Flick: A Novel

by Abigail Tarttelin

  I run my hands through my hair trying not to blow up at her. None of this is my fault, I think. I hold my palm out, trying to reason with her. ‘I’ve just told you he’ll fucking kill me if I don’t do it, Rainbow. How stupid can you be to not realise that?’

  Bow looks totally shocked and I’m not sure why. She shakes her head at me in something that seems to be disbelief and goes and sits at her desk on a chair covered with cushions. She lifts one up and picks at the sequins on it. She starts to speak quietly. ‘Don’t call me stupid. I mean it. My parents don’t ever call each other names. Name-calling and being nasty just breaks thing and crosses lines you can’t uncross.’

  ‘What are you fucking talking about?’

  ‘Don’t SWEAR at me! I’m saying I don’t want to be with someone who would call me names and be horrible to me because then you’ll start thinking it’s okay to be nasty and it’ll just get worse and worse and worse and that’s EXACTLY THE WAY FAMILIES BREAK UP AND KIDS END UP ALONE.’ She shouts these last few words in this aching, hollow voice that doesn’t even seem to come from the Rainbow I know, but from somewhere else deeper inside her, somewhere she hasn’t let me go, and she sinks her head down to her pillow and grips it tightly, curled into a ball like a hedgehog with its spikes out, unmoving.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m stunned. I’d say I was lost for words, but I’m not really the kind of person to ever not have anything to say. I just don’t know how to deal with her, how to make it better. Options fail me again. I go to the first thing I can think of, stunned. ‘You said you were fine about the adoption. You said you loved your mums.’

  ‘Of course I love Aisha and Lucy!’ An insistent mumble from the chair. ‘And I am fine about it, but I’m fine about it because I have to be, Will. That’s an example of something where the person involved has no choice. It happened and I have to live with it. But this hasn’t happened and you don’t have to do it.’

  ‘What is it, Rainbow? What happened?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘I’m not. I wanna know. Tell me.’

  ‘It’s none of your business. You’re selfish to do drugs, Flick, you don’t know what it would do to your mum if she found out. Or your kids, or the love of your life if you one day had a relapse and they found you dead somewhere, because you OD’d or some cokehead thought you owed him something. You never think of all the people you could hurt. And you don’t think about me. It physically hurts to think of your body going through the things you put it through. Your pink lungs turning black. You’re just a child, Flick, we’re just kids. You don’t know, but it taints everything about you and every connection you have with other people for the rest of your life. And more than anything I just feel so sorry for you that you think it’s okay. And so angry with you.’ She lifts her head marginally from her lap and wipes her tears. ‘I’m so angry with you.’

  Silence. I walk over to my clothes and pull on my jeans. ‘You know what? If it’s none of my business why your real parents couldn’t take care of you then this is none of your business.’ I sling my bag on my back. ‘You don’t know anything about this stuff, Rainbow, so just stay out of it.’

  ‘GOD!’ She explodes viciously, suddenly throwing her head up and shouting at me crazily. ‘Eight thousand years into civilisation, thousands of fucking years of getting high, and none of you fucking drugged-up fuckers have figured out that you stick your fingers in the fire and you get them burnt. You’re like fucking animals. I haven’t had to poison my veins with that shit to know that it’s fucking bad for you.’

  ‘Woh, what THE FUCK? What’s WRONG with you?’ I stare at her incredulously. She’s lost her mind. What the hell? ‘I’m leaving.’ I pick up my jacket and open her door and she runs to it and shoves it shut and pushes me into the wall so my head cracks on it.

  ‘THEY WERE FUCKING JUNKIES LIKE YOU, ALL RIGHT? MY REAL PARENTS WERE JUNKIES JUST LIKE YOU.’ She freezes, immobilized by her own words, and puts her hands over her eyes.

  We stand in silence for what might be five minutes. Then I move slowly towards her and reach for her.

  ‘No. No. Get out please. I want you to get out of my house.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t want a stupid junkie in my house, FUCK OFF.’

  ‘Fine.’ I open the door again. ‘I will fuck off then.’

  I open the door and she lets out a coarse sob. ‘Flick!’

  ‘I didn’t know that about your parents,’ I pause at her door. ‘But I’m not being called stupid, I’m not being called a junkie, I’ve never even done heroin, and I’m not being compared to an animal …’ I wipe away tears feeling strangely embarrassed by her admission. I watch her tiny solid form and try to imagine how lonely it must feel to be connected to no one. ‘Rainbow. I’m not going going, I’m just … going for now. I love you,’ I mutter. Then I leave her, standing in her purple jammies and slipper socks by her overflowing bookcases and half-finished paintings, a small, unmoving, lonely figure with two hands pressed childishly over a grieving, tear-soaked face.

  4

  Funk and Other Genres

  I take myself out for a walk. I reflect badly when I’m in a funk. I’m still in shock, but I’m also pissed off at being accused of so many things. The new information about Rainbow’s adoption has sent me reeling and my brain is busy slotting it into our mutual history, looking for clues to it in how she acts, adjusting the Rainbow of the last four months to fit the Rainbow I know now. She’s a different person now. But even the fact of what her parents are doesn’t change how lovely she has been to me, or this blamelessness and innocence and the childlike quality she radiates, instinctually, as a person, or how I feel about her.

  I power march for six blocks before I’m out of breath and have to slow down. I come to a stop at a building I recognise that meant something last year, though I can’t remember what. A Cherokee jeep crawls past me and the woman in it looks at my face before accelerating away. Not really a compliment when people do that. Was someone killed in the house last year? No, bit severe. Rainbow’s face flashes before me. Wait, it was a girl who lived there, a few years older than me. She committed suicide by throwing herself onto the tracks next to Green Lane. That was it. I crack my fingers, glad to be confident of something.

  ‘Yeah, fucking right.’

  A passing old biddy and her dog hear me and I realise this is perhaps a bit inappropriate. I blush red in patches, square my shoulders as if to look cool and mumble, ‘Sorry’.

  I bite my tongue for no apparent reason. It hurts. What did she mean, feel sorry for me? That I’m an animal? Does she pity me? Does she think I’m just like them? I guess that’s how she sees me now. After the fight … well, it doesn’t look too good for Rainbow and Flick, and this thought makes me feel ashamed and ridiculous. How could I have let something so good get so fucked up? It was the dealing that started it. But I know I have no choice and she doesn’t understand ’cause she doesn’t know what Fez could do. I can’t shake the feeling that this is not entirely my fault. I plead crossed wires, your honour, breakdown in communication. We were speaking different languages, because we grew up in different places with different people and different values. Told you. It’s like a fucking religion. Your honour, please see my comparison of stoners and religious fanatics. I am also the esteemed author of the Stoner’s Bible (™ and © William S. Flicker 2009). The text will tell you where I went wrong. Not knowing the Art of the Right Amount, ironically.

  I kick the kerb and stare out towards the train station wondering where I could escape to. Fuck. Fuck shit fuck. Now the pressure is on from Fez and from Rainbow and I’m closing my eyes so I can’t see all the shit that’s about to happen, but it’s racing towards me like fate, like a story written and set in stone by somebody else a long time ago. By politicians and educators and the feudal system and capitalism and I don’t know what. By drug-pushers and dealers and people on the other side of the world in Colombia, wondering how they could make a b
it of money. By my friends and their friends and their older brothers and sisters who didn’t want to fuck up alone, who didn’t mind who they took down with them as long as they weren’t alone doing it. Maybe I should never have gone out with Rainbow. Maybe I knew all along that what I really wanted to do was drag her down with me.

  Since everything’s falling apart anyway I might as well go get stoned and get the bastard deal over with, ’cause that’s what I bloody feel like doing, and I guess that’s who I am. Just a little shit who made the wrong choices. I realise with a funny tightening feeling in my jaw that the voice in my head sounds like my dad’s. Shudder. Maybe what I really am is a little shit who didn’t have choices. Jury is out on that one. My throat tastes weird. It hurts to swallow. Maybe I’m sick.

  The voice in my head rolls its metaphysical eyes again (seems to be habit these days). Flick, it says disdainfully, you can’t bunk off the deal or beg off sorting out your problems with your girlfriend because you’re sick. What you going to do? Give both Rainbow and Fez a note from your mum? This isn’t primary school.

  I can’t order my thoughts so I sit down on a low brick wall and have a bit of a think. I watch the gulls flying overhead. The sky’s light grey, the salt from the sea comes in on the breeze. It’s that good kind of summery cold.

  Right. I love Rainbow. Yes. I do. And I’m pissed off that she said those things, but I could understand why. She was upset about her adoption and about me dealing and fair enough, because I don’t want me to deal either. And it is taking it too far, I agree with her. But it’s not something I can solve now. I’ve got to give her some time, give me some time to figure out what to say. Sort out all the Fez-related crap. Get the deal done with, so I can stop feeling like there’s this black cloud over me, and then maybe I’d stop sniping at Rainbow so much. Maybe I could stop using and she would love me again. Or if I could just keep whatever I personally took on the low, say Fridays at Ash’s, then it would never enter the me-and-Rainbow zone and we wouldn’t have a problem.

  Fucking hell. A year ago I felt like she did about everything. I’m not like the others. I don’t come from a terrible home, there’s a lot of love in it. But then maybe nobody else comes from a terrible home either and it just looks to me like they do ’cause I only see them in public. Even Kyle has his tea with his mam at the table. And we do too. My mam and dad and me. Well, we have it in front of the telly but it’s the same thing. Family time. But then it’s a stupid idea that the breakdown of the nuclear family is the root cause of all our problems, ’cause look at Rainbow’s family. They’re not ‘normal’ as such and she’s pretty perfect, even about the adoption, ’cause she just gets on with life. She is so fucking lovely. I guess maybe we just have to accept at some point that our problems are our own fault and start dealing with them. That’s what’s wrong with the media and politics these days. Everyone spends so much time laying blame they never solve the problem. I fucking hate Rupert Murdoch.

  So I never wanted to be a druggie but once you’re there it’s so hard to stop when you know you could be having a good time instead of a shit one. Life is so much funnier when you’re a stoner. Life without all the shit we take is way too fucking serious. If I was fucked up right now, I think, I wouldn’t be this bothered about what Rainbow said about me being a junkie. I would laugh at her.

  But then isn’t that weird? That I wouldn’t be that bothered? Is that giving up on life? ‘But what other fucking options do I have?’ I say out loud. If I stay basically clean and that means ‘embracing life’, well how the fuck do I do that? I’m not going to go to uni, ’cause even if I could get in, me mam needs someone to earn the money and to help her and me dad in their old age and that starts pretty soon. I want to retire me mam. She’s worked so hard and she never buys anything for herself, never. So that means I’m stuck in Osford, or maybe I’ll move to Langrick with the wage from my menial tertiary-level job. And then how do you embrace life in Langrick? Bingo? I guess I could get gym membership if I didn’t spend so much on pot.

  Right, I decide. I’m sick of waiting. We do it now or not at all. Me and Kyle and we’ll get a few of the boys together. You can run into some really hard gangs when you do this kind of thing and I don’t fancy it being just the two of us. Now the thing is, who would be able, and would want to, buy it off us? This is like a fucking property chain. Only where are the Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer of our world? The only person I can think of who would be able to get rid of it is Grant, who works at our school, probably the guy Kyle was alluding to when I saw him at Fez’s. Shouldn’t be too tricky to get to him as I know he’s there at the moment doing refurbishments. The school got a lot of money to be done up recently so everything’s changing just in time for me to be gone and I do wonder occasionally if they did that on purpose. Only what’s changing is that the buildings will be shiny and new and we’ll have better computers. The teachers remain the same. Which I think is pretty ridiculous, considering people can go to school in bleakest poverty and mud huts in Africa and still become lawyers. Less chance of it happening, but what I’m saying is that it’s the teaching and the learning that counts and not where you do it. But sod it, we always complain everything in our school is so shite anyway. For instance, the walls in our school are so thin that back when Kyle was there he was swinging on the hangers in the changing rooms and put both his feet in the wall up to the knee. True story.

  I drag my reluctant brain back to the topic in hand. Getting the deal done. Over with, so me and Rainbow stand a chance and so I have something to say to her when she accuses me of dealing. Something along the lines of ‘I’m not’ should do it.

  My phone rings in my pocket, eliciting a pleasing tingle. I pull it out and look down at the screen. It’s Kyle.

  All right then, I think. No time like the present.

  5

  Let’s Do This Then

  Grant is spraying his tag on the back wall of the science labs when Kyle, Dildo, Danny and myself show up the next day. I asked Mike and Jamie to come along, but both of them made excuses, giving me sideways looks that said they weren’t into the new me, into what I was doing. ‘I have no fucking choice,’ I told Mike, giving him the finger as he smirked and walked off, schoolbooks under his arm.

  Grant did his GCSEs five years ago. The only subject he passed was Art, so now he does a sideline in graffiti while pursuing his other career as the school’s assistant caretaker. Twelve years of education, and he’s assistant caretaker. And people wonder why I don’t bother.

  ‘Hey, our lads,’ he greets us as we approach, Blues Brothers-like, from the field. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Straitjackets, Grant,’ Kyle shirks his shoulders, gangster-stylee, having got it into his head that he’s George Jung. ‘Straitjackets and a lack of eyesight.’

  I try not to look confused.

  Grant nods knowingly. ‘Oh aye.’

  ‘Got some going for a song.’

  ‘Yeah? What kind of song?’

  ‘Fairly high-pitched, but for enjoyment of epic proportions.’

  Grant laughs loudly, leaving a long and careful silence in the air as he drops his spray can and turns to look at us. Dildo, Danny and me, the team, make a shaky supporting wall behind Kyle, looking down uncomfortably at the ground and exchanging quick and awkward glances. Kyle stands at the front, his nervous energy shaking his knee, for once completely focused on the task in hand. He always did fancy himself a main player. Now I reckon he sees his chance to bag a lead role, to be the godfather, James Dean, the mafia boss with the million-dollar deal. The truth is, he’s closer to Sickboy with his lucky break. And it’s plainly visible to Grant.

  ‘You lads aren’t the first to play this game y’know … going to get your fingers burnt.’ He surveys his work and smiles to himself. ‘I’m not dealing that type of hand any more, Kyle. Girlfriend’s having a baby, parents getting old …’ I’m thinking about congratulating Grant on his kid when our eyes meet. It’s for just a second, but I see him a
ccept me as one of this group, part of the circuit. The thing I register on his face, more than anything, is the lack of surprise. Last year I wouldn’t have been here. This year, I’m one of the guys. I look away, blindsided by some strange emotion in me, that I know I felt earlier, with Rainbow. Confusion, tinged with anger, tinged with shame. Fuck him. Grant picks up a can of paint and looks thoughtful. ‘Time to grow up, you know.’

  Kyle shrugs gamely and, as he turns and we follow suit, let’s out a cool murmur: ‘Oh aye then. Hope that goes well for you, Grant.’

  ‘Looking forward to it, Kyle. Looking forward to it.’

  We leave him happily adding black to the edges of a neon man-size ‘G’ and stroll, hands in pockets, through the school grounds towards the centre of town.

  ‘What the fuck are we gonna do now?’ Any reply to Dildo’s frustrated outburst is abruptly interrupted by Miss P, the Geography teacher, who most of the guys hate ’cause she’s the fittest of the teachers but she won’t flirt with us – the spoil-sport. Kyle says it’s ’cause redheads are tricky. I say I feel sorry for her, with all of us drooling over her. Imagine the amount of wank wasted on poor Miss P. Imagine her, having to imagine it. Anyway, she’s walking our way, carrying some papers and heading for her car, and shrieking at us from across the car park.

  ‘LADS!’ She comes to a rest just in front of us, hand on her hip. ‘What are you up to?’