So Much to Learn (24 page)

I hoped Matt
had exaggerated the situation and it would be nothing, but I
couldn't really believe that. For a start Matt would usually be the
one to try and minimise an emotional situation rather than amplify
it. Also, Simone is such a nice, upbeat person that the news that
she was hanging up on people and on the verge of tears was
particularly disconcerting.

Finally, I
turned up the driveway to the Coogan's house and when I reached it
I knocked briefly on their front door before letting myself in.
Hearing noises coming from the lounge room I stuck my head round
the corner and saw 10 year old Holly, the youngest of Simone's
three siblings, sitting on the floor half-heartedly dragging a
piece of string across the carpet for her cat to chase.

"Hey there,
how's things?" I asked with a smile. After all, I'm a younger
sister myself and I know that if you want to know what's what in a
household, the younger sister is the fount of all knowledge.

"Hello, Talia.
Things are bad," Holly sighed. "Everybody's so cranky today."

"Why's that?" I
asked and Holly sighed again, twitching the piece of string just
out of the cat’s reach.

"Same as usual,
Alex has done something bad again."

"Ah." I nodded knowingly. Alex, Simone's 15 year old brother,
is renowned in our small town for causing trouble. He'd been
excluded from a knobby private school and was well on his way to
being banished from a second. You know how some kids fall in with
the bad crowd? Well Alex
is
that bad crowd.

It doesn't help
that Mr and Mrs Coogan insist on basing their children's education
on how much they have to fork out as opposed to how good the school
actually is. Alex is the sort of kid who considers it his duty to
stick it up the group of stiffs who populate the stuffy, musty
halls of private schools and the sooner his parents realise this
and put him in a place where he'd be a small fish in a big pond,
rather than the shark he is now, the better the whole family will
sleep.

Still, Simone's
parents are not home enough to understand what is going on with
their children. While Jack's dad is emotionally distant Mr and Mrs
Coogan are geographically distant, spending about as much time as
us uni students in the city. This invariably means leaving Alex to
look after the younger two children, although it was usually 12
year old Sean who looked after himself and Holly, Alex typically
being out stirring shit.

"Is Simone up
in her room?" I asked Holly, wanting more than ever to see Simone
and make sure she was alright. She nodded and I made my way across
the open plan living area to the staircase. I was about half way up
when I met Sean who was on his way down.

"Hi, Talia," he
said, smiling shyly.

"Hey Sean,
how’s things?" I asked and he ducked his head quickly, but not
before I saw the troubled expression on his face.

"Oh, hey," I
said gently, putting a consoling hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure
whatever’s going on it'll all work out."

He blushed a
vivid red and I remembered belatedly that 12 year old boys don't
handle a girl's touch very well. Quickly removing my hand I settled
for smiling sympathetically instead.

He shrugged in
a movement reminiscent of Holly's moments before. "Yeah," he agreed
sombrely, "I just wish Mum and Dad were here."

"They're not?"
I exclaimed, completely astounded. Normally perky Holly was
seriously morose, normally chatty Sean was virtually monotone and
Simone, well, I haven't found out how she was holding up, but I
didn't think it was going to be good, and their parents hadn't
bothered to cancel a couple of meetings and come home? "Oh well," I
amended, not wanting to speak ill of Sean's parents to his face,
"I'm sure they're on their way."

"Are you?" Sean
asked darkly.

He clumped away
down the stairs and I virtually pelted up the remaining distance to
Simone's door. As I had downstairs, I knocked on her door then let
myself in, coming face to face as I did so with the infamous
Alex.

This boy was
about as far removed from Simone's bouncy golden red curls and
smiling, open face as it was possible to be. He had dyed his own
reddish hair a midnight black and hacked it short so it stuck up in
short little spikes all over his head, and his eyes, technically
the same bluey/grey as Simone's, were permanently narrowed in an
angry expression. He had grown into one scary looking boy.

"Hey, Alex," I
said, trying to hide the fact that his sudden appearance in front
of me had set my heart beating wildly in surprise. He was like a
tiger, you should never show him any fear.

He looked me
over disinterestedly, then, pushing aggressively past me, he
grunted, "Whatever."

I watched him
storm down the stairs out of the house, slamming the front door
with a bang behind him, before turning to look at Simone who was
standing, looking wan, by the window. Her eyes followed Alex as he
marched down the drive and disappeared down the road.

"Gee," I said
with raised eyebrows, "if that kid works hard enough he just might
be as charming as Micky one day."

I had meant to
lighten the mood, but at my words, Simone's face crumpled and,
seeing that she was about to lose it, I covered the room in a
couple of leaps and wrapped my arms around her. Feeling her
shoulders shaking beneath my hands and my own shoulder becoming wet
with her tears I desperately sought for a way to make her feel
better.

"Oh sweetheart,
I was only joking, he's nothing like Micky, I promise," I crooned,
but if anything, this only seemed to make her shake harder with
sobs so I decided to forgo actual, cohesive sentences and settled
instead for mumbling nonsense to the vague tune of 'it's going to
be alright.'

We stayed this
way for what felt like hours, but was probably only 10 minutes or
so, until Simone pulled away from me and reached for the box of
tissues on her desk. Collapsing onto the bed she proceeded to mop
up her face and I sat down gingerly beside her, waiting for her to
explain what was going on.

"I'm sorry,"
she gasped at last, throwing her wadded tissues into the bin. "I
shouldn't have freaked you out like that, things aren't that bad
really."

"Uh huh," I
said sceptically.

"No, honestly.
I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill," she insisted, her pale,
drawn face and lank hair completely at odds with the words coming
out of her mouth.

"But, Simmy," I
said gently, "we don't have moles here so, I hate to break it to
you, but it's got to be a mountain."

She choked out
a laugh then leant her head against my shoulder and sighed. "Alex
is in trouble again."

"Yeah, I know,"
I said, putting an arm around her shoulder and resting my head atop
hers, "Holly told me. What's he done this time?"

Simone sniffed and then said, in a very small voice, "To be
fair, we don't know if he
has
done anything. There was a school dance last night
and Alex apparently went along to stand around outside smoking and
being generally too cool to actually enter and do any dancing.
About midway through the night a kid got thrown down the fire
escape stairs and ended up in hospital with a couple of broken ribs
and bad bruising."

I pulled away
and looked at Simone in alarm. "Oh God! Alex didn't do it, did he?"
I'd always known Alex as a bit of an angry, 'I'm so misunderstood'
kid, but I never thought he was violent.

"Well, that's
the thing," Simone said in frustration. "I don't think he did, but
he was standing over the guy when the teachers found them and Alex
refuses to say that he didn't do it."

"You mean he's
saying he did?" I asked, confused by her wording.

"No, I mean he won't say that he
didn't
do it, but he won't say that
he
did
do it
either. Not to me, not to the teachers, not to Sean, not to Mum and
Dad when he talked to them on the phone at the police
station."

"Police
station!" My eyes widened in surprise and horror. "He was
arrested?"

"No, they just
took him in for questioning." Simone sighed, looking as if she was
thankful for small mercies. "They can't arrest him just yet because
the kid who was pushed down the stairs won't say anything about it
either and there were no other witnesses." She groaned and buried
her face in her hands for a moment. "It's such a mess, Alex just
keeps repeating that it's none of our business what happened and to
back off and the boy in hospital is saying the exact same thing. I
know the police think it’s because Alex has intimidated him into
not saying anything, but I can't believe it."

Having known
Alex since he was 5, I had to agree with her. Alex may think he's a
hard man, but really, he's all bravado and he certainly wouldn't be
the sort to push someone down the stairs and then intimidate them
into not ratting him out. Obviously something was going on that we
didn't know about.

"Oh," Simone
gave a little moan of anguish, "it's all going so badly wrong. I
mean this Alex thing on top of everything else is too much."

"It's going to
be alright, it really is," I said sympathetically, rubbing her back
before I properly realised what she’d said. "On top of everything
else?" I repeated after a moment, "What everything else?"

Simone looked
panicked for a moment and shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I don't
want to tell you," she said in a small voice and a cold chill
settled over me. Simone and I told each other everything, if she
was trying to keep something from me it must be really bad.

"Please tell
me," I begged. "I won't judge or anything."

Far from
agreeing, Simone let out a little choke of disbelieving laughter
and I pulled away from her in surprise.

"What was that
supposed to mean?" I asked, a little bit hurt by her reaction.

Simone grabbed
another tissue and blew her nose before replying, "I'm sorry,
Talia, you know I love you to death, but you are one of the most
judgemental people I know."

"I am?" This
was news to me.

"It's not a bad
thing necessarily," she hurried to placate me. "It's just that you
hold people up to pretty high standards. Every guy you meet has to
be as funny and nice as Matt and Jack are, and every girl has to be
as sure of herself as you are. Most people can't live up to that, I
know I can’t."

My head whirled
and my mouth opened and closed like a fish's as I tried to think of
what to say.

"I don't think you aren't as good as me,” I eventually
spluttered. “You're
better
! You're sweeter and nicer and
kinder…"

"Which is your
way of saying sometimes you think I'm a big wet blanket," Simone
interrupted gently. "I wish I was as self-assured as you, but I'm
not." She plucked at some loose threads on her bedspread and
mumbled, "I'm not saying this to be mean, but just for now, I want
to keep what's going on with me to myself."

"But…" I
searched for something to say to convince her and settled, fairly
lamely, on, "but we're best friends."

"Of course we
are, but that doesn't mean I'm not entitled to some privacy."

And she didn't
think she was self assured? She was certainly a good actor then.
Admitting defeat and not wanting to push her away I nodded in what
I hoped was an understanding way and then said quietly, "OK fine, I
see what you're saying and I agree that you should have privacy.
But just, could you tell me...you're OK, right? I mean you're not
ill, or anything?"

Her face
relaxed into a smile and she shook her head. "No, I'm fine.”

"And everybody
else? I mean none of our friends have got cancer or anything, have
they?"

She shook her
head again, her lank curls swaying as she did so. "No, as far as
I'm aware, everybody is in perfect health."

"Good." I
sighed in relief, after all don't they say that if you have your
health you have everything? Pretty simplistic, but a nice principle
nonetheless.

There was a
silence for a moment, which was suddenly broken by the shrill ring
of Simone's mobile. Since it was sitting on the bedside table right
next to me I picked it up and went to hand it to Simone, not
realising that she had made a wild lunge for it as it had made its
first peep. Seeing her about to snatch it from me I looked down at
the phone in confusion and saw 'Sam's house' flashing on the caller
ID. Before I had time to ask Simone what was going on, she had
grabbed the phone out of my hands, clicked the off button, stopping
the shrill ringing, and thrown the mobile into her bag.

"Why didn't
you-" I began, but she sent me a quelling look and I stopped
abruptly. "Right, you don't want me to know."

Well, as Alice
said, curiouser and curiouser. Samsa obviously had something to do
with this, what the hell was going on with the two of them?

Realising
another silence was stretching between us, I pushed thoughts of Sam
out of the forefront of my mind, I'd think it through later, and
returned to the matter at hand.

"OK, so where
does it stand with the Alex thing?" I asked and Simone, seeming
very happy to go along with my conversation change sat up
straighter.

"He's been
suspended from school until he tells them what happened and the
police are looking for evidence so they can charge him without a
formal complaint from the boy in hospital." Simone threw up her
hands in disbelief. "I can't believe I'm saying stuff like this,
it's so unreal!" She lowered her voice, glancing towards her door,
as if expecting Sean and Holly to be listening on the other side,
and added, "I asked mum and dad to come home, but they said they're
needed in the city and if anything more happens I should tell them
and they'll try to get away."