by Lia Louis
“There!” I’d squeal, and Eliot would groan from beside me, lean in and say, “Still a plane, Emmie.”
“Can we just pretend it was a star and go in and watch TV now?” Lucas would tease, and Eliot would sigh and say, “The sky is one big TV.”
We’d call him a knob then, but we wouldn’t move. All of us facing the blackness of the sky, bats swooping overhead, birds, late home, but otherwise, the night silent and calm. I think of Lucas now. I wonder what he’d do if he could see us now, doing what we used to. He wouldn’t like it. I know he wouldn’t. He’d probably say something about looking out for me again. Maybe he’d even bring up the party itself. Our nineteenth. He’d bring up the fact Eliot spilled my secret just to impress a girl. He’d bring up that drinking game that derailed my whole life momentarily—dropping out of college, triggering the migraines again—if it wasn’t for him, for Amanda, helping me get it back on track.
“Do you remember that night?” The words tumble from my mouth before I have even given it a thought.
Eliot doesn’t move, but I feel him tense. He takes a noisy inward breath. “You’re talking about you and Lucas. Your party.”
I nod in the darkness. “Our nineteenth.”
“What made you bring it up?” he asks calmly.
“I was just thinking of us. Of me, you, Luke, and lying in your mum’s garden, you pointing out all the stars and constellations, and how much fun we used to have, how close we were… and that night, it all changed.”
“I know.” Eliot looks down at his lap. My heart thumps in my chest. “It was a long time ago,” says Eliot. “But I’m still really fucking sorry it happened to you.”
“I didn’t bring it up to make you apologize.”
“I know that, Emmie,” he says. “But I am. Stacey had no right to do what she did.”
“I didn’t really care so much about her. It was more you. That you’d thought that of me. That… that what happened to me was my fault.”
“No. God, no, Emmie.” Eliot sits forward, shifting, turning, ducking to look at me under thick lashes. “Of course I didn’t think that, not for a minute. I hated that what happened to you, did. I hate that you ever thought that I thought that of you—”
“But she was your girlfriend, Eliot. And in front of a garden full of people, she told everyone. And not that I was a victim—that I had lied, made it up, teased him, brought it on myself, and she knew everything. And only you knew everything. Only Luke did—”
“Emmie, no,” he cuts in, looking at me pleadingly. “Just—I had no idea. I had no idea she knew.”
“But… then how did—”
“I had no idea,” he says again, long spaces between his words, and when I look up at him, I recognize that look—the dark, narrowed eyes, pink lips parted. The “judgmental” look he had on his face at the bar after I pushed Tom. The night of the party, as Stacey said those words, and I stood up, slowly, before walking away and crumbling in Lucas’s bedroom. But it isn’t judgment. It’s worry. I know now that it’s care. He cares.
“Let’s not,” I say, looking down at my lap.
“I think you should speak to Lucas—”
“It’s done,” I say. His hand reaches out, touches my chin, tips my face to look at him.
“Things, Emmie, aren’t always how they appear. I did what I thought was best back then. For you.”
He looks at me intently. I don’t ask any more questions. I want to. I want to ask him what he means. I want to ask him why he thinks I should speak to Lucas; something that feels like a sting, stuck in the skin, since he said it. I don’t want to ruin this beautiful, starlit evening. So I ignore the slow simmering in my stomach, and instead I say, “Let’s get back to the shooting stars, shall we?”
Eliot hesitates, then smiles, his eyes still sad and glassy. “Sure.” He settles back onto the bench beside me, arm back around me, but tighter this time, his hand stroking the top of my arm, and we sit for a while, gazing at the black sky. I feel as though we have popped a bubble that has been threatening to burst over us. This huge, unsaid thing that was never resolved. And although it isn’t perfect, or neatly tied up with a bow, it is done. Louise is right. He is here. He’s always here.
Eliot’s arm suddenly shoots out, a finger pointing to the sky. “Now,” he says. “See, see, look.” And I catch it. For the first time in my whole life, I see it; a small spark, like the tapering of a firework, shooting across the sky, disappearing into nothing.
“Oh my God,” I say, turning to him. “I saw it! It wasn’t a plane!”
“It definitely wasn’t,” Eliot laughs. I snuggle into him, resting my head on his shoulder. And I wish so much, he would kiss me again. Because I think I would kiss him back this time. Properly.
Instead, Eliot leans in, and softly, lips against my hair, says, “Eyes on the sky, Flower. There are more to see.”
A spark in my belly. A small, powerful spark. Unmistakable.
* * *
Eliot waits downstairs, making more tea as I go up to use the toilet. Louise’s door is still ajar, and I don’t know why, but I stop outside. Still. Everything is so still. Silent. And I think I know. I think that’s why I push open the door, why I walk steadily across the floor to Louise’s bed. That’s when I see the mug of tea, on its side, its contents spread across the duvet like an ink spill. I reach out to touch her face.
I shout. I shout loud, so loud I don’t even sound like myself. “Oh my God,” I’m saying. “Oh no, please. Oh my God, oh my God.”
I hear fast feet pummeling the stairs.
“Emmie?” Eliot says breathlessly, then I see his eyes travel over her. His face falls. His hand goes to his lips, gripping his mouth, his chin. Then he’s by my side as I crumple to the floor and sink beside her bed, my face buried into her duvet. Patchouli. Purple fabric softener.
Louise is gone. Louise fell asleep and never woke up. The curtains still open, the moon watching over her.
* * *
Mix CD. Vol. 7.
Dear Balloon Girl,
Track 1. Because you left this morning
Track 2. Because you talk better French in your sleep than in real life
Track 3. Because I can’t actually believe you fell asleep in the garden
Track 4. Because a plane is not a shooting star
Track 5. Because I’m missing you already
Balloon Boy
X
I remember when I was younger, three weeks felt like a lifetime. The two weeks following the Summer Ball were the longest two weeks of my life. Mum came home for two days, where she took baths and talked on the phone and made us one meal—a casserole—then she left again, and I was alone. I’d told her about Robert Morgan, but I don’t think she really believed me anyway. She batted it away, the way she would when I fell over and grazed my knee.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, Emmeline, there are far more worse off than you.”
Two weeks now, though, pass like a gust of wind. That’s how long it’s been since Louise passed away, in her bed, watching the moon. The funeral was last week, and wasn’t like normal funerals, with shiny coffins and drawling eulogies. It was a woodland burial; quiet, understated, simple. Like her.
Eliot and I went together. We were the only attendees, and that was by Louise’s request, although later that day we had a visit from the next-door neighbors, Harry and Eve, with a printout of a charity donation in her name, and three tiger tomato plants Louise had loved. It was a small and beautiful affair among huge, old trees and wildflowers the color of coral. Louise had planned it herself, just days after she was diagnosed with stage four cancer two years ago. She refused treatment because it would never cure her and she was petrified of hospitals. We only know that because Harry and Eve told us.
“Martha spent a lot of time in hospital. Died there,” they told us. “And I think because of that, she wanted to be at home, with her things. I get that, I think,” and Eliot and I had nodded in the doorway and said we
did too.
The sound of the harsh ring of the doorbell interrupts me, mid-seal of a box of Louise’s paperweights. When I get to the front door, it takes me a couple of seconds to realize it’s Lucas’s gray eyes peering over the brown paper bag in his arms.
“Whoppers for two?” he says, eyebrows raising behind his sunglasses.
“Oh my God.” I throw my arms around him, the paper bag rustling between us. “What are you doing here?” My blood rushes with warmth at the sight of him; my best friend.
“You’re squashing our Whoppers, love,” he laughs into my ear. And then, “And you, obviously. You’re what I’m doing here. How are you, Em?”
Ten minutes later, Lucas and I are sitting on Louise’s floral sofa, burgers on our laps on square wrappers. “Fuck, I love a good Burger King,” says Lucas.
“Do you really, though?” I laugh.
“What?” asks Lucas, mouth full.
“Just a surprising comment coming from the man who made a mushroom look like a burger bun last week and posted it on Instagram with the hashtag can’t tell the difference.”
Lucas puts a fist to his mouth and laughs.
“A comment like that should get you hanged,” I say. “It would if I were queen.”
“If you were queen, you’d imprison poor Bon Jovi and force him to sing and caress you inappropriately.”
“Correct. And it’s—”
“Jon, yeah, yeah, eat your bloody burger, you.”
Lucas and I eat in silence. I’ve been distant with him, I know, since the night we lost Louise. And not just because death has a way of throwing a dark blanket over everything—all the normal things you usually do, or pay a lot of mind to; all the trivial things, like what to make for dinner, and that slightly bitchy thing someone said about you at work. But because of the conversation Eliot and I had the night of the shooting star. About the night of our nineteenth. About Stacey. About Lucas. It set me off-balance, a little, and I’ve drawn back just slightly, because I wonder something I haven’t wondered ever before in our friendship. If Lucas knows something I don’t. “It’s a beautiful house,” he says. “Rickety, needs work. Updating. But it’s beautiful.”
I nod. “Victorian,” I say. “I know that much.”
Lucas smiles. “It may still have original tiles under here.” He taps a foot on the carpet. “Or at best, floorboards.”
“It’ll make a nice family home,” I say. “For whoever buys it.”
“And what’s happening with all that?”
“Solicitor is coming next week,” I tell him. “Then I suppose it’ll go on the market and—”
“And where will you go?”
I look at him, raise my shoulders. “I’ll find somewhere else. Get another room somewhere, maybe even a flat on my own, but that’s all down to money.”
“Well, have you applied for any more jobs?”
It makes me wince. I know he has my best interests at heart—so pragmatic, sometimes, in the pursuit of what he wants—but I haven’t thought much more about a new job in the last few weeks. I was concentrating on caring for Louise before she left us. Now I’m concentrating on missing her, of living in her home without her in it. On grieving her.
“No,” I say. “I’ve been busy, obviously. Sorting Louise’s house and going through her things is all I’ve really been thinking about.”
“No, of course,” says Lucas quickly. Then he puts down his burger, looks at me. “Em, I only mention the job stuff because I know deep down you want something else. I don’t say it because I think anything is below you, or I’m measuring you against something. I say it because I want to help.”
I swallow the food in my mouth, look up at him. “I know,” I say.
“You studied, you worked hard and—”
“Luke, I know. And I’ll get there. In my own time.”
We eat, the TV on but the volume low, neither of us speaking. Until Lucas finishes his burger and screws up the wrapper. He wipes his hands on a napkin and looks around the room, then at me. “I know I should have come sooner, Em. I wanted to. But work. They’re dicks. You have to give at least a fortnight’s notice before you book off holiday, but I sorted it as soon as I could. I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“I haven’t been,” I say. “And you’re here now.”
“I am.” Lucas smiles. “Yours until at least tomorrow night. Now. We need tea. Then it’s up to you to put these muscles to work. Packing, lifting?” He flexes, kisses his bicep. “I’m your man.”
I laugh. “You’re a knob.”
Lucas swoops off to the kitchen, taking the bag of rubbish with him from my hands. I hear him opening and shutting cupboards, trying to find mugs, and he starts singing to himself badly. I pass him on my way to the toilet and find him with my red polka-dot apron on. “You still have this,” he laughs. “You used to wear this when manning the old lady fryer. It’s like seeing an old friend.” I am on the landing when I hear the doorbell sound. Before I can get there, Lucas is already scooting down the hallway, into the porch, and opening the front door.
“Oh,” he says, teaspoon in hand. “Hey, dude. Nice surprise.”
“Oh. Hiya, mate.”
I rush to Lucas’s side. Eliot stands there, tall, the breeze bristling his hair, rucksack over one shoulder, and square, paper-handled bag in his hand at his side.
“Nice… pinny.” Eliot smiles at Lucas. “Hey, Em.”
“Hey you.” I smile, and I can already feel my skin heating at the sight of him.
“I carry anything off, you know that, big bro.” Lucas looks down at the apron and brushes it with a hand. He puts his arm around me. “Fancy tea, El?” he says. “I just put the kettle on.”
“Uh, actually, you two carry on.”
“Don’t be daft,” I jump in. “You’re not interrupting anything important, we’re just—”
“Hanging out in pretty pinnies, eating burgers on the sofa, plotting hangings and Bon Jovi imprisonment—”
Lucas and I laugh at the same time, and Eliot smirks. “I’m intrigued, I can’t lie,” he says. “But actually, I was just passing by to give you these.” He swings his bag off his shoulder, reaches into it, pulls out a fan of papers. “These are for Rosie. Drawings of the screen thing she wants, for the event next weekend.”
“The blog-ference,” I say.
And he smiles gently at me. “I mean, I’ve done some jobs, but this’ll be my first ever blog-ference.”
“She’ll probably have you dressed up à la Diet Coke Break.”
Eliot laughs. “Yeah, she has a thing for the tool belt, doesn’t she?” he says. “I told her I’d bring it but I am not taking my shirt off for less than fifty quid.”
“Bit steep,” I say, and Eliot raises his eyebrows. “What do you want, then, Emmie? Mates’ rates?”
Lucas straightens next to me. “Right, well, I’ll erm, go make the tea, shall I?”
“Little bro,” Eliot says, reaching forward, and Lucas takes his hand; they do that rough, squeezing thing men do, when it looks like they’re declaring a thumb war. “Should catch you at Mum’s, at the weekend.”
“Cool,” says Lucas, and he walks off into the house.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
Eliot smiles gently. “I’m sure,” he says. “Plus, I’ve got a transatlantic phone call to take. So, no time for tea.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Is this what happens when carpenters get headhunted for blog-ferences? Transatlantic gigs, no time for your brother, or for boring old Emmie Blue?”
“Cabinetmaker, thanks,” he says with a smirk. “And I’ll explain what it’s about. When I see you. I’ll know more by then.”
“You can tell me Saturday,” I say.
“Pick you up at eight?”
“Perfect,” I say. “Don’t forget your tool belt.”
Eliot gives a wink. “Wouldn’t dare.”
I find Lucas in the kitchen, squeezing tea bags against the sides of two mugs, sti
ll dressed in my red apron.
“So,” I say. “Tea.”
Lucas looks to his side at me, eyebrows raised.
“What?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
“No, come on, what?”
He shakes his head, hesitates. “Do you want mates’ rates?”
I laugh. Lucas doesn’t. He just looks at me, stirring now, waiting for an answer.
“You do, don’t you?”
I hesitate.
“Well, if you don’t you better tell him that, then,” says Lucas. “Poor dude’s got it bad.”
Lucas reaches across, touches a finger to the tip of my nose, smiles, and picks up his tea. It’s later that I realized the bag Eliot was carrying at his side was a bag from Askew’s. The bakery on the seafront he bought us lunch from twice last week. Eliot had planned to stay. Until he saw Lucas here.
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Em, I need you.
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Please please pick up.
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
I need to talk to you.
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
It’s fucked. Everything is fucked.
* * *
I pack quickly, throwing two outfits and a pair of pajamas into an overnight bag. He’d sounded exhausted, drained, when he’d called last night. A child-like wobble in his voice, all sighs and disjointed sentences.
“I… I don’t know what’s going on, Em. We had this huge fight and I don’t know what’s going on—what… what am I going to do? I don’t know if it’s even happening. She—she’s with her parents and I’m—God, I’m going fucking nuts here.”
“I’ll come,” I said. “First thing.”
And I meant to pack last night, too, but exhausted from a day of organizing barely a fifth of Fishers Way, I fell asleep on top of the sheets, in my clothes.
