Lobsters

by Lucy Ivison

  A pair of boxer shorts was lying just under the bed. It made me think of them in bed together, of Stella choosing him as her lobster, knowing Charlie didn’t really want her. Not enough. And now Pax didn’t either. Not enough.

  And then, as if thinking about her had made her appear, there she was.

  ‘Hey … I saw you dancing like a crazy bitch,’ she said. ‘Are you wasted? It’s only like eleven o’clock, you know?’

  ‘No, I’m just … emotional, I guess.’

  ‘About what? School being over? Going there today and seeing Miss Collins just made me frickin’ elated that I never have to go back.’

  ‘I don’t know. This whole summer has been really weird.’

  She came over and sat on the bed and crossed her legs.

  ‘You really liked Sam, didn’t you?’

  I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I really did.’

  She put her head against my shoulder. ‘Life sucks sometimes.’

  I nodded again. ‘Have you slept with Pax yet?’ I wanted to see what she would say.

  She answered in an excited whisper. ‘No, we were going to do it tonight, but he had to go home. I guess we’ll have to wait till I visit him in York. It’s going to be so awesome being able to see him and you in the same place.’

  Going to York was my thing. It wouldn’t be the same if Stella was right there in Freshers’ week; if I tried to be even a little bit different, she would know.

  I stared at a picture of us on her wall in a three-legged race aged twelve, and took a deep breath. ‘Do you think Pax is your lobster?’

  ‘He’s my lobster for now,’ she said.

  ‘I just … I don’t know … Do you really want to start uni with a boyfriend? Especially one who’s on the other side of the country?’ I tried to make it sound offhand but failed miserably. Her voice came out distant and cold as she moved away from me slightly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I dunno. I didn’t think you wanted a boyfriend …’ It sounded so lame.

  ‘It’s not a big deal … Why are you being weird?’

  ‘I’m not, I just … I really like Pax and you together … I just …’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I dunno … Pax …’

  ‘Just because Sam is a bastard doesn’t mean Pax is.’

  ‘Sam didn’t want me,’ I snapped. ‘That doesn’t make him a bastard.’

  ‘OK, so Sam can get off with another girl in front of your face and he’s a nice guy, and Pax treats me amazingly but you’ve got a problem with it?’

  In her world – where Sam was just a tortoise-munching sociopath and Pax and her were the perfect couple – she had a point.

  ‘I’m not saying Pax is a bad person,’ I said.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ She got up and stood in front of her dressing table, picking up lipsticks and checking what colour they were.

  ‘Just that … maybe he isn’t right for you.’

  She laughed a bit and shook her head. She still had her back to me but I could see her trembling slightly as she fiddled with a tiny pot of hand cream. ‘Oh right, I see. And who were you thinking he was right for exactly?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone who thinks they’re cleverer than everyone else and deeper than everyone just because they read fucking books about women killing themselves? Someone who moans on all the time about how ugly she is just so people like Tilly and Grace can kiss her arse? You knew you’d get three A’s but you made us all talk about it all summer. You make yourself out to be the victim all the time, but you’re not. You’re just boring, Hannah. Really boring. And that’s why Sam got off with Panda. That’s what Pax says.’

  My whole body was trembling.

  ‘What do you mean, “That’s what Pax says”?’

  Stella turned around to face me and clamped her hands to her hips. ‘Well, we were talking about why Sam would just have randomly gone off and pulled someone else, and Pax was like, “Hannah’s kind of boring. Maybe he just thought he’d have more fun with that Panda girl.”’

  I gripped the duvet tightly so my hands would stop shaking. Stella wasn’t finished.

  ‘Don’t fucking make out like I’m the bitch. You always do that. Go home and cry to your nan about how mean I am.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ I said coldly.

  Neither of us moved. Footsteps coming up the stairs made us both flinch and then Charlie walked in.

  ‘Hey, ladies. Stell, I was wondering where you’d got to.’ He smiled broadly. Neither of us responded so he smiled again, but this time more tentatively. ‘Everything all right?’

  Stella sighed as if she was bored. ‘Hannah’s just being a bit … weird.’

  I picked up the overnight bag I’d left in her room and started putting the make-up I’d taken out earlier back in.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, Charlie. I’m just being a bit weird. Weird like making your friend wander round Kavos in her pyjamas so you could get with some guy. Weird like thinking you are the only person who has the right to buy a dress. Weird like lying about your fucking virginity for no reason whatsoever except that you’re a controlling, psychotic bitch.’

  I’d never lost it like that before. She just stood there. Charlie whistled under his breath as if he’d just witnessed something a bit perplexing.

  ‘Not everyone in the world wants you, Stella. And even if they do, they wouldn’t if they knew what you were really like. Pax doesn’t even want you. He came to my house today and told me.’

  I saw her break. She looked almost like a child. I had destroyed her. I regretted it straight away.

  ‘You’re a fucking liar.’

  ‘I thought you two were like best friends?’ Charlie said, shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking at the door.

  ‘So did I,’ I said.

  ‘You’re jealous of me and you always will be.’ Stella didn’t look at me as she said it, but her voice was shaking.

  ‘Why don’t we go downstairs and get a drink? It’s a bit intense up here.’

  Charlie reached his hand out and Stella took it and then they were gone.

  Being in there felt wrong after that, but I didn’t want to leave.

  I can’t function like other people. I can’t do life. Everyone else seems to just be able to live. Have friends, look OK, have boys actually want to go out with them.

  I walked into her bathroom and let the door slam shut behind me. I pressed my face up against the cold of the tiles and looked at myself in the mirror. When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. I had nothing.

  Sam

  We got there late. Around 11 p.m. We could hear the party from three streets away. I don’t know how Stella’s neighbours let her get away with it. If I so much as strum a single chord on my acoustic guitar, Mrs Hodson from number 6 is banging on our front door within seconds.

  Me, Chris, Ben and Robin had been drinking Robin’s dad’s Coronas for three hours beforehand, so all of us were well on the way to being fucked. I needed to be. I couldn’t take seeing Hannah sober. I had no idea what was going to happen.

  Weirdly, the whole not-going-to-Cambridge thing had made me feel braver, too. If I had no future, why should I worry about the present? Regardless, I kept glancing into the car windows I passed, to make sure I looked OK.

  Chris rang the bell. A wall of noise hit us as the door opened and a bloke none of us had seen before stood on the threshold. He was brandishing a half empty whisky bottle and was wearing the lid of a flip-top bin on his head, like a (literally) rubbish Dalek.

  ‘Yes!’ he yelled at us. ‘More party people! Get the fuck inside!’

  He hugged all four of us in turn as we shuffled through the door. The party was absolutely heaving. Bodies blocked the stairs, the corridors and the doors to the front room. Everywhere you turned, someone was asking, ‘How did you do?’, ‘What did you get?’ or ‘So, what uni are you going to?’ I just prayed no one asked me.

  We squeezed ou
r way through towards the kitchen, passing that little cupboard under the stairs where I’d first told Robin and Ben about Hannah a few weeks back. It seemed like years ago.

  We poked our heads into the kitchen, but there was no sign of Hannah or Stella. Or Pax or Grace or Tilly, or anyone else we knew.

  ‘Stella must be here somewhere,’ mused Chris.

  ‘Yeah,’ Robin nodded. ‘Unless she’s so cool that she doesn’t even go to her own parties. Is that a thing? Do you think some people are so cool that they organize parties and don’t even turn up?’

  We all ignored Robin’s questions and shuffled our way out into the garden. It was mayhem; even busier than the first party. Four girls were lying flat on the trampoline while two drunk blokes bounced them up and down energetically. They shrieked with glee. There were clusters of people covering every single blade of grass. All you could hear was laughter and screaming and clinking glasses.

  I spotted Hannah’s mates Tilly and Grace sitting with a group of boys by the fence. They didn’t clock us. I didn’t want them to either. I wanted to see Hannah before I saw anyone else.

  We ducked back into the kitchen. There was still no sign of Hannah or Stella in there. Robin edged towards the fridge and pulled the door open. He yanked out four cans of Red Stripe.

  ‘We’ll just have a quick break for light refreshment.’

  He cracked his open and handed one each to me, Chris and Ben.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, smacking his lips and wiping the froth off his chin. ‘That’s better.’

  Two short, pretty girls with thick black eyeliner and punky, peroxided hair sidled over and barged in front of us. They were both scowling at Robin.

  ‘Oi!’ said one of them. ‘Those are our beers, man!’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, ladies,’ said Robin, in his plummiest accent. ‘But my friends and I have opened them now, so it’s probably best if we finish them too.’

  ‘You what, mate?’ snarled the other one.

  At this point, Chris cleared his throat behind them. They both turned round to look at him, beaming his brightest, toothiest, I-should-have-been-a-male-model-iest grin down at them. Instantly, their frowns dissolved into coquettish grins. They both began twirling clumps of their bleached hair round their fingers.

  ‘Oh no, sorry,’ giggled the first one, still melting in the heat of Chris’s smile. ‘I guess you guys can have them. Share and share alike, right?’

  ‘Thanks so much,’ said Chris. ‘That’s so kind of you guys.’

  ‘Yeah,’ added Robin. ‘Nice one. So, are you having a good night so far?’

  Notwithstanding the fact that the numbers didn’t add up (two of them, four of us), I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of chatting up angry punk girls in Stella’s kitchen. My mind was only on one thing.

  ‘I’m going to find Hannah,’ I said. I’m not sure any of them heard me. Chris was nodding politely as the first girl outlined how upset she was at getting an E in Sociology, while Robin and Ben began an in-depth dubstep discussion with the other one.

  I left them all to it and muscled my way through the kitchen and out into the corridor. I even checked the Harry Potter’s bedroom cupboard that we’d hot-boxed last time. There was nothing in there but a mop and some boxes. I thought I could still smell a faint odour of weed. I tiptoed my way up the staircase, dodging several drunk couples pulling. I crept up to the toilet – that same toilet where we’d first met – and tried the door. It swung open, and there, in tears, sitting under that intense, Ribena-coloured shower, was Hannah.

  She flinched as the door creaked back to reveal me standing on the threshold. Her eyes were swollen and damp, and her freckled cheeks were traffic light red. My first instinct was to rush over and throw my arms around her, but the look on her face stopped me.

  ‘Sorry’, I said. ‘I didn’t … I wouldn’t have come in if I thought you were in here.’

  She blinked slowly, releasing two fresh streams of tears down her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t have come at all, Sam. What are you even doing here?’

  Her voice was hard and angry.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just had to see you again,’ I said. ‘I was … I acted like a twat at the festival. I was drunk and stupid, and I got things twisted up in my head. I didn’t mean to say all that stuff. I don’t care if something happened between you and Pax.’

  She let out a loud, despairing cry, and hauled herself up to her feet.

  ‘Me and Pax!’ she yelled, her body quivering with rage. ‘Who gives a fuck about me and Pax? There never even was a “me and Pax”!’

  I stepped towards her, trying her to interrupt.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry, Han—’

  ‘No!’ she cut me off. ‘You can’t just come here and say sorry, and expect everything to just magically be all right.’

  ‘I don’t know what else to say,’ I shouted. ‘I told you I was drunk, I behaved like a twat! I feel horrible for the things I said.’

  ‘The things you said?’ she laughed, bitterly. ‘What about the things you did, Sam?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her I didn’t know what she meant, when an image of Panda drunkenly waving her phone at the sky outside the Mad Hatter’s Tent flashed into my head.

  ‘I saw you, Sam,’ she said, softly. ‘You went straight outside and pulled her. Like that whole day never happened.’

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. The thought of her standing there watching as I kissed Panda was unbearable. The words scrambled across my tongue, as I tried desperately to explain.

  ‘Hannah, I’m so sorry,’ I garbled, breathlessly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. I got it into my head that there was something between you and Pax. I’m such an idiot. All I wanted was you, and I fucked everything up.’

  ‘You really hurt me, Sam,’ she said. Her anger was gone; it was like she’d yelled herself empty. She just looked tired, standing there limply with her arms dangling down by her sides.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. I reached forward and pulled her towards me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I really am.’

  For a second, I held her hot, trembling body against mine. And then she broke away. The tears were working their way steadily down her cheeks and on to her chin.

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ she said.

  I wasn’t listening. All I could think about was holding her. I pulled her back into my arms, and kissed her, feeling the wet warmth of her cheeks against mine. She pulled away again, and stared right into my eyes, breathing heavily. Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me back. We stood there, under the shower nozzle, clinging to each other, gasping for air between kisses.

  That was until Hannah’s mate Grace came bursting through the bathroom door, red in the face and panting.

  Every time I’m getting somewhere with Hannah in this bathroom, that girl always has to come in and fuck it up.

  ‘Hannah!’ she yelled, barely even registering me. ‘There you are! You’ve got come downstairs now!’

  17

  Hannah

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Just come. Right now’

  ‘What’s happened Grace?’

  But she grabbed my arm and was dragging me. Her grip was painfully tight. I didn’t even have time to process what had just happened with Sam.

  ‘Grace. What the fuck?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  That was all she said. The music had been turned off and people were starting to leave. There was a circle of girls all focused on something. Grace pushed through, and Sam and I followed her.

  Stella looked impossibly small. Lying there she could have been a seven-year-old. Her head was banging against the floor violently. It was knocking so hard against the wood that the noise vibrated round the room. There was a trickle of sick coming out of her mouth but her movements were spraying it on to her top and around her face. Something came out of her nose and was running towards h
er eyes. She wasn’t there. Her whole body was writhing and moving but she wasn’t conscious. Her eyes were all white.

  ‘She’s having an epileptic fit.’

  Sam was beside me.

  ‘We need to call an ambulance.’

  Grace looked at me. ‘Charlie was here. He … they … I think he gave her … something.’

  ‘Fuck. Oh god.’ I knelt next to her. I was too scared to even touch her. ‘Where’s Charlie?’ I demanded.

  ‘Gone,’ Grace said.

  ‘Well, someone call him and ask him what the fuck he’s done to her!’

  Sam stepped forward and knelt beside me. I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Hannah, go and get a cushion from the sofa. Grace, call 999 now. Tell them she’s taken drugs but you don’t know what sort.’

  ‘It was coke. She told me.’ Tilly said it quietly. She was starting to cry.

  Sam spoke to the emergency services and followed the instructions, answering all their questions calmly. He told everyone to leave but they were going anyway. People don’t want their parents associating them with drugs, out-of-control house parties and ambulances.

  It was only when the paramedics came in and Sam stepped aside that I saw his hands were shaking.

  ‘Two people can come with us,’ said one of the paramedics.

  ‘We’ll go,’ Sam said, looking at me.

  In the ambulance they asked us questions. Her date of birth, her blood type, her allergies, and whether she had any pre-existing medical conditions. I knew everything about her. As much as I knew about myself.

  The whole way there she carried on convulsing. In the end they strapped her to the bed. It was barbaric. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I couldn’t look at it.

  ‘You all right, dear?’ the paramedic asked me. I just nodded.

  A & E wasn’t like it is in American films. Loads of people didn’t rush her into a room with this massive sense of urgency. They took her away and wheeled her behind a curtain. I caught glimpses of people behind other curtains. An old woman in a pink nightie looking confused. A little boy sitting up in bed playing on an iPad with his mum next to him.