Haunt Me

by Liz Kessler

  I figure I haven’t got much to lose, so I decide to get the ball rolling.

  “You haven’t exactly done something wrong. Well, not to me, anyway,” I open hesitantly.

  “OK. Well, that’s a relief. I tell you, I’ve been racking my brain for the last twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong, either.”

  “I said, not to me.”

  Olly opens his arms wide, in a cheerful surrender. “OK. Fair enough. So who have I upset? Tell me, and I’ll apologize to them, too. I’ll do anything if it gets me back in your good graces.”

  I’m looking down into my lap, trying to figure out where to start. I have absolutely no idea.

  Luckily for me, the waitress turns up with our drinks and gives me a moment’s respite.

  “One double-dip chocolate, one pineapple and strawberry?” she asks.

  Olly points to me. “She’s the healthy one. Chocoholics Anonymous for me, please.”

  The waitress laughs, and a spike of anger shoots through me. Does he have to charm the pants off every female he speaks to?

  Olly takes a sip of his drink, closing his eyes as he draws through his straw. “Mmmm. Best shakes in the world,” he says.

  “Really?” I can’t help myself. “So you’ve had a milk shake in literally every ice-cream parlor in the world?”

  Olly shrugs. “Well. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever even had one outside of this town,” he admits. “But I bet no one makes them as well as Pam.”

  I can’t do the small-talk thing anymore. I suck on my drink while I pull my thoughts together. Then I let out a breath and say, “Olly, can I ask you about something? About someone?”

  “Shoot. Of course you can.”

  My hands are shaking. I grip my glass to try to stop them. I can feel my heart rate speeding up. I hate that feeling. Too many negative associations with it.

  I take three deep breaths, calming my breathing down till I can’t feel it pounding against my ears anymore. Then, in a voice that feels about as thin and as shaky as a reed, I say, “It’s about Joe.”

  That was the last thing I expected her to say.

  I mean, she’s only just moved here. She wasn’t even here before . . . before he . . .

  I can’t even say the word now. Can’t even think it.

  She wasn’t here. She didn’t know him.

  That’s why she’s such a breath of fresh air to me, or at least partly why. Being with her has no associations for me. She is fresh pastures.

  But something hits me harder than that. And this one makes the breath catch in my throat so harshly, I have to reach for my drink to smooth it down. Swallowing the foamy drink that suddenly seems to have lost all its flavor, I try to figure it out.

  But I can’t. I have no option but to ask her.

  I can feel my voice shaking as I struggle to find the words. Come on, Olly. Just ask.

  “I’ve just realized something,” I say, looking right into her eyes. That way, I figure I’ll be able to tell if she’s lying when she answers me.

  “Go on,” she says softly. I know that voice. It’s the one that the therapist used with me afterward to show me she was on my side, make me open up to her, share my feelings. Not that it worked.

  “You only moved here in the summer, right?”

  “Yes. Why? What’s that got to do with — ?”

  “The first time we met. First time I ever saw you, in the school yard — you said his name.”

  I can see it in her eyes, just before I say it. I’ve caught her out. What the hell is her game?

  I hold her eyes while I gather the words together, phrasing them in my head. Ignoring the pounding in my ears, the anxiety that envelops me at the thought of saying his name out loud, I lean forward, and in a low voice that comes out much more raspy and urgent than I intended it to, I ask her, “If you only moved here in the summer, how the hell did you know Joe?”

  He’s waiting for me to reply. I look away while I figure out what to say. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. As though I’ve got something to hide. As though I’m the one who’s done something wrong, not him.

  I can’t help kicking myself. If I’d thought ahead, I would probably have been able to come up with something.

  Here’s an answer I prepared earlier.

  But I didn’t, and I haven’t. And if I think about it, I’m not entirely innocent here, either. I’ve lied to Olly from the start. The fact that he’s done something even worse doesn’t make my actions OK.

  To buy myself a few moments to think, I say something that definitely isn’t a lie.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Olly sits back in his seat. “Try me.”

  “OK,” I say, with absolutely zero intention of actually doing that. And then, almost without even thinking about it or planning what I’m going to say, the words start to come.

  “We met online.”

  Olly raises a Really? eyebrow, and his doubt annoys me so much that it fuels me to continue. “We met on a website, a forum, for . . .”

  I gulp down my nerves. Is it safe to get this near to the truth? Safer than the actual truth, I guess, so I carry on. “For people interested in poetry and music and stuff.”

  Olly’s expression changes. His eyes have gone from disbelief to — I don’t know what it is. Fear? Panic?

  “We’d connected online. That was all,” I continue. “And then one day, he just wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t know what had happened. Didn’t know where he lived or anything. All I had was some exchanged messages and a photo he’d sent me. Then we moved here and — well, you know the rest.”

  “Really?” he asks. “You actually did know him?”

  “Yeah, I really did. We used to share poems that we’d written,” I say, more comfortable now I’m not totally lying through my teeth.

  Olly allows himself a smile. “Sounds like him,” he murmurs. Then the smile disappears. “Why did you keep it from me?” he asks, his voice gravel. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I . . .”

  “Look. It doesn’t matter. Just be honest with me now, OK? Promise me you haven’t made this all up?”

  I stare at him. Has he seen through me so quickly?

  “Wh — why would I have done that?” I manage eventually.

  Olly laughs softly. “As an excuse to talk to me,” he smirks. “Because I’m so devastatingly attractive.”

  My milk shake literally bubbles out of the glass as I laugh down my straw. It’s a relief to laugh. Breaks the horrible tension for a moment.

  I glance up and meet Olly’s eyes. He’s looking back at me, all innocent confusion. “What?” he asks.

  I just keep laughing. “You really thought that? I mean, seriously?”

  He holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, then his face relaxes and he laughs, too. “Well, obviously, now that I know you a bit better, I know that you would never resort to yelling my brother’s name across a school yard just to speak to me.”

  “But it was your first thought?” I say, no longer smiling.

  Olly turns serious, too. “Yeah. Because that’s the kind of game-playing I was always used to.” He holds my eyes, and I feel like a butterfly pinned to the wall. “Till you came along,” he adds.

  I can’t help it: my insides flutter under his gaze.

  Eventually, I look away and go back to sipping my drink. But this is good. He’s opening up. We’ve mentioned Joe. Maybe this is it. My chance to get in there. I can’t risk letting the moment pass, so before he says anything else or breaks the mood, I take a breath and say, as calmly and gently as I can, “Tell me more about Joe.”

  Olly looks down at the table and shakes his head. He doesn’t say anything. I’m tempted to jump into the silence, tell him it’s OK, not to bother, change the subject. I’m scared. Now I’m on the brink of hearing what he has to say, I don’t know if I want to.

  The silence stretches out, sharp and tight like a taut wir
e.

  And then, in a low voice, so quiet I have to hold my breath to hear him, he starts to speak.

  “It’s the summers I remember the most,” he says. “When we were really little. We were best mates, back then. Messing around on the beach, building sand castles, jumping over waves, chasing each other across the sand.”

  He pauses for a microsecond. Then he shakes his head again and lets out a huge breath. “It changed as we grew older and we realized how different we were.”

  “In what ways?” I ask.

  “I guess I didn’t grow up all that much. I still liked messing around on the beach, mostly surfing, a bit of volleyball. Then I got into soccer and didn’t care about much else for a few years. Till I discovered girls.”

  “Ha. Yes, I was going to mention that.”

  Olly grimaces. “Yeah, that’s when we really went in different directions. Joe became more and more introverted, going off on his own with a notebook, sitting at home, playing his guitar.” He allows himself a wry smile. “And I guess going online and chatting to strange girls.”

  I slurp heavily on my milk shake, hoping he can’t see my burning cheeks.

  “Not that you’re strange, of course,” he adds, and I glance up to see him smiling at me.

  I wish he’d stop. Each time he casually refers to my lie, I feel as if a layer of my skin is being slowly shredded. As if he’ll see the real me underneath if he keeps going. I need to move the subject back to Joe and Olly.

  “And what were you doing in the meantime?” I ask.

  “Me? Mostly just having a good time. Parties, girls . . .” He stops, as if his words have run into a barrier.

  I wait.

  Eventually he says, “And drugs.”

  That stops me short. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve never heard of drugs. I know some people take them. I expect half the people in my year at school have tried them at some point. I haven’t, though. The thought of it scares me — especially after what I went through last year. I could never see pills as entertainment. But it doesn’t mean I’m judging him for it.

  He shrugs. “Helped make Saturday nights even better, you know? It was just what we did. Just a bit of fun.” Then he adds, “Which was all fine while it stayed that way.”

  “What d’you mean? What changed?”

  “Joe changed,” he says simply. “And that was my fault.” Then in a voice that cracks with so much emotion, it sounds like a superhuman effort to get the words out, he adds, “If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be alive.”

  A streak of lightning runs through me, turning to ice as it travels around my body. I’m getting closer to what I’ve come to find out. This is why I’m here.

  But now that I’m so near, I’m terrified to hear it.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, half wanting him to continue and half wanting to run out of the café with my hands over my ears.

  He doesn’t say anything for ages. Then he looks at me. His eyes are familiar. They look a bit like the eyes of the dogs in those ads, begging someone to adopt them. But more than that, they look like Joe’s. The same pain, the same loss, the same helpless desperation.

  He reaches a hand across the table. And no, maybe I shouldn’t, but I put my hand out toward his.

  I hate myself for the feeling I have when his fingers close around mine. How can I want him to do this? How can I want his touch?

  “I’ve never talked to anyone about this before,” he says, and my heart literally leaps into my mouth. OK, maybe not literally. I don’t think that’s even medically possible. But if it were, then, believe me, it would be doing that.

  He’s about to confess to killing his brother — the boy I love — and I’m sitting here holding his hand and comforting him while he does.

  “Go on,” my disloyal mouth somehow manages to croak.

  “I used to rag on him, tell him he had no life, he was no fun, he’d never get a girl. Stupid things like that.”

  “Nice.”

  “No, I wasn’t nice. I was awful. Thought I was so cool, so clever, thought I had it all. Thought Joe was such a loser, when actually it was the other way around.”

  “How so?”

  “I was the one thinking life was about getting high, going to parties, snogging girls whose names I can barely remember. He was the one who thought about things — really thought about them. Felt things. He lived life on a level that meant something, while I skated along the edges of it, telling myself I had it all.”

  “So what changed?”

  “I guess one day he’d had enough of me ripping him to pieces and decided to put an end to it.”

  “Put an end to it? How?”

  “Called my bluff. Said he wanted to come to a party with me. So I took him along that weekend.” Olly absentmindedly strokes the back of my hand as he talks. I don’t ask him to stop. I don’t want to. Again, I hate myself.

  “We hung out together for a bit. Well, I say ‘hung out together.’ What I mean is, Joe followed me around like a lapdog for an hour or so, till I spotted Zoe and told him to get lost so I could be alone with her.”

  He falters and looks at me. “You knew about me and Zoe, didn’t you? That we dated?”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “Go on.” Lying again. It doesn’t feel fine at all. It feels . . . what? I can’t even work out how I feel about what he’s telling me. My emotions are a tangled ball of string. My heart hurts at the thought of Joe being sent away, lost, awkward, and lonely in a room full of happy, smiley people. But there’s another feeling too, knotted with the rest of it. Knotted so tight, I don’t want to pull it out and look at it, or the whole of me will come undone.

  Jealousy. At the thought of Olly with Zoe.

  I push my mixed-up, messed-up feelings aside and listen as he continues.

  “Zoe and I had gone upstairs.” He glances at me again, and quickly adds, “I came downstairs after a bit.”

  I don’t ask him what the “bit” entailed. I don’t want to know.

  “To be honest, there were a lot of drugs around that night. Half the people there were popping pills or sharing spliffs. I’d had some weed earlier and half a pill of something at the party.”

  He mistakes my ignorance for judgment.

  “I know it’s dumb,” he says. “It’s just what we did. I didn’t question it back then.”

  “Go on,” I say softly.

  “I couldn’t find Joe. I looked for him all over. Started panicking a bit. Partly because I felt responsible for him, partly because I was still a bit out of it and didn’t want to start getting paranoid. I was picturing him sitting on his own in a corner, writing poetry or something. I got a bit angry at the thought. Like, my reputation was at stake, and I didn’t want him messing it up with his loner-boy ways.”

  “So where was he?”

  Olly smiles. I can almost see him reliving the memory behind his watery eyes. “He was in the room at the back of the house. The room with the loudest music. The room with the bouncing floor. He was the one in the middle of the dance floor, hands in the air, sweat dripping from his hair, grinning from ear to ear as he danced like he was on hot coals.”

  Despite myself, and despite my shock, I smile at that.

  “Someone had given him Ecstasy. He’d had at least one pill — maybe more — and it turned him into a party animal. It was as if he’d had a complete personality transplant.”

  I’m trying to picture it, trying to imagine Joe like that, and I can’t. For the life of me, I can’t.

  Olly’s on a roll now. He barely notices me, other than my hand, which he’s gripping tightly, as if he knows I want to pull away and he won’t let me.

  “That was it, then. He came to everything with me. Every weekend, he wanted to go to a party, wanted to get out of his head, didn’t care what it was — usually Ecstasy. We got into a bit of a routine. Got close, in a weird sort of way. It was the first time in years that we’d hung out together. It was like we were best mates again, not just brothers.”
/>   “That must have been nice.”

  Olly’s mouth turns up ever so slightly at the corners. “Yeah,” he says. “It was. It was really nice. I’m glad I’ve got those memories. I mean, was it smart? No. Was it legal? No. Was it healthy? Probably not. Well, definitely not, as we found out. But would I trade those weeks of hanging out with my kid brother, laughing together, dancing together, flirting with girls together? Nah, not for anything. Well. Not for anything except to have him back.”

  The mixed-up ball of string inside me turns to wire and scratches me so hard, I want to scream. I don’t know which bit bothers me the most.

  Yes, I do. All of it. Every word. Joe flirting with girls. Olly flirting with girls. Joe alive. Every single thing he’s telling me grates at my insides.

  I want him to stop, but it’s too late. He’s not stopping now. Not for me, not for anything. He needs to get this out — I can see that as clearly as I’ve ever seen anything. And to be honest, the thought of walking out on him now feels like throwing him out of a speeding car on a busy highway.

  I can’t do it to him. I couldn’t anyway. This is what I’m here for. I have to find out the truth.

  So I grip his hand as hard as he’s clutching mine — only stopping for a millisecond to wonder which of us is clinging more desperately to the other — and then I grit my teeth and quietly say, “Go on. What happened next?”

  The words are pouring out of me, and I can’t stop them. I don’t want to. It’s as if I’ve spent these past months building a dam inside me, holding everything back — and now she’s come along and pulled down all the defenses I’ve put so much effort into building.

  “Go on,” she says gently. “What happened next?”

  And I accept her invitation.

  “I guess I had slightly mixed feelings about it, even then.”

  “About Joe taking the drugs?”

  I nod. “I mean, I know it’s not smart. It feels like it is at the time. Feels like it gives you entry into the fun club. But really it just messes you up. I know that now. But it was even worse for Joe.”

  “Why?”

  “There was something different in the way he did it — in his relationship with the drugs. I’d drop a pill or two at parties, bought it myself sometimes. But I only bothered with them if I was in the mood. Joe — well, it was like he had to have it. Without the pills, he was the same old quiet, shy, withdrawn loner, sitting in a corner with his notebook. In fact, even more so. When he wasn’t high, he was virtually a recluse. When he was high, he was the life and soul of the party.”