Black Rabbit Summer (8 page)

As I studied him in the flickering candlelight, the angles of his face seemed to shift, and just for a moment he looked
exactly
like Nicole. I’d experienced the same thing with Eric before. Although they were twins, Eric and Nic weren’t exactly alike, and most of the time Eric’s face bore little resemblance to his sister’s. Physically, they were both very similar – same nose, same mouth, same eyes – but somehow the same features didn’t add up to the same thing. On Nic, they were beautiful. But on Eric, for some reason, they just didn’t quite fit together, and this gave his face a strange kind of almost-beauty – neither ugly nor beautiful, but at the same time both ugly
and
beautiful. Sometimes, like now, when Eric’s face momentarily became Nic’s, it was like watching a blurred picture slowly coming into focus – becoming what it was meant to be. This time though, as Eric’s face morphed into Nic’s, it also took on the weird patterns and shapes I’d seen on Nic’s face earlier… triangles, rectangles, cones and pyramids… and when he moved his hand, dropping his dead cigarette to the ground, I saw trails in the air, slow-motion after-images of the movement…

I closed my eyes.

‘I’m going,’ I heard someone say.

The voice sounded odd – slow and deep, thick and distorted.

‘You coming, Nic?’

When I opened my eyes again, Eric had got to his feet and was looking over at Nic. His face was pure Eric again.

‘Nic?’ he said.

‘I’ll catch up with you at the fair,’ she told him. ‘I just want a word with Pete.’

I looked at her.

Ignoring me, she turned to Pauly. ‘In private.’

‘What?’ he said.

‘I need to talk to Pete about something.’

‘So?’ Pauly shrugged. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

Eric nudged him with his foot. ‘Come on, don’t be such a wanker.’

Pauly looked up at him and grinned. ‘You gonna buy me some candyfloss?’

Eric smiled. ‘I’ll kick the shit out of you if you don’t move your arse.’

‘Fair enough,’ Pauly said.

As Eric helped him to his feet, Nic glanced over at Raymond. ‘Do you mind?’ she said, smiling at him.

He stared at her for a moment, blinked his eyes, then looked at me.

I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t feel right, asking him to leave. I knew he wouldn’t feel comfortable on his own with Pauly and Eric, so he probably wouldn’t want to go on to the fair with them, and I didn’t like the idea of him going home on his own. It was dark now. It was ten o’clock, Saturday night, and that’s not a good time for
anyone
to be on their own in Back Lane, let alone Raymond. But, at the same time, I didn’t want to embarrass him by letting the others think he needed looking after.

∗

I don’t know how much of that is true. I suppose some of it is, maybe most of it. I mean, I really
was
worried about Raymond, and I really
did
feel responsible for him… but I know, deep down, that my overriding desire was to be on my own with Nicole.

I looked at her now, wanting to ask – how long will we be? – but I just couldn’t say it.

She smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry.’

I didn’t know what she meant.

I turned back to Raymond. He was still looking at me, still just waiting. It might have made things a bit easier for me if there’d been some anger in his eyes, or even a bit of disappointment or something, but there was nothing. Nothing but trust.

‘If you want to wait –’ I started to say.

‘It’s all right,’ he said simply. ‘I’ll see you at the fair.’

I stared at him, surprised. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded and started to get up.

I just watched him, unable to speak.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, smiling at me.

‘Right…’ I muttered.

I sat there in silence, watching them go: Eric first, stooping quickly through the door; then Pauly, leering over his shoulder at us; and then Raymond. I thought he’d look back at me as he left, maybe say a few words, or wave goodbye. But he didn’t. He just ducked down through the doorway and disappeared into the night.

I listened to him following Eric and Pauly down the bank, their fading footsteps stumbling through the darkness, then I turned my attention to Nic. She’d shuffled away from the wall and was sitting in front of me now – her legs crossed, her face glowing palely in the candlelight, her eyes fixed steadily on mine.

‘So,’ she said quietly, ‘here we are again.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Just the two of us.’

I wiped sweat from my forehead.

She took off her shoes and smiled at me. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’

Everything was kind of OK for a while. Me and Nic just sat there talking about stuff – Paris, Stella, school, college – and it didn’t feel too awkward or anything. We were both a bit drunk, I suppose, and a bit whacked out from the dope, and Nic kept taking quick little sips from the bottle of tequila that Pauly had left behind, so I’m not sure if either of us really knew what we were talking about. But it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, the way Nicole was jabbering away – spewing out words like a machine gun – I hardly had to say anything at all. So I didn’t. I just sat there, watching her as she talked – staring at her mouth, her moving lips… the candlelit colours shimmering on her skin. The more I stared, the more vivid the colours became, and as they grew brighter and brighter, the darkness of the den seemed to close in all around us. It was a nice feeling, like sitting in a bubble of light, and there was something about it that made me feel I was inside something alive. It was as if the den had some kind of primitive consciousness, and now that the others had gone, it was adjusting its size to make us feel cosier.

‘Are you all right?’ Nicole said suddenly.

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘Your eyes… they look really spacey.’

‘Spacey?’

‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘Like big black saucers.’

‘Must be the drink,’ I said.

Nic laughed. ‘You never could handle it, could you?’

‘What do you mean?’

She smiled. ‘You always used to get like this at a den party.’

‘Like what?’

‘All dreamy and stupid… like you’re living in a different world.’

‘Dreamy
and
stupid?’ I said.

She laughed again. ‘Stupid in a nice way.’

‘So you’re saying I’m stupidly nice, is that it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, looking into my eyes, ‘but mostly just nice.’

Everything seemed to change then. The atmosphere, the heat, the silence… it was all suddenly different. Heavier, stiller, more intense. I could taste the dark sweetness of Nic’s perfume in the air. I could feel the sweat oozing from my skin.

‘What happened to us, Pete?’ Nicole said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know… me and you, everything we did, everything we had… I mean, how come we ended up so far apart?’

‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘Things change, I suppose…’

‘They never changed for me.’

She was leaning in close to me now, staring so intently into my eyes that I had to look away for a moment. I didn’t really believe what she was saying, and I knew she didn’t believe it either – she knew as well as I did that we
had
both changed – but as she moved a little closer to me, and I felt her hand on my thigh… well, I couldn’t have cared less about the truth just then.

‘Do you remember that time in the bathroom?’ she said softly.

I looked up at her. ‘The party at your cousin’s place?’

‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘We came pretty close then, didn’t we?’

I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry.

She said, ‘Do you think we would have done it if her parents hadn’t come back?’

‘Maybe…’

She moved her hand on my thigh. ‘It doesn’t seem right…’

‘What?’

‘That we never got round to it.’

I was feeling incredibly strange now – my heart was thudding, my skin was tingling all over, my whole body was buzzing with a warm liquid energy.

Nic said, ‘And now we’ll probably never see each other again.’

We looked at each other, knowing each other.

Nothing needed saying.

Nic’s eyes never left mine as she sat back and started to ease off her vest. I watched, mesmerized, as she crossed her arms, slowly pulled the vest over her head, and dropped it to the ground. I tried to stay cool, forcing myself to concentrate on her eyes… but it wasn’t easy. Her eyes were burning into me now, watching my reaction as she raised her arms and ran her fingers through her hair, subtly flexing her body.

‘You can look if you want,’ she said.

I looked.

She moved her hands slowly down her belly, rested them for a moment on the waist of her jeans, and then she started popping open the buttons. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything. All I could do was sit there and watch, all dreamy and stupid, as she leaned back a little, slid out of her jeans, then got down on all fours and started crawling towards me.

She looked like some kind of miracle beast – her naked flesh in the candlelight, her dark eyes on fire – and for a second or two I felt strangely frightened. But the fear was nothing compared to everything else I was feeling. I was physically hurting now. Aching inside. My heart was pumping so hard that I thought it was going to burst out of my skin.

As Nic crawled up to me, I started moving my legs to give her some room.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Just stay there.’

She got to her knees, straddled my lap, and leaned in close to me, resting her hands on my shoulders.

‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’

‘No…’ I muttered.

She stared into my eyes for a moment, her head cocked slightly to one side, then she gently ran her finger down my face.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she said.

I wanted to say – what do you
think
I’m thinking about? – but I didn’t. I just looked at her.

She smiled again. ‘You know what you said about Stella earlier on?’

‘Stella…?’

‘Yeah, you know… when you told Pauly that you hadn’t seen those pictures of her on the Internet.’ Nic raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Is that right? You really haven’t seen them?’

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to think about Stella… I didn’t want to think about
anything.
I put my hands on Nic’s hips.

‘I’m not interested in Stella,’ I said, trying to change the subject.

Nic took hold of my hands, keeping them still. ‘No,’ she said, ‘neither am I. I’m just curious, that’s all.’

I felt the first flutter of something I didn’t want to feel then.

Nic said, ‘You don’t
mind
me asking, do you?’

‘No,’ I sighed, ‘of course not. I just don’t see –’

‘I only want to know if you’ve seen them or not.’

Her voice was a little bit slurred now, and there was something unsettling in her eyes – a strange kind of uncontrolled steadiness.

She carried on smiling at me. ‘Can you imagine how Stella must feel? I mean, she must
know
what everyone’s doing when they look at those pictures… how do you think that makes her feel?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure I really want to talk about it –’

‘I mean, God… if that was me…’ She looked away for a moment, her eyes gazing at nothing, then suddenly she turned back to me. ‘Would you look at naked pictures of
me
on the Internet?’

‘Listen, Nic –’

‘No, come on, Pete,’ she said, pouting her lips and running her fingers through her hair. ‘What d’you think?’ She struck a pose – hands behind her head, thrusting herself forward – and although I knew she was only joking, mocking the artificiality of pornographic pictures, I kind of got the impression that she was only half-joking too. But while a part of me was still in thrall to the miracle of her half-naked body, she didn’t really look very sexy any more. She just looked drunk.

‘You don’t have to do this, Nic,’ I said quietly.

‘Do what?’

‘You know…’

She glanced down at herself, then looked up, smiling seductively. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?’

‘No, it’s not that… I just think –’

‘What? You just think what?’

Everything felt wrong now. Nic felt wrong, I felt wrong, the whole situation felt wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her. ‘I don’t think we should do this.’

Her face froze. ‘You what?’

‘I just can’t…’

She smiled awkwardly, glancing downwards. ‘Is it… you know… is something wrong?’

‘No… no, nothing’s wrong. I just don’t think this is the right time.’

She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘This,’ I said. ‘Me and you, it just doesn’t feel right…’

She grinned, shifting herself in my lap. ‘It feels all right to me.’

I moved away from her.

She stopped grinning and her eyes went cold. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you? I mean, Jesus
Christ
…’

‘Come on, Nic,’ I said, reaching out to calm her down. ‘There’s no need to get angry…’

She slapped my hand away.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I was only trying to –’

‘Fuck you, Pete,’ she hissed.

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I just sat there, letting her glare at me. Her face had completely changed now. It was dead-looking, vicious, hard as nails. Her once-glowing skin was dull and white, and her eyes were black with rage.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she said nastily.

‘Of course I’m not –’

‘Humiliating me.’

‘I didn’t mean to –’

‘Making me feel like a whore.’

I shook my head. ‘Listen, Nic. I’m sorry, OK? I’m
really
sorry. I know how you must feel –’

‘You don’t know how I
feel.
’

She pushed herself away from me then, shoving me hard in the chest, and all I could do was sit there and watch as she picked up her clothes and started to get dressed. She was stumbling all over the place now, hopping on one leg, trying to pull on her jeans, almost falling over…

‘Do you
mind
?’ she said, glaring over her shoulder at me.

I lowered my eyes.

‘Christ,’ I heard her mutter.