SweetFreak

by Sophie McKenzie

  I try to join in, but I’m having a disturbing memory of Amelia mentioning this very hut and how she and Taylor had gone there and let themselves in with the key with the skull painted on the end.

  ‘One day we’ll run away there,’ Taylor says, his lips drifting over mine. ‘It’ll be so romantic.’

  Like it was with Amelia?

  I don’t say this out loud. Instead, I try to talk about Rose again.

  ‘I’m convinced she’s SweetFreak but I can’t see any way of proving it,’ I complain.

  ‘Well there probably isn’t a way,’ Taylor says. ‘Rose has got what she wants, hasn’t she? Back friends with Amelia and the lead in that stupid play.’

  He’s right, of course, but it still rankles that I can’t call her out on what she’s done.

  ‘You need to let it go,’ Taylor urges, and maybe it’s my imagination but I’m sure there’s a hint of impatience in his voice. ‘Everyone’s forgotten what you’re supposed to have done, haven’t they?’

  I shrug. ‘Mostly, I guess.’

  It’s true that school gossip has moved on. I’m no longer pointed at or whispered over. And yet my position at school is transformed: whereas at the start of the year I was included in everything, now I am ignored, my status downgraded from popular to invisible.

  It hurts but when I turn to Taylor for comfort, I’m not sure he really understands. He tells me I just have to ‘be myself’, that I’m so great everyone will come around eventually and, when I keep talking about it, that I’m being oversensitive and the situation isn’t as bad as all that.

  ‘It’s not like you’re actually getting picked on any more, is it?’ he asks with a tinge of impatience in his voice.

  And I have to agree that I’m not.

  The following week I hardly see Taylor. We meet after school on the Monday, but it’s already starting to get dark and the rain is heavy and we’re soon soaked through and running for home. We pick up our brothers together on Wednesday and I’m hoping for an invite back to his, but Taylor says he’s busy. He doesn’t call later either and I’m just starting to worry that he’s totally lost interest, when he calls to ask me to go to a party on Friday night.

  I have to slip out of the house to meet up with him – Mum might have relaxed her sanction that I’m grounded, but I’m still under a strict curfew – and my heart bubbles with excitement as I let myself down from the bathroom window and patter across the extension roof next door to the pavement below. I race to the edge of the woods, where I’m meeting Taylor, and we catch a bus to the party.

  It’s being thrown in a massive house, by a friend of Taylor’s from his private school. I don’t know any of these posh Bamford House teenagers – they all seem super confident, the boys showing off to impress the girls and the girls themselves uniformly slim, pretty and groomed like models in designer dresses. I feel self-conscious in my cheap jeans and high street top and wish I’d tied my wild hair back so it was less obvious.

  The boys at the party greet Taylor like a hero.

  ‘It’s Super H,’ one of them says in his upper-class accent.

  ‘Yeah, yah, Super H. Super H,’ the group around him chant.

  Taylor blushes modestly.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ I ask.

  ‘Just a nickname,’ Taylor says smoothly. ‘Come on, let’s dance.’

  He drags me over to the centre of the living room. The boys at this party outnumber girls by about three to one and I can feel many pairs of eyes on me as Taylor and I move to the loud dance track.

  I pull the black strappy top I ‘borrowed’ from Poppy self-consciously over my hips.

  ‘Don’t.’ Taylor grins. ‘You look amazing.’

  I glow in the warmth of his pleasure. I must have been wrong about him losing interest. He’s just busy with his life. Which, unlike me, he still has.

  We dance until we’re both sweating and panting for breath. Taylor heads in search of drinks and the boy who called him ‘Super H’ sidles over to me.

  ‘I’m Jack. I go to school with Taylor.’ He has an earnest face, with round-rimmed glasses and a snub nose. It’s hard to believe he and Taylor are the same age. Jack looks and sounds much younger. ‘How d’you meet Taylor then?’ he asks.

  ‘Through a friend,’ I say, not wanting to mention Amelia’s name. ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Not that well. Taylor’s like a shark, always moving on.’ Jack laughs, though I don’t see that he’s said anything particularly funny. ‘He gets through people . . . girls mostly, like you wouldn’t believe. Not you, though.’ Jack touches my arm. ‘He’s obviously mad about you.’

  I’m not sure if he’s saying that sarcastically or not, so I ignore it.

  ‘You make him sound like a bit of a player,’ I say. The music soars around us. A taller, bigger boy barges past unheeding and knocks beer over Jack’s arm. He wipes it away with a string of swear words.

  ‘Not at all,’ he says and, again, I’m not sure if he’s being sarcastic or not. ‘Did he tell you about Mooney?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Not what. Who. This guy in our class Taylor got excluded.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, Taylor was messing about with his posse which Mooney was in. They set fire to the sixth form block after school one evening. No one was hurt, but a couple of the sixth formers had to be rescued by the fire service. They made a big deal of the investigation. Mooney’s fingerprints were on the can of petrol Taylor used. I dunno if Mooney was even with Taylor, but he went down for the fire.’

  ‘He went to prison?’ I stare at Jack, aghast.

  ‘No. Course not.’ Jack shakes his head solemnly, to emphasise the point. ‘People like us don’t go to prison. Permanent exclusion, that’s what they call it.’ He shrugs. ‘Mooney’s probably up at some other private school by now.’

  ‘Right.’ I frown. ‘Does that have something to do with why you call Taylor “Super H”?’

  ‘No,’ Jack starts, ‘we call him that because—’

  ‘Hey!’ Taylor breaks across Jack’s sentence, our drinks in his hands. He glares at Jack who presses his lips together, makes the zip sign, then gives me a wink as he slips away.

  ‘What did he want?’ Taylor asks, suspiciously.

  ‘Nothing. He told me about someone called Mooney. Says you got him permanently excluded from your school.’

  Taylor shrugs. ‘Mooney got himself excluded,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t my fault he got caught. I told everyone to wear gloves so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints. It was just a stupid prank that got out of hand, Carey. No big deal.’

  ‘Sounds like it was a big deal for Mooney,’ I say, wondering how Taylor can sound so casual about letting another person take the blame for the fire, not to mention the terrible risk to the lives of everyone in the building that burnt down.

  ‘He’ll just have moved to another school,’ Taylor says.

  ‘That’s what your friend Jack said.’

  ‘Well that’s what happens,’ Taylor says, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  ‘So tell me about the Super H nickname?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ Taylor says, sounding cross. ‘I told you, it’s just a stupid thing, I don’t even remember how I got it.’ He smiles. ‘Come on, we’re here to have a good time, not talk about stuff that happened a zillion years ago.’

  ‘Course,’ I say, smiling back.

  We swig our drinks, then get back to dancing and making out. But something has changed between us. Taylor seems somehow distant. As if the party was a test which I have failed.

  18

  I’m still obsessing over how Taylor feels about me the following morning as I lie in bed. I can’t make sense of his behaviour: all interested one minute, distracted or withdrawn the next. Can I really trust him? Amelia’s experiences bob uneasily at the back of my mind. She thought he was really into her, but he obviously wasn’t. Is it the same with me? Surely it can’t be, Taylor’s made it clear several
times that he always liked me far more than he liked her.

  Jamie bounds in in the midst of my musings. He demands a story and I shout at him to leave me alone. Later, feeling guilty, I go in search of him to make up, only to find Poppy’s taken him out to the woods and it’s just me and Mum in the house.

  ‘Are you all right, Carey?’ Mum asks, her tone gentler than usual. She’s stretched out on the sofa, her laptop in her hands. She normally uses it for work but right now she’s on a clothes website – rows of flowery dresses fill the page.

  ‘Sure,’ I ask. ‘Mum, how can you tell if someone really likes you?’

  Mum peers at me over the top of the laptop.

  ‘Boy “like” or friend “like”?’

  ‘Either,’ I say, unwilling to give away any information about Taylor. I’ve kept his existence and our burgeoning relationship a secret from everyone apart from Poppy.

  ‘Well I’d say being honest and reliable and respectful, those are good indicators.’

  I nod and drift away, back up to my room.

  Is Taylor those things? I’m not sure. He doesn’t contact me all that day, Sunday. I’m relieved. It gives me time to think about what I learned about him last night.

  According to Taylor, this boy Mooney only had himself to blame for getting caught while Taylor was just along for the ride. But I saw the way the boys from his school looked at him: part fear, part awe. I suspect Taylor was the ringleader of the fire. And even if it was a prank that went wrong, like Taylor claimed, it was still a terrible thing to do and horrible to let someone else take the blame for it.

  I can’t stop thinking about it. Or about Taylor. My relief at having time to myself on Sunday turns into anxiety when Taylor doesn’t call or message until Tuesday night, when he asks if I want to bring Jamie over to his house after our usual little brother school pick-up the next day.

  Relief washes over me. And then renewed uncertainty. It’s starting to dawn on me that maybe I like Taylor more than Taylor likes me. More than he says he likes me. I try to talk to him about his feelings the next day, but he just yawns and changes the subject. I don’t bring up the story of Mooney and the fire, or of Taylor’s strange nickname, but both things prey on my mind.

  I roll the nickname around my head. It seems weird. There’s no ‘H’ in Taylor or his middle name or surname, so what does ‘Super H’ mean?

  A couple of weeks ago Taylor had promised we’d spend the whole of half term together, but now the week off school is coming up, he is unwilling to make any definite plans.

  ‘Mum wants to go to her sister in Nottingham for a few days,’ he explains. ‘So I might go with her, or I might just stay with friends in Cornmouth while she’s gone. I’m not sure.’

  ‘If you leave town, when would you go?’ I don’t mean the question to sound like a whine but I can’t seem to get the needy edge out of my voice.

  It clearly irritates Taylor. ‘I don’t know,’ he snaps. ‘Sometime over the weekend I guess.’

  I gulp, afraid to push him further, especially on the phone, so I change the subject. There’s no point discussing my suspicions about Rose any more; he’s made it clear that he’s bored of the whole SweatFreak thing now. Instead I chat about Bon Wheel – which I’ve totally got into since Taylor introduced me to their music – trying not to let the disappointment sound in my voice. Taylor is soon chatting away too, as warm and sweet-natured as I’ve ever heard him.

  When we meet the next day, Wednesday, at the Cornmouth Primary school gates, I am careful not to mention the upcoming half term again and am rewarded by Taylor in a particularly affectionate mood. He snogs me in the playground, much to the obvious irritation of half the mums gathered to pick up their kids, and on the way back to his house he makes our little brothers laugh with his silly faces and voices.

  We reach Taylor’s house – which is three times the size of my own – where his Mum says a smiley ‘hello’ to me then ushers Jamie and Blake into the kitchen for juice and cookies. Taylor takes my hand and leads me up to his room. He’s grinning as he sits me down on his bed and I can’t help but grin back, in spite of the little coil of anxiety that seems to have settled permanently inside me these days. Taylor’s smile is like the sun, all-consuming in its light and warmth, devastating when taken away.

  ‘So what shall we do for the next two hours?’ Taylor asks, eyes sparkling.

  I wander around his room. It’s cluttered and messy, though the floor is clear, as if someone has shoved everything back against the walls. The top drawer of his desk is open. My eye lights on a stash of old phones inside.

  ‘Wow, look at all these.’

  ‘They’re old ones of my dad’s,’ Taylor explains. ‘I told you before, he works in IT.’

  ‘Right.’ Perhaps Taylor giving me that phone wasn’t such a significant gift as I’d imagined.

  It’s not a happy thought.

  I rummage among the mobiles. In the corner of the drawer I spot the end of a long old-fashioned brass key. I pull it out. A black skull has been hand-painted on the head. My insides contract as Amelia’s voice echoes in my head.

  The last time I saw him he took me to the Haunted Hut outside the industrial estate with the key with the skull painted on the end and it was really spooky and I was all freaked and Taylor was really nice and we made out and it was so romantic . . .

  ‘What’s that key for?’ I ask, assuming an air of curiosity.

  Taylor follows my gaze. ‘That’s the key to the Haunted Hut I was telling you about,’ he says. He sits up, eyes sparking. ‘Hey, how about we go there on Friday night?’ he asks. ‘I’ve never gone there with a girl before, it could be our special place.’

  My heart thuds painfully in my chest. He’s lying to me. I should challenge him, but I’m scared he’ll spin into a bad mood again.

  ‘Won’t it be really creepy going there in the dark?’ I ask, feeling torn. Part of me hates the idea of following in Amelia’s footsteps and of playing along with Taylor’s lie. But part of me is excited at the prospect of going on a night-time adventure with him.

  ‘Nah,’ Taylor says. Then he opens his eyes wide in mock horror. ‘Well, maybe a little, but it’s OK, I’ll protect you from the ghosts . . .’ He finishes with a fiendish-sounding cackle.

  I giggle. Maybe Taylor isn’t mentioning the fact that he took Amelia to the hut because he doesn’t want to upset me. Maybe the hut will be a special place for us.

  ‘Come on, Carey,’ Taylor urges. ‘I’ll meet you at the bus stop on the Bamford Road, you know? The one just before the industrial estate? We can go there together, it’s not far really, all the way through the estate, then maybe ten minutes or so along a dirt track. Whaddya say? Please?’

  I stare at his gorgeous face, all lit up with excitement. How can I possibly refuse? ‘Sure,’ I say, ‘I’d love to.’

  The next two days pass slowly. I can’t wait for Friday evening and neither, it seems, can Taylor. He messages me about our planned trip five or six times, full of enthusiasm. He even says how going to the Haunted Hut with me on Friday will be a wonderful way to spend time together in case he has to go away afterwards, for the rest of half term. It seems a bit strange to me that he doesn’t yet know whether he’s leaving Cornmouth with his mum, or staying in town with friends, but I don’t want to irritate him by pushing, so I leave the subject alone.

  I’m almost giddy with anticipation as I do my hair and make-up on the Friday night. I might be dressed for a hike along a dirt track in the dark – in sweater and boots – but I’m determined to look as great as possible when we get to the Haunted Hut. I put on my black satin jacket with the flower embroidery on the back, apply Mum’s expensive eyeliner and finish my look with several slashes of Poppy’s favourite plum-coloured lipgloss. Poppy herself is babysitting Jamie tonight, while Mum goes out to her book group, so there’s no need for me to creep out of the house. I catch the bus straight away, having double-checked the timetable on the phone Taylor gave me. I get off at th
e stop just before the industrial estate, as Taylor instructed. His own bus from East Cornmouth is due in ten minutes. I check my make-up and huddle in a corner of the shelter. I’m suddenly reminded of the night back in September when I met Amelia in the bus shelter by the rec. I don’t feel like I have anything in common with the Carey I was then. She existed in a different world, a different life.

  It’s drizzling outside, with a chill wind that matches the turbulence inside me. Am I in love with Taylor? I’ve asked myself that several times over the past week. I certainly feel out of control when he’s around. His bus arrives and I straighten up, gazing away from the door, determined to look as indifferent to his arrival as possible. A middle-aged woman gets off, then two twenty-something guys in suits.

  There’s no sign of Taylor.

  The bus roars off along the gleaming tarmac. I examine my phone. No text or missed call or NatterSnap message. Perhaps he’ll be on the next bus. I have no idea when it will get here but I don’t fancy heading into the industrial estate by myself, so I sit tight, tugging my arms around me. The rain picks up, driving against the shelter wall. I’m just shuffling along, trying to find a patch of shelter from the wind, when a vaguely familiar voice says:

  ‘Hey.’

  I look up. It’s the boy with the piercing blue eyes and the mismatched trainers who helped me when I was looking for Nando’s on my birthday last October. His thick dark hair is wet, plastered to his head, and his thin jacket drenched with rain.

  ‘I remember you,’ he says. ‘The girl who got lost in her own hometown.’

  I gulp. There’s a real intensity to his eyes. It’s pretty creepy out here in the dim street light and my nerves are already all jangled. He seemed totally harmless before, but now I’m wondering if he’s some sort of teenage psychopath.

  ‘Are you waiting for a bus?’ he asks. Considering how rough he looks, his voice is surprisingly soft.

  ‘Yeah,’ I lie, too embarrassed to say what seems increasingly clear is the truth – that Taylor has stood me up.

  The boy frowns. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you can’t.’