By Any Other Name (16 page)

She won’t reply straight away because she’ll be at school, but it’s done. It’ll all be OK now. I get on with some revision until Dad calls me down for lunch at one. He
heats me some tinned chicken soup, an old childhood favourite when I’m under the weather.

‘How’re you feeling?’ he says as he watches me spoon up the soup.

‘Much better. Where’s Mum?’

‘She was helping out at Katie’s school this morning because they’re going on a woodland walk. She said she would go to the supermarket on the way back so I expect she’ll
be home soon. What are you going to do this afternoon? More revision?’

‘Yeah, I’ve done quite a lot so far but there’s always more to do.’

‘Never mind, a couple more months and you can have a long break from it. Why don’t you pop out for a walk before you start again? Get some oxygen to your brain.’

I look out of the window and the sun is shining. ‘Good idea, I think I will.’

I grab a coat and pull on some shoes, then I step outside and the sun shines gently down on my face. I stand on the doorstep for a moment to check for any suspicious signs before setting off
down the hill. There’s a brook at the bottom with wild flowers growing and I want to see what’s come up there since I last looked.

The daffodils are still out, and little white star-shaped flowers have opened by some yellow primroses. As I lean over the white rail fence to see them better, I notice a Land Rover coming
towards me down the lane opposite the brook. It takes me a moment to get my bearings, but then I realise that must be the lane to Emo’s farm. That piques my curiosity and I pay more attention
to the Land Rover as it turns down the track by the side of the brook and then comes over the little bridge to join the road next to me.

There’s a man and a woman sitting in the front. They don’t look happy. Emo’s parents? No wonder he’s so miserable all the time.

As the Land Rover passes me, I see him sitting in the back, earphones in and head down, looking at his knees. He looks pale and strained and as unhappy as the two people in the front.

Why isn’t he in school?

The car drives off and takes a right turn at the end of the street, heading towards the main road.

I shake my head and walk back up the hill towards home. Emo’s weirdness is none of my business.

I get a few more hours of revision done until around four, when I check my Facebook account. Nothing yet.

Every five minutes, I check again. By four thirty, I’m checking every two minutes. Then finally just before five, a message pops up:

My eyes fill up with tears and there’s a massive lump in my throat. It’s going to be OK. It’s all OK again.

It’s so easy to ignore all the advice and mail her again. And so easy not to care that I’ve just put all of us at risk. But this is Tasha and she’ll never tell anyone.

That night I sleep easily and I don’t care about getting up and going to school the next day. It’s fine. I’m armoured by my past again, even if they don’t know it. A part
of
me
is back. I don’t care when nobody talks to me at school, when Gemma sniggers and nudges her ex, who isn’t her ex any more, when I walk past them in the corridor. They
don’t matter. None of this matters.

School goes quickly and I focus on work, and it’s easy to do that now. All my feelings of loneliness and isolation are gone. I walk home quickly at the end of the day and there’s a
note on the table from Mum:

Katie pretty much has to be held down at the dentist so I guess Dad’s not having fun right now. I open the fridge and find some bread to toast. After I wolf down a few slices, I decide to
go for a walk. I wander through the estate and down to the brook. There’s no one about so I cross the bridge and slip down the bank to sit among the willow tree roots and watch the water flow
by.

After a while, I hear a sharp bark from the lane above and there’s a black-and-white collie watching me from the bank. I flinch a little – he doesn’t look too friendly. But
then I see Emo behind him, snapping his fingers beside his leg and the collie zooms back to heel.

We look at each other.

‘I heard what happened,’ he says in the unfriendliest tone possible. ‘Sorry. But you should know – all that lot are dickheads.’

‘Oh.’ Well, he’s certainly managed to surprise me there. ‘Um, thanks, I think.’

He walks down the bank towards me, the collie hugging his leg in ultra-obedience. ‘They like messing with people and making them feel shit. That’s what they get off on.’

I smile a little and I’m startled to find I mean it. ‘Yeah, they certainly manage that.’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t let them bug you. Nobody really likes them. They don’t even like each other. They’re like starving rats in a trap – they’ll turn on each
other if there’s no one else to savage.’

I stare at him, not expecting the eloquence, if that’s what it is. His words sound too rough to be described as eloquence precisely.

‘Basically, you see, they suck.’

That forces a laugh out of me. ‘Thank you. Really.’

He pauses as if about to say more and then nods. As he turns to walk back up the bank with the collie, I realise what it is that looks odd about him. It’s his eyes. They’re too
bright and sore-looking and I feel stupid for not knowing straight away that he’s been crying.

‘Joe!’

He turns his head back.

‘That really was nice of you. I appreciate it.’

His solemn mouth quirks into a slight smile and he shrugs again, embarrassed, and turns back up the bank to disappear back down the lane to the farm.

That boy is an enigma. Why is he out walking the dog and crying at the same time? And where did he go yesterday that made him look so unhappy? At first I would have put the crying down to some
pathetic Emo thing, but I’ve seen too much of him to think that’s the reason. There’s something more to this.

T
he first person I see at school on Wednesday is Fraser. He’s on his own and he stops when he sees me. There’s one of those
uncomfortable silences where we don’t know what to say and stare at each other instead. I remember what Joe said and I don’t feel too sorry for him. I wonder if I should, given we maybe
didn’t work out because I just wasn’t enthusiastic enough. Is that why he never wanted to see me outside school, or is he a loser, like Joe says? And then I remember what Cam said too,
about how he’d told her where I lived . . .

But does it matter now? What is there for us to say to each other? We’re two people who thought we’d connect and found we couldn’t. Hardly front-page news. No major drama
there. So I pull my gaze away from his and walk quietly away down the corridor.

I have geography first lesson and it passes uneventfully. I’m tired after another night of disturbed sleep. The dreams were especially bad last night and I kept seeing the gun coming
towards me whenever I closed my eyes. At break I decide to go to the library for some quiet, but on my way there, a throng of lower-school kids rushes past me, babbling excitedly, followed by some
others my age.

Even I recognise the signs of a fight, and while I definitely don’t want to see any punches thrown or blood shed, I’m curious just to see who’s involved so I follow too.

There’s the usual crowd round the bodies in the middle. I stand on the steps outside the library so I can see better. There’s a blond head, looking suspiciously like Stuart, locked
in battle with a dark one . . . with familiar black floppy hair. A jock’s body battling a skinnier Emo type . . .

Joe?

Really?

I blink and look again.

No, that’s definitely Joe and Stuart.

There’s a shout from the corner, ‘Break it up!’ and two teachers run towards the crowd. A bit of pushing and shoving and they break through to the middle. ‘Lads! Lads!
Break it up now!’ Stuart loosens his hold, but Joe catches him a hard punch up on the jaw. I wince and turn away so I miss the rest, but when the crowd disperses past me I realise it must be
over and I turn back again. Stuart’s standing off to one side looking sullen, but Joe’s being restrained by the bigger of the two teachers who looks like he’s having trouble
holding on to him. The other teacher steps in to block his route to Stuart. ‘Hopley, calm down! Pull yourself together!’ When Joe doesn’t respond, the teacher leans into his face
and yells, ‘Pack it in!’

That seems to get through to him and he stops struggling. The teacher holding him turns him away from Stuart and leads him off down the side of the library, passing me on the steps. He glances
at me as he goes past, but he looks numb and shocked as if he’s stunned at what he’s just done. The remaining teacher frowns at Stuart and gestures towards a door in the opposite
direction.

Emo – no, I feel mean for calling him that now – Joe does seem especially wound up and I wonder what’s caused it. It bothers me for the rest of the morning and as I walk to the
canteen after the twelve o’clock bell goes, I see his skinny black trousers and Converses heading up the field. As I watch, he climbs over the hedge at the far end and vanishes into a field
beyond.

Here’s my chance to find out what’s bugging him. Maybe Holly, whichever version of her I choose, would never go after him. But Lou would.

I break into a trot and jog up the field, scrambling over the hedge when I get that far. He’s standing halfway down the field under an oak tree and he’s smoking a cigarette. I walk
towards him, getting my breath back. By the time I reach him, I’m calm and unruffled, as if I haven’t just run up a field in pursuit of him.

‘Hey,’ I say, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the smell of the smoke from his cigarette. ‘You OK?’

His left eye looks a little bruised and he’s got a small cut by his mouth, but otherwise he doesn’t look too beaten up. ‘Yeah. Fine.’ He blows out a cloud of smoke
slowly.

‘Why?’

He stops pretending to be uninterested in my presence. ‘Eh?’

‘Why? What was that all about?’

‘Noth–’

‘And don’t say nothing.’

He puts his hand up to scratch his face and I think he’s hiding a smile. ‘Nothing important. I’d just had enough of him. He picked the wrong time to try winding me
up.’

‘Why is it the wrong time?’

‘You ask a lot of questions, you know that?’

‘Are you in trouble now?’