Out of the Woods - 1. Elijah

The phone rang almost ten times before he finally picked up.

‘…Hello?’

‘So, it’s nearly eight already.’

‘And?’

‘And… You coming to school today?’

He paused. I imagined the eye-roll: so virulent, I could practically hear his lashes fluttering against my ear. ‘Do I sound like I’m coming to school today?’

‘Well, I’m just saying, if you’re not then I’m not.’

‘You’re already in school, idiot. I can hear the bell going.’

‘So? Thankfully I’ve got legs to remedy the problem.’

‘You’re not coming over. I’m sick.’

Damn.

‘I don’t want to come over. Why would I want to come over?’

He snorted. It did sound rather wet and glistening. ‘But I’ll see you this evening? I’ll be better by then.’

‘God, you’re pathetic when you’re sick.’

He laughed, and it quickly degenerated into coughing. ‘Bye, Laurence.’

And so I was left with a dilemma: should I go to maths? Our teacher was young, and useless to the degree that paying attention was a futile endeavour, but though he hadn’t reported me yet for my absences there was always the chance, small as it was, that he might muster the courage and do so. Tom was the only reason I went to maths and the thought of sitting at the front, all alone, the only kid in the room close enough to hear the man’s weak, pathetic attempts at imparting knowledge—well, it didn’t fill me with enthusiasm.

I would go, I decided. But I wouldn’t pay attention. I’d sit in my seat at the front; I might even close my eyes. I’d close my eyes, and I’d sit perfectly still, and I’d imagine myself inside a hedge maze. A vast maze, a terrible, wonderful thing, utterly still, with green walls so high that the sky above is nothing more than a white ribbon over my head.

And so I closed my eyes and I ignored Mr Wilton’s incessant mumblings. It wasn’t difficult. Even when the kids at the back of the classroom began to throw things across the room, or stamp their feet when the teacher’s back was turned; even when Mr Wilton, in a fit of desperation, sent David Andrews to stand in the hall—even when David Andrews began making faces, despite being eighteen or thereabouts, through the glass window—it was surprisingly easy to ignore it all. By the end of the lesson I’d wandered beneath a sky the colour of stone for twenty minutes, and slept for thirty, and it was time for art.

And the chair beside me drew my eye as I collected my things and stood up to leave; and it stared at me as I passed, achingly empty. And despite the people that greeted me in the corridor, I felt oddly alone.

***

I’ve always been strangely susceptible to the changing surroundings. I’m different in darkness, under the orange wash of the streetlights, and I’m different again during the day. The heavy weight of snow can make me either sleepy or excited; I feel ugly buildings pull at me insistently like quiet arms grasping for my feet.

The art department was my favourite place in school. The sixth formers had their own room; it was a vast room of tall windows and hazy air, the light falling in heavy shafts and flecked with dust motes, swirling in lazy, rhythmical patterns. Walking in there I felt so calm and bright and filled with space. I could stand for hours in the doorway immersed in the smell of turpentine, not caring who tried to squeeze past—my fingers would grow into the doorframe and they’d have to pry them off with a crowbar or hack them away with an axe.

It was just a shame that I had to share it with such unbearable cretins.

Art as a subject attracted two very particular types—two very particular polar opposites. It was something I observed with healthy amounts of amusement and disdain. It shouldn’t have happened, since the school discouraged all forms of individuality of appearance and had a strict policy on uniforms—but the students you found in the art department fell, universally, upon a clearly identifiable spectrum.

On the one end there were the bad-boy dropouts like Harry Stanley.

Sure, he was mean—but you couldn’t help but feel sorry for Harry. Harry who, if I had sired and been present at the birth, I would have promptly shoved back in.

Harry was perpetually covered in paint in the same way that small children get covered in food. His shirt was never tucked in and his tie was never done up. He had difficulty picking up a paintbrush on most days: without the benefit of opposable thumbs his blunt, primitive hands snapped them in half. Harry had cheerfully failed most of his classes and was still in the school at all on the grace of his rich father’s generous donations; he and his friends sat in the corner and talked about boobs and penises.

And then, far away on the other side of the room and the other end of the scale there was Will Wright and his type. Skittish and pale and obviously gay—not entirely unattractive but not my type at all. He was one of those artsy emo kids who would have dyed their hair black if it weren’t for the uniform restrictions. I honestly didn’t know him well enough to judge him. He was quiet mostly with a saddened, poetic air—but at lunch, sat with his weird friends, he was an entirely different person, flamboyant and embellished with extravagant, fluid hand gestures and a giggling laugh.

Everyone, without fail, fell somewhere along this spectrum. Myself included: despite that I saw Harry Stanley regularly during swimming practice and out of school, and despite that I happily considered my existence beyond the age of seventeen as one large, out of control rebellion—despite that Harry and his idiot cronies, sat in their stupid corner, considered me a friend—I was still somewhere on the artsy side of the middle. I was good at art, and I had a face to match. My grades were better than most.

Everyone fit cheerfully upon my spectrum. Except, it seemed, the new kid.

He wore his uniform perfectly—not one item was stained or creased or off-centre. His top button was done up.

It didn’t suit him.

He had short dark hair and olive skin, and the sort of body that looked skinny in clothes but, you just knew, would look incredible without them. His shoulders were broad and strong. There was not an ounce of body fat on him. There was nothing artsy about him, and nothing bad-boy—at first glance there were no distinguishing features at all. He was a swimmer, that much was clear; and quite hot, all things considered.

I’d never seen him before and it was rare to get new kids in the final year of A-levels. I watched, intrigued, as he kept his limbs firmly within the confines of his booth. It would have been unlikely that a divorce caused the transfer because our school was private and more expensive than most.

So my guess was a scandal.

And it didn’t take me long to make an educated guess on exactly what sort of scandal. He was very quiet—excessively quiet, to the point of excluding himself entirely from conversation. There was a nervousness to him that grew more apparent when you caught his gaze, which he was careful to ensure occurred as little as possible. It was more than just shyness—there was real terror there, and that look that suggested he expected, quite sincerely, for any of us to turn on him at any moment.

He reeked of trust issues. He was graceful and terrified, like a gazelle. It could have been a simple case of extreme bullying except that he watched me intently for most of the lesson, his eyes wandering away only to dart back again to my neck, to my lips, to the movements of my wrist as I painted. And yet, when I tried to smile at him, he turned away.

Gay. And not at all subtle about it.

I might have been intrigued but I’ve always found nut-jobs like him tiring; dragging them into functionality where they would finally become worth it took considerable expenditure of energy. I thought about it, contemplating the strong curve of his neck and the shape of his tense back; I thought about it and decided that I couldn’t be bothered. I settled down in my booth and began to draw, when a familiar smell washed over me—choked me, clawed at my throat, threatened to stimulate my gag reflex.

My art teacher, Mr Robinson.

Fat and dirty and balding—and it was a source of perpetual dismay to me that he was not yet bald because the few hairs on his head were such nasty, greasy threads that I’d have gladly given anything to rip them out. The fabrics of his clothes had all once been different colours and hues but time and proximity to his skin had slowly turned them all a faint, vaguely yellowish grey. It was generally agreed upon by the kids in art that Mr Robinson was probably a pedophile—and yet he was universally adored. He was, even with the lingering smell of bacon and dead hookers that trailed him, the coolest teacher in school.

‘Hello, flower,’ he breathed over my shoulder, a clubbed hand on my dark curly locks.

His breath smelled.

Elijah. My name is Elijah Laurence. It isn’t, and never will be, ‘flower’. Mr Robinson called everyone some variation of ‘flower’, ‘petal’ or ‘fruitcake’—they were his only terms of endearment. He couldn’t actually remember any of our names so we were all ‘flowers’, ‘petals’ or ‘fruitcakes’ to him, regardless of whether or not we actually were homosexual.

It was probably wishful thinking.

‘Hello, Mr Robinson.’

He picked up my work and took it over to the window where he peered at it intently. ‘York Minster again, flower?’

‘Yup.’

It was a charcoal drawing of the inside of York Minster, all shapes and lines reduced to frenzied, long strokes, the shadows sharp and accusatory. Pillars loomed, reaching far into the dim light; the carven faces of saints peered outwards, lifeless and vaguely threatening.

Mr Robinson grunted and put it back on the desk.

‘Not bad. Your inspiration for the style was Giacometti, was it?’

Not bad? I’d won the Art Prize three years in a row; my position as top of the artistic pile was undisputed. Even Mr Robinson couldn’t draw as well as I could—his fingers had long ago turned to claws.

‘Yes.’

He stared it and nodded. ‘Focus on the faces next time, flower,’ he said. ‘If you’re looking at Giacometti you should be looking at his portraits.’ He gave my shoulder a lingering squeeze and left the room for a cigarette.

The faces.

The faces?

I rummaged around under my desk and pulled out a folder. I swept everything to the side, emptied its contents into the cleared space, filed through until I found what I was looking for: five photographs of York Minster’s stone saints and kings, harsh under the glare of flash photography. Tall they were, towering high over me when I had taken the photographs—tall and beautiful and blank. The faces on the outside of the building had been beaten by wind and rain to vague, shapeless orbs like canvas mannequins but inside they were still as sharp as the day they were cut, stern and starkly staring.

They were beautiful and perfect, and utterly sexless. You could quite easily have knocked the crown off the king and scraped off his beard, given him a quick change of clothes and, just like that, that king would be the Virgin Mary.

I’m a bit like that. Dark curly hair, large, dark eyes, pale skin, great lips, great bone structure: when people say I’m hot they say it because they’re confused over physically attractive and sexually attractive. It’s a common mistake. I’m fairly certain that if they stopped for a moment to consider the logistics of it I’d be killed, pickled, placed in a giant glass box and put into a museum so that everyone could admire my utter, sexless perfection. I’m fairly certain that if they stopped to think, they’d point me out to their friends and say look, see—proof there is a god. Screw Paley’s Teleological argument, screw his stupid watch, there’s no way that wasn’t made by a Supreme Being.

Well, perhaps I’m exaggerating. But not by much.

The new kid shot out as soon as he could when the bell rang. I considered, briefly, satisfying my curiosity by catching up with him; I watched as he collected his things with shaking hands, his body tight, almost hunched, a quivering bundle as tense as a coil. As he passed me I wondered what his reaction would be if I tripped him—I wondered if all that potential energy would spill and he’d snap. Would he kill me or would he burst into tears?

I didn’t do anything. As he left several of Harry Stanley’s idiot friends snickered and made unintelligent comments about his frightened eyes and his nerves. I shrugged: it was time for the walk down the driveway.

The best part of my day.

When I was younger I would walk backwards for much of the way so that I could admire the beauty of the school buildings, old and tall and darkly looming; even at seventeen I could feel them pulling at the back of my mind, urging me to turn back for a moment and look. They demanded attention. Surrounded by the playing fields, and woods, and countryside beyond that, in winter when it was misty the school looked like the setting for some Anne Radcliffe novel. There was an air of incredible, solemn romance about the place and it grew more obvious the further away you walked.

But unfortunately we weren’t long in the open before suburbia reached out its arms for a smothering embrace. And I felt that familiar snaking unease, that slow tentacle, wrap itself around my throat as the countryside gave way to tree-lined streets and large, occasionally tasteless houses.

Soon it would be time for me to get off the bus.

I considered getting out at Hoarwood; I’d walk the Hoarwood Estate alone, just me and the sky and a thousand, thousand trees. I’d walk until it grew dark when I’d probably head over to Tom’s before my date with Sophie.

But I didn’t. I got off at my stop and I made my way home. I opened the front door and delicately stepped in, ears straining for the tiny sounds of movement; I took off my shoes in silence and arranged them on the mat.

There was no one home.

Climbing the stairs two at a time, I pulled off my clothes and stepped into the shower. It was a bad day, I decided: so I sat down under the heavy flow, hugging my legs; I closed my eyes and imagined the water pouring through my skin, through my scalp and through the bones of my skull. I was nothing but a sack full of darkness, a darkness with squirming things in it; I watched passively as the water washed the things away.

And then I was just a sack full of deep, comforting darkness. I heard nothing and saw nothing. I felt nothing. The water washed over my skin, plastering my hair to my forehead; it washed over me and into the basin and down the drain where it travelled unseen for miles, through countless hidden places, until it found the sea.

I stepped out and pulled on an old flannel shirt. I needed the comfort of it—the softness of it against my skin but also the knowledge, vastly more comforting, that I looked good in flannel shirts. I almost—almost—crossed that precarious boundary from beautiful to sexy in flannel shirts. I had a date, so I dried my hair. I made my way downstairs.

The house was so quiet—so wonderfully, deliciously quiet. The aching pleasure of it made me half delirious—and I was in a good mood when I drove into town, and I was in a good mood when I parked the car, and I was in a good mood when I finally found Sophie standing outside of Starbucks. She smiled and handed me a caramel macchiato.

Sophie went to the same school as my sister: an all-girls school that my school had close ties with. It is the sole reason why I—and all of the kids in my private, single-sex English grammar school—knew any girls at all. I really liked her. I liked that she was pretty, and she looked good on my arm. But more than that, I actually liked her as a person. She wasn’t exactly the smartest, and she knew it, but she did this self-deprecating thing that was endearing. It made her seem funny and even witty—and it was, in a way—but it never reached the uncomfortable level where you began to suspect she had low self-esteem. She just knew her strengths lay in other areas, and knew how to get around it.

It was, in a way, clever.

‘Hey sexy,’ she said with a grin, and linked arms with me. I pressed a kiss onto her lips.

Sophie liked me, I knew—really liked me. It wasn’t at all difficult to read her, and it wasn’t meant to be. She made it clear in everything she did.

We made our way through town. We went into Harvey Nichols and Sophie actually bought something, which shocked the hell out of me because, though I was by no means poor, I felt strongly that high school students should not be able to happily just buy something at Harvey Nichols. Everyone knows the only reason you go into Harvey Nichols unless you are over twenty-five at the very least and wearing a brand so exclusive you’ve never heard of it before is because it’s a cool place to go with your friends and laugh at the price tags.

But Sophie was loaded. Most people at my school were. Or Victoria’s school, should I say, but they’re almost the same institution. Even so, she saw me staring, and had the decency to blush.

‘What?’ she asked, with a cute shake of her blonde head.

‘Nothing,’ I grinned. ‘I’m sure you’ve just made daddy very proud, that’s all.’

She laughed. ‘Mummy, actually. It’s a Mulberry purse. Daddy wouldn’t understand the significance of a Mulberry purse.’

She gave me a look as if to say, duh.

I couldn’t decide if by ‘significance’, she was referring to the importance of supporting smaller, British luxury businesses as opposed to the multinational conglomerate imports, or that the Mulberry purse had shiny leather and looked pretty in a way that ‘daddy’, being presumably male, just wouldn’t appreciate.

I had my suspicions, though.

We went to the cinema. We spent half an hour choosing pic’n’mix; I loved the sour jellied sweets, whereas all Sophie wanted to fill our tub with was chocolate eggs.

‘Look, Elli, look!’ she said in a hideous, childlike voice. Her eyes twinkled wickedly as she held up a jellied sweet shaped like pink lips and touched my cheek with it. ‘It’s a kiss, from me to you.’

Thank god she was being sarcastic—I wasn’t sure for a moment, and didn’t know if I could laugh at her. I snapped it up and ate it. ‘Thanks.’

‘Elijah! We didn’t pay for that.’

‘Nope. We didn’t, did we?’

‘That was so naughty!’

‘You know what would be even naughtier?’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I want to hear this.’

I wrapped my arms round her and pulled her close, pressing my forehead against hers so she couldn’t look away. ‘Steal another one.’

‘No!’

‘Do it.’

‘Fine.’

She opened the compartment and reached in; with exaggerated slowness, and much glancing from side to side, she slipped it into her mouth and quickly turned away.

Subtle. I ruffled her hair and pinched her nose. ‘I’m proud of you.’ I picked up our tub of sweets and walked away.

‘Elijah!’

There’s something so exciting about stealing. I’ve never been bungee jumping or mountain climbing but I imagine the thrill people get from extreme sports was similar to how I felt when I stole things. The flush, the elevated heartbeat, the fierce tingling that runs through your veins, furious, as if it isn’t blood that pulses through them so much as the cold air that whips past you as you jump from an aeroplane…

When I was much younger, no more than nine or ten, I used to steal one thing from every house my parents forced me to visit. I’d pick an ornament I liked best and, after much deliberation and planning, I’d slip it into my pocket before we left. It sounds unhealthy but it made me feel strangely alive.

They’re all in the attic somewhere, even now. I can’t even begin to wonder why my parents never questioned how they got there.

I could hear Sophie hissing at me from across the lobby. She finally caught up with me as we queued to get our tickets checked. I had never felt better: I caught her in my arms and, ignoring her objections, drew her into a kiss.

I held out the stolen tub of sweets and grinned.

‘These are for you.’

She rolled her eyes, her face flushed from the kiss. She honestly couldn’t decide whether to be amused or furious. ‘That is not the sort of thing you expect on a date.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, though I really wasn’t.

‘Do you know how expensive they are? There must be about ten quid’s worth of sweets in there!’

‘And all sour sweets, too. They’ve gotta be worth more, right?’

Finally, her lips were tugged by a grin. She turned away to hide it.

‘You’re a horrible person.’

A pause. I waited…

‘And I hate sour sweets.’

In moments like that I’d look at her, really look at her, and I’d try to imagine what my life would be like if I married her. We’d have beautiful kids, of course. We’d be rich. She’d be sweet, and kind. She was a little spoiled—actually, a lot spoiled—but she meant well even so. We’d have a big house, and a great car, and a great life.

I wanted it occasionally. Sometimes I’d look at her, or one of the other girls I dated, and I’d really want to live a life like that. I could love her of course, provided I sorted myself out enough to care—provided I could sort myself out enough to quash the urge to flee; but I would never go weak at the knees when I looked at her, like I did with Tom. I rarely felt that way about girls.

It was sort of sad.

What did I feel for her? In the cinema, with her fingers entwined in mine, I spent much of the movie absently pondering it. There was no emotional attachment, I knew—I was not, and would never be, in love. We hadn’t had sex yet but it would happen, and soon; I never had a problem with that. I had lost my virginity to a girl almost three years ago. In some ways I had quite enjoyed it.

And in others, I had hated every minute of it.

Her fingers were sticky. They were smaller than mine, though not by much. I found myself irritated by the knowledge that she was making my own fingers sticky too and that, with her there, I couldn’t reach for the pic’n’mix with my left hand; they were in the middle—we were meant to be sharing them. I had to reach over with my right and fumble about blindly in the darkness. It was unnecessary and it bothered me.

Later, when she untangled her hand out of mine and placed it onto my thigh, I felt myself harden. I’d never had a problem in that regard.

But it was stimulus—stimulus was stimulus was stimulus. When we made out in the back of my car I got hard: when I heard her moaning against my ear, her hot breath scorching my cheek, I got hard. But I never looked at her as she sat beside me at my desk, in front of our maths teacher, and found myself wishing with every atom of my being that I could press myself so far into her skin that we became one entity.

I never grew weak at the sight of her like I did with Tom.

I had developed for myself a weird reputation, one that was aided by my unusual appearance. At parties I had, on occasion, gotten with guys. I wasn’t out, but I wasn’t exactly closeted either. Strangely enough nobody had ever bothered to actually ask me about my sexuality because I was still successful with the opposite sex. I dated more than Tom did that was for sure, and I wasn’t an obviously effeminate boy—I was just unusual-looking enough to fit my perceived persona. I supposed, if anyone gossiped about me, they’d consider me bisexual, and I wasn’t averse to that in the least. Sophie assumed I was: she had told me she thought it was hot.

I had shrugged, but secretly I had been pleased.

Got to love this new, liberal day and age, right?

On the top floor of Harvey Nichols was a sushi restaurant I’d always wanted to try. It had been dark for hours by the time the film ended; we made our way through town hand in hand. We sat across from each other at our little table, our knees touching just a little. When she leaned forwards she grazed my hand, a small smile on her face; she would shift in her seat and each time she did her foot would brush my leg with the faintest of tingling touches.

God, she was blatant. And I admired her for it.

The truth is that I’m terrible at flirting. Absolutely, utterly horrible at it. Putting yourself out there, crossing that line so that it’s obvious, so that the recipient knows—so that you cannot take it back with a small smile and pretend it never happened… I could never do it. To do it is to make yourself vulnerable to rejection, and I’ve always been too guarded for that.

But being flirted with—that I could do. I watched her as she flirted with me shamelessly, and I loved it. It was fun observing her and knowing that everything that she did was for me. It was fun analysing the little rituals she performed to make it clear she liked me, and she wanted me to like her too. She was as good at the game as I was good at commenting on it.

I was having a great time, and so was she.

All that changed, though, when I spotted someone I thought I knew in the sushi restaurant, sitting not so far away from us. I caught his glance before he turned quickly away; and then I caught the glance that the boy he was with gave me, more obvious this time as he was facing away and had to turn round. I didn’t know the second boy, but the first I was sure I’d met somewhere. It took me a while to recognise him as the new kid from art.

You know, kid-who-did-not-easily-fit-into-my-art-identification-spectrum.

And suddenly I was thrown into turmoil; and suddenly, I wanted to leave. Suddenly I wanted to stand up, not caring what I knocked over in my haste—suddenly I wanted to run, not caring about Sophie’s shock or her hurt, not caring about who paid the bill for our meal, not caring how many people would hear about it by the time I made my way to school tomorrow. Just like that, Sophie’s incessant flirting no longer interested me at all: in fact, the sight of it made me feel faintly nauseous. Her eyes, constantly catching my own, made me feel nauseous—just looking at her made me feel nauseous.

I smiled just as before and I laughed in all the right places. I nodded when I was meant to and I took her hand and entwined our fingers when it was given. I leaned in to kiss her, gentlemanly-like, on the lips, knowing that when I did so she would lean forward and I would be given a better glimpse of the new kid from art without her head blocking the view.

Because I could feel him there, watching me—or purposefully not watching me, doing everything he could to pretend I did not exist. I could feel the glances he flashed in my direction when he heard me laugh, or Sophie laugh. He was there all the time, seated on the table not far from us and at the same time perched on my shoulder, whispering things in my ear.

I hated it.

And there was still dessert to be had.

Once we had parted and I was seated in my car, I couldn’t get him out of my head. I couldn’t shake the unease that had gripped me, clawing at my throat. I just couldn’t let it go.

It wasn’t even that I liked him—I didn’t fancy him. I didn’t care that he was obviously on a date, and that guy-who-had-to-turn-round-to-check-me-out was obviously a—decidedly mediocre—love interest. That didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was that Sophie’s Elijah, seated opposite her in the sushi restaurant, watching as she fucked me in every way she could without actually touching me—he was one of many. The new kid converging on my date with Sophie saw two very different Elijahs colliding.

I knew, with the swift, furious certainty of the panicked, that I didn’t feel like going home. To be honest I felt like I needed, more than anything else in the world, a giant panda bear to sweep me into his arms and just hug the hell out of me, and since that wasn’t likely to happen—and it definitely wasn’t likely to happen at my house—I went to Tom’s instead.

Tom’s mum opened the door, smiling at me.

I am, if nothing else, universally loved by other kids’ mothers. It is understandable: I’m usually politer than their children, and if not always handsomer then prettier—I know how to lay on the charm. But it’s more than that. It took me a while to identify exactly what it is that makes me so attractive to parents but, now that I have, I am perpetually fascinated: it is vulnerability. There’s something lurking in my dark eyes, hiding just out of reach, and it looks a little like sadness. Mothers love to fix it with affection and hot meals, even though they aren’t entirely sure as to what it is they’re fixing. I take advantage of it as much as I can.

The only mother immune to my charms, as far as I can tell, is my own.

Tom’s mum adored me. Despite that Tom and I were best friends I had never really progressed past the Mr and Mrs Harding stage of familiarity with his parents; and yet, despite my insistence on retaining a strictly formal, impersonal relationship, Tom’s mother doted on me more than Tom. He seemed to find it amusing.

We didn’t eat at home—we just didn’t do it. To call my mother a health freak would an understatement equal to calling the opinions of a racist rude—undoubtedly true, but entirely unnecessary. I had never elaborated upon my unusual domestic eating situation but Tom clearly had told his mum because she would make a point of leaving me the last corner of whatever incredible dish she had made her family whenever she suspected my impending arrival—which was most nights, because Tom and I never hung out at my house.

My house had all the warmth and friendliness of a mausoleum.

She pulled me into a hug and asked if I was hungry—it mattered very little whether I was. ‘Elijah, darling,’ she said against my shoulder. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine thanks, Mrs Harding. Is Tom at home?’

‘Of course he is, he’s doing homework. I hope you like cannelloni.’ She winked. ‘I made too much for us all to finish, I’m afraid.’

Of course she did. As I made my way through the house up to Tom’s bedroom I could hear her clattering about in the kitchen, fixing me a plate.

I loved opening the door to Tom’s bedroom. There’s something so intimate about a bedroom—it’s where they sleep, of course, but it’s where they sit and think. It’s where they do…other things, too. Tom’s room smelled utterly and overwhelmingly of Tom. It was like sniffing his neck each time I walked in.

And he’d be there, of course. He’d give me that cheeky grin that he did and a manly slap on the back; then he’d drag me onto his bed, or over to his computer, or to the desk to go through our maths homework.

And I loved every minute of it. It didn’t matter that I was talking about mathematics, the subject that, if given a human form, would undoubtedly steal my lunch money; it didn’t matter whether we were doing homework or discussing Sophie, or some other hot girl he liked, or sports. I was perfectly happy to do all of it because it was Tom—I just felt better around him.

Not that I’d ever let him know that, though.

I remember once, in the school playground, when we were both about twelve: I had jumped on his back, for no good reason I can think of, and we’d both fallen flat on the ground. I’d started poking him over and over, not realising that where I’d happily landed on him he’d landed on hard concrete and was hurt; even then he was too manly to start crying, but he’d shrugged me off and stomped inside, furious at me because I’d hurt him and because he knew that I knew he was close to tears. I followed him and demanded he not tell the teacher.

Even then, I hadn’t really cared about the teacher. Not really. What concerned me more was the crippling fear that we wouldn’t be friends anymore, that I wouldn’t have him to tease, and that I wouldn’t be able to laugh at his ridiculous, oddly formal gallantry and his lame jokes. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to touch him again.

Sometimes he’d catch me looking at him. It wasn’t often, because I was as sly about that as I was about everything else, but whenever he did he’d give me this look, as if to say, you are so lame.

It wasn’t a bad look. He never quite seemed to get what I was doing when I stared so he’d just grin at me and shake his head, and call me a space cadet or a weirdo. Or some other charming Americanism. I must have been doing it on that day, after that disastrous sushi date, because he just laughed at me and ruffled my hair.

‘Don’t touch me,’ I said. ‘You’re still sick.’

‘I’m not sick. I’ve never been better. You, on the other hand, are such a little freak sometimes.’

He ruffled my hair again, harder this time, until I pushed him away.

I thumped him, blushing slightly.

‘No, you’re a freak.’

‘Yeah, well. You’re stupid.’

‘No, you’re stupid.’

We both smiled. It was a daft game we played. We both knew that if ever we were to get into an argument I’d verbally rape him: he wouldn’t stand a chance. I try not to get angry or emotional in arguments because when I do I terrify myself. I have my mother, I guess, to thank for that.

I wrestled him until we both fell off the bed and were rolling over the floor like idiots. It was stupid, because I never won once. It takes only the briefest of glances at my impossibly slender wrists to know I’m pathetically weak.

Wrestling him was one of my favourite pastimes—there was just something so right about it. I loved it when I’d poke him until he started laughing; when I was straddling him I could feel the muscles of his torso shaking with it, feel the air in his lungs as he inhaled and exhaled. He had the most infectious laugh while we were alone, entirely liberated where mine was tightly controlled. It was my laugh—he did it only around me or, occasionally, his parents. It seemed to consume his whole being and, when he laughed with me, I found myself laughing slightly freer. I found myself laughing like someone who wasn’t me.

I could slap him about a bit too if I was lucky and he hadn’t already pushed me off.

So there we were, squabbling like pigeons over a scrap of bread, when the door opened. I could feel the air shifting more than I could hear it, and it took us a while to look up from our little wrestling match.

‘So, this is nice,’ said a smug voice. ‘Who’s your hot boyfriend?’