by Paul Murray
How romantic, Denise says.
It’s like going to the toilet in reverse, Aifric says. It’s fucking sick, I don’t care.
He tried to talk to Lori at the graveyard but she ran away from him. She blocked his calls from her mobile and he hangs up whenever Dad picks up the house phone. At night she can feel him outside in the dark under the trees looking up at her window, and a part of her wants to go out to him in spite of everything. But Janine says, Stay away from him. She says he tried to talk to her too, after school one day. What did he say? I didn’t listen I just blanked him. And you should too, Lori. There’s something wrong with that guy, I’m serious.
And it’s true, what kind of psycho would do something like that? When he knew about the Plan, when she’d explained that it wasn’t real! But inside she knows why he did it, it was because he was jealous of her and Daniel. If only he hadn’t been jealous, if only he’d believed she just loved him! (Though then she thinks of Daniel’s hand on her breast…) And she thinks of him hanging around with all those weirdo knackers selling drugs, they give her the creeps, and of his horrible dad who had sex with a girl in sixth year and his mom wandering around the house stinking of drink and chain-smoking and listening to Lionel Richie, and Carl says he doesn’t care if they split up but that’s why he’s acting weird even for him, it’s got to be, and she knows what he really needs is someone to care for him?
Janine says, He’s a bad guy, Lori, I mean it. There’s something missing from him. He’s dangerous.
You don’t know him like I do, Lori says.
Janine thinks for a minute. Maybe not, she says. But I can still tell.
And she’s right, Lori knows it, he’s bad, he’s all fucked up, you can see it in the marks on his arms, and if her dad ever had a clue that a guy like him had gone near her she’d be sent off to boarding school in a split second because you can tell he’s never going to be all right or good, and he swears and he’s always in a bad mood and all he ever talked about was wanting to have sex with her like does he even really care about her but then she thinks of his teeth that are just the right amount of crooked and she thinks of his body crushing hers like a door into a world of mmmm and stuff she had never thought about before not really and now she can’t stop lying in bed and her mom came in I was thinking of you I had my eyes closed oh my god I’ve never done that before and when you press against a body did you think it could get so hot like your skin’s in flames and everything underneath like a volcano and even when you’re not touching me it’s like you are it’s like I can see the secret fire beneath everything even if we’re just standing outside McDonald’s or on the roof of Ed’s that time you were setting the paper planes alight and throwing them at the guy down on the ground I’d drunk a can my head was spinning I never laughed so much and then I stopped laughing and I lay my head down and looked at you and the black sky and I loved you and the air was full of burning full of sparks coming off the fiery planes full of candybursts of sugarflames of honey-fire of dreamruindisobey, I am never going home…
You were a million miles away, Mom says.
Thinking of your TV career, Dad says with a grin. Here is the news: Lori Wakeham is going to be famous!
It’s just a screen test, Daddy, she says, they might say no.
There’s no way they’ll say no. Look at you, you were born to be on television! I’ll tell you a secret – I always knew you were going to make it big.
Oh stop, Mom laughs, you’re embarrassing her!
Seriously, the day you were born, I looked at you and I thought, This girl’s got it. Star potential. Dad sits back and rests his hands behind his head. Something good may yet come out of all this, he says contentedly. And you deserve it too, after all you’ve been through.
She is back in her house. Mom and Dad are all excited because during the day the woman from the modelling agency called again, and a different woman from a different modelling agency, and a producer from a TV company who thinks she might be perfect for a new kids’ programme they’re making. Maybe Dad is right, maybe everything will work out after all. But tonight she just can’t concentrate on it.
She’s got this weird feeling in her stomach.
Dad is talking about some big deal going down at work, secret plans to take over another company.
‘Mouth closed when we eat, darling,’ Mom says. ‘No one’s going to let you on TV with a mouthful of chewed food.’
‘Sorry,’ Lori says.
It’s different to earlier. Then she just felt empty. This is a definite tingling, like something is alive down there.
Lilya comes in and clears the plates. Mom tells Dad about a new kind of tan you can have injected into your skin. ‘Maybe we should get Lori a salon session before her screen test…?’
And now worry beats into her head, she feels it strike her temples and cheeks with each fresh wave of blood and she bows her head so Mom and Dad won’t see. (What if the stuff leaks through her stomach into her womb?) (Don’t be a spa, it doesn’t work that way, you know it doesn’t!) (But what if it does?) (But Janine said it couldn’t happen just from a BJ.) (But Denise said it could.)
Oh fuck. Another crash of worry, now she feels sick and there are tears in her eyes and the Taste in her mouth and the tingling in her stomach gets stronger. Why is she only thinking of this now? Why didn’t she think of it before, you can get that magic pill that Janine got that time she was with Oliver Crotty?
‘It’s a kids’ show, they’re not going to want her waltzing in like she’s just arrived from St Tropez,’ Dad is saying. ‘They want the natural look. That’s what Lori’s got. Natural, fresh-faced, innocent.’
‘But I’m telling you, this is how they all look these days,’ Mom says. ‘What if she goes for the screen test and all the other girls have tans?’
Lori is trying to remember the sex talk they had in school and what they said about getting pregnant. But all she can remember are the diagrams of the Reproductive Organs, all that equipment secretly packed in there, coiled up on itself like a bomb in a suitcase, waiting, and those freaky horrible words, womb, uterine, fallopian, that sounded like the names of aliens not her own insides…
‘Well, let’s let her decide for herself,’ Mom says. ‘Darling?’
‘What?’ Lori says.
‘If you had the choice, would you rather be a model or a TV presenter? Modelling’s classier, I think.’
‘But TV has more exposure,’ Dad points out.
‘I don’t know.’ It’s all Lori can do to mumble.
‘I think it’s a waste of a girl with Lori’s looks to just plonk her on the television,’ Mom says.
In the average ejaculation there are roughly 350 million sperms, that is another thing she remembers. 350 million! It’s like an army, it’s like a whole country marching through her insides – taking her over, searching for the egg – and suddenly it’s like she can see them, in the great hollow cavern of her stomach, white slithery terrorists hiding in the shadows, waiting till nightfall to creep into other parts of her body, their tadpole-tails flickering almost too fast to see – oh God, stop or I’m going to –
And then Lilya comes in and sets a bowl down in front of Lori.
‘What in God’s name is this?’ she hears Dad ask from a long way away.
‘It’s tapioca pudding,’ Mom tells him. ‘Remember I was telling you, about retro desserts?’
‘Retro is right, I haven’t eaten this in twenty years.’ Dad digs his spoon into the white-grey mess and lifts it to his mouth.
‘It’s a bit runny…’
‘May I be excused?’ Lori says.
As soon as she’s left the room she starts to run. She makes it to the bathroom just in time. Hanging over the toilet bowl she hears Sister Benedict’s voice ring through her head, saying, ‘Though God can do all things, He cannot raise a virgin after she has fallen’ – she sees the nuns ringed around her, staring at her big belly, they are shaking their heads and whispering slut to each other…
And Mom not saying slut but thinking it, and Dad not saying anything just going red and then walking downstairs to the gym and doing bench presses for three hours, and the woman from the TV production company saying, I’m terribly sorry, no sluts. But she’s not a slut, she just wanted to make him like her, she just didn’t want him to think she was frigid or a lesbian! Her stomach is so sore, the muscles there are crying out, and she is crying too, the tears dripping down into the bowl like kids coming down a waterslide, and after she’s finished she can still feel the things in her stomach! They’re still there! And in the distance the intercom goes and she hears Mom and someone else go mumble mumble mumble and then Mom’s voice rings out, Lorelei!
Oh my God, who is it? She looks in the mirror, she is hideous, her eyes are all red and her cheeks too and her hair is straggly and there is snot everywhere – Lori! Mom calls again. Oh no, is it the producer? This is definitely God punishing her, though if he punishes her this way maybe he won’t make her pregnant – Just a second, she calls down, and scrubs her face in the sink so it looks like she’s just been washing not crying and blows her nose which some sick has got into and then puts on some lip gloss and goes downstairs.
But it’s not the producer or the woman from the agency. Instead it’s an extremely fat boy in a Seabrook uniform. Unless she’s imagining it, he’s giving her a really evil stare. In a cold Falcon Crest-type voice she says, Yes?
I have a message for you, goes the fat boy, and in that instant Lori feels her heart stop dead and freeze up like a ghost has wrapped its hands around it, even before the fat boy goes on, From Skippy. She looks down at Mom hoping she’ll say, I’m sorry, dear, we’re having dinner. But Mom has already gone back into the dining room.
Come upstairs, she says to him in a low voice.
Some fat people though not actually attractive can look cuddly or jolly. That’s not the kind of fat he is. As he climbs towards her he gasps for air. The stairs groan under his feet and when he reaches the top he has sweat on his forehead.
She leads him into her bedroom, where he peers around at everything like he’s never been in a girl’s room before, which is quite likely. Were you one of Daniel’s friends? she asks, slipping off her scrunchie and swinging out her lustrous black hair. I was his room-mate in school, he says, studying the pictures on her wall, the horses, BETHani and her boyfriend. It was so terrible, what happened to him, she says devoutly. He does not say anything to this, just releases a kind of a hiss, like steam from a pressure cooker. Suddenly she feels sick again. She wishes he would go. What was the message he wanted you to give to me?
He wanted me to tell you he loved you, the fat boy says. He says it levelly, icily, like a teacher telling you that you’ll never amount to anything. It was his last wish, the fat boy says.
I know that, she says.
Now he’s dead, the boy says.
Lori flushes. She doesn’t like that word being said in her room. She considers asking him to leave but another part of her is advising her to tread carefully, be diplomatic.
The boy has sunk into a chair and flops there motionlessly, staring at the floor. There is a black anger radiating from him.
Was there anything else? she says coldly, the way her mother speaks to shop assistants.
The boy doesn’t respond. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fat fists. Then in a low mean voice he says, It was you in that video.
Lori flinches. What? she says.
It was you on the doughnut shop roof. You and Carl.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lori says in a steely voice.
You pretended to love him, the boy goes on, so you and Carl could play this trick. And now he’s dead.
SHE DOES NOT LIKE THAT WORD BEING SAID, she does not like it, and in a flash she knows that Carl is outside and all she has to do is cry out and then the fat boy would know all about dead. But instead she says, Nothing you are saying makes any sense to me.
With that the fat boy erupts, his moon-like face screws into a horrible mask of hate, and he shouts, You lied to him! You kissed him, you made him think you cared about him, you used him!
That isn’t true! Lori finds her whole body is shaking, maybe vibrating in time with the fat boy, who is wobbling like a jelly made out of explosives, his face a big swollen blackcurrant. But then he becomes quite still. He stares into her eyes and he whispers, You are an evil person. You are a person who pretends to love people so you can control them. But you don’t care about anyone except yourself.
Lori wants to shout That isn’t true! again but she can’t because she is wondering if it is true and for a second the guilt-wave knocks her backwards. But then another wave rises up in her to meet it – a wave of anger, anger at Daniel for doing this to her, for making her feel this way, for weighing her down with death and making her carry it around with her for ever when she barely knew him! She barely knew him! And now jumping up she shouts back at the fat boy who has come into her house to do this to her, Daniel didn’t even know me! I saw him three times in my entire life! I didn’t ask him to write my name on the floor! I didn’t ask him to do any of that! Sparks are shooting from her, she is so sick of boys and all the things they want from her, endlessly endlessly wanting and pulling and draining her away – he didn’t know me, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know about his life, I didn’t know his mom was sick –
The toad’s little squinty eyes open in surprise. His mom? he says.
You didn’t know that? Lori’s dad had told her, he’d heard it from his friend the Seabrook Principal. But it looks like it’s news to toad boy. She’s dying, she says, how can you not know that? Weren’t you supposed to be his friend?
The toad boy looks at a loss.
How about the swimming team, did he tell you about that?
The swimming team?
How he wanted to quit but he couldn’t?
The toad boy frowns. Lori laughs, this is just too funny. Wow, some friend, she says. Do you actually know anything about him at all?
The toad doesn’t reply, he is totally confused because he’s come to punish her and take revenge on her and put the blame on her for what’s happened but now he’s finding out it might not be so simple as the video, it might be that some other things were bothering Daniel too that someone else might have been able to help him with, e.g. him fatso his so-called friend. You can see it sinking in, he falls back into the armchair with a look of shock crossing his face, but instead of wanting to make him feel better and say, Hey it’s OK, we’re in this together, and share the pain they’re both feeling between them instead she finds now the tables have turned she wants to finish him, she wants to pay him back for what he’s done, for making her feel evil and loveless, for making her feel rotten and black inside, when if he knew the first thing about her he’d know that she’s a lovely sweet person that everyone likes, and that Love is all she cares about and all she thinks about all day long, FYI Mr fat slob, Mr disgusting monster, Mr giant repulsive toad who nobody will ever want to kiss even if they’re blind, she wishes he was dead cold in a grave somewhere too, she would love to put him there, she would love to really hurt him, she would love to go over to him and scratch his face, scratch and scratch and dig and dig until there’s nothing left no face just red like a plate of spaghetti Bolognese after you’ve eaten all the spaghetti off it and she even gets up and takes a step towards him and emerging out of his reverie she sees his eyes widen in terror –
Everything OK in here? Mom’s face in the door.
Yes, thank you, Mom. The face that Lori presents back to her is sweet and composed.
Would your friend like some OJ? Or some Pepsi? Mom wonders.
No thank you, Mrs Wakeham, toad-thing says.
Actually he was just about to leave, Lori adds.
On cue, the fat boy rises from his chair. Mom nods and closes the door again. Lori and the fat boy stare at each other. He is trembling, in his eyes there is despair and not-understanding as far back as s
he can see. Goodbye, she says. He goes to the door and down the stairs. She hears him open the front door and shut it. Crossing over the landing she pushes back the curtain so she can see him in the driveway. He is standing there in the light of the security lamp, clutching his head as if he’s experiencing a tremendous pain. Maybe it’s the same pain that’s in her stomach. He stays there so long without moving that the security lamp switches off. She pulls the curtain closed in one quick motion and sinks onto the bed and cries until the duvet is soaked.
I did love him, she croaks through snot and tears to Lala the teddy bear, and as she says it she knows it’s true, and she knows that Carl knew it too even before she did and that’s why he did what he did. And she realizes that love doesn’t go in straight lines, it doesn’t care about right or wrong or about being a good person or even about making you happy; and she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In that same moment she feels herself grow older, like she’s finished a level in a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it’s a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she’s swallowed a ton weight…
And so she’s glad when her phone buzzes with a new message and she can stop thinking about it. When she checks, she finds that in fact she’s got messages from lots of people in the last hour – from Janine, from Denise, from KellyAnn, Shannan, Richard Dunstable (Seabrook), Graham Canning (St Mary’s) and Leo Coates (Gonzaga); she reads them one by one, replies, replies to the replies, time slipping by, phone buzzing, messages wrapping around her like a cocoon, protecting her from the thought of the toad-boy, of what is in her stomach, of everything else.
Obviously the text from Shannan she deletes without even reading. Lori and Janine have been ignoring Shannan ever since Lori found out Shannan told Kimberley Cross that Janine hates Lloyd Dalton even though she knows Kimberley’s boyfriend and Lloyd Dalton are best friends. It’s as she’s sending the message to the trash that she gets her idea. When something annoying or stupid or evil or all three like Shannan is in your life, the best thing to do is treat it like it doesn’t exist. So, that’s what she should do with the invaders in her stomach too! While they are living inside it, she will cut her stomach out of her life, just like she and Janine and Denise have cut out Shannan. She will act like it’s not there until she’s sure the problem has been solved.