The Forevers

by Chris Whitaker

  ‘Did Abi come and see you?’ She held her breath for a moment.

  ‘She came. She sat and talked to me, and every day since I’ve questioned myself. What I told her. What she told me.’

  ‘How do you know you’re doing the right thing?’ Mae said.

  ‘You ask yourself if it comes from a good place.’

  He touched her shoulder, and then began to walk away.

  ‘Felix needs you,’ she said.

  He stopped. ‘He can come to me, Mae. When he’s ready.’

  ‘He doesn’t feel like he belongs. A lot of the kids don’t.’

  ‘Not just kids.’

  ‘Betty and Matilda, you know them?’

  He nodded.

  ‘They don’t feel like they belong, because the old vicar said –’

  ‘The church, it’s a safe place for everyone.’

  Mae smiled. ‘Maybe you should tell them that.’

  ‘I do. Selena, she’s pushed a lot of people back, but she’s also freed people. My sister, Nia –’

  ‘Felix said that her husband left her. She prays each Sunday that he’ll come back.’

  He smiled. ‘She left him, Mae. She lives with Miss Jackson now.’

  Mae frowned. ‘Miss Jackson, she’s the deacon?’

  ‘Yes, and she’s a very good deacon. And she makes my sister happy. And that makes me happy, no matter what some of the congregation might think.’

  She carried her sandals and strolled along the sand. Further up were clusters of summer people. They came and went now, a steady conveyor belt of couples and families that wanted a last taste of sea air.

  He stood with his back to her, tall and broad, his shirt lay on the sand beside him as he watched boats cross the horizon. There was a surfboard by his feet.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘I used to think they were running away,’ Hugo said.

  ‘Who?’

  He pointed at a white yacht carving the water.

  ‘I used to be angry about it, like they should stay and work in their shops and paint their houses and cut their grass. West is beautiful, right? People always said that, but I didn’t see it.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  He finally turned.

  ‘Shit, Hugo. Jesus.’

  One eye swollen shut, his bottom lip split. A neat footprint, bruised onto his chest.

  ‘We shouldn’t take these for granted. It’s getting rare, each sunrise and sunset. Each passing day …’

  ‘What happened?’ She could have guessed.

  ‘I remember the day he bought that car. We watched the auction online, and the money was getting crazy. I used to be proud. I used to like that we had so much, like it meant somehow I’d earned it, or I was worth more.’

  ‘It was me,’ she said, her breath catching. ‘The car. Last night I –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hunter told you?’

  ‘You think we actually talk to each other?’

  Mae tucked her hair into her hood as a light breeze blew in. ‘So how …?’

  ‘The video. You don’t have a car like that without CCTV, Mae.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘I watched it. I recognised you and Hunter straight off, kind of made me smile watching the two of you together.’

  ‘And?’ She thought of Sergeant Walters. He would take her in. She would see out the days beside Sullivan Reed as they waited for judgement that would never come.

  ‘I wiped it.’

  ‘You wiped it?’

  ‘I told him I’d forgotten to set it before we left.’

  She let that sit for a while. Nothing about Hugo made sense, nothing fit. Why his father hated him so much, why he’d lied for them. For her. Why he acted the way he did at school.

  ‘You need to tell Sergeant Walters about your father. He’ll kill you one of these days.’

  ‘The days are running out.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘Do you think I’m brave, Mae?’ He turned to look at her. His hair was wet from the water, his skin baked gold from the summer of sun.

  He had so much.

  He had nothing at all.

  ‘I see you. Everyone sees you. But I see what you do to Jeet, the way you talk about girls. I see you with Liam and the others, and you all blur together.’

  ‘I kept the paper, from Abi’s funeral. I read it every night and I want it to be true but we both know it can’t be.’

  She could tell him the world was what he made it, that you get back what you put in, but she knew that wasn’t true either.

  ‘I like to think in a million years we’ll start over, and someone will find that paper, like in one of those memory capsules, and they’ll do it all different.’

  He sat on the sand.

  She sat down beside him.

  ‘They’ll see your face at school,’ Mae said. ‘Maybe Mr Silver will –’

  ‘My mother showed me when I was young. I watched her paint her bruises away. I know how to do it, Mae.’

  She glanced over at him but he didn’t look at her. ‘Maybe I’m good at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe I like it. Maybe that’s who I want to be. I like looking in the mirror and seeing someone else, maybe someone who hasn’t seen the things I’ve seen. I think I could help other people do that.’

  ‘What are you trying to say, Hugo?’

  He finally broke a smile. ‘I guess I’m trying to say … if you’re a creep. Then I’m a weirdo.’

  She reached out and took his hand.

  ‘I don’t belong here.’

  ‘You do. You belong with us.’

  She opened up her bag and took his wrist.

  There was no grand declaration to change, but she saw in his eyes that he wanted to be better, kinder, more. Less. And that was enough. It wasn’t for her to decide who belonged and who didn’t.

  When she was done he studied the letters carefully.

  ‘Hunter will kill you when she sees that. You’ve gone over to the dark side.’

  ‘Nah, I think maybe I’ve just seen the light.’

  In RE Miss Lock walked down each aisle of chairs and separated them into good and evil. Predictably the division saw Hunter and her group sitting on the good side. Mae glanced at Hugo. The black eye expertly hidden. The tattoo masked by his wristwatch.

  Each student held a small placard.

  MARRIAGE.

  FAMILY.

  KINDNESS.

  FAITH.

  Miss Lock talked about the concept of rapture and the instant elevation of the believers. ‘End time,’ she said, and pointed towards the evil.

  Mae looked down at her own sign.

  FORNICATION.

  She held it aloft to raucous applause from the Forevers. Hugo wouldn’t meet her eye but she could see he was trying not to laugh.

  Miss Lock quietened them down. RE was compulsory, as was belief.

  ‘We stand by idle and close our eyes and wait for our place in heaven. It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘What if there is no heaven?’ Candice said. ‘Then we’ll have wasted our lives preparing for something that doesn’t exist. I’d rather do what I want now, then just say sorry at the gates. He’s a forgiving God, right?’

  Miss Lock took CHASTITY from her and sent Candice over to the evil side.

  ‘The Forevers,’ she said to Mae. ‘I want in. Lexi does too.’

  ‘Hunter will kill you. So will Liam. And Callum.’

  ‘And so will Selena.’

  Mae smiled, then looked over to Sail’s empty seat.

  She asked Miss Lock where he was, as the others debated whether sex before marriage was good or evil.

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  She might not have worried had she not known what day it was. And so Mae felt the blood drain from her, the panic building so quick and sharp it drove her from the classroom and the school.

  She hammered on the door to the white house, pressed her face to the window but saw nothing i
nside.

  It took a while for Sail’s mother to answer the door.

  She wore the white dressing gown, pulled it tight around her and rubbed her eyes. Behind her the hallway was cavernous, the polished marble reflected light so hard Mae squinted.

  Beautiful but faded, more shadow than person.

  ‘I need to see Jack.’

  ‘He’s at school.’

  ‘He’s not.’

  Sail’s mother looked confused but not concerned. Mae wondered what medication she took, what drug had enough of a kick to deaden her to the world.

  ‘I know it’s Alice’s birthday,’ Mae said.

  His mother closed her eyes then. ‘I need … I have to sleep today. I don’t know where he is. Wherever it is, it won’t be good.’

  By the garage Mae saw a couple of cars. A convertible Mercedes had the keys in the ignition. She thought of Sergeant Walters, what he’d do if she got in any more trouble. And then she thought of Sail.

  She drove the automatic with two feet, each time she touched the brake she slammed forward into the seat belt. The sun shone down on her as she drove down every road in West. She stopped on the bay front and checked the beach.

  She called his phone a dozen times, left the kind of frantic message she hoped would see him call her straight back, tell her not to worry, that he just needed some time out.

  Mae slammed the steering wheel, then drove up and along the cliff face and back into town.

  And then the big clock chimed, and Mae felt it, like the Reverend Baxter had told her, she felt it.

  She knew he was there.

  Through the cemetery towards the willow, she found the laptop on the bench.

  It was open to a montage of photos.

  Sail and his sister.

  She was cute like Stella, and she had that look in her eye that showed she was taking everything in. Hair so blonde it touched white, the same blue eyes Sail had, the same delicate features. A photo of them by a rocket. Cape Canaveral. Theme parks.

  The photos changed, the light in her eyes dimmed.

  She looked thin, paler, she lost her hair. She lost everything.

  A photo of Sail lying beside her, the two sleeping. Tubes ran into her arm, a canula in the back of her hand.

  He shaved his head. His father did too.

  The three of them grinned, defiant, his mother stood beside, and through her smile Mae could see the cracks.

  The last photo was a single shot of Alice, in the green hospital gardens, her eyes closed to the sunshine.

  And then the funeral. Mae recognised the suit, smaller, but the same cut. The same white shirt, the same black tie.

  Each day was a funeral for Jack Sail, and that last photo made sure he would not forget that.

  Mae found him near the edge.

  The belt was tied tightly around his arm, the empty syringe on the leaves beside him.

  He was pale. He was gone.

  ‘Sail.’ She slapped his face, then hit his chest. ‘Shit, Sail.’ She pressed her head down to him, felt the faintest breath and tried to call for an ambulance. She screamed at the man as he told her it would be hours.

  Mae grunted as she dragged Sail, leaned into it as her muscles burned.

  She cursed and heaved and got him close to the road, cried hard as she managed to haul him into the passenger seat, where he slumped back.

  On the opposite side a line of cars backed up for a mile. Inside them she saw kids with sun hats, boots filled with picnic hampers and buckets and spades.

  She reached the A road, got the hang of the pedals as she floored it away from the water. Mae passed sleeping towns, a mirror of West, boarded windows on homes too new, graffiti that spoke of eternal damnation. She saw a woman sitting in a garden chair in front of her house. As she approached she held up a sign:

  WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE.

  A petrol station, a police car seemingly abandoned on the forecourt. They roared along the motorway, the nearer hospitals long since closed, Mae followed signs for the city.

  She saw the blinking skyline in the distance as they were joined by more cars. They met tall buildings, a sense of life going on, despite what she had seen on the news.

  She saw people on the streets, smiling students spilling from bars, the homeless in tents, discarded placards, some kind of protest on soaring climate, too little too late.

  She kept a hand on Sail’s, talked to him about everything and nothing, told him he was dumb, that she would kill him if he didn’t die.

  At the hospital she double-parked and ran inside.

  A porter helped get Sail onto a stretcher.

  Then a doctor came, a nurse and others. They took him from her like he was hers to give away.

  A security guard stopped her following, no matter how much she kicked and fought. He pointed in the direction of the waiting room and promised someone would come and see her.

  She stood there numb.

  Above her, strip lights flickered. The place was quiet, only a handful sat spaced around. An elderly couple. A homeless girl not much older than her.

  ‘Mae.’

  She turned to see Felix. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  ‘The Reverend, he had a heart attack.’

  She shook her head.

  He held up a hand. ‘He’ll be all right.’

  Together they sat on plastic chairs as she told him about Sail.

  ‘Shit, Mae. It’s all going to shit.’

  ‘We’re strong,’ she said, but she did not feel strong.

  ‘I’m struggling to be normal.’

  ‘You’ve always struggled with that. But I think maybe normal is overrated. Think of every great person that ever lived. Normal is average, average is middle.’

  ‘And middle is?’

  ‘Middle is settling. If you don’t reach …’

  ‘You won’t fall.’

  Mae smiled.

  ‘I’m guessing that’s why I’m not a Forever,’ Felix said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

  ‘You really are, Felix.’

  ‘I’m kind of running out of time to work out who I am. And I’m still worried I’ll die a virgin.’

  ‘I’d say that’s a certainty.’

  ‘There’s a place in the city. You can pay for it. One hundred pounds.’

  ‘Like you’d do that.’

  ‘Never. On a separate note, I was wondering if I could borrow one hundred pounds?’

  Mae watched a doctor hurry through. That he was still there, working, that they were all still there.

  ‘I thought I’d feel something, now that I know what happened to her. Sullivan Reed. He wanted what he couldn’t have. That’s the story of every bad thing ever done.’

  ‘They want me to be a priest. Not actually to be one, because they know, deep down they know. So they just want me to want to be one. Like that’s enough for them, enough for me to get into their version of heaven. I see a pattern, Mae. Every parent in this town leans so hard on their kids because they’re unfulfilled. They’ve reached the end and realised everything they missed out on. And they don’t get it’s worse for us.’

  ‘They do. People are innately selfish.’

  ‘People are innately good.’

  ‘Maybe nothing is innate. We’re products of genetic code … but that has nothing to do with personality.’

  ‘Hugo is a dick and his father is a dick.’

  ‘Self-hatred is the most powerful kind.’

  ‘Hugo loves himself totally. Like Liam does. It has to be easier if you look like them, if you’re good at something, if you find someone to marry and have children with. And that person should be the opposite sex, the same race, a similar age.’

  ‘Three and half billion years of devolution.’

  ‘And now we’ve run out of time.’

  Mae watched a woman with her son. The boy was small and he pressed his cheek to her chest and slept.

  ‘The Forevers wasn’t supposed to be about rebellion. It was abou
t scrapping the idea of normal, and everything that goes with it.’

  Felix smiled. ‘That’s a big ask.’

  ‘But if we don’t ask it now?’

  As it grew dark Felix placed an arm around her. Mae closed her eyes and leaned on her friend.

  ‘I’ve never seen you cry before,’ he said.

  ‘I wish I could say the same.’

  32

  He lay in the bed, a line running into his arm.

  Beside were other people with other problems. She heard the steady beep of a dozen machines, helping to make sure they stayed alive for the coming days.

  Sail opened his eyes.

  ‘Every day you dress for Alice’s funeral.’

  He shook his head. ‘I dress for mine.’

  She sat on the end of the bed, reached up, his hand felt cold in hers. Everyone around them slept. A nurse sat at her station, a dim lamp beside her as she looked over paperwork.

  ‘How many times have you done this before?’ she said.

  ‘Too many. Not enough.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘There is no fair, Mae. The attribution of dues. There’s no equality, no proportionality. No accrued merit. There’s the things we do and the things we don’t do. There are no mistakes or regrets. There isn’t time for them.’ He looked towards the window, his head on the pillow. ‘You’ve saved my life twice.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I would be dead if you hadn’t broken into my house.’

  ‘How’s that for cosmic forces?’

  He smiled and she felt her heart beat in her ears.

  Felix waited for her. Together they walked outside, the Mercedes right where she left it.

  She opened the door and got into the driver’s seat.

  ‘You drive now?’ Felix said.

  ‘Ish.’

  ‘Can I do that thing where I jump over the door, cop style?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He caught his trailing foot and landed upside down. Righted himself and slipped his belt on. ‘Stolen?’

  ‘Borrowed.’

  They drove from the city. Sail would discharge himself in the morning. His mother would send a car, and they’d go on like it hadn’t happened.

  ‘You didn’t have to wait,’ she said.

  ‘Hot nurses. Armageddon. You think they’d be desperate for –’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’m starting to think porn has been lying to me all these years.’