Non Pratt - Trouble

Hannah stares at the ground, frowning. “I don’t want it to be like this.”

“Neither do I,” I say.

“I know you pulled at the wedding.” She’s so sure of the truth that she doesn’t even look up to check. “And you shouldn’t have felt like you needed to hide it.”

There’s nothing I can say to that.

“I just want you to know that you don’t have to keep secrets from me. You can trust me.” She glances up and I step closer. “I trust you.”

And I know that she is thinking about the one secret that’s been so huge that she hasn’t been able to tell a single soul. Except me.

“Hannah.” I put my arm around her and pull her into a hug, the way I should have done the night she told me that Jay was the father. Maybe he isn’t the only one who’s let her down. I press my face into her hair for a second. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven,” she mumbles into my collar.

This last week or so has been UNbearable.

I have never been so horny in all my life and I think it might kill me if I don’t have sex soon. I almost don’t care who it is, I’m that bad. I would jump a reanimated corpse if its eyeballs swivelled the right way at me.

Tyrone. God. I can’t stop thinking about the evening we had sex. I’m sure my memory is playing tricks on me with the way it likes to magnify his member, but it’s not like I’m thinking straight enough to sort it out.

Fletch… memories of his hands up my skirt and on my skin. I get a hot flush in my nether regions when I accidentally catch his eye as I avoid looking at Mr Dhupam, who is probably the fittest teacher we have. (This isn’t saying much, but talk to my pants cos my brain ain’t listening. Actually, my pants aren’t either.)

I know it’s gone too far when I catch myself gazing at Gideon’s arse.

But who would have sex with someone whose baby is straining the buttons on her blouse if it’s not theirs? Besides, I haven’t forgotten the freak-out I had at Rex’s party. My body doesn’t want sex with anyone else, no matter what it thinks when there’s a member of the male species within perving distance.

My body wants sex with Jay. Even the thought of our kiss in the car is enough to cause a mini spasm of desire, and if I let my mind drift back to his party…

This has got to be why marriage was invented, so that when you’re pregnant there’s someone to have sex with.

In my position as Hannah’s closest friend, I am uniquely qualified to notice that she is being an utter pain in the arse at the moment. She pays no attention to a word I say. If she’s not staring over my shoulder, then her eyes are glazed over and she’s somewhere else entirely. I caught her staring at Rex’s crotch the other day when he came over to say something to me about ICT coursework.

Although associating with Hannah has made me as appealing as a cold sore to the basketball lot, Rex still tries to talk to me, smiles and gives a nod of acknowledgement when we pass in the corridor. Unless he’s with Katie, in which case he keeps his eyes on the floor. She cut him down the other day at registration and Mark Grey did a whipcrack gesture behind her back. The others smirked but Rex looked miserable as hell. I wonder whether regular sex was a fair exchange for his spine?

When I make this joke to Hannah after we meet up before lunch, she just nods vaguely.

“Did you even hear what I said?” I ask.

“You said something about sex.”

“Is that all you can think about?”

I thought I was teasing her but she looks at me very seriously and says, “Yes. It really is.”

“Really?”

“I might die if I don’t have sex soon.”

“Really? It’s not been that long…”

“If I’d had sex fifteen minutes ago I’d still want it now,” she mutters.

“My baby daddy duties don’t extend to that, sorry,” I say with a grin, but I’ve failed to take Hannah’s epic sense of humour failure into account.

“I know, Aaron. You don’t have to spell it out.” And with that she gets up and strops off into the canteen.

If I’d realized where we were going then I would have made every effort possible to get out of a shopping trip with Hannah, Anj and Gideon.

The Clearwater Centre is on the other side of the river from where I live now — the side I am more familiar with. The side I lived on until seven months ago.

None of them knows this and I intend to keep it that way.

I think of what Hannah said when I answered the phone: “If I can’t have sex then I will shop.”

I should have shagged her myself.

We leave the shop weighed down with bags. I say “we” when I mean “me”. Anj says she’ll “think about” the jacket she tried on, whereas I went mental and bought the whole shop, or at least the maternity part of it. Robert gave me some money after I had a meltdown midweek and he and I were the only ones in the house. I’d been in front of my wardrobe, wailing in despair at the three hideous maternity things that Mum had insisted on buying for me, the sound carrying all the way downstairs to the study. He hugged me and told me that it was entirely normal to feel like this — apparently Mum had a similar hissy fit when she was pregnant with Lola.

That was when he took out his wallet and handed me all the cash he had — which was loads. That was exactly what he did for Mum and he thinks it’s the best way to fix a hormonal outburst. I agree.

“Where are the boys?” I say, since Aaron and Gideon skived off the moment we got here. So much for getting a male opinion on my new clothes.

“There.” Anj points at a comic shop called Otherworlds. Nerd nirvana — not a shop I’ve ever paid much attention to. “Gideon drags me in there every time we come here.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Look behind the counter.” Anj nudges me. I peer into the window at the guy serving. If I’m honest, he’s a bit weaselly for my tastes, but still. Cute enough. As I’m looking, Gideon explodes out of the door, followed by Aaron. Gideon covers the ground between us in three bounds and links his arms through ours, singing, “He totally has my email address.”

But a group of girls blocks our path and I hang back before we get tangled up, which is when I notice that Aaron’s missing. I look round to see him standing halfway between here and the comic shop. At first I think he’s staring right at me — but then I realize Aaron’s looking at the girls walking this way.

When Gideon suggested going into Otherworlds, I agreed. I’d be safe — only one other person from my past knew the place existed and he wouldn’t be there. Walking in was surreal. Different posters, different layout — I didn’t go often enough to get friendly with the staff and I didn’t recognize the lad Gideon was lusting over. I walked over to the graphic novels, picked up one I already owned and opened it at my favourite part. It’s about dreams. Odd given the strained relationship I have with mine.

When I finished it, I turned and walked over to the counter. Gideon took the hint and we left.

I’d been safe there.

Now I’m outside and I am not safe at all.

The other two haven’t noticed that Aaron’s stopped in the middle of the walkway, so I’m the only one that sees his expression as the girls part to go around me, their bags bumping mine before they clump together as they approach him.

Aaron is terrified.

Four of them. All painfully familiar. One so much more so than the others. I turn for the side and consider flinging myself over the railing to the level below just to get away. But there’s no need — they’ve passed me by, too busy talking to notice me.

“Aaron?” It’s the second time I’ve said his name, and I rest my fingers on his jaw, turning his attention to me. I want to ask what just happened, but I stop myself. Aaron never asks me too much — I should do the same for him.

I look past him and see one of the girls look back at us. Pretty, blonde, kind of rock chick. Our eyes meet for a second, then she frowns, eyes darting to the back of Aaron’s head as if he’s someone she might recognize… but the crowd shifts and she’s lost amongst the other shoppers.

Only then do I realize that Aaron is no longer leaning on the railing, he’s leaning on me.

There’s a box in my wardrobe, one of those plastic ones with the cheap lids that never clip on properly. It’s covered in stickers: faded superheroes; blindingly shiny holographic discs; papery white patches where I’ve peeled off stickers that I tired of and doodled my own picture in biro; newer, bigger, cooler skateboard stickers and band logos. On the lid, I’ve stuck on some paper and written in massive caps “IDENTIFY YOURSELF CITIZEN” and drawn an intricate image of a thumbprint. The punctuation-phile in me finds a black pen and draws in a comma before CITIZEN. Childishly satisfied, I take the box over to my bed and sit with it for a moment, wondering whether this is really a good idea.

It isn’t, but I’m going in anyway.

The box is filled to the brim with envelopes, cards, notebooks, thin cardboard folders and many, many fictional blueprints for the Death Star. I pull out almost everything, turning over some of the less familiar pieces, trying to remember why I kept them. I find a project from Juniors and a note stapled to the front of it where the teacher made a joke about me being the next Roald Dahl. I smile at it. I’m not looking for memories this old.

At the bottom of the box are year photos — too big to fit comfortably, they’re slightly bowed inside their cardboard frames. I only take out the top one, from the end of Year 9. It’s a smaller photo than those up in the corridors of Kingsway, maybe only 450 of us, but I’m only looking for the girl I saw two hours ago: Penny Fraser. She’s turning a little towards the girl next to her, a huge smile about to blossom, strands of hair swooshing across her face. I peer closely at her, the crooked nose and the very pierced ear. She looks so young. Not as young as in some of the photos of me and her together, the ones tucked away in photo albums that my mother has very carefully left packed up in the loft.

I’m standing one row back, looking suitably ashamed of the God-awful haircut that Mum had inflicted on me the day before. If I squint closely enough I swear I can see the line where my tan stops and my fringe should have been… although maybe I’m just imagining it because I remember being so painfully aware of it at the time. My eyes skip over half-familiar faces to the end of the row.

Chris.

Grief isn’t always a knife-sharp twist in your heart or a dull bludgeon in your stomach, sometimes it’s a net, cast suddenly and silently over your soul so that you feel trapped and suffocated by its grasp. I feel the loss in the deepest recesses of myself, hidden parts of my mind and my matter, united in missing someone I will never see again.

I turn the photograph over and spend a long, long time looking out of the window.

I tell Neville about seeing Penny at Clearwater. I give him just enough context to stop him from asking questions.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Obviously not enough context.

“I’m not your therapist and this isn’t Jeremy Springer.” I don’t correct him. “You don’t just get to offload and leave.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were. I’m old and I’m wise and I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” he says. “You’re just taking bits of the jigsaw out of the box. You don’t have to put the whole picture together, but you’ve got to understand it’s frustrating, only knowing bits here and there.”