“It would so work on your mum.” Seven says.
Day forms the face of innocence that usually proceeds a wind-up.
“PsychoDollar though? What do you think? That face could be a bad business decision...like the music career.”
Day smuggles me a look. I won’t dignify him with a response.
“The lyrics weren’t that bad.” That just slipped out.
“Only you would know. Only you got beyond the vocals.”
Day is rummaging through my clothes recycling pile, he grasps the Careworn black fedora.
“What do you think?”
He’s got in on at a jaunty angle. Cliff wore it pulled low. People need to see my eyes.
“Cross-dresser! I knew there was a reason you hang out with girls.” I declare.
Seven opens my wardrobe, starts flipping through. Locates my dress of the moment.
“Want to slip this on?” She pulls it off the hanger, tosses it over Day’s head. “See how it feels?”
“Hey! That’s quite enough ladies.” Day emerges. “Actually, this feels lovely...” he’s stroking the antique gold fabric over his cheek.
“Speaking of freaks, True has acquired a stalker.”
Seven sits like she just delivered a punch-line to the room- notably not me. I’m deciding what’s the bare minimum I can get away with explaining, when she begins for me:
“It’s the new boy, he’s a Natural. He followed her up the High Street and sent her some creepy pictures of himself.”
The room erupts into excitement.
“Wait, wait, it wasn’t like that! He saw me going into the Health Centre. No, before that, he spoke to me in the Library because he needed help with the AGs. But he wouldn’t switch on his avatar.”
“Hang on. Is this the one who turned up in class as Dollar?” Day says.
“Keep up.” Seven says.
“Yeah. His name is Cliff.” I say.
“So what happened in the Library?” Story says.
“Nothing. I helped him and he went away.”
“But he actually refused to show his avatar?” Story says. “That’s scary.”
Seven has gone all upright, giving me the gaze of My Protector, the one who was right all along.
“Then I was in the Health Centre, and he sent me these three images, basically saying, I look like one of these people and now I’ve shown myself, can we be friends?”
“..And he was outside the whole time.” Seven adds.
Story’s SwimmingPool eyes serve only to increase my sense of losing control.
“Not only that, but one of the pictures was a Natural.” Seven says, rocking on my chair in triumph. You’d have thought the whole thing happened to her.
“Was it really gross?” Story says.
“It was an ancient 2D picture of some older guy- definitely not Cliff.”
“Why send it then?” Day actually puts his phone down. “Sounds like he’s a right creep.” (I wish he’d take that black fedora off.)
“By the time I came out of the Health Centre he’d gone. That’s the end.”
“No- but then I messaged him saying show your face right now,” Seven continues at unnecessarily volume. “So he sent exactly the same three pictures to me, which were- listen to this: an angry Natural, a cartoon rabbit, and Dollar as Rex Rayne.”
“Delusions of grandeur?” Day shrugs. “He believes he actually is Dollar?” He looks to me for the final judgment.
“So, who thinks True should meet up with him- somewhere dark and deserted?” Seven opens her palms, appealing for a vote.
Ignoring the chorus of warnings, I jump up from the bed to fumble frantically in the mountain of papers on my desk. The most important thing is that I locate the correct portrait.
“Here’s Cliff!” I announce.
I produce the cartoon of ‘Repulsive Cliff’ in all its fiendish glory. The eyebrows are hilarious. The nose is worse than I remember. Everybody laughs.
“Don’t we look perfect together!”
I hold the picture up next to my own face and let rip with the full Smile Blocker.
Seven takes a photo with her phone.
Chapter Sixteen
The next time I see Cliff in person I am standing in the middle of a field and Cliff is bleeding. He doesn’t start out like this.
It’s Friday Sports, the only lesson for which we are required to leave the house. A steady drizzle has started up, but it won’t be enough to call off our game of Rounders.
“So what’s it feel like?” Beijing says
Beijing looks like everybody else when they ask; she is scowling slightly, a neat crease between the eyes.
“Like a hole in my face.” I reply, for the umpteenth time.
“Not that. The Smile Blocker.”
“Tiny tugs.”
“What, like all the time?”
“It’s just the polite smiles that stick.”
Her eyes are MonaLisa, so last year, but they still work. It takes effort to look away.
“It can be kind of fun.” I add.
Beijing’s face does not agree; her face does not ‘get’ Maverick. Luckily it is time for the teams to swop over. My team has finished batting, so I seize the opportunity to do some seriously deep fielding and head off on my own. I’m getting as far away from home base as I can whilst still being seen to participate by MonkeyFace Adams, because I’ve answered enough questions out of concerned faces for a lifetime.
I’m now approaching the former school buildings on the edge of the field, beyond the high fence. They are now an industrial park; a steady stream of self-drive white vans pass in and out of what used to be the main school entrance, where the gate still displays the St Luke’s Secondary School logo. Virtual School only retained the sports field, with the running track and a smaller side entrance, because you can’t get fit via avatar.
It’s a shock when Cliff strolls in dressed in his school Sports kit like the rest of us: long black shorts and a crisp white t-shirt displaying the school badge. So they actually made him turn up. His scarf and fedora set him apart. He pauses at the far edge of the field, glancing about. Searching for a familiar face perhaps, so I examine the grass. He sets off along the running track. He moves like a long distance runner, loose-limbed at a controlled pace, oblivious to the rest of us. Are we all to be circled by the new boy? Monkeyface Adams makes no move to call him back and force him into the group.
I hear the thwack of the rounders bat against the ball, and watch it whizz off in the opposite direction, so I am safe to keep a casual eye on Cliff as he rounds the corner into the back straight. Soon he will pass directly behind me. I am hard to miss, standing out here in the centre of the field on my own. If he’s planning to acknowledge me in any way, I’d rather he got it over with out here, than after the game. When I’m sure he’s not watching I edge a little closer to the track.
The fifth time he passes close behind me I get this urge to do a stupid wave. I mean, hello? It’s just me here in a load of soggy grass, getting rained on. Boys are a different species! Real boys’ look far better in the Sports kit than their avatars do. Sometimes Seven, Story and I come here to check them out playing football after school. Seven rates them loudly. Monkeyface Adams obviously being your classic zero, your absolute base point, and Seven’s crush of the term scoring an eleven, or a twenty out of ten. She likes the ones with the brightest gazes that come her way, the latest features. I like the way they move, so differently from girls. Cliff would score well in that respect, from the neck down. I have been following his progress intensely since his arrival, playing the stalker. Let him see how that feels.
Come on Cliff, do something! I guess he’s decided to wait until the end of the lesson, so that if I blank him he can leave straight away. That’s what I would do if I were him. Everybody will be watching. Perhaps he’s still thinking of his opening line, something suitably clever. Here he comes again.
Another distant thwack, this one followed by intense pain
across my right cheek, a cross between a punch and a slap. The ball drops heavily at my feet and I hunch over and clutch at my stinging face. Across the field, Dali and Beijing are hunched over too, with laughter. My face grows redder still. I dispose of the ball fast, hurling it with all my might. It loops and finishes up in a roll and I turn to see Cliff’s long tense back disappearing up the tracks, the knot at the back of his head. I know he saw that.
Across the field I see MonkeyFace Adams do the gesture for Seven to put her phone away, right now. My phone beeps a message. Seven says:
Everybody’s saying you needed to get hit by that ball- for a dent in the other side of your face. Get rid of it!!!! S xxx
I stuff my phone back in my pocket and hold my face. Keep it together.
On the next strike the ball hits the ground and rolls straight out onto the running track as Cliff approaches. Surely he has seen the ball? Cliff flies over the still-moving ball without breaking his stride. His failure to return it has drawn attention; now the whole class sees the masked boy circling us, the boy running in a fedora. Everybody knows by now, of course they do- because Seven knows. The new boy is a Natural. I break into a light jog and retrieve the ball from the tracks. Beijing who is now bowling, runs forward to collect it.
Day is the last up to bat, he takes a swipe and misses. (If it isn’t happening onscreen it isn’t connecting with Day.) MonkeyFace Adams announces the final score, we might have won; Beijing does a little leap and some of the sporty types punch the air. Cliff is almost out of time, and I’m in no rush to join the others. My face is throbbing.
Friday Sports is over for another week, but only a couple of kids head straight off- even to get out of this steady rain. A line of vivid eyes are following the Natural as he moves steadily away from me, towards the finishing line. Seven breaks from the crowd and makes for the finishing line, Day follows. He whispers something to make her display straight whites just as Cliff comes into the final bend. About fifteen kids swarm over the finishing line but Cliff’s pace only slows in the final ten metres. Seven steps into his path with a determined face. Now he will be forced to act.
Day takes a playful swipe at the fedora from behind and Cliff ducks, clutching it to his scalp. Day says something in a normal voice that I can’t quite catch, even though I am closing in fast. Cliff stumbles; he rights himself, face-to-face with Seven on the other side of the finishing line. They exchange tense words. Cliff turns away and Seven goes for the fedora from behind- one last lunge, but this time Cliff is ready, he whips around and catches hold of her forearm.
“Hands off the hat.”
Seven jerks free, her face twisting into outrage. Cliff takes an obvious detour around Seven and into the group, all the kids follow him with their shining eyes. Nobody speaks. (I’m beginning to understand the scarf now, it buys the silence.) Cliff leads with his right shoulder taking care to avoid accidental contact with anyone. Suddenly Cliff is flat on his face so hard he has no time to break his fall. He scrambles up and the crowd parts as one, concealing the culprit. Cliff’s hands cup over where his nose should be and I wait transfixed, for the blood to come seeping through the fabric.
Chapter Seventeen
“True.”
I’m standing at Cliff’s front door. Cliff straightens, a double jerk. He has on a different scarf from earlier, this one is turquoise, with no blood. His eyes could be anything, I’m stuck at turquoise. Higher up the fedora is gone, and I find I can’t look at that missing part of him.
“Hang on.” Cliff says, and walks off.
I act equally casual by examining the white exterior of his house. Normal paint, a normal front door, glossy black with a confidently over-sized silver eighteen.
Cliff returns tugging the fedora into place. It isn’t much of a disguise. Somebody should tell him.
“I just came to check if you were okay.” I say all pre-rehearsed, to where his jaw-line should be.
“I guess,” he puts a hand on the back of his neck, exhales. “I’ve had to deal with all that crap before, at my last school.”
“At least you kept your hat.”
“Yeah.”
“I think Day was just curious y’know...”
“Day was alright. It was Seven.”
“She...she doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time. Motor-mouth.”
“Talking without thinking is a dangerous habit.”
I sense that I’m being processed all over again.
“Why are you friends with her, exactly?” Cliff says
I wish I’d thought this conversation through in advance, all the avenues. A sizeable shadow of someone moves across his front window. Are we being watched? Cliff remains on the doorstep where he’s taller than ever and I’m forced to confide in his school sports shirt, another soft surface concealing him.
“The thing with Seven is, she had a bad experience with this guy.” I’m aware of my voice going all perky. “She was fourteen, she got to messaging this guy, she used to pretend she was older. Stupid stuff. She was being an idiot. Anyway, he phoned her and it turned out he was a Nat..um, an Original-”
“That was the bad experience?” Cliff’s voice is abnormally steady.
“He turned out to be some sort of creepy pervert! You know, saying weird things, messaging her all the time. He wouldn’t leave her alone. He started hanging around outside her house and in the end her parents had to call the police.”
I’m staring at the hand on his hip, the sunken fingernails; how come that story sounded so different out of Seven’s mouth and why did I even come here? Seven still has nightmares about the man with the chequered scarf, the moment he ripped it away.
“Seven thinks scarves are for hiding your intentions.” I mutter.
“On the basis of one dodgy guy?”
One man using his face all wrong. I dart across the surface of Cliff’s eyes, get nothing, no invitation to expand on my story. His shoulders are squared at me.
“Kind of puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it?” Cliff continues, “having to justify your friend’s behaviour to a Natural.”
“Not justify.”
How has it become my fault that Seven got properly stalked? Cliff frowns, framed by the rim of the hat. ‘Repulsive Cliff’ with jagged eyebrows.
“Look, what I’m trying to say is, her reasoning gets all twisted up,” I continue carefully. “That’s why it happened today...whatever it was she said...”
“She told me to show myself; I declined.”
The open doorway gapes behind him, a dimly-lit hall and a pale side door that clicks quietly shut. I totally feel sorry for him, the whole situation with his face and his deluded parents and everything, but none of this is my fault.
“You’re not like her.” Cliff adds.
I take an urgent look around us, and find that the houses on his side of the street are the usual late summer colours, harmonious, no sign of a street show-off. A richly layered aroma of garlic and herbs comes from his house to scent the air. Proper home-cooking reminds me of Dad.
“Come to the cinema with me on Friday.” Cliff says in a rush. “Rex Rayne: The Cure.”
“I can’t.”
Curse that hidden face, I didn’t see that coming. He stuffs his fists in his jeans pockets.
“Because of this?” Cliff points at the scarf.
He’s staring again, making this harder.
“I’m going already- with someone else.”
“The lovely Seven, I assume?”
I make non-committal noises. Cliff steps back into his hallway and grips the edge of the door. It’s over at last. My ordeal.
“Go on, I dare you...” he adds. “You’ve got to be a tiny bit curious, right?”
He gestures theatrically, sweeping a hand from his face right down his body. I follow the hand. Struggle to get my own face under control. I swear he’s laughing at me under there. My reply tumbles out:
“Maybe okay yes but we have to go tomorrow not Friday because th
e film opens tomorrow and I have to warn you that I am probably in love with Dollar.”
“Probably in love?” The soft voice makes its return.
Suddenly there are other people in the street: small boys shouting a battle scene, two cars pass in rapid succession, birds sail overhead and the day accelerates like we stepped into a Rex Rayne action movie. Accelerating towards tomorrow night. A film means two hours in the dark with Cliff. What have I done?
“I’m in love with him too!” A male voice booms from the house. “I’ll be watching from this very sofa tomorrow, Special Preview release time is 8pm girls and boys!”
Cliff’s twists around, the pale inner door is now ajar, about the width of a face. But there is nothing to see, only that voice that carries up the street.
“True doesn’t want to be distracted by your ugly mug, Dad. We’re going out.”
Chapter Eighteen
You and your bad decisions. Rex Rayne’s best line runs through my head, on repeat.
Because Cliff’s twenty minutes late, I’m nearly at the front of the queue and I don’t know whether to buy the tickets and trust he’ll turn up. The girl in front of me swivels and here I am, so obviously on my own, so I stare her out with an added flash of the Smile Blocker. She’s hanging off the arm of some guy. A lantern jaw beside a tapered chin. The girl has the jaw, strong face-strong mind, the boy is delicate, IntuitiveCreative. Turned away they display the usual neat profiles, advancing and retreating features, perfectly weighted both individually and as a pair. Nothing to hold my interest, so I tune into the animated gossip behind me- it’s impossible not to- sounds like five girls minimum on Dollar’s shock announcement: How far will he go? Just one feature- like the Mavericks. I bet the eyes. Opinions barked like a pack of dogs released into the fresh air.
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