Solitaire

IT’S BEEN A weird weekend. Not really knowing what to do, I stayed in bed for most of it, scrolling through the internet, watching TV, etc., etc. Nick and Charlie came to have a “chat” after lunch on Sunday and made me feel pretty bad for being a lazy slob. So my weekend concludes with Nick and Charlie dragging me to a local music festival at the Clay, which is a grassless field just over the river bridge, bordered by a scattering of trees and broken fences.

Nick and Charlie and I walk across the mud toward the crowds surrounding the stage. It’s not quite snowing yet, but I can feel it coming. Whoever thought that January was a good month for a music festival is probably a sadist.

The band, apparently some London indie band, is so loud that you can hear them from the other end of the high street. While there aren’t any actual lights, every other person appears to be holding a torch or carrying a glow stick, and toward the edge of the field is a violent bonfire. I feel significantly underprepared. I think about running back over the bridge and back up the high street and all the way home.

No. No running home.

“Are you all right?” shouts Charlie over the music. He and Nick are several paces ahead, Nick with a torch shining in my direction, blinding me.

“Are you sticking with us?” Nick points at the stage. “We’re going to go watch.”

“No,” I say.

Charlie just looks at me as I walk off. Nick pulls him away and they disappear into the crowds.

I disappear into the crowd, too.

There are so many people here that I’m actually warm, and I can’t see much—just the green and yellow of glow sticks and the lights of the stage. This band has been on for at least half an hour, and the Clay is now more like the Swamp. Mud splatters my jeans. I keep seeing people I know from school, and every time I do, I give them a large, sarcastic wave. In the middle of the crowd, Evelyn shakes me by the shoulders and screams that she’s looking for her boyfriend. It really makes me dislike her.

After a while, I realize that I keep treading on bits of paper. They’re literally everywhere. I’m alone in the crowd when I decide to pick one up and look at it properly, lighting it up with my phone torch.

It’s a flyer. Black background. There is a symbol in the middle in red: an upside-down heart, drawn in a scrawly sort of way so that it looks like an uppercase A, with a circle around it.

So that it sort of looks like the symbol for anarchy.

Beneath the symbol is the word:

FRIDAY

My hands begin to shake.

Before I have time to think any more about what this might mean, I’m pushed right next to Becky, where she’s jumping up and down near the barrier with Lauren and Rita. We catch eyes.

Lucas is there too, behind Rita. He’s wearing this shirt with little metal edges on the collar, underneath a granddad jumper and a large denim jacket. He is also wearing Vans and rolled black jeans. Just looking at him makes me feel really sad.

I shove the FRIDAY flyer into my coat pocket.

He sees me over Rita’s shoulder and kind of cowers backward, which must be pretty difficult in a crowd as packed as this. I point at my chest, not dropping my eyes. Then I point at him. Then I point toward the empty end of the field.

When he doesn’t move, I grab him by the arm and start to pull him backward, out and away from the crowds and the throbbing speakers.

I’m reminded of when we were ten, or nine, or eight, in a similar situation—me pulling Lucas along by the arm. He never did anything by himself. I was always very good at doing things by myself. I guess I sort of enjoyed looking after him. There comes a point, though, when you can’t keep looking after other people anymore. You have to start looking after yourself.

Then again, I guess I don’t do either of those things.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. We’ve broken out from the crowd and stopped a little way in front of the bonfire. Various groups of people wander past with drink bottles in their hands, laughing, though the area around the fire is largely empty.

“I’m doing things now,” I say. I take hold of his shoulder and lean forward, quite seriously. “Why—when did you turn into a hipster?”

He gently removes my hand from his shoulder. “I’m serious,” he says.

The band has stopped. There is momentary quiet, the air filled only with voices merging into one swirling noise. There are several of those flyers at my feet.

“I sat outside the café for a whole hour,” I say, hoping to make him feel really bad. “If you don’t tell me now why you’re avoiding me, then, like, we might as well just get it over with and stop being friends.”

He stiffens and turns red, even visible in the dim light. It dawns on me that we’re never going to be best friends again.

“It’s . . . ,” he says. “It is very difficult . . . for me . . . to be around you. . . .”

“Why?”

It takes him a while to answer. He smooths his hair to one side, and rubs his eye, and checks that his collar isn’t turned up, and scratches his knee. And then he starts to laugh.

“You’re so funny, Victoria.” He shakes his head. “You’re just so funny.”

At this, I get a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead, I descend into hysteria.

“For fuck’s sake! What are you talking about!?” I begin to shout, but you can’t really tell over the noise of the crowd. “You’re insane. I don’t know why you’re saying any of this to me. I don’t know why you decided you wanted to be BFFs all over again, and now I don’t know why you won’t even look me in the eye. I don’t understand anything you’re doing or saying, and it’s killing me, because I already don’t understand a single thing about me or Michael or Becky or my brother or anything on this shitty planet. If you secretly hate me or something, you need to spit it out. I am asking you to give me one straight answer, one sentence that might sort at least something out in my head, but NO. You don’t care, do you!? You don’t give a SINGLE SHIT for my feelings, or anyone else’s. You’re just like everyone else.”

“You’re wrong,” he says. “You’re wro—”

“Everyone’s got such dreadful problems.” I shake my head wildly, holding on to it with both hands. I start speaking in a posh voice for no reason. “Even you. Even perfect innocent Lucas has problems.”

He’s staring at me in a kind of terrified confusion, and it’s absolutely hilarious. I start to crack up.

“Maybe, like, everyone I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people. Nothing works out. Even when it’s someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother!” I grin wildly at him. “My brother, my little brother, he’s soooo perfect but he’s—he doesn’t like food, like, literally doesn’t like food, or, I don’t know, he loves it. He loves it so much that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?” I grab Lucas by one shoulder again so he understands. “And then one day he got so fed up with himself, he was, like, he was so annoyed, he hated how much he loved food, yeah, so he thought it would be better if there wasn’t any food.” I start laughing so much that my eyes water. “But that’s so silly! Because you’ve got to eat food or you’ll die, won’t you? So my brother Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he”—I hold up my wrist and point at it—“he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card, telling me he was really sorry and all, but I shouldn’t be sad because he was actually really happy about it.” I shake my head and laugh and laugh. “And you know what just makes me want to die? The fact that, like, all that time, I knew it was coming, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I’d been imagining it. Well, didn’t I get a nice surprise when I walked into the bathroom that day?” There are tears running down my face. “And you know what’s literally hilarious? The card had a picture of a cake on it!”

He’s not saying anything and he doesn’t find it hilarious, which strikes me as odd. He makes this pained sound and turns at a sharp right angle and strides away. I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes, and then I take that flyer out of my pocket and look at it, but the music has started again and I’m too cold and my brain doesn’t seem to be processing anything. Only that goddamn picture of that goddamn cake.