The Apple Tart of Hope (8 page)

Once a letter's been read, you can't unread it. Maybe I should have been reassured to hear that he was happy to do as I had asked, i.e. put the whole thing out of his mind. But I didn't feel reassured. I felt brokenhearted, and I felt rejected, and I felt humiliated. I was the one who had told him to ignore the things I'd told him I'd been feeling about him. So why did I feel like the one who'd been slapped in the face? My secret was out. And his feelings for me, or should I say his non-feelings, were as clear as they could be. I guess I should have been glad to have got there first, to take back the things I'd never meant to say in the letter I'd never meant to send. I wasn't glad at all, though. Whatever the opposite of glad is—that's what I felt.

From then on, something went wrong between me and Oscar. Our friendship got so bent out of shape that I wasn't going to be able to straighten it out. It was never going to be the way it used to be.

I got the message.

I kept on wishing I'd never felt those feelings or written them down or slid them under my mattress where Paloma had found them and sent them anyway. But it was too late now.

I tried to forget him but I can't say it was easy. I couldn't shake him off. He was under my skin and little things he said kept echoing around my head. I dreamed of his face and his funny ways and I imagined I could see his bike, twinkling in the moonlight—and sometimes when I was asleep I dreamed of the smell of his apple tarts, even though when I woke up the smell had always gone.

And my parents never seemed to stop talking about how beautifully I was adjusting to New Zealand life. They often said—to anyone who'd listen—how good it was that I wasn't checking Facebook fifty times a day to see what everyone back in Ireland was up to, and how I didn't even seem to need to email Oscar all the time either. For the record, that turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life.

I'd never have predicted I would lose touch with him—before, that is, I did. I thought I had my reasons. But it turns out that they weren't good reasons. It turns out that you should never lose contact with the people who are supposed to be important to you in your life. There is no excuse for doing that.

She stopped emailing me and I couldn't get hold of her. And that was exactly the time I really could have done with talking to her because of a whole pile of other things that were happening. The old Meg would have been a massive help. The old Meg would have done her best to get me to figure things out, and everything might have got a good bit better, but I wondered, as the weeks slipped by, whether the old Meg was ever coming back. I began to doubt whether she even existed anymore. When she'd first left, I'd heard from her every single day. Now I hadn't got a single email from her for over a month.

I thought about how I'd kind of assumed that Meg was my person and how stupid I'd been to think that she and I had a fairly excellent future waiting for us when she got back home. And when I realized that I'd been wrong, ridiculously, embarrassingly, shamingly wrong . . . quite rapidly the world went from color to black and white and the magic seemed to drain away and the only thing left for me to do was gather up my personal pride and try to look like the hope I'd had had never existed. I acted as if I wasn't destroyed or defeated. I pretended that I didn't care.

After the letter, everything was different. How could anyone ignore something like that? Maybe some people would be able to, but I couldn't. It's not like I didn't try, but the knowledge of it made its imprint on everything.

It's not as if I didn't have other things in my life: Paloma, for example. She'd been great, and we'd become good friends. At least I thought we had. I guess she was difficult to read sometimes and okay, there were definitely times when I wasn't really sure what to make of her. I'd call in on the way to school and she'd be happy enough to cycle along beside me, chatting away until we got close to the school gates, when she seemed to disappear. Quite often I'd have a hard time catching up with her for the rest of the day.

I'd see her in the yard standing very close up to people like Andy Fewer and Greg Delaney, who used to be pretty good friends of mine too, and I'd wave, and when she looked up or if she saw me heading toward her, she'd have a strange crooked smile on her face and she'd laugh and the three of them would scatter in different directions. And then I'd be waving at thin air, feeling stupid.

She'd made a lot of friends since she'd arrived, and she often liked to have private one-on-ones with them. Most of what she said must have been very funny because people often used to explode with mental-sounding laughter just after she'd whispered something in their ear.

My apple tarts had never seemed to work on my dad, and it's not like I hadn't tried. But no matter how many times I encouraged him to have a slice or two, it didn't seem to make any difference. I reckoned that some people were just immune and there was nothing you could do about it.

But then one night, Dad, Stevie and I were watching this program. It had a celebrity baker on it who wasn't much older than me, and who happened to be showing everyone how to make tarts—apple tarts as it turns out—quite like the ones I made myself. My dad sat up straight and he pointed at the TV and he looked over at me and he smiled.

I hadn't seen him smile for a long time. He told me that
my
apple tarts looked way nicer than the ones on the show, and he said he bet that the ones on the show couldn't possibly taste nearly as fantastic as mine did.

When he went to the kitchen for a cup of tea, Stevie whispered to me that this was a sign. It felt like the first time Dad had said anything in weeks.

Stevie was happy to help, as usual—sieving the flour into our big glass bowl, sitting at the low table I'd set up for him. That night I made four.

Dad said it would be greedy to keep them all to ourselves so why didn't I take a couple into school in the morning, and Stevie thought that was a great idea too.

But I wasn't sure. I'd been kind of careful about keeping my baking skills under the radar when it came to school. You have to be cautious about stuff like that. School is not always the place to show off when it comes to anything unusual— almost anyone will tell you that.

So, just to be safe, I thought I'd check with Paloma before deciding.

Fortunately, that night she was sitting in Meg's window, brushing her hair. When she saw me, she smiled and asked me what the lovely smell was. I thought it was the right time to tell her about
my special talent. She was lovely about it. In fact, she said, “Wow, that's very cool.”

I asked her whether, in her opinion, people in school would appreciate homemade apple tarts and she smiled and said, “Of
course
, they would.” How rare for a boy of my age to be able to make things like that, and I said I was vaguely worried that people might think it was a bit “different” but she said, “Not in the slightest, why on earth would anyone think that? Definitely bring them in, Oscar—everyone's bound to be
so
impressed.”

And her golden hair glimmered in the starlight.

Paloma had been right. I couldn't have imagined a better reaction. Next day, Mr. O'Leary took one of the tarts into the staff room and I left the other one on the table at the top of the classroom.

When he came out he said he had an announcement: “Everyone! I think we have our candidate for the talent showcase!”

The talent showcase is a national competition—schools can put forward whoever they want for whatever skills they think are suitable. Soon, lots of people had had a slice and people were clapping, and saying things like, “Way to go, Oscar!” and people were claiming that we'd certainly win on behalf of the school, which would have been great seeing as the prize was iPads for everyone. So that was fairly exciting, and in the beginning I felt proud to be representing the school doing something that I loved. I knew I had a talent, but I'd never expected anyone would want me to put it on show like this.

Paloma didn't seem to be as happy as I'd have expected her to be. She looked sort of annoyed. She didn't know why everyone was making such a fuss.

“But you
told
me everyone would love the tarts,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I was right about that then, wasn't I?” she replied, still not looking too pleased.

Nobody got detention that day, and nobody got any homework, and the teachers spent the whole time looking like they were actually enjoying themselves.

Lots of other good things happened too, like our hockey team got into the semifinal of the regional league for the first time since 1973, and the school choir sang “Ave Maria” so beautifully that it made Mrs. Stockett cry. Happiness is what she said it was, and pride.

“There's magic everywhere today, Oscar!” said Mr. O'Leary as I was heading for home. It wasn't magic, I thought to myself. It was just people being nice to each other and trying their best. I had a secret feeling that the apple tarts had done their trick again, and I should have felt good about that. But when I got home, Dad was just as silent and sad looking as ever. And when I closed my eyes, I could see Meg's face, and I could hear her talking in my head, and I wanted, more than I had ever realized before, to hold on to her, right at the time she seemed to be slipping away.