“Yeah.” Jayden began to see where this was going.
“Not Jeff,” Scott said flatly, stroking his fingers over the back of Darren’s hand absently. “That was all me. I always wanted a baby brother, even if he had to be Jeff’s kid. When Mother said she was expecting a baby, I must have asked every day for the next five months if he was ready yet. I think I took ‘bun in the oven’ a bit literally.”
Jayden snorted, and a crooked smile washed briefly over Scott’s face.
“And okay I was a bit weirded out by what I got. I think I expected him to pop out with football boots on, ready to play with me. Took a bit longer. But he was my baby brother, right from the off. He was mine, not Jeff’s and Mother’s. It’s always been that way, even when he’s a pain in the arse, and trust me, he is.”
Jayden curled his fingers around Darren’s and squeezed, wishing—maybe hoping—that he could hear them.
“And we’re older now, and he doesn’t talk to me like he used to, but I’m not stupid. I know my little brother, Jayden, and I know he’s not been right for at least a few years now. He goes off inside his own head sometimes, and there’s been days…” Scott’s jaw worked and he trailed off. Jayden waited, hesitating.
“I…I know the days you mean,” he said carefully.
Scott nodded, pursing his lips. There was a suspicious sheen to his eyes. “Yeah,” he croaked. “My point is that since you showed up, those days…they’re less threatening. They’re there, but…he’s had somewhere to go that doesn’t involve that fucking violin and all the pressure Jeff heaps on him to be this perfect kid that doesn’t exist. So—yeah, you hurt him, I hurt you. But I get it. You help him, whether you’re doing it on purpose or not, and as long as you keep doing it, then we’re cool.”
Jayden nodded, squeezing Darren’s hand tightly. “I love him,” he said simply. “I mean…I know we’re only sixteen and there’ll be sixth form and university and everything, but…right now? Right now, I love him.”
Scott nodded, staring glassy-eyed at the slack, pale face on the thin hospital pillows, before starting and slipping his wallet out of his jacket. He pulled a crumpled photograph out of it and passed it over. “Here,” he said. “Keep it. It’s one of the best ones I got. Mother likes formal photos, and he always looks like a pissy bitch in those.”
Jayden unfolded it, smoothing out the crumpled edges, and instantly laughed. It was of the three of them: Scott, Darren, and Michelle, probably a couple of years earlier by the younger softness to Darren’s features and the wide-eyed astonishment of a much younger child on Michelle’s chubby face. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, Michelle obviously hoisted up on Darren’s hip, one hand stuffed in her mouth and her face smeared with pink glitter and probably cake. Scott was leaning over Darren’s other shoulder, barely fitting into the close-up with his half-siblings, crushing in close enough that his cheek was squashed against Darren’s uncomfortably.
“Misha’s birthday,” Scott said. “Last one before Nan died. You think Mother’s boring, you should have met Nan. She was insane, I swear. You had to wear pyjamas in her house. I’m not kidding, clothes were banned. And she threw this party for Misha and invited the whole playgroup. Mother went mad.”
Jayden could see why. Misha was a mess of pink glitter and birthday cake, huge blue eyes staring curiously at the camera. Darren and Scott had both been attacked (by Nan or by small girls) and their curls were clamped into a hundred little butterfly clips of various colours, also glittery (of course). Scott was grinning like a loon, the huge toothy smile nearly obscuring the bad paint job someone had done on his face. (It might have been a purple butterfly, but it was difficult to tell.) Darren was unpainted, but had been assaulted with the same pink glitter as Michelle, and was pulling a comical face of alarm, eyes wide, mouth askew, teeth showing on one side, asking why he was being subjected to so much insanity.
He looked shockingly beautiful, and Jayden clutched at the edges of the picture, biting his lip hard.
“Keep it,” Scott repeated. “You need that more than I do. Just…remind him to go a bit nuts now and then, okay?”
Jayden nodded, swallowing hard. “Thank you,” he croaked after a moment, and Scott shrugged a Darren-esque shrug.
“No problem,” he said. “He’s a great kid. He’s more than a violinist with crazy hair, and…I’m glad someone can see that.”
Jayden slipped his hand back into Darren’s and hoped desperately that he’d heard every word.
* * * *
It was cold.
It was cold, but there was a pleasant kind of haze around his thoughts, so he didn’t mind. He felt insulated. Cocooned. Kind of safe.
Except that with every blip, the haze was punctured like a bubble. Oh, it rebuilt itself in the quiet quickly enough, but it was punctured all the same, and it was jarring. Blip, peace. Blip, peace. Blip, peace.
It was annoying, actually.
The word formed in the darkness almost lazily, uncurling itself like a smug cat. Mop on the piano. And once the thought was there, it wouldn’t go away. Blip, blip, blip. It was bloody annoying. Maybe if he worked up the energy to ask, someone would turn it off, and then he could go back to sleep. Sleep was a good idea. Sleep was awesome.
Except it was cold. There was a breeze and a smell. Antiseptic or something. Air conditioning.
Beeping and antiseptic and cold.
Oh no. No, no, no. He’d been here before. And he hadn’t—had he?
The word blinked out, and he broke the haze to dredge up his memories. Maybe he had. He felt fuzzy enough, but…he had promised Jayden…
Where was Jayden?
The silver flashed in his memory, and he flinched. The moment he moved, his body introduced itself, and it wasn’t pleased. He ached. His hips especially ached like they were falling off his spine. One whole shoulder and most of his side burned, like a week-old scalding, and his left arm was completely numb. His tongue felt like it was swollen; his face felt gritty, and…
His wrist was warm.
His wrist was on his stomach, and it was warm because somebody else’s hand was there too, the fingers wrapped over his skin. He twitched his fingers experimentally; the other ones contracted lightly, and a murmur chased that bloody beeping away. Good. Murmuring was preferable to beeping. Keep talking.
The voice stopped, so he twitched again. Something scraped—could do without that, really—and then the murmuring was closer, and he began to pick out the rises and falls, the dropped consonants and the slurred pronunciation. The choppy mumble.
Scott.
Scott was here. He was in the hospital, and Scott was here, and his shoulder and his hips hurt, and he wanted a drink. He really, really wanted a drink. Maybe Scott would raid a vending machine for him?
He cracked open his eyes and instantly closed them. Fuck. Light. Far too much fucking light. He grumbled, and the voice paused in its murmuring.
“Darren? You with me?”
He tugged his wrist out of Scott’s hand; he let it go, and Darren covered his face clumsily. His arm felt shaky; his hand felt greasy and gross. He needed a shower. He could smell himself.
“Darren?” Scott coaxed, and then a shadow fell, and Darren’s hand was being coaxed away. He squinted up at Scott’s beaming face, shadowed with that stupid half-beard he kept growing, and scowled.
“T’rn the f’cking machine off,” he mumbled, and Scott laughed.
Chapter 30
Maybe this was how Darren felt when he was having a bad day, Jayden thought absently. It was Tuesday; he had just come out of his exam and interview for the St. John’s scholarship, and it had felt physically exhausting to drum up enough energy to talk to the two stern, suited teachers who had come to grill him. The maths paper had blurred into an almost unreadable mess, and he had. Not. Cared.
It wasn’t important. Darren was in the hospital, unconscious and unresponsive, maybe disabled if he even did wake up, and nothing else mattered. Jayden’s whole being revolved around
that, around Friday night and Sunday afternoon and the horrible, awful, terrible possibility that…
Suddenly, St. John’s and Cambridge seemed like a stupid, stupid dream. All he wanted now was Darren. He just wanted Darren back.
The school was quiet. The exam season was in full swing, Jayden’s first GCSE exam coming up next week, and he’d never felt less like studying. Charley was avoiding him, and now he cared even less about making it up to her, and Darren was missing his exams because he was in hospital and maybe he wasn’t going to come out because it had been days now, and…
“Hey!” A shoulder smashed into his, and he went careening sideways into the locker bank. “Watch where you’re going, lady-boy!”
Canning. Alone. He must have come out of the one o’clock exam; Jayden was mutely impressed Canning attended his exams. And he was too tired for this shit. He turned away.
“I’m talking to you!” Canning whirled him around by the shoulder, and Jayden frowned at him. For the first time, it occurred to him why Darren and Canning squaring off was tense: they were the same height.
Which meant Canning was the same height as Jayden too. And he hadn’t been, last time Jayden had really let himself notice, back when this had all started, when Canning had guessed he was gay. Canning had been big then.
Or Jayden had just been small.
“Leave me alone,” he snapped and shoved back.
Canning let go in pure surprise, and then a scowl morphed those ratty features. “Don’t you fucking touch me, queer,” he sneered. “Why the ugly face? Your boyfriend finally learn how to fuck a girl and dumped you?”
The dark, hot wash of anger in Jayden’s stomach was unfamiliar, and he clenched his fists. His heart was speeding up. There was a warm rush in his veins, like blood was running on the outside of his skin, and every muscle was bunching.
“Don’t fucking talk about my boyfriend again,” he snarled.
Canning snorted. “Don’t push me, Phillips, you know how well that ended last time.”
“Your pet monkey isn’t here,” Jayden retorted and shoved Canning hard in the chest. “I’m sick of your shit. You don’t talk about me like that and you don’t talk about my boyfriend like that and if you do…”
“You’ll what?”
Canning shoved him back, and Jayden snapped. He lashed out, and Canning’s face crunched under his knuckles with a wet popping sort of noise, and Jayden’s cheek exploded in fire, and he didn’t care. He hit Canning, again and again, with no finesse and no thought, just pure, white-hot fury boiling under his skin, a pan on the heat with the lid glued down. The pressure was too much, and he took it out on Canning’s twisted, leering face: the years of sneering and shoving, the coffees in his hair, the torn blazers and stolen clothes, the trashed lockers and ripped books…
The coward who’d stabbed Darren in the park for a phone and a wallet with twenty quid in it.
With every blow—given and taken—Jayden felt the anger and the impotent, useless hurt bleeding away. Canning wasn’t bigger than him. He wasn’t scary, he was pathetic. He was a weak, rat-faced bastard who needed a bigger kid to protect him, a kid too fucking stupid to see how useless Canning actually was. He’d been beaten by a private school kid. He’d been beaten by Jayden.
“STOP IT!” someone bellowed over the roaring in Jayden’s head, and then a pair of arms were around his waist and hoisting him into the air. He’d been crouched on the floor, Canning’s collar button popped off as Jayden’s fist was pulled again, and that shrewd little face was swollen and bleeding from the nose and a split lip.
Mrs. Slater, a bull troll of a PE teacher, dropped Jayden. “The headmaster’s office,” she boomed. “NOW!”
She had lungs the size of a football pitch—each—and the roar shocked the rest of the aggression out of Jayden’s system. His knuckles ached; his face actively hurt, and yet he felt both invincible and better. He felt calmer, more in control, more centred, even if Mrs. Slater was physically dragging them both to the office by their blazers.
It took twenty minutes for Mr. West to hear her report and call their parents. Jayden had been called to the office with Canning twice before, but had never actually been in trouble himself. And yet the thought didn’t faze him. Mum would be upset, Dad might yell at him, but he felt free. He’d punched Ben Canning in the mouth. More than once. He’d beaten him up, he’d defended himself and Darren against him (it still counted, even if Darren wasn’t there), and he wasn’t scared. They sat outside the office with Mrs. Slater, waiting for their parents to arrive, and there was nothing to be scared of in Canning’s swelling, bloodied face.
And then Dad arrived, and Jayden forgot all about Canning because…well. He’d been expecting Mum. And Mum would be upset, but she wouldn’t do much. Dad might.
They were invited into the office, Dad and Jayden and Canning and a skinny woman with greasy hair who was probably Mrs. Canning, and Mr. West was doing his serious face: the stern expression and the tented fingers in front of his chin.
“Mr. Phillips, I will cut to the chase,” he said briskly. “Our Head of Physical Education, Leanne Slater, caught your son and Benjamin Canning in a violent altercation.”
“A what?” Dad said.
“A fight, Mr. Phillips.”
“So who started it?” Dad asked.
“He did.”
“I didn’t!” Canning snarled.
“He shoved me into a locker and called me a lady-boy and a queer,” Jayden said evenly. “So I hit him.”
“Hitting him for name-calling…”
“It’s homophobic discrimination,” Jayden said carefully.
“…is hardly an appropriate reaction,” Mr. West spoke over him determinedly.
“Seems plenty appropriate to me,” Dad said, sitting forward and bracing his elbows on his knees, glowering at Mr. West under his eyebrows. “My wife and I have sat right here several times in the last few years demanding you do something about these kids bullying my son, that little shit included.”
“Mr. Phillips, please!”
“You haven’t done shit. And now my kid finally stands up for himself and smacks a kid who fucking deserves it, you’re going to punish my son?”
“Violence is not…”
“Seems acceptable when it’s the straight kids, but not when it’s the gay ones.”
Mr. West went white; Jayden stared at his father, stunned by both the defence and the genius of his approach. “Mr. Phillips, I assure you, my reaction is…”
“Entirely homophobic,” Dad said calmly. “You’re okay with bullying because it’s a gay kid who’s the victim. Now you can punish my son. I agree with you, they shouldn’t be fighting. But you’ve not once punished this kid for bullying him in the first place, so you go right ahead and you punish my son, and by the morning, I promise you that every pro-LGBT publication in the country is going to hear about the sick state of bullying in our state schools. And you’ll be the headmaster who knew everything and didn’t do shit. You got me, West?”
“I…”
“I’m sure my son’s boyfriend would be happy to talk to those publications with me, given that he’s seen the kind of shit this kid pulls.” Dad jerked his thumb at Canning. “He’s tangled with him a couple of times himself. You have a homophobic bully on your hands, and you’re doing nothing to sort it out, so you have a week to send me a very long letter of promises—and believe me, I’ll check it’s being done—about what you’re going to do to stop the bullying in this place, or I will talk.”
Jayden’s phone buzzed; Dad eyed him and Jayden bit his lip, shrugging.
“I want to hear from you by Monday morning,” Dad said finally, standing up. “If I don’t, you’ll hear from a whole bunch of equal rights nutters from the Stonewall people. C’mon, Jayden.”
Jayden was fumbling for the phone before the headmaster’s office door had even closed, and Dad sighed gustily.
“I swear you’re getting more like me the older you get,” he mumbl
ed and ruffled Jayden’s hair. “Don’t get me wrong, kiddo, you’d normally be in big trouble for this. I didn’t raise you to be violent, but I also didn’t raise you to take shit like Canning tries to dole out. If it takes hitting him to shut him up, then you done good.”
Jayden smiled, bumping Dad’s shoulder with his own as he finally rescued his phone from his trouser pocket and flipped it open.
And stopped.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, my God,” Jayden said, and it was like the sun bursting through a week-long thunderstorm. “We have to go to the hospital.”
From: Scott P., 14:54
Get 2 st annes, daz just swore @ me
* * * *
There was a flurry of movement in the ward when Jayden arrived, Dad dropping him off and giving him strict instructions to call once he was done visiting. The nurses were milling about it that kind of controlled panic that hospital staff did, and he hovered uncertainly until one, a tiny, redheaded woman with tattooed wrists, paused in her fluttering.
“Can I help you, dear?”
“Um, I’m here to see Darren Peace?”
“The bay at the end,” she chirped. “We moved him down to the standard unit this morning, and he’s gone and thanked us by swearing at his brother, poor dear.”
Jayden’s heart hiccupped, and he was gone before she finished talking, fleeing past the melee and ducking into the final bay with a mixture of trepidation and dizzying excitement. The curtains were all pulled back but one set, and he headed for them, hesitating stupidly and trying to think of a way to knock before carefully pulling them back with a finger and thumb.
Scott twisted to grin up at him, and Jayden slipped inside.
“He’s awake?” he asked hopefully.
“Sort of.” Scott beamed. His smile was huge, pushing away the tension that had been there since Friday night. “He’s in and out a bit. But I had to get you here before Jeff and Mother, they’d throw a fit if you tried coming back, and Darren’s not up to throwing a fit of his own yet. But you’ll get there, won’t you, bro?” he added, leaning back towards the bed and dropping his voice almost soothingly.
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