‘Yeah, him.’ Rose fidgets, like she has somewhere to be.
‘So where were you?’
‘Around,’ she says. It’s warm now, and her fur coat is slung over her shoulder, her shades low down on her nose. A sharp spike of anger pushes its way through my chest and I do my best to ignore it. Stay calm, don’t spook her.
‘With that guy, the one that texted you? Was it Maz?’
‘Jesus, Red, chill. I mean we are friends and everything but I don’t have to share my daily itinerary with you. You know, sometimes you are a bit much.’
Her words are so unexpected they take me by surprise, turning me inside out in an instant. She’s never spoken to me that way before, and it hurts, it really hurts. Stupid fucking tears sting my eyes, and I don’t want her to see that so I don’t reply, I just slow down as she walks on, leaving me behind, blinking until the moment’s passed, and I’m just left feeling gutted. The other kids around me pretend they haven’t noticed, dropping their eyes and nudging each other as they pass us by. I stop just before the bridge, looking down into the dark water and remembering that dream.
‘Fuck, sorry.’ Rose has come back. She speaks with a smile and a laugh and an it’s-only-me-dicking-around expression on her face.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, uncertain, shy of her.
‘Well come on, then.’ She walks a few steps and looks back at me. I don’t know why I’m not moving, not walking, not following her, like I always do and then the words come out of my mouth.
‘What did you mean?’ I ask, even though I don’t want to.
‘What do you mean, what did I mean?’ Rose sighs, she knows what I mean.
‘That I’m too much sometimes?’
Rose flings her head back, her shoulder bunching in exasperation.
‘I didn’t mean anything, I just . . . I just want something that’s private, OK? Something I don’t have to share with you and Leo.’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Except . . . ’
‘What?’ She takes a step towards me.
‘Well, just tell me about this guy, not everything. Just something.’
‘Why, pervert?’ Rose starts walking again, and I try with all my might to just stand still and let her go, marching off to disappear amongst the buses and cars, but I can’t. I even run a little to keep up with her.
I hate myself sometimes.
‘Because I don’t want you to get into something you can’t handle,’ I say. ‘It’s one thing getting drunk in the park, it’s another ending up in the back of a squad car. Or disappearing from school with fuck knows who.’
‘Ugh, Red, it’s called being a teenager,’ Rose sighs.
‘It’s not, though, is it?’ I say. ‘Who else has been down the nick this week? Or spliffed up in the stationery cupboard, or wherever? Look, you’ve been through some really heavy shit, Rose and—’
She shoots me this steel-trap look that clamps my mouth shut.
‘Oh poor damaged little me, can’t cope with my life and now I’m going off the rails, if only I had a knight in shining armour to save me! Is that what you’re thinking?’ She shakes her head. ‘Except that’s not what you are, Red, you aren’t a knight in shining armour, you are just a loser, riding on mine and Leo’s coat tails. You think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know me at all and honestly, I’m getting kind of bored of this bullshit act of yours. How dare you tell me how to live my life when you don’t have the first clue how to live yours?’
It is like I am looking at a stranger, there is nothing in her expression that I recognise, and something new, something I have never seen before, not even on that first day that we were thrown together and told to form a band whether we liked it or not.
Contempt.
For the first time ever, Rose is looking down on me. What’s happened to her? Why now?
‘Rose,’ I take a step towards her, ‘I don’t want to fall out with you over this, you’ve got to see that I’m just worried about you. I care about you.’
‘I know.’ Rose’s expression softens but only a little. ‘It’s just before you worry about me, Red, maybe you should look in the mirror, you know? You got your own issues, babe.’
We walk on again, but it’s different, like all the ease and comfort between us has turned into friction and difficulty. We don’t fall into step like we usually do. I’m afraid to look at the water as we walk over the bridge, afraid in case somehow the river calls me to it, like in my nightmare.
Waterloo Road turns into urban side streets and then finally suburban avenues, and last of all the corner of Albion Street, my street. I pause on the corner for us to say the long protracted goodbyes that we normally do, but instead Rose just gives me a half-hearted smile.
‘See you tomorrow!’ She shrugs.
‘Rehearsal at lunchtime, OK?’ I call after her, feeling kind of pathetic when she doesn’t reply.
I tell myself as I walk down my road to my front door, that none of this means anything, it’s just one of those things, just a little blip in our friendship. Or maybe it’s more than that, maybe it’s the ripples from what happened to Naomi widening out in slowly disintegrating rings, still strong enough to shake and tilt everything that makes the four of us what we are, or what we were anyway. I tell myself that tomorrow everything will be back to normal again, but as I reach the front door, somehow I know that won’t be true.
Standing here, in front of the chipped green-painted door with my key hovering over the lock, I know only one thing, and that is I don’t want to go in. Dad’s car isn’t parked on the road, again. Heart radio is playing too loud in the front room, and somewhere inside Gracie will be building her own little bubble to keep it all out. I know what I should do, I should go in and see my little sister and hang out with her and give her some normality, but what if I am not it, not normal?
If I go in now, Mum will still be sober, maybe she will be able to look at me, maybe she’ll look at me like she used to when I was Gracie’s age, with this soft smile and big eyes like everything I did and said was a wonder. Or maybe the second she catches sight of me her expression will sour, her eyes will cloud over and whatever it is in the world that is too hard to face sober today, it will be my fault. And the truth is, it really hurts. It hurts me when she looks at me that way, because I miss her. So badly.
So I don’t open the door. Instead I stash my school bag in the thick hedge that runs between ours and next door, taking the tenner that is supposed to last me the week and stuff it in my pocket with my oyster card and I turn around and run.
Photo of Camden High Street. 0 likes. Posted Just Now
17
No idea where I’m going, or what I’m really doing, just that I want to be somewhere where I am not me, so I run as fast as I can, for as long as I can until my lungs burn and sweat pours into my eyes. When I look around I see I’m standing outside Vauxhall tube station, and I know exactly what I want to do.
I take the tube to Euston, until I’m thrown by the escalator into a station that’s packed full of zombie humans, staring dumbly at the same departures board, waiting for the signal to move. I march through them, dodging in and out of the static crowds until I come out onto Eversholt Street.
And start heading for Camden Town.
I’ve been to Camden a lot in the last year with the guys. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when it seemed like somewhere important and exotic, where freedom and music existed just out of my reach, and getting there would be like finally getting somewhere. But the first time I came with Leo, Rose and Naomi I remember how scared I felt, like something terrible would happen to us, we’d get lost, or kidnapped, or drugged and wake up robbed and broken on a boat in the middle of the channel . . . but then we went and it was nothing like I imagined.
It was a tourist trap, full of stalls that sold tie-dyed tat and novelty hats, and theme pubs and people wandering around searching out some bit of identikit originality to take back to their boring little lives. People just like me.
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And when I understood that I felt somehow powerful, somehow adult and in the know, and then nothing about Camden, from its litter-strewn streets to its packed pubs, scared me any more, and going there alone, that’s the best of all.
Because nobody looks at the short ginger kid with a half-shaved head, nose ring and quadruple-pierced ear in Camden. Here that barely scratches the surface of weird. Here I can just breathe out and be me and no one gives a shit who that is.
I weave in and out of a mass of strangers, and I love that no one here knows who I am, and that no one in the world knows where I am. The air smells of beer and cigarettes, and is filled with the noise of traffic and shouts of laughter. I find my way to a basement bar called the Gin Bath, a place that works hard to look as grimy and dingy as it does. When I was standing outside Vauxhall tube that’s when I realised their open mic is tonight, and it suddenly made sense. Now, normally-socially-awkward, sticks-out-like-a-sore-thumb me, doesn’t even hesitate to walk in, because here I am no one, here I am invisible, and here I am allowed to be me.
It’s almost as if I’ve inhaled a kind of drunkenness on my way here, cloaked myself in a sort of illusion of cool. The guy on the door doesn’t stop me, and when I order a Coke at the bar, the barman hardly gives me a second glance.
It’s early still, not even six; when I check my phone there’s no signal, no one can touch me here.
Gradually the bar fills up with people, a few musicians and all of their friends, until the sheer mass of people pushes me and my flat warm coke away from the bar, and into a corner near the stage. I lean against a grey and grimy-looking wall, fold my arms waiting for the first act. It’s a girl with a guitar, because it’s almost always a girl with a guitar, and sure enough she is followed by another girl with a guitar. They are talented, they can all sing and play, and it’s kind of peaceful to listen to the sound of their voices entwined with the strings of the guitar, but it does nothing to my insides, it hasn’t got a fraction of the guts and power that Rose has when she rips a tune out of one of our songs. But in a way it doesn’t matter, not as much as it matters just being here, watching the audience made up of boyfriends and mates cheering and stamping their feet.
When the lights come up and music plays through the PA, I don’t want to move, I want the half a centimetre of Coke in the bottom of my glass to last forever and the rest of my life that is waiting for me when it’s done to disappear.
‘I was watching you.’
I jump when one of the girl singers talks to me suddenly; I was so lost in being invisible that I almost forgot people could see if they looked. She was on in the middle of the bill, Danni Heaven, long straight dark hair to her waist, and pale, almost white, skin, a wreath of tattoos around her hips. Older than me, by a few years I think, and taller too.
Sometimes I really wonder when that growth spurt everyone else has already had will kick in for me.
‘Bit creepy,’ I say, with a lopsided smile. After all, here I am not sidekick Red, I am witty and brave, the kind of person who headlines their own life.
‘Yeah, sorry, it did come over that way, didn’t it?’ She laughs, she thinks I’m funny. She touches her hair, and then her neck, and I follow the trail her fingertips leave. Is this really beautiful girl flirting with me? That can’t be possible.
‘I just noticed that you’ve been on your own all evening.’ She speaks in smiles. ‘And I’ve been with all my mates looking at you and feeling kind of envious. It takes some guts not to need to be with other people.’
‘Maybe I just don’t have any friends.’ I smile, and fuck, I am flirting with this girl, me, suddenly I am a legend. If she turns on her heel and flounces off now it won’t matter, and that’s what excites me, the thrill of being able to push my luck and see how far it holds.
‘I bet you’ve got loads of friends,’ she says. ‘I bet you are really popular. I love your look.’ Her hand brushes against mine, she takes a step closer, her perfume is sweet, like vanilla. ‘Listen, we’re going on to a club? Want to come?’
‘I can’t,’ I say, and then for some reason I sabotage my own chances in the very next breath. ‘I’ve got school tomorrow.’
Red, you are a fucking coward.
‘Fuck, you’re at school?’ Her eyes widen, her mouth making a big round ‘O’. ‘Oh my God, how old are you?’
‘Sixteen.’ I shrug. ‘Sorry.’
‘Fuck, and so cute, too.’ She shakes her head, but she is still smiling and then she grabs my phone out of my hand.
‘Here, let’s have a selfie.’ I stare dumbfounded at an image of myself with this girl’s arm around my shoulder, as the flash goes off, burning the image on the back of my eyeballs. ‘Well then, I’d better let you get home to bed as it’s a school night, but here’s a little something to remember me by.’
The next thing I know her mouth is pressed against mine, just for a second, maybe three, and I feel the sticky glue of her lip gloss and the sweet wine-scented taste of her breath, as she pulls away, tipping her head to one side to look at me once more.
‘Come see me in a couple of years,’ she says. It’s as her hand slips off of mine that I see the tattoo on the inside of her wrist. Almost exactly like Naomi’s but this time a triangle.
‘Wait.’ I catch her hand, and she smiles at me.
‘Changed your mind, jail bait?’
‘I just wondered where you got this cool tattoo?’ The fingers of her other arm cover her wrist at once, and she frowns, drawing away from me.
‘It isn’t cool, it was a mistake, a big one.’
‘But where did you get it? The thing is my friend, she has one a lot like it and so I . . . ’
Her eyes widen, and she looks around, before putting her face very close to mine. This time there is nothing sexy about it, she is suddenly angry . . . and frightened.
‘Tell your friend to run,’ she hisses. ‘Tell her to get far away as quickly as she can and hope they get bored looking for her. Tell her to run.’
She pushes her way through the crowd before I can ask her what she means, what she’s talking about.
Run from what?
The house is dark when I get home. Creeping in through the door, I struggle to contain the energy that’s fizzing and popping in every muscle.
One half of me is buzzed and wired, strong and invincible, and I can see a time, a few years from now, when everything will feel good, and in the right place and I will be where I should be, and who I should be. Like a dream, or a glimpse of the future, just for a second, but it doesn’t matter, because a second is enough for me to feel . . . hopeful again. I hadn’t even realised I’d stopped feeling that way, until feeling that way came back. And the other half of me is like, seriously, what the fuck?
What are the chances I’d meet someone with a tattoo like Nai’s? What was she talking about when she said ‘run’? Questions cram my headspace, each shouting for an answer, doing my head in. I shake them away. It’s just me seeing connections to Naomi’s tattoo where there are none. Me, spinning tales out of nothing. And I probably freaked her out, got too intense. After all, I do that. At least according to Rose I do.
I’ve got to get a grip, set up my own reality check, otherwise I’m going to totally lose it.
As I climb upstairs, Gracie’s door is open, and she is curled up asleep on top of her bed covers, still wearing her school uniform. There is no one in my parents’ room, which means Mum passed out early somewhere downstairs, and Dad isn’t here again. I left her all alone while I was out disconnecting myself from this life, making a space just for me in the world. I’d left her to fend for herself, and I don’t even know if she’s eaten tonight.
Me, I’m close to getting out of here, a couple more years and I’m gone. But Gracie, she isn’t anywhere near close, all she has is me. How am I going to fix things for her?
Opening my laptop I Google Danni Heaven, but all of her social media accounts are set to private, which is pretty unusual for a singer trying to build
a platform.
I didn’t imagine one thing though – she was upset, really upset, when I noticed that tattoo.
There has to be something that links all of this together. Something that links Danni to Naomi, and the only thing I think of right now is music. What if Danni has a crazy fan that attacked her and . . . tattooed her? I mean that sounds mad, but everything sounds mad right now. Maybe that’s what happened to Naomi too, except we don’t have any crazy fans, and most of the fans we do have are in my year, and I’ve got their phone number. Except DarkM00n.
I go back to DarkM00ns’s Toonifie playlist, wondering if somehow there might be a link here, maybe she/he has Danni’s stuff on her playlist too. I skip through the ones that duplicate Naomi’s list and look for newer ones. I can’t find any Danni Heaven, although, unlike Mirror, Mirror, Danni is a Toonifie artist. Then I see something that makes my blood thicken and slow in my veins.
There’s a Mirror, Mirror song here: ‘Find Me, Before I’m Lost.’
Like all songs on Toonifie, the lyrics are right there, under the track, and it annoys me more that the song this prick has ripped off is the one I put a tune to and sang for Naomi in hospital . . .
Except that’s impossible. Because I took that song, those words from the notebook I found in Naomi’s bedroom. The only two people in the whole world that know this song exists are Nai and me.
DarkM00n must be her boyfriend, then. That’s it. That makes sense. This must be the person she ran away with. Maybe if I can find out who he is, I can find out what happened to her and where she’s been, why she never got in touch.
Clicking on the song, I bring my phone to my ear, and hear an acoustic guitar. A melody that is incredibly similar to the one that I came up with for these lyrics unwinds in my ear. The guitar sounds a little faint even with the volume turned right up, the quality is kind of amateur, probably done on a phone. And then the vocal comes in and my heart rate increases. It’s a soft, sweet, sad girl’s voice, rising and falling, soaring and yearning, weaving in and out of the guitar, creating a poem of sound.
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