by James Clarke
Bram had just been there. How could that have been how he first saw Evie again? She thought of his esoteric good looks: he had a face like a leather briefcase, his shoes squeaking with every movement. Evie’s mother loitered behind him, tutting about missing the speeches thanks to another performance. That same old paradigm of disappointment.
The afternoon sky was streaked with violet when they eventually arrived at the den. The elm tree’s garlands were withered and its bunting was faded, the painted stripes up the neighbouring tree chipped and sparse. As the ground was wet and the chair under the tarp had long gone, Evie had Lawrence clean some stones for them to sit on. He’d been windbagging about something so she thought she’d better set him a task.
Presently she sat while Lawrence prised the lid from the tin with his house key and emptied the glue into the sandwich bag the way she’d showed him. They took turns huffing at the bag, trapping and exhaling the glue’s fumes as if having panic attacks. Amid the whirl of solvent, Evie thoughts divided . . . her train ride north at five am, dosed on the Nitrazepam she’d stolen from her mother’s bathroom, so out of it she had to be escorted from the train by the ticket inspector when she arrived in Litten . . . sleeping it off . . . awakening to Clive emerging from his study with a cut above the eye . . . Duncan . . . ‘Please don’t say anything’ . . . lolling in the garden with a drink until Lawrence arrived, babbling about horses, in danger of crying and knowing neither of them would forget it if he did . . . sorry I wasn’t at the woods . . . kissing her . . . letting him do it . . . Bram was . . . Fiona fixed . . . the season had flowed into August and beyond the trees, the trees, there was a gate . . .
“That was fun,” said Evie.
“It’s mad is what it is.”
Evie snorted.
“What’s so funny?” Lawrence said.
“Your lips have gone all blue.”
“They haven’t.”
Evie let him kiss her cheek and put his arm around her, but soon grew tired and shrugged him off. Submitting to the designs of someone you pitied was just another act of self-harm. Bram had taught her that much.
She nudged the glue tin out of sight at the sound of her brother. When Duncan arrived, his eyes flicked to the sticky bag. His hair reached to his chin now. He was still some distance from attaining Lawrence’s height, but was broader in chest. Evie had caught him doing press-ups only the other day.
“All set?” he said, pushing a sheaf of hair behind his ears.
“Born ready.”
“What about you, Lawrence? Mischief Night.”
“Looking forward to it,” Lawrence said, glancing to his left, which Evie had read somewhere was a sure sign of a lie. She leapt onto his back and demanded a piggy-back.
They took the bus over the high road, through the police cordons towards Whitbeck. Passing through the checkpoint, the concertinaed roofs of the old army barracks drew into view. There was an assortment of police vehicles in the exercise yard: Transits, Bedfords and Leylands, cars, carriers, bikes, horseboxes and Range Rovers. Never mind the men. Evie pointed it all out to Lawrence, who didn’t seem bothered.
He could suit himself. Out of the rear window, if it would do, was a suet and cinder-coloured firmament framing the spoil heap on the edge of Litten, and adjacent to that great false hill, by a few miles, stood the colliery’s winding gear and chimneys. Evie was feeling kind; she would not remind Lawrence of the subterranean drama of alignments and networks that formed the citadel of his future, at least not today. He was watching a bird ghosting in flight outside, its tiny form leaving the emaciated shapes of industry far behind. Evie made eye contact with him in the window but could think of nothing to say.
The bus stopped ten minutes’ walk from Fernside Grammar. Evie was beginning to feel the ping of the Dexedrine she’d also taken from her mother’s bathroom and supposed Lawrence must be feeling the fizz too. Duncan, none the wiser, removed three rubber masks from his bag: a witch, a vampire and a werewolf. “Vampire for me,” he said. “And I think we can guess who gets what between you two.”
Evie took the werewolf mask.
Fernside felt abnormally quiet. It had been such a long time since Evie was in a school. Since passing her O-levels well enough to get into college, she had decided to defer a year to ‘figure things out.’ She wouldn’t miss the jostle for position, the obligations and insecurity of education. Her future in the real world would be so very different.
The masks fitted closely against their faces. Evie felt delicious in hers. Hidden from herself as well as others, she felt energised and alert, displaced. Or maybe it was just the amphetamines.
She followed Lawrence uphill to the sports hall. The new complex had just been completed, replacing the concrete tennis courts. Grundy, Fernside’s headmaster, patrolled it daily, a pitted block of windowless concrete that had a green roof that lent it the appearance of a huge lunchbox.
They shook the cans of spray-paint and began to graffiti the outside of the hall. They had a colour each: Lawrence red, Duncan blue and Evie yellow, painting a massive crude jack-o-lantern on the brick and writing the name Grundy above it. They gave the figure a gross body with naked, lactating breasts and a pustulating cock and balls. At its feet they sprayed the corpses of children, trampled, prone. Fuck off, Bastard, Twat, Evie wrote, whilst sitting on Lawrence’s shoulders.
Happy Mischief Night.
When the end-of-day bell clanged, the three of them made themselves scarce, spraying the waist-high walls surrounding the school grounds as they went. The channels of painted colour were reminiscent of the marks left on the wall by the subsidence beneath Threndle House. The cracked lines of paint also extended along the panels and doors of every teacher’s car parked along the road.
As the first pupils streamed outside, desperate for home, Evie and the boys hid from view. First one student noticed the hall, then another, then many more, until one ran inside to fetch a teacher. Grundy soon appeared, gawping at the ten-foot tall grotesque daubed on the side of his beloved building. Evie felt fit to burst and delinquent as her eyelashes caught on the eye-holes of her wolf mask. High, she tore out clumps of grass from the space between her legs and clenched them as hard as she could.
The headmaster had yet to notice the marks on the school’s walls and teachers’ cars. Vainly, he tried to clear the crowd as more and more children appeared. Lawrence reached for Evie’s hand. “Not now,” she said, absorbed by the commotion.
Duncan clapped Lawrence on the shoulder. “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
Lawrence lifted his mask and nodded at Evie. “You were right,” he said.
“You make it sound as if sometimes I’m not.”
The mask slid down his face, the witch’s nose tilting at a forty-five degree angle. “There’s Fenton,” Lawrence said. “Loving it as usual.”
“Which one’s he?”
“Greasebag. White Dunlop jacket.”
Dusting her mucky hands on herself, Evie said, “Well, what’s stopping us going after him?” She looked to Duncan for her easy yes. It was a Mischief Night, after all.
They followed Ryan Fenton towards the main road once he’d split away from the other pupils. Mask ditched, Evie re-applied her make-up, then headed over the road to meet him as he swung around the bus stop, hand on the pole that bore the timetable, its plastic screen blistered with cigarette burns.
Fenton stopped swinging at the sight of her. His smile was the colour of dead grass, his hair shaven tightly at the sides of his head and left lengthier, gelled forwards on top.
He offered Evie the cigarette she asked for, then handed her a lighter. He’d done that thing where you remove the metal guard and fiddle with the fuel switch so that when the flint is sparked, the lighter’s wick erupts into a figure of dancing flame.
“Watch your lashes,” he said.
“Thanks.”
&
nbsp; Evie affected a toothy smile. Fenton’s friends were watching nearby, after all.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“My what?”
Were all the locals as bad as Lawrence? Evie repeated the question.
Fenton answered.
“Nice name.”
He looked confused.
Evie cleared her throat. Lawrence was hiding somewhere, watching. “I’m not from around here.”
“No.” Fenton fiddled with the zip of his coat, the charming diligence of the action and its basic humanity making Evie hesitate. The plan was to lead this bully to The Carousel, a newsagent Lawrence had said could only be reached via an isolated track at the end of a cul-de-sac that led from a nearby estate. There Fenton would be stripped of his clothes, covered in spray-paint and left naked.
Feeling the pervasive rush of nicotine, Evie stepped closer to Fenton. It wouldn’t do to fall at this hurdle, whether he deserved what was coming his way or not, so she opened her body language up to him and asked for directions to The Carousel. She was meeting a friend, she said. She’d only get lost if she went alone.
In the gravel passage between sets of houses, Fenton touched Evie’s lower back as they stepped over a large, kidney-shaped puddle that looked like it was made of tinted glass. They were in the initial yards of the alley. The high walls of the alley were of concrete, an intricate roof had formed from a maze of creeper and branch, and there were bits of litter scattered everywhere.
They were out of sight, alone. Deciding to push things forward, Evie made a wet kind of eye contact with Fenton and bent to his height, her mouth open. It was always a surprise kissing a new person, the different methods they had. Fenton wasn’t shy. He was a fleshy kisser, committing at a similar depth and pace as Evie, to the extent that although he hadn’t questioned her actions, she still felt compelled to justify herself in some way. “Fiona,” she said, pulling away. “My name’s Fiona.”
She was pushed against the wall. Kissed for the second time, Evie found herself unzipping Fenton’s fly. Thank God for the sound of children, though, thank God for boisterous fuss. Because the noise from a nearby garden made Evie realise what she was doing.
She let go of the zipper. But Fenton was already scrabbling at her. He managed to hitch her skirt up and push his hand between her legs. Evie took far too long to remove him. Breathless, she felt breathless, high on Dexedrine and her own permissive nature.
“What’s up?” Fenton said.
“Nothing’s up.”
There was no witch at the end of the alley.
No vampire.
Evie let herself be kissed again, zoning off completely. The only comparable experience she could think of was exercising, in that there is a point, when running, when watching your steps and controlling your breathing, that thought begins to disappear completely. Evie’s exchange with Ryan Fenton quickened and became so urgent that she could do nothing but feel another body against her own and welcome it, enjoy it even, feeling the urge to stop anything disappear as she dissolved totally within the moment.
Her knickers were tugged down and then the surprise of Fenton was upon her and as easy as that, it was happening. Evie could see the top of his head. She could smell his hair gel and make out the dandruff freckling his red scalp. A part of her was saying this wouldn’t matter. Another part was digging the uneven wall and shrieking. A final part, the significant part, was simply not there at all.
Then, as quickly as Evie had departed she returned, as rooted to the earth as ever. She juddered and let go, gasping. The moss under her fingernails was thick and unclean and some kind of twine was knotted about a branch by her head. The TV aerial of the house past the fence was shaking under the weight of a great gabbing crow. Evie felt despicable. A moment passed. She couldn’t stand it. “What are you looking at?” she cried. “You’ve got what you wanted, now FUCK OFF!”
She swiped at Fenton’s cheek, feeling a cool nab of flesh coming loose. Fenton didn’t need telling twice. Clutching his bleeding face, he ran down the alley and disappeared.
It was a brief walk to The Carousel, where Evie saw her father’s name in the Free Press’s A-board propped outside. Dazed, she ran her hands through her matted hair. Just who the hell was she?
Footsteps. She opened her eyes. “Where were you?” she said, oddly calm.
“He took you a different route to the one I thought,” Lawrence said. “Are you all right? I couldn’t find you . . .”
“I’m fine. When you didn’t turn up, I let him go.”
These feelings would pass. They would have to.
Driving wet outside. Duncan was busy with his tutor so Evie and Lawrence were playing Monopoly, alone. Evie was winning comfortably: she beat Lawrence so often that sometimes she wondered if he just let her win.
After putting down her counter, the top hat, she said, “I want to ask you something. Promise me you won’t laugh.”
Lawrence took the dice and rolled his turn. “I promise,” he said, without looking.
Evie snatched his battleship counter before he could move it. “You can’t do that.”
“What you on about?”
“Swear so fast without thinking.”
“You said to promise?”
Evie dropped the counter and went to the window, breathed on the glass and scratched a clear line in the haze of steam. She had been too troubled over the last few days not to speak her mind, despite her reservations, and Lawrence, she realised, was the only person in her life who she could to talk to.
“OK,” she finally said, taking a deep breath. “This might sound weird but, Lawrence . . . do you ever feel like you want to disappear?”
Lawrence seemed about to get up, but stayed where he was. He never got things straight away. In the passageway with Ryan Fenton, consenting like that, a part of Evie had taken over that she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about and was only just beginning to comprehend. She was trying to describe the pursuit of loss: the compelling minor deaths that come from sex.
Lawrence must have realised he’d behaved incorrectly because he quickly apologised. “You’re going to have to explain.”
Evie sighed.
“Lose myself?” said Lawrence.
“As in, go after a feeling you can’t put your finger on. Like what’s the point in not doing.” She was nervous around him as she’d never been before. “Oh, forget it.”
“No, hold on. Give us a chance.”
He nodded for her to go on.
Evie’s voice felt very tight. She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. “So the last few months,” she said, swallowing. “Maybe the year before, I’ve been feeling, I dunno, like I’ve been opened up, like something’s passed across me and now everything’s changed. Do you ever get that? I mean, is it just me or does this happen to everyone at some point in their lives?”
Lawrence always seemed so quiet, even when he was talking. He said, “This year I’ve felt like that.”
“So is this what it’s like to be an adult?”
“I wouldn’t know what adults are like.”
“Have you ever wondered how it would be, following that feeling to its logical conclusion?” Evie felt tearful. She knew now that she wanted to dismantle absolutely everything. “Because I feel as if that’s what I’m always trying to do these days, one way or another.”
Lawrence picked up the battleship, and moved it to its destination: the chance panel. He didn’t take a card. He simply reclined in his seat, twiddling a strand of hair for such a long, ponderous moment that Evie nearly reached out and tapped him on the knee. It was his eyes that kept her from doing so. Beneath their blinking hoods, Lawrence’s pupils were swollen with the same distance Evie saw in everyone. She wanted so dearly to drift in the sap of another person’s thoughts, to understand someone the way she thought she understood her
self. But she knew she never would.
Eventually Lawrence spoke. “My family have this saying, right. Well, it’s not a saying, exactly, it’s more a thing we refer to. Dad says Gran started it – it comes from the way out of town – she just started going, one day, if you were caught daydreaming, like, Oh, he’s taken the Litten Path. Meaning, you know . . .”
“You were miles away.”
“Yeah. Then everyone started using it. Someone a few towns away wins the pools, he’s taken Litten Path. Someone pops their clogs, they’ve gone up Litten Path, you with me? You’ve a choice to make, one way or the other. Path or safety.”
“You take it or you don’t.”
“Yeah. It’s a divide between one reality and the next. When things come to an end, you go up top. It’s the route you take. It can mean all sorts.”
Evie felt giddy with recognition. “And what’s on the other side?”
“Oh, nothing. Like really nothing. But everything as well. My dad’s obsessed with it. I think it’s desolate. It scares me.”
Evie remembered their first meeting in the forest, Lawrence’s bald head, his muddy trousers. There had been a boy who had experienced poverty, not just in material terms but in all its myriad forms, and poverty can be a stigma you can’t shake. She would never have thought the two of them would still be hanging around together all these months later. That she would come to think of him as a friend.
“See someone can come back from most places where there’s life,” said Lawrence. “But the Litten Path, if you take it, I mean really take it, the fog comes. That’s it.”
“Only footprints left.”
“I suppose on the one hand if you really wanted to take it then you wouldn’t want to come back, even if you could. Otherwise it would defeat the purpose of going in the first place. I guess I think sometimes people think taking the Litten Path is the only way, when really it isn’t.”