Solitaire

I’M ON MY way home on the bus when Michael finally decides to make his dramatic reappearance. I’m sitting in the second seat from the back on the left downstairs, listening to Elvis Costello like the goddamn hipster I am, when he spontaneously cycles up beside me on his moldy old bike so that he is rolling down the road at the same speed as the bus. The window that I’m looking out of is all grimy and the snow has dried water droplets into it, but I can still see his smug old face in profile grinning in the wind like a dog hanging its head out of the car.

He turns, searching along the windows, eventually realizing that I am in fact directly adjacent to him. Hair billowing, coat flapping behind him like a cape, he waves, freakishly, and then slaps his hand so hard on the window so that every stupid kid on the bus stops throwing whatever they’re throwing and looks at me. I raise my own hand and wave, feeling quite ill.

He keeps this up until I get off the bus, ten minutes later, by which time it has started to snow again. I tell Nick and Charlie that they can go on without me. When we’re alone, we sit on a garden wall, Michael propping his bike up against it. I notice that he isn’t wearing his school uniform.

I look to my left, up at his face. He’s not looking at me. I wait for him to start the conversation, but he doesn’t. I think he’s challenging me.

It’s taken longer than it should for me to recognize that I want to be around him.

“I’m,” I say, forcing the words out, “sorry.”

He blinks as if confused, turns to me, and smiles gently. “It’s okay,” he says.

I nod a little, and look away.

“We’ve done this before, haven’t we,” he says.

“Done what?”

“The awkward apology thing.”

I think back to the “manically depressed psychopath” comment. This isn’t the same, though. That was me being stupid and his anger getting the better of him. That was just words.

I didn’t know Michael at all back then.

Michael still has that spark. That light. But there’s more there now. Things that cannot be seen; only found.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask.

He looks away and chuckles. “I got suspended. For Monday afternoon, yesterday, and today.”

This is so ridiculous that I actually laugh. “Did you finally give someone a nervous breakdown?”

He chuckles again, but it’s weird. “That could probably happen, to be fair.” His face changes. “No, yeah, I—er—I swore at Kent.”

I snort. “You swore? You got suspended because you swore?”

“Yep.” He scratches his head. “Turns out Higgs has some sort of policy on that.”

“‘The Land of Oppression.’” I nod, quoting Becky. “So how did that happen?”

“It sort of started in history, I guess. We had our mock-mocks a couple of weeks ago, and we got our marks on Monday, and my teacher held me back after the lesson because predictably I did really badly. I think I legitimately got an E or something. So she started having a real go at me, you know, raving on about how much of a disappointment I am and how I don’t even try. That’s when I started to get pretty annoyed, because, like, I clearly tried. But she kept going on and on, and she held up my essay and pointed at it and was like, ‘What do you think this is? Nothing in this makes sense. Where’s your Point Evidence Explanation? Where’s your P.E.E.?’ Basically she ended up taking me to Kent’s office like I was some primary-school kid.”

He pauses. He isn’t looking at me.

“And Kent started his big speech about how I should be better than this and I’m not committing enough to schoolwork and I’m not putting in enough effort. And I tried to defend myself, but you know what Kent’s like—as soon as I started trying to reason with him, he got all aggressive and patronizing, which made me even more angry, because, you know, teachers simply cannot admit to a student that they could possibly be wrong, and then, like, I didn’t mean to, but I was like, ‘You don’t even fucking care, though, do you?’ And, erm, yeah. I got suspended.”

This reminds me of the Michael who Nick described the first day of term. But instead of finding this story a little strange, I actually feel pretty impressed.

“What a rebel,” I say.

He gives me a long look. “Yes,” he says. “I’m awesome.”

“Teachers really don’t care, though.”

“Yeah. I should have known that, really.”

We both return to staring at the row of houses opposite. The windows are all orange from the setting sun. I scuff my shoes on the snowy pavement. I kind of want to ask him about his skating, but at the same time, I feel like that’s his thing. His special, private thing.

“I’ve been pretty bored without you,” I say.

There is a long pause.

“Me too,” Michael says.

“Did you hear about what the Year 7s did today?”

“Yeah . . . that was hilarious.”

“I was there. I always sit on the field Wednesday Period 5, so I was literally right there. It was like . . . it was raining streamers, or something.”

He seems to stop moving. After a few seconds, he turns his head slowly toward me.

“That was a lucky coincidence,” he says.

It takes me a minute to get what he’s saying.

It’s ridiculous. Solitaire would have no way of knowing that I always skip that lesson and sit on the field. Teachers hardly notice most of the time. It’s ridiculous. But I start thinking about what Michael said before. About Star Wars. “Material Girl.” The cats. The violin. And the Ben Hope attack—that was about my brother. But it’s impossible. I’m not special. It’s entirely impossible. But—

There have been a lot of coincidences.

“Yes,” I say. “Just a coincidence.”

We both stand up and start to walk along the gradually whitening path, Michael pushing his bike along beside him. It leaves a long gray line behind us. Little white dots of snow rest in Michael’s hair.

“What now?” I ask. I’m not quite sure which “now” I’m talking about. This minute? Today? The rest of our lives?

“Now?” Michael considers my question. “Now we celebrate and rejoice in our youth. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

I find myself grinning. “Yes. Yes, that is what we’re supposed to do.”

We walk a little farther. The snow grows from a light sprinkling to flakes as large as five-pence pieces.

“I heard about what you said to Becky,” he says.

“Who told you?”

“Charlie.”

“Who told Charlie?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“When did you talk to Charlie?”

He avoids my eye. “The other day. I just wanted to make sure you were all right—”

“What, do you think I’m depressed or something?”

I say this much too angrily.

I don’t want people to be worried about me. There’s nothing to worry about. I don’t want people to try and understand why I am the way I am, because I should be the first person to understand that. And I don’t understand yet. I don’t want people to interfere. I don’t want people in my head, picking out this and that, permanently picking up the broken pieces of me.

If that’s what friends do, then I don’t want any.

He smiles. A proper smile. Then he laughs. “You really cannot accept that people care!”

I don’t say anything. He’s right. But I don’t say anything.

He stops laughing. Several minutes pass in silence.

I start to think about four weeks ago, when I didn’t know Michael. When Solitaire hadn’t happened. I am aware that I feel sadder about things now. A lot of things around me have been very sad, and I seem to be the only one who can see it. Becky, for example. Lucas. Ben Hope. Solitaire. Everyone is okay with hurting people. Or maybe they cannot see that they are hurting people. But I can.

The problem is that people don’t act.

The problem is that I don’t act.

I just sit here, doing nothing, assuming that someone else is going to make things better.

Eventually Michael and I end up at the edge of town. It’s getting dark now, and more than one streetlamp flickers on as we pass, casting a yellow glow across the ground. We walk down a wide alley between two large houses and break out into the fields, slick with snow, that stretch between the town and the river. Whites, grays, blues; everything is a blurry mist, rain on the windscreen, a painting.

I stand there. It all kind of stops, like I’ve left Earth. Like I’ve left the universe.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “Don’t you think the snow is beautiful?”

I expect Michael to agree with me, but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just cold. It’s romantic, I guess, but it just makes things cold.”