Haunt Me

  “Your table is ready, madam,” I say with a flourish as I sit down and pat the space next to me.

  Erin sits down on my coat, her feet out in front of her on the sand. I shift slightly, pretending to get comfortable but really using it as an excuse to shuffle closer so our legs are touching. I don’t know if she notices; she doesn’t move her leg, so I guess I’ve gotten away with it.

  “Careful of the seagulls,” I warn her as we open our dinners. “They’re greedy little buggers — they’ll grab your food right out of your hands. Look, you have to cover it like this.”

  Erin follows my lead as we each make a roof with our wrappers and sneak our dinner out from under them, one french fry at a time.

  “So,” I say, as casually as I can, “how’s the boyfriend?”

  Erin takes a couple of mouthfuls before replying. Then she covers her food up and looks at me. “Yeah, I need to talk to you about that,” she says.

  “Seen the light, eh?” I joke. “Decided it’s time to ditch him and go out with me?” My smile feels wooden, but I need to hold it in place. I promised her we’d just be friends, so I need to keep it light and make her laugh. Not get heavy. Not act like a boyfriend.

  “It’s kind of the opposite,” she says. “I was talking with him this morning —”

  “He’s here?” I ask her. Damn. I thought he was in her old town. For the first time, I realize I don’t even know where she moved from. I know barely anything about her, in fact.

  She shakes her head.

  “You spoke on the phone?”

  Erin pauses. “It’s complicated,” she says. “But we both agreed that we’re not splitting up. Far from it.” She looks me right in the eye then and says, really softly, “I love him.”

  My heart skips at the sound of that word on her lips. It’s completely crazy. I’ve never used the word love with a girl, ever. But she makes me want to say it. I hardly know her, hardly know anything about her. Plus she’s got a boyfriend. I need to leave her well alone. I should. But I can’t. I’ll take whatever she’s prepared to offer me.

  “He’s OK about us being friends, though, isn’t he?” I ask hopefully. Then I realize I’m sounding a bit intense. “I mean, obviously I’m bound to be a better catch,” I add jokily. “But as long as he doesn’t know how good-looking I am, then there’s no need for him to see me as a threat, is there?”

  Erin laughs. Then she shakes her head. “I like you, Olly,” she says.

  “Well, that’s a start.”

  “But it can’t be more than that. And no, I haven’t told him yet — but I will.” She pauses to eat a couple of fries. Then she leans back against the wall and screws her forehead up. “I don’t get it, though.”

  “Don’t get what?” I ask.

  “You. Us. Not that there is an ‘us,’ but you know. This. I don’t understand it.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  She shakes her head. “Come on. You could probably get any girl in the school. I know you went out with Zoe, and I get the impression she doesn’t go out with just anyone.”

  I can’t help it. I’m pleased. She’s been talking about me with her new pals. Mind you, when one of those pals is Zoe, God only knows how the conversation might have gone.

  Erin’s still talking. “I just don’t get why you’d want me, is all.”

  I look at her, wait for her to return my look. When her eyes meet mine, I hold them for a moment. I’m on a high wire, trying to work out how to make my next move. Mess about, play the fool, dance around on the wire? Or take one very careful step and be honest?

  And yeah, I know it’s the dangerous choice, and I could end up falling hard from a great height, but I decide to go for option B.

  “You’re right, I guess,” I begin carefully. “I suppose you’re not the kind of girl I usually go for. Or used to, anyway. You’re more the kind of girl . . .”

  I stop. I suddenly have this awful thought that I’m going to start crying if I continue. I haven’t cried since he died. Not once. I can’t cry now, not in front of Erin. I don’t deserve the relief of tears.

  She reaches out, touches my arm. “More the kind of girl . . . ?” she prompts me gently.

  I swallow and look away. The waves are washing onto the beach, white froth tickling the sand, sucking pebbles away. It’s one of my favorite sounds: the jangle of pebbles on a beach. I want to tell her, want to share stupid things like that.

  I pick up a handful of sand, letting it run through my fingers as I go on. “More the kind of girl my brother would have gone for,” I say woodenly. Then I realize she might not even know about Joe.

  I risk a glance at her. Her eyes are fixed on me; she’s waiting for me to go on. She knows. I can tell. I know that look. Sympathy.

  I don’t want her sympathy. I want something different from her. I know there’s only one way I’m likely to get it, and that’s by continuing along this high wire of honesty and hoping she’ll be there to catch me if I fall.

  “Like . . . all the girls I’ve been out with before, they’re mostly concerned with superficial things,” I continue. “They wanted to go out with me because of how I act, how I look.”

  Erin nudges my leg with hers. “Don’t flatter yourself!” she says with a laugh. It breaks the horrible intensity of the moment. Makes me laugh, too.

  “Yeah. Sorry,” I say, cringing at how I must have sounded. “But it’s true. They liked me for what they saw on the outside. For how the world saw me.”

  Do I dare admit something I have never in my entire life admitted out loud? I risk another glance at her. She’s nodding. “Go on.”

  “I . . . I was always kind of jealous of my brother,” I say, talking to the hourglass of sand running through my fingers. “I mean, he thought he was rubbish with girls.”

  “Wasn’t he?” Erin asks.

  I laugh. “Well, yeah, he was.”

  She laughs, too. I like making her laugh. I love the way her eyes crinkle at the edges and her head goes back. I want to make her laugh every day. But I want to be honest with her, too. She makes me want to open myself up, climb out of the suit of armor I’ve been busy building since Joe died.

  “But girls liked him. He always had a whole group of them around him. He didn’t realize how much they liked him, you know?”

  She nods. “I suppose we always think everyone else does things so much better than we do.”

  “Exactly! He used to think I had it made.” I shake my head. “I never got the chance to tell him how wrong he was. How I’d have traded with him if I’d gotten the chance.”

  Erin looks surprised. “Really? Honestly, you’d have swapped with him?”

  “Well, obviously I wouldn’t have given up my looks and my body for his,” I quip. Erin punches my leg and laughs again. Another point for me.

  I pause to think about her question seriously. “But, yeah. If I’d ever thought about it properly, I’d have swapped with him any day of the week. The girls who hung around him liked him for what was on the inside. I guess I never realized it at the time, but if all they’re interested in is how many times they can photograph you snogging so they can post it online and show off to their friends — well, it’s like they’re saying that what’s on the inside doesn’t count or isn’t good enough or something. And that’s not a great thing to realize.”

  I stop talking and let out a breath. Have I scared her off with too much honesty? Am I being too intense? I don’t dare to even look at her. But there’s more. There’s something else I want to say.

  I squeeze the sand tighter, so it slips from my palm a grain at a time. “You make me look inside,” I say, my throat squeezed as tight as the sand in my fist. “And I like it.”

  Erin doesn’t say anything. Instead, she moves nearer to me, snuggles up to my side, her head on my shoulder. She slips an arm around my waist. I know she’s just comforting me like a friend, but I can barely breathe.

  Before I can stop myself, I put an arm around her shoulder and pull
her closer. I tilt my head so my cheek grazes her hair. The softness makes me feel like I’m melting. A faint scent of coconut. Something fruity, too. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care.

  Right now, I really don’t care about anything much, other than how perfect and right it feels to be sitting here like this, snuggled up on a coat, looking out at the waves with Erin. I don’t want the moment to end.

  TEN THINGS I LEARN ON SATURDAY,

  IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  1. If I forget to set my alarm on Friday night, I will not wake up in time to sneak out and see Joe before everyone else wakes up.

  2. Not seeing Joe after an evening with Olly makes me feel (a) completely desperate and as though I am being torn in half, and (b) if I’m truly hand-on-heart honest, a little relieved that I don’t get the opportunity to tell him I’ve seen Olly.

  3. Getting a text from a boy who is actually alive, who other people can acknowledge the existence of, and who, OK, yes, is very good-looking, telling you that he enjoyed his evening with you, feels good.

  4. Feeling good — especially about things like the above — leads to enormous amounts of guilt, shame, and self-hatred.

  5. Guilt, shame, and self-hatred are easier to ignore when you are having a good time.

  6. Zoe and Kirsty are hilarious and fun and friendly and not the sullen posers that some people seem to think they are.

  7. Nia is starting to feel like the nearest thing I’ve had to a best friend since . . . well, ever.

  8. Feeling part of a group of friends is really, really nice.

  9. I quite like hard cider, and it turns out that after two pints of it, I think I’m rather good at singing, dancing, and air guitar. Even if the video results prove I am very much mistaken in that belief.

  10. I might be having the biggest laughs in the world with the best new friends I’ve ever had, but no matter what I’m doing, I cannot get Joe out of my head for even one minute, and all I want is to be with him again and share the night’s stories with him. Joe. Not Olly.

  Closing thought: If Zoe is under the (mistaken) impression that Olly and I have started dating, and if that gives me some kind of membership card to this new group, well, it’s not exactly an unforgivable crime if I decide not to put her right on that.

  Is it?

  My mind has been to dark places before. I remember more of them every day. Not just the dark places. The good ones, too, even if they feel like tiny dots of sunlight sprinkled over the gray sky that was my life.

  Feelings I mostly remember: inadequacy, loneliness, sadness, despair.

  So, yes. I am familiar with the sensation that my insides are a smoldering pit of embers that will not burn out. I have experienced something like that feeling before. Many times.

  And yet, I don’t think I have ever felt it like this. This bad. The embers smoldering as hot as this. So hot they are almost white.

  It’s been two days. More than two days. I saw her Friday morning, and now it’s Sunday evening. The day is almost over. I’m tiring. I think maybe I’m fading. I don’t even know. Is she the only thing that keeps me here? Without her presence, her feelings for me, will I fade away forever? Does she set me free, or does she tether me to a world that is trying to release me?

  I don’t know the answers. I’m even losing my grip on the questions. I’m losing my sense of who I am. Each memory I gain from the life I lived feels as if it’s taking away another piece of the me that exists now.

  Ha. Exists. What a word. How could I even think I have earned the right to use such a grand word to describe what I do? What I am.

  I am losing myself in misery. Every day I ask myself, Is this the end? Surely it can’t last much longer. I feel as though a time bomb is ticking away inside me. What will it take to make it finally go off and be done with me for good? Is there a hidden sequence, a combination, a puzzle that needs completing, that will set me free from this nightmare?

  And then . . . in the middle of my massive self-indulgence trip, I look to the rocky path for the millionth time, and this time I see something. I see someone.

  Erin.

  And as if it had never been there at all, the darkness dissipates. The smoldering smoke of the genie is back in the bottle, taking the dark traitor with it. I am real again. As real as I get.

  I hurry across to the bottom of the trail. As soon as she picks her way down it, I’m there, and she is in my arms. My hands in her hair, our cheeks pressed together. I want to pull her closer, I want her to become part of me and never leave me again. I am full of want. I am nothing but wanting her.

  She holds me close, kisses me back, smiles, talks, tells me she missed me. But she’s not the same. Something has changed. It’s as if there’s a barrier between us. Is it in her words or in her touch as well?

  Are my thoughts and questions just another part of my growing madness? Is it simply that nothing she says or does will be enough for me now? These snatched moments certainly won’t be.

  “Come on, it’s a nice evening. Let me show you one of my favorite spots,” I say as I take her hand. I need to keep moving. Shake my doubts away.

  We pick our way across my rocky stage, and for a moment I indulge myself in a fantasy that this is normal life, an everyday couple hanging out by the sea, having a romantic walk, sharing their lives.

  I have to stop myself. I want that life so much, the thought of it feels like arrows directed at my heart.

  “Here,” I say, keeping it light, keeping it fun, doing all I can not to betray the intensity that’s burning inside me. I don’t want to scare her off. I think I have done that already. She’s different. She’s definitely different.

  “Are you OK?” I ask as I lead her to the grassy knoll that sits below a massive rock. It faces out to sea and is soft like an expensive cushion. Best seat in the house.

  She answers too quickly as we sit down. “I’m fine. Why?”

  I narrow my eyes as I study her face. “Really? Are you sure? You just don’t seem quite yourself.”

  Erin laughs — but it’s a laugh I haven’t heard before. It’s false, too high, too sharp. “Who else am I going to be?”

  Am I being paranoid? Has this almost permanent solitary confinement finally gotten to me, or is she hiding something from me? I need to know. “Erin,” I say softly, hoping she’ll hear from my voice that she can trust me. “I know you. If there’s something wrong, you can tell me.”

  She takes a sharp breath, then slowly, slowly lets it out. Pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them, she turns away from me and looks out to the horizon.

  Then, in a tiny voice, so quiet I could almost believe it was a rustling of wind through the gorse — and believe me, I wish it were — she says, “I’ve been seeing Olly.”

  My mouth replies before my brain allows the words to sink in properly. “You mean at school? You mean, like in the corridors? You mean you’ve seen him in passing, just like everyone else there? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  She glances at me from under her hair in that way I always thought just meant she was shy. Now I wonder quite how much she hides behind those bangs of hers.

  Then she shakes her head. Quickly. Efficiently. Staccato.

  “There’s nothing in it,” she says. “We’re just friends. But we’ve gone out.”

  There’s a storm inside me. I’m trying to keep it down, but I don’t know if I can. I’m watching the waves below us. It was flat calm out there only moments ago; now the water is beginning to simmer and bubble, whitecaps coming into the bay, waves breaking in fans across the rocks.

  “You’ve gone out?” I force the question past the lump in my throat. “Like on a date?”

  Erin turns to me, takes both my hands in hers. I force myself not to snatch them away. “No, of course not on a date. I would never do that to you. Joe, I love you.”

  She loves me. She loves me. Her words are like a balm to my broken body and my tortured mind. I stroke her fingers with mine. She feels real again
. Warm. The touch of her skin seeps life into me, like a drip.

  “But I like him,” she carries on. “I like his company, and I want to be friends with him.”

  I drop her hands. Do I do it on purpose, or has the contact broken? I don’t even know. I can’t think straight. The medicine of her words has turned sour; I feel like I’m choking on it.

  “We have a laugh together. We’re just friends. OK?” she says, somewhere in the distance.

  I take a moment before replying. If I speak right now, I think my words will come out like fire from a dragon — and I don’t want to burn her with them.

  “I don’t want you to see him,” I say. My voice is lower than I mean it to be. It sounds like a threat. “Please,” I add in an attempt to soften the intensity of emotion that I’m failing to hide.

  Erin stares at me. I can’t hold her gaze. I turn away.

  “He’s just a friend,” she repeats. She moves around so she’s in front of me, forces me to look at her. “Joe. I have never felt this way about anyone before. The way I feel about you. I am yours. You know that, don’t you?”

  I reach out to touch her face. Yes. She’s there. She’s here. Stroking her cheek, I nod slowly. My voice is gravel. “I know. I believe you.”

  Erin tilts her cheek against my hand and smiles. “Good. You shouldn’t doubt me.”

  And I know I believe her. I know she wouldn’t cheat on me, or lie to me. I know that. But still. The darkness won’t subside. The swirling isn’t going away. In fact, it is churning more frantically inside me. Something is building. A memory, a feeling.

  “I don’t doubt you,” I tell her. “I believe you. But if you love me, please do something for me.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “Stop seeing him.”

  Erin pulls away. Her voice is sharper. “Joe, I’ve told you. He’s just a friend. Don’t you want me to have friends?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Really? You’re sure you don’t just want to keep me for yourself? Have no life except the times I have with you?” She’s getting to her feet, walking away from me. “It’s not fair for you to tell me I can’t have any friends.”