Superpowerless

by Chris Priestley

  They weren’t gone that long but it felt like an age to David, who resorted to looking through the library of books round the walls rather than talk to Dylan or Finn, asking Tilly if it was OK to take them down and then sitting in an armchair flicking through a succession of photography books.

  Eventually Kate and Ellen reappear and Ellen beckons him from the doorway and, holding his hand, leads him upstairs to their room.

  ‘Sorry, David,’ she says, closing the door.

  ‘What for?’ he says.

  ‘For drinking too much – and smoking – and falling asleep on you. I’ll make it up to you.’

  David shrugs.

  ‘We OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘You’re pissed off with me,’ says Ellen.

  ‘I’m not pissed off with you.’

  ‘Jesus. You are. You’re mad at me because we didn’t have sex,’ she says.

  ‘So?’ says David. ‘What’s wrong with that? I was looking forward to it. Is that a crime?’

  This isn’t close to being the whole story of course. He has been dreading it as much as looking forward to it. It was more a sense of overwhelming anticipation.

  She smiles and grabs him, pulling him close.

  ‘There’s still tonight.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, frowning.

  ‘You’re not going to sulk, are you, David?’ she says. ‘Because that would be really annoying.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘No. It’s not that. Dylan has been winding me up.’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ she says. ‘Come on – let’s go down to the sea. The sea always makes everything seem better.’

  And Ellen’s right. It does. David has always loved the sea – the sound of waves rolling in, the smell, the wide flat horizon. They walk along the drift of pebbles near the water’s edge and then go for coffee at a cafe looking out onto the promenade, seagulls braying from the masts of the fishing boats hauled up on the shore.

  He is surprised at how many people are about. The house had seemed so claustrophobic that David had forgotten they are in a pretty English seaside town in summer – although in true English seaside form, the sky is thick with cloud and it threatens to rain.

  The walk, the sea, the caffeine – it seems to lift everyone’s mood and David is amazed to find himself chatting to Dylan about comics on the way back. For the first time since they set off for this place, he begins to feel at ease. But they are just walking through the door of the house on their return when Ellen grabs his arm as the others go inside and steers him upstairs to their room.

  ‘Why would you tell Dylan we’d had sex?’

  David opens his mouth, but no appropriate words make themselves available.

  ‘That’s pretty weird, David,’ says Ellen, her frown deepening.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says David. ‘I told you. Dylan was on my case and I just said it to shut him up.’

  ‘To shut him up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You made some comment about me being still asleep,’ she says. ‘Like you’d worn me out.’

  David sighed.

  ‘Look – Dylan was being really annoying. I just wanted him to stop. You’d passed out right in the middle of … and then you leave the house as soon as you get up and –’

  ‘So you were pissed off with me?’

  ‘No! Yes. A bit.’

  David can’t make sense of what he is supposed to feel now. He can hardly say he had been relieved, can he? Even though part of him had. He had felt annoyed too – annoyed that he had been put through so much stress for nothing. Annoyed with Dylan, annoyed with Ellen. Annoyed with himself. What is he supposed to say?

  The healing magic of the walk down to the sea has been immediately reversed and Ellen turns on her heels without another word and walks out, heading downstairs. David looks out of the window at the trees outside. A flock of tiny birds takes flight. Goldfinches, he guesses. He sighs and follows Ellen downstairs. Again he has an overwhelming desire to be back in his own bedroom.

  He feels right back where he was on the train. They have now coalesced once more into a group apart from him and he walks over to the sofa and slumps down while the others sit round the table talking. Ellen’s phone rings.

  ‘Speaking. Oh yeah, right. I should bloody well think so too. OK. OK. All I want is for him to understand he’s out of order. You can’t have someone like that driving cabs, you know. It’s not right. OK. OK.’

  She hangs up and puts her phone on the table.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Kate.

  ‘It’s that bloody cab driver. I complained and they’ve just got back to me.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘The guy says he’s getting him in today and he’s going to sort him out. Says he’ll fire him if he can’t get a straight answer out of him.’

  David gets up.

  ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘They might fire him?’

  ‘If he doesn’t have an explanation, yeah. So?’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them the truth!’ says Ellen. ‘That he called me a whore.’

  ‘Actually he specifically said you weren’t a whore. He said you were an educated young woman.’

  They all look at Ellen.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re taking his side, David,’ she says. ‘He was really nasty. If I’d been on my own I’d have been really scared.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ he says.

  ‘I think you’d better go,’ says Ellen.

  ‘What?’ says David.

  ‘I said I think you’d better fucking go!’ she yells. ‘I don’t want you here and neither does anyone else.’

  David laughs but no one joins him.

  ‘Sorry, David,’ says Tilly. ‘Maybe it’s for the best.’

  ‘Don’t apologise to him! Weirdo. And don’t tell people we’ve screwed when we haven’t. Because that’s never going to happen, OK?’

  David takes a deep breath and goes upstairs to fetch his bag. When he gets back downstairs, Ellen and Kate have disappeared.

  ‘Bye then,’ he says.

  He stares at Tilly, unable to say anything else for fear that he might simply burst into uncontrollable sobs. He feels it welling up inside him but manages to keep it strapped down, despite Dylan’s chuckling, until he has walked to the bottom of the drive and is sure he is out of sight.

  David hurries down the road in the direction of the centre of the village. He skids to a halt, takes a deep breath and grabs a nearby car, lifting it over his head and hurling it down the road.

  Furious as he is, he realises immediately what he has done and takes off, catching the car in mid-air, dragging it to a halt and then flying back to replace it where it was. He does it all so super-quickly that no one sees a thing.

  He carries on, head bowed, and sits down in a bus shelter where he bursts into tears and violent blubbering and bawling in a way he has not done since he heard of his father’s death.

  That night he had cried so much he was sure that he would never cry again, and now here he was, sobbing his heart out over nothing more than looking like a fool. And this realisation simply makes him feel all the more wretched because he feels it cheapens the grief he felt then.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’

  David looks up, his eyes tear-blurred and stinging. An old man is standing beside him, leaning on a cane.

  ‘Yes,’ gasps David. ‘I’m … I’m …’

  But he begins to cry again, leaning over and sobbing and sobbing, and the man moves closer and places a hand on David’s shoulder.

  ‘There, there, lad,’ says the man. ‘I’ve lived a long time. Things are seldom as bad as they seem.’

  The words are meant kindly and David has to stop himself from hugging the old man, but instead he struggles to control himself and sniffs his tears to their conclusion.

  He nods and looks up at the man, whose watery eyes look as though they migh
t overflow with tears themselves.

  ‘I’m all right,’ says David. ‘I’m all right now.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ says the old man, patting his shoulder. ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says David. ‘Thank you.’

  The old man smiles and nods and walks away. David lets him go before getting to his feet, pulling out his phone and calling a cab.

  Chapter 32

  Perfectly Up

  The door bangs open as Holly drags the vacuum cleaner into David’s room.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she says, looking at his dazed expression. ‘You look knackered. The weekend went well then?’

  ‘It was … OK,’ he says, sitting up and pushing the hair out of his eyes.

  ‘Sooo,’ she says, sitting down at his desk with a grin, ‘tell me everything. I want to know every sordid detail.’

  David shrugs.

  ‘Not much to tell really,’ he says.

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  He doesn’t want to talk about it. It already feels like it happened ages ago to someone else. Her grin disappears. She puts her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Hey – there’ll be another time. It’s no big deal, let me tell y—’

  ‘Don’t,’ he says, pulling away. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she says. ‘Although you clearly are.’

  David looks away towards the window. After a moment, Holly gets up and, plugging in the hoover, begins to clean the room.

  David puts his headphones on and listens to music, closing his eyes and returning to the other Holly in the garden, in her bikini – until the one in his room taps him on the foot.

  ‘Stopped sulking now?’ says Holly, when she eventually switches the hoover off. David removes his headphones.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, have you stopped sulking?’

  ‘I wasn’t sulking,’ mumbles David.

  What is it with girls and sulking? Did they all get together and agree to accuse boys of sulking just to wind them up? His mum does it too. It is so annoying.

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘Why are you being so miserable?’ he asks.

  ‘Me?’ she says. ‘You’ve been in a grump since I came in the room.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  Holly sits back down at his desk and slaps her hands down on her thighs.

  ‘Let’s start again,’ she says. ‘How did it go with … what’s-her-name – Ellen?’

  There’s a pause. Should he tell her what happened? All of it? The truth? No.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Just OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says David. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Holly. ‘You were just so hyper before that I thought you be a bit more … I don’t know … up.’

  ‘Up?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m up,’ he says. ‘I’m perfectly up.’

  Holly smiles. David doesn’t. Some of the bitterness and hurt of that morning creeps back into his mind and he feels his heart clench at the memory. There is no way he is going to discuss it.

  ‘Look,’ he continues, ‘we did it and that’s that. There’s nothing really to tell.’

  ‘You don’t sound very happy about it, that’s all.’

  David shrugs. Something about her tone, about her lovely face, makes him want to tell her even while he knows he can’t. It feels like a defeat and it feels defeatist to tell her – to admit to the failure.

  ‘I don’t like to brag,’ he says.

  ‘You have something to brag about?’

  Now he smiles. They can just joke about it and move on. No one ever has to talk about it again.

  ‘Not brag,’ says David. ‘But she seemed happy enough. It was good actually. It was really good.’

  ‘So are you and Ellen an item now?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ says David, surprising himself at where this lie is wandering off to. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ says Holly. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?

  ‘So why the long face before?’

  That is a very good question.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t know. I suppose it still feels weird for me.’

  ‘To have a girlfriend?’

  David nods. His attempts to cut this enquiry short seems to have inadvertently extended it. But he can’t stop now.

  ‘I’ve never really had one before,’ he says. ‘I mean – I’ve never had one at all actually.’

  Holly shrugs. He notices again how beautiful she is.

  ‘Well, it’s the same for everyone. Everyone just learns as they go along.’

  This is crazy. Why are they talking about Ellen? He doesn’t want to talk about Ellen.

  ‘But I was hoping –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know – that you might give me some advice.’

  Holly laughs, dry and humourless.

  ‘Seriously? You’ve come to the wrong place for that kind of advice, believe me. Kissing maybe, but relationships – no.’

  She gets up and starts to leave.

  ‘What about the sex stuff then?’ he says. ‘You can’t have told me everyth—’

  ‘For God’s sake, David,’ she snaps, spinning round and scowling at him. ‘Is that all you see when you look at me? Or Ellen for that matter?’

  David stares at her. A speeded-up slide show of Holly in her bikini and Ellen in her Silver Surfer T-shirt flashes by.

  ‘No! Of course not.’

  She sighs, calming herself down.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

  David nods, happy to see an end to another flare-up of Holly’s wild temper.

  ‘OK then, if that’s true – ask me something else. Anything. Ask me something that isn’t for you or your …’

  She points at his crotch. David thinks. Then thinks a little more. There must be something …

  It occurs to him to ask her why she was crying that day when she was sitting on the sunlounger, but he doesn’t want to draw her attention back to the fact of his spying on her.

  ‘Why did you drop out of university?’ he says after a while.

  Holly peers at him.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says David. ‘I just wondered.’

  Holly is still staring suspiciously at him. He worries that she is about to lose her temper again.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘this was your stupid idea. Ask you something that isn’t about sex, you said. So I did.’

  She nods.

  ‘Yeah – sorry. OK, OK.’

  ‘So, why did you?’ says David, now, seeing Holly’s reaction to the question, genuinely interested in the answer.

  ‘I was stressed out,’ she says. ‘I just couldn’t go on. I got myself into trouble. With a boy, of course.’

  ‘Trouble, how?’ says David.

  ‘Isn’t that a new question?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I thought it was still the same question.’

  Holly pauses for a moment and looks as though she might storm out. But for whatever reason she decides to stay. And it was a decision – David can see it taking place. She is deciding that, despite clearly not wanting to, she is going to tell a piece of her story. He can feel the gravity of it.

  ‘There was a boy,’ she begins, with a sigh. ‘I was working in a coffee bar, to earn some extra money. He came in one day. Then he came back and came back and we got to talking and he left the biggest tips and then he finally picked up the nerve and he asked me out.’

  She breaks off here, looking off into nowhere in particular.

  ‘We became inseparable,’ she continues. ‘I spent more and more of my time at his place, less and less time with my friends. I changed bit by
bit, without really noticing it until a friend pointed it out and I told her to get the fuck out of my life. She was a good friend. Maybe my best. But I was lost to her. Lost to all my friends.

  ‘But I didn’t care because I had Duncan. I didn’t need them. I only needed Duncan. What did I care what they thought about me – about him – about our life?

  ‘I suppose if you like who you are it must be a trauma to move on – to change – to evolve. But you see, I never did really like myself, so I was happy to embrace this new life. If Duncan wanted me to be different, then that was fine. That showed me that he was in it for the long haul, you know?’

  David nods. He doesn’t have to pretend to understand. He feels as if he really does know how that would be.

  ‘But he wasn’t?’ says David. ‘In it for the long haul?’

  Holly smiles and tears appear as though by magic in her eyes, little stars twinkling at the pupils’ edge.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I was such an idiot. I never saw it coming at all. Not at all. Pathetic.’

  She shakes her head and sighs. David waits for more but only silence follows.

  ‘What happened?’ he says eventually.

  ‘He started getting cross with me – over little things. Stuff that used to make him laugh now exasperated him. I became an irritant. I felt like I was in a trap. Whatever I said or did, he took exception to it. And never worse than when I tried to make up for whatever it was I’d done. That just annoyed him all the more. I became weak and servile and it disgusted him. It disgusted me. I would have done anything to keep him. Anything. But he didn’t want me.’

  ‘He went off with someone else?’

  ‘I found out he was seeing someone. I confronted him about it and he lied of course. He even tried to make it up to me. He said we’d make a new start. Jesus – I don’t know whether he believed that or not, even when he was saying it. But it was bollocks of course.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  Holly twisted her face into a grimace.

  ‘No one I knew. She wasn’t even from the uni. She worked in an office across town. But the thing … the thing that really did me in was … was that she looked like me.’

  ‘Looked like you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Holly. ‘And not like the limp and bland fucker he made me, but how I was before. He’d turned me into something he didn’t like and then gone after what I used to be. I mean – how sick is that? And yet …’