Flip (14 page)

Why do they hate me?

They don’t. Their problem is: if your birth host hasnt died yet, theres a theoretical possibility of your psyche going “home.” Thats the Holy Grail of psychic evacuation—the reverse transfer. In two of the PE suicides, they both said that ending their new corporeal lives was the only way to be their true selves. In heaven, they meant. But, well, you might just be able to return to your true bodily self!! None of the rest of us can do that. Ever. Thats whats doing their heads in. Thats why the forums gone ballistic. So dont take it personally, old chap!

Rob, do you really think I can go back?

Hey, a “theoretical possibility” is what I said
.

There was a knock. Alex had just brought a sandwich upstairs and was waiting for the PC to fire up. He opened the bedroom door.

It was the sister. “We’re going into Bradford,” she said.

“We?”

“All of us. Ice-skating. Happy families, eh?”

“Oh, okay.”
Skating. Sweet Jesus
.

“We have you to thank for this, Psycho.” Then, distracted by the music coming from the CD player, she said, “This is the Killers, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.
Sam’s Town.
” One of several CDs Alex had bought since he’d found Flip’s Halifax PIN waiting for him when he returned from London.

“Since when are
you
into the Killers?” she said. Alex shrugged. Teri went on. “Are we witnessing the death of
gangsta
here? I mean, it’s not my thing … but is this the moment when Philip Garamond finally develops something resembling
taste
?”

“Ter, listen, you don’t have to come ice-skating. Not if you don’t want to.”

She stared at him. Her lipstick (blue today) appeared almost black in the shadow of the doorway, her face ghost white. She was in her weekend gear and looked about five years older. Her voice softened a little. “Philip, how come you’re not horrible to me these days? Actually, you’re even
nice
to me.”

“Sorry,” he said, deadpan, “but the voices in my head are telling me to like you.”

If she’d looked at him strangely before, it was nothing compared to her expression now. “You said something … 
funny
? And … 
clever
? No, no, nooo.” She shook her head. “The mouth says ‘Smile’ but the brain says, ‘Be afraid, Teri, be very afraid.’ ”

After the skating, Alex wasn’t sure which hurt more: the sprained wrist or the bruised arse. Mr. Garamond was clearly furious. When you’d forked out for four people to go skating, and one of them—the one who went regularly, the one who’d had
lessons
—spoiled it for everyone by treating it like an audition for
You’ve Been Framed
 … But he couldn’t show his anger. Not to Philip. Not after his
trip to London
. Not when this outing to the ice rink was meant to be part of his son’s healing process. So Flip’s dad made do with scowling and keeping his thoughts to himself. Teri was more up-front (
Newton would’ve discovered gravity way sooner if he’d watched you skate, Psycho
), but the mother shut her up with a look sharp enough to take out an eye.

They had drinks and buns round the corner, in the café at the National Media Museum. It was swarming with kids, families. The sort of place Philip would’ve come to on school trips. All those years Flip had been growing up, living his life, while Alex was living his at the other end of the country. They’d been oblivious to one another’s existence.

Suddenly, he longed to be back at Tyrol Place, online, among the psychic evacuees. They might be dubious about him, but at least with them he didn’t have to pretend to be someone else.

The Garamonds’ was a silent, sullen table. The seat of Alex’s jeans was still damp from the ice. He ate and drank left-handed and had to sit lopsidedly, with his weight on his unbruised buttock. His own body was already out of action, and if he carried on injuring himself—first the cricket, now this—he would wreck Flip’s as well. The thought made him smile. Smiling was a
bad
idea, the mood the dad was in.

“What
was
that all about, back there?” Mr. Garamond said.

“Michael.” A note of warning in the mother’s voice.

Alex shrugged.

“We’re trying our best to understand,” the dad went on. “To
help
. And you treat the whole thing like one big—”

“I’ve lost confidence,” Alex said.

“In what?
Ice-skating
?”

“No,
Dad
. In myself.”

Alex stared Flip’s father down. He hadn’t meant to lean so heavily on the word “dad” but it appeared to have gone unnoticed in the general surprise at what he’d said. Or at the fact he’d said it: Philip, self-analyzing. Philip, unsure of himself and willing to admit it. He could see that the Garamonds were as stunned by this as they had been by his uncanny resemblance to someone skating for the first time in his life.

It stopped the conversation stone dead, each of them returning their attention to their cups of tea, their cherry flap-jacks, their Coke cans, as though in agreement that from then on they should communicate not in words but in sips of drink and mouthfuls of food. At a nearby table, a family of six got up to go amid a clatter of plates and the scraping of chairs. The children, excited, ran on ahead, dad mopping up a spilled drink with a tissue while mum, raising the skirts of her burka to avoid tripping, followed the young ones, calling after them.

“Urdu,” Mr. Garamond said.

His wife looked at him. “What?”

“That woman was speaking Urdu.”

“That’s the guy from the train,” Teri said.

Alex thought she was referring to the father of the Muslim family, who was unsure what to do with his Tango-sodden Kleenex. But he saw that she was looking beyond him, to a twenty-something bloke with spiky dyed-yellow hair and a leather jacket. He sat facing the Garamonds’ table and stared right at them. At Alex, to be precise.

“What
guy
?” the mum said. She hated the word “guy,” preferred “fellow” or “chap.”

“On the way into Bradford,” Teri said. “He was just along the carriage from us. I thought it was
me
he had the hots for … but looks like it’s Philip.”

“Teri, please, that’s disgusting.”

“What is, Mum? The gay thing or the underage thing?”

Alex looked properly at the yellow-haired guy, expecting him to avert his gaze now that he must have realized they were on to him. But he didn’t. He kept on staring directly at Alex, a half smile on his face.

Flip’s mum tugged her husband’s sleeve.
“Michael.”

“Or Farsi,” Mr. Garamond said, frowning. “These Indo-Persian languages are quite tricky to tell apart.”

Teri and Alex caught one another’s eye and burst out laughing. The mother joined in, too, patting the dad affectionately on the back of the hand. “Priceless, dear. Priceless.” And in that moment the tension between the four of them disappeared.

So too, when Alex looked over his way again, had the guy with yellow hair.

Alex might’ve forgotten all about him if he hadn’t turned up again, the next day, by the bandstand in Litchbury. Alex had gone there to meet Donna. They needed to
talk
, she’d said. Probably she was planning to finish with him, the way he’d been treating her just lately. Billie already had done. By text. Which suited him fine, if the alternative was to meet face to face. Really, he should’ve been the one to bring it to an end—with both of them—but the one time he’d tried with Donna, the hurt in her eyes made it seem less cruel simply to let things drift, avoid her, make excuses not to hang out together. Hope the problem would go away of its own accord.

And yet … And yet, and yet, and yet … Donna was so pretty. So sexy. And so besotted with him. With Flip, anyway. On the occasions when they had been together, however difficult, she’d usually ended up with her arms around him, kissing him. Long, passionate face-suckers. Donna couldn’t have known what was
wrong
with Flip, but she realized that
something
was, and it was as though she was trying to draw this thing—this poison—out of him. Like an exorcism.

Did you need to
like
a girl to go out with her? Did you need to have anything in common? Or was it enough just to fancy her?

Alex didn’t know. This was Flip’s territory, not his.

So as he waited for Donna on that Sunday morning, he half wished he was about to be dumped. And half wished he wasn’t.

He was sitting on one of the benches around the perimeter of a small square, watching a Salvation Army band unpacking their instruments and setting up beneath the bandstand’s canopy. Alex hadn’t known they would be here, but it was too late now. A handful of people had taken their seats for the performance; others were sitting eating ice creams or drinking carry-out coffee and reading the Sunday papers. Children played on the slope behind the square, the grass unnaturally green in the sunshine. Alex was distracted by one of the band wrestling a tuba out of its case and didn’t notice the yellow-haired guy until he’d sat down at the other end of the bench.

“That’s one fit sister you’ve got,” he said.

Alex tried not to show how startled he was. The guy wore a plain white T-shirt and ripped jeans and had the same leather jacket as the previous day, only this time he was carrying it. He draped it over the back of the bench.

“Teri, isn’t it?” He took off his sunglasses. “She needs to ditch the goth thing, though. Why do they
do
that, make themselves up like corpses?” Then, grinning at Alex, he said, “Do they think death is
cool
?”

He sounded Australian. His hair was the color of banana milk shake. He stretched, put his hands behind his head. Alex could see the dark hairs in his armpit.

“Who
are
you?” Alex asked, holding his voice steady.

He ought to have been afraid, but for all that the guy was older, bigger, brasher than Alex—and despite the fact that, apparently, he’d been following him all weekend—he gave off no sense of menace. He acted like he wanted to be friends. Or as though they already were. All the same, Alex’s breath came fast and hot through his throat.

“Who am I? Perfectly reasonable question in the circumstances,” the guy said, nodding. He extended his long legs, crossed them at the ankles, one foot tapping against the other as though the band had already begun playing and he was keeping time with the music. “But surely the
really
interesting question, Alex, is who are
you
?”

Alex
. He’d called him Alex.

And then it came to him. The use of his real name. The accent. He shifted in his seat to look properly at the guy.

“Rob?”

“Well
done
,” Rob said, a smile taking the edge off the sarcasm. “And I thought
you
were the bright one and Flip was the dumbo.”

Alex laughed, the pent-up anxiety of the last couple of minutes released like air from a balloon. Then, “But, what … you’ve come over from
New Zealand
?”

“No, mate, I’m back here in the UK now.” He pronounced it “Yook.” “Have been for months. Do you have any idea how
dull
it is in En Zed?” He offered his hand. Alex, hesitant, shook it. Winced. “What’ve you done?” Rob asked, indicating the bandage Mrs. Garamond had wrapped round his wrist that morning.

“Ice-skating injury,” Alex said. “You should see my
bum
. ”

“Oh, thanks, but usually I like to get to know someone a bit better first, yeah?”

Alex burst out laughing; they both did. This was way, way better than going on the psychic evacuation forum—at last he had his own PE to talk to, right here beside him on a bench in Litchbury. Someone just like him. “So, what are you
doing
here?” he asked. “I mean, it’s great to meet you, but why the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

“You think I should’ve made an
appointment
?”

Alex gave a nervous laugh. “Teri reckoned you were stalking me.”

Rob’s smile didn’t slip. “Hey, if I
was
a stalker, you couldn’t have made it easier for me, posting so much personal info on the Web site.” He was sitting sideways to Alex, looking him full in the face, one arm resting on the back of the bench. His elbow, Alex noticed, was scuzzy with eczema. Serious now, he said quietly, “I had to see for myself. See if you were for real … or just some hoaxer, like the others said.”

“And you think I am? For real, I mean.”

Rob nodded. “You can always recognize another PE.”

“How?”

“Mate, you just look so bloody
lonely
in there.”

They talked. There was so much to say—so many questions—Alex hardly knew where to begin, but it was easy talking to Rob. He’d
been
there. He understood what Alex was going through. Despite the age difference (Rob was twenty-two) it was more like being with a mate or an older brother than a guy he’d just met. A wise, funny older brother who listened to him and who took him seriously. Who made him feel grownup, too.

“How come you’re so together?” Alex said.

“I’ve had four years to get used to it. You’ve had, what, three weeks?”

“Do you, though? Get used to it?”

“Aw, look, try to think of it like a river.” Rob made a wavy line in the air with his hand. “All the time, the water evaporates into the air or flows out to sea, and all the time new water comes from the rain or from the little streams … but it’s still the same river.” He looked at Alex. Smiled. “You get what I’m saying?”

The band struck up. Rob suggested they go somewhere else but Alex told him he was meeting someone. He’d forgotten all about Donna; she was late, and he found himself desperately hoping she wouldn’t turn up at all.