I'm seventeen, and I think my girlfriend's in love with my best friend. I'd get all jealous and try to beat him up, but first off he'd win, and second he's completely oblivious to the way Jenny looks at him. He knows she likes him, but then people do like him. It's just part of the way he is, like having blond hair or, so help me, wearing red T-shirts in the middle of winter.
So, in the absence of physical violence, I do what any other lovelorn teenager would. I go down to the local club, lie about my age to the bar staff, and work on getting paralytic. Except that I've come to the horrible realisation that I don't like beer much, and I'm going to throw up before I get anywhere near being drunk. So I just sit there miserably, watching the world party past, wondering if I can just throw it all away and find out if the rumours about the upstairs rooms are true. Life, as I said, cannot get worse than this.
Eventually I give up on the whole thing. I decide to go home. Go directly to bed, do not pass the living room, do not collect $200 worth of advice from Mum's latest slime-mould, sorry, boyfriend. With luck I'll suffocate under the pillow and I won't have to deal with the hangover, assuming you can get a hangover from half a pint of lager. The fresh air outside Giuseppe's revives me a bit, but only enough to remind me of the basic unfairness of love. Stuff existential angst, I think, and beat the hell out of a poor innocent passing wall. At least that's what it felt like at the time; I can't have hit it too hard, since I don't scrape my knuckles much.
Maybe it's the beer, but I get the weirdest feeling that I'm being followed as I walk home. When I turn round there is this beefy looking man some way behind me, but he turns down another street. I've still got that creepy feeling all the way home, and keep looking over my shoulder like some paranoid drunk, which may after all be what I'm becoming.
Six days later and I'm back again. It seems life could get worse, and I'm back trying to drown my sorrows. You see, Jenny's sister died. Murdered. Zack and I went down to the police station with Jenny to identify the body, 'cause her parents were off on different junkets again, and just being there for her was one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. I wanted to run away screaming, and even Zack couldn't bring himself to smile. I just feel so guilty for not liking Jane much, and Jenny's so hurt and so alone, and I've been being strong for her for days now and I can't take it any more. Hence sitting here in Giuseppe's, staring at a half of lager and wondering if you can die of cowardice. If I could, I would right now. Life cannot get worse that this.
Life seems to take this as a challenge, and promptly does get worse. Alex, Mum's boyfriend, oozes onto the stool opposite me. "Hey Davey," he says, and I grimace. I really hate that name. "How's life treating you?"
"Like shit," I say, and he looks surprised. I just can't summon up my usual levels of sarcasm to bait him with, I guess.
"Wow. Serious."
My turn to look surprised. Alex looks like he's concerned about me, and that never happens. He doesn't care. I know he doesn't care. I don't know why Mum can't see it, but he is a real slime-mould.
Alex takes my surprise as an invitation to continue. "You never swear, Davey." He sounds concerned, but the hated nickname has set me off again. "Do you want..."
"Shut up! Don't call me that!" I know I'm not being reasonable here, but I don't care any more. I've spent four days being strong and silent for Jenny, and the only one who's threatening to do the same for me is someone I loathe. I'm just so angry at the world that I want to lash out, to hurt someone, and that scares me. I'm vaguely aware that I'm still shouting at Alex, focusing on him, and I know that if I don't get out of there I'm going to hit him.
I flee. I'm such a coward. Alex may be the lowest form of life that I know, but he doesn't deserve me lashing out at him. Not for that. He was trying to help.
When I calm down, when I can think again, I'll have to think about that.
Calming down takes longer than I'd hoped. Mum objects when I try to drown myself in music; I needed it that loud to stop me thinking and to hell with the neighbours, but in retrospect that might not have been the most tactful thing to have said. The TV at least provides some mindless distraction. Still, I find myself turning over the day in my head, trying to work out what I did wrong, and just how to stop myself bursting into tears when I see Jenny tomorrow. Mum understands; she just hugged me and left me alone to pull my tattered self back together. Yeah, Mum's been there for me, she's just left me to ask in my own good time. Maybe a clip round the ear would have been more effective, I don't know. And Alex…
I've never had a father. My real one didn't even hang around until I was born, apparently, and all the men that Mum has met since then have done a double-take and run away at the sight of me. Not exactly good for the ego, that, even if my dark suspicions about where some of Mum's money comes from are true. Thank God I've got friends who genuinely don't care whether or not I have a Dad about the place. In fact seeing what Jenny and Jane have to put up with, I'm almost glad to be well out of that game.
Then Alex came along, and Mum fell for him harder than I've ever seen her fall for anybody. Though that might just be the hormones talking, given just how hard I'm falling for Jenny. Anyway, now I've got someone else intruding into my family, threatening my stability, and — dammit — making my mother happier than she's ever been. And I'm so scared of losing her I can't look at what I might gain, I just label him with the bad points of every man Mum has ever brought home. Truth to tell, he isn't as bad as I try to make him. He does care for Mum, I can see it in his eyes. Heck, that's half the reason why I'm jealous! OK so he's a bit oily, and he keeps thinking that he knows what I want when he couldn't be more wrong, but he does try to make Mum happy, even if I am an afterthought…
Playing through tonight's confrontation, I can't even hang on to that illusion. Somewhere in the middle of my ranting I heard myself throw Jane's death in his face like it was his fault, and he was really shocked. He hadn't heard. He can't have known. It's not like we've shouted it abroad, since we were trying to shield Jenny; I'd not even told Mum. Once he did know, he stopped trying to shut me up, he just stood there and took it until I ran. He looked… I don't know, he looked like someone had just cut out a little bit of his heart, and that someone was me.
It's at about this point in my musings that I realise that the telly is on the blink again. I cuss it a bit, and slap it in the vain hope that it will spring back into life. I know that won't work, I've done my Electronics GCSE, and it doesn't, so I leave a note for Mum and go to bed. It's been a long day, and tomorrow isn't promising to be any better.
My dreams are dark and crowded. I keep seeing Jane's body lying there in the police station, only it's Jenny there and she's telling me I have to be brave, even if she is dead, and Zack is beaming away telling me that it's OK, she's in heaven now, even though I know he doesn't believe in that sort of stuff, and this makes me so angry that I lay into him, and because this is a dream I win and bloody him up good, except that it's Jenny whose neck I'm squeezing, and Alex who is trying to pull me off and begging for forgiveness while I cry and cry…
I wake briefly, and Alex is there, hand on my shoulder. Usually when he touches me it makes my skin crawl, but tonight he has turned into my anchor, the only fixed point in a world that's going crazy. I'm ashamed that my nightmare was that loud, and embarrassed that he came rather than Mum. "Thanks," I mumble, then embarrassment wins over pride. "I'm sorry." I can't bring myself to say more just yet.
I can't see Alex's face in the dark, but I hear his ragged sigh. "So am I, David," he says. "More than you'll ever know."
As sleep claims me again, I realise he's crying too, but I'm too tired to think about it.
Shortly before Christmas, I nearly put my foot right in it. Well in fact I do, but Zack pulls me out. We'd been to a concert together, me, Zack, Jenny and Maggie Ryan, the poor work experience girl who ended up helping the police doctor. She's been trying hard to cheer Jenny up, and somehow or other got her hands on some tickets for the Blur concert at the Odeon. She must have spotted the poster I got for Jenny when she went visiting. Anyway, we were relaxing in the Pizza Palace beforehand, just talking about life and ourselves, filling Maggie in on things. The rest of us hadn't met Maggie before — well, that's not quite true, I had seen her a few nights earlier at the Giuseppe's, but we hadn't talked — which made the conversation less relaxing than it might have been given how careful we had to be. After all, if Zack had told her that he came from another dimension, she'd have probably run away screaming. As it was, it turned out that she had to miss the start of the concert because of her mad doctor. Poor girl. We promised to watch for her in the interval, and tell her all about what she missed.
After she left, Zack got that look on his face. The one that says "I've got an adventure and you're in on it." I'm not sure I can take another of Zack's adventure's right now. They have this tendency to get surreal, and he's pretty much always the hero, and there's only so far I'm prepared to go for him. Far enough to keep Jenny in sight, basically. So I looked at him and groaned theatrically, hoping that he'd take the hint.
He grinned back at me. I should know by now that you have to hint at Zack with a sledgehammer if you want it to take. "You need to hear this, Dave," he said. "You remember my uncle Sam?" As if I could have forgotten, especially since we spent a large chunk of the night in his company a few days earlier. 'Mad' doesn't really do him justice, in the nicest possible sense, and I said as much.
Zack snorted, still grinning, then looked more serious. "Yeah, well, anyway Sam collared me this morning and told me that a friend had gone to see him. He wouldn't say who the friend was, just that he trusted them completely." He paused for effect. "He said someone was stalking you, Dave."
Well, that certainly got my attention. "What? Who? Why?"
"He didn't know. All he knew was that some bad guy was after you. He didn't think it had anything to do with me. I'm wondering whether it's something to do with Jane."
This was the point where I remembered being followed from Giuseppe's the week before. At least I thought I was followed. That big guy… could be. There was a big guy too with the TV repairman that Mum was so interested in, but that really was being paranoid. I looked up from my coke and sighed. "I believe you."
Zack's eyes had that gleam in them, and I realised I had just been sucked into one of his adventures again. Except this looked like my adventure, for once. "So what are we going to do about it?" he asked.
At this point Jenny put her foot down. "You're going to go to the police and tell them," she said. "You are not going out hunting. I've already lost a sister, I'm not… not…"
"No you're not," I said, trying to put as much reassurance as I could into my voice. "We won't do anything dangerous. But we can't go to the police either. What would we tell them? They'd want to talk to Sam, they might start asking questions about Zack, and we'd end up in more trouble than we already are in."
"Besides," Zack chimed in, "Sam said we'd have some help." We looked at him. "What?"
"I don't suppose he said who this help was?" I won my private bet; Sam's helper was every bit as mysterious as his stalker. Thanks Sam, I thought sourly, that's a load of help. What if we get the two muddled up, that could really be fun.
Zack seemed to take it as the clinching argument, however. "Don't worry, with someone to help us we'll be very careful not to do anything dangerous." We both put on our most earnest faces for Jenny. I don't know whether we convinced her or not — I suspect not — but she let it go. She knew better than to try and lecture Zack on safety, it wouldn't take, but I could see the warning in her eyes. I promised there and then to myself that I would be careful, for her sake.
All of which doesn't quite explain why I am lying in a hospital bed with my badly banged-up best friend nearby, waiting for Mum and Alex to go away so that we can discuss exactly what went wrong.
As with all the best plans, it sounded like a good idea at the time. It was also brilliantly simple, and all my own work, all of which endeared it to me greatly. Our school was having some building work done, you see, and the scaffolding was a magnet for kids to play on. The teachers put a lot of effort into persuading us not to play on it, which just made it more attractive. However a week of cold weather and constantly being chased off by the caretaker had dampened most people's enthusiasm. I still messed about there occasionally, mostly because the school's at the end of our street and it's really cheap entertainment. I don't get pocketmoney as such, and I don't ask because I know Mum hasn't got it.
Enough self-pity. Like I said, it was a brilliantly simple plan. I'd spend the afternoon messing around on the world's least safe climbing frame, something that wouldn't particularly surprise anyone, and Zack would tag whoever was watching. We'd work out if it was our helper or our stalker later. Zack groused a bit about me putting myself in danger, which he seems to think is exclusively his job, but he had to agree that if I was the target, I was the only one who could flush our mystery man out. I was going to play hero this time. It would be his turn later, when we had figured out what, or rather who, was going on.
What we didn't bank on was our man being a world-class sneak. I spent what felt like hours playing in our impromptu jungle gym, making bad jokes to myself about them being brass monkey bars and wondering where Zack had hidden himself. He's really very good, no matter how much I whinge to myself about how it's not fair, and one of the things about school is that it's got lots of good hiding places. I should know, I've used most of them over the years. It was finally dawning on me that giving the enemy quite so many hiding places might not have been such a bright idea after all when it happened.
"Dave! Move!" I heard Zack shouting as I heard the creaks from the scaffolding and felt it shift. I was on the ground and running immediately, but I knew I wasn't going to make it. Then this red streak knocked me sideways, and my last thought before my head hit the ground and I lost consciousness was that Zack had managed to be the hero after all.
I can't have been out for long, but I was pretty confused when I came to. I remember thinking that there were a lot of people standing about, all the workers who had been finding nice warm inside jobs for themselves all afternoon. My legs had something nice and warm wrapped around them, and I wondered why Zack hadn't let go yet. Then I caught sight of him, and my heart stopped. It didn't look good. He was mostly trapped under the scaffolding that had been meant for me, and bleeding from multiple cuts. And he was so still. He had managed to push me mostly clear, but he hadn't been able to get out from under in time.
I just felt so bloody guilty. I mean, I know how things work. This is the real world, bad things happen to good people. I also know that Zack fundamentally doesn't think that way. He has this idea that if you do the Right Thing, everything will come out right. Bad guys are the only ones to get hurt; good guys never get more than bruises and split lips.
I knew all this, and I still let him pull his stupid heroics, and this time it might just have got him killed.
I tried to sit up, to get all that stuff off him, but someone let off a fireworks display in my head. I vaguely remember someone — a policeman I think — telling me not to move and putting a folded jacket under my head. Then Jenny was there, telling me to keep still and wait for the ambulance. I wanted to say sorry, to apologise for getting into trouble despite our best intentions, but I couldn't find the words. Mum was there too, crying over me, and to my dulled surprise Alex turned up while they were starting to dig Zack out. By this point I had figured out that I wasn't dying, and the fireworks in my head had quietened down, at least while I didn't try to move, so I started fretting. I must have driven the ambulance men up the wall. They kept asking me how I felt, and I kept brushing them off, telling them I was fine and that they needed to save Zack. He just looked so grey, at least to my guilt-filled eyes. It wasn't until Alex checked his pulse and looked over him as best he could with the debris, then gently told me that the cuts looked superficial and nothing was sticking out at odd angles that I let myself believe that Zack might survive this, that I hadn't just killed my best friend. I even let myself see the colour in his cheeks at last.
Jenny tried to go with me in the ambulance, but they wouldn't let her. Someone took her home, I think, at Mum's insistence, then Mum insisted on riding with me. She kept touching me, as if she was scared I wasn't really there. Alex got to ride with Zack, he told me, though it was pretty clear he was more concerned with Mum.
The next hour or so was pretty hazy. I think they must have put some sedative in me as they drove and poked and prodded and whatever it is they do in hospitals. I wasn't much help, I know that much. I kept switching between guilt at getting Zack hurt, guilt at breaking my promise to Jenny, and pathetic gratitude that Alex was there for Mum. And for me, now I think of it; he never called me "Davey" once.
Eventually, they ship us to our own little room. God knows how Alex pulled that one off, assuming it was Alex. Anyway, the official verdict is that I've got off with bruises and a lecture about how dangerous scaffolding can be, and Zack was "Bloody lucky." He's managed to come away with no broken bones or internal injuries that they've spotted, though his back is a mass of bruises and small cuts. Typical. They want to keep us in over night, since we were both unconscious for a while, but I can go home tomorrow. Zack they want in for observation, and they aren't going to let him go until they are sure that he's OK. That's a laugh really, Zack can get much better medical care when he gets home.
What I really need now is time to talk to Zack, to apologise and to try and work out exactly what happened. I daren't even mention the subject with Mum around, she'd go completely ballistic that we even thought of doing something like this on our own. Besides, what I have to say is personal, and relates to the side of Zack that the adults just don't know about. Which is how I want to keep it.
My hopes of getting privacy any time soon are dashed when Maggie turns up. The police doctor she's been working for thoughtfully told her about my immense stupidity. She looks pretty concerned even after Mum fills her in on the state of our injuries, or lack thereof. It's funny, it's almost like she's weighing up what's going on with everyone. The way she keeps looking between me and Zack, the wariness she tries not to show towards Alex and Mum, all make me feel more uncomfortable, and that shows too.
Alex is the one to break our uncomfortable little vigil. It's his rugby practise night, and for a moment I allow myself a little vindictive pleasure; I get to hate him for putting his beloved game before me and Mum. Then my brain catches up with my ears, and I hear him promising to be back as quickly as he can, he's only going long enough to introduce this new guy to the team. He wouldn't go at all if he hadn't promised to do that. He wants to be there for Mum. I watch him carefully while he's soothing her, and come to the conclusion that he's for real. This time. I've seen him wheedling her, talking her into letting him do things and distracting her into forgiving him for skipping out now and then, but this time he ditches all the fancy words and just puts his heart in his eyes. I can't help it; for Mum's sake I call back there and then every nasty thing I've ever said or thought about Alex. He loves my mother — really tries to shield her from harm and all that — despite the petulant brat that I've been for the last few months.
The clincher for me is when he stops at the door, turns back to Mum and says "You should get something to eat, too." I suppress an entirely selfish cheer at the thought of being nearer to hashing things out with Zack, and just grin at them both. He's right; Mum is quite capable of working herself up over my bruises that she'll forget to eat entirely tonight. She eventually gives in when all of us, including Maggie, weigh in and Alex threatens her with a fate worse than the hospital canteen if she still hasn't eaten by the time he's back.
And then there was one. The silence stretches out between Zack and myself, and I can see Maggie watching us carefully and looking nearly as uncomfortable as I feel. There is stuff that I need to say to him, but I can't say it in front of her. Of course I can't say that either without explaining more than I want to. It's too weird for most people to cope with, even glossing over the different dimensions stuff.
Note here that I still haven't spotted that Maggie is not "most people." Heck, the girl has been doing work experience with a forensic pathologist, for heaven's sake!
Anyway, we wait and we wait, and miracle of miracles before I scream or explode Maggie decides to go for some coffee. Rather pointedly, I have to say. She's barely out of the door when I turn across to Zack and say "Next time I have a brilliant idea, stop me." It's a weak joke I know, but I haven't been able to think of anything better for all the time I've had. I needn't have worried; Zack laughs anyway.
"But it was a good plan," he protests, eyes dancing. "Elegant, simple,…"
"And nearly fatal," I finish off darkly.
Zack seems to take this personally. He reaches across towards me and says "Hey Dave, you know I'd never let you get hurt."
"I know," I tell him, "but this time I nearly killed you. No, don't tell me that nearly's don't count, I know how you think, if you hadn't been so lucky you could have been dead or crippled." I don't quite dare look at him, but I have to get this off my chest. "Zack, this isn't your world, and it doesn't work the same way. Bad things happen here, in a way that they just don't when you're at home. I knew that, and I still let you get into a dangerous situation, and it nearly killed you. I nearly killed you. You've got to understand, heroes don't always win here. Sometimes they die instead. We've had wars and conflicts, and they weren't full of heroism and glory, they were full of pain and death. You haven't had that." I finally get up the courage to look as I say "This isn't a nice world, Zack."
Zack looks back at me levelly, waiting until I have finished and am good and ready to listen. "I'm not a complete idiot, Dave. I know the risks. I've been hurt here before, you know. The first time I stayed here more than a few minutes, I tried to stop a mugging and, well, nobody backed me up. Whatever happened this afternoon, I wasn't going to leave you without backup.
"Besides, it really was a good plan, and a different one would have had the same risks. If we'd sat around and done nothing, your stalker would have just tried something else. At least this way we had a chance to spot him first."
Typical. He throws my own argument back at me, and I can't do anything but agree with him. I hate it when he's reasonable. I have to grin all the same, and shake my head in mild disbelief. "You're a menace, you know that?"
He grins back, completely unrepentant. "I thought that was the idea."
We both laugh, the tension between us dissolved. I pretend to throw something at him. He winces as he pretends to dodge but his smile stays. I know the doctors told me he isn't badly hurt, but I have to ask. "Zack, how do you feel?"
"Sore," he admits. I'm relieved. I know he's not the macho sort to make light of injuries. If he says he's just sore, nothing worse is going on.
"I'm still sorry," I say, as Maggie returns staring dubiously at a plastic cup of brown liquid.
"Good." I stare at Zack. "That makes it definitely my turn to pick where we eat next."
I groan theatrically and clutch at my stomach. "Maybe not that sorry," I shoot back, and we all laugh. "Hey Maggie, are you sure that's coffee? The way you're looking at it…"
"I'm not entirely sure that it didn't come out of an operating theatre," Maggie chuckles as she puts the cup down. "It's disgusting, whatever it is." Abruptly she becomes serious and fixes us both with a real Paddington of a stare. "So what actually happened to you guys? I've heard the official story and, well,…"
"I was playing," I protest, a little too strongly. I was too. Zack was the one who was doing something else.
"And?" Maggie is actually tapping her foot as she stares at me. Zack gives in first.
"And we thought someone was stalking David, so we tried to turn the tables."
To my immense surprise, Maggie doesn't flip. She's clearly annoyed, but there's a sort of eagerness in her voice as she asks, "Did you see him?" I shake my head.
"I'm not sure," Zack replies to my slight surprise. He hadn't said anything to me, but then we hadn't had much time on our own. "I thought I caught a glimpse of someone shortly before the scaffolding collapsed, but I couldn't be sure and I couldn't make out anything about them. It might have been a trick of the light. I'd still bet that whoever it was fiddled with the scaffolding to make it fall."
"That was my guess too. Hang on, if you didn't see the stalker, how did you know he was there?"
"Someone we trust told us," I say hurried before Zack says something we'll both regret. "Looks like he was right, too."
"So… what are you planning to do next? About your stalker, I mean."
"Oh, we've got a brilliant new plan," I improvise. "I'm going to hide at home until they let Zack out for Christmas." He grins back at me; we both know that he'll be fully fit for whatever comes once he has a chance to get home, which should be a nice big surprise for whoever's after me.
Maggie stares at us and shakes her head in a manner I recognise from Jenny. You're absolutely barking, that gesture says, and after all I've just been saying to Zack I have to agree. We've just avoided being killed once, and we're tacitly proposing to try it again? Where did I put my brain? "At least you'll be safe at home," she says with surprising firmness. "Look, I'd be glad to help if there's anything at all that you think I can help with. I mean it. I like you guys, and I'd hate for anything to happen to you."
My flabber is ghasted. Zack and I met Maggie pretty much twenty four hours ago, and she's asking us to risk her neck too? I can't help it, I find myself giving her exactly the same "you're mad" look.
Zack is giving her a quite different look though, a penetratingly suspicious one. "We were told to expect help," he says slowly. "Are you it?"
"Probably," Maggie says in that same slow, serious tone. "I can't say for certain that I'm who your trusted source was talking about, but I do know some surprising people and I'm more help than you might think."
I'm confused and not a little skeptical, and I know it shows. I don't mean to be rude to Maggie but she's eighteen, and a girl, who can she know that can deal with this stuff? Then again, my best friend is seventeen, a boy, and comes from another world. I'll have to think about this.
Zack has obviously decided that he trusts her. No great surprise there, Zack trusts everyone by default. It's something we have to keep reminding him about here. "I wish Sam had been more specific," he grouses. I see Maggie's ears go up at the mention of a name. Oh yes, I think sarcastically, you obviously know Sam really well.
I stretch back and try not to look as mistrustful as I feel. It seems to work; pretty soon the conversation is back to normal teen things, which I always find funny when a third of it isn't a normal teen. We even all get embarrassed and change subjects when Mum comes back in. She seems better for the rest, or maybe it's just the way that we're not as uptight as we were. I even summon up the courage to say sorry to her for making her worry, and agree that playing on the scaffolding was stupid and we won't do it again. None of us mention my stalker. Shortly after, to my infinite surprise, Alex gets back. He really must have just done a "hello, goodbye" with his rugby mates to be back here so soon, which just makes me feel guilty all over again at the worry I caused Mum.
"I am really sorry Mum, I mean it." I do to. "I didn't mean to put you and Alex through all that."
She smiles, a real full-bodied I-mean-this smile, and leans forwards to kiss me on the cheek. This is so embarrassing. "I love you too," she says, and I glare at my alleged friends who are both grinning ear to ear. "You know, I think that's the first time I've heard you apologise to Alex." It is too, for all that Alex protests that Mum's making it sound worse than it was. I've spent such a lot of time resenting him for making Mum happy, I would have died rather than been nice to him. Somewhere in the last few days I've learned that I'm not the only one who can care.
Then I realise something and sit up sharply. "Oh, sugar!" I say with feeling, looking straight at Alex. "I forgot I haven't got a Christmas present for you yet!"
What are they laughing for? I'm serious.
Alex leans forward to put a hand on my knee. "I've got you back, Davey," he says. "I don't need any more present than that."
I lie back again, luxuriating in this family stuff. A Dad for Christmas, eh? Sounds good.