Belinda Bauer - Blacklands

SL’s first communication had heralded the most interesting four months of Avery’s entire incarceration, and he was loath for it to end. Every missive had been a reminder of his heyday, and everyone likes to be reminded of their finest hour, he reasoned.

Week five of Avery’s unilateral moratorium brought despondency. SL was tough. Avery lay awake at nights and worried. He resented it bitterly; his nights had become oases of pleasure since SL’s first letter had allowed him to reexamine his memories in fresh detail in a way he’d thought was long gone. But now he lay awake, unable to recapture those baser feelings and fretting instead over practicalities like the unreliability of the postal system, or the thought that SL might have concocted the correspondence as a kind of sick hoax to bring about the very punishment he was now experiencing.

It was this last thought that finally raised the anger in Avery that kept him strong. Anger was an emotion he had rarely given in to since his arrest. Avery knew that anger was counterproductive to life inside, which required resignation above all else.

Resignation had been his constant companion for years, with his anger at Finlay or Leaver never being allowed to break the surface, although he could feel it boiling in his guts whenever he saw either of them.

Now, in the pitch-black cell which did not even shed the light of a half-full moon on his darkness, Avery mentally added SL to his short but heartfelt list of fury, and resolved that his erstwhile correspondent would get nothing from him—not a word, not a symbol, not a carefully folded piece of Avery’s shit-stained toilet paper—until he’d said sorry.

It was five weeks and four days since SL’s last letter before Avery received the next one.

There was no map, no initials, no question marks, just the single word:

Avery grinned. It had more grudge than grovel about it, but it would do. SL had learned the lesson and had realized that he was not in control in this game, and that Avery should therefore be accorded due deference. With that single word he had acknowledged Avery’s power.

Now Avery sat and wondered how best to wield it.

IF ARNOLD AVERY HAD REALIZED HOW STEVEN HAD STRUGGLED to write that single word, he would have been more appreciative of it.

Once he’d recognized that he’d offended and needed to make peace, Steven had written a dozen letters and posted none. They ranged from a rambling litany of the reasons he was so desperate for knowledge, through a sycophantic plea for guidance, to an angry rant at the callousness of the distant prisoner.

So it had gone on. A roller coaster of emotions that lasted for weeks and left Steven’s mind sick with pleading and dizzy with anger. In short, he had found it a lot harder to swallow what little pride he had than he’d thought he would.

Finally—going with the brevity that had brought him the genius of “Sincerely”—he simply wrote “Sorry,” hoping that Avery would read into it whatever underlying motivation would best serve Steven’s purpose. He could do no less, but he was not prepared to do more.

Another week passed, during which Lewis claimed that Chantelle Cox had a crush on him.

It was not the first time Lewis had been convinced of the power of his own sexual attraction. Last summer Lewis had casually told him Melanie Spark had let him touch her tit. Steven had been stunned and it was only his careful and insistent probing that revealed that it had been through a cardigan and a blouse, and had really been more of a rib, and that fickle Melanie had immediately elbowed Lewis in the throat for it. When Steven hesitantly suggested that—just maybe—Melanie Spark hadn’t been an active participant in the tit-touching episode, Lewis had merely grinned at him pityingly and revealed that women always changed their minds about sex; that it was what they were known for.

But apparently Chantelle Cox had not changed her mind; at least Lewis had no fresh bruises to indicate that she might have.

“Lalo and me were the snipers and she ran round the back of the shed and I went after her—”

“Where was Lalo?”

“He was too scared. Last time he chased her round there she hit him with the hose. But I went round cos I knew Dad had used the hose to wash the car yesterday and it was out front. And she was just standing there, so I shot her, but she wouldn’t fall down cos of that muck, you know?”

Steven knew. He’d died into the muck round the back of Lewis’s shed a few times.

“So I says, ‘If you don’t fall down, I’m taking you prisoner,’ so she says, ‘Okay, then,’ so I put her arms behind her and tied them with my jumper, right?”

Steven nodded. He’d also been tied with Lewis’s jumper on a number of occasions. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t hard to get out of.

“And then she kissed me, right on the lips.”

“She kissed you?”

“She kissed me.”

“With tongues?”

“Tongues?” Lewis looked puzzled.

“Yeah,” said Steven. “Did she put her tongue in your mouth?”

A look of revulsion flashed across Lewis’s face. “That’s disgusting!”

Steven flushed. Somewhere he’d heard that that was what girls did, but now—flustered by Lewis’s instant disapproval—he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it and whether the source was reputable. His natural deference to Lewis in all things worldly was an integral part of their friendship and now he felt that not only had he stepped out of line but he’d stepped out of line into a bog, and he needed to turn around fast and get back onto solid ground.

He shrugged and looked apologetic. Lewis scowled at him.

“Did you touch her tit too?” Steven thought that handing Lewis the opportunity to brag would be his path back to terra firma, and he wasn’t wrong.

Lewis looked glazed for a moment and then nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, both of them. At the same time. I got a stiffie and everything.”

Steven knew it was a lie. Not all of it. He was sure Chantelle Cox had kissed—or been kissed by—Lewis. But he could always tell when Lewis left his own path and strayed haphazardly and inexpertly into the minefield of lies. A tiny, shifty look in his eyes preceded any such deviation, as if his inner eye were scanning the horizon for the possible pitfalls of his imminent dishonesty. Steven always let it go. It was like the good half of a sandwich. What was the point in arguing?

And besides, he thought with a sudden rush of unfamiliar maturity, just last week he’d apologized to a real-life serial killer; allowing Lewis his imaginary stiffie behind the garden shed seemed paltry by comparison.

Plus, kissing Chantelle Cox was something to boast about. She wasn’t that pretty, and she was a tomboy, but she definitely had little breasts, although she never teased boys with them the way Alison Lovacott did. Apparently. Steven had heard that Alison Lovacott had flashed her boobs to John Cubby in the lunch queue. He could hardly believe it, but if it had happened to anybody it would have happened to John Cubby, who captained the Under-16s soccer team and was plainly the best-looking boy in the school.