Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  Damian caught me. ‘Why do you keep looking up there? Lost your cat, have you?’

  ‘No, it’s my dog,’ I told him and Zoe shot me an angry glance. ‘He went up the tree and now he won’t come down.’

  ‘That little maniac what attacked me? I’d let him rot,’ said Damian.

  ‘Dame,’ said Louis. He looked up into the tree where the torch shone. ‘What’s in his mouth?’ I said nothing.

  ‘I ain’t risking my neck for that one. Go on, Loser, you go up and grab him.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah. Do it for your girlfriend.’ Damian looked at me.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Louis scoffed.

  ‘Go on,’ said Damian, pointing up at Pee Wee. ‘You can jump up to that one, hook your leg over and you’ll be away. Sweet.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’ They were arguing just like me and Zoe had done earlier.

  ‘All right, I’ll go then,’ said Damian, preparing to take a running jump at the trunk.

  ‘No, wait!’ said Louis, pulling him back. ‘I’ll go.’ He jumped up and hung on to the branch.

  ‘Ha ha, knew you couldn’t resist. Anything to impress her.’

  Louis jumped down. ‘Leave it, Dame. Not now.’ He brushed his hands off.

  ‘No, I think it’s about time. Camille, this loser’s got a raging chub on for you but he ain’t got the balls to say it. Right, there, I said it. Now you can jump her bones, can’t you? No more fannying around.’

  ‘Damian, for f . . .’

  ‘Tell her where her scrunchie is, Lou.’

  ‘Shut it, Damian!’ said Louis, squaring up to him. ‘Just shut your hole, right now!’ It looked like a lion cub trying to stand up to the head of the pride.

  ‘What’s a chub on?’ I said. ‘And what about my scrunchie? Have you seen it?’

  Zoe headed towards me and hooked her arm through mine. ‘We have to get out of here.’ We turned together and began to walk away.

  ‘Why?’ I whispered.

  ‘Because that dog is going to drop that hand any second and the moment it does, Laurel and Hardy are going to want answers.’

  I stopped. ‘But I want to know where my scrunchie is,’ I said, looking back at them. It was all I could think about.

  ‘Damian, please don’t, please, let me do it . . .’

  ‘He loves you to death,’ Damian shouted at me.

  ‘You bastard!’ Louis launched at Damian with such power, he knocked him clean off his feet. I grabbed the torch from Zoe and shone it at them as they rolled around on the ground, trying to get a grip on each other and flinging insults back and forward. I looked at Zoe for an answer to how to stop them, but she was halfway across the field, walking back in the direction we had come.

  Damian’s forearms were up, covering Louis’ blows. ‘Just tell her for God’s sake! Stop being such a pussy!’

  Damian had him pinned to the ground by this time, and Louis was glaring up at him with a face full of hate. It was the same look I gave salad.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ I said, marching over to the fighting boys. ‘What are you doing? Get up, get up now!’

  Damian got to his feet. He held a hand out for Louis to help him up, but Louis smacked it away and got up without it. ‘Here,’ he said and held something out to show me. ‘Here’s your scrunchie.’

  I took it and looked at Louis. He looked like he was going to say something, but he turned away. I looked down at my cherry scrunchie. At least, it looked like my cherry scrunchie. I picked it up and sniffed it. It smelled of boy sweat.

  ‘He picked it up after you ran off on freshers’ night,’ said Damian, panting. ‘He wears it on his wrist and smells it. Now it’s all out in the open, Loser, and you ain’t gotta pussyfoot around her anymore, ’ave you?’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Why did he have it?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Damian cried. ‘He’s head over heels for you, you dozy cow. Only he’s too scared to do anything about it. That day on the pier, when he smashed your face on the door, that was because he had that thing on his wrist and he didn’t want you to see. That’s why you ended up clanging your schnoz.’

  ‘Huh?’ My brain was a train on its way to a station everyone else in the world had arrived at. I just didn’t understand anything anymore. Why would Louis Burnett have my scrunchie? I couldn’t work out what the game was. If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny at all. You don’t mess with a girl’s scrunchie.

  ‘I mean, personally I can’t see the appeal,’ Damian sniffed. ‘Seen bigger tits on an ironing board. But you try telling his dick that. I can’t get him out the bathroom some days.’ I shone the torch at him. There was a bit of blood inside his nose. He wiped it away. ‘But he saw you on open day and remembered you from kindergarten or something and that was his thunderbolt moment. He was all geared up to tell you at freshers’ but the snakebite bit him on the arse.’

  Louis walked away, hands up over his head like he was trying to crush his own skull. Louis loved me?

  I still couldn’t make sense of it all. I wanted to cry. I remembered the open day, but I didn’t remember Louis. Or did I? I remembered seeing Damian, lying across some chairs by the wall in the gym, his top buttons undone, chatting to three girls in maxi dresses about freshers’. Someone else had been there. He’d held one of the double doors open for me. Had it been Louis? He hadn’t said anything. I’d noticed everything about Damian: his t-shirt saying ‘Porn Olympics 1969’, his blue jeans with the chain on the pocket, his brand-new Nikes with the silver tick up the side. He’d been peeling an orange in one long strip. I hadn’t noticed Louis at all.

  ‘Dozy as arseholes, the pair of ya. Tell you what, you deserve each other,’ said Damian, striding out of the hollow and ducking under the branches of the tree. ‘I’ll leave you two to it. I’m gonna have another crack at Professor Pinch Pussy.’

  Louis was sitting against Pee Wee’s tree, his arms on his knees and his head resting on them. I looked up into the branches to see if Pee Wee was still there. But there was no sign. I walked over to Louis and knelt down on the ground beside him.

  He didn’t look at me. He just said, ‘I’m sorry,’ like he always did. All he ever said to me was sorry. Sorry about banging the door in my face. Sorry about startling me that night in the graveyard. Sorry about . . . this. And that was the moment I realised that every time he said ‘sorry’, what he was really saying was ‘I love you.’

  I didn’t realise I was shaking until I saw the torchlight flickering on the ground. I held it steady with both hands. ‘This isn’t a joke, is it? I mean, I don’t think it’s a joke but you have tricked me before . . .’

  I didn’t mean for him to answer. I was just saying it to reassure myself, but he shouted, ‘I never tricked you before! That was an accident on the pier. I never meant to smash your face in!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me,’ I said. ‘I was just checking.’

  ‘I can’t do it, okay? I can’t say it. It’ll come out wrong,’ he said.

  ‘What will?’ I said, sitting down next to him on the ground.

  ‘The stuff in my head,’ he replied. ‘The stuff I want to say . . . about you . . . You never should have found out from Damian.’

  I couldn’t catch my breath. Was I excited? Was I scared? I didn’t know. I just wanted him to tell me what was going on. ‘Tell me. I won’t laugh or anything.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s so stupid.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘Yeah, this,’ he said. ‘Spending all your time knowing that the best thing that could ever happen to you probably won’t because you haven’t got the balls to grab it. You wake up and there’s a pain because they’re not there. Then there’s a pain when they are there. You drink to give you the courage to say it, but you never say it cos it’s too hard. You don’t offer them your coat when they’re cold. You see them upset but you don’t hug them. You don’t stop them making a fool of themselves. Because
then they might find out. And you don’t want that because if they didn’t feel the same way . . . it would just be the worst.’

  ‘Am I they? Are you talking about me?’

  ‘YES. Who do you think I’m talking about?’

  ‘There’s no need to snap.’

  ‘There’s every need to snap at you, because you . . . you . . . oh, forget it. Just go, all right.’ He stood up.

  ‘No.’ I stood up too. ‘You don’t own the woods. I can stand here if I want.’

  He crossed his arms. This was too weird. I laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he whispered.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I really didn’t know, I wasn’t just saying that. ‘I don’t quite believe that someone’s fallen in love with me. No one’s ever done that before. I mean, I do it all the time and boys never do it back. It’s a bit scary.’

  He nodded like he completely understood. ‘It’s not like a thunderbolt. I tried to explain it to Damian but he didn’t really take it in. It’s more like a spark. A spark on a bomb. It fizzes and crackles and just keeps getting nearer and nearer until, one day, you’re in full-blown you-know-what. And you didn’t even see it coming. And then there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  My heart was going berserk. ‘So you actually like . . . love me?’ He nodded.

  I frowned. ‘Like Splodge loves Poppy love me?’ He nodded again. ‘Like Jack loves Rose? Like Peeta loves Katniss? Like Edward loves Bella?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t get the hint.’

  In the past, boys had only ever said this kind of thing to me before they pushed me off something or into something, or before just telling me they were joking. But Louis wasn’t joking. ‘But why me out of all the girls at college?’

  He shrugged. ‘When I saw you on open day, you were wearing your lemon bridesmaid dress thing and leggings, same as the night on the pier when I . . . smashed your face in. These girls laughed at you when they saw you but you didn’t take any notice. I just thought you looked . . . kind of . . . like me. It reminded me of before, at St Raph’s, when you found me in the toilets and gave me the peppermint. And I thought you were beautiful and stuff then too. I just couldn’t tell you cos every time I saw you, I froze. I thought it had gone away when I saw you on open day, but it hadn’t at all. I still felt the same. But you were all about Damian.’

  ‘I’m not all about Damian,’ I scoffed.

  ‘You really like him. It’s okay, I get it. Everyone likes him. I know my place in the pecking order. After Damian, before Splodge. Maybe.’

  ‘You really think I’m beautiful?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  And in a heartbeat Louis Burnett became the most attractive guy I had ever seen, heard or read about. He was every hero in my romance novels, every leading man in every rom-com I’d watched, every hot boy who’d blanked me in the corridors at school, every soap actor or rock star who I’d stuck posters of on my wardrobe. But none of them were really anything like him, because none of them had ever liked me back or told me I was beautiful, and at that moment nothing could have meant more in the world. My chest felt like it was going to burst.

  I got the biggest urge to touch him. So I did. I dropped the torch and lifted my hand to touch his cheek. My hand was freezing. His cheek was boiling. I’d known it would be.

  ‘I knew you’d be blushing.’ I put my hand down again.

  He laughed. ‘Worst ever. I’m glad it’s dark.’

  I finally understood it. It had taken me so long, but I got it now. That feeling. Full-blown you-know-what. That volcano kind of feeling when you think you’re going to explode if you don’t kiss someone. Like when Rose runs down below deck to save Jack and break his handcuffs with an axe, even though the boat’s going down and they’re going to die for sures. That’s how I felt about Louis right at that moment. Like I’d wade through icy water for him and cut him free with an axe. If I ever had to.

  ‘Did you really sniff my scrunchie?’ I said, smiling. I hadn’t told my face to smile, it just did it. ‘Was it so you could pretend you were smelling my hair?’

  He nodded. ‘I was going to give it back but . . .’ He shook his head again and took a really deep breath. ‘I didn’t want to.’

  I sniffed the scrunchie again. ‘You haven’t . . . done anything to it, have you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just liked to smell it, you know. It didn’t smell of funeral parlours and disinfectant. It smelled of a faraway place. It made me happy. I liked it.’

  ‘Okay, you’re starting to sound a bit stalky now.’

  ‘Oh God, sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ I smiled. ‘Makes me feel wanted. You are weird though.’

  ‘So are you,’ he said. I shone the torch into his face and he shied away from it. ‘You still wear your bridesmaid dress.’

  ‘So? You wear a kilt!’

  ‘You steal from hospitals!’ he came back.

  ‘You work with dead people!’ I came back.

  He smiled. ‘You’re friends with a psychopath.’

  I smiled. ‘You’re friends with a twat.’

  I laughed. He laughed. It was a dead strange feeling. Still scary. Like something really bad or really good was about to happen. I reached out my hand towards him again, and put my fingertips over his heart. It was going bananacakes.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m seeing if your heart’s beating as fast as mine. Then I’ll know, for sure.’

  He waited while I shone the torch over his face. I looked at his lips. I imagined how they would feel on mine. ‘Do you believe it now?’ he said.

  I nodded. His heart was a heavyweight champion. His hand was on my cheek.

  ‘I’m trying to believe it too,’ he said. Slowly I felt him getting closer and closer and closer to my face. It was just his breath against my mouth for the longest time, and in my ears were whooshing noises. I couldn’t believe what was happening. His lips touched mine and we pressed our heads together and we kissed, slowly at first, until our lips moved and our mouths were opening and closing around each other’s. And though my nose still hurt a little bit as it smushed against Louis’, it was the most fantastic moment of my whole life ever. Because his lips weren’t a poster or my pillow. They were real live boy lips. I shuffled closer to him so we were completely touching, and he wrapped his arms around me. It felt like we were melded together forever and nothing could come between us, like my Barbie and Ken when I left them by the fire. His hands were on my head. My hands were on his back. His damp hair smelled of grass and boy shampoo. Our tummies touched. I felt a surge I had never felt before, running right the way through me from my mouth to my feet. It was electrical. I didn’t ever want to stop kissing him, ever ever ever.

  But I had to cos something heavy dropped down from the tree and smacked him hard right on his head.

  ‘Ahhhhhhhhh!’ Fllllllll-uhhhmmmp.

  ‘Louis?’

  Louis had totally and automatically passed out flat on his back.

  And the hand had landed.

  Shizz

  Pee Wee had appeared around the same time as the hand, looking at me like a rotten hand wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  ‘Bad, bad Pee Wee!’ I whispered sternly at him. He panted, smiling at me like he’d done something brilliant.

  I picked up the torch and shone it over Louis’ still body. ‘Louis?’ I said quietly, nudging him in the ribs. I bent over him and put my ear to his warm, t-shirted chest and listened to his heart. There were beats, thank goodness. He was okay.

  ‘Louis, please wake up,’ I said, shaking him by his shoulders. Pee Wee trotted over and started licking his hand. No, not his hand. The hand.

  I heard a groan in Louis’ neck. He was coming round.

  ‘Oh Louis, thank goodness,’ I cried and stroked his hair away from his eyes.

  He levered himself up. ‘Camille? What the hell was . . . what is that?’ He was looking directly at the h
and Pee Wee was licking.

  I didn’t think. There were no more excuses now. This wasn’t a science experiment with a dead sheep anymore. This wasn’t any old drama prop that I could just explain away. Louis knew a dead hand when he saw one. And he had seen one. I grabbed it, scrambled up out of the hollow and started running back towards college as fast as I could before Louis had even got to his feet. I had to get back to the lab, double fast. I sprinted back across the rugby pitches with that naughty Pee Wee yapping at my heels all the way like it was all a big funny game.

  At the back of the Science block I flung open the door and we raced down the echoey corridor all the way to the end where the lab was. It was dark inside the college but the closer I got, the better I could see the lab door. Someone was standing outside it. Damian. I slowed, hiding the hand behind my back, dangling by its middle finger like a stinky designer handbag.

  Pee Wee pounced on Damian the second he saw him but this time, Damian was having none of it. He picked him up by the collar and flung him straight into one of the metal lockers opposite the lab, slamming it shut.

  ‘Hey!’ I puffed. ‘That’s mean! Let him out, now!’

  ‘What’s she doing in there?’ he demanded, pointing at the lab door. ‘She’s locked it. She’s got someone in there.’

  ‘Who?’ I panted as Pee Wee barked and banged inside the metal locker.

  Raaaaawwwwwrrrrrffff raaawwwffff raaaaawwwff!

  ‘Zoe,’ he shouted over the racket. ‘She’s got someone in there. A bloke. I saw his feet through the window before she pulled down the blind. What’s she up to?’

  I shrugged, still panting for air. ‘I don’t know. It might be perfectly innocent.’

  ‘Pull the other one. You and her are thick as thieves. That’s why she doesn’t want to go out with me, isn’t it? Cos of this bloke she’s got Fritzled up in there.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Come on, out with it.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  Raaaaawwwwwrrrrrffff raaawwwffff raaaaawwwff!