Mhairi McFarlane - Don’t You Forget About Me

He was lean, with a pointed chin; it gave him a slightly underfed look. He was Irish, signalled by the scruffy-short tar-black hair and pale skin. Some wags called him Gerry Adams, but not to his face because apparently his older brother was nails.

Lucas was looking up at me, warily, with dark, serious eyes. I was taken aback by how easily I could read his startled apprehension. Would I make any disgust towards him humiliatingly public? Was this going to be harrowing? Did he need to brace?

In seeing his concern, I suddenly saw myself. I felt bad that I was the kind of person he’d fear that from.

‘Sorry to foist on you,’ I said, as I dropped down into my chair, and felt the tension ease by a millimetre. (I liked to use elevated vocabulary but in an ironic, throwaway manner, in case everyone thought I was trying to show off. Mrs Pemberton so had my number.)

‘Here’s your question to work on together until the end of the lesson, and we’ll discuss your joint findings on Friday: is Wuthering Heights about love? And if so, what kind? Nominate a note taker,’ Mrs Pemberton said.

Lucas and I gave each other uneasy smiles.

‘You’re the thinker so I best be the writer,’ Lucas said, scrawling the topic across a sheet of lined A4.

‘Am I? Thanks.’

I smiled again, encouragingly. I saw Lucas brighten. I rifled my memory bank for any stray useful fact about him. He’d only turned up in sixth form, partly why he was someone out on the periphery of things.

He always wore the same dark t-shirts with half faded-out pictures on them, transfers that had fragmented and splintered in the wash, and three red and blue pieces of string as bracelets. I recall some of the boys calling him ‘the gypsy’ for that. (But not to his face, because his older brother was nails.) In the common room, he often sat by himself, reading music magazines, Dr Marten boot-clad foot balanced on knee.

‘I agree with you about Heathcliff. He’s a werewolf more than a person, isn’t he?’ he said.

I realised I’d spent two years in the same building as Lucas, the same rooms as him, and we’d had never had a conversation before. He spoke softly, with a slight Irish lilt. I vaguely expected a local accent. I’d paid him no attention whatsoever.

‘Yeah! Like a big angry dog.’

Lucas smiled at me and wrote.

‘I don’t know, it annoys me Cathy has to take the blame for the whole story,’ I said. ‘She makes one wrong decision and everything goes to shit for generations.’

‘I suppose if she makes the right decision there isn’t much of a plot?’

I laughed. ‘True. Then it’d just be Meet The Heathcliffs. Wait, if Heathcliff is his surname, what’s his first name?’

‘I think he has one name. Like Morrissey.’

‘Or he could be Heathcliff Heathcliff.’

‘No wonder he’s pissed off.’

I laughed. I realised: Lucas wasn’t quiet because he was dull. He watched and listened instead. He was like opening a plain wooden box and finding a stash of valuables inside. Was he plain? I reconsidered.

‘It’s not her decision though …’ Lucas said, haltingly, still testing out the ground between us. ‘I mean, isn’t it the fault of money and class and that, not her? She thinks she’s too good for him but she’s been made to think that by the Lintons. They grow up differently, after that accident with the dog. Maybe it’s all the dog’s fault.’

He chewed his biro and gave me a guarded smile. Something and everything had changed. I didn’t know yet that small moments can be incredibly large.

‘Yes. So it’s about how love is destroyed by …’ – I wanted to impress – ‘… an unhospitable environment.’

‘Is it destroyed though? She’s still haunting him as a ghost years later. I’d say it carried on, in a different form.’

‘But a twisted, bitter, no hope form, full of anger and blame, where he can’t touch her any more?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Sounds like my parents.’

I’d told jokes with some success in the past, but I don’t think I’d ever been so elated to see someone crack up. I remember noticing how white Lucas’s teeth were, and that I’d never seen his mouth open wide enough to see them before.

That was how it began, but it began -began with four words, three lessons later.

They were printed on lined A4, at the end of shared essays on ‘the role of the supernatural’. We had to swap the folder back and forth, annotating it, straining with the effort of impressing each other.

I had a second’s confusion as my sight settled on the rogue sentence, then a warmth swept up my neck and down my arms.

I love your laugh. X

It was there, in Bic blue, an unexpected page footer. It was so casual, I’d almost missed it. Why didn’t he text me? (We’d exchanged numbers, in case pressing, Brontë-related questions arose.) I knew why. A direct message was unequivocal. This could be denied if necessary.

So it was mutual, this newfound obsession with the company of Lucas McCarthy. I’d never had a spark like this before, and certainly not with a male, whose skin, I’d noticed, was like the inside of a seashell.

I’d gone from not noticing Lucas ever to being consumed by noticing him constantly. I developed the sensory awareness of an apex predator: at any time I could tell you where Lucas was in the common room, without you ever seeing my eyes flicker toward him.

Eventually, I had printed shakily underneath:

I love yours too. X

I handed the folder back to Lucas at the end of the next lesson, our eyes darting guiltily towards each other and away again. When it was once more in my possession, that page had gone missing.

I didn’t know what falling love felt like, I’d never done it before. I discovered you recognise it easily when it arrives.

We found every excuse to revise, out of hours, and the weather meant we could use the excuse of meeting outdoors, in the Botanical Gardens.

We were going on dates, but the revision aids strewn around the grass provided a fig leaf. Truly, I could’ve hugged Mrs Pemberton.

At first, we talked incessantly, devouring information. His life in Dublin, our families, our plans for the future, favourite music, films, books. This dark, serious, laconic Irish boy was an ongoing surprise. He put nothing on show, you had to find it out for yourself: not the deadpan quick humour, not the good looks he could’ve worn conspicuously simply by walking tall, not the sharp intelligence. He was self-contained. By contrast, I felt uncontained.

When I spoke, he concentrated on me intently. Through Lucas’s fascination, I saw myself differently. I was worthy. I didn’t have to try so hard.

The third time we met, in about five days, Lucas leaned over to whisper something in my ear about a group nearby, and I shivered. It was a ruse, he didn’t need to get so close, and I felt us move up a gear.

Lucas said, as he tentatively smoothed the wisps from my ponytail back into place: ‘Is your hair real?’

We collapsed in hysterics.

‘Is that the real colour! Colour! That’s what I meant. Ah, God …’

I wiped tears away. ‘Yes this wig is my real colour. I get my wiggist to match them up.’

Lucas said, unguarded and weak from the mirth: ‘It’s beautiful.’

We both gulped and looked at each other heavily and that was it, we were kissing.

After that, we started revising every day. Barrier broken with that kiss, our feelings spilled out more each time we met. Secrets were whispered between us, fears and desires, the risky intimacies piled up. He had a pet name for me. I had never been seen like this before. I had never dared to be seen like this before.