Solitaire, Part 3 of 3 (3 page)

Michael still has that spark. That light. But there’s more there now. Things that cannot be seen; only found.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask.

He looks away and chuckles. “I got
suspended
. For Monday afternoon, yesterday and today.”

This is so ridiculous that I actually laugh. “Did you finally give someone a nervous breakdown?”

He chuckles again, but it’s weird. “That could probably happen, to be fair.” His face changes. “No, yeah, I – er – I swore at Kent.”

I snort. “You
swore
? You got suspended because you
swore
?”

“Yep.” He scratches his head. “Turns out Higgs have some sort of policy on that.”

“The Land of Oppression,” I nod, quoting Becky. “So how did that happen?”

“It sort of started in history, I guess. We had our mock-mocks a couple of weeks ago, and we got our marks on Monday, and my teacher held me back after the lesson because predictably I did really badly. I think I legitimately got an E or something. So she started having a real go at me, you know, raving on about how much of a disappointment I am and how I don’t even
try
. That’s when I started to get pretty annoyed, because, like, I clearly tried. But she kept going on and on, and she held up my essay and pointed at it and was like, ‘What do you think this is? Nothing in this makes sense. Where’s your Point Evidence Explanation? Where’s your PEE?’ Basically, she ended up taking me to Kent’s office like I was some primary-school kid.”

He pauses. He isn’t looking at me.

“And Kent started his big speech about how I should be better than this and I’m not committing enough to school work and I’m not putting in enough effort. And I tried to defend myself, but you know what Kent’s like – as soon as I started trying to reason with him, he got all aggressive and patronising, which made me even
more
angry, because, you know, teachers simply
cannot
admit to a student that they could
possibly
be wrong, and then, like, I didn’t
mean
to, but I was like, ‘You don’t even fucking
care
though, do you?’ And, erm, yeah. I got suspended.”

This reminds me of the Michael that Nick described the first day of term. But instead of finding this story a little strange, I actually feel pretty impressed.

“What a rebel,” I say.

He gives me a long look. “Yes,” he says. “I’m awesome.”

“Teachers really
don’t
care though.”

“Yeah. I should have known that really.”

We both return to staring at the row of houses opposite. The windows are all orange from the setting sun. I scuff my shoes on the snowy pavement. I kind of want to ask him about his skating, but, at the same time, I feel like that’s
his
thing. His special, private thing.

“I’ve been pretty bored without you,” I say.

There’s a long pause.

“Me too,” Michael says.

“Did you hear about what the Year 7s did today?”

“Yeah … that was hilarious.”

“I was there. I always sit on the field Wednesday Period 5 so I was literally right there. It was like … it was raining streamers or something.”

He seems to stop moving. After a few seconds, he turns his head slowly towards me.

“
That
was a lucky coincidence,” he says.

It takes me a minute to get what he’s saying.

It’s ridiculous. Solitaire would have no way of knowing that I always skip that lesson and sit on the field. Teachers hardly notice most of the time. It’s
ridiculous.
But I start thinking about what Michael said before. About
Star Wars
. ‘Material Girl’. The cats. The violin. And the Ben Hope attack – that was about
my
brother. But it’s impossible. I’m not special. It’s entirely impossible. But—

There have been
a lot
of coincidences.

“Yes,” I say. “Just a coincidence.”

We both stand up and start to walk along the gradually whitening path, Michael pushing his bike along beside him. It leaves a long grey line behind us. Little white dots of snow rest in Michael’s hair.

“What now?” I ask. I’m not quite sure which ‘now’ I’m talking about. This minute? Today? The rest of our lives?

“Now?” Michael considers my question. “Now we celebrate and rejoice in our youth. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

I find myself grinning. “Yes. Yes, that is what we’re supposed to do.”

We walk a little further. The snow grows from a light sprinkling to flakes as large as five-pence pieces.

“I heard about what you said to Becky,” he says.

“Who told you?”

“Charlie.”

“Who told
Charlie
?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“When did you talk to Charlie?”

He avoids my eye. “The other day. I just wanted to make sure you were all right—”

“What, do you think I’m
depressed
or something?”

I say this much too angrily.

I don’t want people to be worried about me. There’s nothing
to
worry about. I don’t want people to try and understand why I’m the way I am, because
I
should be the first person to understand that. And I
don’t
understand yet. I don’t want people to interfere. I don’t want people in my head, picking out this and that, permanently picking up the broken pieces of me.

If that’s what friends do, then I don’t want any.

He smiles. A proper smile. Then he laughs. “You really cannot accept that people care!”

I don’t say anything. He’s right. But I don’t say anything.

He stops laughing. Several minutes pass in silence.

I start to think about four weeks ago, when I didn’t know Michael. When Solitaire hadn’t happened. I am aware that I feel sadder about things now. A lot of things around me have been very sad, and I seem to be the only one who can see it. Becky, for example. Lucas. Ben Hope. Solitaire. Everyone is okay with hurting people. Or maybe they cannot see that they’re hurting people. But I can.

The problem is that people don’t act.

The problem is that
I
don’t act.

I just sit here, doing nothing, assuming that someone else is going to make things better.

Eventually, Michael and I end up at the edge of town. It’s getting dark now, and more than one street lamp flickers on as we pass, casting a yellow glow across the ground. We walk down a wide alley between two large houses and break out into the fields, slick with snow, which stretch between the town and the river. Whites, greys, blues; everything is a blurry mist, rain on the windscreen, a painting.

I stand there. It all kind of stops, like I’ve left earth. Like I’ve left the universe.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “Don’t you think the snow is beautiful?”

I expect Michael to agree with me, but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just cold. It’s romantic, I guess, but it just makes things cold.”

“SO, TORI.” KENT
scans his eyes over my next essay. “What was your opinion this time?”

It’s Friday lunchtime. I didn’t really have anything to do so I came to give in my next English essay early: ‘To what extent is marriage the central concern of
Pride and Prejudice
?’ It appears that Kent is talkative today – my least favourite character trait.

“I wrote a normal essay.”

“I thought you might.” He nods. “I still want to know what you thought.”

I try to think back to when I wrote it. Monday lunch? Tuesday? All the days blur into one.

“Do you think marriage is the central concern?”

“It’s
a
concern. Not the
central
concern.”

“Do you think that Elizabeth cares about marriage at all?”

I picture the film. “I think she does. But it doesn’t really occur to her when she’s with Darcy. Like, she doesn’t connect the two together. Darcy and marriage. They’re two separate problems.”

“Then what would you consider to be
the
central concern of
Pride and Prejudice
?”

“Themselves.” I put my hands in my blazer pockets. “They spend the whole thing trying to merge who they really are and who they’re seen as.”

Kent nods again as if he knows something that I don’t. “That’s interesting. Most people say that love is the main theme. Or the class system.” He puts my essay in a cardboard folder. “Do you read many books at home, Tori?”

“I don’t read.”

This seems to surprise him. “Yet you decided to take English literature A level.”

I shrug.

“What do you do for fun, Tori?”

“Fun?”

“Surely you have a hobby. Everyone has a hobby. I read, for example.”

My hobbies are drinking diet lemonade and being a bitter asshole. “I used to play the violin.”

“Ah, you see? A hobby.”

I don’t like the implications of the word ‘hobby’. It makes me think of crafts. Or golf. Something that cheerful people do.

“I gave it up though.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just didn’t enjoy it much.”

Kent nods for the hundredth time, tapping his hand on his knee. “That’s fair. What
do
you enjoy?”

“I like watching films, I guess.”

“What about friends? Don’t you like being with them?”

I think about it. I should enjoy being with them. That’s what people do. They hang around with friends for fun. They have adventures and they travel and they fall in love. They have fights and they lose each other, but they always find each other again. That’s what people do.

“Who would you consider to be your friend?”

I again take my time to think and make a list in my head.

1. Michael Holden – Most qualified candidate for friend status.
   
2. Becky Allen – Was best friend in past, but obviously no more.
   
3. Lucas Ryan – See above.
   

Who else was my friend before this? I can’t really remember.

“Things certainly are a lot easier the fewer friends you have.” Kent sighs, folding his arms against his tweed jacket. “But then friendship comes with a lot of benefits.”

I wonder what he’s talking about. “Are friends really that important?”

He clasps his hands together. “Think about all the films you’ve seen. Most of the people who do well, and turn out happy, have friends, yes? Often it’s just one or two very close friends. Look at Darcy and Bingley. Jane and Elizabeth. Frodo and Sam. Harry, Ron and Hermione. Friends are important. People who are alone are usually the antagonists. Like Voldemort.”

“Even Voldemort had followers,” I argue, but the word ‘followers’ just makes me think about my blog.

“Followers: yes. Friends? Real friends? Definitely not. You can’t always rely just on yourself, even though it can seem like an easier way to live.”

I disagree, so I choose not to say anything.

Kent leans forward. “Come on, Tori. Snap out of it. You’re better than this.”

“Better than what? Sorry my grades haven’t been good.”

“Don’t be dumb. You know this isn’t about that.”

I frown at him.

He frowns right back – a sarcastic frown. “Get a grip. It’s time for you to stand up. You can’t continue to let life’s chances just drift by.”

I stand up out of the chair and turn round to leave.

As I open the door, he murmurs: “Nothing’s going to change until you decide you want it to change.”

I shut the door behind me, wondering if I just imagined this entire conversation.

LAST PERIOD IS
a free period so I sit in the common room. I keep looking at Becky who’s working at another table, but she doesn’t look at me. Evelyn is also there. She stays on her phone for the entire hour.

I check my blog and there’s a message:

Anonymous
:
Thought for the day: Why do people believe in God?

I check the Solitaire blog, and the top post at the moment is a gif of a little boy blowing bubbles out of one of those plastic pots. A barrage of bubbles bursts into the air and up into the sky, and the camera looks up at them and sunlight shines through, lighting them up pink and orange and green and blue. Then the gif repeats, and you see the little boy again, blowing the bubbles into the sky, the boy, the bubbles, the sky, the boy, bubbles, sky.

When I get home, even Mum notices that something’s changed and she tries half-heartedly to get it out of me, but I just end up back in my room. I walk around for a little bit and then lie down. Charlie comes into my room and asks me what’s wrong. Just as I’m about to tell him, I start crying and it’s not even silent tears this time, it’s proper bawling and I hate myself so much for it that it makes me literally barricade my face from the air with my arms and cry so hard that I stop breathing properly.

“I’ve got to do something,” I keep saying. “I’ve got to do something.”

“Do something about what?” asks Charlie, clutching his knees to his chest.

“Just – I don’t know – everyone – everything’s gone crazy. Everyone’s gone crazy. I’ve ruined everything with Becky and I keep ruining everything with Michael and I don’t even know who Lucas
is
, not really. My life was so normal before. I used to hate being so bored, but I want that back. I didn’t care about anything before. But then – on Saturday – all those people, like, no one gave a single
shit
about it. They didn’t care that Ben Hope could have been kicked to death. And I know he wasn’t. But like, I don’t – I
can’t
be like that any more. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m probably just stressing about nothing. I know, I’m shit, I’m a ridiculous excuse for a human being. But before Solitaire, everything was fine. I was fine. I used to be fine.”

Charlie just nods. “All right.”

He sits with me while I’m raving and crying and when I calm down I pretend I need to sleep so he goes away. I lie with my eyes open and think about everything that has happened in my entire life and it doesn’t take me very long to get to where I am now. I decide sleeping is impossible so I start searching through my room for nothing in particular. I find my box of special things in my desk drawer – a box of keepsakes, I guess – and on the top is a diary that I kept in the summer of Year 7. I read the first page: