by Kat Gordon
“Is she just an older version of you?”
“And then there’s my uncle, who turned up out of the blue, and pissed everyone off for some reason, then disappeared again. Then her and my dad – they don’t talk much, but they don’t fight either.”
“You have an interesting family,” Toby said.
“You mean weird.”
“I didn’t say that.”
I paused; I could feel my stomach knotting up at what I was thinking of saying. “Uncle Jack was definitely the highest point of weirdness. My dad really changed afterwards.”
“How so?”
“Him and my mum started fighting. I don’t remember them fighting before – that could have had something to do with her getting depressed. And he didn’t look after her at all, he got my aunt to do it. And he seemed really annoyed with me.”
“With you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would he be annoyed with you?”
“I dunno,” I said. “We don’t talk either. It got worse after my mum died.”
“What happened?”
“Well – he sent me to boarding school for one thing.”
“My parents sent me, too.”
“But I didn’t want to go, and it was only a week or two after it’d happened.” I swallowed, trying not to let any tears out. “And… I can’t explain it… He looks at me like he doesn’t know me. Just after the accident, I felt like… ” I suddenly realised exactly how he’d made me feel, something I hadn’t been able to admit even to myself. “I felt like he wished it was me who died.”
Toby was quiet for a moment. I could hear my breathing down the line. I tried to stifle it and made a sobbing sound instead.
“I’m so sorry, Tal,” he said eventually. “That sounds shit.” He paused again, and I finally got myself under control. “I’m sure he doesn’t feel like that.”
“Maybe not.”
“I wish I was there with you.”
I rubbed my cheek with the heel of my hand. “We kind of just leave each other alone now.”
“Do you mind?”
“I – ” I stopped. “We’ve never even talked about it. Other than the medical details – he never asked how I was. Not once.”
“Tallulah,” my grandmother called. “Are you still on the telephone?”
I took a deep breath. “Gotta go,” I said.
“Don’t.”
“I have to.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t mind telling you these things.”
“I don’t mind telling you things either.”
“See you in two days, then.”
Edith was hyper-excited about the camping trip, but the day before it was scheduled she got mumps from her younger brother and couldn’t come. “I hate him,” she moaned. “This was my best chance of getting with Toby.”
I made sympathetic noises, but I was secretly pleased about not having to share him. Then I felt guilty and wondered if I should tell Edith that I liked him – but nothing’s going to happen anyway, I told myself.
When the train pulled into Worthing platform, Toby was standing alone. He was carrying a backpack, his hat pulled down over his ears. Seeing him there without the others took me by surprise. I waited for a moment, scuffing my shoes before I went over.
“Hey,” he said, looking terrified.
“Hey yourself. Where’s everyone else?”
“Francis had to go visit his cousin – new baby or something,” he said. “And John’s on holiday with his folks.”
“So it’s just us two?”
“Yeah. Is that okay?”
My mouth was dry. “Sure, why not?”
The woods the boys had chosen were dense and tangled, with berries growing in splashes of red. They smelled like smoke and wet dog.
“What do you think of it?” Toby asked, gesturing around.
“It’s nice.”
He took my hand shyly, brought it up to his mouth and kissed it. “I wanted to show it to you,” he said. “It’s kind of an escape for me – from home and Danny, and my parents… ”
I squeezed his hand.
“Come on,” he said.
We walked until we got to a clearing that sloped down to a pond. Two lone ducks circled the edges of the water, calling mournfully to each other. The trees were tall enough to block out most of the light.
We worked silently, driving the pegs into the ground and stretching the material over the poles. Toby surveyed it when we’d finished. “Not bad for a girl.”
“Watch it.”
We threw our bags inside, then sat down facing each other on two nearby logs.
“Did you bring a sleeping bag?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I think it might be kind of moth-eaten.”
“You can share with me if you want?”
“Okay.” I could feel my stomach flutter. Play it cool.
“I’ve got another blanket too. Oh, and I brought these.” He reached into his pockets and brought out two squashed peanut-butter sandwiches, wrapped in cling-film.
“What do you guys do around here, anyway?” I asked, as we ate.
“Drink,” he said. “Talk about stuff. Sports mostly.”
“I’ll drink.”
Toby grinned. “I’ve got beers.” He rummaged around in his bag and pulled out two six-packs. I noticed again how strong and smooth his hands looked.
“If we keep them in the pond they’ll be colder,” he said.
“Okay.”
It took three beers each for the sun to go down. We sat, knees touching, playing poker with matches that I’d found in my jacket pocket.
“So a straight flush wins?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I laid down a jack, and a queen of diamonds, next to the ten, king and nine on the ground.
“You’re like a cards fiend,” Toby said, shaking his head.
“Beginner’s luck,” I said, trying to not grin from ear to ear.
“I’m going to win those matches back, you know that, right?”
“You can try.”
“How about winner gets both sleeping bags?”
We played a few more hands and Toby took nearly all the matches back off me. I finished my beer and lay back along the log, looking up at the silhouettes of the treetops and beyond, at all the warm, daylight colours that were pooling at the bottom of the sky. There was a loosening inside me, like everything I’d been able to talk to Toby about didn’t matter anymore – my father’s coldness, losing my mother, worrying about my grandmother. Maybe the woods could be an escape for me too.
I felt a sudden pang over Edith, ill at home. But I hadn’t done anything wrong, I reassured myself.
Toby went and fetched us more beers. He passed me one, brushing my hand with his fingertips, and sat beside me on my log.
“I’m cold already,” I said.
“Here, have my jacket.” He wrapped it around me, then huddled closer. “We should make a fire.”
“We should definitely not do that,” I said, hiccupping. “You’re drunk. I’m drunk.”
He put his arm around me, making me jump. “What do you wanna do, then?”
“I dunno,” I said. Starr’s words came back to me. I wondered if he’d done this with other girls, too, the arm pulling them closer as he worked up towards a kiss. I tried to take another swig. Maybe he wasn’t going to try to kiss me. Maybe I didn’t measure up to the others.
“Truth or dare?” he asked, after a moment or two of silence.
“Alright. You start.”
“Truth.”
“Is… it really true you pulled Melissa Albrecht?”
Melissa Albrecht was famous at our school for being bigger than most of the rugby boys.
“Yeah,” Toby said. “But I was wasted.”
“How was it?”
“Scary.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your turn.”
>
“Truth.”
“Okay.” Toby cracked open another can for himself. “What about you – kissed anyone you shouldn’t have?”
“Nope.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean nope,” I said. “I haven’t kissed anyone.” I took a long drink, trying to hide my flaming cheeks.
“What, like, ever?”
“I guess there was Tom at primary school,” I said. “But he slobbered all over me.”
“Wow, really?”
“Really.”
“How did that happen?”
“Isn’t it your turn again?”
“I can’t believe you’ve never kissed anyone.”
“Well I haven’t. I must be hideous – case solved.”
Toby grinned.
“What?”
“Remember the first time we sat with you guys, and you gave John a dirty look ’cos he was laughing at Edith? You kind of look like that now.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re gonna rip my head off.”
“Yeah, well… ”
“I like that I can’t impress you, which is kind of weird, I guess. But you’re actually kind of sweet to other people.” He twisted the ring-pull on his can backwards and forwards until it snapped off. “Like when you found a clump of hair in your cake in that stupid café, and you didn’t tell them because you thought the owner would be embarrassed.”
“And I’m not sweet to you?”
“Not always.” He took my hand in his, drawing circles with his finger on the back of my wrist, and up my arm. “You’ve got really soft hands.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Not really helping with the moment, are you?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Nice things.”
“Like what?”
“Like – you’re so sexy,” Toby said.
“You want me to tell you you’re sexy?”
“No you are. You’re the sexiest person I know.”
“Okay. I mean, thanks. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, it’s just… I think I’m in love with you,” he said.
I saw his mouth coming towards me; his breath smelled like peanuts. Then his lips were on mine, and I opened my mouth instinctively. My hands were hanging at my side, being useless, and I shifted on the log to find the right position. Toby pulled away, and looked at me with such a weird expression that I almost laughed.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“I dunno,” I said, feeling my cheeks flare up again. “I’ve never been kissed before, remember?”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I meant… do you want to keep on kissing?”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
We kissed again, and this time I tried to copy Toby’s movements, the way he bit me gently, or ran his tongue along the inside of my lip. He let out a kind of sigh, like he’d been holding himself together, and a tickling feeling ran up my spine and exploded at the base of my brain. I put my arms around him and dug my fingers in, enjoying the heat underneath his clothes, but I still didn’t feel close enough, and I pressed myself forwards until there was no space left between us and I was touching him with the whole length of my body. He was cupping his hands around the back of my head, holding me to him as the kisses got harder, almost painful, and I realised I’d wanted this since the moment he came over to my table and sat down next to me.
Toby pulled away again. “Fuck,” he said. “I want you.”
I caught my breath.
“Is that too fast?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. I crawled into the tent ahead of him, feeling the cool material of the sleeping bag beneath my hands in the dark, and the thump of my heart in my chest and my throat. Toby flicked on his torch and tied it to the zip dangling from the ceiling, so a small spotlight bobbed gently in the middle of the space. When he turned around on his knees I could see the bulge in his jeans. I reached out and put my hand against the swelling. I could feel the blood thundering through me. I shook my head to get rid of the buzz in my ears, and everything in front of me slid to one side, then returned to its original place.
He took my jumper off me, and my t-shirt, kissing me the whole time, his lips warm and dry. “I’m sorry about the other day,” he said, in between kisses. “I really want to take care of you, you know?”
“Can we not talk about that now?”
A picture of my mother appeared uninvited in my mind, then, even worse, Uncle Jack and my mother that day in the rose garden. I pulled back from Toby, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Hey,” I mumbled.
He was fumbling with the clasps on my bra, swearing under his breath. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I kept hearing Uncle Jack’s voice in my head: ‘not what nice girls do’, and the sound of my mother’s hand across his face. I closed my eyes and saw my mother at her birthday party now, white-faced and grieving, Uncle Jack vanished again.
“Stop,” I said. “Stop.”
“What’s wrong?” he said; he was still trying to unhook my bra.
I felt a bubble of panic rise inside me. “Fucking stop,” I said, twisting away and lashing out. My knuckles cracked against his nose and upper lip and I felt the jolt run up my arm to my shoulder. Toby grabbed at my wrist with one hand and brought the other up to his nose.
“Jesus,” he yelled. “What was that for? That fucking hurt.”
“Get off me.” I tried to wrench my wrist away, and it came dangerously close to his face again.
“What’s your fucking problem?”
“Don’t touch me.”
He sat and stared at me. “Why?”
“Why do I have to explain?”
He looked disgusted. “Everyone in my year laughs at me, you know. They say I’m your love-sick puppy.”
“I didn’t ask you to love me.”
“You don’t have to treat me like shit, either. If you like me too, you don’t have to hide it.”
“I don’t like you,” I said. “You follow me around like a fucking creep – I feel sorry for you, that’s all.”
Toby recoiled like I’d hit him again. “Fine,” he said. He sighed loudly. “We can go to sleep, if you want. Then tomorrow you can go home and you don’t have to see me again. How does that sound to you?”
“Why wait until tomorrow?”
“What?”
I grabbed my t-shirt and crawled towards the opening of the tent.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m your kid.”
“Don’t fucking act like one, then.”
“Fuck you, Toby.”
“That’s fine, then. Fuck off.”
I pulled my top on and walked into the woods, deliberately not putting my hands out to clear a path so by the time I stopped I was covered in scratches. I leant against a tree trunk and lit a cigarette, wrapping my free arm around myself and cupping my shoulder to try to stay warm. Half of me was frustrated that I hadn’t been able to go through with it, and the other half was furious with Toby for not understanding why I couldn’t. I pulled on the cigarette. If he loved me, then he’d come after me.
I finished two cigarettes, stamping them out in the roots of the tree. There were no stars out up beyond the tree-tops. My heart hurt.
“Fucking fuck you, then,” I said.
I waited for what felt like over an hour before I went back. I was shivering, and my body felt flushed with the cold. I crawled in. Toby was inside his sleeping bag, facing away from me. My sleeping bag was out. I rolled myself up inside it and faced the side of the tent, trying to hold my limbs tight so they stopped convulsing. I could hear Toby’s breathing nearby; after about another hour, it became more regular and I knew he was asleep.
The next morning we packed up without a word. Images from the night before kept swimming before me: Toby kissing me, Toby taking my top off, Toby seeing my body. We’d gone so quickly from that intimacy to this heavy silence that I felt ashamed i
t had happened at all. Every time I remembered the moment I’d punched him, my insides shrivelled in humiliation. In daylight, and hungover, I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t overreacted.
In London we walked into the underground together.
“Tal, I… ” Toby started.
“I’ve gotta go,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Yeah.” I felt my eyes well up. I looked down at the floor and willed the tears not to spill over. “I don’t think we should tell anyone about it.”
“Bye then,” he said, and left me at the barrier.
I spent the rest of the week clearing out my room. My father left me to it; he didn’t ask about the camping trip.
I phoned my grandmother every afternoon. Mr Tickles jumped onto my lap and pawed at me while I spoke to her, asking for affection. Toby called four or five times, but I couldn’t face him. The second-to-last time he left a short message, which I deleted, saying he wanted to talk. The last time, he sighed and then hung up.
I take my cup back to the boy on the till.
“Thanks,” he says, uncomfortably, and looks away. Maybe he thinks I’ll report him to my ‘fiancé’ if he talks to me. It’s pathetic that when I think of my imaginary fiancé, I think of Toby, isn’t it?
I go outside, breathing in the fresh air in big gulps. I check my phone again. Still nothing from Malkie.
“Hurry up,” I say out loud.
The lift on the way back up is packed: two nurses chatting, an elderly woman in a wheelchair and a porter to push it, and a family with young kids. They all get out before me, the kids dropping crisps everywhere as their mum tries to surreptitiously take the packets back.
Aunt Gillian and Aunt Vivienne are exactly where I left them, both looking off into the distance. Aunt Gillian is rubbing her right thumb back and forth over the fleshy bit between left thumb and left palm. Aunt Vivienne is tapping a pen against the magazine lying open on her lap. If ever I’ve seen two people trying to keep hold of their anxiety, this is it. I guess it’s been a long time since I was told to wait in here; anything could be happening right now.
“Hi,” I say.
They both start.
“A shrub or small tree,” Aunt Vivienne says. “Anagram of ‘camus’.”
“Sumac.”