Why not just find me at school?”
For a second, he genuinely seems to be offended. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” He laughs. “You’re like a ghost!”
It takes a lot of willpower not to just turn round and leave.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’d seen you before.”
Jesus Christ. He already told me that.
“You told me that yesterd—”
“No, not at Higgs. I saw you when you came to look round Truham. Last year. It was me who took you round the school.”
The revelation blossoms. I remember exactly now. Michael Holden had shown me attentively round Truham when I was deciding whether to go there for sixth form. He’d asked me what A levels I wanted to do, and whether I liked Higgs very much, and whether I had any hobbies, and whether I cared much about sports. In fact, everything he’d said had been utterly unremarkable.
“But …” It’s impossible. “But you were so … normal.”
He shrugs and smiles and the raindrops on his face almost make him seem as if he’s crying. “There’s a time and a place for being normal. For most people, normal is their default setting. But for some, like you and me, normal is something we have to bring out, like putting on a suit for a posh dinner.”
What, now he’s being profound?
“Why did you need to tell me this? Why did you need to track me down? Why was it that important?”
He shrugs again. “It wasn’t, I guess. But I wanted you to know. And when I want to do something I usually do it.”
I stare at him. Nick and Charlie were right. He’s absolutely insane.
He holds up a hand and sends me a slight wave.
“See you soon, Tori Spring.”
And then he wanders away. I’m left standing under the broken lamp post in my black jumper and the rain, wondering whether I’m feeling anything yet and realising that it’s all very funny because it’s all very true.
I HEAD INSIDE, go into the dining room and say hello to my family. They’re still at dinner, as usual. Well, except Oliver. Since dinner’s kind of a two to three-hour job in our house, Oliver’s always allowed to leave the table once he’s done and I can hear him playing Mario Kart in the living room. I decide to join him. If I could swap bodies with someone for a day, I would choose Oliver.
“Toriiii!” As soon as I enter, he rolls over on the futon and stretches his arm towards me like a zombie rising out of the grave. He must have got yoghurt all down his school jumper today. And he has paint on his face. “I can’t win on Rainbow Road! Help me!”
I sigh, sit down on the futon next to him and pick up the spare Wii remote. “This track is impossible, bro.”
“No!” he whines. “Nothing’s impossible. I think the game’s cheating.”
“The game can’t cheat.”
“It is. It’s cheating on purpose.”
“It’s not cheating you, Ollie.”
“Charlie can win. It just doesn’t like me.”
I produce a large and exaggerated gasp, springing up from the futon. “Are you suggesting that Charlie is better at Mario Kart than moi?” I start to shake my head. “Nope. Nuh-uh. I’m the Mario Kart Empress.”
Oliver laughs, his fluffy hair waving around atop his head. I fall back on to the futon, lift him up and sit him on my lap.
“All right,” I say. “Rainbow Road is going down.”
I don’t keep track of how long we’re playing for, but it must be quite a while because, when Mum comes in, she’s pretty irritated. And that’s extreme, for her. She’s a very emotionless person.
“Tori,” says Mum. “Oliver should have been in bed an hour ago.”
Oliver doesn’t seem to hear her. I glance up from the race.
“That’s not really my job,” I say.
Mum looks at me, expressionless.
“Oliver, it’s bedtime,” she says, still looking at me.
Oliver quits the game and trots off, high-fiving me on the way. Even when he’s gone, Mum doesn’t stop looking at me.
“Do you have something to say?” I ask.
Apparently, she doesn’t. She turns round and leaves. I get in a quick round of Luigi Circuit before heading to my own room. I don’t think my mum likes me very much. That doesn’t really matter, because I don’t really like her either.
I put the radio on and blog until the early hours. The radio is playing all this dubstep crap, but I’ve got it on quietly so I don’t care too much. I can’t be bothered to leave my bed except to make at least five trips downstairs for more diet lemonade. I check the Solitaire blog, but there’s nothing new. So I spend ages scrolling down all my favourite blogs, reblogging screencaps of Donnie Darko and Submarine and The Simpsons taken out of context. I write a couple of whiney posts about I don’t even know what and I almost change my display picture, but can’t find anything where I look normal, so I fiddle around with my blog theme’s HTML for a bit to see if I can remove the gaps between each post. I stalk Michael’s Facebook, but he seems to use it even less than I do. I watch a bit of QI, but I don’t really find it interesting or funny any more, so instead I watch Little Miss Sunshine, which I didn’t finish yesterday. I never seem to be able to finish watching a film on the same day I start it because I can’t bear the thought of the film ending.
After a while, I put my laptop by my side and lie down. I think about all the other people who were at the restaurant who are probably now pissed and getting off with each other on Lauren’s parents’ sofas. At some point I fall asleep, but I can hear all these creaky noises coming from outside and something in my brain decides that there is definitely some kind of giant and/or demon stomping around in the road so I get up and close the window just to make sure that whatever it is cannot get inside.
When I get back into bed, every single thing that you could possibly think about in one day decides to come to me all at once and suddenly there’s a small lightning storm inside my head. I think about Solitaire, and then I think about Michael Holden and why he said we should be friends and what he was really like when he was at Truham. Then I remember Lucas and how embarrassed he was, and I wonder why he made all that effort trying to find me. Then I remember his Hawaiian shirt which still enormously irritates me because I hate to think that he’s become some indie band wannabe. So I open my eyes and wander around the Internet to take my mind off it all, and, once I feel relatively okay again, I fall asleep with the glare of my blog home page warming my face and the hum of my laptop soothing my mind like crickets at a campsite.
WE DIDN’T EXPECT anything more from Solitaire. We thought the one prank would be the end of it.
We were quite a way off.
On Wednesday, all the clocks magically vanished and were replaced by pieces of paper reading ‘Tempus Fugit’. It was funny at first, but after a few hours when you’re midway through a lesson and you can’t check your phone and you have no way of finding out what the time is – well, it pretty much makes you want to scratch out your eyeballs.
On the same day, there was hysteria in school assembly when the tannoy started playing Justin Timberlake’s