Toxic

by Nicci Cloke

  ‘Yeah.’ I rolled onto my side and picked at the grass.

  Daisy was looking at her phone. She frowned. ‘Charlotte just sent me a link.’

  I looked up. ‘A link to what?’

  She didn’t answer, because she was slipping her earbuds into her ears. Even though the sun had finally crept from behind its cloud, I felt cold. I had a good idea what she was looking at.

  ‘Hey, this is you!’ she said, and my heart sank. Daisy got up and sat next to me to show me the phone, and I expected to see that same couple of seconds of footage of all of us in Rodeo.

  But I’d never seen this clip before.

  It was me and Nate, arms round each other, singing, both of us with a bottle in hand, and we were looking right at the camera.

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ I said. ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Sure.’ Daisy handed me the phone, tugging her earphones out.

  I looked at the screen. It wasn’t the catch-up player I was expecting, but a YouTube clip. I scrolled down to look at the details. ‘Sun, Sand and Secrets … the Unseen Footage!’

  I couldn’t watch it. Not with Daisy there, looking at me. So I just said, ‘Oh, Dev sent me this earlier. We’re only in that little bit. We look absolutely battered.’

  ‘Oh. Boring.’

  I closed the window and handed her back her phone. Then I lay back on the grass so I wouldn’t have to see her watching me. After a minute, she lay down too.

  We didn’t speak much after that. All I could think about were the endless reasons why Daisy would be better off without me.

  I want to be the kind of guy who took those feelings and said, Well, then I need to be better.

  I want to be the guy who can say, And so I promised myself I would work as hard as I could from then on to be the person she deserved.

  At the very least, I want to be the guy who spoke to her there and then and told her what was on my mind.

  I’m none of those things. I broke up with her that night. By text.

  Do you hate me now?

  I DIDN’T EVEN have to make excuses after that. Mum had to go on a training course for a week, and I got myself into a comfortable routine of one takeaway a day, sixteen hours’ sleep and eight or so hours of self-loathing.

  I watched the YouTube footage of us most days. It had been taken on the beach, the boat in the background, and everyone was a mess. People leering and lunging at the camera, people clinging to each other and laughing, singing, hanging on as tight as they could. There was hardly any light, and if you watched it with the sound off, it looked a bit like found footage from the end of the world. It looked like we had all survived a terrible event, like we were all traumatised and afraid – until you turned on the sound and heard the muddled lyrics and the shouted jokes and the constant cheering and wolf-howling.

  Nate was gone, anyone could see that. He was leaning into me, his eyes half closed, his mouth not quite keeping up with the lines he was trying to sing.

  But me? I looked all right. I couldn’t remember being filmed but I didn’t look out of control. I didn’t look like a person who wasn’t responsible for his actions.

  I recognised some other people from the boat – the couple who’d won the sex positions were there, him giving her a piggyback across the sand.

  And then, with a group of guys, there was Hope. They were singing Bon Jovi, randomly, and Hope’s eyes kept rolling up behind her eyelids. The boys were jumping around and she was bumbling against them, as if half the time she didn’t even know they were there, and then, just before the clip ended, she staggered away from them and out of shot.

  I wanted, more than anything, to reach in and grab hold of the camera and turn it to follow her, to see who was out of the frame, to search for any of us and drag us over there to help her. To drag all of us together and send us off in the direction of burgers and home.

  But obviously I couldn’t. So I just lay there and watched.

  I looked for Emily. Of course I did. Every shot, every second of that film, I looked for her. I dreaded seeing Zack with his arm round her or Nate leaning in to whisper to her. I didn’t want to see anything that might make me have to drag those niggling thoughts out of the darkest corner of my head and into the light.

  And I was lucky, or they were. Because Emily didn’t show up in a single scene. It was like she’d never been there at all.

  Steph had got into the habit of calling me on her way to work, reporting back as Uncle Darius made his way up from plates to bowls and one not-very-vaseish vase. I liked her calls because she talked so much they didn’t require much input from me, and it was comforting to hear her voice.

  But after a couple of days she started asking me what I was up to. I’d make excuses at first – say I was waiting in for a delivery or that I was hungover. After a while though, she didn’t let things slide so easily.

  ‘Are you doing anything today? You should step outside, cuz, it’s a beautiful day. You know, get some fresh air.’

  ‘Fresh air’s overrated.’ It came out harsher than I meant it to.

  ‘Well. You know. It’s actually not raining here for once.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. That was happening more often – I’ve never been good at small talk, but without practice my skills were disappearing entirely. That was why talking to Steph usually felt OK – she didn’t really require it.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you could come and visit. If you’re not up to much. Come see us, make yourself a new plate. It’ll be wild.’

  The prospect of being in their loud, lime-green-and-peach kitchen did appeal, suddenly. To be around their noise and the constant food and the ease of being with people who’ve known you your whole life.

  But then I thought about getting the train, and getting a taxi from the train, and of talking about how I was and results and what my plans were, and I just wanted to close my eyes and not open them for a while. I thought about how much it cost to get a train to Manchester and about the fact that I’d spent all of my savings on the holiday and now had no way of getting any more.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘No cash at the moment. Soon though.’

  ‘Well, I could buy your ticket,’ she said. ‘Stupid shoe money is starting to build up, especially when Mum and Dad refuse to charge me any rent.’

  It was so kind and she said it so easily, like it was no big deal, that it made me want to cry and it made me feel even worse.

  ‘Nah, I can’t let you do that,’ I said, and my voice sounded thin and feeble. ‘When Mum gets back I’ll talk to her – I bet she’d love to drive up one weekend.’

  I believed it too. I really thought, in a week or a month, that’ll be great. I just need a couple of days to myself, that’s all.

  I really thought, they’re my friends. I should trust them.

  It’s amazing, the lies you can tell yourself.

  IT TURNED OUT to be harder to lie to other people. Especially people as persistent as Steph.

  The next day she didn’t call on her way to work or on her lunch. I didn’t realise I’d missed speaking to her until an hour later, when the word knot felt particularly heavy and I kept having to take a deep breath on purpose, because all of a sudden it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  But then she did call, right when things felt so bad – like I was standing looking into a deep, dark hole with no way back from it – that I’d been wondering if I should call 999. And say what? the voice in my head sneered. I feel so sad it’s like I’m actually suffocating?

  It was after lunchtime and Steph wasn’t walking anywhere. She was sitting somewhere quiet and her voice was quiet too when she said: ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Why? I’m fine?’

  But I wasn’t fine. I was crying.

  ‘Logan, I think you’ve got depression.’

  I didn’t tell her I’d been googling it myself, reading the symptoms over and over. I couldn’t say it out loud. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said instead, drawing a shak
y breath and pushing the tears off my face with a fist. ‘What have I got to be depressed about?’

  She tutted. ‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s an illness. Have you told any of your friends how you’re feeling? Zack or Dev or JB?’

  I laughed and was shocked at how bitter it came out. ‘I can’t do that. We don’t talk about stuff like that.’

  ‘Why not? You guys have known each other since you were kids.’

  ‘Yeah, but … We just don’t. It’d be weird.’

  ‘What you’re saying is weird. You realise that, right? You’re basically saying you can’t tell your best friends about something really bad that you’re feeling.’

  I sighed and lay back. This conversation felt exhausting. ‘That’s just how it is with blokes. We didn’t even talk about it when Nate’s sister died.’

  ‘No, Logan, that’s not “just how it is”.’ Steph sounded angry. ‘Don’t pull this “man up” bullshit with me. Friends are friends, whatever gender they are. If you’re hurting, you tell them. Try them – I think you’d be surprised.’

  I had to swallow a couple of times before I could coax the words out. ‘I’m embarrassed,’ I said, and my voice was very small.

  There was a silence and I thought it was because Steph was embarrassed too. But when she spoke, I realised she was crying. ‘Do not be embarrassed about this,’ she said. ‘Promise me. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and then we were both quiet.

  ‘Look, just think about it, OK?’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘Or talk to someone else, someone you don’t know if that feels easier. There’s loads of help you can get. You don’t have to feel ashamed.’

  I looked away, concentrating on a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. ‘I better go,’ I said.

  ‘OK.’ She was quiet for a second. ‘Look, I’m always here, OK. You can talk to me, even if you won’t talk to anyone else.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and my voice cracked. ‘Thanks.’

  I hung up as quickly as I could. And then I lay down and closed my eyes and listened to the voice in my head telling me over and over how pathetic I was.

  TALKING TO STEPH had helped somehow. It had definitely kick-started something in my head, anyway, because that night when I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t just lie there. I got up and went to make myself a cup of tea.

  I took it back to my room and sat at my little desk with it for a while. I wasn’t exactly full of beans, but moving a limb didn’t seem like lifting steel either, and I looked around my room and wondered if tidying it might help things a bit. There were plates stacked around my bed and I was getting a good stockpile of empty bottles there too – I didn’t look at them for too long, because they made me feel guilty and sick. What kind of person drinks themselves to sleep at seventeen?

  I shifted my attention to the rest of the room. My desk chair had clothes thrown over the back of it – clean or dirty, I couldn’t remember. And by the narrow wardrobe was my holdall from Malia, which I still hadn’t got round to unpacking despite Mum bringing it up every other day.

  Even I could admit that that was pretty disgusting, and sorting it out felt like an achievable task. So I scooted my chair over and lifted the bag into my lap. Most things could just go straight into the wash-basket, where I could tackle them tomorrow. Maybe. This was already beginning to feel like an effort.

  I started taking things out and throwing them into a pile. Paint-splashed T-shirts and a pair of shorts with a sticky cocktail stain. Then I remembered Mum’s golden rule of laundry: Always check the pockets. There had been one or two – or twenty – times when I’d ruined a new jumper or whatever of hers by leaving a receipt or a tissue in my jeans. I pulled out the next pair of shorts and checked its pockets – all clear. Another T-shirt and a couple of pairs of boxers went on the pile, and then out came the plastic bag with my shampoo and shower gel in them. I dumped that on the desk – it looked like one of the bottles had leaked, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to tackle that just yet – and kept going.

  Flip-flops went straight into the wardrobe, a little shower of sand going with them. Already I felt pleased with myself, more so than I had for weeks. I realise how ridiculous that sounds. But somehow I felt like if I could get to the bottom of this bag, put everything where it should be and pack the bag away into the top of my wardrobe, I’d have taken a step. Even if it was just a baby one.

  At the bottom there was one last pair of shorts – beige-coloured chino-type ones. I frowned, looking at them, and then at the pile on the floor, where a very similar-looking pair were already tangled up. These ones were heavier, made of a posher material, and they had a print of palm trees on the inside. They weren’t mine – I must have picked them up in the rush to pack.

  I thought back, mentally flicking through images of the holiday, and my brain landed on one very clear one. Me and Nate, sitting on the rock, our feet dipped in the sea. Nate in his white T-shirt and the shorts I was now holding in my hand.

  I folded them, about to add them to the pile so that I could at least return them to him washed, when I remembered the pockets rule.

  The back pockets were empty except for a couple of loose coins, and so was the left – but in the right pocket my fingers hit paper. I pulled it out and found a five-euro note, crumpled up, and inside it, a receipt.

  Turning back to the desk, I smoothed it out. The receipt itself was mostly in Greek, but the price was there – €25. Probably for a round, I supposed. Probably from the bar the three of them somehow ended up at, the bar I was trying not to think about.

  I was about to screw it up and chuck it, when I saw the logo at the top of the receipt. It was big and smudged so I hadn’t paid much attention to it at first – but when I looked again, I saw that the words printed underneath were small but legible. And in English.

  Popeye’s Petrol Stop

  I sat back in my chair, thinking. What had Nate bought from a petrol station for €25? I thought I could remember this Popeye’s place, too – it had been right at the end of the strip, on the way to our hotel, where there weren’t really any bars, just a couple of small restaurants and a phone-repair place. If it was the place I was thinking of, it hadn’t even had a shop, just two petrol pumps. It was just a place where you bought petrol.

  So what had Nate been doing buying petrol?

  THE DOORBELL RANG early the next morning.

  Well, I say early. It was 11 a.m., but by then that was early to me. I could easily sleep until two or three in the afternoon – and if I woke up, I just turned over and closed my eyes until I wasn’t awake any more.

  I lay there and hoped whoever it was would go away. If it was a parcel, the postman would leave it in the communal hallway like he always did – my presence was not required.

  But the doorbell rang again. Longer and louder this time. I got out of bed and threw a hoodie on over my pyjama bottoms. Standing in my bedroom doorway, I tried to make out who was there through the panel of frosted glass in the front door, but all I could see was the top of a head. Blondish hair.

  Not Daisy, the voice inside my head said, with satisfaction. Why would it be?

  I walked down the hallway and opened the door.

  It was Zack. ‘All right, mate,’ he said. ‘Gonna invite me in or what?’

  I followed him into the living room, where the curtains were still drawn. They probably had been since Mum had left, I couldn’t remember. I pulled them open as Zack sank down on the sofa.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah, you’re all right.’ He looked at me. ‘You look like shit, Loges.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve – I’ve been ill.’

  Zack nodded, still looking at me. ‘I heard about you and Daisy splitting up. You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s shit, obviously.’

  I was trying to hide my surprise. Even though Zack had always been there when one of us broke up with a girlfriend, it wasn’t exactly like him t
o just show up at my house.

  ‘Any chance of you guys working it out?’ he asked. He was leaning back in his seat, arm spread across the back and legs stretched out.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I sat down on the armchair opposite him. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘You missing her?’

  ‘Yeah, course.’ I could feel him watching me and I didn’t want to meet his eye.

  ‘So. Go make up with her.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem that complicated to me. You’re moping round here like a wet weekend, when you should be going round there and sorting it out.’

  I stayed silent. I wanted him to stop talking.

  ‘Look, Logan, I’m getting some seriously bad vibes off you right now. And you threw that shit fit the other week too.’

  A flash of anger travelled through me. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘Do what?’ He looked genuinely bewildered.

  ‘Don’t try and make out that I was having a strop. You know exactly why I was upset.’

  Zack looked back at me, wide-eyed. ‘I genuinely don’t, mate.’

  I looked away from him. ‘You’ve been keeping things from me. All of you.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘That night,’ I said. It came out in a growl. ‘What happened? Tell me what the three of you did.’

  ‘Lo. What are you on about?’

  ‘Don’t lie!’ I stood up, realising my hands were shaking. ‘The three of you went out that night and then you lied about it. You were out and you lied and a girl went missing.’

  Zack had his hands out in his calm down way, like he was going to try to herd me back into my pen. ‘A girl went missing? You’re talking about that Emily chick?’

  ‘Yes.’ I made myself look him in the eye. ‘What did you do?’

  He stared right back at me.

  And then he laughed.

  ‘You cannot be serious. Logan Mitchell, as I live and breathe, accusing his best friends of … of what, Lo? Murder?’