She is the fire in my fingertips
The warm rain that tells me where the thunder is
And I know that somebody has found her heart
But that won’t keep us apart
She keeps a piece of herself inside
But she speaks, and every single star collides
And I know that somebody has found her heart
But that won’t keep us apart
Then, as a shaft of late-afternoon sun settled across us both, I laid my head on Olly’s shoulder and drifted to sleep.
* * *
That evening, I was walking down the garden path with earphones in, ready to go straight to bed and shut out the world, when I noticed my dad standing in the living room window. The TV glowed behind him.
“Where were you this weekend?” he said when I walked in through the door. I slipped the bag off my back and dumped it on the floor.
“Um … the writers’ retreat, Dad?”
“Funny, because I was chatting with Melissa’s mum earlier today, and she didn’t know anything about any writers’ retreat.”
A nervous heat was rising inside me.
“Melissa didn’t come. She’s into computers—she doesn’t go on English trips.”
I made a move for the stairs, but Dad was standing in the way.
“That would be convincing if it wasn’t for the fact that I contacted the head about it, and he said the school has never run a writers’ retreat in Devon. Not this year … not ever.”
I had no answer to this. I tried not to breathe, and Dad finally broke.
“Where the hell have you been all this time?”
“I … Dad…”
There wasn’t time to make anything up. Perhaps, though, I could get away with telling him the truth … just not the whole truth.
“I was with a band.”
Dad stared back at me. He looked confused at first, and then the confusion turned to anger.
“A band? What band?”
“Just a band who used to go to Caversham High. They asked me to go on tour with them and take photos. It’s no big deal.”
He grabbed me by the wrist, and it stung.
“Believe me, this is a very big deal. It’s inappropriate for a girl your age, and it’s dangerous, and I won’t allow it. Do you understand?”
I didn’t reply.
“Where were you?”
“I already told you. Devon.”
“Jesus, Charlie. Anything could have happened.”
Dad’s shirt quivered with his uneasy breathing.
“First the curfew, then the message through the door, now this. What’s happened to you? We can’t go on this way.”
I was losing the fight, and it was fraying my temper. I knew I’d regret whatever came out of my mouth next.
“What are you going to do then, Dad? Ground me?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
I glared back at him. He’d never disciplined me before. Not like this.
“What?”
“Go to your room. This conversation is over.”
“Fine. I couldn’t care less anyway,” I said, snatching my bag from the floor, shoving past him, and walking up the stairs.
“If you want to be treated like an adult,” he called after me, “you’ll need to start behaving like one.”
I called back over my shoulder.
“Well done, Dad, that one was right out of The Idiot’s Guide to Parenting.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I yelled back, slamming the bedroom door behind me.
Downstairs, a kitchen drawer clinked angrily, and I heard the cork popping from a wine bottle. I crossed over to my drawer, took out the photograph of my parents, and stared into it as if trying to peer backward through time. My head was filled with noise: the hateful messages on my phone, lines from Gabriel’s songs, the letter to my mother, my father’s secrets, the roaring of an engine, the man in the dark on the rain-ruined cliff side. The noise filled my ears until my brain began to scream, my eyes wet with tears, a hammering pain in my rib cage.
I lay down and pulled the sheets around me, fists clutched to my chest, tears coating my cheeks. I ached for someone to hold me, to tell me everything would be all right, to dry my eyes and stroke my hair and say “sweet dreams” and sing me to sleep. I missed her.
I missed her more than I ever had before.
26
The next morning, before I had even made it to my first lesson, I was called into the head teacher’s office.
“Charlie, we’re all a little … worried about you.”
I had barely slept the night before, and it was written all over my face. My eyes throbbed in their sockets, my vision was speckled, my shoulders were heavy from exhaustion.
“I’m OK.”
Mr. Bennett was doing that thing he always did, his curved fingers spread out with the tips touching, like he was gripping an invisible crystal ball.
“You’ll be aware that your father called me over the weekend, presumably? And while it’s not really my business what our students do on their own time, it is rather worrying that you would use a fake school trip as cover for … well, for whatever.”
“Sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure what I was apologizing for.
“Well, like I say, it’s not my business exactly, but your father is extremely concerned. And, look…” He cleared his throat. “We know you’re being targeted at school.”
I was still receiving the messages. Not nearly as often now, but even so, every few hours a new one would arrive. Aimee’s comment had long been deleted from the blog, but my number was out there now. It could be on any one of the fan forums.
Get lost, charlie bloom
Leave gabriel alone
I seen u on the internet. Lookin at ur pics rite now
“It’s nothing,” I said, folding my arms.
“Actually,” replied Mr. Bennett, crossing his legs and pursing his lips, “I’m not sure that it is.”
Mr. Bennett was right. Before Fire&Lights, I’d been ignored at school. A ghost in the hall. But now, people I didn’t know, people who were hardly even acquaintances, let alone friends, were going out of their way to talk to me.
“Yo, Charlie.”
Just ten minutes earlier, on my way to Mr. Bennett’s office, I’d been approached at the lockers by Nathan Gaines. Nathan and I sat opposite each other in Geography. We were in the same group once on a field trip, but other than that we’d barely had a single conversation in four years.
“What?” I replied.
“Is it true?” said Nathan, chewing gum. He was standing a little too close to me.
“Is what true?”
“People are saying you slept with Gabriel West.”
People are saying, I thought. People.
“I’m not talking to you about that.”
He leaned an arm against the lockers.
“Come on, seriously. Just tell me.” He smiled, baring teeth. “It’s kinda hot.”
I slammed my locker closed.
“If this is the kind of thing that turns you on, there’s something seriously wrong with you.”
Nathan spluttered out an embarrassed laugh, and behind him, his friends sniggered and whooped, fist-bumping each other.
“Whoa, ice queen!”
“Dude, she took you down.”
I turned to them.
“What’s wrong with you?” They looked confused. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Their grins wilted. No one said anything.
I threw my bag onto my shoulder and walked off …
“As your head teacher,” continued Mr. Bennett, pressing his fingers into the desk, “I am responsible not just for your academic life but also, partly, for your welfare.” He glanced at a pile of papers. “Your father informed me about the threatening note passed through your door.”
My heart sank.
“Really, it’s no big dea
—”
“On the contrary,” he interrupted, “we take matters of this sort very seriously. In fact, I’ve been made aware that Aimee Watts has been responsible for similar behavior in the past, at previous schools.”
“You don’t know it was her.”
Mr. Bennett shifted in his seat, and I could tell, though I was avoiding eye contact, that he was looking right at me. He lowered his voice a little.
“Actually, we do. We had a pretty strong hunch about it, so I challenged her this morning and more or less squeezed out a confession. We may even take the matter to the police.”
“Please, don’t do that—”
“You have nothing to worry about, Charlie,” he said, leaning forward on the desk. “You concern yourself with your upcoming exams, and we’ll deal with Miss Watts. OK?”
They always said things like that, teachers. You have nothing to worry about … we’ll deal with it. Maybe they’d forgotten what tended to happen the second they turned their backs.
* * *
I’m done, said Melissa’s message. See you in 5. And we are spending all lunchtime talking about the kiss. ALL LUNCHTIME. Xx
I was in the back courtyard with my camera, photographing the bird with the orange mark on its back. We had passed half an hour together, uninterrupted, the only sound the rhythmic clicking of the camera, when I heard the scuffle of feet on the paving stones behind me.
The voice told me it wasn’t Melissa.
“Hello, Charlotte.”
The bird twitched its little head and listened. I didn’t look up from my camera.
“Oi, Charlie.”
I turned round. Aimee had six girls with her.
“What do you want?” I said decisively, but there was the faintest tremor in my voice.
“You know what I want.”
The girls began to close in on both sides, and my chest tightened.
“I want an apology.”
“What for?”
Aimee walked toward me, frowning. To our right, the bird had gone, and the nest was empty.
“Here’s something funny. I come into school today, and Bennett pulls me into his office to say a ‘threatening note’ has been posted though Charlie Bloom’s door and did I have anything to do with it?” One of the other girls whispered something to a friend, her eyes on me, and they both laughed. “And because I got kicked out of Woodtree for the same thing, he reckons he’s got me pinned.”
She closed the gap between us to just a few centimeters.
“I’m not apologizing for something you did,” I said. Aimee glared at me.
“I think you are.”
Before I could stop her, Aimee pulled the hat off my head and hid it behind her back.
“Give that back.” Aimee slipped the hat to Gemma. Gemma looked at it, gave it a little stretch, and stuck it on her head. “Give it back.”
“Actually, I don’t think we will.”
“It was my mum’s,” I said, my voice catching. Aimee pouted at me.
“Aw, really? Mum’s hat?” She took another step toward me. “Apologize.”
I shook my head, breathing through my nose.
“All right, then. Maybe there’s something else you can give me.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Maybe not,” she said, her eyes dropping downward. “But you do have that camera.”
I retreated against the wall, the camera behind my back. The idea of her taking Olly’s gift from me made me feel sick to my stomach.
“You’re not taking this.”
“Watch me,” she said, reaching for it. I held her off at first, but the other girls closed in and all six of them worked together to pin back my arms. Their fingers were all over me, digging and groping, and as I struggled to break free, I felt nails scrape along my collarbone, drawing blood. I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing the pain, and one of the girls prized the camera from my weakened grip. When I opened my eyes again, Aimee had wrapped the strap around her fist so that the camera dangled downward, and she was swinging it back and forth, gently, just above the ground. Like a medieval weapon.
The look on her face was one of pure scorn.
“They’ve got me on a disciplinary warning now,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “Any idea what that means, Charlie? It means if I do one thing wrong, they’ll—”
“Hey! Hey, let go of her!”
Melissa was running toward us from the far corner of the courtyard. I struggled, but the girls held me fast.
“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Let go. Aimee, stop it!”
Aimee wheeled round and sighed melodramatically.
“Piss off, Melissa.”
“You piss off.”
Aimee lowered my camera onto the ground, dangerously close to a puddle. The strap slipped off her hand and wilted around the puddle.
“What did you say?”
“Let go of Charlie—she never did anything to you.”
“Melissa, don’t—” I began to say, but it was too late. Aimee grabbed a fistful of Melissa’s coat and shunted her across the courtyard. Melissa was lashing out desperately, but she didn’t have half Aimee’s strength. With both hands, Aimee slammed her into the chain-link fence.
She held Melissa’s face to the rusting metal.
“What did you say?”
Melissa’s voice was muffled as she tried to get words out.
“Let her go,” she said, reaching out awkwardly behind her back. “She’s my best friend…”
Aimee twisted Melissa round to face me and, with her gaze fixed on mine, leaned in toward her and whispered something in her ear. Melissa nodded, her eyes glistening.
Then Aimee let go, shoving Melissa away, and started walking back toward me.
“Anyway, Bloom, like I was saying…”
Melissa stepped away from the fence. I urged her back with a careful shake of my head.
“… Bennett’s really got it in for me now,” continued Aimee, plucking my camera from the wet concrete. “One strike and I’m out, he says. So don’t tell anyone about this, yeah?”
I kept my eyes open, unblinking. She was in my face now.
“About what?”
Chewing her tongue, Aimee pulled the camera strap tight across her fist. A little blob of spit had appeared in the corner of her mouth. Then, stepping backward until she was level with a small wall, she dangled the camera behind her back, sucked in a lungful of air, and swung it over her head into the brickwork. With a metallic splinter, it collided hard with the wall, and the lens smashed instantly, showering small, fragile pieces of glass across the paving stones.
Aimee waited a few seconds, breathing in and out, staring at me. Then she braced herself, held the camera at a distance, and swung it once more into the wall. More broken glass, and the sound of cracked plastic.
Then she swung it again. And again. And again.
Each time, the camera broke down still further, until it was misshapen and bent, barely hanging together. I was watching her, helpless, anger burning in my throat, thinking about how Olly would feel if he ever found out, when I noticed someone approaching across the courtyard.
“Aimee, I—”
But she ignored me, her hair falling free in front of her face, and launched the camera into the wall one last time. It broke open on impact, destroyed, irretrievable, little silver parts scuttling away across the paving stones like tiny fleeing beetles.
I held my breath, and Aimee’s eyes met mine.
“What a shame,” she said. “No more pop-star selfies.”
A hand came down on her shoulder.
“Inside, Miss Watts.”
Confusion spread across Aimee’s face.
“Wh—?”
“Inside, now.”
Aimee turned around and, when she saw Mr. Crouch, tried to pull away. He had a tight hold on her arm, though, and began dragging her toward the school.
“Let go of me, you pervert!” she screeched.
“No
chance, young lady. You’ve had it. Game over. You’re going to Mr. Bennett, and this time you will be expelled.”
Around me, the other girls scattered, and I watched Gemma disappear down an alleyway, Mum’s hat askew on her head. Melissa was running toward me, her cheeks flushed, on the verge of tears.
“You’d better hope you don’t see me outside school, Bloom!” Aimee was yelling as Mr. Crouch escorted her inside. “This isn’t over…”
Her words echoed and died away somewhere inside the long, empty corridors as I slumped against the wall, scratch marks stinging in the winter air, the broken shards of my camera lying silent all around me.
* * *
I hadn’t said a word to my father in days. I would come home from school, go straight to my room, and stay there all evening, half working, half gazing at the walls. I avoided him in the hallway; I let him cook his own meals. I barely ate myself.
Several times a day, I’d hear from Gabriel.
Thinking about you, charlie brown xxx
I stared at the message, like I stared at all of them, with my chest tight, my teeth on edge. I could tell him the truth. I could tell him I was thinking about him too, but what good would that do?
Flicking my phone to silent, I slid it under the covers, out of sight, and opened my laptop. We’d been studying Romeo and Juliet in English, and I’d planned to spend the evening watching movie clips online and kidding myself it was research. I entered the search term, scanned the list of videos, then heard a shrinking knock at my door.
“Charlie?”
The floorboards creaked as my father hovered.
“What?”
The door opened slowly, and he stepped half inside the room. You could almost taste the air between us, bitter and flat, like stagnant water.
“Is everything … uh…”
“Yep,” I said, the word clipped and cold, like the locking of a door. Dad pressed his lips together, nodding into the silence. The only sound around us was the creaking of dry, dead branches outside my window.
“That graze on your neck still looks bad.”
The wound on my collarbone had scabbed over into two distinct claw lines. I covered it with a strand of hair.
“It’s nothing.”
“This Aimee Watts is going to pay for a new camera, Charlie. Take it from me.”
“I told you, Dad, don’t bother. I can save up for a new one. Just leave it.”
Songs About a Girl Page 23