allwinterlong

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:10:35 GMT

Chapter Eleven

We stumbled blindly down the street in the darkness, the streetlights seeming too too dim for that night. Every car engine, every footstep, every sound the night had making his run a little faster. Clambering over the gate we found ourselves running across the playground of the elementary school. Rounding the corner of the building we were hidden from the road.
We collapsed onto the floor and lay panting there for a while. Mason’s breathing was kinda ragged and I was worried about him. In the dark I moved closer to him.
“Are you okay?” I whispered. He didn’t answer and I saw he was still trying to catch his breath. Conor had hit him pretty hard quite a few times.
We sat with our backs to the wall of the school where years before we used to go. Somewhere we’d grown too big for. Mason wiped blood from his face.
“Are you okay?” I asked him again.
He nodded his head forlornly. “I don’t like being beaten up,” he said.
“Well no. I think the consensus is that it pretty much sucks.”
“Do you think we’re safe here?” he asked.
I looked around at dark shadows of swing sets and climbing frames and thought about this place during daylight. You’d think I’d feel safe here, but Christ, it’s a school, who the hell feels safe from harm in school? “Sure,” I told Mason. “I don’t think Conor’s gonna follow us anyway.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“What do you mean? Why’d you show up at Conor’s place?”
“I told you. He’s dangerous. He killed this girl.”
“Bullshit.”
“Jesus Tegan, you saw what he was like. He’s a fucking psycho.”
“Who did he kill?”
“His girlfriend. When he was thirteen he murdered her.”
“Then why isn’t he in prison, or, you know kiddie prison?”
“They never found the body.”
“Mason! This sounds like some dumb urban legend. Let me guess she was baby sitting and then some guy with a hook gave her a call from the upstairs bathroom.”
“It’s true.”
“How do you know about this?”
“The internet.”
“You googled my boyfriend? That’s not right.”
“I don’t need a lecture on twenty first century etiquette. I just saved you from that psychopath. Maybe you were about to be his next victim.”
“Just tell me what you found out Columbo?”
“Okay. So I googled him and went through like hundreds of links that weren’t about him, then I found one. It was in this online archive of newspaper articles for New England. There was a picture of Conor on the front page, I knew it was him even though he was maybe four or five years younger. It said the police had released him without charge after arresting him for the murder of this girl a few months...”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Um, it was...” Mason scratched his head.
“Laura?” I asked.
“That’s it. Laura Chapman. Did he tell you about this?” Mason asked uncertainly.
“Not really.”
“Yeah, so. This girl, Laura, disappeared and a few months later the police got like an...” Mason trailed off.
“A what?”
“You know, um...anonymous!” he shouted. “The police got an anonymous call from someone saying that Conor had been fighting with this girl on the night she disappeared. So the police arrested him and Conor didn’t have an alibi or anything but because they didn’t find the body or any blood and stuff they couldn’t charge him. I figure it was pretty soon after that when Conor moved to Nebraska.”
That memory again, of Conor, a few years ago, standing at the front of class being introduced, never once looking up. After a moment I said, “It doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“It’s not like it’d be a big shock. If anyone has serial killer written all over them it’s Conor. You remember that TV movie about that murderer. His parents used to lock him in a closet in the dark for days. Sound familiar?”
I’d closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them I thought I saw a kid running across the playground in the dark, but it was just my eyes fucking with me. You probably think I’m an idiot but I couldn’t believe Conor was a killer. It’s the oldest story in the world, right? Boy meets girl, boy kills girl, and repeat. And no one ever believes it. Sometimes it seems all mass murderers live next door to the most naive people in the world. We’ve all seen them staring dimly into the camera as some news reporter points a microphone in their face, insisting they never suspected for a moment that their neighbor was killing and eating all the kids in the neighborhood, or whatever. And here I was, staring into the dark insisting Conor couldn’t be a killer. The same boy who maybe twenty minutes before had his hands wrapped around my throat like he wanted to crush the life out of me. The same boy who’s wrapped his arms around me on those cold nights.
I guess I’d been thinking all this stuff for a while when I realized Mason was staring at me. I smiled at him miserably.
“I’m sorry Tegan,” he said.
“Are you?” I asked. “Why do you even go looking for stuff about Conor? You just want to split us up. You’re jealous because I found someone who made me happy. Jesus, Mason what kind of friend are you? You’re so desperate to hold onto your only friend you’ll do anything to fuck things up for me.”
Mason looked away, hiding the brightness in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Not good enough,” I said.
“I didn’t want you to...I don’t want to be alone.”
“I don’t belong to you Mason.”
“I know that.”
“Sooner or later Mason we’re gonna lose each other. That’s just what happens.” Mason didn’t say anything. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
We got to our feet and walked across the frost covered playground in silence. By the time we reached the street where we went in different directions we still hadn’t said a word to each other. “Bye Mason,” I said.
“Wait,” he said in a voice so small I almost pretended not to have heard him.
“What?” I asked testily.
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“It’s fine,” I told him crossly.
“Please Tegan. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad, I’m just...” I trailed off as I realized there wasn’t like a word that described the way I felt.
“You want to come home with me?” he asked.
“Not tonight.”
“But what if Conor comes after one of us?”
“And does what?”
Mason looked at me. “I’m scared,” he said.
“Don’t be a baby Mason. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And like that I walked off down the street leaving Mason alone on the corner in the dark. And I never saw him again. No, I’m just fucking with you. But as I walked away I couldn’t help but think, well what if he was right, what if Conor really is a psychopath and what if kills Mason, well then I’d feel real bad. And to be honest, of all the shitty things I did and said to Mason over the years this one I keep coming back to. What kind of asshole leaves a friend when they’re afraid? This kind of asshole I guess.
When I got home I was royally pissed to find that my mom had bolted all the doors on the inside so as I couldn’t get in. I circled the house furiously, trying to decide whether I should smash my way into the house or report my mom to social services. Sure, I’d probably wind up in some hellish care place but I was so pissed I was willing to put myself through that.
“Hey,” the girl said.
I was staring at the front door angrily. I spun round and stared into the empty night. There was no one there. That pissed me off, not only was I locked out of my own goddamn house, I was having auditory hallucinations.
And then out of the darkness Conor stepped towards me. I am never going to hear the fucking last of this from Mason if Conor kills me now I thought. We stood staring at each other for a moment. No matter what Mason had told me, no matter what Conor had done earlier that night, there was something about Conor I couldn’t shake. It was maybe the way he stood there in the cold night shaking slightly in the chill wind looking like the saddest boy the whole world over. Inspite of myself part of me just wanted to put my arms around him and shelter him from the cold and somehow make him smile.
After what felt like the longest time he stepped closer to me. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey Conor,” I said cautiously.
“Can I come inside?” he asked.
I laughed and shook my head. “My mom’s locked me out.”
“Oh,” he said and I knew he couldn’t work out whether I was lying to him or not.
“You can try the door if yourself if you like,” I said offering him my house keys.
“That’s okay. You want to come for a walk with me?”
I looked at him. “Are you gonna have another psychotic episode on me?” I asked.
He shook his head. We walked side by side away from my house, down the dark suburban street. Once again you’re probably thinking I’m like the dumbest kid in America. Maybe you’re right. But I knew I had to go with Conor that night.
Maybe five minutes went by and I was starting to feel pretty nervous. We were heading towards the outskirts of town, into the vast empty space that surrounded it. Just as I was about to say something about turning back Conor spoke.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What are you sorry for?” I asked.
“For earlier. For being weird and, did I hurt you?”
“No,” I told him.
“And for hitting Mason. Is he okay?”
“Mason’s taken worse beatings.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“You want to tell me what it was about?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s Laura?” I asked.
“What do you know about Laura?” Conor said suspiciously.
“You keep calling me her name. What’s the deal?”
“She was a girl I used to know.”
“That’s it?”
We walked on for a while until we got to this old gas station that closed down a few years ago. Conor led the way across the forecourt to where the vending machine still promised cans of Coke. He gestured to the building where the cashier used to sit, “You want to go inside?” he asked.
I looked at the boarded up windows and shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
“I won’t hurt you,” Conor said.
“I wish I believed you.”
“She was my girlfriend. Laura. More than that. She was the first girl I ever liked. I was totally in love with her. I’d never been so happy. Then she disappeared.”
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
“She never came back,” Conor said.
“So what happened to her?”
“I don’t know. Everybody thought I’d killed her.”
“Did you?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I know I’d never hurt her ever. I love her.”
Conor started to mess with the padlock on the door and after a few seconds it clicked open. He pulled the door open and we looked into the total darkness. Conor took his lighter out of the pocket and we peered into the small room. Conor stepped inside. “Are you coming in?” he asked.
I stared into the dark. Now, I don’t believe in anything but when I stepped into the that building knowing all the windows were boarded up, knowing the gas station had been closed for years and no one would come by, knowing what Mason told me about Conor, I guess it meant I believed in Conor. I believed he wasn’t a killer, I believed he was a good kid even if he was fucked up. Looking back I guess the one thing I’d say about faith is that it always says more about the person who believes than whoever or whatever it is they believe in. I wanted to believe in Conor for my own reasons. I stepped through the doorway into a darkness so complete it was like losing my sight.
Conor closed the door behind us. He took hold of my hand and lead me carefully across the room. He negotiated a path behind the counter and then we sat down. On the ground there was a sleeping bag and a pillow. “You come here often?” I asked.
“Yes,” Conor said simply.
“You maybe want to explain?”
“Sometimes I need to go somewhere I feel safe.”
“And you feel safe in here?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s like it’s totally sealed off from the outside world. No light can get in. No one else can get in. No one can find me.”
I figured he meant his dad. We sat on the sleeping bag, our backs against the wall, side by side, our arms touching. “You know I’m not her?” I said eventually. “I’m not Laura.”
I listened to Conor’s breathing beside me. “Yes,” he said.
“But you thought I was her, right?”
“Yes,” he said again. “I know it’s insane and it makes no sense but yeah, I thought you were Laura. Not at first. I guess as time went by I started to realise how much you looked alike. The thing is I never believed she died. After she disappeared I spent all my time looking for her, in every place we’d ever been together. I was sure she’d never leave me, that whatever happened she’d find a way to come back to me.” Conor stopped talking and we sat in silence a while. Eventually he carried on. “When I saw how much you look like her...it’s not just that you look alike, it’s the way you talk and the way you look at me and so many different things, but once I saw it I couldn’t see anything else. All I saw was how you reminded me of her, and then there were so many ways I figured you couldn’t be two different people, you had to be Laura. Does that make any sense?”
“I guess,” I said, but I had no way of knowing what it was Conor had seen and thought and felt. Still, I found his hand in the dark and held onto it.
“If you were Laura then that meant you’d, she’d, that Laura had left me behind and it meant you’d known it was me the whole time, like you were playing with me. And thinking that she could leave me and hurt me like that, it made me stupid.”
“So when did you realise I wasn’t her?” I asked.
“When you kicked me. No matter how pissed Laura was with me she’d never hurt me like that. I guess that was when I figured out you weren’t her. And I guess that was when I realised she’s dead. She has to be. She wouldn’t leave me like this.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What for?”
“Your loss.”
We sat in the dark and minutes went by before I realised that Conor was crying. His breathing sounded weird and I felt his body shake against mine. I reached out and found his face in the dark, I placed a hand on his cheek which was wet with tears. He turned away from me but I held onto him, pulling him slowly towards me. And then I was kissing his face, tasting the salt of his tears, and I found his mouth and we were kissing. I lay back on the ground and felt Conor on top of me. It was strange, I’ve fooled around with guys in the dark before, but never in the total darkness of that abandoned room. All there was the way it felt when he touched me, kissed me, the feel of his skin under my fingers, the warmth of his mouth and his body. We pulled our clothes off and dressed ourselves in each other, and then I didn’t know where I ended and he began.
For hours we were only our bodies and the things that they could feel and then we fell asleep breathing and dreaming together. I woke up a while later with Conor’s body pressed against me keeping me warm. I let my hand wander across his body, his legs, his stomach, his chest. I leant into him and kissed him gently over the place where I felt his heart beating, then I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep again.
When I opened my eyes much later it took me a minute to realise I hadn’t like gone blind. I reached out for Conor in the
dark but my hand found only the wall of the room. “Conor?” I said. There was no answer. “Conor?” I shouted. I waved my arms around blindly as it dawned on me that he was gone. “Son of a bitch,” I murmured. I crawled around gathering up what clothing I could. I pulled on a T-shirt that I guessed was Conor’s and found my jacket. Once I was dressed I felt my way around the edge of the room looking for the door.
After maybe five minutes I started to feel a little edge. Where the fuck was the door? I ran my hands up and down the walls, grazing the tips of my fingers again and again on the rough cement surface. I walked quicker and quicker circling the room god knows how many times. I stopped suddenly and listened to the sound of my own breathing in the room, the only sound I could hear. “Conor!” I shouted knowing that he wasn’t there, knowing that there was nobody who could hear me.
I slumped down on the ground feeling as miserable and as afraid as I’ve ever felt. I closed my eyes and then opened them again, it made no difference, there was nothing to see. In my head a thousand memories of movies and news reports and books I’d read where creepy guys lock up girls in dark rooms they never get out of alive. At least I’d die knowing that Mason’d be totally pissed because he never got to say that he’d told me so. I shook my head, this is bullshit, I thought. This crap only happens in shitty movies. I got back to my feet and walked slowly around the room, running my hands over every inch of the walls I could reach.
Finally there it was. The fucking door handle. I don’t know how I’d managed to miss it on the other five hundred circuits I did of the room. But there it was. I pulled on it and the door opened flooding the room with morning light and letting in a cold wind. I was about to turn and look at the room, to see what it was like. Then I figured maybe it was best I didn’t see, I didn’t want any pictures in my head, any memories other than the way it had felt to be in this dark imaginary place with Conor. I stepped outside and closed the door, locking the padlock behind me.
Heading back across town I was still pretty pissed at Conor, but I knew I’d forgive him. It was early in the morning, maybe six, and the streets were almost empty. I guess the temperature was way below zero so I found myself running through the neighborhood, my feet pounding with my heart and the blood in my ears, my breath pumping out of me in a cloud of smoke. I ran faster even as my legs began to ache. I thought about running from Conor with Mason the night before and I realised I missed the way it felt to run. When I was a kid I’d run all the time, playing some ball game in the street, or making believe something in the park. As a kid I guess I had to run, I guess I had places I thought I needed to be.
The front door was still bolted on the inside when I got home, so I hammered on the door. After a moment Walter opened the door a fraction and peered out at me. “Hey Walter,” I said.
He looked at me uncertainly. “I don’t know if I should let you in Tegan. Your mom says you have to learn a lesson.”
“For fuck’s sake Walter, let me in.”
“Tegan, I -”
Suddenly my mom appeared next to Walter. She glared at me. “You’re not stepping foot in this house until you apologise to me Tegan and promise to respect my rules.”
“Fuck that shit,” I said. “Let me in. All my stuff’s inside. My school books and -”
“Maybe this will make you think Tegan. I think this’ll teach you a good lesson.”
“Jesus! Do you even know where I spent the night?”
My mom shrugged. “Let me guess? At Mason’s house.”
“No. I spent it fucking some boy in a disused gas station. What’s the lesson I learnt? Teenage boys can come more times in a night than I keep a count of.”
My mom’s hand lashed out and slapped me on the cheek. “Why are you doing this Tegan? Is it because of Walter?”
“I’m not doing anything mom. You’re the one who’s thrown me out of the house. Great parenting. Seriously, you should get some kinda an award.” I turned and walked down the driveway, never looking back. I heard my mom and Walter arguing in the doorway. Poor Walter, I thought.
So of course I wound up knocking on Mason’s front door. Mason’s mom opened it and let me in. Mason was eating his Cheerios in the living room watching cartoons. I went and sat beside him. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey. How do you feel?” I asked.
“I’m okay.”
Mason had a black eye. “What did you tell your mom?” I asked him.
“I said someone hit me.”
“Oh? So what did she say?”
“Not much. Just to be more careful in the future.” That was pretty much the kinda thing Mason’s mom would say.
“So I saw Conor again last night,” I said.
Mason’s head spun round to look at me. “Did he try and hurt you?” he asked anxiously.
“No. He told me all about Laura. He says he didn’t kill her.”
“Well what did you expect him to say? He’s not gonna confess is he?”
“I believed him.”
Mason shook his head. “What?” I asked indignantly.
“How many TV movies have we seen where some woman falls in love with some guy because he’s a pretty face and then it turns out he has a shady past and like kills the woman, or at the very least her best friend.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t see Conor in case he kills you?”
“Yes.”
“To be honest Mason, it’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”
He looked at me and rolled his eyes, then he frowned. “Seriously Tegan, don’t you think you gotta be careful? I mean it’s all so weird. His last girlfriend just vanishes without a trace and-”
“I don’t think Conor would have hurt her,” I told Mason.
“Maybe. That’s not what the girl’s family think.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the articles I found was like an appeal by the girl’s mom and dad and her sister for more information. They all sounded pretty certain Conor had something to do with what happened to Laura. You want to see it?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly, surprising myself. To tell you the truth I’d figured I’d probably want to see all this stuff Mason had found. Maybe because I wanted to be sure if my boyfriend was some kinda serial killer or not, but mostly because I wanted to know more about Conor. He kept so much of himself secret, I wanted to see what he was keeping hidden, and it felt wrong in a way, like I’d suddenly discovered naked pictures of him or something. But I found myself telling Mason I didn’t want to see whatever he’d turned up.
Mason shrugged. “You wanna date a mass murderer go ahead. Hell, if you ever split up you could maybe be one of those women who marry guys on death row.”
“Conor’s not a mass murderer,” I said. “At the worst he’s just a murderer.” I guess Mason was making me wonder whether Conor maybe did have something to do with whatever happened to Laura. I growled and said, “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Are you kidding?” Mason said. “This is like the one interesting thing that’s ever happened in the history of our lives. Hell, in the history of the whole goddamn town. And you want to talk about something else?”
“Yeah.”
Mason shook his head. “It’s just all so National Enquirer. The unsuspecting school girl. The-”
“Seriously Mason. Let’s change the subject.”
“Fine. What do you want to talk about?”
I shrugged. “My mom kicked me out.”
“Shit. No way. What for?”
“I don’t know. She’s giving me tough love. I wish she’d realize I’d rather have no love than tough love.”
“You don’t mean that,” Mason said quietly. “I gotta brush my teeth.” He went upstairs and I stared vacantly at the TV. Some animated animal was trying to cook a romantic dinner for another animated animal. Besides the fact that they were like totally different species I guess I had a problem with the whole idea of animals being romantic. Isn’t one of the advantages of being an animal that you don’t have to deal with all that romantic shit, and I’m pretty sure in the animal kingdom having a murderous boyfriend wouldn’t be a huge problem.
Mason reappeared a few minutes later and we went out and caught the bus to school. It felt strangely comforting to be sitting on the school bus next to Mason, all the same kids in the same seats saying the same things in the same voices as we drove down the same roads past the same familiar places.
Conor wasn’t in school and I realized that I missed him. Not just missed him, I kinda wanted him, you know, to fool around with. But I wanted to see him mostly. Every class I was in I was waiting for him to walk in, but he didn’t. I stared blankly at the blackboard through god knows what classes.
And then the bell was ringing at the end of the last class of the day. Mason and I walked out together. It was cold but the sun was still bright. I told him that I was going to head over to Conor’s place. “You want me to come with you?” Mason asked.
“No. It’s okay.”
Mason looked at me, squinting in the sunlight. “You gotta be careful Tegan,” he said.
“I know,” I said. I watched as Mason walked away and climbed onto the school bus. I waved at him as he stared out the window at me, then I turned and walked over to Conor’s house. It took me maybe twenty minutes, all the way I was vaguely aware of the other kids walking home laughing with their friends, little kids running down the sidewalk, not looking before they crossed the street. But I paid them no attention. All I could think about was Conor. The next thing I knew I was standing by his front door wondering whether I should knock on it or not. His dad’s station wagon wasn’t in the driveway, but I knew it might freak Conor out if I just turned up.
After a moment I walked down around the side of the house peering in through the windows as I went. I stood outside Conor’s bedroom window, it was open slightly but the curtains were pulled shut. I hesitated for a minute or two, but then I heard Conor inside. The sound of him breathing, ragged, like it hurt him to breathe. So I opened the window and clambered into Conor’s room. I landed on his bedroom floor with a thud and looked anxiously around. Conor was lying in bed his eyes closed, the covers pulled up so only the top of his head was visible, a mess of black hair that needed brushing. I walked towards him slowly and listened to his breathing. Maybe he was just having a bad dream, I thought. But then I saw something on his bed cover, a patch of blood about as big as my hand. I put my hand on the covers and for a moment I stared down at the blood stain, at my hand holding the sheet. Then I pulled it back slowly.
I dropped the bed cover, my hand covered my mouth as I looked down at Conor. He lay naked in the bed, his body covered in bruises and cuts and blood and dirt. I knelt down beside him feeling too weak to stand up. His lips were swollen and bloody, his cheeks looked like they’d been cut with something, around his neck there were bruises like someone had gripped him tightly round the throat, and maybe hadn’t been too keen on letting him go. His chest was covered in small lumps, which when I looked closer I guessed were burn marks. There were maybe twenty scattered across his chest and his shoulder, and I’d later discover there were more all over his back. His stomach looked like hamburger meat, it had that pounded raw color, as though someone had punched him over and over for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. There were a few bruises on his legs and his knees were covered in cuts, like he’d been made to kneel on something sharp. I saw that even his feet were covered in blood. I looked back up at his face, seeing the blood hidden by his bangs, the blood dried around his nose, the deep bruises on his upper arms and around his wrists. There were bloodstains all over his sheets as well. I wondered how long he’d been lying there, in that bed.
“Conor” I whispered. He didn’t wake up. What the fuck am I going to do, I thought. It’s times like these I wish my parents were more like the kind you see on TV. I’d call my dad and he’d know what to do, being like a world class surgeon or the district attorney or something, instead of a guy who knocks on strangers doors and tries to get them to buy pet insurance. Yeah, my TV dad would know how to heal Conor and how to protect him from the man who did this to him. I looked at Conor and wished I could look away. Hell, I wished I could walk away. And for the briefest moment I thought about that. No one would know if I just climbed back out the window and went home. But I wasn’t going to do that. Shit, I wouldn’t even do that to someone I didn’t care about, and I cared about Conor. I liked him, there, are you happy now?
So I put my hand on a place on Conor’s shoulder that didn’t seem bruised or burnt or bloody and shook it gently. He still didn’t wake up so I figured the only thing I could do was to call the paramedics. For all I knew he could have like internal bleeding or whatever. As I walked towards the doorway I heard Conor murmur something. I turned back and saw that he’d opened his eyes. He was looking at me and saying something so softly I couldn’t hear. I went back over to him and leant in close to his mouth.
“Laura,” he said.
“It’s okay Conor,” I told him, which I guess was a lie. “I’m gonna get a doctor, okay?”
He shook his head as vigourously as he could. Which wasn’t that vigourously. “Conor,” I said. “You need to see a doctor.”
“No,” he said. “Please.”
I sat down on the bed beside him and tried to figure out how I could help him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“What for?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know I hurt you.”
“Conor?”
“I didn’t remember. I still don’t remember. I’m sorry Laura.” His voice grew fainter and then faded away. His eyes closed again. I covered him with the bed sheets and sat beside him for the longest. I sat there as the daylight faded outside and the room grew dark. And then I knew there was only one thing I could do, and maybe it’d make things worse for Conor, but maybe it’d make them better.
I walked out of his room and into the living room. I picked up the telephone and dialled 911 and told some lady who sounded like my fifth grade teacher that my friend was hurt and he needed help.
Then I went back into the bedroom and sat on the floor beside Conor’s bed waiting. After maybe five minutes I heard the ambulance arrive and I went to open the front door, except that it was locked and there was no key. The paramedics hammered on the door and I shouted to them to hold on. So I ran back to Conor’s bedroom and climbed back out the window and sprinted round the house. Two paramedics stared at me impatiently. “The door’s locked,” I told them.
“Ah ha,” said one of them, a lady who looked tired and like she was thinking about what she’d make the kids for dinner when they got home, not about Conor at all. They followed me round to the back of the house and gestured at the open window. The lady shook her head and walked back round to the front of the house whilst the other paramedic who was this real young guy who was maybe a few years older than me, he climbed in through the window. For some reason I stayed outside in the back yard as if to see Conor being examined would be like this violation or something. After a minute I heard the paramedic inside say Jesus’ name out loud in shock.
Suddenly there was this banging from the front of the house and a crashing sound. A few moments later the lady paramedic walked into Conor’s bedroom followed by two cops. I guessed they’d broken the front door down. Man, I really hoped they’d be able to keep Conor safe from his father. I mean he was gonna be so pissed about this. I listened as the paramedics talked in low urgent voices about Conor, words that were meaningless to me, medical words that I guess made his blood pressure and how his heart was beating and how much blood he’d lost.
I walked away from the window into the dark of the back yard away from the lights of the house. I don’t know how long I stood in there before one of the cops walked towards me. “Miss?” he said. “Miss, are you okay?”
I turned to face him and nodded my head not trusting my voice not to shake and make him think I was some dumb girl crying in the dark. “I need to ask you a few questions.” He said.
I looked at him. He was big. I don’t mean like fat or anything. He was just tall and wide and solid and strong like a fall out shelter. He had a moustache and something about him made me think of all those TV dads, how they’re the lie of safety I wanted to buy. “Is he okay?” I asked.
“He’s sustained serious injuries but the paramedics are confident that with treatment his injuries shouldn’t be life threatening.”
I wanted to ask him what that meant. If he even knew. “Is he going to die?” I asked.
“As I said his condition is...” He sighed heavily, and I noticed he was biting his lip like he was nervous or something. “They don’t think he’ll die. But it depends how bad his internal injuries are. If you answer a few questions now I’ll take you to the hospital soon.”
“Is he gone? I mean have they taken Conor to hospital?”
“Yes miss. Now if you could just answer a few questions.”
“Okay.”
So the cop asked a lot of questions, what was my name, what was Conor’s name, why was I here, how did I get into the house, when did I find Conor, when was the last time I’d seen him, did I know who’d want to hurt Conor.
I hesitated then. I guess I didn’t know whether it was my business or not. You know that families are complicated shit, right? And Conor’s dad may be a sick abusive fuck, but he’s still his dad, and would Conor thank me for getting his dad locked up. I know, he should thank me right, but people are never that simple. And what if it just made it worse for Conor.
“Miss?” the cop asked patiently. “Are you protecting the person who did this? Because the injuries that boy had were the pretty much the worse I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly wishing I was one of those girls who cried then maybe the cop would comfort me and I wouldn’t have to deal with this shit anymore. “How do I know what the right thing to do is? What if I make things worse for Conor?”
“Listen to me. You called for help when your friend needed it. You already made things better for him. Hell, you maybe saved his life. Now if you can help us make sure that this never happens to him again, I’m pretty sure then you’ve for sure saved his life.” The cop was silent for a moment and we listened to the crackle of his radio in the freezing night. “This wasn’t the first time was it?” he said in this matter of fact way that somehow I knew was his way of hiding from how much that idea hurt him. I smiled at the cop then, and maybe he thought I was a freak for smiling then, but it made me happy and sad to know that this big strong cop who spent his days seeing awful things could be hurt by the idea of boy being hurt again and again and again.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think it was the first time. His dad,” I said. “I think his dad did it.”
“Have you seen Conor’s father abuse him in the past?” he asked.
“He locks him in the garage,” I said, “when he’s mad with Conor.”
“Okay Miss. Let’s get you to the hospital. You want to be with your friend, right?”
I hesitated. For a minute there that feeling that I wanted to run away from all this was there. I didn’t want to have to deal with all this shit. Jesus, I have enough trouble just getting through my stupid life normally. But I guess there was never any doubt where I was going to go. I nodded and the cop placed his hand on my back and lead me round to the front of the house.
By this time the street was full of police cars, their lights still flashing, turning the street into a night club. Neighbors peered fearfully through their windows. The cop went and talked to some of the other cops, and they all nodded and one of them kept talking into his radio. Then the cop came back over to me, and we walked over to his car and he drove me to the hospital. As we drove down Conor’s street away from his house I looked at it in the rear view mirror, the dark house surrounded by red and blue lights. I wondered at Conor’s life inside that house these last few years. I hoped I’d done the right thing. But how do you ever know?

Chapter Twelve

In the hospital all the lights were bright and they all hummed. I sat in an empty waiting room on my own. The cop hung around, chatting to the nurses, talking gravely to the doctor who was in charge of treating Conor, who had to stop Conor dying. I watched all this feeling out of place, like what was happening had nothing to do with me. I guess it was as if I was watching some medical drama on TV, except the doctors and the nurses all just looked tired and weren’t like as pretty as they are on TV. I couldn’t see any of those people shouting, “Don’t die on me goddamnit!” and pounding on Conor’s bare chest desperately if his heart stopped and he slipped away. I guess if you died these doctors and nurses just turned away shyly and went on to the next patient immediately forgetting whoever they’d just had to watch die. Man, their jobs must totally suck.
The cop sat down beside me. “I’m afraid your friend has to have surgery,” he said.
I looked at him and tried to think of what it was I was supposed to say. I knew this, I thought, I’ve seen it on TV. “Is he gonna be okay?” I asked.
“The doctor’s real hopeful,” he said.
“Can I see him?”
“He’s in surgery now. Maybe when he comes out. Do you know if Conor has any other family we should notify? His mom, or grandparents or...”
I shook my head. “He told me his mom died, and he never mentioned anyone else.”
The cop sighed and for a moment focused on the cover of an old magazine staring up at us from the table in the waiting room. It was a TV Guide from years and years and years ago. On the cover there was that kid who was the stuttering kid in It, you know that film with the clown. Man, that movie always scares the crap out of Mason, I thought.
“Is there anyone you’d like to call?” the cop asked me. “Your mom maybe?”
I thought for a moment then nodded my head slowly. “There’s a pay phone down the hall,” the cop said. “Do you need a quarter?”
I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled a selection of coins. “No,” I said, then I stood up.
I found the pay phone and dialled the number automatically. As I listened to the familiar sound of a phone ringing I looked around me as people walked the hallways, I wondered how many of them were afraid that someone they loved was about to die. The phone stopped ringing. “Hello,” said Mason’s mom.
“Hey Mrs Taylor, it’s Tegan.”
“Oh hello Tegan,” she said coldly. “I’ll get Mason for you.”
I listened to her calling Mason down from upstairs, the sounds of him walking through his house.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” My mind froze then, I couldn’t remember why I’d called Mason, I couldn’t remember where I was.
“What’s up?” Mason asked. Over the tannoy some doctor was paged. “Where are you?” Mason said.
“Um, I’m in the hospital.”
“Are you okay?” Mason asked. “Did Conor hurt you?”
“No. It’s Conor. He...um...he’s hurt I guess.”
“What happened? Is he gonna be okay?”
“Can you just come Mason, please?” I asked.
“Of course,” he answered. “I’ll be right there.” The line went dead and I hung the receiver up.
When I got back to the waiting room there were two other people sitting with the cop. “Tegan,” he said. “This is Detective Summers and Detective Rogers. They need to ask you a few questions.”
“Why? I told you everything I know.”
“I’m sure you did Tegan,” Detective Summers said. He was a plain looking middle aged man who was pretending to be kind but I could tell he didn’t care about me, he didn’t care about Conor. “But we need your help to find Conor’s father.”
“You haven’t found him yet?” I asked.
The detectives exchanged a look. “No,” said Detective Rogers. She was a thin, efficient looking woman who was maybe a little younger than the other detective.
So they asked more questions. They asked me about the time I’d found Conor in the garage. They asked me about Conor’s dad, they asked me about Conor. After a while I guess they saw that I had nothing to tell them, that I barely knew anything about Conor. They went away then, and the cop went with them, telling me he’d back to check on me later.
I sat alone in the waiting room, flicking through the old TV Guide, wondering which of the shows I’d watched ten years earlier that were listed within its pages. Mason walked in, he was red faced like he’d run all the way, there was a dusting of snow in his hair and on his jacket. He sat down beside me. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I told him. I brushed the snow from his hair. “It’s snowing?” I asked stupidly.
“Yeah. So what happened?”
I took a hold of his hands were freezing for a moment, then I let them go. “I went over to Conor’s place. He was in bed.” I paused trying to get it straight in my head what happened, even though only a few hours had gone by. “He’d been beaten up. Real bad, like he was...” I remembered then what I guess I’d been trying not to think about. Conor’s broken body.
“He’ll be alright, right?” Mason asked.
I shrugged. “He’s in surgery for something. I don’t know.” I looked at Mason for a moment, then I looked away, hiding my eyes. “I”ve never seen anything like it Mason,” I said quietly. “He was...” I shook my head and Mason didn’t say anything.
We sat in silence, after a while I rested my head on Mason’s chest and he put his arm around me. I guess I fell asleep for a while, vaguely aware of the world around me. In my sleep I heard Mason talking to a girl, who I thought was me. Maybe I was dreaming, I don’t know.
“She doesn’t believe me,” Mason said.
“You have to make her believe.”
“I don’t know if I believe. I mean I don’t think he’d do that.”
“You don’t know him. You have to make her believe.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t she’ll die. Do you want that?”
“No!”
“Then stop being such a goddamn pussy.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me,” she said softly.
“I promise,” Mason said.
“Good boy.”
By the time I woke up it was pretty late. The hospital seemed strangely silent, which made no sense to me. I mean it’s not like people stop getting sick when it’s night time, is it? Mason was sleeping peacefully beside me. I looked at his closed yes for a minute. His eyelids flickered like he was dreaming.
I stood up and walked out of the waiting room. The corridor was deserted and my footsteps sounded louder than a hundred heartbeats as I walked with no idea of where I was going. Without thinking I got into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. I guess just so as the elevator ride would last as long as possible. As I felt myself moving space as I stood still I thought about that book I’d read as a kid. You know, they made it into a movie, where this boy wins a chocolate factory or something and there’s this elevator that like flies through the air or something. I couldn’t barely remember it, and I tried to think what happened in the story, but there was only a blank space where once there’d been that memory.
The elevator doors opened slowly and I stepped out. The place was pretty much in darkness. There was a dim light from the nurse’s station where I saw a small TV screen showing some old black and white movie. The nurse stared intently at the TV like this old movie had the secrets of the universe to tell her. As my eyes got used to the dilm light I saw beyond the nurse’s station rows and rows of beds in which all the sick people were asleep. Part of me wanted to like check myself into the hospital just so as I could sleep safely with the nurse to watch over.
On the TV screen the movie was interrupted by a commercial break. The black and white pictures replaced by the bright colors of people trying to sell stuff. The nurse stood up and looked at some monitors, I guess making sure no one was dead. Then she saw me standing over by the elevator. She walked towards me slowly. I wanted to push the call button to make the elevator doors open so I wouldn’t have to talk to the nurse. But I just stood there like an idiot.
“Can I help you?” the nurse asked. I was surprised when she got up close by how young she was. I guess because she was a nurse, and she’s been watching an old movie, and the way her hair was tied up (which I know is like the regulations or whatever) I’d just thought she’d be older, like fifty maybe. But the girl looking at me was in her early twenties. She looked tired but pretty. I guess she could have played a nurse on ER or something. “You’re not allowed to be up here,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Can I help you?” she asked again, ignoring my question. “Is a family member up here?”
“No, I don’t think so. No. My friend...he came in earlier. He had to have surgery.”
“Well he won’t be up here. You need to go to the ICU, it’s on the third floor.”
“Oh okay. Thanks.” I still didn’t feel like getting back into the elevator and going to find the place in the hospital I was meant to be. “What movie are you watching?” I asked.
“Just some old movie,” she said embarrassed.
“What movie?”
“Night of the Living Dead,” she said. “I know, it’s probably not appropriate or whatever. We’re not supposed to watch TV anyway. The TVs for like a security monitor or something, but one of the janitors showed me how to tune in some TV stations. You won’t tell anyone will you?”
“No. Can I watch the film with you for a while?” I asked.
She looked at me uncertainly. “I might get in trouble.” She sighed. “Okay, just for a little while.”
So I went and sat in the nurses station and we watched the zombies wander around on the TV screen and all the humans screamed and fought and died. “You ever get scared up here on your own?” I asked her.
“No. Not really. Well, there was this one night when one of the patients woke up. It scared the crap out of me. They’re not supposed to wake up you know, they’re all in permanent vegetative states. You know what means?” I nodded, I’d seen the appropriate TV movie. “Yeah, so basically they just all lie there, every day, every night. But one of them woke up and started screaming. It was scary.”
“What happened?”
“I paged the attending and went and checked the patient’s vitals and tried to calm him down. Then the doctor was here and he wasn’t sure what to do. It never happens. They never wake up. So the doctor decided he needed to get someone else to come in and take a look at the patient. He went off to page them. By the time he came back the guy had died.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I stopped working the night shift up here for a while after that. But a few months later I asked to be rotated up here again. They’re easier than the other patients you see. You know when you have to deal with people with terminal illnesses, or who’ve been in car crashes, or been attacked. I can’t do it. I picked the wrong job, right?” she said.
We watched the zombies on the TV some more as they ate some guy’s brains. “So what’s wrong with your friend?” she asked.
“He got beaten up. Well, worse than that. His dad’s like a psychopath. I found him, my friend I mean, I found him and he was covered in blood and bruises and cuts and burns all over his body. I know people can be sick fucks but I’d never seen anything like that.”
“You see it all the time if work in the emergency room. Wives who’ve been beaten by their husbands, girls who’ve been raped, kids who try to kill themselves. That’s why I stay up here and watch them sleep.”
After a while the hero was killed and the movie was over. “I guess I should go,” I said.
“Okay. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“Maybe,” I said. I went back down in the elevator, to the third floor. I walked down the corridor until I saw this cop sitting in a chair outside a room. I went over to him. “Is Conor in there?” I asked.
“This room’s off limits,” he said.
“Is Conor in there?” I asked again. “I’m his friend. I called the paramedics. Just tell me if he’s okay.”
“I don’t know Miss,” he said. “Maybe if you come back in the morning his doctors’ll be able to tell you something.”
“Can I see him?”
“No.”
I looked at him sitting in the chair. He looked like he was pushing retirement age, he was kinda heavy and not too lively. So I darted past him and opened the door and went inside. I ran over to the bed and looked down at Conor. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. Tubes went into his nose and his skin and the machines beeped and flashed. They’d shaved his head, I guess for the surgery, and I looked at the shape of his skull.
“Conor?” I said. I felt the cop’s arms around me, dragging me out of the room. I don’t know why I fought against him. Jesus, I thought, even as I flailed my arms and shouted, I’m acting like a character in a Lifetime movie. The cop pushed me out of the room and shut the door. He stood in front of it and glared at me, as he panted breathlessly. “Are you gonna behave yourself now or should I get someone to lock you up?”
“I’ll be good,” I said bitterly.
“Okay,” he said. He coughed painfully. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job. No one’s allowed in to see the boy except his doctor and the nurses. It’s for his own safety.”
“You still haven’t found his dad?” I asked anxiously.
He shook his head faintly. There was nothing more to say so I found my way back to the waiting room where Mason was slumped asleep. I sat down beside him and rested my head on his chest. I closed my eyes but I couldn’t sleep, I kept my eyes closed pretending to myself that I was sleeping. Time passed by and the night ended. Gradually the noise level of the hospital increased as people showed up for work, and to check on their sick relatives, and decided that now it was the day they were gonna be ill.
Mason jerked awake beside me. I lifted my head and looked at him. He peered around sleepily, not recognising his surroundings. His dark blonde hair was all messed up giving him a faintly startled appearance, like some crazy scientist finally emerging from his laboratory after years of looking for the cure to everything that kills us.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” Mason stared vacantly at me for a moment, then he smiled gently. “How’s Conor?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Mason borrowed some coins from me and went to fetch us a couple of cups of coffee from the vending machine in the hall. Whilst he was gone two women came into the waiting room, one of them was sobbing hysterically while the other one tried to comfort her.
I picked up the TV guide and read the plot synopsis for an episode of Beverley Hills 90210 over and over again until the words lost all meaning. I didn’t look up when a doctor came in. He sat down beside the hysterical lady and started talking to her in a subdued voice. After a moment the lady made this weird groaning screaming sobbing sound. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “We did everything we could to...” his words were drowned out by the woman crying.
I wanted to get the hell out of the room as quick as I could but I didn’t want to move, I was hoping by not moving I’d maybe be invisible. I saw Mason lurking in the doorway with the coffees, the hot steam rising from them. I glanced at the woman crying and then I stood up and hurried out of the room. Mason handed me one of the plastic cups and we wandered down the corridor and then out the main entrance. We walked up and down the sidewalk listening to the snow crunching beneath our feet. I sipped the coffee and it burnt my tongue. All the cars were driving slowly on account of the snow, people were wrapped up warm in scarves and gloves and woollen hats. Outside the hospital there was a whole world going about its business. I wanted to be a part of it, instead of the world inside the hospital where Conor lay in a bed guarded by a police man.
“This is pretty weird,” I said to Mason.
“I guess.”
“You think I did the right thing, calling 911?” I asked.
“What else could you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus, you can pick them can’t you?” Mason said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just it’s pretty bad luck you end up dating some guy whose family are like the one outta the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“Conor isn’t Leatherface. He’s cute.”
“Cute. Psychotic. He’s a real catch.”
“You still think Conor killed that girl?”
“I’m sure he did.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Who else would have done it?”
“Fuck Mason. The world’s full of sick sick people itching to kill teenage girls. You ever watch the news?”
“You gotta admit there’s something off about Conor.”
“He’s different sure. So are you. So am I. We don’t fit Mason. That’s who we are. How do you think Conor felt when Laura disappeared. He was in love with her, and then she was gone. And to make it worse everyone thought he’d killed her. You ever think about what he must have gone through?”
“You ever think about what she must have gone through? Terrified and hurting and...”
“Mason! Just stop. I can’t talk about this now. I’m going inside. Are you coming?”
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll go home.”
“Mason. Why are you so pissed at me?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
“You can’t be mad at someone for being an idiot.”
“Tegan, you don’t know anything about Conor. But you’re gonna take his word that he didn’t kill Laura just because you want to jump his bones. And you ignore whatever I have to say. It’s like...”
“Mason, all you can tell me is stuff you’ve read on the internet. If Conor had really killed Laura don’t you think maybe he’d be in jail.”
“He got away with it. Happens everyday.”
“Conor’d have been what? Thirteen maybe when this happened. You really think after killing this girl he was crazy in love for, after that he’d be able to somehow hide all the evidence, hide the body so well that four years later it still hasn’t turned up?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said sullenly.
“And it’s not about me believing him over you.” Mason shook his head and turned away. “It isn’t,” I said. “You weren’t there, I wasn’t there. We don’t know what happened. Only Conor knows if he killed her or not. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mason said without looking at me.
“Come back inside with me Mason. Please,” I asked as I watched people walking around us.
“Okay,” he said again.
We dropped our empty cups in a trash bin and headed inside. Without talking we walked along the corridor back towards the waiting room. Standing outside it was the cop who’d brought me here last night. “Tegan,” he said. “How are you?”
“Okay. How’s Conor?” I asked.
“If you wait here a minute I’ll fetch a doctor to talk to you.”
“Have they found his dad yet?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. But he won’t get far, trust me.”
The cop walked off down the corridor. I turned to Mason. “If you want to get to school...,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I want to stay here with you.” I smiled at him. After a few minutes a young doctor walked towards down the corridor, his white coat flapping in urgency. I couldn’t help but wonder if he ever pretended he was in the credits sequence for ER when he walked down the corridors. Hell I know I would. When my dad was in the hospital with one of his heart attacks or whatever, Mason came to see me, on account of him having nothing else to do and we he ran up and down the corridors making believe we were TV doctors. That was fun.
The doctor frowned at me. Without pausing for small talk he launced into all this stuff about Conor’s condition, words I’d heard before on the TV but meant even less now they were being applied to someone real. I concentrated on the faint smell of coffee on the doctor’s breath, the small stain on the lapel of his white coat which didn’t like look like blood but more like it was mustard, at the line of hairs along the doctor’s jawline he’d missed when shaving.
“Do you understand?” he asked. I shook my head slowly, not sure what it was I supposed to understand. “Your friend had a subacute subdural hemota. That’s a very serious injury to the brain. We had to drill a hole in Conor’s skull to relieve the pressure of the blood building up.”
“You drilled a hole in his skull?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“Yes. It’s a common procedure.”
“You just drilled a hole in his head? That’s not right.” I said. Poor Conor, I thought, a hole in the head’s gotta hurt. “Is he going to be alright?”
“The initial signs are very positive. We’re optimistic Conor will make a full recovery.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yes.”
“So he won’t die?”
The doctor sighed and glanced at his watch quickly. “Your friend sustained very serious injuries. He’s undergone surgery which is never without risk. He should recover, but nothing is certain. The next few hours will be very important for Conor.”
“Okay,” I said uncertainly.
The doctor smiled like a rubber stamp on our conversation. “Thank you,” Mason said awkwardly. The doctor turned and walked down the corridor. Mason and I stood watching him. “You think we can get us one of them white coats?” Mason asked.
“That’s what I was thinking. There’s gotta be one lying round somewhere.”
“What do you want to do now?” Mason said.
“I don’t know. Crap.”
“What?”
“I didn’t ask if I could see Conor. Man, I bet the doctor thinks I’m a shitty concerned relative.”
“Maybe we can ask a nurse.”
So I found some nurse who looked pretty important and scary and asked if we could go and see Conor. She strode down the corridor and found some charts which she scrutinised. Finally she said we could.
The police man outside Conor’s door was different. He was this young kid trying to grow a moustache disappointed to find only a collection of straggly blonde hairs on his upper lip. Before we went in he had to talk to someone else on his radio for a while then he nodded at us curtly and let us go in. The door closed behind us and Mason and I stood there staring at Conor lying in the bed.
Mason glanced at me. “If you want me to wait outside.”
“No,” I said. Mason looked at me awkwardly and I knew he felt he shouldn’t be here. That he didn’t have the right to see Conor like this. It was an intimacy reserved only for people who were close to him. But I guess other than me and the man who’d put him in hospital Conor didn’t really have anyone else.
I walked over to the side of the bed and looked down at Conor. “Man, he looks like shit,” I said. Mason laughed without meaning to.
“Sorry,” he said from over by the door.
I looked at Conor’s lips, the bruises on his face, cuts that had been cleaned. Mason and I listened to the sounds of the machines that Conor was hooked up to, doing whatever it is that they did. I guess for a minute I wanted to turn and walk out of the room and walk out of the hospital and go back home and take a shower and get changed and eat some breakfast and go to class and forget about Conor and maybe fool around with another cute guy at a party but mostly just keep thinking about the day when I’d leave this town for college or a job or whatever. But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave for whatever reason. I guess because Conor meant something to me. What he meant exactly I didn’t know but it was enough to keep me in that room.
“Why’d you think he did it?” I asked after a while. “His dad, why would he do this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe...” Mason trailed off into silence.
“What?” I said.
“You don’t want to hear it,” he said.
I turned to face Mason and narrowed my eyes to indicate he was risking physical violence if he didn’t spill whatever was on his mind.
“Fine. Maybe his dad thinks he has to like keep Conor under control. After what happened in North Dakota maybe his dad figured he had to keep Conor in line.”
“You think Conor deserved this?” I said angrily.
“No. I don’t know. I guess if he killed that girl maybe I’m not gonna get too upset about-”
“Shut up,” I said. “Shut the fuck up Mason. You’re such a little puke. Conor could like die, and you’re...” I turned away from Mason and looked down at Conor. That was when I had the idea. Maybe it was a bad idea, I don’t know. I guess looking back things may have turned out better if I hadn’t had it. But it’s too late now. “If you think Conor killed that girl prove it,” I said angrily.
“How I’m supposed to do that? Beat a confession out of him?”
I spun round to glare at Mason. “We’ll find what happened to Laura,” I said as though it would be the easiest thing in the world. I pretty much expected Mason to tell it was a dumb idea but he just nodded his head thoughtfully.
“Okay,” he said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure. Someone should find out where she is.”
“Okay. So I guess we’re going to North Dakota.”
“How are we gonna get there?”
I thought about this for a while. We could maybe get a greyhound or a bus or something, but that’d cost money. I didn’t think my mom’d be inclined to let me borrow her car and drive across a few states. Obviously Mason’s parents were never going to let Mason borrow the car to go to the store, never mind North Dakota. Then my genius kicked in. I grinned at Mason, “Leave it to me,” I said.
I turned back to Conor and felt bad about leaving him like this, even for a couple of days. But I was doing this for him. I bent down and kissed him on the forehead, feeling like an idiot all the time for doing it. When I turned round I saw that Mason was studiously examining his sneakers. “Let’s go,” I said.
I told Mason to meet me my house in like an hour or something. Then I headed across town to the apartment complex where my father lived.

Yay, etc etc

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:53:27 GMT

So I won Nano which is very exciting. Although the novel is still a way off being finished.

You know when you get that horrible feeling in your gut that you’ve just completely fucked your life up. I’d had it a few times before. This one time at some party I’d been pretty drunk and I wound up kissing this girl who I’d always thought was pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m a lesbian or whatever. But I was drunk and I was talking to this girl whose name I won’t tell you on account of you probably know her, she’s real popular, but not like a total cunt. So we were talking and she was funny and smart and I kissed her without thinking and she freaked out and ran off and I went downstairs and straight home and I woke up the next morning with this fear like a poison in my stomach. I was sure I’d go to school on Monday and everyone’d hate me and my life would wind up turning into some dumb TV movie or an episode of a teen drama about the struggles of lesbians in their youth. It was one fucking kiss, for Christ’s sake! The whole weekend I was on edge, convinced school would be hell for the foreseeable future. This is middle America, the gays aren’t beloved out here. As it turned out the girl I kissed never told anyone, she was kinda weird around me for a while, but that was okay.
Well I had that feeling again, like everything was about to fall apart and I’d finally have to take responsibility for my actions. I walked through the streets near Mason’s house with that feeling inside me. Christ, I thought, I’m a total fucking asshole. Hurrying across town I tried not to think, at all. I went to the bus station and bought a ticket for a place a few towns over. It’d take a couple of hours to get there, and I didn’t want to go to school, or home, or anywhere Mason or Conor could find me.
So I sat at the back of the bus looking at the other people. People going to work, or to see friends, maybe running away from something or someone. It took me a couple of minutes until I realised I fell into that last category. Still, that thought made me feel pretty cool. Like I was a fugitive on the run, desperate and violent and doomed. It reminded me of this film I saw late at night a few years back, about these two kids running from the police, taking a Greyhound across America, finally holing up in this cabin out in the woods where they’re happy for a while. Then the boy gets killed in a hail of police bullets. Of course they had each other. Me, I was alone. And not really on the run.
The highway made every minute look the same. I was trying hard not to feel bad about Mason, but it wasn’t working. It’s not like the first time I kissed Mason. I told you about the time a few weeks before when I kissed the idiot to shut him up. To tell you the truth the first time I made out with Mason we were maybe thirteen and Mason had like his first (and only) date with Cynthia Berg and he was totally terrified. He’d never kissed anyone before and he was convinced he’d screw it up. Being Mason he probably would have found a way. So we kissed for a while lying on my bed. It was no big deal. I guess we’ve made out maybe three or four times since then. The only time I can really remember was one Christmas when I was fifteen. My step dad and his daughters had pretty much taken over. My dad came to visit on Christmas day to give me some totally lame present and he came and went in like twenty minutes back to his empty apartment, and my mom and step dad were getting steadily wasted on brandy and laughing loudly, alternating between groping each other and trading insults and accusations of not being committed to the relationship. Meanwhile his daughters lay on the couch watching fucking Titanic over and over until I wanted to drill a hole in my goddamn head and let everything inside leak out. I guess I spent most of the day in my bedroom wishing I was anywhere else. Around seven I left the house and walked over to see Mason. On the walk over I felt totally miserable. I guess I was a little drunk too. So I went into the basement of Mason’s house and there was no one there. So I lay on the couch in the dark listening to Mason’s family upstairs. Some kind of Christmas music was playing, masking the soft murmuring of the voices of Mason’s parents and his sister. I wondered where Mason was and willed him to find me there in his basement. But he didn’t come. After a while I fell asleep. It was maybe three in the morning when I woke up shivering in the dark. After a moment I realised someone had covered me with a blanket. Then I saw that Mason had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, his back against the couch. I leant in close to the back of his hand and stroked his messy blonde hair. I lay back and stared upwards into the darkness and thought my stupid home and my stupid life and I don’t know why, but I started to cry. Believe me, that’s not something I do. Ever. Maybe I just fucking hate Christmas, everyone is like happy and stuff, it’s weird. If you think about Christmas it’s like something of 1984, you know that book. Like at the end of December everyone will feel happy and love their family for a few days. I guess I hate anything that’s compulsory. So I lay there in the dark feeling miserable. Maybe I just wanted a better family, one I could feel a part of instead of apart from.
“Tegan,” Mason said.
“What?” I said quietly, trying not to sound like I was crying like a moron.
“What’s wrong?” he said and I heard him get to his feet.
“Nothing,” I said, turning away from him to face the couch.
“Tegan?”
“Leave me alone,” I said.
He sat down on the edge of the couch next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Tegan,” he said again. We sat in silence for a while.
Finally I asked sullenly, “Are you cold?”
“I guess,” Mason said quietly. He climbed under the blanket and lay beside me.
“So how was your day?” I asked.
“You know. I got some gift vouchers. My sister entertained us all with tales of her life at college. I went to my room after lunch. How was your day?”
I opened my mouth to tell Mason about my crappy day. About how Titanic doesn’t get any better no matter how many times you watch it, about my my stupid parents, about sitting alone in my room wondering what the hell I was doing there. But I figured I sound like a song by the Smiths, and no one wants to hear such whining in the middle of the night after Christmas day. So I turned to face Mason and kissed him. I wanted to tell him something in the dark, the secret I kept, I wanted to tell him he was the only person on the whole stupid planet I cared about. The only person who made me feel not totally alone. If Mason wasn’t in my life I’d have felt like David Bowie in that film where he’s an alien alone on Earth. But I couldn’t tell Mason this. So I kissed him an held on to him and felt him holding on to me. He stopped when he felt my face was wet and started to ask me a question, I hushed him, and we carried on kissing. After that we lay huddled together in the cold of the basement.
The bus reached Fremont before noon and I climbed out just as it started to rain. I wound up sitting in a diner for a couple of hours drinking coffee until I could catch a bus back home. I was trying real hard not to think about Mason’s body beneath mine, his lips, his hands. It was weird, but when I’d seen him that morning I guess I felt the same as that night after Christmas. That Mason meant the world to me, and together we’d always be alright. Oh Jesus, I couldn’t think about it anymore. So I went and bought a National Enquirer to read on the way home figuring it’d cheer me up. But they’d pretty much devoted the whole issue to this former child star who’d just killed himself in a hotel room. Sitting on the bus, heading back home through the rain, I read about this kid who I used to watch on TV when I was a kid. It wasn’t helping my state of mind. As though to prove that being a celebrity means we get to see every single part of your life they had a photograph of this kid lying in his casket, looking miserable and, well, dead. I guess I was tired or something because when I first turned the page and saw that photograph I didn’t see the dead actor lying there. I saw that girl, the one who’d been following Mason around. She was lying in the coffin, her face a mess of bruises and cuts. It was just for the shortest second ever, but it was definitely her. You probably think I’m pretty dumb for not figuring out who she was, where I’d seen her before. But I guess nothing, not even that photograph, could have prepared me for when I’d see her next.

Chapter Nine: Big City Words

So Mason pretty much avoided me like I had the plague or something. At school he didn’t even look in my direction. I know I should have called him or gone to see him or something, but I just couldn’t. Like I said, it wasn’t the first time I’d made out with Mason but it was different this time. I wasn’t able to figure out why it was different, but I knew it was.
Conor had been keeping his distance as well. But that I was used to. The way I saw it that was his problem. Sure enough he showed up maybe a week after we’d had that weird fight in the kitchen. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting on the couch in the living room, watching old cartoons on TV and trying to study for a math test. My mom and Walter had spent the morning shut up in their bedroom, their murmurs and groans hidden beneath the sound of Wily Coyote giving chase on the TV. Finally they emerged to announce they were going out for lunch. I waved my math notes at them and said I couldn’t possibly take a break from studying. They tried to hide their relief, bless them. And then I was alone in the house, and as it will my stupid mind decided it wanted to think about Mason. I lay on the couch and so many different things about him popped into my head at once it was like there was no room for them, and for a moment my mind went weirdly blank. And the only thing I could think of was Mason lying naked beneath me. Jesus, this is terrible, but that was kinda turning me on. Stupid Mason, I thought and tried to focus on Scooby Doo. Fred pulled the mask of some guy dressed as a monster and everyone was astonished that Professor Van der Camp was being such a total asshole. Mason’s skinny body, his skin under my touch, the feel of his ribcage, his hands slow and shy and real. Oh crap. I decided to go and make a cup of coffee otherwise I’d wind up lying there thinking about fucking Mason like a pervert.
There was no coffee. I blamed Walter, even though I don’t think he drinks coffee. Standing in the kitchen I wanted to kick something. It’s times like that that I’m kinda glad we don’t like have a dog, else it’d get it bad. I’m kidding by the way, I guess. There was a knock on the front door and the first thought that went through my head was Mason. I felt fireworks explode in my stomach as I hurried to the door. Opening it I tried to hide my disappointment when I saw Conor standing there. He smiled at me strangely, “Hey,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said heading back inside. He followed me into the living room and we sat down side by side on the couch. “So,” I said. “How’ve you been?”
“Good,” Conor replied. “Are your folks out?”
“I guess.”
“Cool,” Conor said. “I got something for you.” He handed me a yellow plastic bag he’d been holding.
“Thanks,” I said. Inside the bag there was a pair of black combat pants, and a black hooded top with Nirvana written across it.
“I hope they’re your size. I had to guess.”
“Right,” I said uncertainly. “What do you want me to do with them?”
“I want you to put them on.”
“Yeah. It’s a nice gesture, but I used to wear a Nirvana top when I was like twelve. It’s a rite of passage for vaguely disaffected kids. But I’m too old for that now.”
“No one’ll see you.”
“What?”
“I just want you to put them on now. Just in the house.”
“Conor, what is your deal?”
“Please.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“It’s weird.”
“If you put these on...I’ll answer any question you ask me.”
I looked at him. To tell you the truth I’d been kinda losing interest in Conor. But still part of me wanted to know what the hell was going on with him. I shrugged, “Okay.”
Feeling strangely shy I went into the kitchen to change. When I went back into the living room he was wandering round the room. “How come there are no pictures in your house? You guys don’t own a camera or something?”
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
“You don’t have any like baby pictures anywhere, no pictures of like your birthday parties as a kid?”
“No.”
“That’s sad,” he said with an edge of malice.
“Whatever. At least my mom doesn’t lock me up in the garage.”
For a second Conor looked real pissed then he shrugged. “I don’t care.” He looked at me, nodding his head in approval. “Come here,” he said.
I walked towards him and he stepped closer to me. We were so close to each other, I saw for the first time his eyes were a dark green. I guess I figured he was going to kiss me. Instead he started messing with my hair, changing the way it was parted. “What the fuck are you doing?” I said.
“Stand still,” he said crossly, like a mother brushing her kid’s hair in a rush to get out in time for the school bus. He smiled at me. “Just like it used to be.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Without saying a word he took a hold of my hand and led me over to the couch. He sat down and pulled me down beside him. I perched awkwardly on the edge of the couch. He put his hand on my jaw and turned my face to his. “I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said.
“Conor,” I said, “what’s going on?”
He smiled at me in this tired way. “Stop pretending Laura. I know it’s you. I’ve known for days now.”
“Okay Conor, you’re freaking me out. I think you should go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“My mom’ll be home soon. And Mason’s coming over. He’ll be here any time.”
“Don’t lie to me. I’m sick of you lying and pretending.”
I went to stand up but Conor held onto my arm tightly. “Let the fuck go!” I shouted.
“Shut up. Don’t spoil this.”
“Conor, please. You’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. And suddenly something in his voice sounded like the Conor I knew, the Conor I liked.
“It’s okay,” I said gently.
“It’s not,” he said sadly, shaking his head. He looked at me uncertainly, then he slowly placed my hand on the back of his neck. He smiled at me the way a little kid does when he’s been crying and finally his mom finds a way to get him to stop, by promising him ice cream or action figures or comic books. “I don’t know how I lived without you, all these years.” He kissed me softly on the mouth and I lay back on the couch, Conor on top of me. I felt his hands find their way under my top and I closed my eyes and pushed my hands beneath Conor’s T-shirt, feeling the hard cold skin of his back. Then his hands were round my waist and he was pulling the combat pants down. For a moment I grabbed a hold of his hands to stop him. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
“What do you think,” he replied.
“I don’t know if we’re ready for this,” I said.
“What? Isn’t this special enough for you?” he asked.
He shook my hands off and carried on undressing me. I lay there and watched him, staring intently at the top of his head, at his black hair, and the way his bangs hung in the air. “Have you got something?” I asked.
He nodded and pulled a condom out of the pocket of his jeans. “Okay,” I said.
Suddenly he was shy and awkward and fumbling and I wondered if maybe this was his first time. I’m guessing from how quickly it was over it probably was. Seriously, if I’d blinked I’d have missed it. And then he was standing up, pulling his jeans on, walking out the room. When I heard the front door shut I sat up with a start. That little bastard, I thought. I got dressed again, realising as I did it that I was putting the outfit he’d given me back on.
I wandered into the hall and stood staring at the front door for a moment, I guess I was thinking maybe he’d come back and, you know, not be such a jerk. I heard something on the other side of the door, so I walked over to it and listened. Muffled but unmistakable the sound of someone sobbing was audible. After a minute maybe I opened the door. Conor stood there, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Conor?” I said. “What is it?” I stepped towards him but he backed away. “Conor?”
“I don’t understand,” he said in a quiet voice.
“What don’t you understand?” I asked gently.
“I missed you so bad,” he said. He turned and ran down the street never looking back.
So I went back inside and sat back down on the couch. It’s a pretty good sign of how weirded out I felt that I was glad when my mom and Walter got back just so as not to be alone, and thinking. I watched TV with them for most of the night. Dumb reality shows about people who wanted a better life. My mom kept glancing at me all evening, like I was some rare and exotic life form. Every time she did I scowled at her until she stopped.
It was around ten, just as Walter was getting ready to go to bed, when the phone rang. I answered it expecting it to be my dad. He sometime has a few drinks of an evening and calls me to try and convince me that he loves me or something. “Hey,” I said.
“Tegan?” a boy asked.
“Conor?”
“No, it’s Curtis. But I’m glad I’m so memorable.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to call. I mean you never call me. Why are you calling me?”
“It’s your friend. Mason.”
“What about him?”
“He’s in a bad way.”
“Is he drunk?”
“Yeah. And he got punched in the face.”
“Who by?”
“Me.”
“What? What d’you hit Mason for? He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“I know. I was worried he was going to hurt himself.”
“Where’s Mason?”
“He’s with me. We’re parked up just off the overpass off Foster Road.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in about a quarter of an hour.”
I hung up and wondered what the hell kind of trouble Mason was in now. I was worried about Mason, sure, and I guess I was anxious about seeing him again. But the truth is I felt kinda happy, like things could go back to the way they normally are.
“I’m going out,” I told my mom.
“At this time? On a school night. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, right. That’s a good one mom.”
“I’m serious Tegan. It’s too late for you to go out.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I never had a curfew before, since I was like ten!”
“Well maybe it’s time to start.”
“I gotta go.”
“Why?”
“Mason...he’s not well.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t go Tegan.”
I thought about Mason and whatever catastrophe he’d caused this time. I couldn’t just leave him. I shrugged and walked out of the living room and straight out the front door. I hurried down the driveway shivering already and wishing I’d thought to grab a jacket. My mom opened the front door and shouted after me but I ignored her.

By the time I got to the overpass and found where Curtis had parked his car Mason had passed out. He lay in the back seat of Curtis’ car, beneath Curtis’ jacket. There was dried blood on Mason’s face and one of his hand was covered in scratches and blood. “What the hell did you do to him?” I asked Curtis angrily.
“Jesus, you do someone a favor and all you get is shit,” Curtis said.
“A favor. Beating someone up isn’t doing them a favor.”
“I didn’t beat him up Tegan. You know I’m not like that.”
“So what happened?”
Curtis sat on the hood of his car and lit a cigarette. “I was in The Shotgun Bar earlier with some friends. Mason was in there on his own. He was pretty drunk, and he was being a jerk, so he got thrown out.”
“He got thrown out of The Shotgun Bar? That’s fucking impossible.” It really is. Whatever the hell you do, as long as you don’t break anything, bother the bearded bar tender, or lead to the police being called you can do what the hell you like.
“That’s what I thought,” Curtis said. “So the scary bar man dragged Mason out and threw him into the street. I went outside to look for him but he was gone, so I figured he’d gone home to sleep it off. Anyway, a while later I was driving home and when I got to the overpass I saw there was this car just like abandoned in the middle of the road with the door open and everything. So I slowed down. And there’s this middle aged guy standing talking to someone who’s like climbed onto the railing and is about to jump off.”
“Mason?” I said with that sinking feeling of familiarity I get whenever Mason has been behaving like a total jackass. Curtis nodded. From time to time, when he’s really wasted Mason threatens to kill himself. The first couple of times he did it I freaked out, then I worked out he was never really going to do it. Mason would never do anything that might hurt, he’s such a pussy. So whenever he pulled that shit I used to ignore him and he’d either get bored and stop or find some other poor kid to bother about it.
“So I stopped the car and went over to the railing and this guy’s like telling Mason that it’s not that bad and that life’ll get better and it’s worth living and stuff. And he’s looking totally freaked out. So when he sees me he’s like real relieved. Anyway, there’s Mason balancing on the railing and I’m convinced he’s going to topple off at any moment.”
“That’s typical Mason. He has incredible balance when he’s drunk. When he’s sober he can barely stand upright without falling over. Seriously, he can’t even ride a bike. But when he’s drunk it’s like this survival instinct kicks in. I swear to god when he’s wasted he could be like a Russian gymnast or a trapeze artist or something.”
“Yeah, well it looked to me like he’d be going over the railings one way or another. So me and this guy grabbed Mason’s legs and pulled him down. Then Mason started to run away and he fell over and just like lay there on the ground. So the old guy took off then and I picked Mason up and put him in my car. He got real agitated and was shouting like a lunatic. I kinda locked the car doors in case he tried to jump off of the overpass again. That was when he smashed the window of the car.”
“He did that?”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry Curtis. I’ll pay for it.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Just let me know how much it costs to fix. You got my number, right?”
Curtis nodded.
“Thanks for calling me,” I said.
“It’s okay. You want me to drive you home?”
“Yeah. That’d be good.”
So we got into the car and I sat beside Curtis as we drove the dark streets, gleaming under the streetlights, to Mason’s house . Curtis waited while I ran round to the back of the house to open the door down to the basement. Then I tried to wake Mason up. He slept soundly in the back of Curtis’ car and it took me a few minutes to rouse him. He looked at me sleepily, watching me like he couldn’t tell whether he was still dreaming or awake. I dragged him out of the car and thanked Curtis again before leading Mason down into the basement.
Mason flopped down onto the couch like he’d been pushed into a swimming pool. “Are you okay?” I asked. Mason shrugged and closed his eyes. I looked down at him, the blood dried on his face making his face seem different, like a stranger’s. I remembered the broken window and Mason’s hand so I took a hold of it. He winced and I hushed him softly. His hand seemed covered in a thousand tiny scratches, but none of them seemed deep and he didn’t have any glass sticking in him that I could see. “You’re such an idiot,” I told him. He stared at the ceiling obstinately, refusing to meet my gaze. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have got hurt real bad Mason. Jesus, you could have died. Did you think about that?”
Mason murmured something I didn’t hear. “What?” I said.
“Like you’d care,” he said sullenly.
Right then I kinda felt like slapping Mason. I didn’t, but it was an appealing prospect. “Don’t be an asshole Mason,” I told him.
“Fuck you,” he muttered.
“Mason, what the hell is your problem?”
“You think you’re so fucking wonderful don’t you?”
“Not really, no.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“I’m doing what I always do. I’m looking after you, I’m being your friend.”
“You’re not my friend!” he said harshly.
“Mason?” I said. “Don’t say that.” For a while we sat in silence and I wondered if maybe I should get up and leave and go home. But I thought if I did that it could wind up being the last time I talked to Mason, the end of our friendship. Much as I bitched and moaned about him, I didn’t want that. So in the end I asked the question I should have asked him days ago. “Are you upset about the other day? I mean, if you’re pissed at me that’s okay.”
“What do you think,” he said.
“I’m going to guess that you’re pissed at me. I’m sorry okay. I don’t know why I did it. I screwed up.” I looked at him and he didn’t say anything. “Now you forgive me, that’s how this works.”
For the longest time he stared at the ceiling in silence. Then he turned to look at me. “I don’t know if I can Tegan.”
“Why not? I’ve forgiven you for like a thousand dumb things you’ve done. Like that time you told everyone at Carol Butler’s party that I let you fuck me whenever you wanted, however you wanted. That wasn’t very nice of you was it? But I forgave you.”
“This is different,” Mason said.
“Why is it different? Because this time I screwed up, not you?”
“That’s all you think of me isn’t it. That I’m just some pathetic fuck up.”
“That’s not true Mason.”
“Whatever.”
“Mason, it’s not true. I don’t think you’re just a pathetic fuck up. I mean sure, you are a pathetic fuck up, but who isn’t? And you’re, you’re Mason. You’re funny and secretly some kind of evil genius and when you’re not being drunk and mean you’re sweet and you’re kind and you’re the only person the whole world over who makes me feel like I’m not alone.”
Mason sat up and looked at me. “Jesus!” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s like the only nice thing you’ve ever said to me in all the time I’ve known you.”
“I’m sure it’s not the only nice thing. Like the other week I told you...” I trailed off as I tried to remember something. “Fine,” I said. “It is the only nice thing I ever said to you. That doesn’t mean anything.”
Mason looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot. “Look I’m sorry, okay?” I told him. “I’m crap and you’re some sort of minor deity. Happy now? I mean can we get back to watching members of the public weep on national television and being mean about them together?”
He shook his head. “Mason? What is it?”
He dropped his eyes and said quietly, “You made me think you wanted me.”
I guess I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I sat and waited for him to say something else, to fill the silence that was pushing us further apart. He shrugged and ran his hand through his hair. “Nobody ever wants me,” he said sadly. Now I usually have very little time for Mason and his blubbering ways, but I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. See the thing is he was kinda right. His family don’t want him. And none of the kids at school want him. I mean he’s the class drunk, stumbling around in a haze of vomit and confusion, it’s not like the hottest look on a guy. “And then we kissed me and,” he coughed suddenly then carried on, “stuff. I don’t know. I guess for a few minutes I thought you really wanted me. Like now maybe I’d know what it’d be like to be normal and have a girlfriend or whatever. And that it was you. You don’t know what that meant. You don’t know what you mean to me.”
“Mason?” I said, even though I knew I had nothing to say to him.”
“But it was a lie. When you kissed me, it was a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie. Mason, you’re...It wasn’t a lie,” I said sadly.
“You don’t want me. It was a lie,” he said flatly.
“I don’t want you like that. But I do...want you. I need you.”
“No you don’t.”
“Don’t tell me what I need. Sure, okay, you’re right. You’re not the most popular kid in the world. Nobody at school gives a shit about you. Your family suck. Seriously. I know that when you’re brother died it fucked them up. But that’s not an excuse for how crap they are. They barely know you’re alive. All this sucks for you. But for Christ’s sake Mason, I like you. You’re pretty much the most important person in my life. And I know that maybe doesn’t mean that much in like the great scheme of things or whatever. But it means something to me. And okay, what I did, kissing you and everything, it was a crappy thing to do, and I’m sorry. I’ll never kiss you again if you’ll forgive me. I promise!”
“Don’t think you’re gonna win me over with your big city words.”
I smiled at Mason. It’s like this dumb thing we always say whenever one of us or someone else says something that’s over reliant on words of multiple syllables. You and your big city words. Also popular is you and your big city clothes on the rare occasion we’re forced to dress smart. And also you and your big city ways, whenever someone is acting kinda pretentious. Like whenever I listen to any Radiohead album after OK Computer, Mason accuses me of big city ways, also when I read anything written more than ten years ago. So I knew that Mason had forgiven me. “They’re all ten dollar words,” I told him.
Mason smiled back at me drunkenly. I hoped he was sober enough that he’d remember he’d forgive me in the morning. He seemed pretty sober to me. He sneezed suddenly and winced as a trickle of blood and snot ran out of his nostril. He touched the blood gingerly and looked at it anxiously. “Am I bleeding?” he asked.
“A little,” I said. “Here.” I dabbed his face with the sleeve of my top, wiping away the blood and snot. “Is that better?” I asked. He nodded. “Let me see your hand again,” I said. He stuck his hand out obligingly and I looked at it. As I cradled his hand in mine I realised that he was trembling. “Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said.
“You’re shaking. Why are you shaking?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m cold.”
I ran my hand up his arm and realised that his clothes were soaked through. “Jesus Mason. You need to get out of these wet clothes or you’ll catch a cold or something.”
“I’m okay,” he said. “I just want to sleep.”
“I’ll go and get you a change of clothes. Don’t fall asleep.”
He shrugged and I headed upstairs into the house. I walked quietly up the stairs and pushed open Mason’s bedroom door. I found him a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that looked pretty clean. As I turned to walk out of his room someone walked in scaring the crap out of me. “Mason?” the someone asked. It took me a couple of seconds to realise it was Mason’s mom.
“Oh hey Mrs Taylor. It’s me, Tegan.”
“Tegan. Is Mason with you?”
“Yeah he’s in the basement.”
“Is he okay?”
“Sure. He just got caught in the rain so I was getting him some dry clothes.”
Mrs Taylor walked out of Mason’s room. She turned and said, “Would you kids like some hot chocolate. It’ll warm you up.”
“Sure,” I said hesitantly.
“I’ll leave it on the table in the hall for you when I’ve made it.”
“Thanks Mrs Taylor.” I watched her head downstairs and frowned. Why was she being so nice? I shrugged and went into the bathroom to get a damp cloth and some antiseptic and stuff for Mason then I went back to the basement.
As I walked down the stairs I could hear Mason’s breathing and knew he’d fallen asleep. The little punk never does as he’s told, I thought. “Mason,” I whispered, but he didn’t wake up.
I wiped his face with the damp cloth first, getting most of the dried blood off. Then I cleaned his hand and put some antiseptic on his cuts. In his sleep he moaned softly and twitched his fingers. He opened his eyes slightly and looked at me. “Sit up,” I told him. He shuffled obediently into an upright position I pulled his T-shirt over his head awkwardly on account of it being soaked through and kept sticking to his body. “What were you thinking going out without a jacket?” I scolded him. I pushed his head into the dry sweatshirt and helped him extract his arms through the sleeves. He stared at me blankly. “Your pants,” I said. He fumbled with the his fly and I pulled his pants off, then put the dry jeans on. All the time he watched me suspiciously like the mean old lady who lives in my street watches the kids when they play out and they come close to her driveway. I folded his wet clothes over the back of a chair and then went upstairs to get the hot chocolate.
“Look,” I said to Mason brandishing the mugs like sports trophies, “your mom made us hot chocolate.”
Mason focused on me. “My mom?” he asked throatily.
“I think you’re coming down with a cold,” I said handing him a mug. I sat down beside him on the couch and we drank the hot chocolate quickly. I put the mugs back down on the floor and Mason moved over a little to let me lie down beside him. We lay face to face on the narrow couch. “I’m cold,” I said quietly, and he put his arms around me, pulling me closer. He closed his eyes and in the dark I stared at his face trying to memorize it as though somehow I already knew what was going to happen. His breath was warm on my face and smelt sweet, of the hot chocolate. And out of nowhere I got hit by the strongest feeling, I wished we were kids again, off out in the neighborhood looking for secrets we could keep, spying on the neighbors. I remembered this one summer day when Mason and I convinced ourselves we’d seen some serial killer we recognised from America’s Most Wanted drive through the neighborhood and we spent hours walking up and down every street looking for him, well into the summer evening and when the light was fading. Both of us pretending to be scared and pretending not to be scared. I guess it’s a little too late to think like this now.
Mason’s warm, sweet breath, his arms around me, the movements of his body as he breathed, his eyelids flickering as he dreamt of something, maybe of me, the way it felt to hold him. See, now I know this is love. Too late.

Chapter Ten

Mason groaned and opened his eyes. I’d been awake for maybe twenty minutes. Lying beside him, thinking about stuff, about Mason, and Conor, and my mom, I’d watched him sleep. There was a bruise on his cheek, different shades of color, like a map to hidden treasure.
“Hey,” I said.
He focused on me. “Hey yourself.”
“How are you feeling?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not conscious enough yet to be aware of how many different ways I feel like shit.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Was I bad last night?” he asked forlornly.
I shook my head. “No,” I told him. “Not all.”
“Are you sure. I kinda feel like I did something stupid.”
“You didn’t,” I said. I ran my hand gently through the dirty blonde mess of his hair.
“My hand hurts,” he said. He looked at it. “I cut it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Tegan,” he said and then his voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I said and I kissed him quickly on the cheek. “What do you want to do today?” I asked.
“Not very much. Mostly get through the day without throwing up is pretty much my big goal.”
“Okay. You think you’re up to eating?”
“Sure.”
“Wait here,” I said. I went upstairs and raided the kitchen. I made some grilled cheese sandwiches and found some chips and some Coke and took them downstairs.
“A feast,” Mason said. I nodded and showed him the video I’d brought down with me. “My Girl. You hate that movie.”
“What’s to hate? Macauley Culkin gets stung to death by bees.”
“You always say it’s a dumb movie for emotionally retarded prepubescent girls.”
“It is. But it’s like your favorite movie.” I put the video and sat down on the couch beside Mason. He’d taped it off of the TV one Christmas years before, so I fast forwarded through the commercials.
“You still feel bad,” Mason said. “Don’t you?”
“No.”
“You do?”
“I don’t feel bad. I just want...” I shrugged. The film started and I sat back and watched Dan Akroyd not know how to raise his daughter. After we finished the sandwiches I rested my head on Mason’s shoulder and waited for the bees to strike.
“You are the biggest girl I have ever met,” I said as Mason tried to hide his uncontrollable sobbing. On the screen little Macauley Culkin lay in a coffin and Mason wept.
“Shut up,” he muttered. “It’s sad.”
I shook my head and looked at Mason. “Yes, it really is.”
And the movie finished and we cycled endlessly through TV channels, never finding what we were looking for. “So how’s Conor?” Mason asked.
“He’s...pretty much a freak,” I said.
“I told you,” Mason said. I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m sorry. But I did.”
“I know.”
“So, other than being silent for like the last few years, and being locked in the garage by his psycho father, is he weird in any new and interesting ways?”
“Jesus, yes. Yesterday, he...he showed up at my house with like this outfit he wanted me to wear.”
“Like a sexy outfit?” Mason asked, sounding oddly naive like a kid.
“No. It’s what I’m wearing now.”
Mason looked at me. “That’s pretty much what you usually wear. I mean you haven’t worn your Nirvana top since you turned fourteen. But other than that.”
“The weird thing was that once I put these clothes on he started saying all this random stuff and he wanted to sleep with me.”
“I see. Did you?”
“What? Oh. Sure.”
“So you let this freak dress you then you let him fuck you.”
“He didn’t fuck me.”
“What? Did you make love?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So he fucked you?”
Mason looked stonily at me and I scowled back.
“Why do even like him?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. We watched the television in silence for a while, then I said I had to go and headed home.

When I got home my mom yelled at me for a while. After like ten minutes I’d had enough of her bullshit. “What do you care?” I said angrily.
“What do I care? I’m your mother and I will not have you going out at all times of night doing god knows what. I told you you couldn’t go out and you disobeyed me. Now you have to be punished.”
“What you talking about Willis?” I asked.
“You’re grounded for two weeks.”
“Grounded? You can’t ground me.”
“I can.”
“Screw this,” I said. “Jesus, I really hope it works out with you and Walter.”
“Why?”
“Because every time you get a new life partner or whatever you try and impress them being like this strict caring mother, when the truth is you couldn’t give a fuck.” I stomped off upstairs and paused in my doorway, my bedroom door ready to be slammed. Fuck it, I thought, does everything I do have to be a goddamn cliché. So I didn’t slam it. I closed the door gently.
Standing inside my bedroom I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I had some homework, or I could watch TV, or listen to some loud expletive laden music to piss my mom off. But none of that seemed particularly appealing. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and saw that I was still wearing the clothes Conor had given. Then I remembered. “I’m such a fucking retard,” I said. I actually said it out loud such was my outrage at myself even though people who say stuff out loud to themselves piss me off royally. I mean if you say it in your head you still hear it, right? Anyways, the photograph I found in Conor’s bedroom, the girl in black combat pants and a hooded Nirvana sweatshirt. And looking back from the mirror at me, well it was me, but it was her too, a little older, maybe shorter hair. Right then there was only one thing I wanted to do. Kick Conor’s ass.
I rifled through my closet looking for a change of clothes. Then I stopped. It was better like this I thought. There was a soft knock on my door. “What?” I yelled crossly thinking it was my mom come to bitch at me some more.
Walter opened the door a fraction and peered in. “Can I come in Tegan?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Sure, knock yourself out.”
He opened the door a little further and slid his skinny frame through, then he closed the door. He smiled awkwardly at me. I raised my eyebrows impatiently. Walter cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said quietly.
“I’m listening,” I said, doing my best Kelsey Grammar impression. I think it was lost on Walter.
“Good,” he said. “I hope I’m not causing any trouble between you and your mom. The last thing I want to do is come between the two of you. And if my moving in is creating tension then maybe I should move out.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did my mom put you up to this?” I asked suspiciously.
“No.”
“Okay Walter. See here’s the thing. You couldn’t come between my mom and me if you tried.” In my head then I heard how dirty that could sound and mentally went eww.
“You’re very close,” he said nodding happily.
“Yeah, lay off the crack pipe Walter.”
“I don’t! I haven’t...” Walter squeaked in astonishment.
“It’s a figure of speech Walter, like you know, I pledge allegiance to these United States or something.”
“Oh,” he said looking relieved.
“My mom and I aren’t close. We just share a house because like it’s the law. But pretty soon I’ll be gone and we’ll be happier. So it’s real nice of you to be concerned and everything but seriously, don’t worry.”
Walter looked at me thoughtfully. “You know Tegan, I lost my mom when I was pretty young and maybe you should...what?”
Walter had detected the way my posture had slumped and the bored scowl on my face. “I’m sorry and stuff Walter, but I don’t need some kind of sitcom dad talk. Okay?”
“Alright, Tegan. If you do ever need to talk to someone then-”
“It won’t be you Walter.”
“Oh. Okay.” Walter backed out of my room awkwardly, somehow wedging himself behind the door, then in the doorway, then struggling to get the door to shut properly. I guess it was a good thing Walter never had any kids. That’s a gene pool we don’t really need reproducing.
I grabbed some gum and headed downstairs. My mom intercepted me in the hallway. “Where do you think you’re going young lady?” she asked.
“Jesus,” I said. “Can you hear yourself?”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going out.”
“You’re grounded.”
“Seriously mom, I’m going out.”
“Seriously Tegan, you’re grounded.”
I opened the front door and stepped outside. “Seriously, I’m not.”
“Fine,” my mom said crossly, “just tell me where you’re going at least.”
“I’m going to see my boyfriend,” I said like she was retarded.
“You have a boyfriend? You mean Mason?”
“Eww,” I said. “No.”
I walked off down the driveway ignoring my mom shouting about how she wanted to meet this boyfriend of mine. Do parents only know how to say stuff they’ve seen on TV? Jesus!

By the time I was on Conor’s street the sunlight was fading and I was having second thoughts about going to his house. Aside from Conor’s weirdness there was his dad and the sick crap he may do. I shivered in the cold and hesitated before shrugging and marching over to Conor’s house. I banged on the front door. Conor opened it maybe a minute later. He peered out anxiously.
“You,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you Conor. It’s been a long time, right?”
“That’s not my fault,” he said.
“So can I come in?” I asked.
He opened the door slightly I pushed in past brushing against him. He shut the door and locked it behind me. The house was in darkness and I was questioning just how smart I was. I followed Conor through the house into his bedroom. He sat down on the bed and pulled me down beside him.
“You want to turn a light on?” I asked. He shook his head and stared at me. “So, I guess you’re pleased to see me,” I said.
“Not really.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I can’t believe you have to ask that. After what you put me through. Jesus Laura, I loved you. I loved you so much.” He shook his head and I saw that he was shaking.
“I loved you too Conor,” I said. “I still love you. I missed you so much.”
“Why did you do it?” he shouted. He grabbed a hold of my shoulders and shook me violently.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
“Why did you do it?” he screamed at me.
“I don’t know,” I said my voice shaking. “Why do you think I did it?”
Conor laughed this nasty hollow laugh. “I have no idea. I’ve spent the last four years looking for, trying to figure what happened. And it turns out you just split on me. Did you even hear about what happened to me after you left?”
“No,” I said.
“Liar!” he screamed furiously. “Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not lying,” I said desperately.
He pushed me down on the bed, one hand on my chest holding me down, the other around my throat squeezing tightly. “Tell me the truth,” he whispered.
“I don’t know Conor! I’m not who you think I am. I’m-”
“Lying, all you do is lie. My father was right about you. He said you’d only mean bad things for me.”
I swung my hand up flat, hitting him on the side of the face with end of my hand. I pushed him away and scrabbled across the bed and out of the bedroom. I ran to the front door it was locked and of course the keys were gone.
Conor walked down the hallway towards me, one hand grasped to his cheek which was bleeding slightly where I’d hit him. He didn’t seem angry anymore, just so sad. He looked at me, like he was a puppy I’d just abandoned at the road side. “I never thought you’d hurt me,” he said.
I shrugged, “That’s what people do Conor.”
He walked closer and found myself backing up against the locked door. “What do you want Conor?” I asked.
He shook his head tiredly. “I don’t know. Maybe we should wait for my dad to get home. He’ll know what to do with you.”
“Conor?” I said. “I gotta go. My mom’ll miss me, I told her I was coming here.”
“Stop lying Laura! I can’t listen to you lie anymore!”
“I’m not Laura. For Christ’s sake Conor, I’m Tegan. I don’t even know who the fuck Laura is!”
“I told you to stop lying.” Conor looked at me and something in his eyes made my whole body go cold. I remembered the feel of his hand around my throat. It happens every day, and without expecting it you wind up dead.
“Conor,” I said.
“Shut up,” he said. “I have to think.”
“Listen to me Conor. I thought you liked me. I thought...”
“I loved you!” Conor howled. He pushed me back up against the wall. I tensed my body ready to fight him, to fight with everything I had, to fight for every last breath.
From somewhere in the house there was a crashing sound. Conor spun round nervously. I pushed past him but he grabbed a hold of my top, I swung round to face him and punched him in the face, his face crumpled with pain but he didn’t let go off me. I bit his arm, feeling strangely pleased to feel his blood warm in my mouth. He yelped in pain and let go off me. I ran back towards his bedroom.
“Tegan!” Mason shouted. I ran into the bedroom straight into Mason.
“Mason?” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We have to get out of here. Conor’s dangerous.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“No you don’t. He’s a murderer,” Mason said and felt something drop inside me all the way from my head to my feet. Mason grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the window. I scrambled through and turned back. Conor had grabbed a hold of Mason and was punching him again and again. Mason was crumpled over, pushed against the wall.
Without thinking I climbed back in through the window and leapt at Conor. I pulled him away from Mason and we fell to the floor together. Conor pinned me to the ground. I brought my knee up sharply into his groin and he curled up in agony. I got to my feet and gave Conor a few kicks to the gut for good measure, then I guided Mason out through the window and followed him. I glanced back and saw Conor still lying on the ground, doubled up in pain. Then I took Mason’s hand and we ran as fast as we could as far as we could.

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:05:59 GMT

You're Randal Graves. You're a sarcastic
sonofabitch who loves porn and hates people but
loves being around them. How else can you piss
them off with your offensive and crude
comments?

Which Clerks Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The police walked from room to room as my mom looked at the mess of our lives spread across the carpet in every room.
Walter moved in that night. My mom declared that she was too shaken up to be on her own in the house, “Just a couple of girls,” as she kept saying. I wanted to point out that at her age the term girl may not be the most accurate description of her, but whatever. So I lay on my bed ignoring the papers and books and Cds and clothes and everything thrown around my room and I listened to the sound of Walter brushing his teeth in the bathroom and then saying something to my Mom and she said something back and I guess I wanted Walter to stay forever. Not that I was scared or needed a man around or wanted some kind of father figure. Just because I saw how tired she was, too tired to keep doing this, and Walter seemed decent and unremarkable and unlikely to abandon my mother for someone with silicone breasts or whatever. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Walter’s total normalness was the type that masked something monstrous, like child abuser, or Ed Gein wannabe.
Time passed and the night dragged on and through and I slept some and was awake some and I dreamt some. I dreamt about Mason, about him as a kid when we were first friends. I guess we were both maybe ten or eleven, and he was a scrawny, nervy kid who always seemed to be running away from something.
In my dream I watched him die. I didn’t know what he was dying of, just that he laying on the grass staring upwards breathing slower and slower and slower. And even in my dream I knew this wasn’t right, I knew that Mason didn’t die when he was a kid. I knew that he and me we got older together. But still I sat beside him staring at his face, looking as scared as Mason had ever looked, his body shaking. And then he stopped. Dead and gone but still lying there in front of me. I woke up a little after that, and in the darkness of my bedroom it took a few seconds to realise that it had been a dream, to realise that Mason was alive.
After that I didn’t really sleep. I just lay waiting for the morning light. Sometime around five I heard Walter get up. He seemed to be pacing back and forth around the house, like a sentry on duty. Finally, after like ten minutes he went downstairs, and I closed my eyes and wondered what the fuck he’d been doing. Once again the old black and white news footage of Ed Gein and his house ran through my mind. What is it that makes me think it’s really the people who seem normal, who seem to fit in, who you gotta look out for? The freaks, the weirdos, the run of the mill nutbags, they just seem sad. I guess the thing is, with people who look like the dictionary picture of average you don’t expect them to be doing all the terrible things they do, you know, messing with their kids, or killing hookers, or whatever the hell else people do for no good reason. They’re like werewolves, monsters on the inside, monsters only when they’re monstrous. Man, I thought, I should really give Walter a break.
It seemed to take forever to get to like seven in the morning. Earlier, when I’d woken up I’d wanted to run over to Mason’s place just to make sure he was okay. I know it’s dumb, but I wanted to see him breathing and not dead, just for my own piece of mind. But now as my room slowly lit up as the sun rose the feeling passed. Besides I was pretty pissed at Mason for being such a loser about me and Conor. I guess I expected it. Mason is prone to strange and unpredictable bouts of jealousy. He was furious with me and refused to speak to me for maybe a week after he found me talking to his sister one time at his house. We were talking about some dumb movie star and about how he may be dumb but we’d like to bone him and we were laughing and getting on pretty well and Mason walked in, saw us and walked right out. And Mason was always weird around me if I hooked up with Curtis. So I was planning on forgetting about Mason, but then I don’t know why, I just had to see him. I guess I was thinking about this time when it was Mason’s birthday. His family never made a big deal about it when they rembered it, and this year I was thinking about they’d given Mason a birthday card with this totally lame picture of some guy fishing on it, like Mason’s ever been fishing! And inside the card was a fifty dollar bill. I know, that’s not bad, there’s kids starving in Belgium or wherever who’d love fifty dollars. But it’s like the most impersonal thing you could give someone. It’s okay if like your uncle or a family friend slips some cash into the card but when it’s your mom and dad, that sucks. They may as well have written who fucking cares inside his birthday card. So Mason was pretty down that day, but he didn’t tell me why for a few weeks. Anyways, after school he came back to my house and I’d bought him this dumb cake that had his name written on it and everything, and there were candles, I guess maybe thirteen or fourteen. I made Mason wait in my bedroom and I went and lit the candles and took it upstairs. And Mason’s face when he saw this stupid cake, it’d break your heart. You’ve never seen anyone look so happy about something so totally lame. So Mason’s stupid smile wouldn’t get the hell outta my head.
I got dressed and left the house and walked quickly through the snow to Mason’s house. Mason’s parents were making breakfast in the kitchen when I showed up. His mom let me in without really botherinng to speak to me. I went upstairs and pushed Mason’s bedroom door open. The curtains were open and the sun shone through the windows. Mason lay on top of his bedcovers wearing just his boxers. The room smelt faintly of whisky. I stood in the doorway watching him breathe.
I went and lay down beside him on the bed. Taking a hold of his hand I slid beneath his arm. So close to Mason I could smell the whisky on his breath, I stroked his arm gently. Mason opened his eyes groggily and frowned at me.
“Happy birthday,” I whispered.
He stared at me for a moment in confusion, then said, “It’s not my birthday.”
“I know that,” I told him. “Your birthday’s September ninth.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I wanted to see you.”
Mason smiled at me sleepily and I felt something inside myself break. Okay, maybe I’m trying to cover for myself here so you won’t think bad of me for what happens. But the truth is when Mason smiled at me then, I don’t know. I can’t describe it. Either you get it or you don’t.
I smiled back at him and pulled him towards me. I kissed him and felt him kiss me back. Running my hand across his back, the smooth skin warm beneath my touch. I pushed Mason onto his back and lay atop of him, his arms wrapped around me. My hands found their way down his chest and his stomach and they pulled his boxers down and he was hard and I took a hold of his cock, and I guess it was then I had a moment of clarity. I rolled off of Mason and lay on my back with my eyes closed. Oh Jesus, I thought.
“Tegan,” Mason said eventually.
I opened my eyes and looked at Mason lying naked next to me. Oh Jesus, I thought again. For a moment a part of me wanted to turn to face Mason and hold him and kiss him and feel him hot against me. Instead I stood up and headed for the door.
“Tegan,” he said again.
“I gotta go,” I said.
“Where?”
“I’m meeting Conor,” I told him. This was a lie. I walked out without looking back at Mason.

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:56:52 GMT

Somehow I'm just about keeping up with Nano writing. Admittedly at the same time my PhD's gone pretty much out the window. But who cares about that right? I mean which is more important, writing 50000 words of crap in one month, or 60000 words of pretentious crap in three years. Ooh, House is on in like three minutes. Must run and make tea.

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound cool, trying not to run up to him and grab a hold of him to make sure he was real and alive and standing in front of me not locked forever in the darkness of a suburban garage like a guilty secret we all kept.
He looked at me uncertainly and I was gripped by the fear that he was about to turn around and walk away. Instead he said, “You want to go for a walk?”
“With you?” I said. “Sure.”
So we walked down by driveway and back down the sidewalk. It was cold out but the sky was empty of clouds and neverending above us. “How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Good,” he replied. “I’ve been real good. You?”
Right then a big part of me wanted to head back home and forget about this boy beside me. See, what he wanted from me was for me to pretend the thing in the garage had never happened. And believe me, I get why he’d want that. But I didn’t know if I could. How can you be friends with someone when you spend every minute with them worrying about them, not just worrying, but being totally afraid for them, thinking constantly about a cold dead body in the dark. This moment here was maybe when everything that happened later was set in motion. If I’d gone home instead of going with Conor maybe all the terrible things that happened wouldn’t happen. Maybe those people wouldn’t have died. All because I liked some cute boy. But I didn’t go home. Instead Conor smiled at me and said, “It’s good to see you Tegan. I missed you.” And I knew that that was as close as he was going to come to talking about what happened at his house that day.
I smiled back at him without showing any teeth. “I missed you too.”
“You did?”
“Sure.”
And then he surprised me by leaning in and kissing me softly on the lips on the street where I grew up, where I went trick or treating dressed as a murder victim for Halloween four years in a row, where I once heard a lady scream with total terror when her kid ran out in front of a car and was like an inch from being knocked down.
Conor dropped his eyes and looked down at his sneakers on the sidewalk. I wanted to do something to let him know it was okay, that I wanted to kiss him. I figured I could hold his hand but the way I see that stuff’s for pussies. So I stood there looking at his eyes, his dark eyelashes, the way he shuffled his feet nervously. “Conor,” I said quietly. He looked up at me and I smiled at him. “Let’s go,” I said, and we walked down the street away from my home, my street. We walked through the suburbs and out the other side to the highway that sanked around the town taking people away from here.
We stood on the overpass looking down at the cars below speeding on oblivious to us, oblivious to everything else in the world. We perched on the edge of the overpass our backs seemingly poised to topple backwards but our feet anchored firmly to the concrete beneath us. I wanted to ask him every question in the world, to know the story of his life like I knew my own, but that was never going to happen. At least I thought that then. Now I know the story of his life better than my own I wish I didn’t. I wish it was possible just to sit next to this boy as the sun went down and cars below us took people home to where people were waiting for them, and for that to last forever for Conor and me. That way no one would get hurt.
I put my hand on Conor’s stomach, leant in and kissed him. Even as I was kissing him part of me wanted to have like an out of body experience or something. To be able to see Conor and me against the twilight sky kissing, like something in a photograph. We kissed and moved our hands and closed our eyes and felt our eyelids flicker and out bodies tremble and our breathing hot in the cold dusk. I placed one hand on the back of Conor’s head and stroked his hair gently, my hand trailed down to the back of his neck which I stroked gently. Suddenly Conor stood up and stepped away, he turned his back towards me and didn’t say anything.
“Conor?” I asked. “Conor? Are you okay?”
For the longest time he didn’t speak. I sat and watched night fall around us as Conor stood, his shoulders hunched, looking away from me. Finally he said “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
He shook his head, “I can’t explain. We shouldn’t do this.”
“Conor, we’re not doing anything wrong. This is what people do. They like each other and they kiss and then they’re happy, or at least less monumentally miserable than they were before.”
“Tegan,” he said in a voice so low I could barely hear him. He turned to face me and in the near dark of the evening car headlights flashing by lit his face, then plunged it into darkness as they passed. In the light of the beams I saw his eyes glistening.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m not ready for this. I can’t do this.”
“Conor, you remember when you followed me into the woods that night?” He nodded. “And you remember today when you decided to show up at my house?” He nodded again. “Why d’you do those things?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
“Okay. Because I like you. A lot. I like you a lot. I haven’t met anyone like you for the longest time.”
“And I like you Conor. I’ve never felt like this about a boy before, you know? I don’t just want to jump you bones. I don’t know. I guess this is gonna sound pretty dumb, but the way I see it this is like a once in a lifetime thing here. You walk away from this you don’t know what you’re walking away from.”
Conor looked at me sadly, “I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s up to you. I’ve made my decision. I’m in, no matter what. We can take things slow Conor. We don’t need to make a big song and dance about it. And I’m not the kinda girl who’s going to want to be walking hand in hand with you through school or be making out in study hall. I’m not going to show up at your house, and I understand if sometimes you can’t come and see me. Okay?”
Conor sighed and his breath filled the air between us like smoke from a dying fire. Then he kissed me hard on the lips, his body pushing up against me, pressing me into the railings I was sitting on. My hands grabbed a hold of his body and pushed him closer into me, and in my head I imagined us illuminated by the headlights of every passing car, every single motorist swerving off the road as they looked up at us in worship of our passion, as they smashed through crash barriers into other cars, as the road was filled with flames and twisted metal as we kissed and kissed and kissed.
My hands found their way beneath Conor’s T-shirt and I felt the cold hard skin that he came wrapped in. Beneath us a police car sped past its siren screaming and I opened my eyes as for the briefest second we were light up in by its bright lights, Conor’s face changing color before my eyes.

And like that we were a couple or whatever. Not that you’d know it. In school Conor still kept to himself. I guessed he had his reasons and let it go. Besides, it wasn’t like we totally kept our distance at school. Most days we found somewhere sometime to hide behind a locked door, or on an empty sports field, or in a classroom deserted for a filed trip, to meet and be indecent.
After school I usually hung out with Mason. The way I saw it it was best if Mason didn’t know about Conor or me, at least to begin with. You can never tell how Mason’ll react to something. So Mason and me did the stuff we always did. We wathced dumb TV shows and mocked the people on them, we listened to music and offered our erudite opinions on the singer’s haircut or the way he died or whatever. We got drunk, in Mason’s basement, at other people’s houses, in the park, in the dark of downmarket bars, in a parking lot, wherever. But afterwards, when I’d negotiated Mason into a sleeping position in his bed or mine or on a couch, I’d walk down to the baseball field at the edge of my neighborhood where in the daytime kids play little league while their fathers yell at them from the sidelines. And Conor would be waiting for me in the dugout, reading a book by torchlight, the time he’d been waiting for me measured out in cigarette butts on the ground. Then I’d sit down beside him and tell him about my night, about Mason asking Justine Jameson out drunkenly oblivious to her boyfriend sitting right beside her, or Mason losing his shoes and having to walk all the way home in his socks. And then we’d ffol around for a while until we fell asleep wrapped up in each other beneath the blanket Conor brought. And we’d sleep like that until the beeping of the alarm on Conor’s digital watch woke us at around four in the morning, and we kiss one last time and hurry home, through the dark empty streets, every one else in the whole world asleep, doors safely locked against the outside world, the outside world which was now my world.
This went for a few weeks I guess without anyone catching on. Sure we were both pretty tired and all, but we slept during the day. Here’s the thing, it was getting colder and colder and pretty soon there was a heavy snowfall and Conor and I were lying in the dugout beneath the blanket shivering, our bodies shaking against each other like ice cubes. “This is stupid,” I said. “They’ll find us frozen to death out here. We can go back to my place.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’ll be asleep. And if she hears us she’ll just figure it’ll be Mason.”
So we hurried across the neighborhood leaving tracks behind us in the snow and soon we were safe in my room, beneath the bedcovers, holding on to each other. And we fell asleep.
I woke up around three I guess and turned over to face Conor. I rolled over and realised it wasn’t Conor I was lying next to. The body beside me was smaller and wearing different clothes. I stared at the back of this unknown person anxiously. I reached out and took hold of their arm, turning them over. I stared into the face of this person, but there was no face, just a skull with wiry hair and small flecks of decomposing flesh. I woke up with a start and sat upright in bed. For a moment I was too confused and freaked out to do anything other than stare numbly straight ahead. Then I realised that Conor was sitting next to me, watching me intently. “Conor?” I asked.
He looked at me with this dark expression on his face. “I gotta go,” he said and climbed out of bed. He put his jacket on and headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said.
He stopped at looked at me for a moment. He looked at me like he’d never looked at me before, almost like he’d never seen me before. Then he walked out.
The rest of the night, well the truth is I didn’t sleep so well. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the skeleton head lying beside me, or Conor’s angry glare as he left. I missed Mason then. Whenever we slept side by side I always felt safe, which is dumb I know. In the event of any kind of danger Mason would be no help and it’d be up to me to defend him from monsters, burglars, serial killers, and so forth. I guess that was what made me feel safe, knowing that I’d be looking after someone else. But now I was lying alone in my bed, no Mason, no Conor, and, fortunatly, no imaginary decomposing body. For maybe the thousandth time since I’d met Conor I wondered what the fuck his problem was. It was a question I’d end up asking more often over the next few days. It was a question I’d have been better off not knowing the answer to.

Chapter Eight

The next time I saw Conor he acted as though nothing was wrong. But I knew he was acting, pretending like everything was alright between us when really something was very wrong. After school Mason had to see the guidance counsellor to explain his many absences and why he kept passing out in class. So Conor was waiting for me when I got home.
We went inside and I made us some hot chocolate. Sitting at the kitchen counter drinking it Conor reached out and took hold of my hand, but he did it in this weirdly formal way that I thought was strange. “How come I’ve never met your parents?” he asked.
I shrugged and said, “I thought we were keeping this a secret. That’s what you want isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to say I’m like your boyfriend or whatever, but I’d like to see what they look like.”
“You want to see what my parents look like? Is that some weird thing where you need to see if my mom’s hot so you’ll know what I’ll look like when I’m older?”
“No. I just, I think it’s weird that I’ve never even seen your parents. Or even a photograph.”
“I’ve never seen your parents.”
“You’ve seen my dad.”
“Okay, but we weren’t like formally introduced or anything. And what about your mom?”
Conor let go of my hand abruptly. “She died,” he said in a voice as empty of emotion as a robot’s. He lifted his mug of hot chocolate to his lips and drank slowly.
“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry Conor.”
“It was a long time ago. I don’t care.”
“Conor?” I said surprised. “What do you mean you don’t care?”
“I don’t want to talk about this. Especially with you.”
“What? Are you mad at me or something?”
“No,” he said into his mug.
“It seems like you’re mad at me.”
“Jesus Christ!” he said sounding frustrated. “You think you’re so fucking different. But you’re just like all the other girls. The moment you get a boyfriend you become this pathetic obsessive needy girl who has to know everything about me and has like a nervous breakdown if I even make an offhand remark. My dad always said that girls take everything you have to offer and give nothing back.” After he finished his rant he turned away and stared at the kitchen cupboard intensely.
I sat open mouthed gaping at Conor. How the fuck did I wind up going out with such an asshole? Finally I said “I don’t know if I like you Conor.”
He shook his head and scowled. “That’s fucking typical isn’t it,” he sneered.
“Shut up,” I told him. “I’m not like the person you described and if you think I am like that then you know me even less than I know you. And the way I see the knowledge you and your lovely father have of girls is pretty fucking limited, seeing as you’re both jerks.”
“You don’t care do you?” he said. “You don’t care how much you hurt me do you? You don’t care about what I went through.”
“Conor? What are you talking about?”
“Stop pretending. I know. I know who you are.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Jesus. Do you know what it was like for me? After you...”
The front door slammed shut and a moment later Mason shouted cheerily, “I have a drinking problem. Hey,” he shouted up the stairs, then he wandered through into the kitchen. He stopped and looked at Conor and me. “Hey Conor,” Mason said, “how’s it going?”
“Alright.”
“Good. So did you hear, Mr. Konchesfky says I have a drinking problem. Can you believe it?”
“You do have a drinking problem Mason, remember?”
“Well, not a problem.”
“Jesus,” said Conor crossly. “You were in lost in the woods for two days because you were drunk. That’s a pretty big problem.”
“Okay,” Mason said uncertainly. “Thanks for your views, I’ll bear them in mind. Am I interrupting something, Tegan?” he asked.
“Yeah. If you could...” I started to say.
“No. I have to go.” Conor stood up and walked out. “Bye,” he shouted without turning round.
Mason and I waited for the front door to shut before he looked at me and said, “What the hell? What are you doing with Mr. Flowers in the Attic?”
“Nothing,” I said, hiding behind my mug. “You want a hot chocolate?” I asked. “It’s cold out.”
“Sure,” Mason said. “I’ll make it. You tell me what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing going on. We’re just friends.”
“Oh my god!” Mason said. “You’re fucking that freak!”
“I’m not! We’re not, he’s not a freak. Okay, he maybe a freak.”
“Are you like girlfriend and boyfriend?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know what we are. I guess. Maybe.”
“My little Tegan’s all grown up. Now if you need advice, sex education, whatever, you know where to come, don’t you?”
“Not to you. Most preschoolers are more sexually experienced than you.”
“That hurts. And is not true. So is it serious?”
I thought about that question. I thought about that dumb thing idiots like to say, that’s something as serious as a heart attack, I thought about that Smiths’s song, Morrissey wailing I know, I know it’s serious. I lifted the mug back to my lips even though it was empty, just to hide the look on my face when I thought about that question.
“Tegan?” Mason said.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it was serious.”
“How serious?” Mason asked.
“Serious.”
“Are you in love with him?” Mason asked, trying to hide the hurt in his voice.
“Mason,” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe. I thought, I thought he was the boy for me. You know? Like the one or something.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know. I still think Conor could be that one person you find who’s just right for you. But he’s been acting weird and I don’t know how he feels about me. Or how I feel about him.”
“I see,” Mason said coldly. “I should be going.”
“Don’t go Mason. Tell me about the guidance counsellor and your drink problem and everything.”
“No thanks. Bye Tegan,” he said and disappeared out the door. Man, I thought, I’m just driving guys away in droves today.
I went up to my room and lay on the bed listening to the Cure and wondering whether or not goths have any fun, trying to care about the history of some other country hundreds of years before. I know people say you have to learn from history to avoid repeating the same mistakes (insert your own fail history doomed to repeat it joke here if you want) but what kind of shields guys used to carry with them long ago didn’t seem to have any relevance to my problems.
To my horror my mother appeared around six to tell me that we were going out to dinner with Walter. Apparently I’d been informed of these arrangements last week but either I’d repressed the memory or was very drunk when I was told.
“You’re still dating that loser?” I asked.
“Walter is not a loser.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a computer whizz,” my mom informed me.
“I see. But what does he do?”
“If people have a problem with their computer things you can call Walter and he’ll tell you how to fix it.”
“So he works in a call center?”
“I guess.”
“I’m busy tonight.”
“You’re not getting out of this Tegan. This is very important to me and to Walter.”
“Why?”
“Well Walter is very special to me and...”
“Oh Jesus,” I said.
“What?”
“You’re going to marry that loser aren’t you? Mom, you know there’s nothing wrong with women being single. You don’t have to get married just to satisfy some out dated idea you have of what a woman’s supposed to do.”
“Well thank you very much Germaine Greer. But I happen to like Walter a lot. I enjoy his company. And it’s not like you’re ever here to keep me company is it?”
Oh, here comes the guilt. “I’m sorry I have my own life but do you really want to spend time with me? I mean what in god’s name would we do?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not unheard of for mothers to spend time with their daughters and for it to be enjoyable.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that.”
She sighed and looked at me with that look mothers have when they’re disappointed or put out or something. I closed my eyes to protect myself against the powers of that look. “We’re not getting married,” she said. “Yet. But Walter might move in. His apartment’s pretty small and it’s lonely for him and I think he wants to feel part of a family. That’s what we were going to tell you at dinner tonight.”
“Now you’ve told me,” I said opening my eyes. “There’s no need to take me to dinner. You save money, I save my sanity. We all win.”
“Tegan, that’s enough. You’re coming to dinner with Walter and me. I don’t ask a lot of you. It’s not like I’m asking teh earth of you. Walter will be here in half an hour. You’d better be ready.”
“Or what?”
“Tegan.” My mom suddenly looked so tired standing in my doorway, she suddenly looked her age, and every disappointment was etched across her face.
“You can do better than Walter,” I muttered and immediately regretted saying it. She looked down at the floor and I saw it on her face, she wanted better than Walter but he was what she’d have to settle for. Like she’d settled for my stepdad, and my dad before that.
“You don’t even know Walter,” she said sadly. “We’re leaving in a half an hour. Come, don’t come, I really don’t care.” She turned and left my room, shutting the door gently behind her.
Oh the guilt. I lay on the bed and wished I was one of those kids who cut themselves just so I could do something to make plain the way I was feeling, to put the guilt on my arms and watch it bleed out. But I’m not big on pain, so I put something loud and angry on my stereo and turned up loud and switched the light off and lay in the dark until I heard Walter’s car pull up outside. Then I turned the music off and headed downstairs. My mom glanced at me as she went to open the door, “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked. I growled. The front door opened and Walter stepped inside. He kissed my mother on the cheek and then smiled at me. “Tegan, how nice to see you.”
“Likewise,” I muttered. I scrutinised my new daddy. He was tall and thin, like an old pencil. He wore a creased white shirt tucked into some brown cords. His jacket was beige and so dull it was almost invisible. A little like Walter himself. Jesus, I know I sound harsh but what can I say, you don’t want me to lie to you do you? Oh you do, well screw you, this is my story.
So we went to dinner at some chain restaraunt, I forget the name. I remember they had a salad bar which Walter seemed to view as the most luxurious thing in the world, ever. And part of me warmed to Walter a little. I mean the guy was so pathetic, it was hard not. Thinking about Walter being like a little kid once and playing make believe games, or being in high school and so totally in love with some girl, and growing up and having dreams and slowly realising as he got older that not one of those dreams would ever come true, that he’d forgotten how to play make believe games, that he’d never kiss that girl, that he’d never be anything but forgotten one day. So I found myself laughing at his lame jokes and nodding like I cared when he told us about the calls he gets from people who can’t turn their PCs on, and wait for this now, they haven’t plugged them in, hold your sides you don’t want them to split with the laughing do you. It has to be said I enjoyed one of Walter’s stories, about this mad old guy who’d rang up. He told Walter he couldn’t get his PC to do anything once it was turned on. It wouldn’t go online, he couldn’t print anything, nothing happened. So Walter asked him if he’d clicked on this or that icon. No, the man said, but I keep telling it what to do. That made me laugh, the idea of some guy sat in front of the computer shouting instructions that were never obeyed.
While we waited for dessert Walter looked significantly at my mother and she nodded. “Tegan,” she said, “we have something we’d like to tell you.”
“Ah-ha,” I replied glancing around for the waitress, a pretty blonde girl about my age who smiled at everyone and was soon to bring me pie.
“I’d like Walter to move in with us, if that’s okay with you.”
“You already...” I started to say, but my mom kicked me under the table. “What the? Fine,” I said crossly.
“I know this may come as a surprise to you Tegan,” Walter was saying.
“Not really,” I muttered.
“But I care very much for your mother and I’d like to be a part of your life too. Don’t think that I’m trying to take your father’s place,”
“Ha,” I said.
But I’d like us to be a family,” he finished.
I nodded my head and tried not to think about Walter living in the house with us. At least Walter didn’t have any kids of his own. My ex-stepdad had two daughters who were regularly banished to live with us by their mother. They were a year or two younger than me and conformed to every trend that was popular, veering from Britney to Justin to anorexia to cheerleading to the young Republicans to a brief foray into lesbianism that lasted as long as it took to arouse their boyfriends. Needless to say I hated them with a fiery passion. Plus my ex-stepdad was a total asshole. He thought he had some right to tell me what to do, not to be rude, to do my homework, not to hang out with Mason, not to stay out late. Of course I ignored him but still there were arguments, in which my mother rarely became involved. I suddenly realised my mom and Walter were staring at me. I wiped my mouth in case there was like gravy or something there. “What?” I said.
“What do you think?” my mom asked.
“About what Walter said.”
“Oh. It’s great. What Walter said is great,” I replied barely remembering what Walter had said, even though barely a minute had elapsed since he’d finished speaking.
My mom smiled and Walter beamed across the table. Oh sweet Jesus, I thought, as I saw his eyes water up. The poor bastard is so starved of human contact he’s emotionally moved by my acceptance. I shook my head and waited for dessert to interrupt the sheer lameness of the moment. Seconds passed like I was living through all of human history and then there was pie and the moment was gone and Walter and my mother were sharing their desserts in a way that turned my stomach.

As if that hadn’t been enough excitement for one night when we got home we walked in to find the house had been totally ransacked. My mother started crying and Walter, to his credit, after initially looking like he may pass out calmed her down and went through the house to make sure there was no one lurking in a darkened room, and called the police and helped my mother check what was missing. And here’s the thing, nothing was missing.

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:23:05 GMT

After falling far far behind managed to get a lot written for Nano toady and am just about back on schedul.

I woke up with a start convinced someone was standing over us, but looking up all I saw was the bare branches of the trees and above them a blue sky. Conor still lay beside me, huddled into me, breathing steadily. If you ask me I tend to think it’s pretty creepy watching people when they sleep and in no way romantic, it’s stalker behavior, take it from me. But still, I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t stop myself looking into his face, looking somewhere for an answer to questions I didn’t know. His black hair was all messed up and hung over his face. I looked at his lips and his closed eyes and the curve of his collar bone.
He shifted against me and I looked away quickly. Somehow I knew the exact moment when he opened his eyes and looked at me. I felt him watching me for a moment, then he said, “Hey.”
I turned round to look at him. “Hey.”
For a while we didn’t say much else, instead we sat side by side under the trees. I guess I can’t speak for Conor but I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to have to limp back to the real world full of so many things I just didn’t care about.
“How’s your ankle?” Conor asked.
“It still hurts,” I said. I slipped my sneaker off and scrutinised the ankle which was swollen and covered in a redblue bruise.
“Man,” Conor said, “that looks nasty.”
I sighed and put my sneaker back on. “We should get going,” I said reluctantly.
We got to our feet and stood for a moment in the cover of the trees. I was trying to figure out if last night meant anything that morning. I mean all that happened is we slept side by side in the woods, but somehow it felt like it maybe meant something.
Trudging slowly through the muddy undergrowth I felt miserable. Why the hell did we have to go home? Why couldn’t we live out in the woods like people in the olden days did? We could hunt for food and eat bloody burnt flesh to stay alive.
We’d been walking maybe twenty minutes in silence when we heard a soft keening sound. “What the hell is that?” Conor asked anxiously.
I listened. At first it seemed a completely unrecognisable noise, a gentle coughing sniffling whine. “Maybe an animal?” I said.
“It doesn’t sound like any animal I know.”
I walked in the direction of the sound with Conor following me. As we got closer and closer something about the sound became more and more familiar. I stopped for a moment and closed my eyes. Oh, I thought, it’s someone crying. For a moment I was freaked out. When you find someone alone in the woods crying it’s never a good sign. Then I realised it had to be Mason. “Wait here,” I told Conor. He started to object but I hurried away from him, towards the source of the sound.
I stood at the edge of a deep ditch looking down at Mason. He lay in the dirt curled up in a ball, a mess of mud and dirt. He was shaking like he was about to throw a fit. “Mason,” I said softly.
He looked up at me. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you. What do you want?”
“What do I want? What the fuck are you doing in that ditch?”
“Leave me alone,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
I knelt down by the ditch and peered at Mason. “How long have you been out here?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Well you need to get out of that ditch now and come home.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Mason mumbled something I couldn’t hear. “What?” I said.
“I can’t get out of the ditch,” he said mournfully.
“Jesus Mason,” I said without thinking.
“Just go away,” he said.
“Give me your hand,” I told him.
He stood up and looked at me suspiciously. I put my hand out and after a moment he took hold of it. I guess I’ll always remember the way his hand felt that morning, how cold it was, covered in mud. I pulled and Mason tried to scramble up the side of the ditch. Here’s the thing, the walls of the ditch were this real soft soil and every time he tried to climb up they would collapse around him. He slumped to the ground and turned his face away. “Listen,” I said, “Conor’s here with me. He can help pull you out of the ditch.”
“No!” Mason said angrily.
“Mason, don’t be...”
“Shut up. What’s he doing here anyway? Are you like dating that freak?”
“People in glass ditches shouldn’t throw stones,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re like the goddamn swamp thing stuck in the bottom of your pit and in no position to be calling people freaks.”
“Whatever.”
“You know what Mason, I am going to leave you alone. You don’t care that I spent all fucking night looking for you. That I was wandering through these woods in the dark and the rain and I’ve practically broken my fucking ankle and I had to spend the night out here all because of you! That I spend all my time looking out for you and all you do is bitch and whine in return. I’ve had enough.” And with that I turned and walked away. I heard Mason faintly mewling my name behind me, but I didn’t look back.
Conor smiled at me as I approached him. “So Mason’s in the ditch?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s not dead.”
“Why’s he still in the ditch?” Conor asked.
“He can’t climb out.”
“Oh. You want me to help him?”
“Not really. I’m going home. You can do what you like.”
“Tegan? What the hell? You were out here looking for him. Now you’re just going to leave him stuck in some ditch?”
“It looks that way,” I said and I walked away from Conor quickly. If you want the truth part of the reason I took off was that I felt like I might cry. I don’t know why. But I don’t cry. Some people cry. Some people don’t. I don’t. And I definitely never let anyone see me cry. So I headed off down the path away from Conor and Mason and back towards the town. Conor shouted after me but I ignored him and pretty soon he was lost from sight.

Home is, so they say, where the heart is. I don’t know who this mysterious they is, but what they don’t say is that home is where Walter is. By the time I’d limped all the way outta the woods and across town I was pretty exhausted. So when I opened the front door of my house to see Walter wearing just a bathrobe and groping my mother in the kitchen it wasn’t exactly the homecoming I needed.
Without saying a word I headed up the stairs and into my room shutting the door behind me to keep everything else on the other side. I collapsed into bed and closed my eyes. All I wanted to do was sleep but I couldn’t stop thinking about stupid Mason. I bet you think I’m like some queen bitch for always ragging on Mason and leaving him in that ditch. And myabe you’re right. But here’s the thing about Mason, ever since we’ve been friends I’ve always been the one pulling him out of the ditch, that’s like a metaphor by the way. And I never used to mind. Hell, finding ways to save Mason from disaster was pretty much my only entertainment. I swear to god that kid’s like some video game, every time you get through one level he’ll find new and more difficult challenges. But now I was tired of Mason. All I’d been thinking about lately was leaving this town. I’d be graduating high school soon and the only thing I wanted to do was get the hell outta here, whether I go to college or just get some crappy job in a city somewhere, I have to do something. I don’t know, I guess I’ve been worrying about Mason. I mean who’ll take care of him when I’m gone?
After a while I fell asleep and woke up in a dream lying next to Conor in the woods. I rested my head on his collar and felt the warmth of his skin against mine. I kissed him on the neck and he turned and brought his lips to mine, then his arms were all around me and I wrapped my arms around his body amazed at the feeling of something so solid in my hands. So we were fooling around, you know how that goes, right? I guess we got to like second base, maybe third when I realised someone was standing watching us, hidden behind a tree. I murmured Conor’s name in his ear and told him to stop, but it was like he couldn’t hear me. I tried to push him off me but I couldn’t move him, that was about when I found out I couldn’t move either. I was like totally paralysed, lying in the dirty ground with Conor moving around on top of me. I tried to scream but my voice was gone. Conor’s hands were all over me and his lips on mine. His tongue forced its way into my immobile mouth. Somehow I forced my jaw to close, though the effort to take was like I was lifting a car clear over my head without superman’s magic powers. My teeth bit into his tongue and I felt his blood flowing into my mouth, a warm strong taste. And then Conor was standing over me looking down. In my dream he was saying some girl’s name over and over. The moment I woke up I’d forgotten the name but I knew it wasn’t my name.
It was late afternoon by the time I woke up. That cold winter light that makes everything outside seem somehow more real and more like something on TV colored the view from my window. I walked downstairs through the empty house. Mom and Walter were long gone leaving behind empty bottles of cheap champagne and cushions thrown from the couch to the floor.
The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. I had a paper to write for English and I had to study for a history test on some war. I stayed indoors the whole time, watching kids’ movies on TV lying on my bed.
Monday morning and I sat alone on the school bus, no Mason, no Conor. It occurred to me that Mason could still be sitting in his ditch but I knew Conor would have dragged him out, kicking and screaming, well mainly kicking.
Later that afternoon I went over to Conor’s house and knocked on his front door. There was no answer so I went round the back and stood looking at the overgrown backyard where an old lawnmower rusted. I peered through a window into a bare bedroom. A single bed was pushed up against one wall, next to a chest of drawers was the only other furniture in the room. The walls were bare, there was no sign of life other than a hooded top thrown on the floor that I recognised as belonging to Conor. Jesus, I thought, he lives like a monk. I looked closer and saw a dark patch on the brown wallpaper of the room. There was a similar patch on the carpet. From a distance it could be anything. Where Conor had spilled a cup of coffee or a can of Coke. But the more I stared into this near empty room the more I became convinced it was blood.
The window was open a crack and I pushed it all the way open and clambered through it landing awkwardly on my bad ankle in Conor’s bedroom. It was wrong, I know, but I felt this like charge of electricity at being there, in his room. For some reason I didn’t want to look at the stains on the wall and the carpet, even though it was the reason I was breaking and entering. Instead I sat down on his bed, it didn’t feel real comfortable and as I lay back on it I wondered at how Conor could sleep on it. My head on his pillow I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined him here beside me. Then I stood up and wandered over to the chest of drawers. Opening the top drawer I found nothing more than a mess of socks and boxers. Okay, I thought, this is totally wrong, I’m going through his underwear drawer. I slammed the drawer shut and opened the next one. Conor’s T-shirts. The next drawer held a selction of tops, and the last drawer was full of neatly folded jeans and combat pants. Don’t ask me why but I rooted around in the bottom drawer, and finally pulled out a small black hooded top. It was like two sizes too small for Conor. I guess it was his was he was a kid and he hadn’t gotten around to giving to goodwill yet. I fiddled with the zip for a minute, not wanting to put it back in the drawer yet.
I was folding up to put back when I felt something in one of the pockets. I put my hand in the pocket and pulled out a creased photograph. Staring back at me from the photograph there were two kids. They were maybe eleven or twelve, I don’t know. One of them was Conor, his dark hair hanging over his face in a way that was unchanged maybe five years later. There was something different about him, other than him being younger. I realised he was smiling, and not just smiling, but he had this expression on his face. It was the sweetest smile I’d ever seen, he looked like the happiest kid in the world. I knew that for whatever reason I’d never see him smile like that. Standing next to him was a girl who was about the same age Conor was in the picture. She was wearing black combat pants and a Nirvana hoodie. Her dark hair was cut fairly short, to her jawline, but her fringe hung across her face like Conor’s. They were dressed alike and had the same haircut pretty much. I saw that they were holding hands shyly, hiding their hands almost behind their back. They were standing in front of a school sports field smiling at whoever was taking the picture. Now here’s the weird thing. I swear to god I knew the girl who was holding Conor’s hand. I couldn’t work out how I knew her, or who she was, and given that Conor had grown up like half a country away there was no way I could know who she was. But I knew I knew her.
After a minute I put the photograph back into the pocket where I found it. From the way it was so creased it was obvious Conor had looked at the picture a lot. I returned the hooded top to the drawer and closed it. Without even thinking I turned and faced the wall staring at the dark stain on it. Then I knelt down and scrutined the stain on the carpet. The stain was a dark red and crusty. I rubbed it and picked up a tiny piece of it. This is gross, believe me, I know, but I stuck my tongue out and licked it before crumbling it into invisible dust between my fingers.
It was blood. The taste in my mouth was the taste of childhood cuts, and it was the taste of Conor’s blood in my mouth, the exact same taste from my dream. I looked at the two stains, they were pretty big. By the looks of it Conor had lost a lot of blood. And for the first time since I’d climbed through the window into Conor’s bedroom I felt scared and I wondered if somehow somewhere Conor was lying dead or dying.
I was feeling pretty jumpy right then so I nearly screamed out loud when I heard a door slam shut somewhere in the house and the sound of footsteps walking swiftly through the house, beating a path straight to where I stood.

Chapter Four

The way Mason tells it he pretty much pulled himself out of the ditch. And it was really down to him that Conor didn’t fall in as well. Of course Mason is lying. What happened is that after I limped off into the woods Conor went and stood over the ditch. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Mason replied without even glancing Conor’s direction.
“So you’re stuck down there?” Conor asked.
“No. I can get out any time I want.”
“You don’t need no help?”
“Hell no,” Mason said.
“Okay. I guess I’ll catch with Tegan if you’re alright down there.”
Mason didn’t reply so Conor walked off a little way. He stood waiting. For a while there was silence, then the pitiful sounds of Mason desperately trying to scramble out of the ditch. After about five minutes Mason gave up and sat back down miserably in the ditch to await death or rescue, which ever came first. As he sat there he thought about dying. He thought about his corpse being discovered by some folks out walking their dog. Maybe it would even bring one of Mason’s limbs to its owners like a stick it wanted them to throw for it. And the police would come and carry away his body and his parents would have to go and identify his body. Maybe just his dad would do it, spraing his mom having to go through that. She would sit anxiously in some anonymous waiting area worrying about what people would think about them losing two kids. It would look real carelss. And then his dad would come out and nod sadly at his mom and they’d go home and call his sister would have to be reminded by their father who Mason was. And then there’d be the funeral. His parents and his sister sitting at the front of the church trying not to look bored. And there’d be me, Tegan weeping pitifully in the aisle behind them feeling real real bad about all the mean things I’d ever said to him, and especially the time I’d told Stacey Klein that Mason used to think about her when he jerked off (which I gues was funny at the time but I do feel pretty bad about now). And then his coffin’d be carried out after the priest or whatever had something vague and stupid and meaningless about his young life and tragedy of his early demise. He’d be dumped in the ground and covered over with dirt and his family would go home and watch the news and forget about him in a matter of days and me, well I’d forget about him too. So this is what Mason was thinking about as he sat in the ditch. I know, you’d think he’d keep these kind of thoughts to himself, but in a drunken confession Mason won’t keep anything private (how else do you think I knew about Stacey Klein?).
Maybe twenty minutes had passed and Mason had set his heart on dying in the ditch to spite his family and me. Conor walked back over and peered in. “Hey Mason,” he said.
“I thought you left,” Mason said.
“No. I was waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“Well, I figured once you’d climbed outta the ditch you could help me find the way back to town.”
“Oh,” said Mason. After a moment he stood up and looked at the walls of the ditch.
Conor crouched down and put his hand out. “Here, grab onto my hand.”
Mason looked at Conor’s hand like it was a strange object he’d never seen before. Eventually he took a hold of it and Conor pulled him, grabbing onto Mason’s jacket and dragging him out of the ditch.
Finally Mason was out, lying panting beside Conor on the ground. Mason mumbled, “Thank you,” and Conor pretended not to hear. Instead he got to his feet and brushed some of the mud off of his clothes. Mason stood up and they headed back to town. It took them maybe a half an hour walking through the woods. They didn’t say much for a while until Mason said out of the blue, “So are you and Tegan like a couple now?”
Conor frowned and kept walking a way before shaking his head, “No,” he said.
“Why were you with her then?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you like her?”
“I guess.”
“So are you going to go out with her?”
“No,” Conor said and walked faster.
“Hey, wait up,” Mason said. “Why not? If you like why don’t you want to, you know?”
“I don’t date,” Conor replied.
“What? Ever?”
“Yeah. I don’t date,” he repeated like a self-help mantra.
“Why not? Are you like gay or something?”
“No. I just...You gotta be pretty happy about this, right?”
“About what?”
“Me not dating.”
“Why the hell should I care about that?” Mason said loudly.
“You don’t want anyone moving in on Tegan.”
“That’s bullcrap!” Mason shouted.
“Oh please. You’re so goddamn transparent. You want Tegan all to yourself. I don’t know if you’re just friends or if you’re totally in love with her, and I don’t care. But you don’t like the idea of anyone else hanging around her.”
“That’s so totally untrue,” Mason said quietly.
Conor looked at him for moment, then said, “You’re in love with her aren’t you?”
“I am not!” Mason replied angrily before stomping off ahead of Conor.
They didn’t speak again until they were out of the woods and back on the man-made streets of our town. Mason was sullenly walking behind Conor when he suddenly announced, “I turn off here for home.” He started off down the street but Conor called him back hesitantly. “Hey, you want to maybe borrow a change of clothes or something before you go home.”
Mason thought for a moment. He looked down at his clothes which were torn and encrusted in mud. His hands and his face were also covered in mud and somehow he still spelt like the bottle of cheap bourbon he’d been drinking when he headed into the woods. “Okay,” Mason said. He turned back and followed Conor, trotting behind him obediently.
When they got to Conor’s house Conor told Mason to wait outside a minute then headed into the house. A couple of minutes later he emerged and beckoned for Mason to come inside. He didn’t offer an explanation. Instead he led Mason quickly through the house, whose furnishing Mason described as shabby and limited, and into Conor’s bedroom. Conor glanced at Mason and said, “I guess we’re about the same size, right?” He grabbed a handful of clothes out of the drawers and handed them to Mason. “The bathroom’s through there if you want a shower. There are some towels in the closet.”
So Mason went and took a shower, and scrubbed off the mud and changed into Conor’s clothes. By the time he’d finished and he wandered into Conor’s bedroom Conor was asleep on the bed. Mason looked at him, then he knelt down beside Conor’s bed and carefully unlaced his sneakers and took them off. He’d seen an old blanket in the closet with the towels so he went and fetched it and covered Conor with it. Then he pulled Conor’s bedroom shut and walked out of the house.
As he was walking down the street a little way from Conor’s house he heard footsteps running towards him and before he’d even had the chance to turn around someone had grabbed a hold of his shoulder and was spinning round. Now Mason was pretty startled and he scared easy and he was real intimidated by this guy so he couldn’t remember too well what he looked like. The best description he had was that the guy looked like a math teacher or maybe an accountant. I guess what he meant was that he looked real ordinary with a cheap haircut and a neat white shirt. Anyways the guy started shouted in Mason’s face asking him who the hell he was and what in god’s name he’d been doing in that Mason.
So Mason explained to him that he was friend of Conor’s and had been visiting him, and the guy kepy getting angrier and angrier. He asked Mason if he knew where Conor had been last night. Mason mumbled about him being out in the woods with me.
The man stopped shouting and narrowed his eyes. “Who’s Tegan?” he asked quietly.
“She’s just this girl,” Mason replied. “She’s my friend, and I guess she’s Conor’s friend or something.”
The man looked at Mason for a moment then without a word he turned and walked away quickly. Mason didn’t hang around to see where he went. Instead he ran all the way down the street and over the road and kept running until he was nearly in his neighborhood.
He burst in through the front door of his house and hurried up the stairs into his bedroom. He lay on his bed for a while listening to the sounds of his parents moving around downstairs. He waited for one of them to come upstairs and demand to know here he’d been, to shout at him for his irresponsible behavior, to tell him that they’d been worried sick and had called the police out and had been out combing the streets looking for him, and that now he was back he was grounded and couldn’t leave the house ever ever again.
But no one came. After an hour or so of waiting Mason put an old REM tape he’d found in his sister’s bedroom on and lay listening to it over and over, until finally the sun set and his room became dark. Then he pulled a bottle of something out from under his bed and drank it down. He fell asleep a while later still wearing Conor’s clothes and lying on top of his bed covers. When he woke up hours later in the middle of the night, feeling cold like he needed to throw up he reached out for the blanket he’d dreamt covered him. Then he rembered that blanket was covering Conor not him. He grabbed the waste paper basket automatically and retched into it. He hadn’t really eaten in a couple of days so nothing much came up. He lay panting on his bed feeling disorientated in the dark and as he closed his eyes again he remembered the angry man grabbing a hold of his shoulder and for a minute there he was worried about Conor. Then he fell asleep again and forgot about Conor.

Chapter Five

The footsteps were getting closer and I was I thought I was about to have a goddamn heart attack, I kid you not. Without really thinking I threw myself to the ground and crawled beneath Conor’s bed. The mattress was in a pretty bad state and hung low, there wasn’t much space between the it and the floor, so I lay pressed to the ground, my face pushed into the carpet.
After a couple of minutes I heard the bedroom door open and someone walked in. I was hoping real hard that it would be Conor. I mean, sure he’d probably be pissed about me breaking into his bedroom and going through his underwear drawer and hiding under his bed and so on, but I was pretty sure someone had hurt Conor real bad and I didn’t want to meet whoever that was.
From under the bed I could see maybe a half an inch of the room. I saw a pair of cheap black leather shoes probably bought from some outlet mall somewhere walk past. Whoever it was walked out of the room, and a few minutes went by. I was just starting to wonder whether I ought to try and get the hell out of there when whoever it was walked back into the room. I heard like a splashing water sound and then this vigorous rubbing noise, which I figured was the stain on the carpet being cleaned, rather than you know, anything gross or whatever.
There was no choice really, I just had to lay there and hope I wasn’t found. I listened to the carpet being scrubbed and then the wall and I tried not to move or breathe or make any sound. Here’s the thing though, scared as I was, I kept thinking about Conor, about the way he’d felt lying next to me in the woods, about him following me out there in the first place, about his smile in the photograph and about the blood in his bedroom. I was getting pretty upset about all this so I focused my attention on the small space I occupied.
The threadbare carpet beneath smelt musty, as though every occupant of this room in all the years since the house had been built had left something behind in the damp, dusty odour. Beneath my fingers the carpet felt scratchy and worn. I squashed my hand flat against and the tip of my index finger brushed something jagged at the bottom of the wall. I explored further with my hand, feeling a small gap where the wall met the floor behind the bed. Mice, I thought anxiously. Or bigger rodents. Without thinking my hand slid into the gap and immediately I felt a selection of small objects, something metallic that felt like the top hat from Monopoly, a couple of pieces of paper that even to touch felt wrinkled with age like the skin of an old man, something small and plastic, something else metal. It was a treasure trove, like the one Boo Radley used to give things to the kids in that book we had to read for school years ago.
Suddenly I felt the weight of someone sitting down on the bed above me, pushing down the mattress and the bed frame so that it dug sharply into my back. I winced silently and pressed myself down into the floor. I really didn’t like this. Eventually, after maybe ten long minutes he stood up again and I felt able to breathe again. He walked out of the room. I’d been lying there feeling suffocated and claustrophobic and like I was about to die in some totally unpleasant way pretty soon in all that time. The moment I heard the bedroom door swing shut I scrambled out from underneath the bed. Glancing round just quick enough to see the soapy patches where Conor’s blood had been washed away, I pushed the window open and pulled myself out again. I landed on the cold earth and felt such relief. After closing the window a little I scrambled round the side of the house keeping low so as not to be seen.
Crouching by the front of the house I looked at the street only yards away and hoped it wasn’t out of my reach yet. I took a breath and raced across the muddy bare lawn and onto the street going as fast as I ran when I was a kid and we were playing some game with rules I’d long since forgotten. Well past the end of the street I was still running, eventually slowing down to a fast walk. I kept glancing behind me but the street was empty and I was free.
Eventually I slowed down some and walked along, looking at my breath as it left a mist in the cold winter evening. I guess Conor had a lot of secrets, but who doesn’t? You have your secrets, right? I know I have mine, and I always keep my secrets. Still, all I wanted to know was where Conor was, and whether he was okay or not.
As I kept on walking I realised I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. I mean I’d seen the blood on the wall in Conor’s bedroom but what was I supposed to do about it. I could go to the police, but then maybe I’d get in trouble for breaking into Conor’s house, and even if they believed me when they got over there the blood would be long gone, like in those dumb movies where kids find something suspicious but by the time they get the authorities there it’s disappeared and then no one believes the kids and then everybody dies a horrible death. And I pretty much figured that Conor wouldn’t want me to involve the police.
Not too long later I found myself standing in front of my house. I went into the dark house reluctantly and wandered upstairs. I didn’t turn the lights on when I went into my room, instead I slumped down onto the bed. Slumped down right on top of a warm solid human body. I leapt up and shouted out loud startled. I flicked the light switch on and Mason blinked his eyes dazedly and sat up.
“Hey,” he said sleepily.
“Jesus Mason! You scared the shit outta me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You could have left the light on or something.”
“I fell asleep. It was still light.” He smiled at me and his eyelids flickered like he was trying not to fall asleep again. By the looks of him he was pretty wasted. Not falling down in a pool of vomit drunk, but still a long ways from sober. He opened his eyes and I watched his eyes struggle to focus on me. He smiled at me again. “Hey Tegan,” he said. “I was waiting for you.”
I half smiled back at him and lay down beside him. He smelled like whiskey and cherry Coke. “I went to see Conor,” I told him.
“Oh, cool. How is he?”
“He wasn’t there.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah. There was blood all over the wall and on the floor in his room,” I said and kept my eyes on him as this information penetrated his drunken haze. His body stiffened and he looked at me anxiously. “So,” I said, “did he get you outta the ditch?”
Mason hesitated a moment before telling me the true story of his rescue from the ditch. The only time he’d ever tell me the truth. Every time it came up later he’d insist he’d climbed out all by himself. By the time he’d finished his story with a reenactment of his confrontation with the aggressive man on Conor’s street I had this feeling in my stomach like an ache that went right up through me into my throat.
Mason had been silent for a while, and finally he said, “You think that man hurt Conor.” It wasn’t quite a question, because the truth was we both thought that man had hurt Conor.
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to do something,” Mason insisted.
But I didn’t know what to do. So we lay there on the bed for hours. My mom came home briefly to change before another date with Walter. She stood in the doorway staring at Mason and me on the bed. “Are you two just going to lie there all night?” she asked.
We shrugged in unison and she disappeared, returning ten minutes later with a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches. We climbed under the bedcovers and ate the sandwiches and tried not to think about Conor. Lying there in the dark, our faces inches away from each other we whispered in the empty house. Mason told me he was tired and he fell asleep while I lay beside him, his breathing the only sound. Me, I lay awake most of the night thinking about Conor. Every five minutes I’d decide to go to the police first thing in the morning, then I’d worry that maybe that would be the worst thing to do. And I feel bad and scared for Conor, so I’d stare into Mason’s face, his so familiar face. Sometime around four maybe I finally fell asleep and for the rest of the night I dreamed bad dreams. I was lying under Conor’s bed again, the man on top of it, pushing it down, forcing it into my skin, and then there was Conor lying dead on his bedroom floor and I tried to wake him up, I tried to bring him back to life by kissing him on the lips, like the Prince waking Sleeping Beauty, but Conor wasn’t asleep. He was dead. His lips were cold and then blood started to pour out of his mouth into so much blood I felt sick, like I was about to throw up. Inside the dream I could feel myself retching and choking and in the last moment of the dream I looked up and saw a girl watching me. Then my eyes burst open and I was awake, sitting upright in bed, panting for breath scratching at my throat and my mouth. I realised that Mason had his arms around me and was looking into my face with this terrified expression on his face. “Tegan,” he said over and over.
Even after I’d been awake a few minutes I still couldn’t stop shaking. Mason held onto me tightly, whispering into my ear, teling me that I was alright. Eventually I was feeling better more like myself. I kissed Mason quickly on the cheek then I climbed out of bed. “Are you okay Tegan?” he asked anxiously.
I nodded, still not sure I dared to trust my voice, that it wouldn’t shake and tremble. “Did you have a bad dream?” he said. I nodded again.
“We have to find Conor,” I said.
“Okay.”
And like that we were gone into the early morning light. It was maybe before seven and the dark blue light felt somehow the safest place to be. It was biting cold. Mason and I hurried through the streets, still whispering to each other, like we didn’t want to wake the town.
By the time we reached Conor’s street the sun had finally risen and across the whole town bedroom lights were going on as people woke up. The empty roads gradually became a little busier. We stood at the end of the street, watching Conor’s house from a distance like spies.
“What are we going to do?” Mason asked.
“I’ll think of something,” I said but my mind was blank. So we stood in silence on the sidewalk staring. After maybe twenty minutes someone walked out of Conor’s house, a middle aged man wearing an old suit. He climbed into the station wagon parked on the street and drove slowly down the street towards. Mason turned and ran up the driveway to the house we were standing in front. He hid behind the car driveway. I stood and watched the station wagon drive past, catching a glimpse of the driver, hair brushed and neatly parted, then he was gone.
Mason crept out from behind the car and hurried back to my side. “That was him, the man who shouted at me.”
“Him?” I asked incredulously. Mason nodded vigorously. “Come on,” I said.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Conor’s house.”
A few minutes later were climbing in through the window of Conor’s bedroom. We stood in the room. The dark patches of blood had faded from the wall and carpet but not completely disappeared. We walked through the rest of the house, never being more than a few inches apart. In the living room two worn dark green armchairs sat facing a small television. Pushing another door open we stepped into what had to be Conor’s dad’s room. It looked basically like Conor’s room. There were a few bills on the chest of drawers and a drab white shirt hung on a hanger from the door handle.
We walked into the kitchen. A single cracked coffee cup sat on the counter in the narrow room. Leading off the kitchen there was a door, it was deadbolted and padlocked. Mason gestured at it. I pressed my ear against the door and listened but all I could hear was silence. I knocked on the door softly at first, then a little louder. I was pretty sure that I heard someone move around on the other side of the door. “Conor?” I said.
There was silence and then Conor’s voice came faintly from the other side of the door, “Tegan? Is that you?”
“Yeah. Are you okay?”
“You have to leave. You can’t be here.”
“Conor, are you alright?”
“Just get the hell out!” he shouted.
I shrugged at Mason who was going through the drawers in the kitchen. “Maybe we should go?” I said uncertainly.
“We have to make sure he’s alright first,” Mason insisted. He pulled a set of keys from a drawer triumphantly and handed them to me. I started to try the keys in the locks, from the other side of the door I heard Conor moving.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “You can’t come in here. Stop it! Get out of my house!”
I hesitated for a moment, then turned and told Mason to go in the living room and keep a look out for the station wagon. Finally I found the right keys and unlocked the door. I tried to turn the door handle but it wouldn’t move. I could hear Conor’s breathing on the other side of the door and realised he was holding the door handle.
“Conor,” I said. “Let me in.”
“No,” Conor said desperatley. “You can’t come in. You have to leave. Please, Tegan. I’m begging you.”
“Listen Conor, just let me in for a minute then I’ll leave. I promise.”
Conor was silent and then the door opened slowly. I peered into the darkness. Conor stood in front of me.
“Oh Jesus,” I said.
“Please Tegan,” Conor said frantically, “you have to leave.”
“What happened to you?” I asked. His face was covered in bruises and cuts. One of his eyes was swollen. There was dried blood on his lips and his cheeks. I looked over his shoulder into the dark room he stood in. I tried to step into the room but Conor blocked my path.
“Please Tegan, don’t come in here.”
I figured it was a garage but from what I could see it was totally empty. There was none of that junk that you usually find cluttering up people’s garages. Just the bare walls and the concrete floor and Conor.
“Conor, what’s going on?”
“Please Tegan” he said. He tried to speak again, but then closed his eyes and winced in pain. He slumped down onto his knees. He was really scaring me now. His eyes were closed and his head was bowed like he was praying. He groaned softly and gently lowered himself to the ground. I stepped into the garage and the first thing that hit me was how cold it was. I mean it was Winter in Nebraska, the temperature in the garage couldn’t have been much above freezing. The cold came first, then the smell. It stank like the toilets in the nastiest bars in town. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand and tried not to gag.
I knelt down beside Conor and looked into his face, and for just a second I saw his face in my dream, the dead Conor I’d kissed to try to bring back to life. In a second it was gone and I was looking into Conor’s bruised and beaten face, but that was no better. “Mason!” I shouted. I heard him hurrying through the house. Conor’s eyes had rolled up into the eye sockets and I knew he wasn’t sleeping, he was unconscious.
“Fucking hell!” Mason exclaimed as he walked into the garage. He looked down at Conor and saw his face for the first time. “Oh man.” He knelt down beside me and put his hand on Conor’s neck. “He’s freezing. We have to get him out of here.”
“Mason,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know what to do. Should we call the police or, Jesus, I don’t know.”
“You’ll figure it out Tegan,” he said. “You always do.” Just then we heard the sound of a car door banging shut from out on the street. Mason hurried back into the house to check on it. “Shit!” I heard him yell. He ran back to the garage. “He’s back! That guy, Conor’s father or whatever!”
“Okay,” I said. “Listen, lock the door like it was before and put the keys back right where you found them. Then go out through Conor’s bedroom window. Hide outside and wait.”
“Okay,” he said. “Are you coming?”
“I’m not leaving him like this.”
“Tegan, you don’t know how dangerous this could be. We should-”
“Mason, there’s no time.”
I pushed Mason back into the kitchen and he shut the door plunging the garage into darkness. I heard the locks turning and then Mason’s footsteps fading away just as the front door slammed shut. He was inside. I heard him walking closer and closer and then the drawer opening and the jangle of the keys. The locks opened again and the door swung open.
I was pressed into the corner of the garage near the door hoping that he wouldn’t turn the light on.
“Still asleep sleepy head,” he said. His voice was as ordinarly as brown paper. “Time for breakfast. You need to keep your strenghth up.”
Conor didn’t move. I watched as the man grabbed hold of Conor’s head and forced his mouth open. He had a carton of milk and he poured it all into Conor’s mouth. Conor made these choking sounds but still didn’t wake up. When the carton was empty the man dropped Conor’s head back to the ground.
“I guess you’re too sick for school today. I’ll call them, don’t worry. You get better son.” Then he bent down and kissed Conor tenderly on the forehead. He stepped out of the garage and locked the door. A couple of minutes later I heard him leave the house. I waited for Mason to come back and open the door. Five minutes passed, then maybe ten minutes and I started to panic.
I was sitting beside Conor, with his head on my lap, stroking his hair gently. As I ran my hand through his messy hair I felt a warm damp patch at the back. I figured when the man had dropped Conor’s head he’d hit it pretty bad on the floor and now Conor was bleeding. And that familiar feeling, warm blood and soft hair and that first dream came back to me like a sucker punch. Conor’s head bleeding onto my hands. That freaked me out. More than being locked in the dark garage with Conor, that I dreamt of this first. See I don’t have any time for any kind of superstition, be it religion, or psychics, or ghosts, or whatever. The way I see it it’s all bullshit. But there was the dream, the way it felt, the way it made me feel, just as I’d dreamt it.
Conor murmured something and stirred but didn’t wake up. In my arms I could feel him shaking. He was only wearing a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt. I ran my hand up and down his arms which were as cold frost on the ground. I took my jacket off and struggled to get Conor into it. I wrapped my arms around him and rubbed his body gently trying to get him warm. Conor was murmuring again, I pressed my ear against his ice cold lips and listened. “You found me,” he said in a voice so quiet and dry and distant. “You found me after all this time. I was looking for you Laura.” He coughed again and again, struggling to clear his airways, his body shaking against me racked by every cough. And then he was still again. He fell asleep as I held onto him in the dark feeling every movement of his body.
Where the hell is Mason, I thought.

Chapter Six

Hours passed and I wondered if I’d spend the rest of my life in this dark garage. Conor woke up after the longest time. Feeling my arms around him he recoiled. “Who’s there?” he asked in a voice that trembled.
“It’s me,” I said, “Tegan.”
“Tegan?” he said like he’d never heard my name before. “What are you doing here?”
“I was rescuing you.”
“Good job.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, I remember. So, what? You forced your way in here, then locked yourself in here?”
“Something like that. That man came back. I guess it’s your dad. So I told Mason to lock us in and wait for him to leave.”
“Did he leave?”
“Hours ago.”
“Where’s Mason?” I didn’t say anything. “I see.”
“This is so typical of Mason. The one time I need his help, the one time he could save me for a change, he flakes on me. Unless...”
“Unless what?” Conor asked.
“Unless that guy did something to Mason. I mean, would he? I guess if he’d hurt you this bad then...”
“No,” Conor said sharply. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”
“Conor?” I said and I reached out in the darkness and found Conor’s chest beneath my hands, I pulled him towards me. “Come here,” I said. And we lay in each other’s arms for the longest time. Finally I asked, “Conor, did he do this to you?”
“Yes, but he’s right. He has to do it. I make him do it.”
“Conor! That’s bullshit.”
“It’s not. He’s my father and he has to look out for me. I deserve it.”
“Conor,” I whispered in the darkness. “You don’t deserve this.”
“You don’t know me Tegan.” I felt his body shaking softly. I put my hand on his cheek and felt the wet tears on his face. I kissed him softly on his lips and felt him kissing me back hesitantly. I ran my hands across his back and felt his arms around me. We kissed on the ground in the dark garage for maybe five minutes before Conor pushed me away.
“We have to stop,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. He didn’t answer me. I reached out to put my arm around him but he shrugged it off. “So tell me why he did it?” I asked coldly. “Why’d your father beat you half to death?”
“I misbehaved,” he said in a voice that suddenly made him sound much younger and at once reminded me of the photograph I’d seen of him.
“What did you do?”
“You know. I was out all night, then I brought Mason home without permission. If I’m not careful I’ll be acting the way I used to act.”
“Does he hit you a lot Conor?” I asked.
“No. Only when I deserve it.”
“For Christ’s sake! You don’t deserve it! Whatever you did you don’t deserve it.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“What about this, the garage? Does he often he lock you in here?”
“No. He’s only done it a couple of times since we moved here.”
“Why did he do it before?”
“Tegan, please.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
I shuffled closer to him on the ground and pulled him back towards me. This time he didn’t shrug me off. “Tough. Tell me.”
“The first time, it was just after we’d moved here. He just told me to get inside and the he locked me in.”
“How long for?”
“I don’t remember. Three or four days maybe. It was just before school started and he said he was teaching me a lesson. That if I was bad he’d put me in here forever.”
“And the second time?”
“He found something, in my room.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just some pictures and letters and stuff. He was real mad, and he was right to be. I shouldn’t have kept them. It was wrong.”
“Conor,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. I kissed him softly on the top of his head. Somewhere in the house a door shut and we heard someone moving.
“Oh Jesus,” Conor said. “He’s back. If he finds you here he’ll be so mad. I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“It’s okay Conor,” I said gently. “Whatever happens we’ll sort it out. Everything’ll be alright.” I said this calmly but inside I was more scared than I’d ever been in my whole life. The footsteps came from the kitchen, we listened as the keys were found and the locks were unlocked. I kissed Conor on the lips and told him again that it’d be okay. Then I ran into the corner of the garage, sheltering in the darkness from something I couldn’t understand.
The door opened and a small patch of light from the kitchen was cast on the floor of the garage. It illuminated Conor’s broken body lying on the ground. This boy I’d thought was so strong and tough and somehow different from everyone else wasn’t there anymore. In that moment I suddenly wanted it to be Conor’s father standing in the doorway. I wanted to run at him screaming and rip the flesh from his cheeks, tear out his eyes, and make him understand the pain he’d caused Conor. My whole body tensed.
Mason stepped into the garage. “Tegan?” he said quietly.
“Hey,” I said, lurching out of the shadows.
He knelt down beside Conor. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” Conor said in a voice so low I knew how ashamed he felt at being seen like this by two kids he barely knew.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked Mason.
“Waiting in the back yard.”
“Why?”
“That guy didn’t leave. He went outside and got in his car and drove it away. Then he came back on foot and sat behind the trees in the neighbor’s front yard watching. He only left about half an hour ago. I waited to make sure he was really gone this time.”
“Let’s go,” I said. I stood over Conor waiting for him to get up. “Come on.”
“I can’t go anywhere. If I disobey he’ll be angry.”
“You can’t stay in here.”
“I don’t got a choice.”
“Sure you do. Conor, we can call the police. What your father did is wrong.”
“No! No police. Promise me Tegan.”
“Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“But we can’t leave you here.”
“You have to.”
“Conor, it’s freezing in here. You’re starving. You may have internal bleeding or got knows what. You lost a lot of blood. If you stay here you’ll die.”
“I won’t die. I’ll be alright. You should go now.”
I stood there not knowing what to do. “Mason?” I said.
He looked at me and shrugged. “She’s right Conor. If you stay out here there’s a good chance you’ll freeze to death.”
“I’ll be fine. This is just something I have to do.”
“Why?” I asked.
“This is my life Tegan. I don’t know why you think you can just come in and start taking over.”
“Because your psycho father’s beaten you up and locked you in the garage in the middle of winter. You need someone to take charge of your life.”
“Conor?” Mason asked. “Have you got any other family? Your mom, or grandparents or anyone?”
“No,” Conor said. “It’s just me and my dad.”
“Listen,” Mason said in this calm, gentle voice that didn’t really sound like Mason, “if you go to the police they’ll protect you. They’ll make sure your dad can’t hurt you again.”
“I said no police!” Conor shouted angrily. He started coughing again. Mason and I exchanged glances and we saw the same thing in each other’s eyes, horror and sadness and not a clue what to do, how to help Conor.
“You can come to my house,” Mason said. “There’s a basement. My parents never go down there. They won’t know you’re there. You can stay there until you feel better.”
“I have to stay here,” Conor said. “You’d better go. If he finds you here it’ll be worse for me.”
“Okay. We’ll go,” Mason said.
“Mason!” I said.
“We’ll go Tegan. But first you gotta drink some water and have something to eat. And we’ll find you another T-shirt to put on under that one. Okay?” He looked at Conor, and Conor nodded slowly. He got to his feet awkwardly and walked back into the kitchen.
Outside the darkness of the garage Conor looked even worse. The bruises were more violent, his posture was bent over in pain. He put his mouth under the tap in the kitchen and drank some water. After that he ate some bread before walking back into the garage. He stood in the doorway looking at Mason and me. “Your jacket,” Mason said.
“He can keep it.”
“Mason’s right. My dad’ll see it.” He slowly took the jacket off and handed it back to me. I held it close to my body like he was still inside it. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone. You don’t know the truth. Promise me.”
Mason and me promised then I shut the door and my heart broke. The look in Conor’s eyes as I plunged him back into darkness, as I locked him up, it was the saddest thing I’ve seen my whole life. I walked out of the kitchen quickly leaving Mason to lock the door. I didn’t wait for Mason, instead I headed outside into the back yard where the sunlight was fading and I found it hard to believe that only one day had passed. It felt like I’d been in that garage with Conor for a much longer time.
Standing staring at the back yard with its patches of out of control weeds mixed with patches of dirty ground and some trash that‘d blown in from somewhere. I heard Mason climbing outta the window behind me and then he was standing beside me. “We have to go,” he said.
“Mason, we can’t just leave him there.”
“I know.”
“We have to go to the police, right?”
“I don’t know Tegan. It’s not what Conor wants. And the truth is we don’t really know what’s going on. There’s probably stuff we don’t know about. For all we know we’d just make it worse if we went to the police.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Mason didn’t reply and I knew that neither of us had an answer to that question. We walked home slowly, and spent the night watching documentaries about minor celebrities on cable. I asked Mason to stay the night, and he agreed, somehow knowing that if I was left to lie alone in the dark all I’d be able to think about would be that dark garage. So we lay side by side through the night. Both of us thinking pretty much the same thing. Would Conor be alright?

Chapter Seven

It was the best part of a week before we saw Conor again. Mason was sitting next to me in study hall when Conor walked in and took a seat near the front, far away from us. In that brief glimpse before he’d sat down and hunched over defensively away from us Conor has seemed thinner, he’s looked tired. The bruises on his face had pretty much faded but you could tell something had bad had happened to him.
In those days since we’d left Conor behind he was all Mason and me talked about. Had we done the right thing? Should we go to the police, or tell a teacher, or someone? To tell you the truth, after a few days had gone by we’d pretty much decided Conor was dead. We’d been trying to work out how long we shoulde wait before we reported his death to the police. And then there he was, maybe not looking in the best of health, but not dead at least.
After study hall we hurried out after Conor but he’d disappeared. For the next few days we saw him around school but he was like a ghost, as soon as we got close to him he’d vanish. He stopped taking the bus to school and a couple of times I’d seen him climb out of that station wagon by the front of school. One time I cornered him outside the canteen. “Hey,” I said. “Wait.”
He looked at me for a few short seconds. “I got to go,” he said and hurried away from me. And the days passed and carried on as normal and it was though the things we’d seen had never happened. As though nothing terrible had happened. So I was pretty damn surprised to get home from school one day a few weeks later to find Conor standing shyly in my driveway.
I walked up to him slowly and if you want to know, I was pleased to see him. There was something about Conor that I can’t even describe, but he made me feel the oddest things. But mainly, when I wasn’t worrying if he was dead or alive the very thought of him made me feel excited about being alive because maybe I’d see him again and hold him again and kiss him again. And I tried not to let all this show in my face as I walked towards him. He smiled at me and I had that stupid feeling only idiots in love get.
“Tegan,” he said.

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:38:03 GMT

Yay, managed to write quite a bit for Nano this evening so that's good. Probably won't have time to write any tomorrow as I either have to work or go to a graduate seminar (if I can get out of working) and then to the pub.

My mother sighed and grabbed a hold of my elbow. She propelled me back towards the house and Walter. “Mom,” I protested. “I gotta go. I have to find Mason.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up dear,” she said pushing me through the front door towards Walter who wiped his brow and pursed his lips. “This is Tegan,” my mom said. “My pride and joy.” I hate it when parents are sarcastic. It doesn’t wear well on them.
“It’s a real treat to meet you Tegan,” Walter said. “Your mom’s told me so much about you.”
“I bet,” I said. Walter put his hand out and I looked at it for a moment before shaking it. His hand was soft and damp to touch. For one of those horrendous moments when your mind breaks the leash I imagined those soft damp hands on my mother. Good god, I need some kind of therapy.
“It’s nice to meet you Walter,” I said trying to wipe my hand on the back of my trousers without him seeing.
“Your mom tells me you’re quite the artist.”
“Really? Well, sure. Look, I have to go. I’m real sorry.” I turned my back on Walter and my mom and walked back out into the night. I heard their voices fading into silence as I got further and further away.
Head down I trudged the deserted sidewalks of the neighborhood. I wish my mom hadn’t told Walter I was an artist. Believe me, I’m not. It just shows how few reasons my mom has to be proud of me and indulge in that mom bragging they love so much. Back when I was kid, maybe twelve or thirteen, I used to draw a lot. Stupid comic books mainly about the adventures of this teenage girl who’s a total superhero and can kick anyone’s ass in a fight even Batman and Spiderman and Superman, especially Superman. And this one time I won some stupid competition in middle school to design the cover for some book about the history of our town. It wasn’t a bestseller, believe me. But all that was a while ago, and I don’t draw anymore. I guess that’s pretty much the only bragging material I ever gave my mom, and now she’s using it to get into some old guy’s pants.
I walked faster remembering how when I was little I used to get afraid when I was walking at night of the gap between streetlights. I was convinced that the patches of bright light beneath streetlights were like safe places and once you left them the bad things that lurked in the darkness could get you and do whatever it is the bad things do. I know, it’s stupid. But I was like five or something, all five year olds are pretty stupid, they can barely write their own names for christ’s sake.
And somehow as I walked along I was pretending I was scared of the dark patches again, just like I was a little kid. I was hurrying from streetlight to streetlight when out of the darkness someone stepped towards me and said my name.
I didn’t scream. I don’t scream, it’s not like I’m Mason. The girl stood in front of me and said my name again. I scowled at her recognising her as that girl from the party the other night, Mason’s stalker.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“What are you doing out here?” she said.
“I’m looking for Mason.”
“I told you to take care of him. You’ll miss him when he’s gone.”
“Yeah. Have you seen him?”
“You’re looking in the wrong place.”
“So you have seen him.”
She smiled at me and said, “You have to look after Mason. No one else will.”
“Yeah, I get that already. Do you know where he is?”
She didn’t answer at first, instead she just stared at me with these dark eyes that made me feel kinda nervous, which I know is pretty stupid. I mean she’s just a thirteen year old girl. Why should I be scared of her? “He’s in the woods,” she said abruptly.
A car sped passed its headlights illuminating the light rain that started to fall. By the time it had passed by the girl was gone. I looked around in the darkness but there was no sign of her. I was really starting to dislike that girl.
The woods? What the hell was Mason doing in the woods on a dark, cold night? Mason’s scared of the woods during the daytime. I’m not joking, he really is. He won’t walk through the woods alone even on like a bright summer’s day. I stood there, by the side of the road, in the dark, feeling the rain on my face and thought about whether I was really going to wander through the woods at night, looking for Mason. Maybe I should just go home. Mason would probably be there now, watching some sitcom rerun and waiting for me to come home. Why should I believe what that weird girl said.
But, she’d known where he was at the party the other night, and somehow I knew she was telling the truth. So it looked like I was going to be spending my Friday night walking through some woods in the rain. I was so going to kill Mason when I found him.

An hour later I was even more pissed at Mason. The rain was pouring down and the paths through the woods had turned to muddy lakes in which I was sliding about. I was soaked through and it was pitch black in the woods. No streetlights to guide me home, no moon, not even any stars. Just total complete darkness.
“Mason,” I shouted for like the hundredth time. Maybe the tone of my voice was keeping him in hiding. Here’s the other thing. I was kinda lost. I mean not totally lost. I had a vague notion of which way I was going and which way I had to go to get back to town, but I kept wandering of the path in the dark and ending up fighting my way through bushes and the branches of trees.
If I was in a movie or a TV show or something, at this point I would say, “Well, at least things can’t get any worse,” at which point things would immediately get worse. But I wasn’t in a TV show, and I’m not a total moron. I know things can always get worse. So I didn’t say it. But things get worse anyway. That was about the time I started to suspect someone was following me. At first I wasn’t sure. I mean with the rain and everything it was pretty hard to hear, but I kept hearing that unmistakeable sound of branches breaking under foot, and once I thought I heard someone speak. I looked behind me but in the darkness it was pointless. Not for the first time that night I wished I’d brought a torch with me.
So I started walking faster and faster, not caring about the branches hitting me in the face, or the times I slipped in the mud, or the fact that I was so far off of the path and into such thick woods that basically I was running straight through bushes. I stopped for a moment to listen, and there above the sound of the rain falling onto the trees I heard someone running not too far away. And then I thought about that scene in Evil Dead where the trees kill that lady. Now, I don’t scare easy, but it’s common sense not to think about that when you’re alone in the woods at night with someone following you. It’s like looking down when you’re climbing a tall building or whatever and someone’s told you not to look down.
I was running again, wondering how long it would take me to run all the way through the woods and clean out the other side somewhere in the next county. But I knew I wouldn’t make it that far. My legs were already aching pretty bad and I was out of breath. This is stupid I thought. No one actually ever gets pursued through the woods on a dark, stormy night and killed by a hook whieldiing psychopath or whatever. That stuff just happens in the movies. And yet here I was, being chased through the woods on a dark, stormy night by some hook whielding maniac. Okay, I had no proof at this point that it was a hook whielding maniac, but whoever it was they were chasing a seventeen year old girl through dense woodland at night. It probably wasn’t Ed McMann following me with his oversized check book.
So this was all going through my mind, hook whielding maniac, Ed McMann, etcetera, when I slid in the mud, reached out to grab onto something, anything, to hold onto, twisted my ankle and ended up on my back in the mud. I tried to get back to my feet but with the mud making it difficult to do anything but slide around, and the agonising pain in my ankle I didn’t make much progress. I stopped trying to move and listened. The rain was still coming down heavily and for a minute or two that was all I could hear. Then, out of nowhere, I heard someone else breathing, gasping for air like they’d been running. They got closer and closer. So close now that I could hear their footsteps. And I realised that they were standing pretty much directly behind me. Whoever it was walked slowly past me. I didn’t make a sound. They stopped again and stood still listening to the night. I dared to look up at them but all I could make out was a dark shape. They moved a little as though looking for something, and suddenly whoever it was standing on my hand. I gasped in pain as my hand sunk into the mud beneath the sneaker pushing it down. I gritted my teeth.
There was a sudden, unexpected burst of light which startled me. I realised that the person standing over me, hell, standing on me was lighting a cigarette. I could see that this was going to be one of those situations that really test my patience. I looked up, and in the flame of his lighter I recognised the person standing over me.
“Conor?” I said.
He pretty much jumped right out of his skin then. To be fair to the boy he was standing alone in the dark woods when someone started calling his name from beneath him. “Conor,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me.”
He’d kinda started to run away when he hesitated and peered into the darkness, “Tegan?” he said.
“It’s me.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m on the ground.”
He walked closer following the sound of my voice. He bent over me and there his face was in the night, his dark hair soaked through. I couldn’t help myself, I smiled at him. “What are you doing down there?”
“I fell over. I hurt my ankle.”
“Is it hurt bad?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess it hurts.”
“Which ankle is it?”
I gestured with my hand and he knelt down in the mud beside me. He rolled up the bottom of my trouser leg which was covered in mud and took my sneaker off. I felt his hands on my ankle and in the dark far far away from the rest of the world it felt strange. Like I was a princess in some dumb kid’s story, and he was the prince. And the feeling of his hand on my skin, part of me wanted to run my hands through his hair and pull his warm mouth towards me.
“It’s pretty swollen,” he said. “You think you can walk on it?”
“Well I can’t lie here all night.”
“I know. But with the mud and everything it’ll be tough for you to walk on a bad leg.”
He put my sneaker back on and straightened out my trouser leg. Then he crouched in the mud right next to me and said, “Listen, I saw like a drier place a little way back. We can shelter there for a while if you want.”
“Okay.”
“Here,” he said. “Let me help you.” And he took hold of my hand and my arm and gently pulled me to my feet. He put his arm around me and we walked slowly through the trees. I winced as I put my weight on the bad ankle. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said and held onto Conor a little tighter.
We’d been walking maybe five minutes when Conor pulled me under the low branches of a tree. I guess some kind of creeper had grown over the branches forming a little shelter. The ground beneath us was pretty dry and we sat down on the fallen pine needles, our backs resting on a log. “You want my jacket?” Conor asked me.
I turned to face him and smiled at him in the darkness. “No,” I said. “But thanks.”
“You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing out in the woods at night in a rain storm?” he said.
“You want to tell me why you were following me through the woods at night?”
Conor sighed in this exasperated way. “I saw you,” he said.
“When?”
“You walked down my street on the way to the woods. I saw you from my bedroom window. I thought you were maybe coming to see me again.”
“Oh no, don’t worry. I made the vow never to call at your house again.”
“Yeah. So I saw you walk past and I thought...I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I felt bad. I was rude to you earlier. And I don’t know, it seems I keep being rude to you. So I wanted to say sorry I guess.”
“Then why did you follow me all the way into the woods?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I wanted to see where you were going, what you were doing. If I’d known you were just going to stumble blindly through the woods for an hour maybe I wouldn’t have bothered.”
“Ha,” I said. “So why did you want to know where I was going?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here?”
“I’m looking for Mason.”
“Mason? Why would he be out here?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. And his stalker told me he was in the woods.”
“Mason has a stalker?”
“No, not really. There’s just this girl who keeps appeariing out of nowhere telling me stuff about Mason, where he is, what he’s doing. I figure she must want to jump him pretty bad.”
“What is it with you and Mason?” Conor asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. You always seem to be saving him or something. Are you sure you don’t want to jump him?”
“Mason? Hell no!”
“Oh come on. Why else would you be lost in the woods late at night if you weren’t in love with him?”
“Because he’s my friend. He’s Mason. I’m Tegan. It’s what we do.”
“So he’s not your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“How’s your foot?”
“It hurts.”
“Will you get in trouble if you don’t go home tonight?”
“Hell no. My mom’s out with Walter.”
“Who’s Walter?”
“I have no idea. But no, I won’t get in trouble. Why?”
“I think we may have to stay out here. Wait for first light and the rain to stop. With your foot hurt and the rain and the dark, it’d be dangerous to try and get home tonight. You walked pretty deep into the woods you know?”
I shrugged. “So will you get in trouble?” I asked. “You know, if you don’t get home tonight.”
“Some.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But so long as my dad doesn’t find out I was out with a girl it’ll be alright.”
“Is he pretty strict?”
Conor didn’t answer and we sat in silence listening to the rain falling through the trees. After a while I said, “What about Mason? What if he’s hurt or something?”
“There’s nothing we can to help him. We’d never find him in the dark anyway, even without your ankle being hurt. He’s probably at home in bed, like everyone else.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“We should try and get some sleep.”
“Okay,” I said. I rested my head against his shoulder and I felt his whole body tense up. Then after a minute he put his arm around me. I took hold of his hand. “Conor?”
“What?” he said.
“What’s your deal? I mean you don’t talk to anyone at school and I don’t know anything about you.”
“Tegan. I don’t want to talk about myself. There’s nothing worth telling.”
“One thing. Just tell me one thing about yourself that I don’t already know I’ll stop asking.”
“Okay,” he said. “One thing. Man, I don’t know. Alright, when I was a little kid I used to love those Teenage Mutant Turtle movies. I’d watch them over and over on video till I wore the tape out.”
“Great. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with a teenage mutant turtle fan. I feel a lot better.”
“I bet you liked loads of dumb stuff when you were a kid.”
“I did not.”
“You so did. Tell me. One thing, one stupid thing you liked when you were a kid.”
“Punky Brewster.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“Only like the single greatest TV show ever. You never saw it?”
“No.”
“I guess you were busy watching those ninja turtles.”
He laughed and I felt the movement of his chest as he did. I wanted to hold him tighter, so tight that it would be like we were one whole person together.
We talked a while longer, about other dumb stuff from when we were little, and movies, and he told me some things about himself, without really realising it, friends he used to have before he moved to Nebraska, the dog he had as a child. Stupid stuff that wasn’t stupiud because it’s who we are. And I guess after a few hours we drifted off to sleep holding on to each other, dreaming of each other. Never for a minute thinking about Mason.

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:54:34 GMT

Conor sighed and looked up and down the street. “Alright,” he said. He followed over to the car where Mason sat peering through the window, the expression on his face like the punch line to some dumb joke.
Conor opened the door and climbed in. “You’ve got the keys,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
He shook his head and started messing around with the wires beneath the steering wheel. After a couple of minutes the car’s engine started and Conor smiled up at me. “Get in,” he said. So I climbed into the back and Conor pulled onto the road driving steadily. “Where are we going?” he asked.
I let Mason sullenly give him directions back to Mason’s house, while I stared out the window, looking up every driveway and through every window of every house we passed. We slowed down as we approached Mason’s house. He jumped out and ran inside to replace the car keys before his mom got home. Conor swung the car around and accelerated away from Mason’s street. “You like sitting back there?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” I told him, watching his eyes watching me in the rear view mirror.
“I feel like I’m driving Miss Daisy.”
“You’re not black,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“If it’s your retarded way of asking me to sit up front with you, why don’t you just ask me,” I said.
“I don’t care where you sit,” he said.
This is so typical of the way all the boys in school act. Always getting petulant if you call them on anything. So I was tempted to stay in the back of the car in splendid isolation. But if you want to know the truth, I wanted to sit next to Conor. And I wanted to lean into him, rest my head on his shoulder and whisper to him, telling him to keep on driving out of the town and across the state and to keep going until we hit the ocean.
I scrambled into the front and we sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Finally he said, “Where are we going?”
“We need to dump the car somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. What am I? A criminal mastermind? I guess it’s gotta be somewhere the cops’ll find it sooner or later. And not too far out of town seeing as we’re going to have to walk back.”
“I know just the place,” Conor said.
“I bet you do.”
He laughed at that. “You think I’m some total juvenile delinquent don’t you?”
“No. Well, maybe.”
“I’m not the one who goes around stealing cars.”
“It’s not stolen. It’s Mason’s parents’ car. We just have to make it look like it was stolen so Mason won’t get busted for taking it without permission and, you know, driving it into a tree.”
“So you’re doing all this just to help your friend?”
“Sure. Mason is...how can I put this? He’s an idiot. If he didn’t have me looking out for him he’d be...dead, or in jail, or like sold into slavery or something.”
Conor glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and I saw his lips turn upwards in a quick smile. My god, I thought, he’s totally falling madly in love with me. Maybe I should have used Mason’s helplessness before to let me people see my caring, sensitive side. Like guys who use babies or puppies to get girls into bed with them.
Conor turned off the main road out of town onto some tiny dirt track. He started going real fast sending a cloud of dust behind. And then he stopped the car suddenly. We were parked on some wasteland at the edge of the river. A rusted bridge caught the light from the setting sun.
“Here we are,” Conor said.
“Are you sure they’ll find the car out here?” I asked.
“Sure. People come out to here fish most weeks.”
“Do you fish?” I asked.
“No. I just like coming out here sometimes. It reminds me of this place back home. Where I grew up. I used to...” He stopped talking and got out of the car abruptly. I quickly rubbed the steering wheel and the door handles and stuff with the sleeve of my top and then I got out. Conor was already a little way back down the dirt track. I hurried after.
“Hey,” I said. He slowed down a little but didn’t stop. I soon caught him up. We walked down the dirt track side by side, not saying a word. I tried to think of a topic of conversation that would allow me to showcase my highly developed wit and other wicked skills of conversation. But I drew a blank. Finally I said, “So where are you from?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said curtly.
“What?”
“Anything. Where I’m from, what I’m doing here, who I am. That’s not your business.”
“Fine. It’s not like I care. I was just being polite. You know, making small talk.”
“Yeah, well don’t.”
I sighed loudly and resolved not to speak in Conor’s presence ever again. We turned onto the main road and headed back toward town wordlessly. The light had faded and as the cars headed out of town their headlight blinded us over and over. About twenty silent minutes later I was near my side of town.
“I live up there,” I said gesturing vaguely. Conor opened his mouth to say something but before he could speak I said, “I know, I know. You don’t care, right? I’m just saying goodnight Conor.” I turned without waiting for him to speak and walked away.
Behind me I heard him mutter, “Unfuckingbelievable.”
I spun round angrily and yelled at him. “What’s your fucking problem?”
“What’s my problem? How about you turn up and my house for no reason demanding I hotwire some car then you make me drive it out of town and walk all the way back and you don’t even say thank you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings? How terrible. And I didn’t make you do anything. So fuck you.”
I marched off up the street without looking back. I guess we’re unlikely to embark on a whirlwind romance now.

When I got home Conor was sitting in my bedroom reading one of the dumb kids’ books he’s always reading. You know like the Hardy Boys or Nancy fucking Drew or whoever. Maybe I oughta point out that Mason isn’t stupid. He can like read and stuff. He’s probably pretty smart really, but for reasons I don’t know all he’ll read are the same books he read when he as a little kid, over and over again. It’s another of his idiosyncracies that I find either charming or irritating depending on my mood. That day it was definitely pretty irritating.
“Where’ve you been?” Mason said.
“Where do you think I’ve been?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was dumping your parents’ car. You remember? The one you stole and drove into a tree.”
“Did he go with you?”
“You mean Conor?”
“Yes, I mean Conor.”
“Sure, Conor came with me. Have you got something against Conor?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“He’s...” Mason shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t like him.”
“Whatever,” I said. I stood there staring at Mason, he wouldn’t meet my eye. Finally he said, “I guess I’ll go home then.”
“Fine,” I said. “You do that.”
“I’m going to.”
He stood up and wandered over to the doorway where he lingered for a moment. “Tegan,” he said.
“What?” I said sharply.
He shrugged, “Nothing.” He walked out of the room. I lay down on the bed where he’d been lying. I knew even then I shouldn’t have let him leave then. But I was tired, and here’s the truth. I was tired of Mason.

Chapter Three

The next day Mason wasn’t in school, which was no shocker, you know Mason. But he wasn’t sitting in my room when I got home. Even so, I wasn’t worried about him. Not really. It was Friday so I waited for Mason to call full of plans for the night. By the time it got to about seven I started to wonder why he hadn’t called. When I rang his house his mom answered. She sounded real distracted and said she’d thought Mason was with me. I lied and told her that I’d arranged to meet him somewhere but I’d forgotten where it was. She didn’t seem real interested in what I was saying and she hung up without saying goodbye.
My mom was shouting to me from downstairs but I wasn’t listening to her. I was thinking about Mason. Where the hell was he? I’m not joking, I’m like his only friend. He never hangs out with anyone else. And he doesn’t usually go anywhere on his own. Unless he’s been drinking. Oh. Unless he’s been drinking.
I grabbed my jacket and headed downstairs past my mom and some old guy in a brown suit who smiled at me and opened his mouth in a greeting. I was out the door before he’d got any words out of his mouth. The front door opened behind me and I heard my mom hurrying towards me, her heels clacking on the tarmac. “Tegan! You wait there a minute young lady.”
Ugh, I thought. I stopped and turned round, raising an eyebrow at my mother as she approached. I guess with it being pretty dark and all it was a wasted gesture.
“Where the hell are you running off to? Walter’ll think you’re so rude. He’ll think I’ve raised a terrible child.”
“Who the hell is Walter?” I asked.
“My date.”
“Walter? Really?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. You’re dating him.”
“Yes I am. And now you’re going to come back inside and say hello to him politely like the well mannered young lady I raised.”
“What well mannered young lady are you thinking of?” I asked.
My mother sighed and grabbed a hold of my elbow. She propelled me back towards the house and Walter. “Mom,” I protested. “I gotta go. I have to find Mason.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up dear,” she said.

</lj-cut?

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:36:02 GMT

Spent most of the day (okay, some of the day) working on my nano and have just about caught up I think. I don't really know what's going on in the story but I don't care. As long as something's happening.

By this time Mason was passed out on the floor outside the bathroom, with the word dick written on his forehead in magic marker. Before that though Mason had a pretty busy evening. I’ll explain later how I know the details of Mason’s night given that he was obviously too smashed to remember anything and I was sitting on the doorstep waiting to go home.
Soon after we’d arrived at Chuck Johnson’s suburban palace (I kid you not, it’s huge) I wandered outside to smoke and be apart from everybody else. Meanwhile Mason, using that highly tuned skill of his, had deduced where Mr. Johnson’s well-stocked liqour cabinet was. Of course, it was locked but Mason’s gotten pretty good at picking locks. He’s like Houdini if he knows there’s alcohol the other side of a locked door. So Mason was sitting in the leather armchair in Mr. Johnson’s den, drinking Mr. Johnson’s very old very expensive cognac. You know why old people are so obsessed with drinking stuff that supposedly gets better with age? So they can lie to themselves that life’s like that.
Anyways, Mason was draining the dregs of the bottle and feeling like it might be nap time when the door of the den burst open and two people fell into the room, just shadowy figures in the unlit room. Mason heard them murmuring to each other urgently and the sound of kissing and rustling. Now Mr. Johnsons’ leather armchair had its back to the rest of the room, facing, as it did, the stupidly big flatscreen TV that adorned the wall. So in the dark, hidden by Mr. Johnson’s over-sized chair Mason was pretty much invisible in the room. Mason sat there trying not to breathe or even move lest the stupid leather of the chair squeaked. He listened intently as the boy kissed the girl, the oldest story in the world. Knowing Mason he was probably wondering when it would be his turn, when he’d get to be the boy kissing the girl. Don’t get me wrong, Mason’s not like a virgin or anything like that. But people hook up with Mason very (very) rarely. It’s not that he’s the elephant man, he’s not uncute in his scrawny, nervy, scruffy, way. But given that most of the time he’s mumbling his way through a drunken haze to the point in the night where he passes out or vomits or both, he’s not that attractive a prospect. So this is probably what was going through Mason’s mind at this point, you know a greatest hits of Smiths’ lyrics.
“Hey,” the girl said uncertainly.
“Shut up,” said the boy. Mason hadn’t recognised the girl’s voice but he knew who the boy was. I say boy, man is the right word. Nick Walsh was like Peter Pan gone to seed. He’d been kept back in pretty much every grade so by the time he left high school he was pushing twenty. By now he was nearer thirty but he still hung around with the high school kids. He could get away with this because he sold them drugs and would buy beer for kids who didn’t have a fake ID. And there he was, at every party any high school kid threw getting wasted and getting aggressive and getting laid. I think there may have been a point like five years ago that other kids thought he was cool because he was old and had this big pick up truck and a bigger range of pharmeceuticals than Superdrug. But by this point in the history of the world everybody pretty much thought he was this creepy older guy who hung around with high school kids and should maybe stop. But they tolerated him for the aforementioned drug and drink reasons. Basically he was an asshole. Even Mason knew this.
There was some kind of crashing like a lamp being knocked over and the bang of something hitting the wall and beneath the muffled sound of the girl’s voice trapped beneath Nick Walsh’s hand on her mouth. Mason poked his head over the top of the armchair. In the dark all he could make out were dark shapes over by the wall. He blinked and felt faintly nauseous. Mason didn’t like this at all. Still he was pretty drunk and so braver than he’d normally be. He cleared his throat and said, “Are you okay?”
There was a silence for maybe thirty seconds in which Mason wondered if he was having another of those drink induced dreams that seem so real. Then the light was flicked on and Mason blinked. He looked at Nick Walsh, tall and thick set and as mean as a snake, and the girl who was maybe sixteen and blonde with her clothes unbuttoned and hanging off of her.
“Who the fuck are you?” Nick said menacingly.
“Um, nobody,” Mason said.
“You just like to watch, is that it?” Nick said.
“No. I didn’t see anything,” Mason said anxiously. “I guess I was asleep and I heard something and I...”
“What did you hear?” Nick asked.
“Nothing. Really, I just...”
“Shut up,” Nick said. “Man, you make me sick. Hiding in the dark spying on people. How would you like it?”
Mason didn’t answer at first, but the neverending silence and Nick’s angry gaze made it clear he was waiting for an answer. “I wouldn’t,” he said finally.
“Fucking right you wouldn’t,” Nick said. “Come here.” Mason didn’t move. “I said come here asshole. Don’t make me say it again.”
Reluctantly, Mason got to his feet and shuffled over to where Nick and the girl were standing. Nick grabbed the back of Mason’s head roughly. “Kiss her,” he said.
Mason shook his head faintly and murmured, “I...no...I don’t think that, well I don’t know here and...”
“Kiss her.”
“Nick!” said the girl, sounding understandably pissed. “I’m not kissing this loser.”
“You’ll do what you’re told,” Nick said angrily.
“The fuck I will,” she replied. She turned to leave but Nick grabbed her hair and pulled her back forcefully. She screamed sharply in pain. “Get the fuck off!” she shouted.
“You both shut up!” Nick bellowed. Then he pushed their two heads together with such force that they both cried out as their faces collided. For a moment there was just silence. Mason and the girl and Nick all breathing sharply, the sound amplified. Then the girl put her lips on Mason’s mouth and started to kiss him softly, her tongue finding its way past Mason’s teeth into his mouth which felt as dry as the desert. With their eyes closed, kissing in the dark time passed and they both felt Nick remove his hands from the back of their heads. They both heard Nick murmuring something under his breath in a voice as rough as sandpaper, as disturbing the devil’s own voice.
Mason and the girl kept kissing, kept their eyes closed. Suddenly the girl winced sharply and Mason opened his eyes. Nick was undressing the girl roughly. “Don’t stop,” he muttered. The girl looked at Mason, even in the dark her eyes shone. She leaned in again and kissed Mason’s lips. Mason stepped back. “Stop,” he said. “Stop.”
Nick looked at Mason and shook his head. “We’re just having some fun, aren’t we Emily?” he hissed. Emily didn’t say anything until she felt his hand on the back of her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Nick looked at Mason who shook his head and said, “No we’re not.”
Nick whispered in Emily’s ear and she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she stepped towards Mason and put her hand on her chest. “Don’t stop,” she said. “We can...let’s...I’ll..don’t stop please.”
Mason hesitated. He looked at the girl’s face so close to his own, and then Mason kissed her. He felt the girl’s body shaking against his own and he really wished he was someone else somewhere else. After a while it felt to Mason like they’d been stood there in that dark room, lips together, for his whole life. He wondered how much longer this would go on. About then Mason felt Nick’s hand grabbing the back of his head again. Nick pulled Mason away from the girl and punched him once in the stomach.
“Get out you little freak,” Nick said. He dragged Mason across the room and pushed him out the door before slamming it shut again.
Mason leant against the closed door, bent over with his arms cradling his stomach. Two boys walked past in mathcing Blink 182 T-Shirts. “Are you gonna hurl again man?” one of them asked Mason.
Mason shook his head faintly and the two boys walked away laughing. He looked at the closed door, wondering what was on the other side of it, wondering whether he should burst in there and rescue the girl from the clutches of the bad guy. But Mason knew that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t save people.
Instead he wandered from room to room looking at the couples making out on couches and in corners, kids shouting animatedly about some new film they loved, about the Nirvana box set, about the girl they just had to have. As he went he swiped drinks at random, knocking them back quickly even for Mason. By the time he’d walked all they way through the ground floor of the house, and negotiated his way through the various people on the stairs, Mason was well past oblivion. He opened the door to what he thought was the bathroom, but the darkness and the quick shout to get the fuck out, made it clear he was wrong. The next door was locked, so Mason slumped down on the floor outside, his back to the wall. Within a couple of minutes he’s drifted in the deepest sleep. About twenty minutes later some kids rifled through his pockets and finding only a few quarters dropped them on Mason’s lap in disgust. And Mason slept for hours, oblivious to the whole world and everything in it.

Enough about Mason, back to me. I was standing alone in the dark of the back yard looking at someone looking at me. Whoever it was getting closer and closer to me. I glanced back at the house wondering if I should go back inside. Fuck that, I thought. I looked back at whoever it was getting nearer and breathed a sigh of relief. It was just some kid, not like the Boston Strangler or whatever. For a moment in the night, with just the moonlight for illumination the kid looked like the girl from my dream, but already my memory of the dream was starting to fade.
“Hey,” she said as she walked up to me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Got a cigarette?”
“Aren’t you kinda young to be smoking?” I said.
“Aren’t you?”
“How old are you? Like twelve?”
“I’m older than that.”
“Whatever,” I said. “What are you doing out here this late? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“You should take better care of your friends,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Mason. You should look out for Mason.”
“I do,” I said irritably. “All I fucking do is look out for Mason. Is he okay?”
And then she told me all about Mason’s night, his cognac stealing ways, and his adventure with Nick Walsh. “Did you like spend your whole night following Mason?” I asked her. She shrugged. “Have you got a thing for Mason?” She shook her head.
“You have to look after the people you care about else bad things happen to them,” she said and walked past me heading inside.
For a moment I stood feeling the cold night all around me, then I followed her indoors and headed upstairs to find Mason. He was still asleep on the ground. I shook his arm slowly.
“Mason,” I said, “hey, Mason.”
He opened his eyes slowly and looked up at me. He frowned, “What are you doing here?” he said. He looked around. “Wait, where am I?”
“Come on,” I said. “It’s time to go home.” I helped Mason to his feet, then I spat on my hand and rubbed his forehead where some comedy genius had written the word dick. It didn’t come off. So we walked down the stairs and out the door leaving the noise and the warmth behind us.
Above us clouds raced across the night sky hiding the stars then revealing them again, like same lame old magician who only knows one trick. The wind was so strong it felt like someone was walking alongside us, pushing and pulling at us like a lunatic.
Mason didn’t say anything all the way home. My arm wrapped around him to stop him falling over (which is like Mason’s favorite pastime) we hurried through the night. When we got to Mason’s house I took him in through the back door and down into the basement so as not to wake his parents. I laid him down on the couch and covered him with a blanket, then I turned the light off and headed for the door.
“Tegan,” Mason said in this quiet voice.
“What?”
“Don’t go.”
“It’s late Mason, and I got to get up for school. I’m tired.”
“Please. Don’t leave me alone.”
I sighed, then slumped down on the couch next to Mason. “Move over,” I said. He moved a little and I lay down beside him, pulling some of the blanket over me. I put my arm across Mason’s chest and fell asleep a while later listening to Mason’s breathing, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. I gotta tell you, that’s something I really miss now.

Chapter Two

I wasn’t stalking Conor, you should know that. It just happened that I saw him around school a lot over the next few days. We have classes together for god’s sake! Even so, it seemed like I’d see him every five minutes. I guess he was always there, I just never noticed him before. Of course Conor didn’t notice me. He’d walk past me in the corridor and I’d glare at him but he wouldn’t even glance in my direction. In class my eyes bored into the back of his head but he was oblivious absorbed in something I couldn’t see. Still I started to notice things about Conor. I’ve already told you about his legendary silence. I know you’re going to think this is like totally impossible but I swear to god I think he’d go through the entire school day without saying a word. I never heard him speak, or even mumble or whisper or hum or anything. He had this way of walking as well that was actually real quick but seemed slow. He’d kind of drift around the place and then be gone round the corner. He never looked directly at anyone. His eyes would dart from the floor to the ceiling without catching anybody’s gaze.
Despite all this I still liked the look of. Hell, I liked the fact that he didn’t talk and avoided human contact. It’s a pretty appealing way of life sometimes. So I watched him and thought about talking and wondered what bands he liked and if we watched the same TV shows and what his parents were like and if he was an only child, and if he had a girlfriend.
Anyway, it was nearly the end of the week and I’d decided to go home after lunch. It’s not like I’m ever going to use math is it? I was heading for my locker to drop off some heavy textbooks which were like giving me bad posture when I saw the girl from the party the other night. You know, the one I’d spoken to in Chuck Johnson’s backyard who I pretty much figured was crazy in love with Mason. She was just waking down the corridor wrapped up in the big coat. I don’t know why, I decided I’d go and talk to her. Mainly in the hope that I could mock Mason about his thirteen year old secret admirer. So I picked up the pace and hurried after. When I got to the stairwell I couldn’t see her so I figured she’d gone down the stairs. I headed down after her when out of nowhere Conor pushed past me and ran like the place was on fire. I decided to follow Conor instead.
He ran all the way down the stairs and burst through the door at the moment. By the time I got outside he was leaning against the wall panting like he was about to have a coronary. “Hey,” I said. He looked at me but didn’t say anything, quelle surprise. So I walked over to him. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“Oh. So what’s with the running? You trying out for some new olympic event? Fastest school evacuation?”
“I thought I saw someone I know, but I guess I didn’t see them.”
“I see. So, I’m Tegan,” I said.
“I really don’t care,” he replied.
“Well you’re not gonna win Miss Congeniality with those manners.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but could you just fuck off. Please.”
I stared at him open mouthed and tried to think of some crushing comeback. “You fuck off!” I said and marched away to annoint myself the 21st century Oscar Wilde.
All the way home, and it’s a pretty long walk believe me, I cursed Conor in every language I knew. Which is basically English as Mr. Guttierez won’t teach us to swear in Spanish class. Now I’m not one of those girls who is attracted to mean boys. If someone is mean to me I don’t like them. I definitely don’t sleep with them. Even so I couldn’t help thinking about Conor. Where did he get off being such an asshole? Why was he such an asshole?
Out of nowhere a car horn sounded right behind me, I swung already real mad. I made a disgusted noise and scowled as my father got out of his Volvo.
“Tegan,” he said flatly.
I nodded at him like an acquaintance you pass on the street, which, if we’re being honest, is a pretty accurate description of our relationship.
“You need a ride anywhere?” he asked.
“No.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Oh. Why aren’t you in school? You’re not sick are you?”
“What’s it to you?”
We stood there in silence on the sidewalk. Grey clouds above and the wind shaking the already bare branches of the trees. Early afternoon in suburbia on a weekday, you may as well be in a graveyard. No cars drove past, no people walked by, even the birds couldn’t bring themselves to squawk.
“You want to go to my apartment? I’ll make you a sandwich. You can watch cable.”
Oh Jesus. For a minute there I started to feel sorry for my father as I pictured his cramped apartment with the one armchair and the brown walls. “I’ve eaten,” I said.
“Can I give you a ride home then?”
“Jesus!”
“What?”
“We’re like round the corner from my house. It’ll take me less than a minute to walk there.”
“I could give you a ride. Save your legs.”
Save my legs, I thought. What is he talking about. “Fine,” I said.
We walked over to his volvo and climbed in. He scrambled to clear the passenger seat of candy wrappers and empty Burger King boxes. I tried to remember how many heart attacks my father had had but they all seem to blur into one unending memory of sitting with my mother in dirty waiting rooms reading last years news in magazines for hour after unending as we waited indifferently for the doctors to say whether he was dead or alive.
He started the car and in my head I counted, one, two, three, round the corner, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and we were there. It was like the shortest car ride I’d ever taken.
“So how’s school?” he asked.
“It’s shit.”
“Tegan?”
“Yes?”
“I was wondering if maybe one evening you’d like to go out for dinner?”
“Oh, I’m real busy at the moment. I’ll have my secretary check my diary and get back to you.” I got out of the car and shut the door. Through the window my father mouther goodbye and waved. I forced my features into some kind of grimace smile and raised my hand like I was being sworn in in a courtroom and then turned away and walked inside.
I closed the front door behind me and stood there listening to the sound of my father’s car getting further away. I know what you’re thinking. I’m either a really terrible daughter or my father was a really terrible father. But I don’t think either is true. I mean I’m not like gonna win daughter of the year or anything. And it’s not like my father beat us or stole or did all those bad things fathers do in TV movies. He did leave my mom when I was about one but he paid child support and everything. It’s just I can’t be bothered with the whole thing. I don’t want to go to Howard Johnsons and stare vacantly at the menu for two hourse with some fat old guy I have nothing in common with. Just because, you know, he got laid nearly twenty years ago doesn’t mean there’s some bond between us.
Still I felt bad as I walked up the stairs and into my room. I looked around, something was different. Then I realised Mason wasn’t there. He hadn’t been in school today, so I’d just assumed he’d be lying on the bed watching trash on TV. I lay down on the bed and looked at the ceiling. There was still so much of the day to get through before it would end. I picked up the telephone and dialled Mason’s number. It rang and rang without answer. Usually his mom would answer by like the third ring in this breathless voice that always made me think she’d been doing something suspicious before the phone ring. But today there was no answer.
I switched the TV on and started watching this TV movie about this woman whose husband died but then it turns out he didn’t die and they spent a lot of time rowing about this fact. Just as the man was, for like the fifth time, trying to justify faking his own death, abandoning his family and getting a new wife, the phone rang. I picked it up and murmured into.
“Tegan!” Mason’s voice shook down the line. I could already tell he’d screwed up and needed help.
“What is it Mason?”
“You got to help me Tegan. Please? Oh shit shit shit! You gotta help me!”
“What happened?”
“I crashed the car?”
“What car?”
“The car! The fucking car. My parent’s car!”
“Mason! Are you okay? Where are you?”
He told me where he was, and I made him promise to stay there. He was somewhere on the edge of town, near where the woods are. It was going to take me a good half an hour to walk over there. For a moment I thought about calling someone to give me a ride, but I knew Mason would freak out if I showed up with someone else. So I gritted my teeth and walked half away across town.
By the time I got there I was pretty mad at Mason. He’s always screwing up and it’s always me that has to sort it out. Just once I’d like Mason to sort things out.
Mason was sitting forlornly on the sidewalk staring fixedly at his scuffed Converse high tops. He looked up as I approached and I saw he had a small bruise in the middle of his forehead and a drop of dried blood beneath his nose. Behind him his parents SUV was sitting beneath a tree, the headlight smashed.
“Mason,” I said. He wouldn’t look at me, so I sat down beside him on the sidewalk. “Are you hurt?” He shook his head. “Let’s get you home then.”
“The car won’t start.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a fucking mechanic.”
“Come on,” I said angrily.
I stood up and walked over to the car. Mason followed me reluctantly. We got in the car, I turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened. I turned it again, nothing happened. “You’re right,” I said. “It won’t start.”
“I told you that,” Mason said sullenly. I looked at Mason who was staring out the window. His eyes were red like he’d been crying, and leaning closer to him I could smell the beer on his breath.
“Jesus, Mason. Have you been drinking?” He shrugged and I grabbed hold of his arm. “Don’t you know how stupid that is? Why did you take the fucking car?”
“I don’t know,” Mason mumbled. “It’s just, my mom’s gone on some shopping trip with some friends and the keys were just sitting there on the kitchen counter and I was thinking, they never let me drive. When my sister was younger they used to let her drive all the time. And before she got her licence my dad would go out with and show her how to drive and stuff and he never even asked me if wanted to. So I thought I’d take the car out. But then I decided it’d be pretty dumb on account of how I’d been drinking.”
Mason stopped talking then so I looked at him expectantly. Finally I said, “And yet we’re still here.”
“I know. This girl came to the house and asked me if I could drive her home.”
“I don’t know. Just some girl. She said she’d gotten in an argument with her boyfriend and he was refusing to drive her home. I told her I’d been drinking and how I’m not the best of drivers, I really did. But she said it didn’t matter. She said she had to go home because she was afraid of her boyfriend. She didn’t know what he’d do if he found her. I had to help her.”
I looked through the windscreen at the trunk of the tree Mason had driven into. “So then what happened?” I asked.
“She was like giving me directions and stuff and we wound up in this part of town which I guess is where she lives and then, I don’t know, it was like my eyes hurt like I was looking at the sun or something. I closed them and they still hurt and then the next thing I knew I’d driven into this stupid tree. The girl jumped out of the car and ran off. So I tried to start the car but it wouldn’t start and I didn’t know what to do. So I called you.”
This was such a typical Mason story. In which disaster befalls our hapless hero in a way that isn’t quite his fault. “What are we going to do now?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to call the Auto club.”
“But then my parents’ll find out what I did.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Mason, if Dr. Phil has taught me anything you’re acting out has...”
“Shut up Tegan. I’m not acting out. I’m not looking for attention. I just want to be left alone.”
“That’s not true Mason. You’re so desperate for someone, anyone, to notice you, to actually care about you for one moment, that you’ll do anything. You’ll get blind drunk and stagger around at parties, and you’ll steal your parents’ car and drive it into a tree, and you’ll...”
“I said shut up. If you really think I’m that pathetic why don’t you just fuck off!”
“Mason, I’m sorry, okay. Listen, we’ll sort this out. Maybe we can just call a tow truck. I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry.”
Mason sat in silence for the longest time. Finally he said, “Leave me alone.”
After a moment I got out of the car and walked away. I was pretty mad at Mason. He drags me all the way out here and expects me to magically solve another of his crisises and then he tells me to fuck off. I know, I know, what I said to him was pretty harsh. But it was true and he needs to it. I was thinking about Mason so I didn’t see the person walking towards me until I’d pretty much walked right into them.
“Watch where you’re going?” I said.
“I’m sorry.” I stopped and looked. Conor frowned back at me. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you like following me?” he asked.
“No. Are you following me?”
“No,” he said. “I live here.” He pointed to some rundown house on the corner. He looked at the car run into the tree. “Did you crash your car?”
“No,” I replied. “My idiot friend did.”
“Well, you should really get it out of there soon if you don’t want someone to call the cops.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
“I’m just saying, if your friend doesn’t want to deal with the police...”
“It won’t start. It’s broken.”
“Maybe I can help?”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Fine,” he said and started to walke away.
“Wait,” I said and growled internally. Mason would really owe me one after this. “Can you help?”
“I don’t know. I can have a look.”
So we walked over to the car. I opened the door and Mason glared at me furiuosly. “What’s he doing here?” he said.
“He’s going to help.”
“He’s not triple A.”
“Can you pop the hood?” Conor said.
“He speaks?” Mason said.
“Shut up and pop the hood Mason,” I said.
Mason looked at me awkwardly, “I don’t know how.”
Without a word Conor leaned into the car and like that the hood was open. He went and peered in. After a few minutes he said, “Try it now.”
Mason turned the key and the engine burst into life surprising us both. Conor slammed the hood down, “There you go.”
I glared at Mason until he said, “Thank you,” sullenly.
Conor turned to go then stopped. “Hey, what was your name again?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” I said. “You seemed to take it so badly earlier.”
“Please,” he said. And maybe it’s just because I wasn’t used to hearing his voice but swear to you, it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
“Tegan,” I said.
“I’m Conor,” he said. “I’m sorry about being, you know, earlier.”
“That’s okay.”
“Bye Tegan,” he said.
“Bye Conor.” I watched him walk away towards his house and I felt this ache in my gut. I didn’t want him to leave, and then he was gone from sight and Mason was winding his window down and demanding to know what I was doing.
So I drove the car back to Mason’s house and parked it in the garage. We sat there in silence, in the dark. “What am I going to do Tegan?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said feeling suddenly so tired. Like all I wanted to do was fall asleep in the dark of the garage. I closed my eyes.
“Maybe you were right,” Mason said. “The things you said.”
“Mason.” I tried to work out what it was I wanted to tell him but I couldn’t.
“You know what this is like?” he said.
“What?”
“The end of Ferris Bueller. You know Cameron wrecks his dad’s prized sportscar and decides not to hide it. To face up to his parents.”
“Does that make me Ferris Bueller?”
“No way. You’re more like his mean sister who’s always trying to catch Ferris out!”
I punched Mason on the arm.
“So are you going to face up to your parents?”
“I guess I don’t have a choice. Maybe I could run away.”
“I have an idea,” I said.
“Really?”
“Sure. How long till your mom gets back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour.”
“Okay.”
So I drove the car back out of the garage then locked the door. I made Mason set the burglar alarm. Then I smashed the lock with a hammer and we drove away at high speed with the shrill sound of the alarm echoing across the neighborhood.
“This is never going to work,” Mason said.
“Of course it’ll work.” I accelerated and we sped through the suburban streets. Pretty soon we were back we began, parked down the street from Conor’s house. “Wait here,” I told Mason as I got out of the car and sprinted down the street.
I knocked on the door of Conor’s house. After a moment he opened it. He looked at me anxiously. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
“Nice to see you too Conor.”
“Seriously. Don’t ever come to my house again.”
“Believe me. I won’t. I need your help.”
“Did your idiot friend drive into another tree?”
“Ha. Not quite. I need you to hotwire the car.”
“What makes you think I can hotwire a car?”
“I don’t know. You made it work before. Please Conor. Then I’ll leave you alone and never ever come near your house again.”
Conor sighed and looked up and down the street.

I guess I should really go to bed but I can't be bothered. Maybe I can.

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:25:57 GMT

Have returned from spending a couple of days in the bosom of my family where I alternated between being served nice food and drink and wanting to put a fork in my eye due to the world of my family which I'm too tired and weak to describe. Anyway I managed to write some more Nano stuff since getting back whoo-hoo. So I'm only about 5000 words off schedule or something, I can't do the maths. Unfortunately my main character has gone a bit nuts which I find a little distubning oh well...

Mason knocked on my bedroom door in this jittery way he has and then barged right in. “Hey,” I said.
“What?” he said peering in from the doorway.
“You could maybe wait for me to say come in or something?”
“Why?”
“I could be naked!”
“Why would you be naked?”
I shook my head at Mason and wondered how he managed to survive his Masonness.
He stepped into my room and said, “Are you ready?”
I looked at him knowing he’d already been drinking, knowing right now he was feeling pretty good, not the usual nervous Mason who hates being stranded in a crowded room. Of course in a couple of hours he’ll probably be unconscious in the dirt somewhere. I grabbed my jacket and we headed downstairs. My mom was standing by the front door waiting for us.
“Where are you two going?”
I shrugged and Mason smiled vacantly.
“You gotta tell me where you’re going Tegan, I’m your mother.”
“We’re going to the library to study.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me.”
“Do I ask you where you go at night?” I said.
“I’d be happy to tell you if you’d like.”
“No,” I said. “I already have this horrible mental picture. I’m sure the reality of the small town singles scene can only be more disturbing.”
“You’re probably right there,” my mom said. And for like a very brief moment I felt sorry for her. It’s not easy being old and alone I thought. Still, it’s her own fault for only hooking up with really dull old men. I’m serious. My ex-stepfather was like the single dullest man alive. He’d sit for hours watching that TV station that basically just tells you what’s happening on the stock market. Hours. And it’s not like he was some kind of Wall Street guy, he didn’t own any shares. He just didn’t have anything else to do.
“Goodnight mother,” I said and kissed her formally on both cheeks like she was some visiting dignitary.
“Don’t be late,” she said.
We turned and walked out of the house which was light and warm into the night and the feeling of the wind, harsh on my face made me smile. Mason lit a cigarette and I walked beside him breathing in the smoke he blew out. I guess the smell made me think of Conor again and still I couldn’t shake the feeling of the blood on my hands. I held them out in front of me like I was a priest blessing something.

Chuck Johnson’s party totally sucked. It was the same kids from school who’ve I’ve seen every day of my life for a hundred years, saying the same things, doing the same things, till I wished I could make them all fall asleep until the next century. James Atwood kept trying to get his dirty mitts on any part of any girl’s body without getting slapped. Andrea Holmes kept locking herself in the bathroom and weeping loudly in the hope that someone would ask her what was wrong. Then she’d spend the next three hours describing her battle with depression and her tragic life (her father had run off with the next door neighbor and her favorite grandparent died like ten years ago). Some cheerleader and her jock boyfriend argued intermittently about whether he’d cheated on her, kinda like the old President it came down to a question of whether blow jobs count as sex or not. Eventually they came to some sort of an understanding and started groping each other on the couch.
Me? What did I do at the party? Pretty much what I always do at parties. I sat on the doorstep of the backdoor and smoked and dragged and wondered if I’d still be here in ten years time. Not like literally sitting on Chuck Johnson’s doorstep for a decade. I figure that’d piss his folks off plenty. But you know what I mean, don’t you? Still sitting outside, away from everybody else, alone and pretty drunk. It’s not a great future. After a while Curtis came out and sat down beside me. He handed me his nearly empty bottle of cheap bourbon and I swigged down a mouthful knowing that by this point in the night the bourbon was watered down by the spit of Curtis and half a dozen other kids who’s shared the bottle. When I was a kid and I found out that statistic about the last tenth of a can of drink being like ninety per cent saliva (or whatever, I’m summarising here) I was totally disgusted and for years wouldn’t share drinks or food or anything with anyone else. If someone had like a sip out of my can of Coke I’d refuse to drink it. But now, in some weird way I like it. I like the idea that when I drank that bourbon I was drinking the spit of all these other kids as well. I know, I know, I’m not of sound of mind. Believe me, I get that a lot.
Curtis put his cold hand on my cheek and turned my face towards his. I looked into the dark of his eyes. He stared back. He took another swig of bourbon then leaned in and kissed me. His lips and his tongue were hot with the whiskey and in the cold night I felt hotter than the centre of the sun. I felt like the bright spots night vision cameras. I opened my eyes as we kissed and looked at Curtis’ closed eyes, his eyelids flickering. In some strange way I felt like I loved Curtis then. Not in that crappy, dumb romantic movie with Meg fucking Ryan way, where I wanted to hold his hand and have his babies or whatever. To be honest I didn’t really care if I didn’t see Curtis for weeks. I just felt like I couldn’t not feel something like love in that moment, looking at Curtis with his carefully messed up hair and his T-shirt with the name of some lame heavy metal band on it, and his eyelids flickering. Sometimes I think it’s lame to be in love with like a person. How can you love someone all the time? We should be in love with the minutes we spend with people that mean something. See, this is part of the reason I don’t date much. I can be in the middle of fooling around with some guy and then I’ll start thinking all this crap about love and then I think, what in god’s name is kissing about anyway? I mean, it’s okay. But there’s more fun stuff to do in the world than letting some guy stick his dirty tongue in your mouth for five minutes. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.
So Curtis stopped kissing me and said, “Is something wrong?”
I shrugged and in the half-light Curtis thought I was shivering. He took his jacket off and wrapped it around my shoulders. Can I tell you a horrible, horrible secret here? Of course I can. When he did that I thought it was like the sweetest thing and that stupid love feeling came back. And then I stopped myself as I realised I was one walk in the park and a romantic montage away from being Meg Ryan. Still, I didn’t stand up and walk away or give him his jacket back or anything. I just sat there and wondered if Conor would ever give me his jacket to wear on a cold night. Jesus! This is why I hate having a crush. Suddenly everything becomes about some dumb guy I hardly know just because he has nice bangs, or a good laugh, or a pleasant smell. I thrust my hands into the pockets of Curtis’ jacket and felt the objects inside. A lighter, an old tissue, a bus ticket, a couple of coins, a piece of paper, a tiny stone, a bottle top. See, this, this, yes even this crap can give me that stupid love feeling. The junk Curtis carries round in his pockets makes me want to, I don’t know.
I took my hands out of the pockets and Curtis took hold of one of them. Okay, I hate holding hands. Partly because it makes me feel like one of those romantic saps I spent much of my time railing against mentally, and also because, like with the kissing I find it a bit intrusive. You know what I mean, right? I always end up with my hand in some uncomfortable position where my whole arm goes to sleep and I don’t like to move it because I know that’s just the kind of gesture underconfident teenage boys are likely to interpret as a form of rejection, and the world is full of enough angst ridden poetry by teenage boys who keep getting rejected (here’s a tip for them, maybe you’d get more action if you stopped writing horrible poetry basically structured around the theme of not getting any).
Curtis’ hand and mine. I’m sorry but I couldn’t allow this. So I squeezed his hand tight feeling the bones beneath the skin, he winced quietly. I dug my fingernails into the skin of his hand deeper and deeper until Curtis said, “You’re hurting me.” I smiled at him and pushed his wrist back. “Tegan,” he said. I let go of his hand and was about to stand up and leave him, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, couldn’t think of leaving Curtiss here. I took hold of his hand, gently this time. I could feel his eyes on me, watching me like an unasked question. I ran my fingers across his knuckles, felt the warmth of the palm of his hand, then I looked at the four half-moon marks on his skin. I wiped my hand across them like a magician expecting them to disappear. But they were still there. I put my whole mouth over the back of his hand and ran my lip across the skin, the metallic taste of blood reminding me of childhood cuts I’d licked clean.
Curtis sat up straight, leaning into the doorframe away from me. “Curtis?” I said quietly.
“What?” he asked. I looked at him and realised I didn’t have question to ask him. I put my hand on his ribcage feeling bone and the distant beating of his heart. I kissed him on the mouth and we wrapped our arms and our hands around each other. With my eyes closed, with faint light, with the wind streaming over us, we kissed and kissed and kissed. And I kept my eyes closed and thought about Conor, thought about his lips and his arms and I leaned closer into Conor pushing against him harder and harder to let him know I was there that I wanted something from him. And in the darkness of my closed eyes and deep inside my head I said Conor’s name over and over again. Then Conor was whispering something in my ear and I remembered it wasn’t Conor. Curtis I thought dumbly. I opened my eyes and focused on what Curtis was saying to me. He wanted to know if I wanted to go someplace else. I knew what this meant. You know what this meant. He wanted to go somewhere we wouldn’t be seen to screw, or at least something close to screwing. Round all the bases as the crowd cheers.
I yawned and thought about screwing Curtis. I guess I didn’t feel much like it. I wanted to carry on sitting on the doorstep and smoke a cigarette and shiver a little in the cold and it’d be nice to have someone sitting beside me, to lean into, to shiver with me. But I was pretty sure as soon as I told Curtis I wasn;t interested he’d be off looking for some other girl to nail. I shook my head and told Curtis I was going to stay where I was. He didn’t try and persuade me, didn’t try and pressure me, didn’t try anything. He just kissed me softly on the cheek and walked back inside. Don’t get me wrong. Curtis is no saint. He used to try and talk his way into my pants when I told him I wasn’t interested but I pretty soon made him stop doing that. It’s not like I don’t put out. It’s just most days I really can’t be bothered with all the hassle. But still, I’d slept with Curtis a few times and it was okay, you know? Not mind blowing, but whenever is it really? But it was nice. And I know that’s a lame word and you probably think it’s the wrong word to describe two drunk teenagers screwing in the backseat of his car. But nice is the best way I can think if to describe it. The warm skin, and the touches, and the feeling of his arms round me, and the way afterwards he’d hand me his sweatshirt to put on and we’d lie there listening to tapes his older brother had left in the car years before. It was nice.
So I guess I was maybe thinking all this shit, and thinking maybe I should have gone off with Curtis when I heard something moving around in the backyard. I figured it was probably some stray dog, hungry and mean and looking for a fight or a meal. I stood up to get a better look and the back door swung shut with a bang that’d have made a nervier person than me (let’s say Mason) jump. I glanced back at the door then peered into the darkness of the back yard. That was when I saw the pale white face and the pair of eyes glinting in the moonlight as they stared right at me. Someone was watching me.

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:01:30 GMT

Arrgh. I've finally hit my Nano first day target of 2500, even though it's seemed to take like a really (really) long time and I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover it wasn't even November anymore (except then there'd be no explanation for the firewroks going off every seven minutes). Beside wasting much time on the Nano boards taking comfort in other people's difficulties and sense of their own crapness, and even more time making endless cups of tea just to get away from the evil eyes of my laptop, I also went onto campus and returned about twenty books and got out some stuff on the horror genre. For some reason the library's just installed these self-service machines for returning and checking out, so there's lots of people milling about spying on other people to see how they work, and finally walking away when the stupid machines refuse to respond to all forms of begging and pleading. I signed up for some shifts at the centre - I'll be working a screening of Broken Flowers so yay, but also a screening of Kinky Boots, so not yay. Oh well.
I finally managed to set up a meeting with my supervisor to discuss the chapter I sent him, it's only taken a week and a half.

So yes, have hit the Nano target, but now my mother has persuaded me to go home for a couple of days tomorrow, and I'm missing my dog so...I guess that'll put me behind on Nano by, oh about 7000 words or something, and I only need the slightest discourgagment to give up, as I proved last year.

Anyway, here for safe keeping and posterity is my Nano first day nonsense.

He smelled good. If you want the god’s honest truth that’s pretty much where all this messed up stuff started. Sitting there on the school bus I was staring off into space, every road, and every house, and every shop front, and every tree, so familiar to me after all these years that I wished they’d all burn down in front of my very eyes. Mason was sick that day so I was sitting alone. For sick, read Mason was having another of his hangovers and was at that moment lying beneath the covers in bed, moved to tears by reruns of Oprah. I kid you not.
So yeah, I was sitting alone and so goddamn bored I could feel it killing me, like I could actually feel every single moment of my life passing. And I realised that the kid sitting in front of me smelled good. Like cigarette smoke, and peppermint gum, and shampoo, and cheap store bought deodorant. I know, I know, I’m making him sound like he smells like the city dump or something. But trust me, he smelled good. So I shifted my attention from willing every house on the street to spontaneously combust to the boy sitting in front of me.
I scrutinised him, the messy black hair, and the scuffed denim jacket. Then I set my mind to remembering his name. I knew we had some classes together but I couldn’t think of a single thing I knew about him. So I stared at him some more. He was looking out the window like he was in a trance, like he was seeing things there I could only dream of. Then I remembered he was a transfer student, or had been, maybe three years ago. I had a vague picture of him standing in front of the class eyes fixed on the floor as Mrs Thomas introduced him. He’d sat down in back without a word and I swear I don’t recall a single time he ever said a word since then. I mean he must have, right?
The bus shuddered and stopped and he stood up suddenly, like he knew someone was watching him, thinking about him. He hurried off the bus, and my eyes followed him down the sidewalk. Conor, I thought for no reason at all, then I remembered, that was his name. Conor was cute, and vaguely mysterious, and as I’ve said already he smelled good. Now I spent my formative years watching TV movies and talk shows so I should have now that there’s nothing more dangerous in the whole goddamn world than a cute boy.

Chapter One

As I thought Mason was watching Dr. Phil berate some short blonde lady about something on Oprah when I got home. “Hey,” he said without taking his eyes off the screen when I walked in.
“Hey yourself. Why’s Dr. Phil so mad today?”
Mason took a swig of Coke before explaining, “See this lady, she’s totally out of control with her credit cards. She owes like thirty thousand dollars or something.”
“Has Dr. Phil made her cry yet?”
“Twice.”
I slumped down on the bed next Mason. Now don’t go getting any ideas about Mason and me. We’re not like boyfriend and girlfriend or anything like that. The only reason he’s in my bed is that he has a stay at home mom, which is real inconvenient when he’s too hung over to go to school like today, or the day before that. So he gets up in the morning like he’s going to school and spends the day in my house on account of my mom not being into staying at home at all. Especially since she just divorced my stepfather and is now, as she likes to declare, on the market again. I don’t like to tell her the market for two time divorcees pushing fifty is pretty much a buyer’s market. So like I was saying Mason’s gotten into the habit of spending many - many - school days lying in my bed nursing himself back to health so he can go and get wasted again.
“How was school?” he asked.
“The same.”
“The same?”
“Yes Mason,” I said. “Today was in no way at all different from yesterday. I even think some of the teachers taught the same lessons they did yesterday.”
“You always think everything’s the same Tegan,” he said.
“It is,” I muttered back at him. “Even this episode of Oprah’s a fucking rerun. I remember it now. Right after the next break she’s gonna cut up her American Express and weep and her fat husband’ll squeeze her tight in his fat arms and he’ll weep and Dr. Phil’ll nod sagely and then they’ll cut to some lady in the audience who’s overwhelmed by emotion.”
“Don’t ruin Oprah for me. It’s my only joy.”
“You’ve seen this before as well Mason.”
“I know. You want me turn it off?”
I grunted in a way Mason would know meant that I didn’t want him to turn the TV off and we watched as the things I said would happen happened. I guess that’s the cool thing about reruns, they can make you look really smart or clairvoyant or something.
“Hey,” I said, “do you know that Conor kid?”
“What Conor kid?”
“You know. He has like dark hair and eyes and stuff.”
“Let me think. Someone with hair and eyes? No, sorry I don’t know anyone who meets that description.”
“One of these days that smart mouth of yours is gonna get you in a world of trouble.”
“You mean that creepy boy?” Mason asked.
“He’s not creepy!”
“He hasn’t said a word in like three years. That’s creepy.”
“He’s reserved. It’s something you wouldn’t know anything about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mason asked anxiously.
“You know.”
“No I don’t. By definition, that I’m asking the question suggests I don’t know the answer.”
“It could be a rhetorical question,” I said quietly, knowing this would piss Mason off.
“It’s not a fucking rhetorical question Tegan! Did anything happen last night?”
Poor Mason has like the worst drink induced black outs. He’s getting like the guy in Memento, you know? No idea what happened the night before, I’m going to have to start writing stuff on his scrawny body. Like you threw up in your mom’s rosebush, you performed that Macarena song in front of twenty or thirty people, you tried to get into Alison Anderson’s pants (I’m shuddering just thinking about that - you have to see Alison Anderson, she looks like Abraham Lincoln, I kid you not). Well you get the picture. Put it this way, if Mason ever goes to AA and has to do the thing of going round apologising to all the people you pissed off when you were wasted it would take him most of the rest of his life.
“Tegan?” he said in this urgent pleading tone I’d heard like a thousand times before.
I shrugged and thought about last night. We’d gone to this dive that’s like the darkest, dampest, smokiest place on the planet, but they never card so we like live there. But then Mason had remembered his parents were going to be at some charity dinner all night so we’d gone to his place. I know, a charity dinner? I mean this is fucking Nebraska. Mason’s house is like a walking cliché, except it doesn’t walk on account of it being a house. But it has everything a suburban family home should have. There’s a den and a basement and cable TV and a bar (an actual bar) and even a golden retriever. So we sat in the basement watching god knows what on TV drinking totally vile cocktails we’d invented. I guess I dozed off watching some kind of reality show I couldn’t quite understand. I woke up a while later to the sound of a car pulling into the garage. I looked around for Mason but he was gone.
This was a worrying development. Whenever Mason has a few drinks and disappears it usually means he’s going to need someone to pull out of a dumpster in a couple of hours. And that someone is usually me. So I sprinted up the stairs and ran through the house looking for Mason. Okay, I say ran but I really mean I walked at a slightly accelerated pace mumbling his name, but be fair, I’d only just woken up.
The lock turned in the front door and I knew Mason’s parents were on their way in. Then I heard a muffled banging from upstairs. Muffled banging is pretty much Mason’s speciality. So I headed up the stairs and saw the light was on in Mason’s brother’s room. From downstairs I heard Mason’s parents advancing on us like, I don’t know, like something in a military metaphor. Mason was standing in the middle of his brother’s room wearing one of his brother’s jackets. I know what you’re thinking, it’s hardly the crime of the century. But here’s the thing, Mason’s brother died when he was about ten. Mason’s seventeen. Let’s just say the jacket didn’t really fit him. In fact he’d torn it around the shoulder pulling it on.
“Mason,” I whispered.
“Hey,” he said grinning at me and doing that drunken standing but wavering thing that always make me feel off balance.
“What the hell are you doing Mason? Your parents are back and I think they’re gonna be - “
“My parents are back. I gotta to talk to them. I have to show them, I gotta show them that - “
“Shut up Mason,” I said. I pushed the bedroom door shut and switched the light off. I grabbed Mason and pushed him to the ground behind the bed then I sat down beside him.
“What are you doing Tegan?” Mason asked.
“Shh,” I said. “You don’t want your parents to see you like this. Not wearing that jacket.”
“It’s a cool jacket,” Mason said obstinately. “It was Evan’s jacket.”
“I know that Mason.”
“I never met Evan.”
“I know.”
“My parents like Evan better.”
I had to stop myself saying I know again. Instead I said, “Well they probably prefer having you around given that Evan’s like pretty much decomposed now.”
“That’s true,” Mason said sadly. “Huh.” Mason started to laugh in this weird way, like kids do when they’re nervous and don’t know what else to do. I heard the creak of footsteps on the staircase. Mason kept laughing. The footsteps got closer. Mason kept on laughing. I put my hands in his face and turned it towards me, then I kissed him softly on the lips. Mason seemed paralysed like a stroke victim. He didn’t move or breathe as I kissed his lips that tasted of the cheap cherry brandy he’d found at the back of the drinks cabinet left over from a christmas long gone. After a moment I stopped and we sat in silence looking at the outlines of our faces in the dark. We sat there listening to his parents moving around the house until finally they went to bed. By this time Mason was asleep on my shoulder. I stroked his lanky dark blonde hair and put off the moment when I’d have to wake him up and take the jacket off and put it back in the closet where it belonged and push Mason in the direction of his own bed and then walk home through the snow.
“Tegan?” Mason said again. I looked away from the tearful climax of Oprah and smiled at him.
“Nothing, you just fell asleep on the couch.”
“I know,” he said. He handed me the remote and scrambled out of the bed. “I guess I’d better get home. You want to do something later?”
“Like what?”
“Isn’t Chuck Johnson having a party?”
“Chuck Johnson’s an asshole.”
“You think everyone’s an asshole.”
“They are,” I said irritably.
“So you want to? Chuck Johnson’s?”
I growled. “Don’t you want like a quiet night in?”
Mason shook his head vigourously like a dog trying to pull a toy of its owner’s grasp.
“Fine,” I said.
“Cool. I’ll come by about nine.” And like that he was gone.
I lay back on the bed feeling the warmth where Mason had been lying all day. I closed my eyes and thought about Conor. I didn’t care what Mason said. Conor wasn’t creepy. Just because he wasn’t like all the other boys at high school constantly shouting for attention.
I closed my eyes and I fell into that kind of sleep where you can’t tell when you’re asleep or when you’re awake. I kept trying to pull the covers over me but stupid Mason was lying on them and I pushed him and pushed him and he wouldn’t move. And Mason’s pretty light, I can usually push him clear off the bed when I want to. So I was getting all mad at him, and I rolled over to face him but it wasn’t Mason lying next to me. It was a girl, she was maybe a few years younger than me, and it was weird, in that first instant when I saw her I thought I was looking at my own reflection in the mirror. Then I realised it wasn’t me, she just looked kinda like me. Same short dark hair, and pale skin. Our clothes were even pretty similar, black combat pants and zip up hooded tops. Her scowl mirrored mine. But like I said she was a few years younger than me, and when you looked at her face you could tell us apart pretty easy. I pushed her again but I couldn’t move her. She was like stone carved into the bed.
“Hey,” I said.
She turned to look at me and as she did blood ran out of her eyes like tears. I didn’t like that. I rolled away from her in the bed and closed my eyes.
“Wake up,” a voice said sounding so far away it could have been on another planet. Then I felt lips kissing me softly. “Mason,” I said irritated. “Cut it out Mason!” I opened my eyes and saw Conor leaning over me, his eyes hidden by his dark bangs. He kissed me again. “You’re definitely not Mason,” I murmured. I put my hands on the back of his head, but his hair was real sticky. I took my hands away and looked at the blood on them. “Conor?” I said looking at him.
The girl sat up next to me in bed. “That’s what you get for kissing boys,” she said and laughed.
A while later I woke up. The sun had already set and my room was in near darkness. The only light came from the streetlights outside. I sat up quickly and switched a light on, looking around my room at the shadows the light cast. And I couldn’t shake the dream, the girl lying beside me, just a skinny kid yet I couldn’t move her with all my strength. And the feeling of the blood in Conor’s hair, on my hands. I needed to get a good night’s sleep.

Mason knocked on my bedroom door in this jittery way he has and then barged right in. “Hey,” I said.

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 19:45:21 GMT

I've finally got back from staying with a friend for a week. I'm very very tired and in the midst of some kind of three day hangover and am malnourished. So this is all good. Still it was a good week, I got to play with her dogs a lot (which really isn't a euphemism for something - I swear), and we watched some of the worst movies ever made. So that's good. I've spent today pacing round the house thinking about tidying up and buying food and thinking about the next section of my thesis (which is about Ginger Snaps - yay werewolves). Anyway, I'm feeling oddly optimistic about Nano, mainly because I've done brief character outlines for the three main characters (and given them names, thank the maker) and also roughly planned out the first three chapters. Tomorrow I have to face the trauma of going on to campus and dealing with the library. So that's a reason to get up in the morning. hah.

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 10:41:55 GMT

AAHHHHHHHHHHH. I've finally finished the chapter of my dissertation I was working on. It's only like a week late, so that's okay. well I guess now I get to stop living like a crazy hermit and can leave the house. Yay. im going to stay with a friend for a week whiler her parents on holiday. so i guess my nano prep may be pretty screwed. oh well.

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 19:09:09 GMT

I managed to write about 5000 words of my thesis chapter which I'm pretty pleased. I'm choosing to ignore the fact that it was due on Monday and I didn't start writing it until half ten this morning. Also am in crazy essay writing state of mind where I don't leave the house and pile notes and books and DVDS all over the house and wander round in stupor drinking endless cups of teas. Still am in no mood to sit in front of my laptop getting worse posture and carphal tunnel so I guess I won't do any Nano planning tonight. That said I did manage to write a character outline for my MC Tegan, which should be somewhere around here...

Tegan is seventeen, and she’s pretty angry about that. Tegan was the only child of a brief and relatively joyless union between Douglas and Annabel. They were both in their early thirties, both wondering why they were still alone. They hooked up at the office Christmas party (Tegan likes to say she was conceived in the office supplies closet) and dated for a while. When Annabel found she was pregnant they moved in together and talked about marriage and mortgages and a life together. But it wasn’t what either of them wanted. Still they stuck together for a while, and it wasn’t until Tegan was nearly one that they called time their stillbirth of a relationship. Douglas, bearing down on forty, never really found anyone to share his life with apart from himself. Taking refuge in food and drink and sports and cable porn Douglas finds himself now the wrong side of fifty, overweight, alone and unwell. His continual overtures to his wayward daughter are rejected. Annabel spent most of her thirties trying to juggle raising a kid with dating like it was going outta fashion. When Tegan was twelve Annabel finally landed herself a man, Bob, 50, with two kids from a previous marriage who would occasionally invade Tegan’s home when they’d fallen out with their mother. Tegan was never less than unimpressed with all this.
Tegan was the kind of kid who never took any bullshit from anyone. When adults cooed over her and offered her dolls and small cuddly animals made of fabric and filled with something flammable (or inflammable) she scowled at them and waited silently for them to leave her the hell alone. Growing up Tegan spent a lot of time watching TV, by the age of five she pretty much knew how the world worked. The secrets of the world revealed themselves to her on TV chat shows and sentimental family sitcoms with life lessons about drugs and sex and guns. And Tegan watched this endless parade of humanity and came to the conclusion everybody else in the world was a goddamn idiot. It’s not that Tegan’s arrogant. Or that she thinks she’s better than everyone else. It’s more like she’s recognised her inner idiot and wishes everyone else would do the same. At school teachers soon noticed the way she’d roll her eyes when other kids didn’t know the answer to some dumb question, or even when the teachers said something Tegan thought was dumb. So Tegan was never going to be elected prom queen maybe. But that’s not to say she was unpopular. In fact the other kids liked her deadpan humor and general contempt for the world around her. She was always invited to the birthday parties and skating trips and whatever. But as she grew older Tegan knew that she was a form of entertainment for the other kids. They liked having her around, but they didn’t really like her. This realisation made Tegan increasingly irritable. For reasons lost to history at the age of nine Tegan broke Thomas Morgan’s nose. In fact the reason she did it are known to her and her only. Not even poor Thomas Morgan knows this. Tegan had overheard Thomas bullying Samantha Sanderson, the overweight girl who’s body developed much faster than her brain. Tegan wasn’t sure why she was so pissed about Thomas’s meanness but the next time she saw him she’d been filled with a furious anger which she expressed in the form of a punch which landed firmly on Thomas’ Roman nose. Suspended for a week she grew bored at home and soon entertained herself by seeing how far onto the school grounds she could get. This was how she wound up meeting Mason, in his hiding place. Tegan instantly liked Mason. Mainly because she’d never seen anyone so uncertain in the whole of her life. And the eagerness with which Mason spoke to her, she knew at once he needed a friend, and she wanted to be needed. Maybe she needed him more than she wanted him as well. Who knows?
Tegan and Mason became good friends. Pretty soon they were entering adolescence. Tegan initially rebelled against her teenage years. She refused to express an interest in boys. Until she realised it could be fun. Tegan was a pretty girl with short dark hair and a smile that was always a scowl and a scowl that was always a smile. So she fooled around with boys who took her interest without ever really getting into the whole dating thing. As the years went by she found herself bored by the boys she met, bored by the town she lived, hell, even bored by Mason. That, I guess, is her greatest single defining characteristic at the moment, boredom, and the frustration that comes with it.

I'm a little worried about the fact I found writing about my supporting character easier than writing about Tegan, although it could just be that she's basically the same MC from my last two novels with a different name.

Anyway, I also had my first novel rejected today, which I feel pretty indifferent about. So I guess I'm not a literary genius. Looks like I'll have to rethink my career plans.

Well, I'm off to cook some food and drink some wine.

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:26:34 GMT

Actually managed to write some Nano prep. Admittedly at the expense of working on my thesis chapter which is supposed to be tomorrow, but I don't really feel up to it. Anyway, I wrote a character outline for one of my main characters, so that's something.

Mason is seventeen. Mason is drunk. I mean right now, he’s probably drunk. So he was born way back in the late ‘80s when the first George Bush was President. What’s remarkable about Mason’s family is how unremarkable it is. Mason’s greatest secret is just how ordinary he is. His mom teaches Elementary School, little kids wrapped up tight against the world in straight lines. His dad does something to do with real estate, not buying it or selling or it, touching it or owning it, but something connected to it in a way Mason has always found mysterious. Mason’s parents had met when they both in college. His mom worked as a waitress in a diner that his dad used to visit regularly. One thing after and another and they’re a regular When Harry Met Sally. They married after graduation, and had their eldest child a couple of years later.
Mason is the youngest of two, or three children. First there was Evan , then Amber, then Mason. Before Mason was born, not long before, Evan died. Mason was kind of an accident anyway. Evan was already ten, Amber was seven, while Mason was in the womb. So a few months before he was born Evan was at a friend’s birthday party. They were running round in the garden and the front lawn and across the silent suburban street. And as the light faded and someone driving home late from finishing a shift at work, tired didn’t see the little kid in the blue parka darting across the street thinking only of the game they were playing, and that was that. Naturally Mason’s entire family was pretty devastated by this. When Mason came along a couple of months it didn’t seem right for them to be happy or celebrate. It’d felt like getting a new puppy the week after the dog you had all your life died. And the truth of it is, a truth neithr of his parents would ever admit, is that after Evan died the last thing they ever wanted was another kid. Maybe this was there the whole damn time, through all the years of Mason growing up - his parents feeling obliged to be affectionate towards Mason, but not wanting to, and not wanting it to like they were overcompensating, and not wanting it to like they didn’t want Mason, couldn’t bring themselves to care about Mason like they knew parents should. This tension maybe Mason noticed maybe he didn’t.
As kids Amber pretended Mason didn’t exist. She barely looked at him, or spoke to him, or in anyway acknowledged his presence. To begin with, sure in some way Amber blamed Mason for Evan going away, for her parents being so sad, and then it was natural anway, what 14 year old girl wants her seven year old brother hanging around, and after so long it became a habit. It was the way it was and always had been. But I guess over the last few years that had maybe changed a little. Amber’s been away at college and when she comes home for holidays or whatever she notices Mason skulking around the edge of the family, drifting through the house like a ghost, and she started to wonder about her little brother. But now she lived in the city, was barely home, barely thought about Mason, god knows if she ever thinks of Evan anymore.
So growing up in a nice suburban house with cable TV, and clean sheets, was maybe lonely for Mason. When he started at school Mason was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people he encountered, he didn’t really know what was expected of him by all these kids and the teachers and everyone else. So he withdrew and learnt how to get by without being noticed. But of course he was noticed. When he was nine Tegan broke a boy’s nose. The reason for it are unimportant, it happened, and passed into folklore. Tegan wound up being suspended for a couple of weeks. Bored at home she used to sneak onto the school grounds just as a fuck you to the vice principal and all those other jerks. At the farthest end of the sports fields is an old shed they used to keep sports equipment in until they got tired of it being vandalised and broken into all the time. So it was just an empty shed, walls and a roof and door that kinda closed if you knew how to jiggle the handle. And that was where Mason used to go every lunch time, every time between class when he had nowhere else to go. He’d sneak along the perimeter of the sports fields running like mad his backpack bouncing off his back, and he’d sit in there hour after and hour and day after day. He’d read comics and books and never ever want to leave, sitting in the near dark reading about other kids having great adventures and overcoming obstacles and making friends and finding their family right where they were supposed to be. One wet Wednesday afternoon when the rest of the school was in the canteen Mason sat in the shed reading a Hardy Boy’s book when the door burst open and Tegan peered in from outside where the rain soaked her to the bone. And in the space of twenty minutes Tegan bullied Mason into talking to her more than he’d talked to anyone his whole life long. That night when he went home, he lay in his bed and thought about Tegan and had this feeling in his gut that he recognised as excitement. He wanted to see Tegan again. He wanted to talk to her again. And the next morning the minute his alarm clock went off he leapt out of bed even though he’d only slept a couple of hours. He wolfed down his cereal and ran out the door. And the whole day he looked for Tegan, and at lunch he ran down the field faster than he’d ever ran before and when there was no one waiting for him he sad in the dark and waited and waited and waited and he never heard the bell for class go, or the bell for the end of the day, and when finally he gave up and stepped outside it was dark and he hurried all the way home and in the back door and up to his room. And he sat there panting as he slowly realised nobody had noticed his absence. It was a few days later when Tegan knocked on the front door of Mason’s house and was treated as a mild curiosity for being pretty much the first friend Mason had ever had over. Tegan had been sent to spend a few days with her grandparents and had made Mason her first stop on her return. See Tegan had had friends before, she’d hung out with kids before, but she’d never had someone else need her so much, need her so plainly as Mason. And that was how their friendship started. Mason needed a friend. Tegan liked being needed. That was about eight years ago and needless to say a lot has happened since then, their friendship has changed and they’ve fallen out and made up, and maybe now it’s more the other way round, maybe Tegan needs Masosn more, or maybe they just need each other.
Without a doubt his friendship with Tegan changed Mason’s life. He spoke to other kids, he started relating to them. And he started doing what other kids do. He played video games and went to the movies and ate more fast food than he should and he learnt how to ride a bike, and how to skateboard, and what TV shows were cool, and what bands to like and what bands not to like. And he learned to drink. The first time Mason drank alcohol, the first time he got drunk he was about thirteen. Tegan and he had gone to Stacy Wayne’s older brother’s party where there were so many kids there from high school and the neighbourhood they were spilling out of the house onto the street, into the yard even though it felt like seven below out. And Mason drank some beer and felt himself slipping into a warm oblivion, felt himself feeling not so awkward, not so out of place, felt himself falling asleep in a pile of coats on a bed somewhere. And sure the next morning he felt dreadful but he rembered that feeling drifting off to sleep drunk and warm and somehow not real, not Mason. Since then he’s drunk a lot. And now, well, now Mason’s drunk most of the time. He’s a compendium of drunken injuries and blackouts and coming to in unusual places he doesn’t recognise. Even Tegan is finding Mason’s drinking tiresome. At first it was fun to have someone to get drunk with and smoke cigarettes. Now Tegan finds herself constantly pulling Mason out of dangerous situations and covering for him at school and with his parents and sobering him up on a daily basis. And Mason is left clinging to Tegan even more than ever.

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:54:58 GMT

Very tired and hungover, and hungry. I had my first shift as a steward at the art centre this evening, which went pretty well, even though I was mostly just trying not to pass out.
I'm already getting a sinking feeling about my prospects of completing Nano. Still don't have a very concrete plot or characters and I have to write the section of my dissertation on All About My Mother and 8 Women over the weekend, so wont have much time to work on Nano.
oh well. Time to make a toasted cheese sandwich a pot of tea I think.

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:51:41 GMT

So I managed to so some prep for Nano. Only about 20 minutes but it all helps. I think I have a clearer idea about the plot. I guess it couldn't be any vaguer than it was anyway. Although mostly I've been trying to decide whether I like the name Teagan for my main character or not. Hopefully I'll be able to post something about the plot, anything, tomorrow, but I'm so tired. I went to a research seminar on celebrity for some reason and only got back a while ago. So I think I'll lie down and drink some tea and continue my internal debate -"Teagan, that's a great name for a MC." "No, wait it sucks." "It does not" and so on.

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:34:21 GMT

All hail the reviving powers of The Goonies. I'm in a better mood than I was this morning and have even managed to do the first draft of the writing assignment for my creative writing class. which should be here...

I had to write a page of mainly dialogue between two characters, one is good the other is evil, and the dialogue has to show you which is which. I don't think that's really what I've done but nevermind.

“Are you alone?” the man asked.
The boy craned his neck up to look at the man. “No, I’m here with my friends” he replied sullenly.
The man looked around the deserted playground. “Where are they? I don’t see anyone else here.”
The boy laughed. “All my friends are imaginary.” He swayed from side to side in the swing set dragging his feet in the dust.
“Would you like me to push you?” the man asked.
“If you want to.”
So the man walked behind the boy and pushed him. The boy sat on the swing seemingly indifferent to his movement through the air. “It’s pretty late for you to be out on your own,” the man said. “Won’t your parents worry about where you are?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why’s that?” the man asked.
“What’s it to you?
“Nothing,” the man said quickly. “I was just curious. I mean it’s nearly dark and you’re out here all by yourself. Aren’t you scared?”
“I’m not scared of anything,” the boy said.
“But it’s dangerous. Here, after dark.”
“You sound like my mother,” the boy sneered.
“Listen, do you want me to walk you home?’ the man asked suddenly.
The boy stopped the swing with his foot and stood up. He turned to face the man. “What makes you think I’d be safe with you?” he asked.
“I’ll make sure you get home in one...” the man stopped speaking and glanced desperately round the playground. “Did you hear something?” he asked anxiously. “I think someone might be coming.”
“So?”
“Come on,” the man said urgently, “let’s go.”
The boy looked at him for a moment then shrugged. They walked away side by side. “What are you doing out here after dark?” the boy asked.
“I was looking for you,” the man said.
“Looking for me?”
“Not you specifically. Just...” the man hesitated. The boy glanced around the empty park. The man reached out and took hold of the boy’s arm.
“Let go of me,” the boy said angrily. He tried to pull himself free of the man’s grip, but the man held on tight.
“Listen to me,” the man said. “Listen! It’s dangerous this place. You don’t know what happens here after dark.”
“I know,” the boy said indignantly.
“You don’t. Nobody knows. Now quickly, we have to get out of here.” The man dragged the boy down the path towards the street where his car sat waiting.
“I know a shortcut home,” the boy said. He turned and led the man away from the path into the woods.
“It’s dark in there,” the man said hesitantly.
“I know,” said the boy.

I might go and see Last Days (the new Gus Van Sant film about Kurt Cobain) later, so I guess now would be a good time to think some more about Nano plot, characters, and all those other things.

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:42:32 GMT

I'm very tired and kinda down and a bit hungover so my grand plans to work on the characters for Nano look unlike happening. I'm also having a crisis of confidence about my paper thin plot and feel inclined to come up with something less vague. I guess the best thing to do maybe is lie under a blanket and watch The Goonies.

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 13:32:38 GMT

So I think I have a working title for Nano - My Most Imaginary Friend. I can't decide if I like it or not so it may change.

I also have an opening line - He smelled good. again I don't know if I like it or not. I guess the thing about it I like is it's casual or something.

The rough plot I have in my head at the moment is about three high school kids or are about fifteen, or maybe older. The central character is a girl who has a crush on this boy who is pretty much a loner. He transfered from another school about a year ago and keeps himself to himself. The reason for this (unknown to my main character) is that his best friend died in mysterious circumstances. Whether he changed schools because he was a suspect or because he was in danger is a big question (that I don't know the answer to). The third character is the girl's closest friend, who maybe is in love with her. Lurking on the edge of the story will be another boy who may or not be the dead boy. What exactly will happen to these kids? I don't have a clue yet.

But there we go, at last I have something down on paper - or computer screen.

I also dug up my feeble Nano 2004 effort. It's very short but still I kinda like it. I'd like to get a similar tone this time round. If I understand how lj works my Nano 2004 (which either didn't have a title or I can't remember it) should be available from this link. Be warned it contains a bit of bad language and only runs to about four pages in its entirety.

Prologue

I choked him tenderly. My hands pressing tightly on his neck. It felt strange to feel something so solid breaking beneath my touch. I looked into his eyes and for the briefest moment I saw nothing but my own reflection staring back at me. My grip loosened slightly as his blue eyes looked into mine. His fingers tried to pry my hands away. The fingernails cutting tracks into my skin. Still I held on and met his gaze as I choked the life out of him. It never felt so good to hate.
He was trying to say something. His cracked lips forming words that he couldn’t say. The sound of someone being strangled is louder than I expected. It made me hesitate for a moment when a desperate breathy cry emerged from his open mouth. Maybe for the first time since I’d knocked him to the ground did I stop and think that in just a few seconds he would really be dead and I would have killed him. It’s the kind of thought that makes you stop and think. Did I want him dead? Yes. Did I want to kill him? Yes. And no.
The rain was a torrent now and I blinked drops out of my eyelashes. He crawled along the asphalt away from me, the blood in his hair already washed away into the night. So I stood there like an idiot, watching him crawl, shivering in the rain. Then I grabbed him and pushed him down into the road, my hands wrapping around his throat again, pushing against his adam’s apple. This was it. This was the moment. I glanced up and saw them all watching me. They stood, the three of them, impassively in the rain, waiting for something.

The First Chapter

Okay, so it was the best day of my life. So far. To be honest before that January day I didn’t have a best day of my life. I was only seventeen, I always figured my best day was yet to come. Then here it was. It was a Sunday, that began like any other Sunday. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling all morning, listening to my father move around downstairs. Then around noon he went out. Wherever he goes I don’t know. So I made a grill cheese sandwich and lay on the couch listening to the noises the world makes even when you’re the only person in it until I figured it was late enough that I could over to Dylan’s house. Dylan liked to sleep late and there’d been a few times I’d gone over he’d still been asleep. That was ok, his parents didn’t mind. They made me coffee and let me watch cable on their huge widescreen TV. But Dylan always seemed pissed off when he woke up and found me sitting there.
I walked through the woods to Dylan’s house. Apparently in the olden days where the town is now it was all woods, then they built factories and offices and the suburbs. Now the woods run along the edge of the good part of town for about a half a mile with the interstate running along the other side.
It had snowed for the past few days, but not since last night. I listened with satisfaction to the noise the snow made when I walked on it. I headed into the woods. I like it in there. It’s usually quiet and you hardly ever see anyone. Sometimes though you might run into some of the dropouts who go to the woods to screw or get high I always try to avoid them. But you never see them till late afternoon. So I wasn’t too worried when I heard footsteps on the snow behind me. It was a clear, bright day, but the overhanging branches meant the light penetrated the gloom of the forest in brief flashes. I glanced over my shoulder but couldn’t see anything. I walked a little faster. Still the footsteps seemed to keep pace with mine. Looking back again the woods seemed deserted and the footsteps stopped. I started walking again, and the footsteps echoed mine. I was walking pretty fast. I mean if I’d been wearing lycra you’d have thought I was power walking. The footsteps seemed to be getting closer. I was sweating even though it was like five below freezing or some really cold temperature. I wondered if it was possible for sweat to freeze like on your body. Then i realised that the footsteps were right behind me now. I could hear someone breathing softly behind me, so close I felt it hot on my neck. Right then I broke into a run. I’m no great athlete but I ran as fast as I could, bundling myself down the narrow track through the trees.
I slipped in the snow and fell on my back. Looking up at the gaps in the trees I waited, listening. I don’t know how long I lay there, till I was sure that I was alone. Maybe a few minutes. Then I stood up, brushed the snow off my clothes and outta my hair and walked quickly through the woods.
As I made my way up the drive of Dylan’s house (which is like about as long as a goddamn runway or something) it occurred to me that this was like the third time in a week I’d got freaked out and thought someone was following me. Jesus, who’s gonna want to follow me? To be honest I’m like the most irrelvant person ever. I’ve never like done anything important or heroic or even really bad. I’ve stolen stuff from shops when I was younger, you know candy bars, Playboys, that sort of stuff. But I’m hardly a master criminal. Dylan’s like my only friend, all we do is play videogames, or watch television, or get drunk sometimes. I knocked on the front door of Dylan’s house and wondered what it’d be like to have someone really follow you. To be someone so important and interesting someone went wherever you went. Not in this life.
Dylan opened the door and nodded at me with this sleepy smile on his face. He stood back and I walked in. I should tell you some stuff about Dylan. He’s kinda athletic and I guess he’s good looking. When I’m with him I always feel like the fat friend. Not that I’m fat. I’m so skinny you can see my ribs. But you always see those pairs of girls who are friends and one of them is so absolutely beautiful it can practically bring on a panic attack, and the other one’s this really fat girl who follows the other one around wheezing. Or in those movies where some blonde woman falls in love with some guy the woman’s always got this funny, sarcastic friend. That’s me. Not that I’m funny or sarcastic, but if my life was Sleepless in Seattle, and me and Dylan were women, he’d be Meg Ryan and I’d be Rosie O’Donnell. What I guess I’m trying to say is Dylan and I are kinda opposites, you know. He’s good looking and confident and has at least managed to get laid. I’m funny looking and anxious and the thought of having actual sex with someone makes me feel so nervouse I feel like I might throw up.
I followed Dylan into the kitchen, which was like one you see in a TV show, with a breakfast bar, and gleaming marble surfaces and all these machines that make juice and coffee and bread and pasta and meat and stuff. Dylan’s parents were sitting at the breakfast bar reading the New York Times or something, and drinking coffee and eating like croissants. Like I said it was like something off a TV show. Dylan’s family live like they’re in an advert. When I walked in they both looked up from the paper and smiled at me.
“Good morning Samuel,” Dylan’s father said.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly. Dylan’s parents are like really nice but I always feel out of place around them. I always get the feeling they think I’m a bit retarded or something.
“Have you had any breakfast Samuel?” Dylan’s mom asked me. I hesitated for a moment before replying. They always have the nicest food. At home my dad and I eat like bread, cheese, cereal, ham. They are the four food groups. Here though they’ve got all these foods I can’t even pronounce what they’re called. And they’re damn good. But if I had something to eat, I’d have to sit and eat with them, and I’d feel awkward still and they’d try and make polite conversation and I wouldn’t know what to say, and I’d have to eat in front of them, and I’d probably end up throwing food all over their nice kitchen because I’m such a klutz.
I realised they’re all staring at me waiting for an answer. Shit, how long have I been standing here staring into space. I start shaking my head then I remember I should be nodding, so I nod. “I ate cheese,” I say like an idiot, and they smile at me delighted, like people in the zoo when the monkey catches a ball or some dumb trick.
Dylan handed me a mug of coffee and we went up to Dylan’ room. Like everything in the house Dylan’s room looks like it belongs in an advert. It’s real big, with a double bed, and a big TV and a DVD player, and a new stero and a Playstation 2, and posters on the walls. I love it. Dylan put a CD on and we sat on the bed drinking the coffee and talking about the stuff people talk about.
He finished his coffee and lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. I stared at him lying there and wondered why some people look like they could be on a teen soap and other people look like they they wished they were invisible. The thing about Dylan is people do really look at him. He’s that good looking. Walking down the street girls glance at him. And in class I watch as some girls, and a couple of the guys, stare at him. I glanced down at the coffee mug in my hand as he opened his eyes. Reaching under the bed he pulled out a small bottle of whiskey and grinned at me.
“Where did you get that?”
“I found it in one of the guest bedrooms. I think my Uncle Stanley stashed it there when he visited over Christmas and forgot to take it with him. You want to go drink it?”
So Dylan told his parents we were going to the cinema and we walk across town. We headed into the woods and to this place we hang out. In the woods at the side of interstate there’s this old car, that’s all rusted and burnt. But the inside’s alright. We sit in the car and listen to the interstate and we talk about things we can’t talk about anywhere else. It was one October night, when we’d got a six pack from somewhere, I can’t remember where, that I told Dylan about my mom. And it was here that Dylan told me things. Secrets. That’s what binds us together. What we know about each other.
Dylan handed me the bottle and I take a small sip of the whiskey. It burns some but kinda warms me up. We stared through the cracked windscreen at the winter light. The sky looked about ready to snow again. I passed the bottle back to Dylan and he took a big swig, then gasped.
“So Samuel,” he said in this voice he has when he thinks he’s better than me, “When the fuck are you going to get laid?” He laughed and started spluttering.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You should go to a hooker.”
“I can’t afford a hooker.”
“You should get a job. Then get a hooker.”
“I’m not going to a hooker.”
“You really should. It’s the best.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and said “How would you know?”
Dylan glanced around the car, like their were people listening everywhere, then he smiled. “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this.”
“Who’m I gonna tell?”
“For my last birthday my dad took me to this place he knows in the city and...you know.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“It’s true. Her name was Brandi, with an I not a Y. And she was so fucking hot. The best thing about hookers is, it’s all about you. You sleep with some girl you got to make sure she has a good time.”
“Jesus,” I said, becuase I didn’t really know what else to say. I didn’t know for sure if he was telling the truth or not. Lots of kids at school lie about having sex, but it kinda sounded like the sort of thing Dylan’s father’d do.
“If you’re not going to pay for it then you’ll have to ask a girl out. What about Stacey Waters? She’s not repulsive and I hear she’s easy.”
“I don’t like Stacey Waters.”
“Well who do you like? And don’t say Eddie Mason.”
“Eddie Mason,” I said.
“She’s never going to go out with you. I think she might be a lesbian.”
“She’s not a lesbian.”
“How do you know? You’ve never spoken to the girl.” Dylan had a point. I’ve never spoken to Eddie Mason. But I have been in love with her for like four years. Just thinking about her made me feel...something, and something’s better than nothing.

Anyways, I've managed waste like half the day reading the paper and messing around online. I really should do something, like clean the house or make lunch or do some work. grrr. I guess I'll make soup.

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 12:53:46 GMT

Ahhh, so I guess this is my first post (or whatever they're called) in my shiny new livejournal. sadly I have nothing to say. doh! anyways, I got the livejournal as a place to work out my plot for nano. at the moment I don't really have a plot. i have like a vague idea which may turn into something but might not.
other than that i'm very hot at the moment. i cant figure out how the heating works in my flat so yesterday I was freezing and had to wear many sweaters and blankets, today the heating's working but is too hot. oh well.
I finally got paid yesterday so i went out and spent more than i can afford on new cds, which is exciting.
well I guess i should go away and think about plot and characters and stuff.