Solitaire

“I’M NOT JOKING, Tori. This is an extremely serious decision.”

I look Becky squarely in the eye. “Oh, I know. This could determine the whole future of human existence.”

We are in her bedroom. It’s 4:12 p.m., Friday. I’m cross-legged on her double bed. Everything in here is pink and black, and if this room were a person, it would be a Kardashian on a moderate income. There is a poster of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan on the wall. Every time I see it I want to put it through a shredder.

“No, seriously though, I’m not even joking.” She holds up the costumes again, one in each hand. “Tinker Bell or Hermione?”

I stare at each. They’re not very different, except one is green and one is gray.

“Tinker Bell,” I say. Seeing as Becky maintains her coolness and hilarity by acting like an idiot, it would be an insult to the name of Hermione Granger and J. K. Rowling and all Potterheads to allow Becky to be the brightest witch of her age.

She nods and chucks the Hermione outfit onto a steadily growing mountain of clothes. “That’s what I thought.” She starts changing. “Who are you going as again?”

I shrug, still thinking about Harry Potter. “I wasn’t going to dress up. I thought I could wear my invisibility cloak.”

Becky, in just her bra and knickers, puts her hands on her hips. I know I shouldn’t feel awkward because I’ve been her best friend for over five years. I still do, though. Since when did nudity become so normal?

“Tori. You are dressing up. It’s my fancy-dress party and I say so.”

“Fine.” I think hard, weighing my options. “I could go as . . . Snow White?”

Becky pauses as if waiting for the punch line.

I frown. “What?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t think I could go as Snow White.”

“No, no, you could be Snow White. If you want.”

I look at my hands. “All right. I’ll . . . er . . . think about it.” I twirl my thumbs. “I could . . . make my hair . . . all wavy. . . .”

She seems satisfied and puts on the tiny green dress with fairy wings.

“Are you going to try and talk to people tonight?” she asks.

“Is that an actual question or an order?”

“An order.”

“I make no promises.”

Becky laughs and pats me on my cheek. I hate that. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you. I always do, don’t I?”

At home I put on a white shirt and a black skater skirt I bought once for some job interview I never showed up to. Then I locate my favorite black jumper and black tights. My hair is just about long enough to style into tiny plaits, and I draw on more eyeliner than usual.

Wednesday Addams. I was sort of kidding with Snow White, and I despise Disney anyway.

I leave the house around seven. Nick, Charlie, and Oliver are just sitting down to dinner. Mum and Dad are going to see a play and then stay at a hotel tonight. To be honest, it was Charlie and I who insisted that they stay overnight rather than take the two-hour drive home. I guess they were kind of worried about not being there for Charlie. I almost decided to stay home and not go to Becky’s party, but Charlie assured everyone that he would be fine, which I’m sure he will, because Nick’s staying round this evening. And I’m not even going to be out for very long.

It’s a dark party. The lights are dimmed, and teenagers are spilling out of the house. I pass the smokers and the social smokers who gather in rings outside. Smoking is so pointless. The only reason I can think of for smoking is if you want to die. I don’t know. Maybe they all want to die. I recognize most people from school and from Truham, and there are Year 11s through to Year 13s here, and I know for a fact that Becky doesn’t know them all personally.

A selection of Our Lot is squeezed into the conservatory, along with a few other people that I don’t know. Evelyn, scrunched into the corner of a sofa, spots me first.

“Tori!” She waves, so I wander over. Eyeing me thoughtfully, she says, “Who are you?”

“Wednesday Addams,” I say.

“Who?”

“Have you seen The Addams Family?”

“No.”

I shuffle my feet. “Oh.” Her own outfit is rather spectacular: straightened hair put up in a classy bun, insect sunglasses, and a fifties dress. “You’re Audrey Hepburn.”

Evelyn throws her arms up in the air. “THANK YOU! Someone at this party has some bloody culture!”

Lucas is here too, sitting next to a girl and a boy who have basically merged into one being. He’s wearing a beret and a rolled-sleeve stripy T-shirt with these skintight ankle-length black jeans, and he has an actual string of garlic bulbs hung around his neck. Somehow he looks both very fashionable and very ridiculous. He waves shyly at me with his beer can. “Tori! Bonjour!”

I wave back and then practically run away.

First I go to the kitchen. There are a lot of Year 11s in here, mostly girls dressed as a variety of promiscuous Disney princesses, and three boys dressed as Superman. They’re chatting excitedly about Solitaire’s pranks, apparently finding them hilarious. One girl even claims she took part in them.

Everyone seems to be talking about the Solitaire meet-up blog post—the one that Michael and I found after he broke me out of that IT classroom. Apparently, the entire town is planning to attend.

I find myself standing next to a lonely-looking girl, possibly a Year 11 but I’m not too sure, who is dressed as a very accurate David Tennant’s Doctor Who. I immediately feel a kind of connection with her, because she looks so alone.

She looks at me, and as it’s too late to pretend I haven’t been staring, I say, “Your costume is, er, really good.”

“Thank you,” she says, and I nod and walk off.

Ignoring the beers and WKDs and Bacardi Breezers, I raid Becky’s fridge for some diet lemonade. With my plastic cup in hand, I amble into the garden.

It’s a truly magnificent garden: slightly sloped with islands of rainbow flowers and a pond at the bottom, enclosed by clusters of bare willow trees. Groups are huddled all over the wooden decking and the grass, even though it’s about zero degrees Celsius. Somehow, Becky has got her hands on an actual floodlight. It’s as bright as the sun, and the groups of teenagers spill swaying shadows over the grass. I spot Becky/Tinker Bell with a different group of Year 12s. I go up to her.

“Hey,” I say, sliding into the circle.

“Toriiiiiiiii!” She’s got a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream in her hand with one of those curly plastic straws in it. “Dude! Guess what! I’ve got something so amazing to tell you! It’s just so amazing! You’re going to die, it’s so, so, so amazing! You are going to die!”

I smile at her, even though she’s shaking me by the shoulders and spilling Baileys on me.

“You. Are going. To DIE.”

“Yes, yes, I’m going to die—”

“You know Ben Hope?”

Yes, I know Ben Hope, and I also know exactly what she’s about to say.

“Ben Hope asked me out,” she splutters.

“Oh,” I say, “my God!”

“I know! I, like, did not expect a thing! We were chatting earlier and he admitted he liked me; oh my God he was so cute and awkward!” And then she talks for quite a while about Ben Hope while sipping on her Baileys, and I’m smiling and nodding and definitely feeling really pleased for her.

After a while Becky starts repeating the whole story to some girl dressed as Minnie Mouse and I feel myself getting a bit bored, so I check my blog on my phone. There is a little (1) symbol, signifying I have a message:

Anonymous: Thought for the day: Why do cars always part for ambulances?

I read the message several times. It could be from anyone, I guess, though no one I know in real life knows about my blog. Stupid anons. Why do cars always part for ambulances? Because the world is not filled with assholes. That’s why.

Because the world is not filled with assholes.

As soon as I make that conclusion in my mind, Lucas finds me. He is a little bit drunk.

“I can’t work out who you are,” he says, always so embarrassed.

“I’m Wednesday Addams.”

“Aah, so cute, so cute.” He nods knowingly, but I can tell that he has no idea who Wednesday Addams is.

I look past him, out into the floodlit garden. All the people are just blurred darkness. I feel a bit sick, and this diet lemonade is giving me a nasty taste in my mouth. I want to go and pour it down the sink, but I think I’ll feel even more lost if I don’t have something to hold on to.

“Tori?”

I look at him. The garlic was a bad move. It doesn’t smell great. “Mm?”

“I asked if you were all right. You look like you’re having a midlife crisis.”

“It’s not a midlife crisis. It’s just a life crisis.”

“Pardon? I can’t hear you.”

“I’m fine. Just bored.”

He smiles at me like I’m joking, but I’m not joking. All parties are boring.

“You can go and talk to other people, you know,” I say. “I really don’t have anything interesting to say.”

“You always have interesting things to say,” he says. “You just don’t say them.”

I lie and say I need another drink, even though my cup is more than half full and I feel really sick. I get out of the garden. I am out of breath and so angry for no reason. I barge through the crowds of stupid, drunk teenagers and lock myself in the downstairs bathroom. Someone’s been sick in here—I can smell it. I look at myself in the mirror. My eyeliner has smudged, so I sort it out. Then I tear up and ruin it again and try not to start crying. I wash my hands three times and take the plaits out of my hair because they look idiotic. Someone’s banging on the door of the bathroom. I’ve been in here for ages just staring at myself in the mirror, watching my eyes tear up and dry and tear up and dry. I open the door, ready to punch them in the face, and find myself directly opposite Michael Goddamn Holden.

“Oh, thank Christ.” He races inside and without bothering to let me leave or shut the door, he lifts the toilet seat and starts to pee. “Thank. Christ. I thought I was going to have to piss in the flower bed, for Christ’s sake.”

“All right, just pee with a lady present,” I say.

He waves his hand casually.

I get out of there.

As I exit through the front door, Michael catches me up. He is dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Even the hat.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

I shrug. “It’s too hot in there.”

“It’s too cold out here.”

“Since when did you acquire a body temperature?”

“Will you ever be able to talk to me without making a sarcastic comment?”

I turn and start walking farther away, but he’s still in pursuit.

“Why are you following me?”

“Because I don’t know anyone else here.”

“Don’t you have any Year 13 friends?”

“I—er—”

I stop on the pavement outside Becky’s drive.

“I think I’m going home,” I say.

“Why?” he asks. “Becky’s your friend. It’s her birthday.”

“She won’t mind,” I say. She won’t notice.

“What are you going to do at home?” he asks.

Blog. Sleep. Blog. “Nothing.”

“Why don’t we crash in a room upstairs and watch a film?”

Coming from any other person’s mouth, it would sound like he is asking me to go into a room and have sex with him, but because it is Michael who says this, I know that he is being completely serious.

I notice that the diet lemonade in my cup has gone. I can’t remember when I drank it. I want to go home but at the same time I don’t want to, because I know I won’t sleep. I’ll just lie there in my room. Michael’s hat looks really stupid. He probably borrowed that tweed jacket from a dead body.

“Fine,” I say.