by Cat Clarke
Kai just looked at me, saying nothing. I matched his silence, knowing full well that I could wait him out. Sure enough, after five seconds or so he said, ‘I couldn’t possibly divulge my sources. And I’m sorry for even mentioning such scurrilous rumours. I mean, I knew it couldn’t possibly be true, and I said as much last night. But you never know, do you? The crackling of the bonfire, the twinkling stars in the sky . . . it could make a girl crave a little romance, couldn’t it?’ He wiggled his eyebrows with such fake lasciviousness that I had to laugh.
‘Are we talking about me or you now, hmmm? Are you trying to tell me you got a bit of hot boy-onboy action last night? Don’t tell me . . . Bugs, right? I’ve always wondered about him. How was it? Rather sweaty and gross, I’d imagine.’
He put his hand up to his forehead and swooned back onto the bed. ‘I do declare that you have uncovered my deepest, darkest secret!’ His Southern Belle accent was one of his best, but I hadn’t heard it for a long time. ‘That Bugs is just so manly. He was like an animal, I tell you!’
‘That reminds me . . . we haven’t decided on Max yet! Which animal do you reckon he is? Think carefully now – this is VERY important.’
Kai laughed and shook his head. ‘You know what, Jem? You think about things waaaaay too much. I love you for it, but you are batshit crazy.’
Fair point, well made.
The rumour mill went into overdrive at school on Monday. Most people were talking about the party, especially the ones who hadn’t been invited. Kai relayed his personal favourites: there had been an orgy in Max’s parents’ bedroom; someone had given hash cakes to the dog; and Stu Hicks had tried to prove how hard he was by running face first into a tree, breaking his nose in the process.
Kai was especially thrilled about the last one, given how he felt about Stu. When we caught sight of him at break time, Kai clapped his hands. ‘Oh my God, it’s true! Look at his face!’ He was laughing so hard I thought he might choke. I tried not to wince at the sight. Stu had a white strip of bandage across the bridge of his nose and there was ugly yellowish/purple bruising under his eyes.
He seemed to be OK though – laughing and joking around as usual. People kept on coming up to him and asking about his nose and you could tell he was loving the attention. At one point he looked over from the bench where he was holding court and his eyes passed right over me like I wasn’t even there. I should have been grateful, but a part of me wanted him to acknowledge what had happened between us. I wanted him to acknowledge me. Kai was right: I was batshit crazy.
It wasn’t until Wednesday night that everything turned insane. I was in my bedroom doing my homework and trying not to think about Stu. My phone rang. It was Kai. At least the caller ID told me it was him; it certainly didn’t sound like Kai. ‘Have you checked your email?’
‘Not recently – why? Have you sent me another one of those cat videos?’ I clicked on my laptop to bring up the Internet.
‘I don’t know what to do. I just . . . Check your emails, OK?’
He disconnected the call. I had no idea what he was on about. But it was Kai . . . how bad could it be?
Really very bad, as it turned out.
chapter ten
I opened up my email account to find three new messages. One was from Kai, sent that morning. A link to a cat video. The second was spam. The third was from a sender I didn’t recognize: Captain Outrage. The email had been sent to Kai, but I’d been copied in.
A video file was attached. I opened it even though I’d never normally open files from someone I don’t know. It wasn’t very good quality – kind of grainy, and whoever had been holding the camera (or phone . . . yes, it was probably a phone) had a very shaky hand. There were two guys in the frame. One of them was sitting on the edge of a bed. The other one was kneeling in front of him, head buried in his crotch. It was pretty bloody obvious what was going on. The face and torso of the guy on the bed had been obscured somehow – like some kind of special effect or something. He hadn’t been blacked out completely, but his face and body were a mass of pixels. Like they do on TV when they’re trying to hide someone’s identity.
The other guy (or rather boy) hadn’t been afforded the same pixellation treatment. I’d have known him anywhere. Even if I hadn’t recognized the so-called ‘lucky’ shirt, the sight of the back of his head was enough, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen him doing that before. But I didn’t think many people would have known it was him . . . not until they finished and he turned towards the camera, wiping his mouth. He didn’t seem to realize he was being filmed.
Just in case there was any doubt left in anyone’s mind, the frame froze on his face and the image stayed up there for a few good seconds. His hair was messed up where the other guy had been clutching his head, and he was smiling. The smile was so typically him that it caused an actual, physical pain in my heart.
Kai.
I slammed the lid of my laptop down, legged it down the stairs and out the front door. Made it to Kai’s in far less than four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Louise answered the door, looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. She didn’t even bother saying hi, which was fine with me. I rushed past her and up the stairs to Kai’s room.
The room was dark and at first I thought he wasn’t there. But then I saw his bare feet poking out from under the desk. He was tucked up under there like a hibernating animal. ‘Kai? It’s only me. Are you going to come out?’ I said gently, as if he was a small animal I was trying to coax out of its hiding place.
No response.
I sat down on the floor in front of him. ‘Kai? Talk to me. Please?’
Still nothing.
‘You’re kind of scaring me. Please say something.’
He cleared his throat. His voice sounded rusty. ‘You watched it then?’
‘Yeah, I watched it. But it’s OK, Kai. It’s nothing to be . . . ashamed of.’
‘You think? Why don’t you take a look at my inbox?’
His laptop was on the bed. I opened the lid and listened to it whirr to life. The screen was filled with unopened emails. I clicked on one at random and immediately wished I hadn’t. Words jumped out at me from the screen: i hope you die of AIDS you fuckin homo.
I didn’t recognize any of the email addresses – they were clearly fakes. People had gone out of their way to set up new accounts so they could do this without getting caught. God, how many people has that link been sent to? I clicked on another message: Always thought you loookd queer as fuck. Looked lik you was enjoying that, u little bitch.
‘How many are there now? There were seventeen the last time I looked.’
Twenty-nine. There were twenty-nine messages. ‘Oh, Kai, I’m sorry! Who would do something like this? I mean, why would anyone do something like this?’
Kai laughed. ‘You don’t need an excuse to out a fag, do you? They probably thought they were doing a public service or something.’
‘When . . . when did you get the email?’
‘The video was in my inbox by the time I got home from school. Whoever this Captain Outrage is, he sent it to me first.’
I scrolled back and found the original email. The subject line read: READY FOR SOME FUN AND GAMES?
‘OK, let’s think about this rationally. Kai, are you going to come out from there?’
‘I . . . I can’t.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
‘I don’t want you to see me.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Kai. This is me . . . Can I at least put the light on?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ His voice sounded so hopeless, so small and pathetic, so not Kai.
I felt helpless. ‘Do you want to talk about this? I really think we should.’
‘There’s nothing to say, is there? Everyone knows. Everyone knows.’
‘Who cares? You’re gay. So what? Lots of people are gay. It’s normal.’
‘Yeah? Tell that to all the people who’ve emailed calling me shirtlifte
r or fudge packer or paedophile. That’s my favourite. Paedophile. Like I’m some kind of deviant just because I want to have sex with men . . .’
‘No one thinks that. I mean, no one who matters anyway. Your parents are cool with it, aren’t they? There are always going to be idiots in the world, but they don’t matter. Come on, you know this. They’re ignorant, that’s all.’ I knew the words were woefully inadequate, but they were the best I could do.
‘I wasn’t ready, Jem. I wasn’t ready to come out. I wanted to do it on my own terms, you know? And that’s not even the point . . . That video is . . .’
‘Yes, it’s embarrassing . . .’
‘Embarrassing? Are you serious? It’s fucking mortifying! Are you trying to tell me you’d be completely OK with a video of you doing something like . . . that plastered all over the Internet? God, Jem, I’m asking for some support here!’ He started to sob.
I crawled under the desk to sit next to Kai. There really wasn’t enough room for two people. I leaned my head against him. ‘I’m here for you. Whatever you need. We’ll get through this, OK? Tomorrow you’ll walk into school with your head held high. You’ve done nothing wrong. Fuck the lot of them, yeah? They can only make you feel ashamed if you let them . . . And anyway, in two years’ time we’ll be out of this place and they’ll still be here, working in McDonalds or something. Remember the plan – Kai and Jem take on London and WIN! Two measly years, that’s all.’
He reached out and squeezed my hand, then let out a long juddery breath. ‘OK.’
‘Really? Is that a real OK? Or a please-stop-talking-before-I-punch-you-in-the-face OK?’
He laughed softly. That was progress, I thought. ‘It’s a real OK – honest.’
‘That’s more like it. Now . . . I’m going to delete all those emails, OK? You’re banned from looking at your inbox until all the fuss has died down. And it will die down, I promise you.
‘You’re a good friend, you know that, don’t you?’
I patted his knee. ‘The best. And you’re not so bad yourself.’
I’m not sure why I didn’t ask Kai who the mystery boy was. I guess I thought he’d tell me if he wanted to. His privacy had already been invaded in the worst way imaginable and I wasn’t about to add to that. That’s not to say I wasn’t curious. Actually, curious wasn’t even the right word. I was dying to know the identity of Mr Pixel. And I couldn’t help wondering why Kai hadn’t mentioned him when he came over on Sunday. At least now I knew the reason for his little disappearing act. But why the hell hadn’t he told me? He was always going on about boys, so I’d have expected him to tell me as soon as he’d snagged himself a real live one.
Then again, I hadn’t told him about Stu. But that was different. At least, I told myself it was different. Still, if someone had secretly filmed what had happened in the greenhouse and emailed it around, I wouldn’t have wanted to show my face at school. Or anywhere for that matter. Kai was stronger than me, though. He’d get through this and everything would be OK, I was sure of it.
I eventually managed to coax him out from under the desk and he even let me turn on the light. He looked terrible – wrecked. I hugged him and told him over and over again that it would be all right, that people have short memories and no doubt the next scandal would be right around the corner, that whoever had done this to him was a pathetic loser with nothing better to do with their life. And it seemed like I was getting through to him. It really did. He nodded and even smiled a couple of times.
I cleared out his email without reading any more of the vile messages. I gave him one last pep talk before I left. He practically shooed me out of the door, saying, ‘I’ll be fine,’ over and over again until I actually believed it.
Kai could always make me believe whatever he wanted me to believe.
chapter eleven
The next morning I knocked on Kai’s front door just like I’d done every single school day for years and years. I was ready to go into battle. I was worried about what people might say, but I was ready. Kai and I would get through this – together.
Mrs McBride answered the door, looking even more tired than usual. She was a nurse and worked night shifts at the A&E department at the hospital. She was usually drinking coffee or yawning or rushing off somewhere. Just looking at her made me feel exhausted. ‘Jem, sweetheart, I’m afraid he’s not coming in today. He’s not well.’
I wasn’t surprised. If it was me, I’d have cut off my arm with a rusty knife if it meant I’d get out of going to school for a while. ‘Can I see him?’
‘Why don’t you come round after school? He’s sleeping at the mo, the poor love.’
‘OK, just tell him . . . tell him I hope he feels better soon.’
She smiled a watery smile. ‘I will do. I’m not used to him being ill – I can’t even remember the last time! Strong as an ox, that boy. Right, I’ve got to pop the washing on and then it’s bedtime for me. Have a good day at school, Jem.’
Mrs McBride shut the door and I was left standing on the doorstep, wondering if there was any way I could skive off too. I had to go in though; I had to face them. For him.
It was bad. People looked at me, which was a new experience. An entirely new experience that I didn’t like one little bit. It seemed like everyone had their phones out and little groups were huddled together watching the screen, laughing. Maybe they were watching videos of skateboarding dogs or something. Maybe I was just paranoid . . . but I didn’t think so.
People I’d never talked to in my life asked me about Kai. Most of them were smirking idiots, but one or two people were worried. Bland Boy A and Bland Girl B seemed genuinely concerned, which made me feel a bit bad for being a bitch about them. But even their concern was measured, in a bland sort of way.
I texted Kai a few times but didn’t get a reply. Fair enough. I’d give him the day to get over it, but then he really would have to deal with this. Being there by myself was hideous. I’d never felt so lonely. It felt a little bit like my first day all over again – everything and everyone seemed sinister and unfriendly. I must have looked at my watch a thousand times, willing time to move faster so I could run home and see him.
I avoided the cafeteria at lunchtime. There were limits to the torture I was willing and able to endure. I found an empty classroom and sat on the floor under the window so that anyone who walked past wouldn’t see me. I sat there nibbling at an apple, feeling sorry for myself. I mean, obviously I was feeling sorry for Kai most of all, but since he wasn’t there I reckoned a little bit of self-pity was allowed.
Kai would bounce back soon enough. I was almost sure of it. He had to. There was no other option.
Towards the end of lunchtime, Louise came into the classroom. For once in my life I was actually glad to see her. I scrambled up from my hiding place, making her jump. ‘Fuck! What were you . . . ? Actually, I don’t want to know.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘He’ll be OK.’ Her face gave nothing away.
‘God, I hope so. He was a total mess last night. I swear, if I find out who did this to him, I’ll . . .’
‘You’ll what?’
I shrugged. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I just feel so . . . helpless.’
‘That’s because you are. There’s nothing you or me or Kai can do. We just have to pretend it never happened and wait for all the fuss to die down.’ She seemed resigned, weary, just like her mother.
‘Don’t you want to find out who did it?’
Louise shrugged and went back to staring out of the window. There was a game of football going on. Stu Hicks was in the middle of some complicated goal celebration. Max and Lucas were high-fiving each other like something genuinely amazing had just happened rather than some poxy goal against the lads from the year below. Boys were pathetic sometimes. She eventually turned to face me. ‘What does it matter? What’s done is done.’
‘How can you say that? We could go to the police or something. There are laws against this sort of thing .
. .’ I wasn’t quite sure this was true, but it sounded like it could be.
‘You really think Kai wants the police seeing that video? Yeah, that would make everything so much better. Kai would be even more humiliated and you’d be even less popular than you are already . . . if that’s even possible.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about being popular! I just want to find out who did this to him. And if you don’t give a crap, I’ll just have to do it myself.’
‘Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?’ Strangely enough, I was completely aware of how ridiculous I sounded.
I wanted to hurt her. ‘Is everything OK with you and Max?’ I asked in my sweetest, most innocent voice.
She blinked quickly a few times. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but things are going great.’
‘Really? Because it sort of looked like you were fighting at the party the other night?’
She shrugged her shoulders and grabbed her bag from the windowsill. ‘That was nothing. It’s half the fun of being in a relationship . . . having little disagreements. It’s totally worth it for the make-up sex.’ She smirked. ‘You know how it is, don’t you? Oh wait. You don’t . . . I forget you’ve never had a boyfriend. Silly me.’
She patted me on the shoulder and left me standing there thinking of all the things I could have said. The best I could come up with was, Well, at least I’m not a slag. And that would have been lame by anyone’s standards.
I hated that girl almost as much as I loved her brother. It was as if she’d become the price I had to pay to have someone as amazing as Kai in my life. On balance, it was a price worth paying. But at that moment, standing alone in that classroom, my cheeks burning with shame . . . it was a close-run thing.
The school day had one more unpleasant thing to throw at me before it spat me out at three thirty. I bumped into Stu in the corridor between lessons. And when I say ‘bumped into’, I mean it literally. I’d swear in a court of law that he did it on purpose, but I’d never be able to prove it.
