Thinking of nothing sensible to say she merely replies with an inarticulate, ‘Oh … awright,’ punctuated by a stupid giggle. Instantly I hate her.
The teacher, Miss Wetherly, a weary-looking woman with an ineffectually quiet voice tries to call the class to attention. ‘Class … CLASS, quieten down, we’ve got a lot to get done.’ Some of the students even listen, but generally the noise levels in Ben’s maths class are high, and it would appear that even with the exams coming up most people in this class don’t have a clue what’s going on.
There is an algebra formula written on the board and Miss Wetherly looks between the board and the class, waiting for hush. ‘Is there anyone that can attempt the algebra on the board?’ she asks eventually, looking around the room. I slide low in my seat and try to look unnoticeable. ‘Ben?’ she calls out.
Why me? Don’t you know that I’m that naked person in a dream? That I need to see but not be seen?
‘Is there any chance at all that you can surprise me today?’
I surprise her.
When I slide back in my seat, Miss Wetherly praises my apparent increase in brain function, which I know has only drawn attention to there being something different about Ben.
‘Oooh, Ben, how come you know all this shit all of a sudden?’ Holly looks me up and down as if Ben has changed overnight. Which, of course, he has.
‘Well …’ I answer, ‘how long have you got?’
She laughs as if I have just said the funniest thing she has ever heard, which causes me to decide that we are talking vacuous here. I find myself looking at her for too long, or rather down at her for too long, because, well, there’s not a lot going on behind that over made-up face. Her eyebrows are possibly the largest drawn-on examples I have ever seen in my life, and her eyelashes must be false! I peer at the line where she may have glued them, but she flutters them a little and I realise with a sinking heart she is flirting with me. I am not at all prepared for what happens next. She touches my thigh and slides her fingers towards my groin, while looking steadily into my eyes.
‘Whoooah,’ I call out, finding myself leaping out of my chair, shrieking in a Lily way. She laughs again, but I can’t see anything funny about being touched up by Holly Watts, and now the teacher is rapping the desk and yelling at me.
‘Get back in your seat, Ben. What are you playing at?’ I sit down, scraping the metal legs noisily across the floor, trying to make absolutely sure my body language makes it clear to Holly that I’m one hundred per cent not interested. She sulks but it doesn’t last long. She appears overconfident, of herself and of my brother’s personal space, and I don’t like the way she seems to be taking ownership of him. I decide there and then that I want to shove her, and her chavvy eyelashes, face first into the desk.
At break, I find myself leaning against the wall outside, alone, unable to work out what to do with myself. My eyes scan the playground for my friendship group from the safety of my lookout post. I want to see them, yet I don’t think I can trust myself not to be all Lilyish in front of them. There are a multitude of things that can give me away. I’ll laugh too loud and I’ll fling my arms around when I talk; I’m super-clumsy and far too feminine to be Ben and I’m bound to give it away.
‘Do you want to come round mine later?’
A high, treacly voice makes me jump and my heart slides down to my hobbity feet in Ben’s scuffed black school shoes. Holly is here, eyes large and dark, circled by jet-black kohl with a huge Latino flick, and she is standing far too close.
I take a large bite out of an apple and talk through it. ‘I’m busy, Holly.’
She pouts. ‘You don’t look busy. You look … lonely.’ Her boobs are encroaching on my personal space, offering me their company, almost threatening to rest themselves on my chest. I swear to God if they touch me I’m going to shriek, but the wall behind me stops me from taking a step back.
‘Go away, Holly, I’m not in the mood,’ I growl.
‘You were the other day … Tomorrow then?’ she asks hopefully, not taking the hint, and employing her pathetic whine that is really getting on my nerves.
‘I’m busy tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that,’ I repeat, noticing how her lips are beginning to pout again.
‘You weren’t too busy last week.’ She cups her hand on my groin, making me jolt back against the wall, hitting my head against the brick. ‘You were in the mood then,’ she adds, squeezing her hand.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I hiss at her, shoving her backwards, but at the same time processing a grossly unappetising thought. Oh noooo … I think we might have had … sex! I’m surprised, horrified and … very jealous all at the same time.
When the hell did that happen?
I thought I’d have known if Ben was still a virgin or not, unless it happened after I died. Maybe this is why Ben didn’t pull me to him as often as Mum and Dad did. He was busy finding other things to occupy his mind. Although, in this case, it’s a very good thing, because seeing my own brother doing the horizontal mambo with Holly Watts would be enough to traumatise me for the rest of my eternity.
I can’t exactly ask Holly if we’ve ‘done it’, and to be honest I have no idea what Ben was even doing with this girl. Having been pushed away for the second time, Holly’s pouty lips contort into a curl. ‘Actually you ain’t all that special, Ben Richardson,’ she snarls.
‘And you’re pretty chaverage yourself, Holly Watts,’ I reply spitefully, breathing a long lungful of relief into the air as she leaves.
Ben … how could you …? Holly Watts?
I spend the rest of the morning in Ben’s favourite lesson, photography. The droning voice of Mr Meldridge humming on about lenses and stuff fades to the background, while my bland expression hopefully masks the frenzy of sexual contemplation going on in my head. I can’t stop thinking about Ben having sex, and why on earth he picked her to do it with.
I remember sharing hot kisses with Nathan, his tongue exploring my mouth and his hand bravely wandering under my school blouse. I remember the delicious shivers that rippled across my skin, his body leaning into the hollow of my hips until I could feel how much he wanted me …
‘Ben!’ Mr Meldridge shouts across the room, snapping me out of it and making everyone stare at me. ‘I don’t know what you’re dreaming about but it’s not a zoom lens!’
‘Oh, it is, sir,’ I answer, smirking at his use of metaphor.
*
At lunchtime, with my heart jittering, I make my way to the canteen where Nathan will be, queuing with people who are not me. Will I find him sitting with someone else, another girl, an easy replacement for what we once were?
‘Ben!’ A brutal slap on the back causes me to fall forward onto my knees.
‘Jeez, you idiot,’ I yell angrily before I look up to realise that it’s Nathan laughing at me.
‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t think you were going to face-plant the floor,’ he says, as he reaches an arm out to pull me up.
It’s him. It’s my boyfriend, and I know that I am looking far too delighted to see him again. I should be inventing some boy-type reaction in return, such as lumping him with my bag, or smacking him in the head with my fist, but instead, ‘Hi, Nate,’ comes out of my unwillingly smiley mouth, and my hands fight not to reach for his hand.
He sticks with me, or I stick with him, as we both get trays and load them with all things that are edibly beige, before joining a small group of his friends who are already eating.
I find myself looking for the cute tangle of Nathan’s eyelashes that match the slight curl of his hair, and admiring the way his perfect teeth flash white before he scoops each forkful of cheesy chips into his mouth. Now, however, I also notice how little lines and shallow dents have appeared under his eyes that weren’t there before, making him look tired and strained, just calling for me to kiss his face happy again. When he catches my eye, it feels so familiar that my fingers keep forgetting to stay planted on the table, a
utomatically stretching towards him until I snatch them back.
‘Ben?’ he asks.
‘Mmmm?’ I hum, allowing value pasta coated in some kind of indigestible glue to drop off my fork, as I indulge myself in his pure manly gorgeousness.
‘What the hell are you looking at?’
This question, for the second time today, instantly yanks me out of my dream and my fork clatters on the plate. ‘Oh, sorry, Nate … I was just wondering … do you ever think about, um … Lily?’ I reach for one of his chips, watching the cheese make oily strings between the plate and my hand.
‘Pretty much all the time,’ he answers.
‘YOU DO?’ I raise my voice with such gladness that I am unable to hide the delighted pitch of it. ‘Oh, do you?’ I cough and try to look suitably sad.
‘She would have done this –’ he points at me picking my way through the chips on his plate – ‘for a start.’
I pick up my fork again, and wave it aimlessly over my plate. ‘Do you think you’ll … um … go to the prom without her … you know … with anyone else?’
Nathan looks directly into my eyes in a way that convinces me he should be able to see straight inside Ben’s skull to me.
‘Yeah,’ he says.
It comes out of his mouth as if it is the ugliest word I have ever heard, while the telltale blur of tears queue across my eyes, ready to leap like watery suicidal lemmings.
‘I might ask Daisy.’
‘DAISY?’ I say, sounding less than casual. ‘Do you fancy her?’
My heart is thumping and I’m so jealous I’d be surprised I wasn’t turning green.
‘She’s nice. She’s not Lily though … your sister is a hard act to follow. But I either go alone, or I ask someone like Daisy.’
A vision of his mum looking at me from the gap through their front door, reminds me that she is the reason behind Nathan having to ask Daisy to the prom instead of me.
‘How’s your mum?’ I ask spitefully, studying his reaction through the flop of Ben’s hair, noticing how he flinches at the mention of her. His whole demeanour changes to one of defence.
‘Why do you care?’ he answers.
Oh, I care, all right!
‘Just wondered,’ I answer, as casually I can manage. ‘She … you know … wasn’t well when I went to your house last week.’
‘She … she’s fine,’ he snaps.
‘You’re not convincing me, Nate. Is there something … wrong with her?’ Even though I know this is a delicate subject for Nathan, it is just too tempting to know how much his mother is suffering.
Any news about the driver?’ he asks, trying, without being aware of the irony, to change the subject.
My mind plays out the answer to this question in loud silence.
Yes, it’s your mother! She is the silent hit-and-run criminal that everyone is looking for. Your … mother … killed … me!
‘What would you do if you found out it was someone you know?’ I ask, tiptoeing my way through the implications of my question.
Nathan looks up from his almost empty plate in surprise. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ he answers through another mouthful of food.
I play ball with my question, batting it back over the net. ‘We live in a village … everyone knows everyone else. What if the driver was someone we know, or a friend … or a family member?’
‘I’d kill them. Then make them confess to the police, then kill them again,’ he replies, poking his fork in the air, stabbing at his imaginary enemy.
‘But if they were family, would you … could you … ever forgive them?’
Nathan checks his phone for the time and scrapes his chair back. ‘I wouldn’t ever want them anywhere near me again! Study club, got to go … You’re sick, man. Why would you waste your time thinking that shit?’ He lifts up his tray, dumps it in the rack and turns away from me.
‘Because I died because of that shit!’ I answer silently.
*
How do I fit into a life that has moved on without me?
I don’t know how to spend the rest of my lunch break, and I’m not even sure where Ben fits into the picture any more. He would normally be doing something sporty or be hanging out with the group, but I can’t find anyone to hang out with, and I’m not convinced I should do any more of Ben’s sport after Saturday. Beth is spending her lunch break in the art room catching up on her coursework and Matthew is nowhere to be seen.
I wander aimlessly around the school grounds, trying to pretend that I’m simply enjoying being alive and ignoring the fact that in reality I’m feeling awkward and every bit the spare part. Joe, a nasty-looking weasel of a boy, joins me as I pass the edge of the school grounds by the fields.
‘Fag?’ he asks, as casually as someone who might do this every lunchtime. I look at it for a few seconds, surprised by this random offering, but I try not to show it. I remember how Ben took Uncle Roger’s cigarette the night after they found me, and how I begged him not to do it. It is yet another thing I’ve never done, so I take the cigarette and light it, inhaling gingerly, aware of my total hypocrisy. It catches embarrassingly uncomfortably in my throat, which makes me cough and my eyes water.
Another boy called Graham, all blubber and aggression with a thick neck and a line of black fluff on his lip, joins us, lighting up from his own packet. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m getting the feeling that I’m being flanked by the main villains in a budget movie. I’m beginning to think Ben has joined some kind of underworld club without me knowing about it.
Joe lets the smoke drift slowly out of his nostrils as if he thinks it makes him look cool but it coils back across his face, causing his small grey eyes to squint through the haze. ‘Didn’t see you in the park this weekend.’ He breathes the last of his fumy breath out and immediately takes another loud drag. Hanging about in the park is the latest craze: drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and seeing if you can stay out most, or possibly all, of the night. Nathan, Beth and I were never interested in this, too cold for a start, and I had been pretty sure Ben wasn’t into it either. I wonder if that’s what Dad meant on Saturday morning when he made me go to football: ‘I know you’ve been bunking off football lately for some reason, and God knows where you go,’ he had said.
‘Holly was in the park. She’s got a firm grip … if you get my meaning,’ Joe adds. I get his meaning. Graham’s thick shapeless lips draw on his cigarette, followed by a disgusting sucking noise that he makes through his teeth before he laughs indulgently at Joe’s sophisticated wit.
‘You’re welcome to her. Dogs like to sniff around arseholes,’ I sneer, preferring the quality of my own humour.
How can I not know this part of Ben’s life? I thought his life revolved around decent friends like Matthew. I thought he still loved football and sport … not this.
Why didn’t I know what you were becoming?
Ben has apparently been trying to find a new kind of life. Maybe enjoying all the normal stuff made him feel bad. Maybe the move to an ugly life rather than a sad one was easier, and that’s why he only pulled me to him when he was at home.
Oh, Ben! This was no life for you either.
You really need me to manage your affairs. You’re obviously incapable!
I flick the hardly touched cigarette at Ben’s new friends and walk away.
‘Oi, knobhead, we haven’t finished our discussion,’ Joe shouts, but just at that moment a large group of kids come running round the back of the school building, like wild things tasting sweet freedom, their native call drowning out any more of Joe’s interesting description of me as I make my escape.
Nothing they could possibly want to discuss with Ben would interest me.
‘How is loneliness shown and what is the writer trying to say about it?’
Mr Venables sits in front of us, tapping his copy of Of Mice and Men on his corduroy knees. ‘It’s highly likely to come up in some form or other in the exams and we need to nail it.’ We sit arou
nd him in a semicircle with our heavy scuffed bags dumped on the floor by our feet, as he tries to drum up enough enthusiasm for something resembling a debate.
Occasionally someone says something of mild interest that Mr Venables pounces on, trying valiantly to shake it into a viable viewpoint and I try … I really try … but I just can’t keep my mouth shut.
I have experienced loneliness. In fact, I reckon I could describe it in a far more interesting way than John bloody Steinbeck has. And, what’s more, I’m still lonely, even though I’m alive again and surrounded by people I know. The monosyllabic attempts by the others to describe loneliness is so inadequate that I’m consumed by a need to put them straight, and it inflates inside me, building up pressure until finally it courses its way up my neck, into my mouth, and out in a fountain of vomited personal opinions. A couple of kids in the class start laughing every time I talk because once was OK, twice was a surprise, but having something to say on just about everything is, well, not cool, I guess.
‘Ben, this is very … participative of you,’ our English teacher announces, looking almost as shocked as everyone else, then he does that awful thing that teachers do when they use you as a wonderful example of intellectual brilliance in front of all the kids around you.
‘Ben Richardson has obviously read this book in great depth,’ he says, waving the book at everyone else and nodding appreciatively at me.
‘Like fuck he has,’ I say silently, placing my hand over the sticky mould stain across the cover, contaminated from whatever that dead thing is in his bag. I catch the tittering looks passed around like a hot brick and my enthusiasm rapidly dwindles, as I realise sadly that not only have I been entirely out of character for Ben, somehow in death I have grown up. My perspective is no longer through the eyes of the teenage girl I used to be, and I can’t work out whether it’s sad or uplifting. So this must be what old people mean when they say youth is wasted on the young.
I can see Matthew looking at me with one eyebrow raised and I raise an eyebrow back.
Sunflowers in February Page 15