Beyond A Colour - 4. Chapter 4

It was any other day, although, not, because this was a day when I was feeling actually sort of a bit OK. I had unintentionally left it late going into the canteen for lunch, and hoping that I could still get a seat away from people. However, no sooner had I sat down than someone came and sat right next to me. I mean, there are probably sixty empty places, why do you have to choose that one? I looked up. Fuck. Ing. Hell. What are you doing here? I sighed heavily as I pulled out my earbuds.

“Hey, Stacks! You're back.” When I looked up he was definitely smiling.

“Yeah, I'm back Emmerson.”

“Cool. So, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh?”

This couldn't be good. People don’t talk to me unless they really desperately need help with maths. And I don’t think Emmerson is one of those people. He’s never been one of those people before.

“Yeah, so, I'm having a little sort of party this weekend. Do you… umm… want to come?” He asked.

“What?”

I looked around, like the muppet that I’m sure many people expect me to be, confident that despite appearances, he must be talking to someone else.

“Well?” He asked.

“Why?”

“I just… thought it might be cool.”

Really? Emmerson thinks it will be ‘cool’ to invite me to a party?

“A party?” Probably I misheard him. But what sounds like party? Arty? Barty? Carty? Darty? These are not even words.

“Yeah, nothing crazy, just me and a few of the guys.” He was definitely trying to look… something. A certain way, even if I had no idea what that certain way was.

“Oh.”

The guys, by which he probably means his teammates on the First Fifteen. I really don't think so.

“So you’ll come?” He asked.

“I don't know, are you sure you've got the right person?”

It was a semi-serious question. I looked around again, and he laughed and smiled, in a good way, I think, before looking suddenly a little more serious.

“Look, I, erm… I'd really like it if you were there.” He said.

“Right. Am I being set up for something?” There can be no other explanation, right?

“What? No… I mean…”

“Emmerson, I don't know if you've noticed, but people don't invite me to parties. In fact, most people don't even know who I am, and the ones that do, mostly avoid me.”

“So?”

“So it’s a bit weird that you're suddenly inviting me to a rugby team party.”

“It's not, I mean, there’ll be a few of us, that's all. Just my friends.”

“And me?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm, I'm back at ’why’ so we don't seem to be getting anywhere.”

“OK, here, give me your phone.”

He held out his hand, waiting. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. What was he going to do, steal it in front of everyone, I don't think so. He picked it up.

“Can you unlock it?”

I pressed the button, which scanned my finger and unlocked it. He swiped and typed for a few seconds.

“There you go. I really mean it, it would be cool if you came. So at least message me. Please?”

Please? This seemed to be evidence enough that I hadn't actually woken up at all, and I was, in fact, still in a drug-induced state of sleep and was hallucinating the entire thing. But apparently, I wasn't. I managed to hide out in the library all afternoon, and so successfully avoided any further weirdness. Until I got home. And that was basically self-inflicted weirdness so it might not even count. It was warm, so after getting changed I opened all the windows and lay downstairs on the sofa. I had some serious thinking to do. At least superficially, I had most definitely been invited to a party. A small party, but hey, it's a fucking miracle anyway so I'm not going to complain. And actually, I'd probably definitely not go if it was a full-on half-the-school-is-going type party. As a socially marginal entity, it was a gift I really shouldn't even be considering refusing. But then there’s the nagging suspicion that this is somehow a bad thing. Why? Why would anyone invite me? Why would he invite me? In so many ways, it was a total no-brainer, just go, and if it’s shit or just not my thing, I can leave. I'm a grown-up, sort of, I can do that. And Emmerson has always seemed like a nice guy, really nice actually. But none of this gave me any kind of answers, leaving me confused and distracted, which Mum noticed immediately when she got home.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” She asked. Again.

“Yeah Mum, I promise, it's not that. I'm just, trying to figure some stuff out.”

Meaning no, this is not the beginning of another period of super-crazy. Hopefully.

“Oh?” She said.

This wasn’t the sort of ‘oh’ that meant ‘oh OK then, I’ll leave you to it’. As if to emphasise the point, she stopped her walk through to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe looking in to the lounge instead.

“Fine. So, Emmerson invited me to a party this coming weekend.” I explained.

“Emmerson?”

“Yeah, and I don't know if I want to go or if I…”

“Stop, stop, stop.”

I could tell that Mum was in a good mood because she was exaggerating her hand gestures.

“What?” I asked.

“Emmerson?”

“Uhuh.”

“Who’s Emmerson?” She asked, looking comically quizzical.

“Just a guy from school.”

“No. That's what you said last time.”

“Yes, he is! We have some of the same classes. We have English and Physics and…”

“Honey, I realise that I'm old and horribly out of date on everything, but I’m your mother, I know things. About you. And this is the second time you've mentioned him.”

“It is?”

“Yes. You never talk about people at school.”

“So?”

“So tell me about Emmerson.”

“I dunno… he's a guy at school. He seems nice.”

“Nice? Just... nice?”

“Yes, OK, he's very nice.”

“Like, what kind of nice?”

Oh dear, now she’s sitting down, this is looking serious. I sat up.

“What? No, stop that! He’s just nice, like, normally nice.”

I pulled an oversized cushion in front of me as a hopeless protection against her questions.

“OK. You need to work on that look if that’s the answer you’re going to go with. Are you blushing? And he's invited you to a party.” She clarified. What look? I wasn’t doing any kind of look. And definitely not blushing. It’s just warm today.

“Yes.”

“OK.”

“What does that mean? What do you think?” I asked.

“I think it's a terrible idea. And I think you should go, and enjoy yourself, and meet people, and smoke weed and drink too much and come home and try and pretend it's all fine the morning after.”

“Mum! That's not helping.”

“Fine, just, don't really smoke weed, or drink too much, you know how it affects you.”

I didn't reply. She carried on talking anyway.

“So when you say ‘nice’? You mean he’s cute, right? Because ‘nice’ doesn’t really say much about a person does it.”

I huffed dramatically as I stood, and retreated to my bedroom. I slept badly that night. The music was struggling to work for me, but in a new twist, it wasn’t the usual voices I was trying to block out. At least, I don’t think it was. I just couldn’t stop thinking. Wednesday lunchtime and I was again sitting next to Emmerson, not of my own choosing. He came and found me. Again.

“So, you didn't message me.” He stated.

“No.”

“Oh.”

He actually looked a little hurt. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not fair.

He doesn’t realise he should stay away from you. He doesn’t know what kind of person you really are.

“I don't understand why you want to invite me.” I finally replied.

“Because I want to… get to know you better. I want to hang out with you and, well, I just want to. A lot.”

“If you’re just trying to set me up to make fun of me or bully me or whatever… I thought that had all stopped…”

“What? No. And people don’t do that to you, do they?”

“Sometimes. But it's OK.”

“No it's not!”

Emmerson stood up, scanning the room as if he was about to literally witness someone being mean to me. He doesn’t know you deserve it.

“Yeah, alright Captain America, sit the fuck down and stop with the drama will you?” I reached to pull him back down but then retreated into looking down at the table instead, my hand hovered mid-air not knowing what to do. Thankfully he sat again anyway.

“Sorry. So, you’ll come?” He asked.

“I don't know.”

“Why not?”

“Really? Because I don't trust you. I mean, you've basically never spoken to me before, and I'm like the opposite of someone who gets invited to a rugby team party.”

“It’s not like I haven’t tried. Look, I told you, it's not like that kind of party. There's going to be like five people there. It's just a chilled-out thing.”

“Bye Emmerson.”

I left the last of my lunch and walked out of the canteen. This was all getting to be too much for me to make sense of. Unfortunately, the last classes of the day were English Literature, which meant that he was also there. And staring at me. Freak. Like literally, whenever I looked up, he was there, looking at me. Like a psycho stalker, probably already planning on how to dispose of my body after he murders me. OK, maybe not that extreme. Maybe he really did just want to be friends. That makes just as little sense to me. I stopped paying attention to the lesson as I became distracted by that daydream. I could probably manage having a friend again. I'd done it before. Sort of. Jo was a friend. I think.

“Stacks?” Miss Spencer had a way of making her voice horribly shrill, dragging me back to reality.

“What, erm, sorry Miss, what was the question?” There was the beginning of derisive laughter but things like that didn’t get very far in Miss Spencer’s classes.

“The monster, should he be feared or pitied?”

I hate it when that happens, and the whole fucking room is staring at you. As usual it takes me a few seconds, which feels like about 10 minutes to be able to figure out what I want to say and to speak properly.

“Umm…pitied Miss” I answered.

“But why?”

“Because he’s only ever feeling miserable, which Shelley uses to reflect Victor’s own emotions, as he also feels miserable throughout the book, probably because of his own mental health issues and his sense of failure in creating the monster.”

Yes, fuck you all, I read it. And I read the study notes. Apparently, my half-hearted responses were good enough for her to move on and pick on someone else. It was such a boring book. At the end of class Emmerson again made a point of talking to me. Like, in front of basically the whole class. He didn’t even wait for most people to leave but instead just came right over to me.

“So?” He asked.

“What?”

“Will you come?”

“Fine.”

“Fine, what? You’ll come?”

“I'll think about it.”

“Awesome! Message me.”

“Bye Emmerson.”

I was relieved to find Mum not at home when I got in. I like the time alone, it helps me process. At least, sometimes it does. But actually, I realised it had been too long since I'd spoken to Ry. And by too long, it was almost a week, which is long for us. I started to get changed and propped my phone up on my desk before FaceTiming him. It rang a couple of times and then took a second to connect properly, but it's still better than Skype.

“Bro!!! I was getting worried, how’s it going?” He’s always so full of energy.

So, Ry is my actual brother, and we don't really call each other ‘Bro’, unless it’s in a strictly ironic way. Yes, Americans can do irony.

“Yeah, you know, mostly OK.”

“Mum said that you weren't so good the other day, I was gonna call you but thought maybe you would appreciate the space.”

“Oh, yeah, it was fine in the end, just a bad couple of days, you know…”

“Uh-huh. That's not very convincing but OK.”

We get on well, and Ry is probably the only person I still talk to regularly who has any real insight into what my world is really like. Mum tries hard, I know she does, but there are still a lot of barriers between us. And Ry, I think he properly gets it. He is also, honestly, probably the only reason I’m alive. Like, literally. I mean, sure, things are not great, like at all. But Ry, he properly saved me.

I was nine, but my memories are patchy at best. Ry helped me fill in some of the gaps later, telling me a little more about what happened. But I remember walking into his room, and I remember how I knew that it was worse than it had been before. Thankfully the details of that still mostly evade me. But Ry was there, and he made everything better. Kind of.

~~~~~

“Ry… something’s wrong.”

By this time I guess it wasn’t unusual for me to be going into his room and crying. He would let me sleep in with him when I was… afterwards. But this time Ry was sat up in bed immediately. He flicked on the lamp which dazzled me for a second.

“Oh fuck, Blue! Not again, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I remember him hugging me, his arms all around me, and then looking at me and his face changed…. He looked… different. There was blood on his hand. He hugged me so tight again but it was so confusing because he was so angry and crying as well.

“Shit, shit, shit. OK, Blue, I promise you, this will never happen again. Has he gone back to bed?”

This momentous watershed passed by without comment. I knew I had definitely never ever said, and neither had he. That’s how terrible things keep happening I think, because no one ever says. But he knew, and I nodded.

“OK, you have to wait here, I’ll be back in a second.”

“No, Ry, where are you going?”

I didn’t want him to go, to leave me. Not ever.

“I promise Blue, just for a second, I’ll be right back, just, lay here OK? I’ll get help.”

Ry crept as quietly as he could out of his bedroom. I pulled his duvet around me, I think just wanting to feel something containing me. I still need that feeling. I slid down, half under the bed and tightly pressed against the bedside table. It felt like hours, but I think it was probably less than a minute or two. Ry closed the bedroom door again and came to sit on the floor, pushing the table away to make more room, pulling me close to him.

“I’m so fucking sorry Blue.”

I didn’t understand why he was crying, it wasn’t his fault. I closed my eyes, feeling him against me and wanting everything else to just go away. I heard him call 911. He was saying things, things that had happened. But I hadn’t told him anything. Later, I found out that he knew all too well from his own experience. After what seemed like forever but was only another few minutes, it was done. I remember how the silence was somehow so loud, I think I could hear his heartbeat. The silence was soon punctured so intensely by the hammering on the front door. And then, a whole shitstorm landed. Running, shouting, thudding, screaming. Mum was yelling at the police and making all kinds of threats towards them, and Dad was sounding increasingly aggressive although I didn’t see him at all. But I could hear him, yell, yelling at me I think. I was the dirty little bastard, the useless fucking piece of shit, the lying little fucking homo.

Ry held me so tightly as the world was unravelling around us, until it burst into his bedroom in the form of a police officer followed closely by a now hysterical Mum.

“Ryan, what the hell is going on? What have you done?”

She demanded an explanation. And I remember that look. It still haunts me because she didn’t know. I know that she didn’t know. I didn’t want her to either, because then she couldn’t be disappointed in me.

“I’ve stopped it, mom.”

Ry spoke in a way that kind of scared me, he sounded so furious, there was so much rage.

“Stopped what? Why is your father being arrested? They’re saying all kinds of crazy things…”

And then she saw me, huddled in the sheets behind Ry. I think that was when I first felt really scared, because my Mum looked suddenly terrified.

“Oh my god… Blue, baby, what’s wrong? Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?”

She just… kind of crumpled, sitting down at Ry’s bedroom desk, and Ry spoke to the officer.

“Sir, my brother needs to go to hospital, there’s bleeding, I don’t know how bad it is.

~~~~~

Unfortunately Ry still lives in California so we don't exactly get to hang out that much at the moment. He came with us at first, to the UK, but after a couple of years he wanted to go back, and Mum couldn’t stop him by then.

“So? Are you busy?” I asked.

“It's 8 am here. Of course I'm busy! But not too busy to talk, so what's up?”

“Why does something have to be up?”

“You know this is a video call right? I can see you? You have that thing where your eyebrows get all weird.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ha ha ha - I'm so right. So?”

“I've been invited out, like, to a party. A small party.”

“OK.” Ry was obviously waiting for more.

“That's kind of it. I don't know if I should go.”

“Why not? What’s it for? Who else will be there?”

“I dunno, just Emmerson and a couple of his friends I think.”

“Cool. You should go. Who’s Emmerson? Is that even a real name?”

“It's his last name, he's from school.”

“Oh, so, you two are like, friends?”

“No, not really. He said he wants to be. I think.”

“Hmmm, I don't see the problem here, other than maybe you make it sound like you’re about five years old. What are you not telling me? Guys don’t usually go around saying ‘will you be my friend’. Do they?”

“It’s nothing!”

“Ahh, I get it. He's hot, right?”

“What? No, I don't know. Maybe. Fuck off Ry you're supposed to be helping.”

“OK. Then I think you should go anyway.” He smiled. “You know, get drunk and smoke weed and have fun.”

“For fuck sake, has Mum already told you about this?”

“Maybe.”

His grin gave him away completely.

“Grrrrrrr!”

“Ha ha ha. Look, honestly, what have you got to lose? You might even make some friends.”

“I feel like you're both ganging up on me now.”

“Only because I love you. Just go, try and have fun, you can remember what that is right?”

“I guess.”

“Look, I got baking to do and we’re super busy in the shop. Call me later if you want to. And call Jo too, he misses you.”

“Tell him I said hi.”

“You tell him.”

“Bye Ry.”

“Later.”