Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  Damian’s dad and his girlfriend, whom Damian had never met before, had thought it was all hilarious. I think they had just come from a party because they were dressed up and had both been quite drunk. His dad’s first words to the cops had been, ‘What’s he done this time?’ He’d offered to pay for all the damage cos he was loaded, knew Fat Pang himself and had friends on the council. Damian was always getting into ‘scrapes like these’ apparently.

  Zoe was okay, we were told by a doctor, burnt and injured but okay, and this had popped my anxiety bubble good and proper at least, but that had been all we were told about her for yonks. The saddest thing in the world was that nobody had come to the hospital for her. Nobody had come to tell her off or to give her a clip round the ear or to find out if she was okay. Nobody at all. Even Social Services hadn’t sent someone.

  The two police officers who had taken our statements were the same ones who’d got me and Louis out of the burning building. The policeman was called PC Kessler and he looked like that bloke in that film who goes out with this woman for one night and they end up having a baby together but really they’re a total mismatch but in the end it’s all okay because they’ve got a baby so it has to be. The policewoman was called PC Goodman and she looked like that blonde lady from that film about the woman in the yellow tracksuit. This is a brief snippet of our conversation with them:

  ‘So who was the man in the tank?’ said PC Kessler.

  ‘What man in the tank?’ said Damian.

  ‘The man in the tank in the gym,’ said PC Goodman.

  A shrug from Louis. A shrug from me.

  ‘We never saw no man in a tank. You must have been imagining it.’

  ‘Yeah, it was just Zoe in the gym. And the sheep we’d been trying to bring back to life. The sheep we’d knocked down.

  We were trying to do the right thing.’

  ‘Honest.’

  ‘Yeah, honest.’

  Basically, we’d denied all knowledge of a man in a tank. As far as we were concerned, he’d never existed. We’d been so convincing, I’d started to believe it myself. As long as we all stuck to the story, it would be okay.

  But ever since we’d shaken off our parentals and the cops and been shoved into the family room to wait for news on Zoe, Damian had been acting dead odd. He just paced and flicked through magazines and clacked the abacus thing on the kids’ table. Silent. It wasn’t like him at all. He’d never gone more than five minutes without making some comment or flirting at least.

  Me and Louis were on the sofa having a cuddle session, my head resting on his warm chest. His heartbeat was so soothing and I was so tired. I’d read in my Biology textbook that the human heart beats an average of three billion times in a single lifetime. I thought mine would beat twice that now I’d met Louis. No, not since I’d met him. Since I’d realised what he meant to me. He wasn’t just the spare boy any more. He was my boy. And that made him the best and most special boy ever.

  I was as heavy as lead but I couldn’t fall asleep, no matter how hard I tried. My mind was racing thinking about Zoe and SDB. We weren’t being told anything about them. Pee Wee was sleep-twitching on Louis’ lap. My poor baby was dramatized.

  A male nurse finally came in after an entire ice age and told us the latest on Zoe. Damian was ready for him.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know anything more? You’ve gotta know something more, you work here!’

  ‘I’ve said she is stable. Now if you’d just like to take a seat . . .’

  ‘That’s all I’ve been doing for the last three hours, you dickhead, taking a frickin’ seat.’

  ‘Sir, if you’re going to be abusive, I will have to ask you to—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I get it, sit quietly and get ignored for another three hours, if I’m lucky and you might come and tell me she’s dead. I get it, I hear you,’ he shouted as the nurse left the room. Damian slammed the door behind him and slumped down in the purple armchair nearest the door and started leg jiggling.

  ‘They’ll come and tell us when they know anything, Dame. Chill,’ said Louis, pouring some bottled water into the shallow pot plant tray on the coffee table. He set it down on the floor for Pee Wee who lapped at it eagerly.

  ‘I can’t chill; I gotta do something.’ He bounced up and started pacing the room again. ‘I’ve decided one thing though. I’m gonna get you three off the hook. I’ll take the full wrap for this and I don’t want any arguments.’

  ‘What?’ said Louis. ‘We’ve given our statements already.’

  ‘I’ll say you both lied to protect me,’ Damian sniffed, jumping around on the balls of his feet. ‘I want it. I’ll say I roped you all into it. I broke into the college and Fat Pang’s. I forced you to help me with the tank. It was my idea. Everything. I’ll say it was me. They’ll believe it. They’ve been waiting to pin something big on me.’

  ‘Damian, no,’ I said. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Camille, I said I want it, end of. Cops are gonna keep asking them questions and they ain’t gonna be satisfied till someone pays. What’s the worst they can do? Dad’ll pay for the damage and he has friends on the council so he’ll be able to fast-track the college rebuild. I want this. I deserve it. Worst I’ll get is community service. Hardly gonna blacken the glowing CV, is it?’ He sat back down in the purple chair.

  I looked at him. He didn’t look right, he looked almost, well, humble. ‘You’re doing this for Zoe, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ he said after a while of leg-jiggling and thumbpicking.

  ‘You really like her, don’t you?’ I said.

  Damian stood up and went to the window. ‘I didn’t go back in there to get her. Didn’t even try. He went back in for a dog. I didn’t do nothing.’

  Louis stroked Pee Wee’s tummy. Pee Wee looked like he was in a sleepy ecstasy. He loved Louis too, I could tell. ‘There was no way you could have made it through the flames and saved her. She didn’t want to be saved anyway.’

  ‘I just legged it like always and saved my own skin. And now she’s dying.’

  ‘She’s not dying,’ I told him. ‘The nurse said she was stable. That means not dying any more. They’ll call for us when we can go and see her.’

  Louis stroked my hair. He could do that now. I liked him doing that. It made my neck go goosepimply. I looked at Damian. It was the first time I’d ever felt sorry for him. How weird was that? And how weird was it that Zoe had been the one to make him so un-Damian-like? The words Thus begins a new life popped into my head. And I remembered Zoe saying it. And painful tears began to well up in my eyes.

  A lady in blue pyjamas came in. She had a tag on. And then I realised she wasn’t wearing pyjamas, she was wearing those scrubby things doctors wear. And she was a doctor.

  ‘Camille Mabb?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, standing up.

  ‘Your friend is asking for you.’

  I looked back at Louis. ‘I’ll wait in here,’ he said.

  ‘Can I see her n’all?’ said Damian, jumping up.

  ‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘She specifically said, “Just the blonde girl called Camille Mabb. Not the arrogant boyband reject.” I can only assume she meant you.’ By her sneer, I guessed she’d been talking to the male nurse Damian had shouted at.

  Damian sat down next to Louis on the sofa. Louis squeezed his shoulder. Pee Wee woke up and growled.

  Zoe was in a private room on the first floor. The doctor took me up in the lift.

  ‘Was she badly hurt? Is she going to be okay?’

  ‘She’s got burns to her hands and arms and she’s inhaled quite a bit of smoke from the fire. We’ll need to keep her in for the time being.’

  ‘Oh right.’

  ‘She’ll need a fair bit of TLC for a few months as there will be some tasks she can’t do for herself. We haven’t been able to get in touch with any of her family. Do you know where . . .’

  ‘Uh, they’re away,’ I said. ‘She’s staying with us. My mum and dad ar
e always there. And me. I’ll be there too. We’ll look after her.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the doctor. ‘You’re a good friend.’

  Yeah, I wasn’t sure what my mum and dad would have to say about it but I’d fought to keep Pee Wee so I would fight for Zoe as well, no problem. I suddenly couldn’t wait to look after her, do things for her, make her meals and bring them to her on a tray, change her dressings. Make it all better. Make up for thinking she was doing all those terrible things. Murdering people and stealing their organs. Murdering my best friend. My ex-best friend. I was ready to nurse her back to health. And then I remembered who else might need looking after.

  ‘And what about . . . the boy? Is he . . . ?’

  The doctor tilted her head, like she hadn’t quite heard me. ‘Sorry, the boy?’

  ‘Yeah, can I see him too? To say goodbye.’ I owed him that at least.

  ‘There was no boy brought in. It was just your friend. Was someone else in that building?’

  ‘Um . . . oh no,’ I replied, as the lift binged and opened onto a long beige corridor. ‘I’ve probably got my wires crossed. It’s been a long night.’

  No SDB, huh? That didn’t add up. Nothing ever did in my stupid little brain.

  So what happened to Sexy Dead Boy?

  Two doors down, in a hospital bed, lay my best friend Zoe. She looked just terrible. Her face was a sweaty, sooty black and both her hands were bandaged up. Her eyes were closed.

  ‘She’s on a lot of painkillers so you might not get much sense out of her,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ll be just down the hall.’ And she gave me an awkward smile and left.

  I tiptoed over to the bed. ‘Zoe? Zoe? It’s me, Camille.’

  ‘I am awake, you know, there’s no need to creep around.’ Her voice was croaky and she coughed when she’d finished speaking. She opened her eyes and they were still huge, blue and starey like before, unmistakeably Zoe amid all the soot. ‘Might not get much sense out of her, huh,’ she scoffed. ‘I’d like to hear some sense coming out of her mouth once in a while instead of hearing what happened in the last instalment of Celebrity Scrapheap.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s good sometimes, that. They have to dig around in some really bad rubbish and finds things to make . . .’

  ‘I. Don’t. Care,’ she said tiredly but smiled at me at the same time.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I was so pleased to see her. I wanted to hug her and didn’t care if she wouldn’t hug back. I flung myself on her and she oomphed and laughed, coughing again. ‘Sorry,’ I said, pulling away. ‘I told the doctor you could stay with us. Until you’re better. I can help you.’

  She stared at me.

  ‘You can’t say no. She said you will need help because of your hands.’

  She still stared at me.

  ‘It won’t be a problem. My mum and dad will be cool. It’ll be fine; don’t worry. You could spend Christmas with us. Like . . . a sister or something, I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to open my stocking with a sister.’ I blushed, realising that had sounded better inside my brain where it probably should have stayed. Damn you, brain.

  ‘A sister?’ she said. ‘You’d really want me to stay?’

  ‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘Zoe, you’ve given me everything I ever wanted: a pet, a boyfriend – a true friend. I know we’re not alike and I’m not as clever as you . . .’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said. And she smiled and blinked away a little tear which I pretended not to see.

  I got a little over-excited. ‘We could even double-date if you got to like Damian. We could be, like, Z-amian and Cam-ouis.’

  ‘Steady on now.’ Cough cough.

  I dragged a chair to the side of the bed and stroked her bandaged hand, doing the windscreen-wiper thing cos people did that in hospitals. And when they wanted to show people how much they meant to them. I don’t think she could feel it through her bandages though.

  ‘Ow,’ she said, looking down at my stroking fingers.

  I took them away. ‘Oh sorry,’ I said, biting my lip. ‘So you’re pretty burned then? How are you feeling? How did you get out of the gym before it blew? What happened? Did you try and get the tank out first? Is that why you wouldn’t leave?’

  ‘Which question would you like me to answer first?’ she croaked with a cough.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I laughed. ‘How are you feeling?’

  She coughed again. ‘Burnt.’

  ‘How did you get out of the gym?’

  ‘I grabbed a crash mat from the store room and got the back doors open just in time. I rather think that crash mat saved my life.’

  ‘Where’s You-Know-Who?’

  The fire was in her eyes again; the same fire that had been there at the start, when she’d been describing how we would collect up all the pieces and put him together. And then she was smiling. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  I frowned. ‘What happened to him then? The doctor said there was no one else in the building. Did you get him out of the gym before it blew?’

  ‘I didn’t get him out, no. There was nothing left of him in that building.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  She stared across to the window. The sun had risen fully now and it was a clear blue sky outside. ‘He’s gone, Camille.’

  I frowned. ‘Gone where? You mean, he burned to d . . . ?’ How can something that was never alive burn to death? He must have burned to no-chance-of-life-ever, I guessed. It was my turn to stare at her. I remembered the photos of her mum and dad at her house. Another person leaving for her to deal with. Another death. A re-death of her father. The little girl would always be alone now. A bubble of sadness popped in my neck. ‘At least we tried. I can ask Louis if we could have some kind of funeral for him. A private one. Just us, yeah? We’ll arrange everything.’

  ‘Louis is . . . good for you, Camille,’ she said, with a yawn. ‘I knew it that day on the bus when I shouted at you. I knew how you felt about him before you did. You’re tailor-made for each other. I was just afraid. Of losing my friend.’

  I bit my lip. ‘Best friend,’ I said. ‘I’ll be a better friend to you than Sexy Dead Boy ever could have been. You’ll see. I’ll be your family now. Maybe it’s a good thing that it didn’t work.’

  ‘Oh it did work,’ she mumbled. She turned her head back towards me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It did work. He’s alive, Camille. Sexy Dead Boy is very much alive.’ Her grin went wide. She was making the exact opposite face to me.

  ‘What? What do you mean, he’s alive? You said he was dead.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I said there was nothing left of him in that building. While you three were running for the hills, Sexy Dead Boy sat bolt upright in the tank. It took him a time to get his bearings but once I’d untied the wire around his feet and hands, he was off. He stood. And then he walked. And then he ran. Through the back doors, across the playing fields and far away.’

  My chest hurt. My head throbbed. ‘Are you sure? You’re on a lot of painkillers, the doctor said . . .’

  ‘Yes, to reduce my pain, not addle my mind. I know what I saw. It worked, Camille. It actually worked!’ The tear that had been threatening to fall from her eye finally dropped onto the pillow beside her head.

  This was unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine Sexy Dead Boy up and about. Walking. Running. Breathing. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And I’m powerless to go out and look for him in this state. I want you to go and find him.’

  ‘Find him?’

  ‘Yes. Find him and help him. He will be confused and afraid and he shouldn’t be on his own at a time like this. I need you to find him and take him to my house and keep him there until I come out. You passed a locked room next to my Aunt Gwen’s room when you were snooping, do you remember?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, remembering that day I’d stolen SDB’s head from her house.

  ‘Outside that room is a framed anatomical drawing of a lung.
It’s an original Castilho sketch; he was the Da Vinci of his day. On the top left-hand corner is a key. This key will unlock the locked room. He can go in there. I used to lock my father in there sometimes. On bad days. It’s padded.’

  ‘You want me to go out on my own, find a mad walking dead bloke, go to your repossessed and probably locked house, break in, find the padded cell and lock him up?’

  ‘Yes. If you wouldn’t mind. And he’s not mad; he’s unnerved. Scared. Confused. But if you could just be there for him, until I’m well again. You can dress him in those clothes you bought. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

  ‘He’s not a doll,’ I said. ‘He’s a human being now. A living, breathing man. He could be capable of anything.’

  ‘With a brain like his I imagine he would be. You’re good at looking after people, Camille. This is where you really could shine for this experiment!’

  My mouth wouldn’t close. ‘But I don’t even know where he is.’

  ‘My guess is he’s gone down to the beach. Or the woods. Somewhere he once knew very well. He won’t have gone far. Take Louis with you if you’re concerned. He will help you, won’t he?’

  ‘What, help me find my naked would-be boyfriend, capture him and lock him in a padded room? Yeah, I should think so,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘I wouldn’t tell him that my father’s brain is alive though, not just yet. I’m not sure he’d quite understand.’

  ‘No, okay,’ I nodded, as the thought of Herbert West drifted back into my mind. And not just the thought that I didn’t have to write that English essay any more, now that college had burned down.

  One thing had uttered a nerve-shattering scream; another had risen violently, beaten us both to unconsciousness and run amuck . . .

  He was out there, Sexy Dead Boy. He was out there somewhere in the town. Doing goodness knows what. Maybe whooping in a treetop. Maybe strangling pensioners. And starkers too. How on earth was I meant to catch him? Pin him down? Drag him all the way up the steep streets of Clairmont Hill and up the gravel drive into Zoe’s house? Up the stairs? Into the padded room? I couldn’t even coax my Jack Russell puppy down from a tree.