Songs About a Girl

by Chris Russell

  Finally, there was Gabriel. As the days went by, the time I’d spent with him was beginning to feel like a distant dream. All those connections between us—Mum’s notebook, his lyrics, the memories we seemed to share—I began to see them for what they were: coincidences. And as time passed, I hoped I would find a way to forget it all forever.

  That is, until one frosty evening, when I received an unexpected e-mail.

  For Charlie re: Fire&Lights

  Goose bumps blossomed on my neck. If it was him, I would just delete it. Straightaway, without a moment’s thought.

  Charlie, my name’s Patricia Davis, and I work for Satellite Publishing. We’re releasing the next Fire&Lights fan book and are currently collecting together all the images and footage from the last tour. I hope you don’t mind me contacting you like this, but Barry King said we should drop you a line …

  Barry King? I frowned at the screen. We’d only met that one time, outside Gabriel’s hotel room. Had he actually liked my work after all?

  … Basically, we’ve seen your photos on the F&L fan page, and we think they’re fabulous. When it comes to capturing the boys’ spirit, it seems you have a magic touch! And with that in mind, we’d like to use a few of your photos in the book. There are some wonderful shots: Gabriel dancing with a fan, Aiden strumming his guitar backstage, Yuki juggling bananas! Various other ones, too—details in the attached document …

  I thought back to late October, and the way I’d felt when I first replied to Olly. How I didn’t think I was good enough, how I was just a kid, how I couldn’t understand why they’d want me instead of a professional. But now, reading this e-mail, it was obvious why the band needed my pictures. The shots Patricia had mentioned, those fleeting moments between the boys … no one else saw them happen. Not the way I did. A professional photographer might have had better equipment than me, and more experience, but they wouldn’t have seen the band like I did, for who they really were.

  Four ordinary teenage boys, who happened to be living extraordinary lives.

  … There’ll be a small fee in it for you, and your name will appear in the credits. We’ll just need a parental signature etc., so do drop me a line and we’ll take things from there. Thanks! PD.

  I listened for my father, downstairs, typing in his study. I’d need to fake his signature, but it wouldn’t exactly be the first time. So I wrote a speedy reply, accepting Patricia’s offer. Then, as I was about to sign off, I hesitated above the keys, questions creeping into my mind. Was this a bad idea? Should I just ignore the e-mail, pretend I’d never seen it? Wasn’t I trying to forget this whole thing and move on with my life?

  No. I had earned this. I had given everything to it. Above all else, my time with Fire&Lights wasn’t really about Gabriel West.

  It was about me.

  Breathing deeply, I signed my name at the end of the message and hit Send.

  * * *

  A week later, I was walking back from school alone, a light snow gathering on my coat sleeves. It had been snowing all day, the kind that dusts the road and the trees like icing sugar, and the air had a crystalline quality, like it might shatter if you touched it.

  “Charlie.”

  A voice I hadn’t heard for weeks scuttled up my spine. I kept walking.

  “Hey, Charlie. Slow down.”

  Aimee emerged from an alleyway and fell into step with me. My heart began to thud as I tried to outpace her, fractured memories from the schoolyard shooting through my mind. The girls’ hands all over me; Aimee’s hair falling loose as she swung my camera into the brickwork.

  “Leave me alone. Please.”

  “Just wait.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to y—”

  “Listen,” she snapped, seizing my arm. I looked down, eyes wide, and she let go straightaway. “I’m not … I mean … ah, man.”

  We had stopped underneath a deserted bus shelter. Aimee wasn’t wearing a coat, just an old T-shirt, and she looked cold.

  I hugged my arms to my chest.

  “What do you want?”

  She reached into her back pocket. I stepped away, but my back met the plastic wall of the bus stop.

  “Aimee, pl—”

  Her arm was outstretched.

  She was holding my hat.

  “This is yours,” she said, looking right at me. I stared at her, astonished, the hat hanging from her fingers.

  She waved it at me.

  “Don’t you want it back?”

  “Yes … yes, I do.”

  I took it from her, and sank my fingers into the wool. It felt soft and familiar against my skin.

  She lit a cigarette, shivering, and I eyed her, silently, as she took a long, deep draw and blew the smoke above her head. It hit the roof, billowing out into a flat cloud.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, gripping tightly to my hat, but Aimee just shrugged. We stared at each other for a while, and I wondered if I should tell her. Tell her what it had been like to be me this past month or so. Take her through every sickening moment: the whispers in the hall, the vicious, anonymous hatred. The threats and insults on my phone.

  Maybe, though, she already knew. And that was why she was here.

  “So … being expelled sucks,” she said, sucking hard on her cigarette, as if trying to draw warmth from it. Tiny, transparent snowflakes eddied around her head.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Yeah. I just sit at home with Dad all day, in front of the telly.” She sniffed. “He doesn’t like it.”

  She tapped ash onto the ground, and I watched the hot, gray specks sink into the gathering snow.

  “He’s an angry bastard,” she continued, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “And I don’t want … I mean … that’s not me, y’know?” Her voice shrank, until it almost disappeared. “That’s not me.”

  Strangely, I found myself thinking of my conversation with Gabriel, weeks earlier at the after-party. Our parents don’t get to decide what kind of people we are. That’s up to us.

  A car crackled by on the icy road.

  “I should probably go,” I said, slipping my hat on. “But thanks for bringing my hat back.”

  Aimee looked at me, and I realized that she wasn’t wearing any makeup. It was the first time I’d really seen her face, and her features were softer, her skin paler, than I’d ever imagined at school. Wet snow was settling in her hair.

  Tightening my scarf, I walked back out onto the street and carried on my way. As I turned the corner on to Tower Close, I looked back over my shoulder one last time. Aimee was sitting on the bus stop’s metal bench, watching me leave, her eyes drained of color. She rubbed her bare arms to keep out the cold.

  All around us, snow fell.

  * * *

  There was a lump in my throat as I approached the house.

  Aimee had seemed smaller, somehow, outside school. The way she had looked at me from that bus stop, it made everything that had happened—the fights, the accusations—seem phony and ridiculous.

  I wondered what would happen when she got home.

  I wondered what her father would do.

  “Charlie…! Charlie.”

  Rosie was hurrying down the garden path toward me, waving. I hadn’t been round to Melissa’s house since that night on the train.

  “Charlie, sweetheart.”

  “Hi, Rosie.”

  She reached the end of the path, and I stopped on the other side of the locked gate. She crossed her arms against the cold, and a snowflake landed on her nose.

  “Everything OK?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s freezing out here,” she said, and my gaze flickered upward to Melissa’s bedroom window.

  “Don’t worry, love. She’s not home.”

  I nodded again.

  “Will you come in for a cup of tea…?”

  * * *

  Rosie clinked away at the sink, snow whipping at the windows, while I sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug of
tea. Megabyte hopped onto my lap.

  “Melissa feels horrible, you know,” Rosie was saying, as she arranged snacks on a plate. “I don’t think she’s slept properly since you two fell out.”

  Rosie slid the plate onto the table between us and sat down in front of her tea. She nudged the food toward me.

  “Here you go: Brian’s chocolate flapjack. It’s about a billion calories per slice, but absolutely guaranteed to cheer you up.”

  I took a piece silently, and Megabyte craned her neck to sniff it.

  “You don’t want to talk to me about all this, I know that,” Rosie continued with a smile, “and, really, it’s none of my business.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “But whatever happened, it can’t be worth throwing away ten years of friendship over, can it?”

  Rosie let the question hang in the air between us, and I thought of Melissa, standing at the school gates, dressed in a duffle coat and her favorite gloves. The purple ones, chewed at the fingers.

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  “Hi, Mel.”

  We’d bumped into each other a few days earlier on the way out of school, among a seething crowd of people. Students were pushing past us, shouting, backpacks swinging from their shoulders.

  “So … you good?” she asked, glancing at her feet. They were turned inward, as if in conversation.

  “All right. You?”

  Her face looked pained, and she wrinkled her mouth.

  “I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but—”

  “It’s fine.”

  I felt strangely calm, but Melissa was fidgeting and chewing on her glove. Finally, she blurted out: “I’m really, really sorry.”

  At first, most of what I’d felt toward Melissa had been anger. Anger, and bitterness. But looking at her now, standing in front of me in the spitty rain, I mainly felt sad.

  “You know you can’t do that sort of thing to a friend, don’t you?” I said.

  “I know.”

  “What you did, Mel, it was … just horrible.”

  “I know.”

  She bit back tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Charlie, I feel awful. I barely sleep anymore; I just keep thinking about…”

  She stopped, the end of her sentence written all over her face. About what I did to you. I pictured her in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, duvet pulled up to her chin. Across the garden, behind my curtains, I’d have been lying awake too.

  “I see you’ve taken the blog off-line.”

  Her face brightened a little.

  “I shut it down … for you. I know it’s too late, but…”

  It wasn’t as if there was nothing for Melissa to write about. Between the album release, Gabriel’s fling with Tammie, and the upcoming tour, the Internet was alive with Fire&Lights gossip. She could have kept it going and ridden the wave of popularity. But she hadn’t.

  “I noticed. Thanks.”

  For several long seconds, we stood there in silence. People pushed past us on their way out of the gate.

  “Can I walk home with you?” asked Melissa, a tremble on her lip. I looked back on the face I’d known for very nearly my entire life, and doubt clenched my stomach.

  “Maybe some other time,” I said, passing through the gate without her. “Nice to talk to you, Mel.”

  I joined the chattering crowd, kids laughing and swearing and playing music on their phones, and it swept me back out into the world, Melissa watching me as I went.

  As the memory faded, I found myself back in Rosie’s kitchen, staring at a photograph on the fridge. Melissa and I were standing side by side in the garden, aged around six, dressed as pirates. She was wearing a giant fake mustache, and we were both laughing our heads off.

  “You OK?” said Rosie, laying her hand on mine. I looked at her, suddenly aware I hadn’t said anything for over a minute.

  “Um, yeah … I think so.”

  Megabyte wriggled on my lap and mewed.

  “I don’t want to preach to you, Charlie, because that’s boring, but…” She squeezed my hand gently. “There are two things that matter in this world, above all others. Family … and friends. Once you know where you are with those, everything else falls into place.”

  * * *

  I slid my key into the front door, and the automatic light clicked on above me. All around, the weather was closing in, covering everything in a clean, white blanket of snow.

  Rosie’s words had settled in my mind.

  Family … and friends.

  When I opened the front door, Dad was pottering in the kitchen, chatting to himself. I hung my coat next to his, on the rack.

  “Oh, Charlie,” he said, looking up from the sink. “You’re home.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  I wandered down the hall and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

  “School all right?” he asked.

  “Not too bad. How was work?”

  “Erm … the usual. Jen’s still doing my head in, but…” He was eyeing me curiously while he filled the kettle. “Everything all right?”

  My heart skipped, and the words I’d been rehearsing fell helter-skelter from my mouth.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad.”

  He put the kettle down.

  “What for?”

  I stumbled momentarily. Words jostled for attention inside my head.

  “What for, Charlie?”

  “For … all the lies. For going off with the band, and keeping secrets from you.” I dropped my bag by my side. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Honestly.”

  Dad’s eyes widened at me.

  “Oh … Charlie,” he said, padding toward me in his socks. “That’s OK.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not OK. I know I haven’t been easy to live with these past two months.”

  He thought about this.

  “No. But I don’t suppose I have either.”

  I thought of the papers I had found in Dad’s study all those weeks ago. His awards, his PhD, the life he’d left behind to look after me when Mum was gone.

  “I know it’s been difficult since Mum died,” I said. “I just … I wish we could be a proper family.”

  He touched a tentative hand to my shoulder.

  “We are a proper family,” he said, with a catch in his voice. Our eyes met, fleetingly, and I went back to staring at the floor.

  “Anyway,” I said to my feet, “I was thinking. About Birthday Cinema Club.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know my birthday was last month, but … maybe it’s not too late. Maybe we could do it, like, one day next week.”

  “I thought you were too old for that, kiddo.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re never too old for Toy Story.”

  Though I couldn’t see Dad’s face, I could hear him smiling above me.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I think we can find the time for Birthday Cinema Club.” Then he added, in a funny voice: “I shall consult my diary.”

  I sat down awkwardly on the bottom stair, and blood rushed to my cheeks.

  Dad cleared his throat.

  “Um … now. There’s something in your bedroom I think you’ll want to see.”

  I looked up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see. In your bedroom.”

  Dad gestured to the top of the house with a nod and a strange little smile. Dubiously, I walked up the stairs to my room, hand trailing along the banister. Had he … bought me something else for my birthday? Or an early Christmas present?

  When I opened the door, I found Melissa sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands curled in a ball in her lap.

  And the room was filled with marshmallows.

  34

  “Hi,” said Melissa.

  I stared back at her, dumbfounded. A single marshmallow tumbled off the bookshelf.

  “Oh my God…”

  They were everywhere. Lining the windowsill, strewn across my pillow, piled in mi
niature pyramids on the desk. She’d even marked out my initials on the bed: C in pink, B in white.

  If you were ever really sad, d’you know what I’d do? I’d fill your bedroom with marshmallows.

  “I … can’t believe you did this,” I whispered, noticing a marshmallow in one of my slippers. “I can’t believe … you did this.” It was like walking into a dream. “You’re crazy.”

  Melissa looked crestfallen.

  “What … you don’t like it?”

  I could tell she was holding back tears.

  “No,” I said, breaking into a smile. “No. I love it. I…”

  Melissa’s knees were jiggling, and she bit her lip.

  “I love it, you big stupid idiot.”

  She sat up on the bed, and the words spilled out of her.

  “I know this doesn’t change what I did,” she gabbled, knocking marshmallows onto the carpet. “I know I can never take that back, ever. But I can be your best friend again, Charlie. I know I can.”

  She looked at me, eyes huge, tears beginning to form.

  “If you’ll have me.”

  I stared back at Melissa, her face filled with hope and heartache. Without her, my life was black and white. I knew that. Nothing was fun anymore. It was like a piece of me was gone.

  No one else in the world would do something like this for me.

  “I’ve missed you,” I said, stepping forward, accidentally squishing a marshmallow. Melissa nodded, her chest swelling.

  “So much.”

  We were quiet for a few seconds, cocooned in our marshmallow dream world.

  “Charlie?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  Melissa’s lip wobbled.

  “Is it OK if I cry now?”

  Before I could say anything, little sobs started falling out of her, and I hurried across the room, sending marshmallow piles flying. I sat down next to her on the bed and hugged her tight against me.

  She gazed up at me, face sticky with tears, and sniffed.

  “I spent all my allowance.”

  She sobbed into my jumper for a little while and then reemerged, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

  “It’s impossible to be sad when you’re eating marshmallows. That’s a scientific fact.”