Steven Camden - It’s About Love

“Anyway, we still up for the Electric later?”

Leia says, “Yeah,” then looks at me. “You up for it? They’re showing Ghostbusters One and Two. Classics.”

And it’s horrible. All of it, the staring, the nickname, his face, the fact that they’re cinema buddies, her smiling.

“No,” I say. “I’m busy.”

Leia’s face straightens, but she doesn’t seem that bothered.

Then people start packing up for the end of the lesson and I’m so glad I get to leave, I think I actually smile.

I buy a jacket potato from the refectory and take it all the way down the hill to the graveyard to get away. I sit on a bench dedicated to a man called Harold who used to clean the graves. A couple of crows are fighting over what looks like a chicken bone in front of a dirty white marble stone slumped at an angle.

I’m telling myself I have no real reason to be angry, that I knew a lot of people would already know each other and be all confident and that. But him? Her ex? Mr Squeaky Clean ‘I’m a young Brad Pitt’ Simeon?

Forget her. Keep to yourself. You’re not like this lot.

I dig a crater into the tuna with my white plastic fork. She said he likes to cause trouble. Maybe he was just saying it to wind her up, test me out.

She didn’t deny it though, did she?

She didn’t. How long did they go out for? Why are they still friends? Is that the kind of boy she likes?

I’m digging into yellow potato now. If he’s her type, then …

Digging with my fork.

They’re just a bunch of rich kids, they’re not like you, forget them.

But she seemed cool. Still digging.

Did she stare?

The fork hits the bottom of the box.

Did she stare?

I’m still pressing.

The fork snaps.

Yes. She stared.

I get off my second bus early and walk round to Dad’s place.

I use the key he cut for me and, as I climb the dark stairs, I remember the afternoon I helped him move in. A year and a half ago. I remember watching his big body almost get wedged between the walls as he climbed up to the small attic studio flat. It’d been coming for a while; Marc getting sent down was just the rock that tipped the scales.

I come here sometimes when Dad’s at work. Mostly I just watch a film and then leave. The whole place is the size of our living room.

The only window is the skylight and in the afternoon it shines a rectangular spotlight on to the floor where the white lino of the kitchen corner meets the mud-brown carpet. It’s like a rubbish fairytale:

The Giant Who Lived in the Box Attic.

The sofa bed’s still folded out and the sheets are strewn. There’s an extra-large pizza box on the floor by the TV and empty lager cans on the draining board. I open the skylight to try and let out the man smell and start to tidy up. I stuff all the rubbish into a bin bag. I scrub the two plates and mug that have clearly been there for a few days. I fold the thin mattress of the bed back into a sofa and I use the dustpan and brush to sweep the carpet underneath. It feels like setting up a board game.

When I’m done, I sit on the sofa and look round the room. I always imagine this place is mine. My own flat, away from everyone. Just a toilet, sink, fridge, sofa, TV and enough DVDs to get lost in.

Simeon. The platonic ex. Forget them.

On the tiny chest of drawers in the corner to my left there’s a photograph of all four of us at Frankie & Benny’s. Dad got the waiter to take it. Him and Mum are in the middle, with Marc and me on the outsides. I take it from the drawers and hold it in my lap.

It’s Marc’s fifteenth birthday, so I’m eleven, fresh-faced, smooth skin, my hair longer and parted at the side. I remember Mum burning her mouth on her calzone and sucking an ice cube, Dad doing the ice-cream sundae challenge and winning a T-shirt.

I touch my face in the picture, feeling the smooth hard glass. Then it catches the light and I see my reflection. My face now, superimposed over our family. Breathe.

The afternoon quiet of the room. Just me on a fold-up sofa, in a shady attic, holding the past in my lap. Somewhere now, in a house probably twenty times bigger than this place, Leia is getting ready to go to the cinema with her platonic ex and his perfect skin.

I leave the photo on the sofa and lower down into press-up position, but on my clenched fists, like Marc used to do them. My weight presses down through my knuckles into the floor as I start and the pain is good. One, two. I turn my head to the side and my eyes run along the spines of the DVDs against the skirting board. Three.

Guilt is the worst. Four. Burn me with angry, choke me with sad, anything but guilt. Five, six. Guilt lives in your skin, like lead. Seven. Sitting there, heavy. Eight. And poisonous. Nine. Telling you not to forget. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I see Ghostbusters, the white letters against black, and I stop. I can feel the muscles across my back pulled taut as I stay there, suspended, my knuckles raw from the friction and the pressure, and I see Leia, giggling as she hands the usher her ticket, Simeon smiling next to her as he wraps his tanned arm round her shoulders. I stare at the DVD.

“Come on, sleepy.” Dad’s voice wakes me up. I feel the pain in my neck as I sit up from resting on the sharp arm of the sofa bed. The light is on and through the skylight I can see a rectangle of black sky.

“Your mum was worried. Since when do you come on a Monday?”

I shrug. Dad nods. “I’ll drop you back.” His hands are smeared with oil as he ejects the Ghostbusters DVD and files it back into the row on the carpet.

I look at my phone and see four missed calls from Mum. It’s half ten. She’ll already be at the hospital. Dad hands me a twenty pound note. “Here, for cleaning up the place.”

He smiles. I take the money. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Come on, I wanna get to the chippy before it shuts.” He rubs his barrel stomach as I pull on my trainers and follow him out the door.

EXT. – NIGHT

An old black Vauxhall Astra drives along the night-time road, reflected streetlights rolling over its bonnet.

“So it’s going all right, then?”

He’s watching the road as he drives and I’m thinking, every conversation feels easier in the car. Staring forward and talking should be standard procedure.

“Yeah,” I say, “It’s fine.”

“Not too much homework?”

“We’ve only just started really. It’ll be fine, Dad.”

We’re behind the same bus that I catch home from town.

Dad glances my way. “And what about girls?”

I think about Leia and Simeon and my legs tighten. “No.”

Dad shrugs his boulder shoulders and I notice he’s not wearing his seatbelt again. “What? I’m just asking. New pond, new fish, strapping young shark like yourself. You’ll make a killing.”

I shake my head. “What the hell does that even mean? Sharks? In a pond?”

And he’s laughing. “I dunno. It’s an analogy.”

Now I’m laughing. “Oh, it’s an analogy, is it, Joseph? And since when do you make analogies?”

“Well, when your boy goes off to college and starts mingling with college types, you need to step your game up, don’t ya?”

He grips the steering wheel dramatically, pretending like he’s trying to control a spiralling jet fighter, and waits for my reply. I just look at him, then blow a raspberry with my tongue. “There’s your analogy, old man.”

And we laugh together as we turn on to the high road.

Our laughter fades out as we drive down ours and he pulls up outside the house. You can see the hall light is on through the glass top of the front door, but we both know the house is empty.