Golden Boy

by Tarttelin, Abigail

  I think of Max Walker at this point because he is standing in the frame of the common room doors. The sun is shining on him. Doesn’t it always.

  Max moves out of the halo ray of sun in the doorway and moves slowly up to a group of the popular people. Carl turns around and notices him. He reaches out with his arms.

  ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KID!’

  ‘Hi!’ Max grins, and then Carl runs round him and jumps on his back and Max yelps and wriggles out. Max mumbles something, and looks half-pained and half-happy.

  ‘I was just saying happy birthday.’ Carl holds up his hands in mock reproach.

  Max smiles at him. Max talks considerably quieter than Carl so I can’t really hear what he’s saying.

  I don’t know why I’m listening to the exchange. I’m so bored. B-o-r-e-d. I’m trying to zone out by watching YouTube videos of Ash Sarkar and Kate Tempest on my iPhone. They’re badass performance poets, and they are just a few years older than me. I wish I still lived in London. If you come of age there, you’re at the epicentre of the performance poetry scene already. But I notice, after a few minutes of listening to Max talk, that I have let the YouTube video play out and stop. Instead of searching for another one, I pretend I’m still listening to my iPhone, so no one talks to me, but I take one earphone out and try to listen to him instead.

  He doesn’t look as nervous as yesterday. I kind of want to go over and ask him if he was OK. He probably hasn’t told anyone. He is the Walker offspring, after all. Must keep up appearances.

  ‘Heyyy!’ Marc Paulsson yells, running past me, over to Max. ‘Happy sweet sixteen, mate!’

  They high five and then they all sit down on the comfy chairs and talk more quietly, so I can’t hear them. Maria and a few girls walk over in tiny pleated skirts and give Max hugs and wish him a happy birthday. He has a conversation with Suzanne and Nikki, which I give him a plus point for, because Suzanne and Nikki are cool. They are kind of bookish. Outside of school, they wear very fifties gear. Some of the other girls call them the Pink Ladies, after the girls in Grease. It’s supposed to be an insult, but if I acted like Rizzo or looked like Sandy, I wouldn’t complain.

  I watch Max laughing with them, and waving to other people who wish him happy birthday, but he looks a little . . . subdued, or reserved, like he’s trying to be excited but isn’t, or doesn’t have the energy. He smiles at everyone, like he is a sweet little eleven-year-old, who hasn’t a clue how bitchy people can be at secondary school. I guess Max Walker wouldn’t know how bitchy people can be. All the girls love him. But he seems so young to me. Weird, I know. But he seems young.

  Watching him now, he looks the kind of happy where you’re sad, but you’re doing your best to be upbeat, and I wonder if any of his friends notice that. It always seems strange to me how little people notice about each other’s lives. One good thing about being a loner is that I notice a lot, because I’m outside everything, with nothing to do but watch and write it down in poetry. It’s clear to me that Max is miserable, but his friends don’t seem to see. He shrugs at something Maria says, and laughs. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek and he blushes, looks at his lap, and smiles.

  I frown and look away. I don’t know why I frown. It’s fine if he likes Maria. She’s OK. A bit blah, but still OK. She is the type of blonde, swishy-haired girl who would be a golden boy’s girlfriend. They are both normal, predictable and kind of boring: the golden people of school, and who knows in the life after school? Maybe golden people tarnish fast.

  Later, on the school field, at lunch:

  ‘His lips were gross and tiny. Like, there was almost no lip there,’ Laura Narne says thoughtfully, pulling at her own full bottom lip, as I rub my stomach. I have period pains. Hate, hate, hate. Who cares about his lips? Whose lips? I’m not lipsning.

  ‘Why did you even kiss him, then?’ Fay asks, sitting on the grass outside the art block, inspecting her legs in her gross polyester school skirt.

  ‘He was cute otherwise.’

  ‘He was the only one there who wasn’t heinous,’ Emma says with a smirk, and Laura punches her. ‘Everyone else there was fug.’

  ‘What’s fug?’ asks Laura.

  ‘Fugly, you dick.’ Emma sits up. ‘Err, why is Wonder Boy Three walking over this way?’

  Who is Wonder Boy 3? Who cares? My back is killing me and I feel totally grumpy from listening to Emma bleat on all lunch. But I have itchy feet for company. You can’t talk to yourself alone for too long. You’ll go crazy.

  ‘Is Max Walker Wonder Boy Three?’ asks Laura. ‘I thought he was Number One?’

  ‘Huh?’ I look up, across the field. Max Walker is walking towards us.

  ‘No, he’s Three,’ Emma says. ‘Todd Z is Wonder Boy One, Marc Paulsson is Wonder Boy Two and Max Walker is Three.’

  ‘Max Walker’s way fitter than Marc Paulsson.’ Laura frowns. ‘And Todd Z.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how attractive they are really. They are all dicks.’

  ‘Ems, that’s not true. Marc Paulsson’s OK. I have him in Biology,’ says Fay.

  ‘Er, he is definitely walking this way.’

  ‘OMG,’ says Laura.

  ‘He’s a dick.’

  ‘Shut up, Emma!’ Fay nudges her.

  ‘OMG!’ Laura yelps, like she’s pissed herself.

  ‘Hi, Sylvie.’

  ‘Err . . . hi,’ I say awkwardly, putting my arm over my eyes to shield them from the sun. I squint up at Max Walker, and blink at him uncertainly.

  ‘Hi guys,’ Max says shyly to Laura, Emma and Fay.

  ‘Hi Max,’ says Fay.

  ‘Hello, Max Walker,’ says Emma, and giggles maliciously, staring at me like she wants me to catch her eye.

  ‘What’s up, Max?’ I say, in the bored fashion you use when you are sitting next to a group of girls who will make it a huge deal if you seem at all interested in a guy.

  Over the field I see Maria looking at us. She’s standing next to the football field, watching the boys play with all the rest of her group of girls. She has long blonde hair that’s perfectly straight. She’s like an extra from High School Musical. No, the lead. Of an erotic version of the same. She turns back to watch the football. I don’t know why. The players do the same thing every bloody lunchtime.

  ‘I just wanted to see if, um . . .’ Max is mumbling. He clears his throat. ‘If maybe you wanted to hang out?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, tearing my eyes slowly away from Maria. She flicks her hair away from her face and I remember Max blushing earlier. ‘I’m kind of . . . busy,’ I finish lamely.

  ‘Oh, OK, that’s cool.’ Max shrugs and looks down at his feet. Then he takes a deep breath, lifts his head and gives me a big smile. It’s his usual beam but it looks like it takes a lot of effort today. ‘Maybe we could hang out another time. We’re going to the cinema on Saturday for my birthday, if you wanted to come?’

  ‘Who’ll be there?’

  ‘Um . . .’ He looks around at the football pitch vaguely, like he’s having difficulty remembering. ‘Marc, Carl, Todd, Grant, Maria, Olivia, Karina . . . Some other people. I dunno.’

  ‘And you’re asking me because you need another girl whose name ends in “a”?’

  ‘Oh yeah, Sylvia,’ he says, as if he had never considered that this would be my full name before. Everyone calls me ‘Sylvie’. I see a peak of a genuine grin. He laughs a little. ‘Yeah, we need symmetry. The world is just . . . too illogical to handle without it. Your friends are welcome to come too,’ he adds, gesturing to the girls. ‘I think afterwards we’re going to go to the Pancake Café.’

  There’s a silence while I think about going to the Pancake Café with that many people and being so awkward with them I don’t know what to say and don’t speak the entire time, and then when I’m at school we pass in the corridors and I don’t know whether to wave so I don’t, and then they think I’m a bitch.

  Then Max says, ‘I’ll buy your popcorn!’ which sounds a bit desperate, and may or may no
t mean that he really wants me to come.

  I find this confusing, and am unsure how to react. I probably can’t say ‘I don’t like people’. That would probably not be the right response. For some reason Max actually seems nervous asking me as well. He seems so freaking young, but he’s only a week younger than me. My sixteenth birthday was last Wednesday. Toby and I went clubbing.

  Max Walker makes me say things in my head that sound like I’m a grandma. Like ‘bless him’. He has this very childlike quality of utter cheeriness. Like a puppy. Although today, he looks more like a kicked puppy, tail down and in the corner. I guess the word is ‘cute’. It is almost distracting, this cuteness. He has this impossibly sunshine-like smile. Other girls, of course, find it utterly distracting. Not me. Because I am an individual.

  I screw up my face. ‘I don’t actually think I can do Saturday.’

  Emma and Laura both look at me like I’m crazy. Max smiles, but – and here I feel a little bad – looks truly disappointed. He obviously sees that I’m lying. He shrugs.

  ‘Oh, OK, that’s cool, no worries.’ He puts his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ll get going, then. I think they need me on the field.’ He gestures towards the football match. ‘If you do get free, though, the film starts at six forty-five, at the Kinema. I’d love you to come, but no worries if you can’t. Bye.’

  He says this last bit kind of lamely and waves his hand, then turns away and heads up to the field.

  ‘Max!’ I call, then roll my eyes at myself. ‘Listen, another time, OK?’

  He grins, and suddenly his entire face lights up and I watch a group of Year Sevens passing him practically faint.

  ‘OK! Bye, Sylvie.’

  He wanders off slowly to the football field and runs a little bit up and down with his friends, kicking the ball half-heartedly. The girls are talking excitedly behind me, but I watch Max. He looks around the field, over to me, turns away again, says something to Maria, then picks up his jumper, and walks over the field and into the library building, head down, looking kind of lonely and glum.

  ‘Sylvie! Isn’t it his birthday today?’ says Emma, in a tone that suggests they have been talking to me and I haven’t been listening.

  ‘Erm, maybe,’ I say.

  ‘He wanted to hang out with you on his birthday and you said no.’ She giggles. ‘You’re such a freak, Sylvie. I love it. You’re like, “No, I totally don’t care whether you clearly fancy me or not”.’ She hugs me.

  ‘He doesn’t fancy me!’ I protest between her breasts.

  ‘He thinks he’s the shit,’ says Laura.

  ‘Totally,’ agrees Emma. ‘He thinks he’s hot.’

  ‘Really?’ I say slowly, getting my iPhone back out. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh my god, like so.’

  ‘So.’

  I groan audibly at them, but they won’t understand what I’m groaning at so it doesn’t matter. I plug in my earphones and open the YouTube app again.

  So Max Walker wants to hang out. I hope he was OK the other day at the clinic.

  Max

  I can’t sleep.

  I had a pretty good day today, I guess. Everyone was talking to me all day, because it was my birthday, and I got cards and some of the girls brought me presents at school. I didn’t have time to think about anything, really. I was planning to be on auto-pilot, trying not to think about it. You know. It. But everyone was making jokes and hugging me anyway, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

  This late at night, there’s no one here to force myself to feel OK for, to smile or hold it together for, and I feel pretty bad. I try to do what Mum always says to do, and think about how there’s always someone worse off than me in the world and I should be grateful for what I have, but tonight it doesn’t help me stop thinking about everything. I changed the sheets, but I had to do it Sunday night straight after it happened, so there is still a sheet with blood on it in a plastic bag in the bottom drawer. Quite a lot of blood. It’s weird how blood pools out like that.

  I still feel sore when I move too. I felt sore all day pretty much, even though I took the right doses of painkillers. I couldn’t play football at lunch. I said my ankle was hurting. Liar, liar.

  Sylvie Clark was sitting on the school field so I decided to go and say hello. She looked really pretty. I felt shyer than I have before. I usually am a tiny bit shy, but I just try to go for it with girls. But today I felt nervous after Sunday and everything. Anyway, I’m not sure that I feel that way about her. I mean, I don’t even know her. But she was nice the other day at the clinic, and she’s obviously really, really beautiful, so I thought maybe if I got to know her, we might get on.

  Her hair today was like a curly mess of caramel around her face and down onto her shoulders. She has caramel-coloured skin too. She looks like sweets. I wanted to stroke her skin. God.

  She said she was busy.

  I couldn’t really think of what to say, because she didn’t look at all busy, but I said OK and that maybe we could hang out another time. Today, language seems to have failed me. I kept smiling all day and looking excited and stuff, but I found that trying to talk that way was too much. I keep panicking, and thinking someone’s going to find out. I’m avoiding Mum and Dad for the same reason. I just keep thinking they’re going to look at me and know, or I’m going to bleed a bit or something. I kept going into the toilets to check my trousers at school, make sure there were no marks. If Mum and Dad found out about the other night, not only would I be their intersex kid, then I’d be the kid that everytime they looked at him, they would think of my crotch and Hunter doing that to me and how I didn’t fight back. I tried but, like, how would they know? Would they believe me? If they knew it was Hunter, would they think I had been with him all along, ever since we were kids? Urgh.

  After Sylvie said she was busy, I asked her if she wanted to come to the cinema on Saturday and she said she was busy then too. I think she was lying. She’s a bit of a kook.

  I smile to myself in the dark, in my bed, imagining stroking her hair. Kook.

  After we talked I tried to play footie, but I was aching too bad, so I went to the library and did my homework so I didn’t have to do it when I got home. When school finished, I went round to Marc’s with Carl and got wasted. They gave me my present from them, which was FIFA Soccer 12 (!!!) and a pack of condoms and some lubricant.

  ‘For gay sex,’ said Marc. ‘Because you are gay.’

  He was just joking, but I almost cried. Instead I grabbed him and buried my face in his shoulder and pretended I was expressing my undying love for him and said, ‘Only for you, Marc. Only for you.’

  I got home too late or I would have shown the game to Daniel. He loves video games. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of what is on release at the moment, and how many stars Gaming Magazine gave everything. He’ll be excited. I’ll get him to play with me tomorrow.

  Marc, Carl and I played the game and we had to drink every time we scored a goal. They got a bit drunk but I got absolutely smashed, even though we had the same amount to drink. I always get drunk quicker than everyone else. I wonder if it’s my build.

  They had to smuggle me out when I left, so Marc’s mum didn’t see. When I got home I walked very carefully up the stairs and threw up in the toilet. I flushed it away and then cried in the bathroom, like an idiot, sat on the floor next to the bath. No one saw. Usually I’m not this emotional. I think I was just upset about what happened on Sunday even though I wasn’t thinking about it.

  How could Hunter do that? He was my best friend.

  I carried it around all day.

  Something really big happened, you douche, my brain says. You’re allowed to be upset. It’s only Tuesday.

  I know. I just hate it. I’m bored with it.

  You’re bored?

  Yep. I don’t wanna think about it anymore. Why should I have to? I don’t deserve to.

  Nope. But it’s only been forty-eight hours.

  So? I don’t deserve it anyway
. I’m not going to think about it. Close my eyes and go to sleep. Think about something else.

  Sylvie . . . ?

  Maybe.

  We could . . . you know . . .

  Why does everything have to always be about sex?

  Huh?

  How can someone be friends with you for that long and always have been thinking about sex with you? It just ruins every memory you ever had with them. Was he always thinking about it? Even when we were little? Did he always want to touch me? Am I like this curiosity to him?

  You said you weren’t going to think about it.

  I’m not thinking about it.

  Yes, you are.

  God, SHUT UP! Just shut up.

  You are shouting to your own head. Retard. I know. Urgh. Why would he do that?

  Yep. Urgh. Hope we don’t see him around any time soon.

  Don’t say that.

  Sorry. Max? What if we do . . . ? Max?

  Please stop talking.

  OK.

  Karen

  ‘Hi,’ I say, surprised when I walk in the kitchen after work on Wednesday.

  Steve is home, sat at the kitchen table. The mock campaign posters are spread over it. There is a new one, a large one: ‘Stephen Walker: the only independent Independent.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d left the office,’ I say.

  He stands up from the kitchen table. ‘I thought I’d come home and work on this. I heard the Murphy case went well today?’

  He holds his arms open to me and pulls me in to his shoulder. It feels strange to have him so near after being colleagues all day. I’m still in work mode, strong and in control and ready for anything, but this – being held close by a body much larger than mine, feeling petite and protected – it’s a change in roles and it always takes me a minute, each day, to switch between the two.

  Steve never seems to notice my stiffness. I soon relax. I smell his familiar smell, I feel his familiar weight on me, his waist, his bulk, his warmth. But that first time we touch after work, I stiffen and he doesn’t notice, and I think, How do you not notice this? Do you know me at all?