C.J. Skuse - The Deviants

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. ‘What time was the second bus?’

‘There isn’t one,’ said Corey.

Dread filled my chest. ‘What? You said there were two buses a day. One at lunch and one at tea-time.’

‘Yeah, but not on a Sunday. Reduced timetable.’

‘How are we supposed to get back?’ said Max. ‘And we still haven’t found his cat.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Fallon. ‘You can all stay at mine tonight.’

‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll get a taxi back.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Fallon, flapping her hand. ‘There’s tons of sleeping bags and duvets. You don’t have anything to get back for, do you?’ She seemed slightly desperate.

We actually didn’t. Corey’s grandparents were still on holiday and my dad wouldn’t be back for another couple of days.

‘My parents will go spasmodic if they know I’m out here,’ said Max, all twisty-face. ‘I should get back.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘we don’t have any of our stuff. Toothbrushes. We need to go.’

‘Oh please stay,’ Fallon begged. ‘We’ve got spare toothbrushes somewhere. And blankets and sleeping bags. And more alcohol.’

‘I could text them and say I’m staying at your house, Ells,’ Max suggested.

‘Yeah!’ said Fallon. ‘And we could get a takeaway too. I think the pizza place delivers out here, though I’ve never tried it. We get the leaflet though. We could have a picnic in the lounge and play Monopoly like we used to, what do you say?’ Then she turned to me, all serious-faced for a moment. ‘I’m always the boot though.’

‘Very Famous Five ,’ I said. ‘Apart from the booze.’

‘Yeah! Do you remember Jessica reading the stories to us? She gave me all her books the last… time I saw her.’

Max smiled. ‘She knew how much you loved them.’

‘I always thought we were just like them,’ she said with more than a note of sadness in her voice, ‘the five of us. Max was like Julian, the eldest and wisest.’

I snorted. ‘I didn’t know Julian was a pot head.’

‘Ella was George, the tomboy. Zane was Timmy the dog, strong and reliable. I was probably Anne.’

Max laughed. ‘Yeah, and Corey must be Dick.’

If Corey was offended by Max’s remark, he didn’t say. ‘Jessica called us the Fearless Five. That was our name.’

‘Hey, he’s right!’ said Max. ‘I’d forgotten that. Christ, that’s a blast from the past.’

‘Yeah well,’ I said, ‘we’ve all grown up a lot since then.’ I almost felt insulted by it. We weren’t little kids any more – we couldn’t play those kinds of games now. She was dangling memories before my eyes like gold stars I couldn’t reach.

‘We could be the Fearless Five again, now,’ said Fallon. ‘Only we’re four. We don’t have Zane.’ We looked at each other and smiled secretly, not knowing if she was joking.

‘I know!’ she cried. ‘The baby can be Timmy! Then there’s five of us again! Yay!’

‘What baby?’ said Corey.

‘My baby,’ she said. And that was the moment Fallon lifted up her vest to reveal a small, but definite, bump.

‘So that’s when you found out about Fallon being pregnant?’

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