by Tom Anderson
It was no consolation for how worried I was about Gaby, though. I had to try and reason with her in some way, and since she wasn’t in school it would mean one of two things. Either trying to call her, or just suffering and being patient enough to wait for her to get in touch with me.
I’m not good at doing either of those. To call her would be a step of bravery that went way beyond anything I had in me. But then again, waiting and worrying wasn’t going to be much fun either.
Waiting and worrying did actually involve doing nothing on my part, though, so it was just about the easiest option.
I lasted until break.
Then I slid out my phone and went to dial her number. My head throbbed with dread at that, so I went for the middle ground and sent her a text:
‘Sorry u not in today. Hope u okay. Let me know if u need anything.’
She replied nearly straight away.
‘Thanks. NO. Fine.’
Then she followed it with another message which I think sort of helped lift a bit of my gloom: ‘Not gonna stay in house all day. Might need bunker to hide away in. U should come too.’
I tapped out a reply straight away. ‘Cool. Will do. See you straight after work?’
‘Okay yeah.’
‘Work’ was a word we used for school. Gaby had this thing about how going to school was our job. Seemed ironic since she didn’t come that much. But still, the shadowy patch in my mood was definitely brightening. I could endure the lunchtime litter pick now, knowing I had at least one half-friend in the universe, even if she was sticking by this stupid idea that we mustn’t be seen as mates in school.
But then I realised she hadn’t said anything to suggest she wasn’t still going to be mad at me. Had she? Maybe she had. I’m so bad at this. I could convince myself everything was okay, then convince myself it wasn’t, just as quick.
The other two of Kleener’s morning victims had the guts not to show for the litter pick too, so there was plenty of time for me to drown in my own, useless company. Plenty of time to feel the eyes of the whole school as I spiked empty Coke cans off the floor and dropped them into a big, yellow bucket. Plenty of time to make sound mixes in my head – repeats of the warning Kleener had given me along with litter tongs: ‘You’ll be doing this stuff every day, minimum wage, for forty years if you mess school up, Luca Lincoln-James.’
And there was plenty of time, too, for me to match that soundtrack in my head with an image. The other thing I couldn’t stop dwelling on. There they were, in the background the whole time. Those empty faced spirits from the middle of the night.
* * *
Out on the west of Chapel Shores was Bunkers Beach. It had some long and winding Welsh name, but to everyone local it was known as ‘Bunkers’ because the shoreline was dotted with rotting concrete from the Second World War. Like the set of Call of Duty, there were these huge, square, lookout turrets wedged into the dunes from when Wales used to fear invasion from Germany. The ocean and tide had pulled them all over now, so they were dangerous and smelly, covered with graffiti and algae. Some of the kids my age – or at least the ones who went outdoors instead of playing Call of Duty all day – loved them. We often hid away here, me and Gaby, so I knew this was where she’d meant by that text.
There was a little bit of fog, really cold, down by the beach and a sharp wind to blow it sideways along the wet sand. The windows of the derelict shop and pubs on the sea-front were thick with the salt left behind.
I loved the way this town was slowly falling apart in the sea air. I remember my History teacher, Mr Lloyd, explaining to us on a field trip to the bunkers once about the army stuff that got built here. The factories that came after it, plus the shipping lanes and industrial waste meant Chapel Shores was ignored when they set up the holiday resorts. No one had bothered removing the bunkers, he explained, because the beach wasn’t ever going to need it.
Yes, it was official. We were growing up in the only beach town in Wales that hadn’t escaped looking and feeling like a ghetto. There were a few posh streets on the one little hill, and Gaby lived just on the edge of that area. On the east of that hill were the ropey houses and my street, and then on the other side was the old road out to Bunkers. Apart from that, the only other thing the Shores was famous for was being surrounded by miles of boring, flat land that was full of warehouses, supermarkets, DIY shops and empty offices. Chapel Marshes had a sign that claimed it was the ‘Heart of Coastal Commerce’, but not even my dad believed that. It was always getting flooded too, being something silly like a third of a foot below sea level.
Anyway, while most of the kids in this town moaned that they lived in a dive – and couldn’t wait to get on with some far-fetched, dream career which would let them leave, like footballer, Wolf of Wall Street, fashion model or fighter pilot – me and Gaby decided years ago that this set-up suited us fine. It was always quiet and desolate here, even in summer. The whole town seemed like a place to hide.
Gaby was sitting on top of the furthest bunker. I could see her outline through a little patch of mist – that short hair wrapped inside a fluffy head band that went over her ears. I ran towards her, slowing once I got near so that I wouldn’t seem too anxious to see her.
‘Alright?’ she said. Her feet were dangling over the side and she was scratching the surface of the concrete with a sharp stone she must have found at the high-tide mark.
‘Yeh. You?’ I climbed up and stood on a little platform in the cement just below her. I could see what she was sketching. It was the outline of her own hand, and she’d added claws to the fingertips.
‘You got my message then?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
She rolled her eyes, so I asked her if she was okay again.
‘I probably would be if you’d said the right thing just now,’ she said.
My mind grabbed at her words, but found nothing.
‘Er…’ I mumbled. I was drawing a blank.
‘That you’re sorry?’ she suggested. ‘Sorry for humiliating me yesterday?’
That was easy enough for me to say, but was that really what I’d done.
‘Just trying to help,’ I said.
‘Is that what were you thinking?’ she asked, staring straight at me.
‘I was… I was worried.’
‘Well don’t be,’ she said, frowning. ‘D’you really think I need it? Your worry?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Anyway, we’ve spoken about this before,’ she added. ‘We don’t really go round together in school. I get stressed about it.’
‘I know, but…’
‘And especially when we end up in the same class for an hour!’
I wanted to tell her this was a stupid rule, but she’d insisted on it from the day we became friends and I could sort of see the logic behind it. For her, anyway.
‘We can hang around outside of school because that’s real life,’ she explained. ‘In school, though, it’s not real life, and it suits both of us to keep apart.’
I shouldn’t really have been expecting her to say anything else. I knew how it went, now, anyway. Once she finished reminding me of these ‘rules’, she’d be okay again and we could probably be almost normal.
When I told her about Joseph Poundes tripping me up she said it was proof that she was right.
‘See what I mean? You watch. You’re only going to learn this the hard way,’ she told me. ‘They’ll go for you if you associate with me too much. Trust me.’
‘I don’t really care, though,’ I told her.
‘Yeah you do. You think you don’t but you do. Your calling, Luca, in life, is normality! Don’t you get it?’
‘No.’
‘We’re going in opposite directions, see.’
‘What d’you mean?’
/> ‘You’re coming into the world of normal people from outside of it. I’m going the other way. That’s why we get on. We’re passing each other on route to swapping places.’
‘Eh?’
I knew what she meant, though. I think.
‘It’s all about how things look in school,’ she added. ‘We need to play the game there. We can compare notes afterwards, in places like this.’
‘But what about if I see you get so upset in class like that?’
She stopped scratching the stone in her hand and looked up.
‘I was fine.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. If you ask me about that again then I will kick off on you.’
‘Fine.’
There was a little pool of water in front of this bunker, where the sea had dragged sand away as it bounced off the concrete. On high tides waves could smack into this and bounce white foam up in the air. The fog was sticking closely to the shoreline, grey layers of vapour drifting heavily in the wind.
Gaby flicked the stone she’d been using to scratch her handprint on the bunker. A perfect spin took it across the pool in three neat rings of water, before it caught up with itself and sunk.
‘Come on then,’ she said, lowering herself off the opposite edge and dropping to the sand. ‘Let’s do a trawl. I need you to help, LLJ. You can be my second pair of eyes.’
This was chiefly why we came here. With the vast range of amazing waste people had left in the sea, Bunkers Beach was the best place in the universe for collecting odd objects. Gaby liked to call it ‘sculpture work’, and stuck together the items we found in odd ways. Back in her house she’d saw things and bend stuff to make these beach statues that represented some kind of meaning.
‘Check it out! This has to be from a dead person!’ She was holding up a plastic picture frame, the glass long ago cracked out of it and probably turned to sand. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘This is gonna be so meaningful! I should soak some photo – maybe black and white – in it, then drop little bits of colour on once it looks faded enough. What d’you reckon, Luca?’
When we used to trawl the beach near my house Gaby would stash things she found in my garage – then we’d either get my dad to run it over to her house closer to the west side of town, or she and I would both carry them together. We walked a rusted trampoline over to her place once, stopping for rests along the way. Her folks never came down to my street, though.
‘Hey, I’m really liking this frame idea,’ she said, still looking at the places where the sea had taken the colour out of the plastic. ‘Reckon this would bend? Have you noticed how salt water makes plastic all flimsy and ready to crack?’ She went to bend the object slightly with her hands.
‘Ooh. Don’t want to risk it,’ she said. ‘I’ll spray this with lacquer once I’ve made my piece with it.’
Our Art teacher, Mrs Rogoff, thought Gaby was the brightest talent she’d ever had in her class. Gaby was allowed to do whatever she wanted for her GCSE coursework, while the rest of us got forced to do some sort of copycat project on sculptures and paintings Mrs Rogoff had photographed on a trip to this arts city in Colombia, called Cartagena. Some teacher team had been with her there on a trip to prepare artwork and Mrs Rogoff never shut up about it. We had lessons that felt like Geography thrown at us, all about that Cartagena place and its buildings, and Gaby was the only one allowed to follow something else for her main project.
But still Gaby refused to use this stuff from the beaches in Chapel Shores, ever. When I asked her why, she always said the same thing. ‘Coz GCSE Art’s not real life and this is!’ In school she painted fruit bowls or still lifes of her own hand. And still they lapped it up.
‘Luca! Come on. What d’you think? You know I need you to call it for me. You’re my muse – you tell me what flies and what won’t.’
She was still staring into the frame. ‘What d’you reckon then? What do we need to put in this picture frame,’ she asked. ‘Or who? Shouldn’t be an alive person or anyone too real! Howabout I sketch someone?’
‘Could work,’ I said, and then after a moment’s thought, ‘Maybe I could…’
The idea hit my chest and head so hard on the way out that it stayed put.
‘Could what?’ said Gaby.
‘Ah, nah. It wouldn’t work.’
‘What wouldn’t?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on. What’s your idea?’
‘I dunno. Just, like, maybe… Maybe imagine some people on the sand somewhere. You know… Like, shadows or… What d’you call them…’
‘Silhouettes!’ she said.
‘Uh, yeah. I think.’
‘Like those Jack Vetriano paintings Rogoff loves?’
‘I dunno. Maybe,’ I said, going off the idea already and super reluctant to tell her any more.
‘Like what then? I know. I could colour one silhouette while the others were just shapes. Maybe I could find some cloth or something down here, to paint them on, like? Something the sea’s bleached.’
She fell to rummaging in the shoreline, and my moment to say any more about figures, silhouettes, alive people, dead people or strange shapes of any kind on the sand had passed.
‘Ooh!’ she yelled, yanking a ball of rope out of the ground to see if it was attached to anything else. ‘Come on. We’re gonna find something to use. I can feel it!’
As for me, I could feel the first hints of a bit of rain. That wasn’t going to stop her, though.
‘Come on LLJ. Two can trawl this beach quicker than one.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll take the lower tide mark.’ And off I walked, to help someone else make something better out of the stuff that was in my head.
* * *
It was raining hard by the time we got off the beach, and we ran for shelter under the old electricity box they sometimes used as a lifeguard station on the summer days, when there were more than five people here.
Gaby had found some flat wood that she thought might fit in the frame, but apart from that the fog, the cold and the wet had made it hard to get really into the trawl. We could come back, though.
Our pace going up the broken road from Bunkers to the outskirts of town was quick and we were getting wet. It was getting dark early, too, and the few places that were open on the sea front – some offices, a community centre and a big, rundown pub – were closed.
‘See you again, LLJ,’ Gaby said, as she turned off the main road and headed uphill towards her house. A few steps off, she turned and added, ‘Oh, forget about the school thing. I won’t be in tomorrow anyway. Not in the mood. Dunno why. Can’t say.’
‘Yeah, okay. Nice one. T’ra.’
And then I was alone again. I started running as the rain thickened. I reached the first of the roundabouts where cars could turn to drive out across the Marshes. Staying on the sea-front, I kept going, feeling my heart and lungs rising to the task of jogging as my clothes got wetter. A few minutes later I was past the pile of barnacle-covered rocks that broke the town’s beaches in half, and had arrived on the eastern end of the Shores. The lamps of my street stuck out at the far end, disappearing around the back of the biggest dune, and after that the only specks of light were fishing boats out to sea.
Dad had finally sold some of the Reeboks and I got home to find him frantically boxing stuff up to post.
‘Alright Lukee Boy!’ he said. ‘You’re lookin a bit wet. Why didn’t you ring for a lift?’
‘I’m alright,’ I said. ‘Made a sale?’
‘Too right I have! Sold half the batch.’
‘Don’t ask him the prices he got,’ said Mum.
I wasn’t going to.
‘They’re fine!’ he argued back. ‘It’s all about turnover, Hannah. Keep the cash flowing. All of em settled up with PayPal right away. I can ring Jeff Rafferty now and look
for some more stock.’
I made for the stairs.
‘Off up quickly?’ said Dad.
‘Yeah. Got to get dry. You just said.’
‘No I never. I said you look wet, but not that you have to storm straight off when we ain’t seen you yet today.’
‘Get up earlier, then,’ I told him.
My mum cut in again:
‘Luca’s done really well with waking up, hasn’t he. Attendance, attendance, attendance! You’re on it now. The Comp will be off your back in no time. Where you been anyway?’
‘Looking for bits on the beach.’
‘With Gaby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sounds fun,’ said my mum. ‘Don’t you think, Steve?’
My dad looked up from his reel of box-tape.
‘Eh?’
‘Been on the beach with that Gaby girl, he has,’ said Mum.
‘Wahey,’ said my Dad.
Now I was going up.
‘Ah don’t be like that Lukee Boy! She’s alright, she is!’
‘He knows that, Steve,’ said my mum. ‘Luca knows exactly what he’s doing.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said my dad.
‘That you can leave off wahey-ing him about teenage girls.’
‘He doesn’t mind it!’
‘Have you asked him?’
Once I got out of earshot, I could hear them talking a bit more, and then laughter. Not long later my mum called up the stairs to tell me to make sure my school clothes were drying.
‘Wouldn’t want hanging out in the rain with Gaby to cost you your education would we! Or your attendance figure!’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘It won’t.’
* * *
There’s another reason behind Dr Wentloog’s idea, I’ve realised now. The guy might say he needs me to understand how I got into this mess which isn’t really a mess. Really, though, he needs to understand a bit more for himself, because I haven’t really given much away.
But that’s fine. Once I’m finished doing this, I’ll do a different one for him, maybe. It can be all watered down and tamed, and he can puzzle over it and say something deep. Then he’ll get paid, and I’ll get to go and finish my GCSEs – with the aid of some horrid cover note telling the exam board about how I have to have my pencil case opened for me, and have extra marks and extra help and then pass even if I fail, or else I might do something bad again.
