Wasted (7 page)

Her legs are long and bare. They are smooth, lean and flawless, beneath a very short white skirt. Heels push her centimetres higher. She's a walking cliché. Straight off the pages of a cheap magazine.

But it's when you see her face that you decide whether you do or don't like Kelly Jones. She could smile at you angelically, and often does at teachers, or she could turn you to ice with the arrogance of her sneer. To be honest, even when she's doing the angelic bit, “likeable” wouldn't really be the word, unless you were some rather short-sighted elderly relative taken in by her sugary voice. Or a boy who wasn't interested in “likeable” anyway. If beauty is within, even the most powerful torch would fail to find it in the furthest depths of Kelly Jones's soul.

Arrogant sneer is definitely what is on show right now, as she looks down at Jack. Samantha and Charlie stand a little behind. Charlie's skin is expensively tanned, with hennaed hair tumbling deliberately over her shoulders. Samantha is the paler version, razor-thin eyebrows arching over highly decorated eyes in an opal face, her hair streaked with gold and straight as paper.

All are slim, tall and very high-maintenance.

“Why, it's Charlie's Angels,” says Ella.

“What do you want, Kelly?” asks Jack, not looking at her.

“I heard that there's some crap band playing at the leavers' prom,” says Kelly, her voice drawly.

“Yeah,” adds Charlie. “We heard that somebody's daddy persuaded Willow to let his little boy play.”

“And how do you imagine he did that?” Kelly looks at each of her friends in turn.

“Maybe lots of money for the school library?” asks Samantha.

“Or something more, um, personal?” Kelly looks at Jack now. Kelly Jones has been watching too much television and she has the LA-bitch smile down to a fine art.

Jack's face shows his anger. He opens his mouth to say something. But Tommy speaks: “Ignore her, Jack. She's not worth it.”

Then Kelly seems to see Jess for the first time. Something else crosses her face now as she looks from Jess to Jack, sees how closely they are sitting.

“Well, look who's here! Hanging out with losers as usual, I see.”

Which is when Jess makes her mistake. “Drunk as usual, I see,” she says. She does not quite know why she says it. It just slips out. It's one of those insults that can be equally useful in many situations. Kelly, in fact, does not look particularly drunk, but then the night is yet young and she may well be later.

But that is what Jess says and it is, by chance, the one thing she should not have said. Not if she wants to keep the forces of darkness chained up for the night. But then she does not know this.

There is an intake of breath and the noises of the bar swell around them. Over the smooth shoulders of the three girls, Jess is aware of other drinkers, laughing, shouting, doing the things that they do on an ordinary night out. And then her attention comes back to her own group.

Several things happen in exactly the same moment.

Kelly seems to grow another few centimetres, as she bristles like a cat about to fight.

“Uh-oh,” says Chris, with a grimace.

“OK, bye, then, Kelly – see you around, eh?” says Ella, firmly.

Tommy sinks his head down and slowly bashes it against the table in mock despair.

Samantha and Charlie both narrow their eyes. Charlie puts her hand on Kelly's shoulder. Jess wonders what's going on. OK, it's quite annoying to be accused of being drunk, but there's more to this than that.

Then Jack seems to have had enough. “Look, Kelly, you asked for it. Off you go now.”

“You bastard!” spits Kelly. “I said I'd get you back. And then I thought I'd forgive you, be big about it, you know? But if you've told your new girlfriend, then you can forget it. And it looks like she's not the only one you blabbed to. Can't keep your trousers on
or
your mouth shut, obviously.”

Tommy pretends to have died. Ella covers her eyes. Chris looks at Jess and makes a face which says something like,
Now it's war and although it was technically your fault, you couldn't have known
.

Jack starts to get up, but Kelly and her cronies have gone. They march on their long, long legs over to the other side of the bar, where they join some boys who seem to know them and who buy them more drinks. Soon, they will leave, after a hurried and furious conversation, but Jess and Jack and the others will not notice. Or would not think anything of it if they did. Though they should. They should be very careful from now on. And they will need all the luck that Jack believes surrounds him.

“OK, so what was that about?” says Jess. Ella pours them all another drink from the pitcher.

The noise in the bar is rising and something's turning ugly over the other side of the room. Someone has spilt a drink and someone else thinks it was deliberate. One of the bar staff is calming the situation with some practised jokery. It's the sort of argument which could go either way, flare or fade.

It's not even worth thinking about, because Jess wants to hear the story of Jack and Kelly, which sounds somewhat more interesting.

JACK
twists his head to look at Jess and tell the story directly to her. “Something happened, couple of months ago. We'd all been out – Ella's birthday – and we ended up at a party in someone's house. Kelly was there. She was pretty pissed.”

“For a change,” says Ella.

“Hey, does anyone want anything else to drink? I know this story,” says Tommy.

“Yeah, thanks – orange juice please,” says Jack.

“Me too,” says Jess.

“Anyway, without going into the sordid details,” continues Jack once Tommy has squeezed past them, “Kelly started chatting me up and, as you can imagine, it was extremely blatant and yes, I know she's pretty and all that but frankly I'd rather be kissed by an eel. Anyway, I knocked her back. I don't think it had ever happened to her before.”

“You should have seen her,” says Ella. “Totally flipped.”

Jess is thinking that Jack really
does
seem not to be under Kelly's spell. She likes this story more and more.

Jack continues: “I didn't think any more about her until I was cycling home after the party was over. I heard this noise in someone's garden. It was Kelly, lying on the ground, virtually unconscious, and throwing up. Charlie was with her and frankly she wasn't much better but she was at least conscious. I said we had to get help. Charlie tried to stop me but what could I do? I seriously thought Kelly could choke on her own vomit.”

This is not a pleasant image.

“So I went back to where the party was and I had to get hold of the parents, who were next door keeping out of the way and not best pleased to have to be involved. And to cut a long story short, they called Kelly's parents and she ended up in hospital for the night. Then I think she was grounded for ages – oh, and she had to go and apologize to the people whose garden she'd thrown up all over. She'd puked on a gnome and the woman made her replace it. And
that
story made her a laughing stock too.”

“And all Jack's fault, you see?” says Chris.

“And she's still pissed off about it now?” asks Jess.

“Ah, well, that's not quite all,” says Ella.

“She accused me of trying to assault her, as in sexually.”

“The cow.”

“Stupid too – no one believed her. She's an idiot – I had witnesses who'd been with me all night and everyone knew how pissed she was.”

“So, major humiliation for Kelly Jones.” Jess can't help feeling quite satisfied.

“Exactly.”

“I can see why she hates you.”

“And I rather suspect that you are now included in her circle of hate. Anyway, can we please not think about her? She's not worth it.”

Tommy has come back with the drinks. Jess takes her orange juice, but she also pours herself something from the pitcher that appears. Her mouth is feeling pleasantly tingly and her feet heavy, but she is perfectly well in control of everything she wants to be in control of. Jack leans towards her to say something but she cannot hear over the rising noise of voices. His mouth is close to her skin and she can feel his breath, see the lines on his lips. When he touches her hair to push it behind her ear, her heart tumbles. A cliché, but true, she discovers. Skin-tingling and all the rest.

This and other moments like it take them all through the next hour and it is time to move on, to go to the club, where music, more drinks and dancing are supposed to occupy the rest of the night.

Before they leave, Jess and Ella go to the toilets. It is very possible that Kelly might be there or might see them, but she isn't and therefore doesn't, and they have more or less forgotten about her. Which is pleasant but unwise.

“So, how much do you like Jack, then?” asks Ella. Jess grins as she says she likes him a lot. “It's obvious he likes you,” says Ella. “I'm really pleased. He needs someone like you. He's great and everything but he can be intense and that thing with the coin… Well, he takes risks. You know? Sometimes it's as though he doesn't care what happens. It's like tempting fate, challenging it to come and get him.”

“I know what you mean,” says Jess. “He told me about the game thing. It seems kind of weird, but interesting. Kind of deep.”

“Yeah, I suppose. You know about his mother, don't you?”

“I know his mother's dead but no details.”

“Well, ask him. It's not a secret and he's quite open about it but he should tell you, not me. He told me once he'd had so much bad luck early on that he'd used it all up. He calls himself Lucky Jack, spins that coin as though he thinks he actually controls it. I don't know, but I just don't think it's right. So, look after him, will you? He can be a cocky bastard but we all love him.”

Jess thinks about this briefly, as they walk back to the others. Jack is talking to Tommy and Chris, near the door, waiting for the girls. But all Jess can really think about is the feeling when he looks at her. If he has a hidden vulnerability then that is absolutely fine with her. Makes him all the more likeable, if that was possible. And it's not as though he's screwed up or needy, either of which would be a definite dampener. Jess has enough of that at home. She wants a survivor, someone who will run with her headlong into the future.

Ten minutes later they are queuing to get into the club. Kelly and her friends are nowhere to be seen, not that Jess and Jack are thinking about them much. Tommy is not with them – he's gone to meet some other friends. Jess is the only one who is not eighteen and she has the usual tension as she stares the bouncer in the eye and answers his questions about her ID. She knows it all off by heart now but you never know when they'll spring a weird question on you.

There are no signs that something is about to happen. No omens. No solitary magpies or one-legged black cats. No one walks under a ladder or breaks a mirror or spills salt. The idea might have come into Jack's mind to toss the coin to see whether they should even go into this club. And maybe the coin would have said they shouldn't. But the idea is far from his mind. Maybe this is the moment when an observer could have said,
Stop! Make a different choice now! Toss the coin, Jack, and hope it tells you to go somewhere else. Home, preferably.

So, perhaps it is all Jack's fault. For forgetting to make his sacrifice to luck. And now the ancient gods are annoyed with him for that lapse. But Jack is in love – he is in no position to concentrate.

Perhaps if they hadn't been so wrapped up in each other they'd have seen Kelly peering round a corner, and watching them go in. They'd have seen her talking to someone. They might have seen her face, twisted by anger and vodka. But even if they had, it would have told them nothing and changed nothing.

We will watch Jess and Jack for a little longer and then we will reach a moment when either one thing or another will happen. It is not possible to predict which it will be, because many small and uncertain things will lead up to it. It will hinge on something so tiny and unnoticeable, so uncontrollable, that it might as well be decided by the toss of a coin. Some people would call it chance. Jack would call it luck.

So, here they are, in the club, the noise so ear-splitting that they must touch each other a lot, pull each other very close just to be heard. They are not complaining. Jess is feeling slightly dizzy and has had enough to drink but she's at that point where saying yes is easier than saying no and there isn't enough reason to say no.

“Drink?” Jack shouts in her ear.

“Whatever you're having,” she yells back, and can hardly hear her own words.

Jack and Ella go to the bar, Chris goes to the toilet and Jess tries to claim some space for them all. She finds a pillar to lean against. For a while she stands there, her head buzzing. It is tiring having to shout and for a moment she wishes she and Jack could go somewhere else. And that she'd asked for something non-alcoholic. She looks around at the room, packed with people, a few dancing, but most standing, drinking, laughing and shouting.

Once they are all back together again, it's not long before Chris and Ella seem to see some people they know and disappear. Jack and Jess both guess that this is not entirely a coincidence. Jess catches his eye. He's smiling. She looks at the ground and her heart races. There's an urge in her, deep and hot, which she thinks she may not want to resist.

The forces of night are ready. They are watching Jess and Jack and waiting for the moment.

Jess and Jack talk – or shout – for the next twenty minutes or so. They are unaware of everything else, wrapped around as they are by the noise and heat. Everyone in the bar could have disappeared and been replaced by robots, or turned green; armed police could be wandering through the room; a man could be leading a tiger on a string. None of these things is happening, but Jess and Jack would not have known if they all were.