hand and fought for breath.

  He coughed again, then took his own weight, reached around the buoy and breathed.

  In the half-light his skin almost glowed.

  ‘Can you swim?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  They swam together, she kept him by her side.

  When they made it to shore they collapsed on the sand.

  They lay side by side.

  The stars opened above them like some kind of show.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ she said, still panting.

  He turned to look at her.

  It was then she realised she wore only her underwear. This time he leaned in, and he kissed her so hard she lost all the air in her lungs.

  She pushed him, her hand on his chest, her eyes blazing as water dripped from her hair.

  Behind them the town shone.

  Above them the sky fell a little lower.

  9

  ‘Your hair is wet.’

  ‘I went swimming.’

  ‘At night?’ Stella said, pressing the clock beside her. It spoke out the time and she raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you going mad? Mrs Rogers went mad, remember her, Mae? She had that sign in front of her house that said ASTEROIDS NOT WELCOME.’

  ‘I’m not going mad.’

  ‘Do you ever think about Mummy and Daddy?’

  Mae took a breath. ‘I’m still in school, aren’t I?’

  ‘Because Mum wanted you to go to college. Tell me the story again.’

  ‘You know it.’

  ‘They were driving. I was in Mummy’s tummy. You were in the back. We were leavers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then the truck,’ Stella whispered.

  The truck.

  ‘You want to pray tonight, Stell?’

  ‘When we go to church and pray, Felix said you keep your eyes open.’

  Mae swallowed, all of a sudden too tired. She could’ve told Stella she stopped praying the day their parents died. She could not imagine a god so callous, so wanted no further reason to stare at the sky and look for answers.

  ‘Then tell me a Saviour story,’ Stella said.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘And then you’ll shut up and go to sleep?’

  ‘And then I’ll shut up and go to sleep.’

  Saviour 9.

  Mae took Stella to the open-air cinema in Cheston.

  They rode two buses to get there, then walked through the streets with an army of others.

  Stella wore an old white bicycle helmet that Mae had covered in tin foil. And white pyjamas they’d glued an American flag to. A NASA logo their grandmother stitched. A jetpack made from upside-down Coke bottles.

  The screen was set up in the Victoria Emery Park. Mae laid a tartan blanket down on the grass as they settled among a crowd. Some painted their faces with neon, held glowsticks aloft and sang along to a girl with a guitar and a decent voice.

  A mother cradled her baby and swayed, her husband drank beer and watched them like they were the last good thing in his world.

  ‘Will it work this time?’ Stella said.

  ‘Yeah, this time.’

  ‘Kinetic energy,’ Stella said. She sat cross-legged. ‘Two spacecraft go up. Tom and Jerry. Tom lands on Selena and sends details back to Jerry.’

  ‘So Tom gets the dangerous job and Jerry gets the glory. Jerry arrives exactly where Tom tells him to. And Jerry slams into Selena so hard the kinetic energy sends her off course.’

  There was raucous applause when the rocket launched. Mae painted every scene for her sister, in such detail that Stella gripped her hand tightly and squeezed.

  Stella slept on the bus ride home.

  Mae carried her up their street, her arms burning, her sister’s head against her chest.

  She did not pray that night, but she came close.

  Tom and Jerry missed by two hundred thousand miles.

  Mae lay there till her sister’s breathing changed, till her own eyes grew heavy. And only then did she allow herself to think of her parents.

  At fi
rst she thought it was a nightmare that woke her, maybe Abi again, but then she felt the rumble, ran from her bedroom across the hall to Stella, who did not stir.

  She checked on her grandmother and saw her deep in a medicated sleep, her white hair all that poked from the sheets.

  Outside, the road pulsed with the flash of car alarms. Neighbours came out into the street, pulled their robes tight and looked to the sky.

  She saw Peter and Caz, Stan and Mary. They exchanged nervous smiles, looking up and then down.

  Mae walked out into the centre of the road as the cars were silenced one by one, the howling dogs quietened, front doors were closed and bedroom lights switched off.

  She walked on down her street, towards the marina and the coast of fishing trawlers and sailing boats. And up the high street and past the church.

  There was a sign hammered into the grass outside.

  JESUS FORGIVES.

  Mae knew that while he might forgive her, she’d never forgive him.

  When she reached the white house she clung to the gate and wanted more than anything to see him, but she wasn’t sure what she would say if he came out. Maybe she would tell him she hated him. That if he ran into the water again she would not stop him.

  She heard the low hum of a generator and followed it to the Prince house, saw the gates open and stepped through. This time she skirted the house, past the swimming pool, and stopped at the edge of the hole.

  ‘I left the back door open for you.’

  She turned to see Hugo. He wore shorts and no shirt, skin tanned gold. He sat by the hole, his feet free of the edge.

  ‘I already took everything worth stealing.’

  There were lights and discarded machinery, scaffolding twisted down and disappeared. A small lift shaft, the land beside propped and held back with concrete posts so thick Mae reached out and touched one.

  ‘Don’t you care, what people say about you?’ he said.

  She noticed a slight slur in his voice, then saw the empty beer bottles beside him as she sat.

  ‘Even if I did, they’d still say it.’

  ‘You could try harder to fit. You could look like her … Hunter, and the rest. You carry your books in a plastic bag. Your clothes … life could be easier.’

  He passed her a bottle. There was a lot she could have said, nothing that would have mattered.