The Forevers

by Chris Whitaker

She found Stella asleep in her bed.

  Instead of waking her and sending her back to her own room, Mae grabbed Abi Manton’s file and climbed out of the window, lay back on the flat roof and began to read through each page.

  So tired her eyes burned.

  The light from the bedroom was just enough to read the words and see the photographs. Sergeant Walters had done his best, photographed the scene from every angle, but Mae only had to close her eyes to see it again.

  There was a close-up of Abi’s face, and she forced herself to look at it.

  ‘Mae.’

  She turned to see Stella at the window behind her.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Mae nodded.

  Stella changed into her white pyjamas while Mae moved through the kitchen and found the popcorn she’d been saving.

  As the microwave whirred she looked out the front window and saw lights blink on in every house on the street. Behind she saw the slow wake of West, hours before dawn.

  Stella put on her space helmet and stood close to the TV.

  Morales was sanguine.

  This is it.

  I know you’ve all read about it. I know you’ve seen dozens of TV programmes.

  You can pray.

  You can believe.

  Stella cried when the rocket launched.

  Mae held onto her tightly.

  The popcorn sat on the table, untouched.

  ‘Will it work, Mae?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know.’

  ‘What colour is the rocket. Paint it for me.’

  Mae stared at the screen. ‘It’s every colour in our world. The darkest blue to the brightest yellow. It’s beautiful, Stell.’

  They sat on the sofa as the experts talked, charts were wheeled out, computer graphics loaded up.

  Mae looked over at Stella fast asleep. She took a blanket and covered her sister, then watched the break of dawn in the garden, the dog beside her.

  Mae sat in the crisp air and turned the last pages of Abi’s file. And then she came to an interview with Mr Silver. She skimmed it, knew she’d find nothing, chalk up another failure, another dead end.

  Sergeant Walters: Mr Silver, thanks for coming in.

  Edward Silver: Of course. And please, call me Edward.

  Walters: Seems kind of wrong. In my day the headmaster was all formality. But I guess I’ve seen you so much over the past months I can call you a friend.

  Silver: Well, in that case, my friends call me Teddy.

  Mae skipped ahead, past the small talk, the school talk.

  Walters: Tell me about Abi Manton.

  Silver: She was friends with my daughter. Most of the girls are, actually.

  Walters: And your daughter, I hear she’s popular. Head girl. Someone the younger children look up to.

  Silver: Going back to the Manton girl …

  Mae skipped past Mr Silver detailing Abi’s achievements, her talent for music and art.

  Walters: Abi’s suicide, it doesn’t make sense to me.

  Silver: And James and Melissa, that did?

  Walters: That’s why you have a school counsellor.

  Silver: Jane. We brought her in months before we had to. We try to pre-empt these … situations.

  Walters: You have Abi Manton, popular, lots of friends. No problems at home. She’s doing well at school, likely to head to Cambridge.

  Silver: Actually she … she had problems in that department.

  Walters: Oh? Her parents didn’t say.

  Silver: We try to give students a chance before we involve the parents. Abi was struggling. Her grades had fallen sharply. I spoke to her about it, informally, just to see if she was okay.

  Walters: And was she okay?

  Silver: She was having trouble concentrating. She said her mind was all over the place. It was the noise, she said she couldn’t shut out the noise from the outside world. It was deafening.

  Walters: What did you tell her?

  Silver: I arranged another session with Jane.

  Walters: And how did that go?

  Silver: She didn’t turn up. I was due to follow up with her but then this …

  Walters: I’ll have to tell her parents about this. It won’t bring them comfort, that Abi didn’t go to them to say she was struggling.

  Silver: They rarely do. The parents are always the last to know.

  Walters: Of course you have experience in this. Gemma Dune. At Goldings. To us though, in West, three students.

  Silver: It’s devasting. Devasting.

  Mae watched light shatter the night sky, breaking through in thin strips of gold. She thought of Abi, her world falling apart. No doubt finding out she was pregnant had taken a toll on her grades.

  But as Mae glanced at the moon, holding in place, stubborn, she thought about what Mr Starling had said. How Abi maintained her grades. How strong she was.

  Her mind swam before she reached the only conclusions.

  One of them had it wrong …

  Or one of them was lying.

  40

  They left West early.

  Kitten screamed her way along the empty high street as dozens of people walked down to the beach.

  Felix kept one hand on the wheel, the other on the gearstick. As he turned onto the B road the dice swung his way. He ripped them down and threw them out the window.

  ‘You know there were near two hundred Forevers on the beach during the launch. Sergeant Walters stood there watching them, waiting for them to do something wrong so he could find a reason to break them up,’ Felix said.

  ‘You were with them?’

  ‘Nah. I’m an F, remember.’

  They stuck to the back roads, traced the coast because the motorways were jammed. They passed the Waterside Holiday Park, a line of caravans, the boats beyond them.

  ‘I feel like we should be saying more … something profound,’ Felix said.

  ‘Live like there’s no tomorrow.’

  ‘What is coming is better than what has gone.’

  Felix took his foot off the pedal as they passed the mouth of Hamilton Bay, rocks towered on either side, the water was too clear, like an aquarium.

  ‘I never said thank you,’ she said.

  He glanced over, then back at the road. ‘For what?’

  ‘You’ve always been there for me.’

  ‘Shit, we really are getting profound.’

  Mae smiled. ‘When my parents … and Stella came home. I didn’t leave the house that whole summer, remember?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sat in the garden each night. And you read your book. Sometimes you sat there hours.’

  He shrugged like it was nothing. ‘In case you needed me.’

  ‘I did need you. And you were there.’

  She placed her hand over his, gripped it tight.

  ‘Our friendship,’ he said.

  ‘The Reverend’s son and the town slut.’

  They watched a boy and girl, maybe ten years old, walk down to the water, hand in hand.

  ‘This can’t be the end,’ Felix said.

  ‘Then how come it is?’

  They drove the last half-hour in perfect silence.

  Goldings Secondary was half the size of Sacred Heart, and a quarter as grand. Mr Silver had been head there for three years before coming to Sacred Heart.

  Mae and Felix slipped in among the others and filed through the gate.

  They found themselves in the main corridor, beside a line of lockers. A couple of kids glanced their way but most ignored them.

  The head’s office was empty, they took a seat and waited. Mae had found out what she could online. Gemma Dune had been sixteen when she died. She’d looped a belt around her neck, then attached it to the automatic garage door at her house.

  Mrs Charles entered and frowned. She was small but her face was all steel.

  The second Mae mentioned Gemma Dune, Mrs Charles asked them to leave. Mae
tried to argue till the headmistress threatened to call the police.

  ‘That went well,’ Mae said, as they walked back through the halls.

  Just as they were about to head out the main door Felix stopped dead.

  ‘What?’ Mae said.

  ‘Look.’ He pointed.

  The girl was maybe a year younger, she stood beside two others.

  ‘And them,’ Felix said.

  Mae saw another group. ‘Jesus.’

  Felix grinned.

  Mae walked over to them, didn’t think of what to say because she was blinded by the tattoos on their wrists.

  ‘You’re Forevers,’ Mae said.

  They turned together. One was about to speak when Felix called out, ‘Mae, we need to go.’

  Mae looked past him and saw Mrs Charles coming, with another teacher beside her.

  Mae smiled at the girls, who stared at her like they’d seen a ghost, then she jogged from the building with Felix beside her.

  They’d almost made it to Kitten when Mae heard her name called.

  ‘You’re from West,’ the girl said.

  Mae nodded.

  ‘Holy shit, it’s you. It’s really you.’ She reached out and grasped Mae’s hand, looked at the letters like she’d never seen them before, like they weren’t printed on her own wrist.

  ‘How –’

  ‘My cousin goes to Sacred Heart. Freya Cannon.’

  Mae drew a blank.

  ‘She’s in Year Nine. She emailed a photo … and then I printed it out and before long … I mean, there’s twenty-six of us here now.’

  Mae smiled.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you. The ultimate creep.’

  ‘That’s what they call her,’ Felix said.

  ‘We get together in the field behind my house and play music … and we’ve taken back Forever, just like you. I mean, two days, but we’ve got each other. I feel like we owe you.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We were trying to find out about Gemma Dune,’ Felix said.

  ‘Oh.’ The excitement died in a breath.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Not really, I mean, everyone knows about her. She had problems, she couldn’t cope with it all. And she was majorly into drugs. She’s like a cautionary tale in this town. Just say no.’ Mae wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear, maybe that Gemma had been just like Abi, and then she’d met Mr Silver and fallen apart. It would’ve been neat, but then she reasoned nothing about life was neat.

  Another town.

  Another dead girl.

  ‘You’re like a god to them,’ Felix said, as they drove back towards West.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Seriously. All hail Queen Margaret.’

  She punched his arm.

  They stopped at Adlers Bay, swam out into the clear water and floated on their backs.

  ‘I’m going to miss this,’ Felix said. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think we lived, Mae?’

  Gentle waves, the sun so bright above. ‘I think we survived.’

  ‘I wanted more.’

  ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘I keep feeling … angry. I want to scream.’

  ‘You should, Felix.’

  ‘I think you’re either a screamer or you’re not.’

  Mae screamed then. So loud Felix righted himself and began to tread water.

  The beach was empty.

  And so he screamed.

  And she screamed again.

  And together they screamed.

  The road jammed five miles from West.

  ‘Remember the time I broke my arm cliff-diving?’ Felix said.

  ‘Sprained your wrist jumping from the low board at the pool,’ she corrected.

  ‘How about the time I made out with Avni Laghari?’

  ‘She was so drunk she puked into your mouth.’

  ‘First kiss and a free meal.’

  They crawled along for a couple of miles. Stopped and started.

  She tapped the analogue clock in the centre of the dashboard.

  ‘It’s stuck at eleven. Maybe time has stopped for a while.’

  ‘What’s the real time?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Shit, my mother’s going to kill me. I was supposed to be back by five at the latest. Said I’d help with the set for the concert. It’s supposed to look like heaven, all white curtains and candles.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re coming around to the whole church thing.’

  He leaned out the window and craned to see how far the traffic backed up.

  ‘I’m just helping her because no one else will.’

  Mae stretched her legs out. ‘I thought Jeet Patel was doing all that.’

  ‘Please, that kid’s the water boy. He spends all his time hoping something will happen to Theodore so he can step up. Eternal understudy, it’s gotta sting.’

  Mae turned to Felix. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He pours the water, Mae. He makes sure everyone has a glass in case they choke up there.’

  She thought back to seeing Jeet Patel in the chemist’s.

  Mae opened the door and sprinted towards town.

  41

  The queue stretched from the bay up the high street to the church.

  She pushed past, ignored the complaints.

  Inside the church was transformed.

  White netting draped from each wall, white flowers rose from tall vases at the end of each pew. Mae looked to the ceiling and saw lanterns had been hung from the wooden arches.

  The concert had already started.

  She realised then that the people outside wouldn’t get in, they’d just come to show their support, maybe to get close enough to hear Theodore sing.

  She stood at the back and looked out over five hundred.

  Sally sat behind the piano and played those same notes Mae had heard outside her house, those notes that broke her heart all over again.

  Theodore sat there with others.

  They’d left a chair for Abi, her violin on the seat.

  Mae crept her way along the stone. Between the nets she caught sight of townspeople. Mrs Abbott and her husband. Theodore’s parents. She saw Jon Prince sitting beside Hugo, who wore a tie and kept his eyes down, like he was carrying the weight of his father’s sins.

  Mae caught sight of Jeet, who sat in the wings on a plastic chair, his hands pressed neatly between his knees. There was something pure about the way he watched them, the way his breath caught when Theodore stood.

  Mae moved closer, so close she could almost reach the stage.

  She saw the small tables to the side of them.

  The glass of water on Theodore’s.

  Mae thought of Jeet Patel waiting for his chance, his time to stand in the light.

  She edged closer.

  Mae crept low, avoiding everyone’s eye, trying to look official as she grabbed the glass from in front of Theodore. She took it back to the corner, out of sight, her heart still racing, her hair matted down with sweat.

  She breathed.

  And then she froze as Theodore sang.

  Sally matched him on the piano.

  Mae recognised the song. The words.

  His voice cannoned from the old roof, rattling it till the wood splintered and light fell on them.

  Mae let her eyes drift to the stained glass. And she remembered sitting there between her parents, back when the world made some kind of sense. Back when Selena was a faraway thing in a faraway sky.

  She thought of Abi, of everything they knew and everything they dreamed of. She needed her then, despite Felix, despite the Forevers all around her, she needed her friend, to hold her hand when she jumped, to tell her everything didn’t need to be okay, so long as they had each other.

  Mae saw Lydia Manton sitting alone in a corner.

  Theodore’s parents were uniform in their smiles.

 
Sergeant Walters cried silently. Mae thought of his father, still in that room, in that chair.

  As Theodore sang about the creeps and the weirdos, Candice was the first to turn, and she nudged Lexi. Others turned as Sullivan Reed appeared at the back of the church.

  The notes died and people stood, their applause so thunderous Mae felt it in her bones.

  Theodore took a brief bow and walked down the aisle.

  And Sullivan walked towards him.

  They met in the centre, and melted into one perfect kiss.

  The applause didn’t stop.

  They held each other, lost, the words on their wrists so bold.

  Mae looked over at Jeet Patel, who smiled at her with such sadness in his eyes.

  She wanted to be wrong, more than anything, right then she needed to be wrong.

  Mae brought the glass to her nose, inhaled and breathed out slow.

  She crossed the stone floor and hugged Jeet tightly. ‘Thank you.’

  He smiled. ‘For what?’

  ‘For being everything good.’

  42

  Mae stood in the graveyard as the crowds broke and drifted away.

  She walked over to Theodore.

  ‘You told Sergeant Walters,’ she said.

  ‘It took me too long.’

  Mae smiled. ‘But you did the right thing in the end.’

  ‘I think you helped me realise. You and the rest of them … on the beach, at school. Everywhere I looked.’

  ‘Realise what?’

  ‘That my Forever is Sullivan.’

  She watched him walk over to his group. Mae guessed Theodore didn’t know his parents quite as well as he’d thought, because they wrapped their arms around him. And then his father shook hands with Sullivan.

  The four walked together down towards the bay front.

  Mae nodded at Sergeant Walters, who tipped his hat in reply.

  ‘Sally …’ Mae called, and caught up with her.

  Sally turned.

  ‘That was …’

  ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘Yeah. And I saw you. Everyone was crying in there.’

  ‘Two days left, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.’

  Someone had strung fairy lights around Abi’s gravestone.

  They stopped in front of it.

  ‘You want to come down to the beach?’ Mae said.

  Sally smiled, then shook her head.

  ‘Are you okay, Sally?’