Dear Charlie. N.D. Gomes

to be buying a house, especially for this neighbourhood. But when I reached the top, it quickly sunk in why he was there. Positioned in the doorway, almost too afraid to step any closer, was a young woman taking photos of my brother’s room.

      ‘You should leave before my dad catches you,’ I said, as she spun around, dropping the camera by her feet.

      ‘I… I was just…’ But she didn’t finish her sentence, unable to find a good reason to explain why she was doing what she was doing. She grabbed her camera, called down to her boyfriend and hurried to the Jeep. I met my dad at the front door just in time to see their car reach the end of the street, tyre streaks still visible on the concrete.

      ‘Dad, they were – ’

      ‘ – I know.’ He sighed and rubbed his forehead. ‘I know, Sam.’ He sauntered back into the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge and quietly closed the garage door behind him. A minute later, I heard him slam something hard against the door. He would later emerge that afternoon in need of a bandage to cover his bloody fist.

Chapter 6

       ‘Head Over Feet’ (Alanis Morissette, Autumn, 1996)

      ‘I’m going out!’ I yelled up the stairs. I was trying a new approach. Rather than sulk in a corner, I would dance in front of them like a circus animal until they noticed me.

      ‘I won’t be back until late. Probably around midnight or 1am.’ No response. ‘It might be dangerous out there. There could be lurkers… lurking.’ OK, so this wasn’t going to plan. Had Mum even heard me? Did they remember I still lived here?

      I pulled open the garage door and saw my dad hovering over a voltage box with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver in his hands. A pint glass of lager sat on the wooden workbench behind him, one third full.

      ‘Dad? I’m heading out.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘I won’t be back until late so don’t wait up.’

      ‘Right.’

      I waited around for him to ask me where I was going and why I wasn’t going to be back until late. And whether I had enough money in case I needed to take a taxi home, and if I was going to be warm enough in only a T-shirt in November. After a few minutes, he glanced up at me standing in the doorway awkwardly. ‘What?’ he asked.

      Right. That’s it, I guess. Nothing more to say.

      Debbie’s house was about a ten-minute walk from the school bus stop, Dougie had told me. Hunched over his note, passed to me in Physics on Thursday during theoretical discussions of kinetic motion, I reread it for the twentieth time. His Fs looped and curled inwards and his Ss lazily hung down. But even after the twentieth time, I questioned whether the note was for me. Perhaps it was for the boy that sat behind me, or the girl who sat at the table next to me. Why would it be for me? Why would I be invited to a ‘hang out’ on Friday night? I was nobody.

      I had gone to sleep that Thursday night with the note tucked under my pillow, as if the wish wouldn’t come true without it. I thought I’d blown it by the time the note came to me. I had seen them earlier that week in the hallways and at the cafeteria but they’d been deep in conversation and I hadn’t wanted to interrupt them. By Thursday morning, I was sick with anxiety. I wanted so badly to be friends with them. The only thing that had the potential of pulling me out of this nightmarish hole was Dougie and Izzy. Without them my future at Knightsbridge Academy was bleak, like the many headlines splashed across the local newspapers that week.

      A part of me wondered how I must appear. I could see myself from the outside, looking desperate and socially hungry. But I couldn’t stop. I needed them to like me. I needed them to want me. I just needed to be needed, for once.

      I had even got the bus to the city center the day after the music club and bought a faded grey Ramones T-shirt from the too-cool-for-me records store on Abbot Avenue. The shop assistant had given me the ‘raised eyebrow’ for a long and visible moment before ringing up the sale. I had tried not to cough at the forty-quid price tag that came with being quirky and innovative.