Solitaire, Part 3 of 3 (9 page)

He chuckles, takes his hat off and puts it in his pocket, and folds his arms. “To be honest, Victoria, I can’t believe you haven’t guessed.”

“Well then, I must be some kind of idiot.”

“Yeah.”

Silence. We’re both totally still.

“You
do
know,” he says, taking another step closer. “You need to think carefully. You need to think about all the things that have happened.”

I get to my feet and step backwards. There’s nothing inside my head except fog now.

Lucas clambers on to the table island and walks a little way across towards me, nervously, as if he’s scared they’re just going to collapse under his weight. He tries to explain again.

“Do you … do you remember ever coming to my house when we were kids?”

I really want to laugh, but I can’t any more. He looks down a little and sees the bandage on my arm, and it almost seems to make him shudder.

“We were best friends, yeah?” he says, but that means nothing. Becky was my ‘best friend’. Best friend. What does that indicate?

“What?” I shake my head. “What are you talking about?”

“You
do
remember,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “If I remember, then you remember. Tell me about when you came round my house all those times. Tell me what you saw there.”

He’s right. I do remember. I wish I didn’t. It was summer, we were eleven and it was nearing the end of Year 6. I went round his house what felt like a hundred times. We played chess. We sat in the garden. We ate ice lollies. We ran all round his house – it was a big house. Three floors, with an abundance of hiding places. Everything was kind of beige. They had a lot of paintings.

A lot of paintings.

They had a lot of paintings.

And there is one that I remember.

I asked Lucas, when I was eleven, “Is that a painting of the high street?”

“Yep,” he said. He was smaller than me back then, his hair white-blond. “The cobbled high street in the rain.”

“I like the red umbrellas,” I said. “I think it must be summer rain.”

“I think so too.”

The painting of the wet cobbled street with red umbrellas and warm café windows, the painting that Doctor Who girl was staring at so intensely at the Solitaire party; it’s inside Lucas’s house.

I begin to breathe very fast.

“That painting,” I say.

He says nothing.

“But the Solitaire party … that wasn’t your house. You don’t live in this town.”

“No,” he says. “My parents are in property development. They own several empty houses. That house was one of them. They put those paintings in there to brighten it up for viewers.”

Everything suddenly clicks into place.

“You’re part of Solitaire,” I say.

He nods slowly.

“I made it,” says Lucas. “I made Solitaire.”

I step back.

“No,” I say. “No, you didn’t.”

“I made that blog. I organised the pranks.”

Star Wars
. Violins. Cats, Madonna. Ben Hope and Charlie. Fire. Bubbles. The fireworks at The Clay and the burning and the distorted voice? Surely I would have recognised his voice.

I step back.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

I step back again, but there isn’t any table to step back on to, and my foot falls on to air and I topple backwards into nothingness, only to be caught under my arms by Michael Holden who has been standing by us since God knows when. He lifts me a little and settles me on the ground. His hands feel strange on my arms.

“Can—” I can’t speak. I’m choking, my throat is closing. “You-you’re a sadistic—”

“I know, I’m sorry, it all got a bit out of hand.”

“Got a bit
out of hand
?” I shriek with laughter. “People could have
died
.”

Michael’s arms are around me. I throw him off, climb back on to the tables and march towards Lucas, who cowers a little as I face him.

“All the pranks were related to me, weren’t they?” I say this more to myself than him. Michael had realised this right from the start. Because he’s clever. He’s so clever. And I, being me, didn’t bother to listen to anyone except myself.

Lucas nods.

“Why did you make Solitaire?” I say.

He can’t breathe. His mouth turns in and he swallows.

“I’m in love with you,” he says.

At that moment, I consider many options. One is to punch him in the face. Another is to jump out of the window. The option which I go with is to run. So now I’m running.

You don’t pull pranks on a school because you’re in love with someone. You don’t get a whole party to attack someone because you’re
in love with someone
.

I’m running through our school, into and out of classrooms I’ve never entered, through dark and empty corridors I never pass through any more. All the while, Lucas is in pursuit, crying out that he wants to explain properly, as if there’s more to explain. There isn’t more to explain. He’s a psycho. Like everyone. He doesn’t care that people get hurt. Like everyone.

I find myself at a dead end in the art department. It’s the room that I stood on top of only two days ago, that I was sat outside of earlier today – the art conservatory. I dart round the room, desperately looking for somewhere to go, as Lucas stands breathing heavily at the door. The windows are too small to jump out of.

“Sorry,” he says, still panting, hands on his knees. “Sorry, that was kind of sudden. That didn’t make any sense.”

I practically screech with laughter. “Uh, you
think
?”

“Am I allowed to explain properly?”

I look at him. “Is this the final explanation?”

He stands up straight. “Yes, yes, it is.”

I sit down on to a stool. He sits at the stool next to mine. I edge away, but don’t say anything. He begins his story.

“I never forgot anything about you. Every time we drove down your road I would look at your house, pretty much praying that you’d step out of your door at just the right moment. I used to come up with all these scenarios where I would contact you and we would be friends again. Like, we’d find each other on Facebook and start chatting and decide to meet up. Or we’d meet randomly somewhere – in the high street, at a party, I don’t know. When I grew older, you became, like, that one girl. You know? The one girl who I would end up having that great romance with. We start as childhood friends. We’d meet again, older, and that would be it. Happily ever after. Like a film.

“But you’re not the Victoria I had in my head. I don’t know. You’re someone else. Someone I don’t know, I guess. I don’t know what I was thinking. Look, I’m not a stalker or anything. I came for a tour of Higgs last term to see if I liked it, you know. Michael showed me round. He took me all over the school and the last place I visited was … the common room. And, er, that’s where I saw you. Sitting literally right in front of me.

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack. You were on a computer, but you had your back to me. You were sitting there at the computer, playing Solitaire.

“And you looked so – you had one hand on your head and the other just clicking and clicking the mouse, and you looked so
dead
. You looked tired and dead. And under your breath you kept saying over and over, ‘I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself.’ Not loud enough for anyone to hear except me.”

I don’t remember this happening. I don’t remember this day at all.

“It seems dumb now. I bet you were just stressed about coursework or something. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And then I started to get all these ideas. I thought that maybe you really did hate yourself. And I hated the school for doing that to you.

“I literally went into rages thinking about it. And that’s when I came up with Solitaire. I talked to a guy I knew from Truham who’d joined Higgs, and we decided to start pulling pranks. I had this crazy,
crazy
idea that just a few small acts of hilarity might bring something bright into your life. And into everyone’s lives.

“So, yeah, I organised the Ben Hope thing. I was so angry about what had happened to Charlie. Ben deserved that. But then … then the thing at The Clay happened. People got injured.
You
got injured. It got out of control. So after that I quit. I haven’t done
anything
since Sunday. But there’s so many followers now. We made them all take it so seriously, thinking they were anarchists or something, with the posters and the fireworks and the stupid slogans. I don’t know. I don’t know.

“Michael found me about half an hour ago. I know you’re going to hate me now. But … yeah. He’s right. It’s worse for you if you don’t know.”

Tears start to drift down his face and I don’t know what to do. Like when we were little. Always silent tears.

“I am the worst type of human being,” Lucas says and he puts his elbows on the table and looks away from me.

“Well, you’re not getting any sympathy from me,” I say.

Because he gave up. Lucas gave up. He let these stupid, imaginary feelings control his life, and he made bad things happen. Very bad things. Which caused other bad things to happen. This is the way the world works. This is why you never let your feelings control your behaviour.

I’m angry.

I’m angry that Lucas didn’t fight against his feelings.

But that’s the way the world works.

Lucas stands up and I flinch away.

“Stay away from me,” I find myself saying, like he’s a rabid animal.

I can’t believe it took until now for me to realise the truth.

He’s not Lucas Ryan to me any more.

“Victoria, I saw you that day and thought that the person who I’d been in love with for six years was going to kill herself.”

“Don’t touch me. Stay away from me.”

Nobody is honest, nobody is real. You can’t trust anyone or anything. Emotions are humanity’s fatal disease. And we’re all dying.

“Look, I’m not part of Solitaire any more—”

“You were so
innocent
and
awkward
.” I’m talking in rushed, maniacal strings of thought. I don’t know why I’m saying any of this. It’s not really Lucas I’m angry at. “I suppose you thought you were romantic, with your books and your fucking hipster clothes. Why shouldn’t I be in love with you? All this time you were plotting and faking.”

Why am I surprised? This is what everyone does.

And then I know exactly what to do.

“What,” I ask, “is Solitaire going to do tomorrow?”

I have the chance to do something. To finally, wonderfully, put an end to all of the pain.

He says nothing, so I shout.

“
Tell me!
Tell me what’s happening tomorrow!”

“I don’t know exactly,” says Lucas, but I think he’s lying. “All I know is that they’re meeting inside at 6am.”

So that’s where I’ll be. Tomorrow at six. I’ll undo everything.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I whisper. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

There is no answer. He cannot answer.

The sadness is coming, like a storm.

And I start to laugh like a serial killer.

I laugh and run. Run out of the school. Run through this dead town. Run, and I think, maybe the pain will stop, but it keeps burning inside, burning down.

THE FOURTH OF
February is a Friday. The UK experiences the heaviest snowfall since 1963. Approximately 360,000 people are born and lightning strikes the earth 518,400 times. 154,080 people die.

I escape my house at 5.24am. I did not watch any films during the night. None of them seemed very interesting. Also, my room was kind of freaking me out because I pulled down all the Solitaire posts so my carpet was now a meadow of paper and Blu-Tack. I just kind of sat on my bed, not doing anything. Anyway, I’m wearing as many clothes as possible over my school uniform and I’m armed with my phone and a torch and an unopened diet lemonade can which I don’t think I’ll drink. I’m feeling slightly deranged because I haven’t slept for about a week, but it’s a good sort of deranged, an ecstatic deranged, an invincible, infinite
deranged
.

The Solitaire blog post appeared at 8pm last night.

20:00 3rd February

Solitairians.

Tomorrow morning, Solitaire’s greatest operation will take place at Harvey Greene Grammar School. You are most welcome to attend. Thank you for all your support this term.

We hope that we’ve added something to what might have been a very boring winter.

Patience Kills

I have a sudden urge to call Becky.

“… hello?”

Becky sleeps with her phone on vibrate next to her head. I know this because she used to tell me how boys wake her up in the night by texting her.

“Becky. It’s Tori.”

“Oh my God. Tori.” She does not sound very alive. “Why … are you calling me … at 5am …?”

“It’s twenty to six.”

“Well,
that
changes
everything
.”

“That’s a forty-minute difference. You can do a lot in forty minutes.”

“Just … why … are you calling …?”

“To say I’m feeling a lot better.”

Pause. “Well … that’s good, but—”

“Yeah, I know. I feel really, really, really good.”

“Then … shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Yeah, yeah, I will, once I’ve sorted things out for good. It’s happening this morning, Solitaire, you know.”

Second pause. “Wait.” She’s awake now. “Wait. What – where are you?”

I look around. I’m nearly there actually. “Heading to school. Why?”

“Oh my
God
!” There’s some scuffling of her sitting up in bed. “Jesus Christ, dude, what the fuck are you doing!?”

“I already told you—”

“TORI! JUST GO HOME!”

“
Go home
.” I laugh. “And do what? Cry some more?”

“ARE YOU LITERALLY INSANE? IT’S 5AM! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO—”

I stop laughing and press the red button because she’s making me tear up.

My feet sink into the snow as I hurry through town. I’m pretty sure that at some point I’m going to take a step and my foot won’t stop; it’ll just keep sinking down through the snow until I’ve disappeared entirely. If it weren’t for the street lights, it would be pitch-black, but the lights are painting the white with a dull yellowish glow. The snow looks sick. Diseased.