Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘This your boyfriend?’ he called. He was sneering at me, lazily, but only for effect. He put his fingers on Chloe’s shoulder, squeezing her there and guiding her over the gravel towards me and Wilson, but his eyes were hazy and kept darting back to the car.

Chloe was twitching. She looked a state – her hair was a mess and she kept patting at it. She was biting at the skin on her lips and rearranging the collar on her jumper to cover the tiny purple marks on her neck.

‘Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, Carl. We’ve been meeting in secret all this time because we knew you couldn’t handle the competition,’ I said, before I could stop myself. And bang goes the lift home, I thought.

Carl looked surprised, and then laughed right at me. A real laugh, open and genuine.

‘Cheeky bitch,’ he said, and laughed again, shaking his head like he didn’t know I could be funny. Thought I was scared of him. Chloe looked at Carl, didn’t like it.

‘You cow!’ she mouthed poisonously. I looked away.

Wilson started to laugh too, and Carl laughed with him for a while, exaggerating and slapping his thigh. It went on until Carl reached over and pushed the ball through Wilson’s arms. It rolled between his feet and through the grass. Wilson chased it but it went into the hedge again before he could grab it. When he bent over to pull it out Carl put his foot in the middle of Wilson’s backside and gently pushed until he toppled over. When he got up his face was red, his hair stuck up in tufts. His nose was running and he was outraged. It did look funny.

I stepped away from Wilson and went to stand nearer to Carl and Chloe. Wilson scowled and rubbed the back of his trousers with his free hand.

‘You and your jailbait, yeah!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell my dad you and your jailbait did this to my hand,’ he said, and held up the hand with the scratch that I thought he hadn’t noticed.

‘Wilson.’ I said it quietly, because Carl wasn’t laughing now, wasn’t doing anything except looking at him with slack, dull eyes.

‘Tell him you and your jailbait made my face bleed. Ripped my new coat. Took my ball. He’ll have you.’

‘Shut up, Wilson,’ I said, not looking at him. I tried to take a step sideways, to get between Carl and him, but Wilson was already coming forward, getting as close to Carl as he could, standing up straight as if he was preparing to fight. Wilson was bigger than Carl – taller, wider – Donald would have called his trainers canoes. But he was soft and slow and he didn’t know what Carl was like.

‘What did you say?’ Carl asked quietly, as if he was genuinely interested. He cupped a hand behind his ear. ‘Didn’t hear you, mate. Speak up a bit. Go on. Don’t be shy.’

‘Tell my dad. Not scared of you. Bullies only pick on people they’re scared of. You’re just jealous. You and the jailbait!’

‘Say that again for me, will you?’

Carl didn’t look angry, he was glittering with calm. He was hard – but relaxed – teeth not even clenched, arms loose at his sides, fingers curled against his palms. He snapped his arm like a whip and clipped Wilson around the side of the head before he could duck. It was the sort of thing his dad probably did to him when he caught him smoking.

He’ll be all right, I thought. It was a hard slap though, and made a noise like Carl had hit wood.

Wilson put his free hand on his head like it was starting to rain. He cried with his mouth open. Spit bubbled between his gappy teeth and snot came out of his nose. It was noisy. He was wailing in his sing-song hooty voice, still going on about his dad and jailbait. It was like it was a foreign word, one he didn’t understand. I don’t think he’d ever heard it before and it was the novelty of it that was making it stick in his mind. That, and because it had something to do with sex. But I could tell Carl couldn’t stand it.

Chloe laughed.

‘You stupid monger,’ she said, hawked, and spat at his shoes. There was blood in the spit from where she’d bitten her lip.

Wilson cried louder and dropped his ball again. He bent over and tried to wipe the thick froth off the toe of his shoe. Carl raised his foot and I thought he was going to kick Wilson in the head. I opened my mouth but I was frozen, and then Carl let it fly and kicked the ball, really belted it. It went right over the hawthorn hedge and disappeared into the bushes and woods behind.

‘Aw, what did you do that for?’ Wilson said. He rubbed his hand clean on his coat then rubbed his face with his hand. He was still ready to smile and forgive us. He was still ready for it to be a joke.

‘Go on then, go and get it,’ Carl said. ‘I’ll give you a headstart.’

Wilson disappeared through the hedge. ‘Are you going to count me?’ he called, as if it was hide and seek. I could hear him crunching through dry twigs and leaves, blundering through the edges of the woods. He was counting himself, ‘Seven crocodile… eight crocodile… nine croco—’

Carl cupped his hands around his mouth.

‘I’m going to come and fucking belt you!’ he bellowed, the pitch of his voice sliding upwards. ‘Ready or noooo-ot!’

Chloe laughed, and from deep in the woods came the faint sound of wailing.

‘I bet he just shat himself,’ Carl said.

‘Let’s go, shall we?’ I said.

Carl shook his head. He was grinning and counting down from five silently, holding up his fingers to Chloe who was smiling and tugging at her collar. When he got to zero all his fingers were tucked into his palm and he clenched them into a fist and set off running, forcing his way through the hedge with a shout.

‘Better get moving!’ he called, and I could hear Wilson shrieking. It was so high-pitched, so obviously terrified, that I think I might have laughed if I’d heard it before I met him.

I might have laughed.

I think I laughed.

We waited. Chloe took a pot of lip balm from her pocket and pulled one of her gloves off with her teeth so she could apply it. I moved away from her and tried to look through the hedge.

‘Where is he? Shall we go after him?’

‘What’s your problem?’ she said.

‘Forget it.’

‘You’ve had a face on you all afternoon. We didn’t need to bring you out, you know. If you wanted to stay in and watch It’s a Wonderful Life with your grand— I mean, your parents, you should have just said.’

‘Fuck off, will you?’ I said, and stepped away, even though there was nowhere to go.

‘Be glad to. Been trying to get ten minutes with Carl without you cracking on for the last hour.’

‘You’ve been in the car for the last hour,’ I said. ‘If all he wants to do is get off with you, why don’t you go back to his house? Why have I got to come all the time? Is he into being watched or something?’

Chloe smirked. ‘His mum would be as keen on me as my parents would be on him,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated.’

I scowled. ‘You could always go and hide out in his darkroom ,’ I said and Chloe laughed again.

‘You’re so jealous,’ she said, ‘and anyway, Carl’s been busy. We’ve got to snatch our time when we can take it. It isn’t easy for us, you know.’

I hated it when she pulled that ‘us’ stuff on me – rubbing it in, always, that she had a boyfriend and I didn’t. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t even want a boyfriend, not really. But now Chloe had one it was the next big thing I needed to do, and suitable candidates had been slow in appearing.

‘It’d be nice if we could do something, for once, without him or Emma turning up,’ I said. ‘It didn’t used to be like this.’

‘Never mind,’ she giggled, ‘you found a friend, didn’t you?’

‘I want to go home.’