Fallen Angel

by Melody John

  ‘Don’t we just need, like, a toothbrush and a quilt?’ I asked.

  ‘Hairbrush?’ Dmitri suggested. ‘Hand sanitizer?’

  We all looked at him.

  ‘What, hand sanitizer isn’t cool enough for you?’ he demanded.

  We shook our heads.

  He sniffed. ‘Well, you’ll be sorry when you all come down with food poisoning. And I shall point and laugh.’

  I went to my room to decide what to bring. I gathered together my concealer and powder and eyeliner pencils. My navy blue eyeliner was almost too short to sharpen properly anymore. I would have to get a new one. Thinking back, I realised that I’d bought that pencil when I was in college. And now it was almost finished.

  I looked at my face in the mirror on my desk. I touched my hair, remember how obsessed I’d been with hair extensions a couple of years ago, the blue and green streaks that I’d worn almost every day when I was in college. My hair was a little longer now; I had light blonde and dark gold highlights in my natural light brown hair, and it was still a little wavy from when Laura had crimped it the other day.

  God, I felt old.

  No, not old. Older.

  Sometimes college had felt like a blur of do this, it’ll look good on your university application, have you done another draft of your personal statement yet, here you should look at this university prospectus and think about your future. Now here I was actually at university. I’d finished the first term. I’d made friends. I’d settled in.

  I spun around in my chair and looked around at my room. The Back To The Future poster next to the Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose print, my Funko figures on the windowsill, the postcards Mum and Dad had sent me from their sudden autumn holiday to Morocco, the little dolphin figurine that I’d got on a day out in town with Laura and David and Dmitri.

  How bare and unfriendly this room had seemed when I’d first moved in. Gradually, by degrees, it had warmed and changed, and now it was truly mine. My room. And I was about to go on a road trip with my friends, to celebrate having finished our first term of university.

  I spun back around in the chair, and smiled at my reflection.

  ‘Lizzie?’ Laura called.

  ‘Yeah?’

  She opened the door. She held up a tangle of clothes and hangers. ‘Which one should I take?’

  ‘Dude, why are you taking extra clothes? We’re only staying a night.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Ew. Aren’t you taking anything?’

  ‘Well, a clean shirt and undies and stuff, but not a whole wardrobe change.’

  She untangled the choices, which turned out to be four different dresses. ‘See,’ she said, ‘the blue spotty one is nice, but I can only wear it with a cropped jumper, which isn’t very warm, so I’ll probably be cold. The black one is nice, and I love it, but my mum calls it my Wednesday Addams dress, and you know, I love Wednesday Addams, but she’s not really the impression I’m going for here. The green tartan one is nice, but so is the blue one.’

  I tilted my head at her. ‘What kind of impression are you looking for?’

  ‘Huh?’

  I folded my arms, grinning. ‘Are you into Kerouac?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ted. Wannabe Kerouac, with his weed and his van. Are you into him?’

  ‘No!’ Laura sounded genuinely scandalised. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

  ‘Well…’ I gestured towards the dresses. ‘This just seems like a lot of effort to go to for an overnight beach trip.’

  She stared at me. ‘Oh.’ She gathered them together again.

  I felt confused; I didn’t know what I’d said wrong. ‘Laura?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, without looking at me. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Laura, no, I don’t understand—’

  ‘No, sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m just making a fuss. Sorry.’ She scrunched the dresses heedlessly up in her arms, then shut the door behind her.

  I sat there, completely perplexed at what I’d said wrong.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A rather unpleasant surprise turned up in Ted’s van.

  ‘Hey guys,’ Jamie said as we climbed in. He winked at me, and grinned at Laura. ‘And hellooooo.’

  Laura ignored him and sat in the backseat, away from him, and away from me. I wanted to sit next to her and find out what the matter was, but I couldn’t in front of everyone, and especially not in front of Jamie. David got in the back with her, and Dmitri and I sat in the middle seats. Jamie was in the front next to Ted. The luggage was in the boot, but some of the quilts and sleeping bags oozed onto our seats.

  I had my pillow, and I rested it against the window.

  ‘Okay?’ Ted called back.

  ‘Okay,’ Dmitri said.

  Ted craned around in his seat and stared at us. ‘Excuse me? We’re about to take a road trip to celebrate our education, a daring expedition to shout aloud our independence and freedom to the skies, a wild journey, a quest of self-discovery—and all I get is an okay?’

  ‘Yay,’ I said. ‘Wowsers. Such amazeballs. Very excite.’

  David laughed, and shouted, ‘Whoohoo!’

  ‘That’s better,’ Ted said. He turned back to the wheel, and said in a pirate’s voice, ‘Are ya ready, kids?’

  ‘Aye aye, captain,’ I responded automatically.

  ‘I can’t heeeeeaaar you!’

  I hoped that Laura would join in, but she was quiet. David and Dmitri yelled back instead, ‘Aye aye, captain!’

  ‘Ohhhhh…’ Ted yodelled. He turned the key, and the van started to life. We pulled away from the campus with him singing the rest of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song at the top of his voice.

  I’d been worried that Ted would be the pretentious asshat that Laura had made him out to be, and was rather surprised at how down-to-earth he seemed. Then that made me feel guilty for liking him when it seemed that Laura didn’t, and then I felt even more guilty for catching myself enjoying the journey when Laura was still sitting quietly in the back seat.

  I wanted to turn around and talk to her, but I couldn’t. I even thought about texting her, but that would be weird, wouldn’t it? And you couldn’t really be very expressive in a text; I needed to talk to her in person, face-to-face. But I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. All I’d done was comment on her dresses, hadn’t I? I scrambled back through my memory, trying to figure out if I’d said or done anything wrong. I didn’t think I had—but evidently Laura didn’t think so.

  A sad feeling of guilt mingled with unease tightened its sickly grip on my throat. I didn’t want to lose Laura’s friendship. She was a really good friend, and we’d been talking about taking a day trip so we could meet Kim. She and Kim would get on really well, I thought, and I wanted them to meet, because then it would be beautifully symmetrical if my two best friends were also best friends with each other. But maybe that wasn’t going to happen now. Maybe this was it for Laura and me. A temporary friendship, strong for a term, and then fizzling out and away into nothingness. After all, university was where you were supposed to make friends for life—but it was also the place where you were meant to hook up and break up like promiscuous mayflies. Maybe that was me and Laura. Mayflies.

  No, I thought angrily, and tried to squash down my sadness. Laura wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t just drop me without a reason. Once we got to the beach, I’d make the opportunity to speak to her. I’d apologise for whatever it was that I’d done, and all would be well.

  If she accepted my apology, that is.

  Goddammit.

  Ted had moved away from Spongebob, and was now quoting poetry. ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where auf the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man…’

  I could kind of see now why Laura found him a bit much. I drew out my iPod and screwed in my earphones. I scrolled through until I found a track by The Decemberists that went on for about twelve minutes, and I snuggled
up against my pillow and closed my eyes.

  *

  The van rolled onwards. We moved away, out from the city, and onto the motorway. The houses grew fewer, and eventually it was just bare fields on either side. There were a few very tall and spindly skeleton trees on the verge, which David said were poplars. Their tops waved and bent in the wind, their skinny branches tracing thin black zigzags against the sky. It was already starting to get dark, and the sky was heavy, grey and overcast.

  ‘Great beach weather,’ David observed as a few drops of rain lashed against the van’s windows.

  ‘Well, at least no one else will be there,’ Dmitri said.

  ‘Just us,’ Jamie said. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could tell that he was pulling that irritating smirk.

  I wanted to look over my shoulder to see how Laura was, but didn’t dare. I closed my eyes again against the grey, wintery landscape outside, and let my music take me away.

  We drove on. After an hour or so, Ted pulled the van up to a McDonald’s. I thought we might stop and sit inside, and then I might be able to talk to Laura, but—

  ‘Drive-through!’ Ted announced cheerfully. ‘Who’s having what?’

  I decided to get a burger to make myself feel better, even though I knew I’d probably regret it in a week’s time. As the others ordered, I gathered my courage and turned around to Laura. ‘Aren’t you getting anything?’

  ‘Why?’ she asked coldly. ‘Are you worried that I’m starving myself?’

  I felt as though she’d slapped me across the face. ‘No, I—’ Horribly, I felt tears threatening to spill over. ‘I just—sorry.’

  For a moment, I thought Laura looked stricken, but I turned around before I burst into tears and started sobbing in earnest. Behind me, I heard David murmur, ‘Laura, are you all right? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she muttered.

  Ted passed back the bags, and I received mine, and bit down determinedly on my chips. They tasted odd, but I didn’t know if that was because they were a bad batch of potatoes, or if it was because my throat felt dry and tight.

  Dmitri touched my arm. I started away out of habit, then mumbled, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you and Laura?’ he asked quietly.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know, all right?’ I shoved my earphones back into my ears and turned away, but not before a tear had escaped and rolled down my face.

  God, what had I done to mess this up so badly? This had been meant to be a fun experience, a road trip like in the films, lots of laughing and talking and loud music and bad jokes and movie references. Not this tight ugly silence that was like being at home when you’d pissed off your parents and no one was going to apologise. And now it wasn’t just about me and Laura; now David and Dmitri were pulled into it. Ted and Jamie were obliviously babbling on together in the front seats.

  I couldn’t think what I’d done, but I’d messed all of this up. It was all spoiled now because I was too clueless and insensitive to realise when I’d upset one of my closest friends.

  Another tear fell into my chips, and I angrily scrubbed it away with a greasy hand. I didn’t feel like eating anything anymore. I folded up my chips and burger, and shoved them back into the paper bag, and then folded myself up against the window and closed my eyes. My eyeliner had probably run all down my face, and everyone would be able to tell that I’d been crying. Jamie would make some snide remark, and he would remember me as the girl who’d randomly started crying in the middle of the road trip, and would afterwards never shut up about it.

  I curled up around my misery, and wished I were anywhere but here.

  *

  ‘We’re here!’ Ted sang out.

  I started awake all at once, feeling disorientated. There was a crick in my neck, and my mouth felt dry.

  It was dark outside, but I could see that we were parked by the side of a road. On the left was a row of houses, and then a stretch of dark space that looked like it might be a park. On the right-hand side were railings, tarnished silver in the orange light of the street lamps, and beyond them was a thin border of ragged bushes. Beyond the bushes, the ground dropped away, and I could see a dark, glittering ribbon reaching up to the horizon. The sea.

  ‘Great,’ Dmitri said. ‘We’re here. Now what? It’s dark.’

  ‘So?’ David said, unbuckling his seat belt. ‘Where’s your sense of adventure? Come on, let’s go down to the beach. Laura, come on.’ He stood up, and reached over the seats to pat me on the shoulder. I looked around at him, and saw him smiling at me. ‘Come on, Lizzie,’ he said, and his voice was gentle. He knew that something was wrong between Laura and me, but he didn’t know what, so he would just fall back on his default behaviour and be nice to both of us until we sorted it out.

  At that moment, my feelings for him rose up in a great wave until I thought they would choke me. I blinked hard, and nodded, trying to smile back.

  We disentangled ourselves from food wrappers, rubbish, earphones, pillows, and sleeping bags, and piled out of the van. The air was very cold, and the wind was bitter, wailing along the seafront and cutting into my clothes. I shivered, and zipped up my coat and pulled on my gloves.

  ‘Right,’ David said, bouncing up and down on his toes. ‘So, where are the steps?’

  Laura pointed mutely to a gap in the railings. She was wearing her long blue coat with the red ribbons on the wrists, and I thought miserably how well it suited her. I felt dull and frumpy in my big black duster.

  ‘I think I’ll stay in the van,’ Ted said. ‘Keep an eye on it, you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie said, looking rather unenthusiastically over the railings at the dark beach below. ‘We’re not going to be here for long, are we?’

  ‘This was the whole point of us coming here,’ Dmitri pointed out.

  Jamie shrugged. ‘Well, let’s go then.’

  We made our way along the railings to where the steps began. They looked very dark and uninviting, and if I’d been by myself, there was no way at all that I’d have gone down them.

  ‘Hey,’ David said, and touched my elbow lightly. ‘Careful. Make sure you don’t fall.’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Yeah. That would be a swift end to this glorious road trip.’

  ‘Too right it would be.’ He grinned encouragingly. He didn’t take my arm, because that would have felt way too patronising, but he stayed close by my side as we carefully picked our way down the stairs. They were a bit slimy, and smelled of old pee and something else that I supposed was seaweed. It wasn’t a pleasant combination.

  Laura was ahead of us, and Dmitri and Jamie brought up the rear. Finally the steps ended, and we came out onto a concrete promenade that stretched out to the left and right as far as I could see. And right in front of us, glittering and hushing back and forth in the darkness, was the sea.

  David laughed out loud, and hopped down off the promenade onto the sand. I followed. The sand was cold, and with each step, my boots sank down further and further, and a lot of sand ended up inside my shoes. David rushed on heedlessly towards the water, and as I followed him, the sand grew smoother and harder, until it was almost as stable as the concrete, and the waves were right in front of us.

  Dmitri had followed close behind us, and he caught up with David at the water’s edge. David looked around at him, grinning, and as Dmitri halted at the end of the waves, he grabbed his arm and dragged him out with him into the water. Dmitri yelped in surprise, and David laughed, and I couldn’t help it—I laughed as well.

  Dmitri stood ankle-deep in the dark water and flapped his hands in consternation. ‘Oh my god, it’s freezing!’

  ‘I know!’ David said in delight.

  ‘It’s freezing!’ Dmitri shouted.

  ‘I know!’

  Dmitri made a rush at David, and shoved him. Taken by surprise, David slipped in the surf, and fel
l. A wave crashed down over his shoulders, and he sputtered and coughed as Dmitri whooped over him.

  I began giggling, watching them both, and then I became aware that, beside me, Laura was also laughing. I wanted to look at her, to make eye contact and see if this shared laughter would fix things, but I didn’t, and it seemed suddenly so absurd that I could be laughing about one thing and still upset about another thing, and my giggles began to choke me, and then I just couldn’t stop.

  ‘You all right?’ David yelled, trying to get to his feet, then, ‘Ow!’ as Dmitri pushed him down again. He grabbed Dmitri’s wrist, and yanked him down with him, and Dmitri went under.