Remix

by Non Pratt

It’s Stella − who’s sitting pressed up a little too close to the other side of Stu − who spins the bottle first.

  Goz.

  Their kiss isn’t anything too racy, and when it’s Goz’s turn, it lands on Parvati, who groans, but still goes for a snog over a shot. When she spins the bottle, it lands on Tequila Girl No. 2 and the pair of them shrug and go for it to cheers from the boys.

  “Grow up.” Parvati rolls her eyes at Dongle.

  I lose interest in all the to-ing and fro-ing, concentrating instead on knocking back the beer in my hand and then going for a tequila rather than reaching across to the cool box behind Stu.

  My attention snaps back to the game when the bottle knocks against my foot. It was Dongle’s spin and the neck end is pointing at Stu. His groan is cut short as Dongle dives on him and they roll around on the floor with Dongle making kissing noises that we can all hear because his face is about a foot away from Stu’s.

  Stu’s laughing when he’s released and the sight of him squeezes at my insides.

  I require more tequila.

  KAZ

  Ruby looks thunderous as she tips her head back to drain her cup before pouring another slug of tequila into it. I try and tot up how much she must have drunk today.

  “Shit.” Both Anna and Tom have gone very still on either side of me.

  “What?”

  Neither of them say a word and I follow their gaze to the bottle that’s sitting on the rug in front of Stu. Pointing at Ruby.

  RUBY

  “What you waiting for?” Stu smiles across the circle at me. “Nothing we haven’t done before, right?”

  My words in his mouth, mocking me.

  Bollocks. If I hadn’t talked it up I could have just taken the shot.

  No going back now.

  Not that I want to. Every muscle in my body is clenched tight with excitement at the thought of kissing him. I can remember the way it feels … the way it tastes…

  No way in hell will I admit to it though.

  I shrug. “Whatever.”

  It only takes seconds for him to crawl the distance from one side of the circle to the other, his eyes on mine, but time seems to slow, the same way that the noise fades and the people around cease to matter.

  My pulse starts thrumming in my throat and I swallow, the last few drinks loosening my grip on reality.

  When he’s right in front of me, I can’t escape the look in his eyes, as if he can see my memories of everything we’ve done together playing on my retinas like a film reel. His clothes are infused with the warm smell of weed and wood smoke. I breathe in a short, shallow breath and taste the memory of sun on his skin and the beer on his breath.

  “Come here, then,” Stu says in a low voice, a murmur that no one but me can hear. That no one but me has heard before. He raises a hand to my jaw, his fingers brushing my hair back off my face and behind my ear as he brings his face to mine, his nose brushing my cheek and I don’t mean for my lips to part, but…

  I can’t do this.

  KAZ

  No one seems to know what happened. One minute Stu’s about to kiss her, the next Ruby’s leaped up and away from him, downing her drink so fast it spills across her cheek. Wiping her face with the heel of her hand, she kicks the bottle across the circle to where Stu’s sitting back on his heels.

  “Spin it again.”

  And she’s gone, fast, unsteady steps on legs that look thin and cold and white in the dark night. When I look over at Stu, all he does is shrug. It’s only as I’m running after her, following a rushed goodbye to Tom and a hop and skip over the guy ropes blocking my path, that I realize that Stu might have looked like he couldn’t care less, but it’s the first time he hasn’t been smiling about something.

  Good.

  10 • BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN

  RUBY

  “Ruby!”

  I can’t even identify the emotions that are flooding through me at the sound of my name.

  “Ruby – wait!”

  All I do know is that the person calling me is Kaz – not Stu – and she’s not the one I’m running from. Within seconds, Kaz has caught up with me and I feel her arms round me, pulling me in for a hug that’s more reassuring for her than it is for me.

  “Are you OK?”

  “No. I’m not OK.” I glare at her, too angry with what’s just happened for it not to spill out into everything I see or hear or touch. “What the fuck was Stu doing there?”

  “I don’t know.” Kaz looks pained. “I’m sorry, Ruby.” Actually, Kaz doesn’t look so much pained as guilty. “God, this is all my fault.” She almost whispers it, then, louder, she says, “I saw Stu earlier and—”

  “You what?” I explode, my brain barely managing to process the words. “And you didn’t think to mention it?”

  “I did, but—”

  “You thought lying was a better idea?”

  “No! It’s not like that. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to know.”

  This is the second time Kaz has decided what is and isn’t good for me when it comes to the truth about Stu. At least last time she was doing the right thing. This time though… “You thought it would be better if I was totally punked by Stu turning up at my campsite instead?”

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Owen said—”

  “Owen?”

  KAZ

  I hadn’t meant to throw Owen under the bus (had I?), but it’s too late to cover that up as well.

  “I asked Owen what I should do. He said not to tell you.” Oh God, I have made that sound so much worse for him than for me.

  “So what? Owen is my brother’s boyfriend – he’s not my best mate. Owen can keep whatever secrets he likes from me. I didn’t think you and I were meant to have any at all, but this weekend you’ve been stacking them up like a set of Piss Ruby Off Top Trumps. What part of ‘we don’t do secrets’ was so fucking hard to grasp?”

  “I said I’m sorry.” Tears rise up behind my eyes and I blink them back down. I hate that I cry so easily. I hate that it’s Ruby making me want to. “I was trying to protect you. I didn’t think we’d run into him again. If I’d been there when Dongle called Travis, I’d have stopped him.”

  “And where were you?” The way Ruby’s looking at me turns me inside out, as if my mind is a sheet of music and she’s reading every note.

  “I was getting chips with Tom.”

  “Of course you were. And when you were getting chips with Tom, did you by any chance ask about his girlfriend?”

  “I don’t need to, Ruby. Tom would tell me. It’s not like with you and Stu. We’re friends.”

  “Really? Friends – that’s what you call it? Have you looked in a mirror lately, Kaz, because that dress is not a friendly dress. It’s a—”

  “It’s just a dress.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not when you wear it near him. Come and see our camp, Tom!” She sounds so much like Lee did and I wonder whether she has any sense of how mean all that tequila has made her. “Let’s go get chips, Tom! I love the way your trousers look, Tom!”

  I really wish everyone would shut up about his trousers.

  RUBY

  There’s a moment when I can totally see there’s a choice. Either I can a) stop shouting at the person I love the most in the world and apologize, or I can b) carrying on shouting.

  I’m not someone who knows how to stop once they’ve started. “Yay, please, let’s play spin the bottle, Tom!”

  “Why are you being such a bitch?” Kaz snaps.

  KAZ

  I want to snatch the word from the air and crush it in my fist until there’s nothing but a corpse of letters smeared in my palm. But that’s not how words work. Once you let them out, you can’t take them back.

  RUBY

  We’re in free fall.

  “I’m not being a bitch!” I say, barely believing Kaz even said that word. “I’m being a friend!”

  “Really? Because right now you’re just being poisonous. What has Tom
ever done to you to make you hate him like this?” Kaz is properly crying now, but I don’t know if it’s anger or sadness or both. And I don’t know how she can even ask me that question.

  “HE BROKE YOUR HEART!” I hadn’t meant to shout that loud and I can see people staring at us. “That’s what he did. I spent all summer gluing it back together and you’re just going to hand it over to him to smash again. When are you going to get it? Tom is over you. It doesn’t matter what dress you wear or how much you flirt with him. You are not what he wants.”

  Even as I am shouting it, I know that it’s a lie. Tom looks at Kaz the way that I want to look at Stu.

  KAZ

  “Why are you shouting at me about this?” I’m furious at the tears that have escaped and I practically punch myself in the face as I wipe them away. “I followed you over here because I was worried about you and somehow it’s ended up with you telling me why I’m the one who’s a mess.”

  Ruby looks confused as if she’s lost her train of thought and it’s like I’ve pulled a plug – I can actually see the fight draining out of her.

  RUBY

  I try to backtrack through the words that brought us here, but when I look for them, they’re jumbled and nonsensical and I realize that all the beer and tequila haven’t so much caught up with me as overtaken me.

  Kaz doesn’t drink. Ever. And when she looks at me, it’s no longer with guilt, but with disapproval. Just like that, the conversation pivots under me and I find I’m the one holding the shitty end of the stick.

  “I know you’re not OK, Ruby. But I don’t know why.” Her voice is bordering on kind, but her expression is hard, patience stretched thin. “Shout all you like about Tom – or maybe wait until you’re sober and use your indoor voice. But that’s not why you bolted from the campsite. What’s going on with you and Stu?”

  Kaz plants her hands firmly on my shoulders, holding me steady. She’s so close I can’t really see anything else.

  “Ruby.” Kaz looks at me. “Tell me.”

  But what am I supposed to say other than the truth?

  “There’s nothing going on with me and Stu. I couldn’t kiss him, that’s all.”

  I don’t tell her that the reason is because I wanted to.

  KAZ

  Ruby says nothing more, just starts walking back to camp, and since I don’t seem to have any other option, I walk with her. When Ruby clams up, there’s no point trying to prise her open and even if we’re not walking arm in arm, at least we’re not walking alone. Camp is deserted when we get there, tents zipped shut like mouths keeping secrets, and someone’s stamped down on the ashes of Owen’s fire. Ruby looks like the (barely) walking dead as she struggles to pull off her vest. It’s not unusual for her to hit a wall after a night out and usually I’d be tutting at her, untangling her hair when it gets caught in a zip or reminding her to remove her make-up.

  Not tonight.

  We brush our teeth, taking turns to spit from our tent into the ashes and listening for a hiss of success. Ruby’s more accurate than me, but then, as she says, Naomi and I didn’t engage in spitting contests as often as Ruby and her brothers.

  “Callum always won.”

  “Really?” Our conversation is paper-thin over the fissures of our argument.

  “Don’t let his pretentions towards being an intellectual fool you. Callum is a champion Spit Meister.” It’s a weak attempt at humour and so is the smile she gets for it.

  By the time I’ve finished brushing my teeth and cleaning my face, Ruby’s already down and out on her back, arms folded above her head, breathing with the kind of depth that comes with too much alcohol. The eyeliner she slicked on so thick this morning has held fast, but it looks wrong on her sleeping face, like graffiti on a statue.

  When she’s awake, Ruby is as big as her personality, but sleeping she looks as small as she really is. Her arms look snappable and I feel a prick of dismay at how thin she is at the moment. Without the smiles and the energy, the enthusiasm and the passion, Ruby looks … vulnerable.

  As I unlock my phone to set an alarm for the morning, it buzzes in my hand.

  Tom.

  11 • IT’S BEEN A WHILE

  RUBY

  There’s a rustle somewhere near by. A swoosh of the zip, a whiff of cool night air. By the time my beer-befuddled consciousness claws its way out of oblivion the tent is still. I roll over and see that Kaz’s sleeping bag is open, slipper socks and pyjamas flopping out like entrails. Her shoes are gone when I pull open the front flap. Toilet trip, I guess.

  Until I hear a familiar laugh.

  Just outside of our camp, silhouetted against the glow of the fires beyond, I see Kaz. And Tom.

  I yank the zip shut as if not-seeing can turn into not-believing.

  But who am I kidding? Everything Kaz has done today has been leading to this moment with Tom.

  Now it’s here, I’m no longer so sure why I thought it was my place to stop it.

  Tom broke her heart before, but who’s to say he’ll do it again? Maybe he made a mistake? Maybe he’s been regretting it all summer and now he’s finally got a chance to make things right?

  Maybe I’m not thinking about Tom when I say that.

  Go home, brain, you’re drunk.

  Tomorrow, when I’m sober, when I know how to use my indoor voice, I will tell Kaz I’m sorry and I will mean it.

  KAZ

  Tom hands me back Ruby’s phone. The battery is at thirty-seven per cent and I make a mental note to remind her to take it to the charging tent tomorrow.

  “Stu found it. I thought you’d rather I was the one who brought it back.” He smiles and brushes a bit of floating ash off my cheek with the back of his fingers.

  “I should head back.” I half-turn towards my tent, but Tom lays a hand on my shoulder.

  “Wait.”

  When I turn back there’s no mistaking his expression.

  “Yes?” My voice might be light, but the look I’m giving him is so heavily loaded I can barely lift my lashes.

  There’s a second in which he swallows and I expect his gaze to dart away, for him to remember that we (presumably) broke up for a reason.

  Tom doesn’t move an inch. “Let’s go somewhere for a bit. Just you and me.”

  We make our way towards Three-Tree Field, pausing to cross the main track. Even though it’s past midnight, late arrivals are still tramping down from the car park, rucksacks on, ground mats rolled under their arms as they carry crates of beer and carrier bags. Mostly it’s the older crowd – people who have driven here from their day jobs – and the conversations I catch seem to be focused on whether there’s space to pitch their tents. I don’t think there’s anywhere left unless they’re prepared to camp up a tree. When I make this joke to Tom, he huffs a laugh at me.

  The smell of roast pork and popcorn, candyfloss and hot chips engulfs us as we pass the food vans lining a track marked WEST WALK, fading into the night as the track peters out on the far side of the site. There’s a choice between turning towards Tom’s camp, or turning away.

  It’s Tom who decides, each step he takes pulling us away from the noise of the campsite and up a slope that starts off gentle before taking a savage turn up into a copse of trees. There’s no one here and we let the hill get the better of us as soon as we’re beyond the first of the trees. My hands are shaking. Every part of me is consumed by energy, my skin buzzing with suppressed excitement like it’s opening night and I’m singing the solo.

  “So what exactly are we doing here, Tom?” I look up at the sky, at the trees near by and then, finally, at Tom, who shrugs. The setting might be romantic, but the boy isn’t. After all, this is Tom. The person who thought an umbrella was a suitable Valentine’s gift “because we’re having a wet February”.

  “I just know it’s been good seeing you,” he says. “I didn’t know how much I’d missed this – us – until I saw you.”

  And there it is: the gulf between the way I feel about him and the wa
y he feels about me. I’ve missed him every second of every day since we broke up.

  And yet…

  He misses me.

  Tom reaches out for a hug and I go with it, putting my arms around him, resting my face on his shoulder and finally, finally letting myself breathe in the smell of him. A moment longer and I’ll pull away, break the contact.

  It feels good, standing here on the balls of my feet, my nose pressed into the material of his top.

  A second later he kisses me on the cheek.

  I kiss his cheek in return.

  He kisses me again, not on the safe skin on the apple of my cheek, but in the no-man’s-land towards my lips.

  I turn my face closer and kiss him in the same place, my lips soft, the touch a little lingering, and when I pull back, I don’t turn my face any further, but rest it there, my nose so close to his jaw he must be able to feel my wavering breath on his skin.

  Tom turns. It’s only a fraction of a degree but enough for the skin of his lower lip to brush against mine. There isn’t a sound between us as each of us hold our breath, waiting.

  Did you ask about his girlfriend?

  I don’t think I need to.

  RUBY

  Apparently I went back to sleep, because I’m jolted awake by voices outside the tent.

  It’s Lee and I shuffle out of my sleeping bag, wanting to tell him what’s happened, because telling Lee always makes things better, but the zip’s only halfway open when I stop.

  Opposite, Lee is in Owen’s arms, the pair of them so closely wrapped around each other that they seem like one person, not two. Their faces are turned inwards, Lee’s pressed into Owen’s neck, Owen’s hidden in my brother’s hair. Even in the near-dark, I can see the muscles standing out on Lee’s arm as he pulls Owen to him.