Toxic

by Nicci Cloke

  I laughed. ‘OK, I won’t do either of those things.’

  ‘And don’t do that sort of squinty thinking face you do when you don’t like something but you’re not sure how to say so.’

  ‘My what face?’

  ‘You know, like when your mum buys you the wrong socks or the woman in the canteen tries to persuade you to have quiche instead of pizza or whatever. This one.’ She wrinkled up her face, head on one side.

  ‘Oh, right. That one.’ I flicked a croissant crumb at her. ‘Fine. No squinty thinking face.’

  Daisy took another sip of coffee and then put the cup down. ‘OK, so. It’s basically like a detective novel, except the stuff she’s investigating is all to do with the supernatural. It can be anything – vampire colony in tiny seaside town, demon-summoning ritual in Oxford college, whatever. People come to her when strange stuff’s happening, and she goes and figures it out and helps them. But she’s also like this famous novelist who writes novels about all this stuff, so she’s kind of hiding in plain sight. She’s kind of Sherlock meets Stephen King but with extra Buffy.’

  She looked at me. ‘You’re not making any weird facial expressions.’

  ‘No. I’m not. Because that sounds awesome.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah! Can I read it?’

  She grinned, slipping her laptop into her bag. ‘Yeah, maybe. Come on, let’s go.’

  As we walked through the shopping centre, I felt light and happy. Daisy took my hand in hers and we walked past all the crappy little carts selling phone covers and sweets and handbags.

  ‘So, what we looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘Something for Charlotte for her birthday. And maybe new running shoes if I can find a decent pair for cheapish.’

  ‘OK, cool. I guess I could probably do with some new trainers too.’

  She gave me a playful shove. ‘You have like twenty pairs!’

  ‘I do not! Anyway, it’s my thing.’

  She grinned and turned away. ‘Let’s go look at books for Charlotte.’

  In the bookshop, I browsed around the tables while Daisy searched through the fantasy section. I had no idea that Charlotte was even a fantasy fan, even though I’d been friends with her for much longer. But Daisy always knew those kinds of things about people. When it came to her friends, she could probably tell you what their first pet was called and what song they got stuck in their head the most, stuff like that, without even blinking. I thought again about what JB had said that night at Nate’s. I can’t remember the last time I had a decent conversation with any of you. I pulled out my phone to send him a message – just to say hey or whatever.

  ‘I’m going to get her this,’ Daisy said, interrupting my thoughts. I put my phone away and looked at the book. I didn’t recognise the title or the author – I didn’t read any fantasy, and right then I wasn’t reading anything much at all. I found it hard to keep my attention on the words on the page, and usually I ended up falling asleep or playing on my phone. But I didn’t want Daisy to know that, and the cover was nice, so I nodded like I knew what I was talking about. ‘Cool.’

  ‘She loves this series,’ Daisy said, ‘and this one’s just out. Come on, help me pick a card.’

  We left the bookshop and carried on drifting through the mall. ‘Did you hear anything about those jobs?’ Daisy asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s weird. Well, never mind. I’m sure they’ll get back to you soon.’

  ‘Yeah, probably.’ Thinking about it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in my chest and I realised I didn’t really want to talk about it right then. ‘So, results day next week. Want to go in together?’

  ‘Yep, that’d be nice.’ She glanced at me. ‘You nervous?’

  ‘Nah.’ I realised right away that I probably was. ‘It’s just AS’s, right? No big deal. Anyway, I feel like the exams went pretty well.’

  Daisy nodded. ‘Yeah, you’ll be fine. You’re annoyingly clever, given you never bother studying.’

  ‘Can’t help it,’ I said, tapping my temple with a finger. ‘Photographic memory.’

  She shoved me, rolling her eyes, and then I pulled her back towards me and we walked for a while like that, my arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Shall we get one?’ Daisy said as we passed the little hut selling frozen yoghurt. ‘I’m buying.’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ I said, even though they were stupidly overpriced. ‘What flavour do you want?’

  Dev had once told me off for letting Daisy buy stuff all the time. ‘You’re supposed to treat them like a princess,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t make the same mistake I did with Mollie.’ I didn’t think Daisy cared about stuff like that, but I did want to make her feel special. Looked after. That was what men were supposed to do, right?

  Daisy went to sit on the edge of the fountain, so I ordered the cones – mango (urgh) and toffee chips for Daisy, strawberry and white chocolate sauce for me – and took them over to her. As I sat down, my phone buzzed with a new message. Dev.

  feel sick bout what i sed the other night. dunno what to do.

  I put my phone back in my pocket without replying. You and me both, I felt like saying. I’d managed to distract myself all day with Daisy, but now I couldn’t get the image of Dev crumbling a pill into Hope’s drink out of my head. Suddenly I didn’t want to eat the cone I’d just bought.

  ‘You OK?’ Daisy asked, wiping a drip of strawberry off the back of my hand where I hadn’t even noticed it melting.

  I knew I should tell her. Daisy would know the exact right thing to do; she’d know whether I should tell Hope or make Dev tell Hope or just leave the whole thing well alone.

  But when I looked at her, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want her to think of all of us out in Malia behaving like that. How could I sit there with her and talk about what an awful person Dev was, when her boyfriend was the kind of guy who attacked someone, two against one, in some dark alleyway?

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I’m fine. Just kind of full. You want some of this?’

  THE NEXT DAY, I woke up to an email from the temp agency, thanking me for my application but saying that they were no longer looking for new candidates for their books. Nothing from the pubs or the sandwich place.

  In the kitchen there was a note from Mum saying she’d taken on an extra shift at the care home that evening, with a folded twenty for a pizza.

  I decided to go back to bed for a while.

  BED WAS MY friend for the next few days too. I was tired, more tired than I’d realised, and I put that down to a lingering hangover from Malia. What was the harm in chilling out for a bit? Getting some extra sleep and catching up on Netflix stuff seemed like the best thing to do. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

  On Wednesday night there was an England friendly on telly, so we’d all arranged to watch it at the Wheatsheaf, this big soulless pub next to the supermarket on the outskirts of town. It was hardly ever busy, which meant they hadn’t been ID-ing us for a couple of years. When I arrived, Nate and Dev had baggsied a big table with a good view of the screen.

  I waved at the two of them and went to the bar to buy myself a pint, delaying the moment I’d have to go over. I hadn’t really spoken to Dev since Nate’s. After staring at his message for ages the night before, I’d ended up replying:

  it was a messed up thing to do, but it’s done now.

  It was a complete cop-out, and I knew it. I just got this feeling that Hope didn’t want to talk or think about that night, and I didn’t know if I could handle any more rifts in the group. I couldn’t bring myself to force Dev to tell the truth or apologise.

  But at the same time I couldn’t help thinking about how he’d lied to us about where he’d stayed that night. I couldn’t help thinking how weird it was that JB and Nate had also supposedly disappeared off with random people. I didn’t know why, but something just felt totally off about the whole thing.

  I didn�
��t know what I was thinking, getting suspicious of my best mates. My brain felt like it was trying to hear and see things through a thick grey fog. Then again, it wasn’t exactly like I didn’t have my own secrets to hide.

  ‘All right, mate?’ JB appeared next to me just as I was getting served. ‘Here, I’ll get that.’

  ‘Cheers.’ I smiled at him. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’ He held up his hands, which were spattered with paint. ‘Guess who got roped into last-minute play preparations with Mum and David?’

  I laughed. ‘Unlucky.’

  ‘Here you go.’ He handed me my pint. ‘Well …’ He glanced in the direction of the table. I got the feeling I wasn’t the only one feeling less than social.

  ‘Come on.’ I made my way over to the others, JB behind me. Zack had arrived while we were at the bar, and he stood up and gave us both his half-handshake, half-low-five thing.

  ‘Sorry, Z, didn’t realise you were here,’ JB said. ‘Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘Nah, no worries, mate. I’ll go. Anyone else need anything?’

  No one did. I sat on the stool next to Nate, avoiding Dev’s eye. JB took the one opposite and started telling us all about the cardboard palm trees he’d been making for his mum’s play. ‘David wants to hang actual coconuts from them but they just keep drooping,’ he said, laughing. ‘No one likes a droopy set of coconuts, do they?’

  The whistle for kick-off blew just as Zack came back with his beer. ‘I fancy our chances here, boys,’ he said. ‘Could easily do them 3–0, I reckon.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate that defence,’ JB said. ‘It’ll be harder than you think, from their last couple of games.’

  We watched the screen, sipping our drinks and making the occasional comment – or criticism. It felt like a familiar rhythm and I began to relax. One drink down, I felt fuzzier but like the fog was lifting.

  ‘Another, Loge-Dogg?’ Zack got up from the table.

  ‘Yeah, cheers – I’ll get the next ones.’

  He waved that away – it wasn’t like he was short of money. Zack’s dad had given him a credit card as soon as he turned sixteen, the same as he’d done for Freddie two years before. No questions asked, bills barely glanced at. Zack could afford to be generous – but he always was, without even thinking about it. To him, things weren’t fun unless he could share them, it never occurred to him to keep stuff for himself.

  While he was at the bar, England conceded a penalty, sending the whole room into a round of irritable muttering. It was only a friendly, but people were already gearing up to say how terrible the new manager was.

  ‘Told you,’ JB said. ‘They’re a tight team – we’ve gone in way too complacent.’

  ‘We’re playing like a bunch of women,’ Zack said, putting down the pints he’d balanced carefully between his hands. He jogged back to the bar to collect the last one and then sank back into his seat, eyes on the screen. ‘Bloody hell, Hastings, grow some balls!’

  We all watched in silence as our striker bottled another tackle.

  ‘Don’t fancy our chances in the Euros then,’ Nate muttered, pulling one of the fresh pints towards him. ‘Cheers, Zack.’

  Dev reached out to take his drink too, and I couldn’t help glancing at him. He caught my eye and smiled awkwardly, and I thought of him swaying in the corner of Nate’s living room, watching Hope. I just wanted her to have a good time. I looked away.

  At half-time it was still 1–0 and the players were looking a bit bewildered at how totally unimpressive they were. We turned away from the screen and huddled into our drinks.

  ‘It was a good night on Friday,’ Zack said. ‘Not that you’d know, Logan, abandoning us like that.’ He grinned at me to show he was joking, and I didn’t smile back.

  ‘Yeah, it was fun,’ Nate said. ‘And nice to see the girls too.’

  ‘Yeah, glad Novak’s over her hissy fit,’ Zack said, draining his drink. ‘She was on good form, Friday.’

  I saw JB’s hand tighten round his glass and I looked down at the table. Don’t say anything, I thought. Don’t waste your time.

  But JB clearly wasn’t receiving psychic messages at that point.

  ‘It’s hardly a hissy fit to be upset when your friends leave you passed out on a foreign beach,’ he said. ‘I think it’s pretty normal to be upset about that. I think it’s pretty horrific behaviour, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh, have a day off, JB!’ Zack said. ‘I’m so sick of hearing about this. Seriously, what is your deal?’

  ‘My “deal” is that we acted like a pack of animals out there and one of our friends could’ve been seriously hurt because of it. You have no idea what happened; she has no ide—’ JB, whose face had gone all red, cut himself off, clearly thinking better of it. ‘Look, the point is, we’re friends. We’re supposed to look out for each other. You know, like, take care of each other?’

  ‘What are you, gay?’ Zack said, laughing, but JB put his pint down. He wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Yeah, I am actually.’

  Zack was still laughing. ‘Yeah, OK.’ There was a long silence. Zack looked up and saw JB’s face. ‘What, you serious?’

  ‘Yes, Zack. I’m serious.’

  ‘But … You can’t be. You –’ Zack looked from JB’s pint to the screen to all of us.

  ‘Yes, Zack,’ JB said again. His voice was perfectly calm. ‘I like football and beer and I fancy boys. I know that’s going to be a difficult concept for you to get your head round.’

  Zack just stared at him.

  ‘Well, I think that’s cool,’ Nate said awkwardly, breaking the silence. He offered JB a handshake. ‘Are we meant to say congrats? How does coming out even work?’

  JB laughed. ‘I dunno. But thanks.’

  I just went for a hug. I didn’t know what to say really, especially with Zack sitting across the table with his jaw flapping. It wasn’t a big deal to me – but I didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, no big deal,’ because it was clearly a huge moment for JB. So instead I panicked and said nothing. Words were failing me again, just like they always do. I wished Daisy was there.

  ‘I’ll erm … I’ll get us some more drinks,’ Dev said, getting up from the table. Zack followed him to the bar without a word.

  We watched the second half without talking much. And when it was over, we left without saying much either.

  I WAS GETTING bad again. I could feel it coming in like storm clouds crossing a sea, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I didn’t want it to be true. But every day getting out of bed felt like some kind of Olympic effort, and the idea of opening the curtains felt like running a marathon. I slept each day until gone lunchtime, but then at night I’d lie awake until the sky started to lighten, clicking endlessly through web pages without really reading them.

  I read all the messages on the boys’ WhatsApp group but I never replied. Thinking of funny things to say took too much energy.

  I made excuses to Daisy too – I told her I was seeing the boys, or having dinner with Mum. I didn’t know why. I just felt like I needed to be on my own.

  I knew it was bad when I couldn’t sleep one night and ended up with a bottle of Bacardi out of Mum’s drinks cabinet. Just lying there on my bed, drinking Bacardi out of a mug. Lying there with the same old thoughts circling through my head. All week I’d been wanting to google news in Malia, wanting to know that the guy me and Zack beat up was OK. Up until then I’d been scared. But with two mugs of Bacardi down me, I found myself wanting to find out once and for all. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I at least knew he was OK, everything else might start to slot back into the way it used to be.

  So I opened my laptop and tried searching ‘Attack Malia July 2017’. I took a big swig of Bacardi before I looked at the results.

  But there was nothing there – well, there were plenty of results about a bar called Attack on the strip somewhere. And a couple of random blog posts about people getting in fights and something called ‘Attack
of the slags!’ which I didn’t bother clicking on.

  I tried ‘Police Malia’ and filtered for stuff posted in the past month. As I scrolled down the first few, I started to feel calmer. There were a couple of articles about a police crackdown on drinking in the street, and then a video of a group of lads dancing to Bruno Mars with two police officers outside a club.

  But then I hit the bottom of the first page of results, and my stomach dropped.

  Police appeal for information after UK tourist reported missing in Malia

  Crete police have been interviewing holidaymakers in popular party spot after a UK national was reported missing

  That was all I could see in the preview, and it took me a couple of deep breaths and another big glug of Bacardi before I could get the courage to click on the article itself. What if the guy had died? What if he’d never made it out of that alley – what if he was still there?

  My heart started beating double-time when I saw the date of the article. It was the day we’d flown back, two days after the boat party. About the right time for the news to break over here, maybe? The words danced in front of my eyes and it took me a while to calm down enough to read them.

  Crete police have been interviewing holidaymakers in Malia, a popular holiday destination on the island of Crete, after a UK tourist was reported missing there on Sunday. The British Embassy in Athens said they were aware of the investigation and that they were ‘doing everything they can to support it’.

  The tourist, whose name has not been released until her family can be reached, was said to have been on holiday with a group of friends. Another British holidaymaker, who asked not to be named, said that the woman had attended a party on a yacht, organised by local company Party Boat, on the day of her disappearance. Police in Crete refused to confirm or deny this at this time.

  I read it again, trying to feel relieved. It wasn’t anything to do with me and Zack after all. But it was pretty disturbing that some girl had gone missing after the boat party. I couldn’t get the image of Hope asleep on the beach out of my head. What if something had happened to her instead?