by Tom Anderson
‘Jeff’s offering to take us both Thursday. I reckon it would be good for you, Luca. There’s so much money in jewels. Having experience from such a young age could set you up better than any of those exams they’re gonna put you in for.’
‘Mum won’t go for it,’ I was saying, thinking A) that was true, she wouldn’t; and B) even though I’d love an excuse to miss school, it was stupid beyond belief to think that knowing your way to a jewellery market with Jeff Rafferty would stand someone in better stead than passing your GCSEs.
‘She’ll go for it,’ said Dad. ‘She worries about you. If she thinks you’re into something she’ll support you.’
Into something? No she wouldn’t.
‘She’d be happy to think we were one day gonna have a family business,’ my dad added.
‘You really believe that?’
‘Yeah. Why? Don’t you?’
I couldn’t be bothered to tell him. Even though I found the idea of what to do when I grew up terrifying – and it could easily get me into one of my episodes – the one thing I didn’t want was join him in the world of loser, small-time conmen and failed Ebay traders. Even if him and his mates had the biggest diamond in the universe, they’d still manage to screw it up. We’d been reading this book in English about a pearl diver who did that – found the most beautiful pearl ever made – but he didn’t have enough game to do anything with it and just ended up a sitting duck for all the clever people and the powerful types who came knocking on his door. It was by the same guy who wrote Of Mice and Men, so you can imagine what kind of ending that one had.
And anyway. We weren’t talking perfect pearls here either, were we. I wondered if they sold oversized Reeboks at Jeff’s favourite jewel mart.
‘Family business,’ my dad repeated. ‘If I can turn around two grand on buying cheap gold, it’ll more than double. The kind of money that deal could bring in would mean focussing on only the one line of trade, then. No more Chapel Marshes or eBay. We could wholesale! You’d have a job to go into then, however you do in school.’
Saved by the bell – or the threat of it, at least. I pointed the time to him and jumped out of the car. I’d multi tasked good, too – listening to Dad and DJing at the same time. The Bunny track was only eight seconds out, and I could slow for the right moment and still make Reg on time.
The same supply teacher was still babysitting our form, so I hid one earphone and left Bunny to sing in my other ear while she tried to explain to us about a careers fair that was coming to Chapel Shores soon. Then she told us that, because there would be ‘experts’ there that could go over all the important stuff on jobs and college options, our actual careers lesson was going to turn into PSE, again. Great. Two consecutive Mondays of it. Normally they went with every other week for both careers and PSE, but maybe Miss preferred trying to make Joseph Poundes do worksheets on where cocoa came from than forcing us to think about what we had to do next year once our exams were either passed or failed. Actually, thinking about it, I didn’t blame her.
Gaby was in, too, so this was like a full blown repeat of everything that had happened last week. She frowned at me for a second then stuck her head into the worksheet. Poundes came late, got sent to the back, which was exactly where he’d want to sit anyway, and just spent the whole time throwing broken bits of a novelty rubber at me or anyone else who didn’t deserve it. A slow hour passed of feeling like crap, and doing nothing with any point to it – just how we’d all like to start a week in school, eh?
But I’d ignored Gaby correctly this time. That was the important bit.
The low mood thing still hung around me most of the morning, though. The trials of last week were there, lurking in the background the whole time, and I spent the rest of the morning thinking about why Gaby didn’t want to be seen being friendly in school, and about what my mum and her mates had been saying when they were ribbing me about this last night.
She’s probably not that interested back, but he can try, can’t he?
‘Try what?’ I wanted to ask. It wasn’t like that… Honestly. It wasn’t.
* * *
To say Gaby could be a bit ‘complicated’ in school was an understatement. She’d tell you all the time about how being popular and having loads of friends and influence wasn’t important to her. She’d use words that sounded stolen from teachers like ‘irrelevant’. ‘Whether people like you is irrelevant,’ she’d say.
But what she said, and what she did… were often not the same thing.
One kid from my Reg group who I was sort of friendly with, Jaime King, had given me his big theories on her once, after he’d tried to go out with her for about a week. I remembered getting really pissed off with him for telling me and not really wanting to sit near him in Reg after that. Couldn’t show it, though. He didn’t really know that me and her were friends.
‘That girl,’ Jaime had told me, ‘chooses friendship groups and allies so carefully you’d think she could go into business.’
Maybe he’d said it because we’d just started a Business Studies course, or maybe he understood the deal better than me. Who knows. Two weeks later we were learning about how companies get investors to put different amounts of money in by giving them packages with different names – creating different ‘tiers’ of contributor, according to Ms Vieira, our tutor.
‘Look at this example,’ she then said. ‘You can buy gold, silver and bronze memberships to a banking scheme. What’s the implication of this?’
As some other kid answered, Jaime had whispered in my ear ‘Just like the whole Gabo, Gaby and Gabe thing, really, int it? That’s basically gold, silver and bronze, too.’
I’d decided he was just bitter because he’d probably tried too hard and she’d dumped him. I knew the other version of the story too, and it went that he’d put ‘pressure’ on her, if you get what I mean. ‘Pressure’ and Gaby would not go together well.
Still, though, he’d left me thinking. It was clever how quickly she could work into someone’s favour if she wanted, and yet not really get close enough to let them down or to cross anyone. Apart from me obviously, who she crossed any time she liked, but that’s because she knew I’d never ditch her.
I thought about the handful of times I’d been in lessons with Gaby other than PSE – not counting Art where she worked really, really hard. Jaime was right when he said in class she’d line up with the most successful people; kids either too nice or too sure of themselves to bother having a problem with it. Since Gaby was super sharp it would normally work both ways anyway.
‘What was that word from biology?’ Jaime had said. ‘A symbiotic relationship. Yeah, that’s it. Something that suits both parties.’
In breaks, meanwhile, she’d try really hard to make it look as if she liked being by herself. Really, though, she spent her time outside of lessons with a couple of really gnarly girls who were about thirty years old already in the way they behaved. Whenever I saw them together they reminded me of Rachel and Amy. Which was why not having so much to do with Gaby during the ‘working day’ wasn’t that much of a bother to me, most of the time.
And then the school day would end. The bit she called the ‘fake’ half of the day, or ‘our jobs’ – she still called it that despite not being in a quarter of the time – would be done, and she’d switch off. That was when she became the amazingly interesting, kind person with big ideas and interests and plans to work out what was wrong with the world and, if she couldn’t do anything about it, at least make everything better by laughing.
Very occasionally, there was a glimpse of that warm and nice Gaby during the school day, but it was rare. Usually it would be something indirect, just like what happened in BTEC Science later that Monday, when a revolving seating plan put me right next to one of those thirty-type girls from my year that knew the daytime version of Gaby.
Ella Bowen, rapping her long, light gr
een fingernails on the desk and swishing her hair that was blonde as a light bulb, started ribbing me right away about what had happened in PSE last week. As you can imagine, that wasn’t ideal. Just as I could feel my chest going to tighten, though, she seemed to relax a bit.
‘It was kind of funny anyway,’ Ella said, raising her eyelashes like a stage curtain. ‘Gabe (because Ella got to use that Gold-friendship name) found it sweet.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, she told me. Said you could fight Joe Poundes for her too.’
I sighed. Very funny, Ella.
‘Sorry. Nah, she didn’t really say that last bit. She did think it was sweet, though. She’s in Product Design now. Bet she’ll laugh when she knows we’re sat together.’
Ella whipped out an iPhone in some cheesy white, diamante cover and her fingernails skidded across the keypad to unlock it.
‘Sittin’ by your nite in shining armour in BTEC,’ ran the message.
Great. Now I was done for.
Ella slid the phone back under her handbag and we both pretended to concentrate on the PowerPoint. Then her phone buzzed with a reply, and she waited for a chance to grab it when no one was looking.
‘Reply from Gabe: “AW. He’s nice INT he. Tell him im going bunkers after we leave the office?”’
Ella showed me the message. ‘Mean anything to you?’
‘Er, yeah. Er, thanks.’
‘You’re welcome, LL Cool J.’
I loved getting people wrong. Ella was nothing like Amy or Rachel. We whizzed through our worksheet after that, and got told we could sit together again in lessons.
And anyway, my head was on its way to the beach already. I had something to speed the day up, something to look forward to.
‘Why don’t you come as well?’ I asked Ella.
‘Nah. Not my thing,’ she said. ‘Plus, I have to go to real work. Glass collecting in the pub tonight. Not allowed to pull a pint, see. Under eighteen, so Dad’s got me off the books. Child labour, with a load of blokes perving on me and pretending to be kind. Gotta love it, eh?’
Chapter 8
‘How are we doing, Luca Lincoln-James?’
‘Fine.’
Dr Wentloog always talks about we. He was super nice when he interrupted me just then, which makes me super sure he’s up to something.
Mind you, though; apparently he was impressed by how into this stuff I was getting yesterday and today. The ‘diary’. He thinks he’ll get to see it one day soon, so he can bust open my case and stick me in one of his books or talk to loads of Americans in posh clothes about me.
Well, I reckon good luck to him. I’ve started his version now, too. In the little book he gave me. It’s so clean you’d laugh at it – and then puke, then probably rip it up and set fire to it. Or just throw it aside bored. I almost did that about every ten minutes while I was doing the first bit, but then I kept reminding myself how important it was to make sure he had something to look at. It’s the deal he made for me – in order to stand any chance of being left alone before I’m twenty-one.
Oh – and he also told me this morning that I’m not going to have to go to the police station when I leave, either. See! They don’t think there’s a problem, and the cops haven’t heard any other version of the story apart from what they think they saw.
Anyway – what I saw is the bit that matters. Hopefully you can use that as proof I’m not making any of this crap up. Why would I?
* * *
It was bright and windy down at Bunkers Beach. The sea was acting like a giant fridge and as I ran across the gravel and broken tarmac of the carpark I could feel the cold cranking up. Patches of sand were swirling in the breeze, and there was the smell of something really thick and man-made from the industrial estate behind the far end of the beach. A patch of reddish brown water was drifting across too, where that little stream from the Marshes ran out to sea.
That was the bit of the beach we had all been told, since we were old enough to speak, to stay away from. So noawadays, of course, it was the bit of beach me and Gaby used to make a point of going to.
I reached the furthest bunker before she did, and had a few minutes to worry if she was going to stand me up. I had a sudden moment of panic in which I imagined Ella Bowen and a load of others, maybe even Poundes himself, stepping out from behind one of the concrete lumps and taking a photo of me looking all lonely and pathetic then sharing it everywhere. Paranoia can do funny things to you. It shouldn’t be ignored, either – it keeps you safe.
She showed, though. Like I kind of knew she would.
‘Alright Lukee?’ she laughed. ‘Tough day at the office?’
‘Better than it could have been,’ I said.
‘Ah, yeah. Heard you sat by Ella in BTEC. She’s taken a liking to you already. And why shouldn’t she.’
‘It that a trick question?’
Gaby laughed.
‘She’s got you as “Gabe”, too,’ I said. ‘Saw it on her phone. What did she do to earn that one?’
‘Ha! See, there are a few of them out there. I dunno. It’s not like something I decide.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘No. It’s got to fall naturally, you know what I mean. Like Tu and Vous…’
‘…Or Ti and Chi.’ I finished her sentence.
‘Yeah. It’s a kind of organic thing, right?’
‘Organic?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought that meant food that my mum always wants to buy,’ I said, stopping short of adding, ‘but my dad won’t let us coz it’s expensive.’
‘Same thing,’ she said. ‘It means not forced. Something that’s allowed to happen the way it wants to.’
‘That’s what organic food means?’ I had this vision of a chicken being allowed to walk onto your plate and chopping its own head off.
‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Anyway, tell your mum to come for dinner at my place. My mum loves organic! D’you reckon they’d get on?’
I thought about the way I’d heard my mum, Rachel and Amy speak yesterday, and wondered if Gaby’s mum was on a treadmill right now.
‘So I could just start calling you “Gabe”, then, and that would be organic?’ I asked.
‘Er, maybe.’
‘Okay then, Gabe.’
Her face tightened and she stared right at me. Then she smiled and said, ‘Didn’t feel natural, though, did it.’
She was right. It didn’t.
‘Maybe I’d get used to it,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but then that would be forced. It wouldn’t be organic anymore,’ she replied.
‘Gaby, d’you believe in ghosts?’ I asked her.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Er, okay. Bit of a random question, mind.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s just…’
‘Just what?’
‘Never mind.’
* * *
We set out walking west, with the tide pretty much high. I tried to work out where the watermark would be right now on the beach near my house compared to where it had been when I saw them the other night. Then I counted the hours ahead, trying to work out when this stage of tide would next occur during darkness, before Gaby distracted me with a few finds.
‘A doll’s arm! Ew! Creepy as! I’m keeping this. And d’you know what all these little blue, plastic sticks are from?’
‘No.’
‘Cotton buds,’ she said. ‘The cotton rots off then the stick washes ashore. These are probably from ships. Imagine that? Sailors on those minging oil tankers that pass towards the Marshes, rubbing these things around their ears!’ She waved one in my direction, like a toy sword.
Gaby still had her schoolbag on her shoulders, and lifted it off. That was part of her non-gender ste
reotype thing – she wore a backpack with both straps, whereas most of the girls used satchels or handbags which never had room for anything big, and it meant they had to keep going to their lockers between every lesson.
She dropped it to the sand and started fumbling around inside her Art stuff. She had a mini plastic, see-through sack in there for bits she collected off the beach, and then her sketchbooks.
‘Are you looking for something in particular?’ I asked her.
‘Just somewhere to put more stuff,’ she said, before reminding me of an important fact for about the millionth time: ‘Luca, you know I don’t use beach stuff for my GCSE?’ She tapped her sketchbook.
‘You should, though,’ I said. She laughed.
‘What would you know? You’ve never seen inside my sketchbook, anyway. You only take Art because you had to have ten separate subjects anyway.’
‘So.’
‘So, how’s your artwork coming?’
‘It’s not,’ I told her.
‘Well it should,’ she laughed.
‘Maybe I’ll find something today.’
‘If you do, you can give it to me,’ and she punched me gently in the ribs, zipped up her bag and moved on, adding, ‘Coz Rogoff isn’t gonna let you sculpt anything and you know it.’
There was driftwood in the shore, and we’d come a good way west of the last bunker, now. The runoff from that feeble little stream that came out of the Marshes was dyeing the ocean the colour of black tea. This was the best place for finding stuff, and before long we had a decent haul of items to wonder over.
I held up the plastic casing from a shotgun cartridge, while Gaby held a toilet seat around her head like a halo.
‘What d’you reckon then, Luca? Someone been shot while on the bog?’
‘Yeah, in a ship, then all evidence thrown overboard.’
