Solitaire
: Part 1 – Chapter 17

WHEN WE ARRIVE outside my house, the sky is black and there are no stars.

Michael turns and puts his arms around me. It takes me by surprise, so I don’t have time to react and my arms are once again trapped at my sides.

“I had a really good day,” he says, holding me.

“So did I.”

He lets go. “Do you think we’re friends now?”

I hesitate. I can’t think why. I hesitate for no reason.

I will regret the conversation that occurs next for the rest of my life.

“It’s like,” I say, “you really . . . you really want to be friends with me.”

He looks slightly embarrassed, almost apologetic.

“It’s like you’re doing it for yourself,” I say.

“All friendships are selfish. Maybe if we were all selfless, we would leave each other alone.”

“Sometimes that’s better.”

This hurts him. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m pushing his temporary happiness out. “Is it?”

I don’t know why I can’t just say that we’re friends and be done with it.

“What is this? This whole thing. I met you, like, two weeks ago. None of this makes any sense. I don’t understand why you want to be friends with me.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“Last time?”

“Why are you making this so complicated? We’re not six years old.”

I say, “I’m just awful at—I’m—I don’t know.”

His mouth turns down.

“I don’t know what to say,” I say.

“It’s all right.” He takes off his glasses to wipe them with his jumper sleeve. I’ve never seen him without his glasses on. “It’s fine.” And then as he replaces his glasses, all the sadness disintegrates, and what’s left underneath is the real Michael, the fire, the boy who skates, the boy who followed me to a restaurant to tell me something he couldn’t remember, the boy who has nothing better to do than force me to get out of the house and live.

“Is it time for me to give up?” he asks, and then answers. “No, it’s not.”

“You sound like you’re in love with me,” I say. “For God’s sake.”

“There is no reason why I couldn’t be in love with you.”

“You implied that you are gay.”

“That’s entirely subjective.”

“Are you, then?”

“Am I gay?”

“Are you in love with me?”

He winks. “It’s a mystery.”

“I’m going to take that as a no.”

“Of course you are. Of course you’re going to take that as a no. You didn’t even need to ask me that question, did you?”

He’s annoying me now. A lot. “Jesus fucking Christ! I know I’m a stupid twattish pessimist, but stop acting like I’m some kind of manically depressed psychopath!”

And then suddenly—like a wind change or a bump in the road or the moment that makes you scream in a horror film—suddenly he’s an entirely different person. His smile dies and the blue and green of his eyes darken. He clenches his fist and he snarls, he actually snarls at me.

“Maybe you are a manically depressed psychopath.”

I freeze, stunned, wanting to be sick.

“Fine.”

I turn around

and go into the house

and shut the door.

Charlie is at Nick’s for once. I go to his room and lie down. He has a world map next to his bed with certain places circled. Prague. Kyoto. Seattle. There are also several pictures of him with Nick. Nick and Charlie in the London Eye. Nick and Charlie at a rugby match. Nick and Charlie at the beach. His bedroom is so tidy. Obsessively tidy. It smells of cleaning spray. I look at the book he’s reading, which is beside his pillow. It’s called Less Than Zero and is by Bret Easton Ellis. Charlie talked to me about it once. He said that he liked it because it’s the sort of book that makes you understand people a little better, and he also said it helped him understand me a little better. I didn’t really believe him because I think that novels can very easily brainwash people, and apparently Bret Easton Ellis is infamous on Twitter.

In his bedside table is a drawer that used to have all these chocolate bars stacked and ordered inside, but Mum found them and threw them away a few weeks before he had to go to the hospital the first time. Now there are lots of books in the drawer. A lot that Dad’s obviously given to him. I shut the drawer.

I go get my laptop and bring it into Charlie’s room and scroll through some blogs.

I’ve ruined it, haven’t I.

I’m angry that Michael said that stuff. I hate that he said that stuff. But I said stupid stuff too. I sit and I wonder whether Michael is going to talk to me tomorrow. This is probably my fault. Everything is my fault.

I wonder how much Becky will talk about Ben tomorrow. A lot. I think about who else I could hang around with. There isn’t anyone. I think about how I do not want to leave this house ever again. I think about whether I had any homework to do this weekend. I think about what a dreadful person I am.

I put on Amélie, which is the best foreign film in the history of cinema. I tell you, this is one of the original indie films. It gets romance right. You can tell that it’s genuine. It’s not just like “she’s pretty, he’s handsome, they both hate each other, then they realize there’s another side to both of them, they start to like each other, love declaration, the end.” Amélie’s romance is meaningful. It’s not fake, it’s believable. It’s real.

I go downstairs. Mum is on the computer. I tell her good night, but it takes her at least twenty seconds to hear me, so I just head back upstairs with a glass of diet lemonade.

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