by Alice Oseman
I squeezed his hand.
“What about me?” I said.
“I tried,” he said immediately, looking me in the eyes. “I tried. I wrote so many replies to your texts, but I just … I couldn’t send them. I thought they’d make you hate me. And as time went on, it just got worse and worse, and I got more and more convinced that you hated me and anything I said to you would just make you forget me forever.” His eyes welled up again. “I thought it’d be better if I just said nothing. At least then … there was still the possibility that I had something good in my life … now that Universe City has … has gone …”
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “Far from it, actually.”
He sniffed.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know I’ve been an idiot. Everything would be fine if I could have just … said all this earlier …”
I knew that this was true.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it.”
Sometimes you can’t say the things you’re thinking. Sometimes it’s too hard.
“Why did you end Universe City?” I asked.
“My mum kept calling me whenever I made an episode. Telling me to stop doing it or she’d— She’d stop sending me money, or she’d call the university, or stuff like that. I didn’t listen to her at first, but it got to the point where I was dreading every single episode and I ran out of ideas and I just hated doing it.” His face crumpled and more tears fell. “I knew she would ruin this for me. I knew she would take the one last thing I have and ruin it.”
I dropped his hand and hugged him again.
We fell into silence for a moment and though nothing was fixed, it was a relief to hear him say exactly what he felt for once.
“We all just want you to be okay,” I said, dropping my arms. “All of us.”
“All— You and Daniel?”
I shook my head. “Carys is here.”
Aled froze.
“Carys?” he whispered, like he hadn’t said the name in years.
“Yeah,” I said, almost whispering too. “She’s here to see you. She came with me to see you.”
Aled started to cry like I’d turned on a tap. Tears just started to pour out of his eyes.
It made me laugh, which was probably very insensitive, but I couldn’t help feeling happy in some weird way. I hugged him again, because I had no idea what to say, and realised that he was laughing too, sort of, through his tears.
WE HOPED
Carys, Daniel and Raine were still sitting in the foyer when we got back to college. When we entered through the door and Aled saw Carys, he stopped in his tracks and stared.
Carys stood up from her seat and gazed at him from across the room. They’d once been similar – blue eyes and blonde hair – but they really looked nothing alike any more. Carys was taller and rounder and everything about her was clean, bold, block colours. Aled was small and pointy and looked ruffled and shadowed, his skin a little blotchy, his clothes crinkled, his hair several different shades of green, purple and grey.
I walked away from Aled as Carys approached. As Carys moved in for a hug, I heard her whisper, “I’m sorry for leaving you alone with her.”
Daniel and Raine were staring without reserve from their armchairs, Daniel looking a little unnerved at how physically different Aled was, Raine looking on with heart-eyes as if this were some sort of touching family drama documentary.
I put my hands on each of their heads and gently turned them so they were facing away.
“How is he?” whispered Daniel as I sat down.
There was no point lying. “Absolutely terrible,” I said. “But at least he’s not dead.”
I’d meant it half-jokingly, but Daniel nodded in agreement.
We’d done it.
We’d found him. We’d helped him. We’d rescued him – we hoped.
That’s what we thought until the college door exploded open and in walked a plump woman with cropped hair and a tote bag over one shoulder.
I jumped out of my seat faster than I had ever moved in my life. Upon seeing her, Carys sort of pulled Aled farther away from the door towards us, and in the moments before he turned and saw her, I could see the confusion in Aled’s eyes.
“Allie, darling,” said Carol.
ON YOUR OWN
Everybody was on their feet. I wasn’t entirely sure what a stand-off was, but I felt like this might be one of them.
Carol blinked. “Carys. What exactly are you doing here?”
“I came to see Aled.”
“I wasn’t aware you still cared for any member of your family.”
“Only the good ones,” said Carys through gritted teeth.
Carol raised an eyebrow. “Well, it is how it is. I’m not here to see you and, frankly, I don’t want to. I want to talk to my real child.”
“I don’t think you deserve to,” said Carys, and I could feel the inaudible gasps of everyone in the room.
“Excuse me?” said the woman, her voice raising. “You have no say in how I interact with my son.”
Carys cackled. It echoed around the foyer. “Ha! Oh, believe me, I do; I do when you’ve been torturing him like he’s a fucking doll.”
“How dare you …”
“How dare I? How dare you. You killed the dog, Carol? You killed the dog? Aled loved that dog, we grew up with that dog …”
“That dog was a burden and a nuisance and its life was miserable.”
“Let me talk to her,” Aled interrupted, sending everyone into silence despite his voice still being almost at a whisper. He stepped out of Carys’s grip and walked towards his mum. “Come on, we’ll just talk outside for a minute.”
“You don’t have to do this on your own,” said Carys, though she didn’t move from where she stood.
“Yes, I do,” said Aled, and he followed his mum out of the college door.
We waited for ten minutes. Then another ten. Raine kept jogging up to the door and listening through it to check that they were still there. Students kept walking past us and giving us funny looks.
Carys was chatting softly to Daniel, whose knee was bouncing frantically up and down. I was sitting in a chair, contemplating what was happening and what Carol could possibly be saying to him.
“He’ll be all right, won’t he?” said Raine, coming to sit down next to me for the sixth time. “He’ll be all right, in the end.”
“I don’t know,” I said, because I honestly didn’t. Aled’s fate rested entirely on what he decided to do tonight.
“How did she even know we were here?” I asked, because there was no way anyone believed that Carol just happened to be here on the same day four of us had driven six hours up the country to rescue him.
“She saw us leave,” said Carys abruptly. “I saw her looking out the window.”
“She didn’t know where we were going though!” said Raine.
Carys laughed. “Aled’s long-lost sister sets off with his best friend in the same car, with bags of food for a long journey? Not that hard to guess, is it.”
Raine was about to say something else when we heard a car door slam. She bolted from her seat and swung open the door and shrieked “NO!” and we ran to join her just in time to see Aled and his mother driving away in a taxi.
UNIVERSITY
“I didn’t think this could get any worse,” said Daniel, “but it literally just did. Great.”
We were standing in the middle of the road watching the taxi drive away.
“They’ll be going to the station,” said Carys. “She’ll be wanting to take him home.”
“Well, we obviously can’t let that happen,” I said.
Raine was already walking towards her car, which was still innocently parked on the double yellow lines by the college building. “Everyone get in the car.”
It took us a moment to react, and a cry from Raine of “GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” and then we all got into the car and Raine tore off after them.
She broke the speed
limit and got us there in three minutes, Daniel shouting, “Slow down, we’re all going to die,” most of the way. We piled out of the car and into the station and checked the departures board and there was a train to King’s Cross leaving in three minutes on Platform One. We ran towards Platform One without speaking to each other, and then there he was, standing by a bench with his mum, and I shouted out to him – we couldn’t get any closer because we couldn’t get through the ticket barrier – and he turned, his eyes wide as if he thought maybe he’d been imagining us this whole time.
“Don’t go home with her!” I shouted. The station was lit up orange and gold against the darkness. “Please, Aled!”
He made to move towards us, but his mum grasped his arm and he stopped in his tracks. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“We’ll help you!” I tried to think about what I was saying before I said it, but my heart was pounding and I couldn’t think properly about anything, anything except that if Aled got on that train we might never get him back. “Please, you don’t have to stay with her!”
Carol tutted at me and turned away as if she couldn’t hear me, but Aled continued to stare. The train was almost at the station.
“It’s my only option,” he replied, although I could barely hear him. The train pulled in with a huge screeching noise. “I can’t stay here, I have nowhere else to go—”
“You can stay with me instead!”
“Yeah, or me!” Carys shouted. “In London!”
“You’re not meant to be there!” I continued. “She’ll just make you go back to university! You were never meant to be at university …”
Carol started trying to pull him towards the train door. He moved slowly with her, but he was still looking at me.
“You made the wrong decision … you— You thought you had to go to university even though you didn’t want to, or— Or you thought you wanted to go, but you really didn’t … just because we were told that’s our only option.” I was leaning most of my body weight over the ticket gate, as if I could snap it in two. “I promise it’s not! I understand … I think— I think I made that mistake as well, or— or I haven’t made it yet, but— I’m going to change it …”
Aled stumbled on to the train, but remained standing in the doorway, looking at me.
“Please, please, Aled …” I was shaking my head wildly at him and I felt myself start to cry, not from sadness but from fear.
I felt someone nudge me in the side and when I looked Raine had linked her fingers together and was holding them by my leg as a foothold. I realised what she was doing as she winked at me and said, “Go before the ticket gate guy notices.”
I put my foot in her hands and Raine practically threw me over the ticket gate. I heard the ticket gate man shouting at me, but I ran towards the train door and stopped right in front of Aled. His mum was trying to pull him farther on to the train, but Aled wasn’t moving. He was just standing there, watching me.
I held out my hand to him.
“Please don’t go with her … you have other options … you are not trapped.” I could hear my voice shaking, the panic and the desperation.
“What if I don’t?” he whispered. “What if I … can’t get a job, and … I’ll never be able to leave home … and—”
“You can live with me and we’ll get joint shifts at the village post office and we’ll make Universe City together,” I said, “and we’ll be happy.”
He blinked away tears. “I—” He looked down, fixed on some point on the ground, and he didn’t say anything else, but I saw him decide …
“Aled!” Carol’s voice sounded from somewhere behind him, sharp and demanding.
Aled wrenched his arm out of her grip, and took my hand.
I mumbled, “Thank God,” and saw he was wearing his lime green plimsolls with purple laces.
And then he stepped off the train.
5. SPRING TERM (c)
UNIVERSE CITY
We all stayed the night. It was too late to drive back home. Aled had a spare duvet for us to lie on and the four of us didn’t think we’d get much sleep, but Raine fell asleep only ten minutes after she exclaimed, “I haven’t been to a sleepover in months,” and Carys quickly followed, covering herself with her leather jacket.
Daniel was asleep within the next fifteen minutes, wearing a pair of Aled’s pyjama shorts and a T-shirt instead of his school suit and tucked slightly under Aled’s desk because there definitely wasn’t room for five people to sleep in here. Then only Aled and I were awake, sitting on his bed against the wall.
“What did you mean about you, like, making a mistake about uni?” he whispered, rolling his head towards me. “Are you— What’s your plan now?”
“Well … the thing is … I don’t actually think I care about English literature. I don’t want to do it at university.”
Aled looked startled. “Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure I really want to go at all.”
“But … that was— That was what you cared about more than anything.”
“Only because I thought I had to,” I said. “And because I was good at it. I thought that was the only way I was going to have a good life. But … that’s wrong.”
I paused.
“I love making Universe City with you,” I said. “I don’t feel like that when I’m studying.”
He stared at me. “What d’you mean?”
“I feel like myself when I’m with you. And … that version of me … doesn’t want to study books for three more years just because other people are and school told me that I should … That version of me doesn’t want to get a desk job just for the money. That version of me wants to do what I want.”
He let out a small laugh. “What do you want to do?”
I shrugged and smiled. “I don’t have any plans. I just … I might need to think about it all a bit more carefully. Before I make any decisions I regret.”
“Like I did,” said Aled, but he was smiling.
“Well, yeah,” I said and we both laughed. “I could do anything, though. I could get a septum piercing.”
We both laughed again.
“What about art?” Aled said.
“Hm?”
“You like art a lot, don’t you? You could go to art college. You’re really good at it. And you love it.”
I thought about the idea. Really thought about it. It definitely wasn’t the first time someone had suggested that to me. And I didn’t have any doubts that I would enjoy it.
For a moment there it actually felt sort of brilliant.
All I remember from the rest of that night was waking up briefly and hearing Daniel and Aled talking to each other, whispering so quietly that they were barely making any sound at all. Aled was still next to me on the bed. Daniel was, as far as I could tell, looking up at him from the floor. I quickly shut my eyes again before they noticed I was awake and thought I’d been eavesdropping.
“Wait, I don’t understand,” said Daniel. “I thought that meant someone who doesn’t like having sex at all.”
“I think that’s the case for some people …” said Aled. He sounded a little nervous. “But asexuality means … erm … someone who doesn’t feel, like, sexually attracted to anyone.”
“Right. Okay.”
“And some people just feel like they’re … like … partly asexual, so … they only feel sexually attracted to people who they know really, really well. People they have, like, an emotional connection with.”
“Okay. And that’s you.”
“Yeah.”
“And you are attracted to me. Because you know me really well.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you never have a crush on anyone.”
“Yeah.” There was a pause. “Some people call that ‘demisexual’ but, erm … it doesn’t really matter what the word is—”
“Demisexual?” Daniel chuckled. “Haven’t even heard of that one.”
“
Yeah, it doesn’t matter what the word is, to be honest … I’m just trying to explain what I actually … like … feel. It’s the feeling that’s the important thing.”
“It’s fine. It’s just a bit complicated.” There was a rustling sound which might have been Daniel rolling over. “Where did you find out about all this?”
“The Internet.”
“You should have told me about it.”
“I thought you might … think it was silly, or something.”
“Who am I to judge anyone’s sexuality? I’m massively gay.”
They both laughed softly.
Aled continued, “I just wanted you to understand, like, why I don’t want to come out or anything. It’s definitely not because I don’t like you in that way—”
“No, I get it. I get it.”
“And I was just scared … I didn’t know how to explain it to you and make you believe me. And I just slowly started avoiding you … which made you think I don’t like you … and I was scared you’d just break up with me as soon as I spoke to you. I’m so sorry, I’ve been so horrible to you—”
“Yeah, you’ve been an absolute bloody arse.” I could hear that Daniel was smiling, and they both stifled a laugh. “It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”
Aled moved his arm off the bed. I wondered whether they were holding hands.
“So can we just go back to the way things were?” whispered Aled. “Can we just be us again?”
Daniel took a moment to reply.
“Yeah, we can,” he said.
In the morning, Aled and I walked to Boots to get some toothbrushes for everyone, because Carys said she was not going anywhere until she’d brushed her teeth. While we were there, Aled wandered off to look at hair dye, and once I joined him, I asked him if he wanted me to dye his hair for him when we got back to his room, and he said yes.
Aled sat on his desk chair, his hair freshly washed, and I stood behind him with a pair of scissors we’d picked up in WHSmith.
