Out of the Woods - 3. The Party

It was a Wednesday, which meant one thing: swimming practice.

I smothered my irritation.

I ended up following the new kid on the way to the changing rooms—Jamie, I had discovered his name was. He was too skinny to have a great ass but it wasn’t a total disaster either. I followed the lines of his broad shoulders, tapering down a strong back to a narrow waist; he was built for swimming. I could almost see the envious glances he’d get when he started to strip out of his clothes. They’d assess him in silence like a slab of meat in a market.

And they did just that. We undressed without saying a word, and for the only guy—as far as I knew—actually interested in his body, I was the only one who didn’t hungrily follow his every move. He may as well have been stripping only for them and the knowledge of it made him uncomfortable; he refused to turn around, his back tense and perfectly straight, his face and neck gradually turning red, his movements more rigid. His hands shook as he tried to unbutton his shirt.

It was almost too awkward to be amusing.

He was shirtless when the changing room door opened and Mark Little walked in. He glanced about the silent room and shot me a quizzical glance. I snorted softly.

‘Jesus, guys,’ he said, his voice loud in the terse quiet, ‘could you be any more gay?’

The room filled with shameless grins.

‘Sorry, mate,’ said Jake Nolan, slapping Jamie on the back with a grin. ‘Just checking out the competition.’

Jamie flinched.

‘Just checking him out, more like,’ said Alex West with a smirk. Jake faked a horrified look.

‘Me? No way!’

I watched as Mark Little rolled his eyes.

They did that all the time. Every practice someone was accused of being gay; they followed the same pattern each time with a loud accusation, the phoney-horrified voice, the jeers, the furious denials and blushes of the victim. It was good fun; and inevitably one of them would turn to me, gesture towards the poor guy who was ‘checked out’—and, laughing, say:

‘So what do you reckon, Laurence? Would you?’

And I’d turn, assess him briefly, shake my head, and say something witty like, ‘Nah. Only real men float my boat.’

And everyone would laugh.

I could do that with them, because there wasn’t a label. I could do that with them and they’d all laugh, because I wasn’t ‘gay’—I was only a quirky, sexually liberated sort of fellow who randomly got with guys at parties but otherwise was one of the gang. If ever I crossed that line and got a boyfriend, or announced to the world that I was, in fact, gay, all the camaraderie would stop. None of them would care—not really—but to them I would be subtly different. And, in return, they would be subtly different with me.

Jamie aced his first swim practice.

But if anyone thought the backslaps and the congratulations would make him smile, they were quickly proven mistaken. He said, if possible, even less after the practice than before. He seemed to make negative noise, somehow, as if he absorbed it instead of emitted it; around him everyone ran out of things to say. I began to hate his impossibly lean back as he fixed his gaze on the changing room wall, methodically reapplying his clothing, saying nothing to anyone. He was the most irritatingly silent person I’d ever met.

For some reason I decided to talk to him on our way out. God only knows why: it clearly wasn’t for the quality of his companionship. He wasn’t the most forthcoming of conversationalists.

‘Hey.’

He turned towards me and I could feel his reluctance. It radiated from him like heat.

‘I saw you yesterday, right? At that sushi restaurant?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sure you do. You looked right at me and then pointed me out to your boyfriend. That was your boyfriend, right?’

His eyes widened. His mouth, that had almost begun to form a perfunctory answer, froze in place slightly open. His body visibly stiffened. Inwardly I smiled that I could have such an effect on him, watching as his gaze flittered here and there, searching desperately for an escape route, for the rat that might overhear us. I could almost hear him thinking, hear his panicked series of thoughts repeating themselves over and over:

Should I come out to him?

Should I lie about it?

How would I feel after either?

Had someone heard us?

But no one had heard us: I had checked before I’d said anything. There was no one around to overhear. He stood there, eyes wide, until I grew bored with it. I shook my head and smiled.

‘Hey, it’s no problem, you don’t have to say. Don’t worry about it.’

I turned and made to leave when he grabbed my wrist.

‘Please—don’t say anything. Please.’

I paused. I nodded at him and made my way back to my car. A strange, giddy intensity took me, and I climbed in, put my hands on the steering wheel, and didn’t move. I wasn’t sure why I had done that—why had I pushed him like that? I didn’t really care that I’d upset him except that it worried me I’d done it, so easily, at all. I behaved like that occasionally and for no apparent reason; and afterwards, I would think back on what I’d done and wonder dispassionately where it had come from. It wasn’t even something my mother would do: she was a lot of things, but nasty wasn’t often one of them.

And I’d get such a thrill from it—the same thrill I felt when I stole the pic’n’mix the day before. That’s why I did it.

Oh well.

I drove home, climbed out, collected some clothes. I drove to Tom’s house. I showered there. We were going to a party that night at the house of a girl we knew who was turning eighteen.

Tom believed he was going to kiss her that night. It was all he would talk about in his room and he did it so damn adorably, just going on and on about how hot she was and asking me over and over whether I thought she liked him; I tried to be pissed off with him but he was just so excitable it was difficult keeping a straight face. He was going to ask his mum what she thought he should wear before I finally had enough and picked an outfit out for him.

Tom had a very strange relationship with his mother. They got on really, really well. Obscenely well. He’d tell her all about the girls he fancied and she’d tell him whether or not she knew their parents and…it was weird. It certainly wasn’t normal.

Of course, I suppose it was easy for Mrs Harding because Tom so rarely ever got with any of these crushes of his that she didn’t need to worry about protection, or unwanted pregnancies, or even just thinking about her baby being sexually active.

We ate lasagne with his parents and discussed the forthcoming party. Tom went into great detail as to exactly why Anna was so very beautiful and Mr and Mrs Harding listened as intently as if he were explaining the dangers of climate change. I watched with an amused expression. Mrs Harding was so pleased with my healthy appetite that she ruffled my hair, and Mr Harding gave me a slap on the back that sent me sprawling and said, in a voice so deep it vibrated my insides:

‘That’s a man’s portion, that is. Good lad, Elijah—good lad.’

And then it was Tom’s turn to watch with an amused expression.

Before long we were on our way out the door when Tom’s mobile rang and I knew, even before he had fished it out of his pocket, who was on the other end.

‘Hey, it’s Chris!’ said Tom, as he read the caller ID.

Big fucking surprise.

Chris was bored. He wanted to know what Tom was doing tonight, and Tom told him about the house party. He invited Chris along, but Chris didn’t want to impose.

‘Okay, well why don’t you meet us in a couple of hours? We can hang out then.’ He looked at me briefly and grinned at my sour expression. ‘I don’t think either of us really intended to get wasted tonight anyway.’

But I did want to get wasted. The knowledge that I would, before long, be catatonic and passed out on some stranger’s bed had been the only thing keeping me afloat above the rose-tinted ocean of familial love that flooded the dining room at dinner.

‘…‘Us’ is me and Laurence. Elijah. Remember? Yeah. Okay, well we’ll meet you outside at twelve then.’

He slipped the phone back in his pocket and climbed into the car, waiting for me to get in the passenger’s seat. We set off. It didn’t take long for Tom to realise I was angry at him.

‘Go on,’ he sighed. ‘What did I do? Do you really hate him that much?’

Who? Oh. I shook my head.

‘I wanted to get drunk.’

‘Well, you can still get drunk.’

‘Yeah… But I wanted to get really drunk. Now I can’t.’

He frowned. ‘It’s a school night, Elli. Why would you want to get drunk on a school night? You’ll be hungover tomorrow.’

I snorted at that and, normally, Tom would have done the same. I’ve never been hungover. I just wasn’t stupid enough to get a hangover—and I’ve never really understood why everyone else was. They really weren’t difficult to avoid: you simply drank water whilst you got drunk.

But Tom wasn’t laughing this time. He was just throwing me strange glances while trying to drive. ‘You tend to drink pretty heavily, you know.’

God, I hate it when people try to care about me. ‘It’s called youth, old man. Young people tend to drink heavily.’

He didn’t say anything after that. We made our way almost in silence to Roundwood, a green, leafy area of town. The house we pulled up at was a great Victorian thing, black with age, overlooking Roundwood Park. It was only ten o’clock but you could already hear the music for miles.

I smiled. The neighbours would be livid.

Anna’s parents were away for the weekend, and the house was already trashed. I couldn’t feel particularly bad for them because they were, after all, stupid enough to leave so soon to her birthday—a crazy, drunken party would hardly have taken a great deal of effort to predict. Kids littered the lawn, too drunk to feel the cold, and the grass was speckled with bottles.

And we had forgotten to bring alcohol. Tom looked worried.

‘Do you think we could ask to borrow some?’

We found a half full bottle of vodka on the grass and I lifted it. There’d be mixers inside the house.

‘Elijah!’

I didn’t recognise the girl who screamed my name but that didn’t seem to matter; she dragged me forcefully with her and, thrusting another drink in my hand, began determinedly filling me in on the important events of her life I had missed since we last spoke.

‘Anna was going to make it a themed party,’ she said with a pitying expression. ‘We took so long trying to decide on a theme—she wanted paganism, but Charlotte didn’t even know what that was, and then we realised that everyone would just come in togas if we did that, and then we may as well have called it a toga party, you know?—and in the end I persuaded her not to. Because, you know, themed parties are either for pre-school kids or else they’ve got to be really, really expensive if they’re going to be good. We’re going to play beer-pong. Freddie is the worst partner, like, ever.’

Eve. Her name was Eve. She was a friend of Anna’s, and Sophie hated her. She liked to talk a lot.

We made our way through various rooms, Eve pushing and elbowing our way through the crowds. It was impossible to down my drink at the rate we were moving and I was made painfully aware by the growing pulse at my temples that, without alcohol, the noise and the heat would conspire to throw me into a foul mood; I almost longed for the fresh, freezing night air again—the place smelled wholly of sweat and smoke.

I had also just ditched Tom, who had no idea who these people were.

I had a thirty second reprieve as Eve argued over teams. I grabbed a cup, mixed vodka with coke, and chugged. Players had almost been agreed upon when Anna showed up.

Anna was meant to be a friend of mine. She was Sophie’s best friend. I had liked her just fine whilst I had known her only vaguely but I had, not that long ago, come to realise I had made several large and mistaken assumptions about her.

She was blonde, and beautiful, and rich; nice and, therefore, stupid, because clever girls are never nice. But I had discovered that she was not, in fact, stupid. She was one of the top in her year—she did absurdly well in exams. She was a genius linguist and she intended to apply to the same universities as me. Once I had discovered this everything else about her seemed to fall away too: she wasn’t even a real blonde. Her hair was the product of the expensive and subtle attentions of a hairstylist, once every two months with bimonthly root top-ups. And I couldn’t even be sure she was nice because she had, since the day I ‘discovered’ her, treated me to this quietly ironic smile and a knowing glance as if to say, bet you didn’t see that one coming, huh?

I disliked people who were both clever and beautiful on principle. There was something about it that disturbed me.

She appeared at the table, smiling wickedly at me, and declared she would play on the condition she played on the opposing team. It was Eve and I versus Anna and Freddie—Eve’s ‘worst partner, like, ever.’

That, at least, was true: he wasn’t very good at all.

Anna was good. She annihilated Eve and I, and by the time we were done I was one sudden movement away from being drunk.

I found Tom again, discussing his preparatory plans for medical school with Harry Stanley. Harry I doubted even knew for sure what a medical school was, and must have been bored out of his mind because he grinned too widely when he saw me and wrapped me into a bear-like embrace. ‘Laurence!’ he cried, fairly drunk. ‘Laurence mate, I haven’t seen you in ages.’

But he had, of course. We spoke only that afternoon at swimming practice. I hate engaging in conversations with people drunker than I am.

The three of us got talking about football, and then summer plans. Harry intended to take a gap year and travel Europe. Every now and then Tom would shoot me grateful glances and, once Harry disappeared, he whispered a quick thank you in my ear. Strangely, despite that he was physically your stereotypical jock, he often found socialising difficult.

‘You just need to loosen up,’ I said, grinning at him. ‘Take off an item of clothing.’

He grimaced. ‘What?’

‘Just do it. Go get a refill and take off your top—you’ll see, suddenly socialising will get way easier.’

‘How will that help?’

I laughed. ‘No one will pay so much attention to the shit that comes out your mouth.’

He rolled his eyes and punched my shoulder, but he did what I said. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than at that party, but he pulled off his top anyway. In the dimmed light his chest gleamed. ‘I’m meant to be our designated driver,’ he mumbled as he opened his next bottle of beer.

I knew that, at some point, I was going to lose touch with all the people I saw at Anna’s party. I knew I should care as everyone else cared: there was a strange atmosphere in the room, an intensity that had been missing from last year’s parties, and it was there because everyone suddenly understood that these events were now numbered. The final year of school wouldn’t last forever, and soon we’d all be scattered around the country and separated. It made the kids laugh harder and louder and get drunker. A few of them got emotional.

But I didn’t care. There were more hugs all round, more slurred declarations of love, but I didn’t care. I knew it should bother me but it didn’t—who were they to me, after all? I didn’t care if I never saw any of them again. They didn’t know me; none of them did, really. They knew only one of many Elijahs, each as false as the last.

And they were being hypocritical anyway—because, if you cared that much that your time with a person was limited, you wouldn’t waste that time drunkenly flitting from acquaintance to acquaintance, engaging in meaningless smalltalk.

I was in danger of becoming a maudlin drunk. So I made my way through the crowd, pretending to listen to the people that stopped me to talk; I made my way through the various loud, thumping rooms, looking for Sophie.

Where was she?

She was in one of the bedrooms with Anna. I could hear them arguing from the top of the stairs, but I couldn’t tell what was said. The thud of the music was making me dizzy and stupid; I needed another drink. I stumbled back down to the party and took a bottle of gin out of someone’s unwitting hands. Thank god it was Gordon’s, not some crappy supermarket value range—good alcohol was, at least, the one consolation for suffering through a night filled with otherwise insufferably middle-class brats.

Gin. Where was the tonic? Gin without tonic is the most disgusting thing on this earth. I looked about the room half-heartedly, but couldn’t see through the wall of dancing, laughing figures. Gin and orange would have to do.

Time seemed to grow liquid; space seemed to grow thicker. Tom came and went, hugging me, his bare abs glittering with sweat, laughing now and no longer nervous—nothing he said made any sense to me. I moved on autopilot through a familiar routine of socialisation, spoke to countless people whose name I couldn’t remember, laughed and shouted and danced with the rest of them; but I felt out of it. The lights in the room gave a surreal edge to everything. Where the fuck was Sophie?

And then a moment of clarity. I didn’t find her—I found Anna.

It was difficult to hear her over the music and the shouting, but her challenging little smile was clear enough. For a girl she was shockingly direct. She gestured I sit next to her on the sofa; for a while we watched a small group playing a drinking game in the floor.

‘I don’t know a single person in that group,’ she said mildly. ‘I have no idea who they are.’

‘That one’s called Andrea,’ I said, pointing to a cute girl with slender, elfin features. She had been blatantly ignoring me all night.

Anna watched her for a moment. She laughed. ‘She hates you.’

Yes. Yes, she certainly did. ‘Really?’

‘Undoubtedly. What did you do?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

We watched the group for a while longer. A guy with too many neck muscles lost that round and the circle erupted in cheers as he downed his drink.

‘I hear you were going to make it a themed party.’

Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Eve?’

I feigned ignorance. ‘Who?’

‘Don’t even get me started. That girl has been driving me crazy. She just won’t shut up—I suppose there’s something impressive to be said about her perseverance but she would not stop lecturing me on toga parties.’ She shook her head. ‘God, I hate parties.’

‘I’m surprised.’

She gave me a direct look. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘No, I’m not. But then, I suppose this party was inevitable really. You can’t turn eighteen without destroying your parents’ house—there’s almost something Freudian about it.’

‘Are you going to destroy your parents’ house?’

I smiled. ‘With or without the party.’

‘Huh.’ She regarded me for a moment, toying with the ice cubes in her drink. ‘So, what’s your problem?’

I blinked stupidly. ‘What?’

‘With me, I mean. What’s your problem with me?’

I quickly looked away; if I didn’t I’d have gawped. How could she possibly have known? I replayed in my mind the last hour since our arrival at the party and analysed everything I had said to her, but there was nothing—there was nothing at all. I had been careful—I had performed perfectly.

How could she possibly have known?

‘Have I given you the impression I have a problem with you?’

She laughed. ‘No. Tom told me.’

‘Tom?’ Traitor!

‘Yeah. He told me you don’t like me. He also told me not to worry, and that it’s pretty common. It’s strange: for a guy so much bigger than you, he can’t hold his drink. So—why don’t you like me?’

‘I like you just fine.’

She laughed at me. ‘No, you don’t. But why not?’

I could feel myself losing control of the conversation. Like a tug-of-war game, I could feel my feet slipping through the wet grass as she pulled me. ‘I do like you,’ I said, but it had sounded pathetic in my mind and hardly less-so out loud. Anna snorted.

We fell into silence and I began to panic—I hurried to fill the gap.

Such a rookie mistake.

‘You’re clever,’ I blurted.

Fuck.

‘I’m clever?’

‘You’re clever—and you’re gorgeous. I don’t—I don’t like people who are both.’

My face burned and my body reeled as if in shock. Why had I done that? Why had I just told her that? I had said something horribly, horribly personal and suddenly I couldn’t look at her; I felt a familiar crippling, whispering urge to run.

‘And that’s why you dislike me?’

‘I don’t dislike you,’ I mumbled. ‘But, yes.’

She laughed. ‘That just smacks of self-worth issues.’

She regarded me for a moment before deciding that, based on my irrational reasons for it, my dislike of her could not possibly run deep enough for her face to easily overcome. She leaned in closer until I could smell her perfume. ‘Besides, that’s not a reason at all.’ Her hand found my chest and stayed there. ‘And it’s quite hypocritical.’

I couldn’t stand to look at her. I was trapped and terrified and unable to move—why had I done that? Why had I said that? She was toying with me now, watching my reaction under the soft veil of her eyelashes; I fought to keep my expression calm. A hedge maze, I thought. A hedge maze, and I’m the only one there.

I had to take back the initiative.

‘You don’t know that I’m clever.’

‘Oh, I do.’ She laughed. ‘You’re very clever. Crazy, but clever.’

Crazy? ‘You don’t know that I’m crazy.’

‘I do. I can tell.’ She came closer, sidling up against me. The smells of her clung to my skin: something sweet and perfumed, something softer and less artificial, something bitter and stale. I was nagged at the sight of her by a vague feeling, the idea that I was missing a beat somehow; I just couldn’t remember what. It had blonder hair than Anna’s, whatever it was, and a gentle laugh; it had an innocent, deprecating sense of humour.

It loved Mulberry purses.

‘What were you arguing with Sophie about?’

She drew away and I found I could think better without her choking me. She narrowed her eyes. ‘What did she say?’

I shrugged.

‘She didn’t say anything to you.’

I raised an eyebrow. Of course she did, it said. ‘We’re dating.’

She looked unsure. She looked pissed off, actually, and no longer so pleased with herself. She was eyeing me suspiciously—I could almost feel the heat radiating from her head as the cogs turned. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ she said, smiling again.

But it didn’t have the same effect on me, now that I knew it to be fake.

‘Is that why you keep avoiding my advances?’

And it was over—and I was going to be fine. We were back to mindless flirting again, our feet firmly planted in a landscape I knew well. I could feel myself begin to smile and I smothered it.

Now that I had won—now that I was no longer crippled by fear—I found that I wanted her. It was as if a veil had been pulled from my mind. The dim lights made her eyes seem a darker shade of blue, almost black; her hand on my chest was small and agonisingly warm and, like her gaze, direct and forceful. I wondered what they would feel like roaming over my skin—I wondered what it would feel like roaming over hers. The thrill I would feel if I’d had her—if I’d had Anna. Anna, my intellectual equal.

I wanted it.

I couldn’t act on it there, though. I couldn’t do anything—not when I knew that Tom liked her. Not where countless eyes would see and countless mouths would whisper. Any one of them could whisper into Tom’s ear, and he’d be devastated.

Or could I?

I leaned in to kiss her.

There was a crash to my left and I jumped, my forehead bumping Anna’s painfully. Several people began laughing and jeering—I thought they were jeering at me and I blushed. But they weren’t.

Tom had fallen into the pool table and was trying to extricate himself from amongst the now disturbed balls. He kept saying, in a slurred fashion, that he didn’t feel well.

And I felt like such a shit. How could I have left him all night like that?

I took his phone from him and called Chris with it, and then took him outside to wait, hoping the air would settle his alcohol-steeped stomach. His car would have to stay where it was for the night.

Anna stalked off.

We couldn’t take him back to his own house with his parents being at home. Mr and Mrs Harding were just too nice for us to even consider it; Mrs Harding would be devastated, I don’t think it had even occurred to her that her little baby actually partied and drank alcoholic beverages yet. And of course, Mr Harding was a police officer; legally we hadn’t done anything wrong, but it just wasn’t a good idea.

My house was out. That went without saying.

So we drove to Chris’ house. It wasn’t too far. Tom and I were in the back of the car, he alternating between moaning about his stomach and giggling; I’d strapped him in as well as I could and was sat next to him holding him in place but his head lolled with each turn in the road and I was concerned for a while that the movement would make him throw up on me. If he did, I knew that I would follow soon after.

Chris seemed to find it entertaining. I liked him no more than before, but I had to admit that he handled the situation well. I was sober enough by then to hold a conversation and, in between me stopping now and then to readjust Tom’s head into a more stable position, we talked. We may as well have been alone in the car, for all Tom was going to remember of it; Chris seemed well aware of this too.

‘So… Elijah,’ he said with a sly smile. He spoke my name like a small child would say a dirty word, but at least he didn’t call me Laurence. ‘What’s up with you?’

I rolled my eyes before I remembered that he was facing the road and wouldn’t benefit from it. ‘Nothing. Nothing is up with me. You?’

He laughed, as if I’d told a very funny joke. ‘Oh, you know. The usual.’

Every word that came out of his mouth was spoken as if it was a code; perhaps I was drunker than I thought but I honestly couldn’t fathom it out. I couldn’t tell whether he was flirting with me or, in some subtle way, insulting me—but then, I wasn’t really sure I was expected to fathom it out. I certainly wasn’t in the mood to encourage him, and I didn’t bother replying. For a few moments we sat in silence.

‘You’re very different, you know,’ he said suddenly.

I snorted. ‘I’m aware. You said the same thing yesterday.’

‘You weren’t in the room when I said that.’ He smiled. ‘Were you spying?’

‘Yes.’

Chris laughed. ‘You’re definitely not the same person I knew.’

‘I know. Unless you’re going to elaborate on it I think we’ve said as much on the subject as we can.’

‘Fine. How’s your love life?’

‘It’s good.’

He glanced at me through the mirror. ‘Do you remember the night of house choir—’

‘Yes, I remember.’

He grinned.

We hauled Tom out of the car and into the house, making our way as quietly as we could to the bedroom. Chris called Tom’s parents to let them know he’d be staying the night while I held his head by the toilet bowl in case he should throw up. He didn’t. We force fed him as much water as we dared, undressed him, and manoeuvred him into the blow-up bed that Chris had hauled out of storage and fixed. He told me bluntly that there was only one spare bed, and so I’d be sharing his. I went into the bathroom and sat on the seat.

I felt strangely hollow.

I turned like that sometimes. It wasn’t anything particularly new. There was no denying the situational benefits of it but, for whatever reason, alcohol sometimes had this effect on me. I’d never stop using it so long as there were parties for which it would be useful—but sometimes, as the night drew to a close, I would feel impossibly hollow. My vision swam slightly and I could feel my head pulsating.

I felt so…displaced. There was a boy-shaped hole in the bathroom, a patch of utter black where I should have been, sat on the seat of the toilet. It sighed and placed its head in its hands.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. The bathroom fan throbbed but, perversely, the rhythm of it made the room feel quieter. The darkness outside the window seemed to press inwards towards me, a reminder that the little bathroom where I sat was nothing more than a softly glowing windbreak, a very brittle raft, the only thing between me and the wide, empty night beyond it. I felt equally empty and very alone.

My fingers ran through my hair, and I remembered it needed cutting. How could I have forgotten? I knew I shouldn’t, but I walked to the bathroom mirror and gazed at my mess of dark locks. God, it was horrible. It was just wrong. I felt the wrongness of it rise through my stomach, burning, heaving, up through my throat.

I knelt by the toilet and threw up.