The Deviants (26 page)

‘Thanks,' I said, saliva filling my mouth. I bit down into
the pillow of bread and a burst of sweet, savoury and salt sent my mouth into paradise.

‘Any plans for today?' he said, flapping a tea towel over his shoulder.

‘No,' I said.

‘What's happening with training?'

‘Pete's not very well,' I lied. ‘He said he'd call me when he's better.'

Dad looked at me as though he was sucking on an unpleasant sweet. ‘So what are you going to do in the meantime? Why don't you go for a jog? How about that gym next to the garden centre? It's Pay-as-you-Go, isn't it? You could join until Pete's better perhaps?'

‘I dunno.' There was no way I was joining Sweat Dreams – I might run the risk of walking straight into Zane. But Dad clearly wanted me to go somewhere today.

‘Why don't you go and see your friend with the baby? She's called twice. She's home from hospital now, isn't she?'

I carried on eating my sandwich, filling my mouth and chewing slower so I wouldn't have to answer.

He went back to his board and started dicing his peeled carrot. ‘Talking of hospitals, you can take that off now, you know.'

He was looking at the white plastic bracelet they'd given me that had my name and date of birth on.

‘Yeah, I know.' For some reason, it made me feel like something real had happened for once, rather than everything being in my own head. Proof I hadn't imagined everything I was feeling.

‘That Malinowski boy keeps ringing as well. You know, Derek and Doreen's grandson from down the road? He came to the door while you were in the shower.'

‘What did he want?'

‘To see if you're all right. He said he's staying at the girl's house in Cloud to help her with the baby. Derek and Doreen are back from their cruise now.'

‘Were they OK about him moving out?'

‘Why don't you call him and find out?'
Chop chop chop.

I purposely didn't look at him. I looked to the board where he'd been chopping prewashed veg – celery and onions. He started chopping up a leek. ‘Are you making soup?'

‘No, I'm trying that rabbit ragu from the Jamie Oliver book. The one you got me last Christmas. Thought I'd give it a whirl.'

‘You can't stand Jamie Oliver. You always say he's an overconfident barrow boy who needs to run a comb through his hair.'

‘Well, he might be, but I like the look of this recipe.' He scraped the diced vegetables into a large saucepan and moved it to the draining board. ‘His fish pie looks good as well. Thought I might try that tomorrow. Will you have some?'

‘If you take the poo pipes out of the prawns this time, yeah.' I offered him a brief eyebrow raise before going back to my sandwich, disappointed to see I'd only got one corner left. ‘Celestina's coming over for dinner, isn't she?'

He didn't answer immediately. He was concentrating too much on washing his hands and washing them again, just to be sure they were un-oniony. ‘I thought she might like to come over and try this. We're doing Italian cookery in the next couple of weeks.'

‘That's why you want me out of the house, is it?' I smiled.

‘No, of course not. You're more than welcome to join us. I just don't know if it's too soon. After your mum, I mean.'

‘Dad, it's been five years. You're entitled to fall in love
again.' He actually reddened, and couldn't look at me. ‘Aww, Dad.'

‘I think you'll like her, Estella. She's got a good heart.'

‘You mean she's completely different to Mum?'

He started to protest, but that was all I needed to know. My dad was going to be OK. As for me…

He kissed my head and smiled, one of his toothy ones. ‘Thanks, Little Fish.'

And those two words seemed to make everything a little bit more all right. Dad hadn't called me Little Fish for ages. When I was tiny and I'd fallen over, Dad was the one I always run to and he always called me Little Fish and it somehow managed to sprinkle magic on any wound.

‘I'm going to get dressed,' I said.

‘And then?' said Dad.

‘And then I'll go for a walk. Maybe a jog.'

Dad winked at me and scraped his peelings into the food bin. ‘That's my girl.'

*

I jogged all the way to the seafront and sat on the sea wall with my water bottle, just staring out to sea and breathing in. I did feel a bit better. I felt a buzz in my pocket.

A text from Corey.

I had a letter. From Zane.

Zane Walker?
I text back.

Well, yeah, it wouldn't be Zayn Malik, would it?

What sort of letter?

I'll ping it over to you. Hang on.

Within seconds, a picture message flashed up. It was of a handwritten note, scrawly handwriting, badly spelled. It was Zane's handwriting. It hadn't changed since he was a kid.

I didn't feel as euphoric as I'd felt after we'd done the whole Skin Room thing to the Shaws. Don't ask me why but I felt bad.

How awesome is that?
came the next note.

I didn't really know what to say. It didn't feel awesome. It felt a little sad. Like we'd toppled Nelson's Column or something.

So I just put
Yeah, that's awesome. So glad it worked.

Are you better now?
he asked.

I didn't answer him that time. I didn't want to tell another lie. I jumped down off the sea wall and began walking back towards the Pier. I thought about jogging to Max's. I thought about getting an ice cream. I petted a couple of frisky Jack Russells being walked by a kind old lady who stopped and chatted about the new colour tarmac they're putting in the High Street. The residents were planning a protest, apparently.

I was dead opposite Zane's house when an Easy Riders taxi pulled up to the kerb by his gate. A chunky woman, wearing a psychedelic pink cardigan, leopard-print leggings and gold sandals got out and tottered round to the other side. Zane's mum, Zelda. She opened the door and out stepped Zane himself, wearing a T-shirt and board shorts and trainers with no socks.

I stood by the sea wall, flicked up my hood and watched.

The taxi sped off down the road and Zelda teetered
up their garden path to unlock the door. Zane stood at the end of the path, looking round, like he was expecting someone to be there. He looked awful. Paler, thinner. Still big, still angry-looking, still ready for a fight, but changed. Brutalised. Hollow.

Then I noticed his wrists. And the clean white bandages that covered them.

I looked both ways to cross the road and walked along the pavement to the gate of number thirty-one. All along the path were little sun-bleached gnomes, sitting on mushrooms with fishing rods. He saw me through the front bay window, just as I saw him. Neither of us moved. Moments later, he vanished.

The front door opened and there he stood. He had on a hospital bracelet too, over one of his bandages. I rolled up my sleeve to show him mine.

‘Snap,' I said.

His eyes were watering. I didn't know if it was the breeze off the sea or if he was crying. Either way, he looked like something was going to burst out of him.

‘Want to talk about it?'

He sniffed. ‘No. I want to scream.'

‘Come on, then,' I said, opening the gate. ‘We can scream together.'

He looked unsure and, for a moment, I thought he was going to slam the door on me. Instead, he turned around, grabbed a white hoody from the banister, and called out to his mum that he was going for a walk. Somewhere in the distance, she shouted out instructions peppered with angry swearwords. He slammed the door on her, mid-flow, and came down the path towards me. ‘Where?'

‘The island,' I said, closing the gate behind him. ‘Tide's
not in till late tonight – we can walk over. It's the one place in Brynstan you can scream and no one will hear you.'

‘How do you know?' he said curiously as we walked, side by side.

‘Cos no one heard me.'

‘So you and Zane talked?'

22

Back to the Island

W
e walked across the sand in silence. Words were kind of unnecessary. We were both walking in the same direction, and, in a way, that was enough. I noticed he had flecks of purple glitter in his eyebrows and behind his ears, but I didn't mention it.

‘When was the last time you were here?' I asked, when we were halfway there.

‘Dunno. Years. You're not gonna pull some cat move on me when we get there, are you? Cos if you are…'

‘I'm not, I promise. We're done with that.'

He nodded warily and we walked the rest of the way in total silence. It took us about twenty minutes to reach it – it would have taken five, in a boat. It was sunny, for a while, but by the time we'd got to the little pebble beach on the east side, it had started to rain. The amount of litter on the shore was depressing. Not just driftwood and plastic bags, but bottles, cans, tyres, rusted bits of metal, plastic buckets, broken car parts, fag butts; you name it. OK, I hadn't been out here for a few years, but there never used to be so much rubbish around.

It wasn't that bad being back there, though. I'd had so
many nightmares about it, but, as it turned out, the fear had been worse than the reality. There was no one threatening here. Just Zane. And he was no one to be afraid of any more.

The rain was coming down harder by the second.

‘Quick,' I said, pulling up my hoody and running into the thicket of trees until we were deep enough inside Mushroom Woods to be sheltered from it. We found a little copse of felled logs and sat down. I wondered if he'd remember the den we built there once. The sound of rain battering the leaves above us almost drowned our voices.

‘We were lucky,' I said. ‘Just made it.'

‘What if the tide back comes in?' said Zane, shivering inside his hoody.

‘It won't. It's not due in till later tonight,' I replied. ‘We've got plenty of time.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I run on the beach. I have to keep an eye on the tides.'

He looked around us, rain beading his face. He was afraid.

‘There's no one else here, I promise, Zane. No one comes out here any more. It's not on the tourist trail, and no one would hire a boat if they didn't know the tides.'

The air was actually warm, despite the fact it was tipping down. The trees were our umbrella.

‘This is them woods where I found the mushroom,' he said. ‘We had a den here.'

I smiled. ‘That's right. This is Mushroom Woods. You named Jewel Creek. Max named the Pirate Graveyard. Like we discovered them.'

He suddenly put both his hands up to his face. It was like he'd been bottling his tears for a lifetime. As the rain came down around us, so they flooded down his cheeks.

‘… and Jewel Creek. I thought the walls were covered in jewels. But they weren't. It was just where the sun caught the wet rock. We could go and see it when the rain clears?'

‘Why did you bring me out here?' he said, wiping his nose on his hoody.

‘Were you there when we played Robin Hood at Bucket Bay, with bows and arrows made out of branches and bits of string? And when I lost my Polly Pockets in Jewel Creek and me and Fallon spent ages looking for them? I used to go down to the shore all the time, thinking they might wash up, but they never did.'

‘What are you going on about?'

‘Making dens. Eating picnics. Police stakeouts inside the ruin. Always having picnics. You miss those days too, don't you?'

Zane pulled up his knees and rested his face on them. Then he began unravelling the bandage on his left wrist. I felt my legs go weak at the thought of what was underneath, but when he got to it, there was barely anything there. Just a few little scabby red cuts, like a tally.

‘Turns out Gillette ain't the best a man can get.'

I looked at the tally in silence.

‘What a pussy, eh? Wanted to die, but didn't want it to hurt.'

‘What about the other one?' I said. He did the same again, unravelled the bandage, and showed me. Fewer tally marks this time, but these ones were deeper.

‘There was a load of blood,' he said. ‘Mum took me down to A & E.'

‘Was she worried about you?'

He scowled at me and started wrapping one of his wrists again, all ham-fisted. ‘Of course she was, Estella.'

‘So she didn't want you to die?'

He scowled again, like I'd just smeared dog muck on his jeans. ‘I'm her son, for Christ's sake. Her
only
son.'

‘So why can't you just tell her you're gay?'

Zane seemed to shrink. ‘I ain't. I
ain't
, all right?' He went so much more Essex when he shouted.

‘There's no one here, Zane. No one can hear you.'

‘I. AIN'T. GAY. There, you hear that, do ya?”

‘To thine own self be true, Zane,' I muttered. I didn't think he'd heard me.

‘What?'

‘It's this quote my dad's got up in his office. He's got loads of book quotes in frames all over the walls. It's from Hamlet It's good advice.'

‘I'm not …'

‘You like kissing boys. Corey saw you.'

‘I knew that prick couldn't keep his mouth shut.' He tried wrapping up his other wrist again, but he was getting it all wrong. I stopped his hands and pulled them towards me. He snatched them away.

‘Come here, I'll do them.'

He let me, but he wouldn't look at me.

‘My older brother David's gay,' I told him.

‘So?
I
ain't.'