Flick (12 page)

RISING PANIC

I walk home a little faster than usual after school, take the package out of my drawer and stand in the center of my room holding it, silently and motionlessly panicking.

“William!” my dad bellows up the stairs. “Will you be staying in for tea?”

“Ermm . . .” My eyes dart about the room, then out the window to the ocean. That little voice in my head comes back to me and says scornfully,
What? Are you going to throw it in the bloody water?

“WILL? TEA?”

“No ta, I'm going out. I'll see you later.” I stuff the packet in my rucksack, pull on a hoodie and jump out my window onto the garage roof, then to the ground. I grab my bike and pedal hard round to Kyle's. As I get nearer his house I try to look a little cooler, worried that the police are casing him. They could've easily tracked him through Fez. You don't know what Gav told them to get off lighter. And if Fez knew anything about it, he wouldn't say anything 'cause he wouldn't give a shit if I was picked up by a patrol car. Selfish bastard.

I throw pebbles at Kyle's second-story window like Romeo to Juliet. Then the ground-floor kitchen door opens and he leans out. “All right, our Flick?”

“Oh, hi.” I skip over, a bit embarrassed. “Erm . . . I'm fucked, Kyle. I can't wait on Fez forever. He's supposed to be calling me and letting me know who to sell it on to. But I'm keeping it in my fucking room, which my nosy dad checks.”

His forehead creases for a moment, then he smiles. “Well, mate, don't put it there.”

“I don't have anywhere else to put it, where else would I keep it, my bloody timeshare in Marbella?” I say darkly.

“What about your girlfriend's place?”

I look at him incredulously. “Are you shitting me?” I put my hand to my head. “Do you know what she'd do if she found out any of this was going on? Fucking . . . break up with me for a start . . .” I cringe with panic at this thought. “Look, Kyle, I need to know what the fuck I'm doing with the stash, I thought he just wanted me to sell it on ASAP, I can't keep it any longer . . .”

“All right, man, calm down.” Kyle puts his finger to his lips and winks at me. “We'll sort it out together. All in good time, mate. We're just having dinner now though, so d'you want to come join us?”

I sigh, exasperated but out of options. The problem with problems when they are trivialized is that then they're not problems, they're just things in your life and you stop trying to get rid of them and start living with them. Dealing for Kyle came second to dinner. That, for anyone, is trivial. Kyle, snub-nosed and rosy, like the Artful Dodger, gives me a cheeky grin that I gather is supposed to reassure me. I roll my eyes and nod him inside.

In the dining room Kyle, his mam and I eat in front of a bookcase of dainty glazed pottery figures of Beatrix Potter rabbits. Kyle speaks to me in thinly disguised code.

“What did Fenton tell you?”

“Fenton just said I was to get the, you know, thing, for him. He said to wait for his word to pass it on, and under no circumstances to call him. Do you think I should anyway?”

“No, no, you
never
do that, mate. Best to wait for him . . . it's the etiquette of the thing, you see.”

“Yes, I suppose it wouldn't do to be impolite,” I say with heavy sarcasm, rolling my eyes at Kyle as his mam bows her head to sip her tea. “Manners are a virtue in any situation.”

“Have you thought about just not doing it? I'm sure Fez wouldn't mind. He's a reasonable guy.”

I look up at him. He's joking. Twat.

“Yeah, Kyle.” I glare at him. “I'd been wondering whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. And then you know what I thought?” I stick a carrot in my mouth. “Oh, whaddya know, I bloody can't—sorry, Mrs. Craig.”

“Hm. I'm thinking what we could do.” Kyle wipes his plate with a Yorkshire pud, crams it whole in his mouth, then chews for what seems like an excruciatingly long time.

“Yeah?” I say, brow furrowed, waiting.

“Hmmm . . . hmmmmmmmm . . .”

I look up from his gravy-stained lips. “Kyle, this isn't funny.”

“Right.” He's laughing. “Sorry. Listen, don't worry, hand it to me and I'll sell it on, and then I'll take a cut. I don't have a debt to clear like you have Gav's debt so it's policy that I get a bit of money. I'll tell him myself that I am. Don't look worried, the only reason he wants you to be the main man is 'cause he thinks the police are onto me too, but that's bullshit.” He looks at his mam, silently eating peas and flipping through a
Reader's Digest
. “I'm a good boy.” He smiles at me. “I'm just not as clumsy as Fez, right? I'll get it to Fez . . . borough, cousin of Fenton, and he can clean up his own shit—sorry, Mam—mess.”

I toss Kyle the blow that night and I'm rid of it, then feeling free and unburdened I bike along the North Sea road, fresh but light rain on my face, speeding along to see my girl, well rid of fucking Fez . . . and utterly naïve.

CRASH BANDICOOT AND A QUIET NIGHT IN

It's Thursday night about a week later and Rainbow and I are indulging in a little downtime. In the tense and trembling silence of my bedroom, she opens her mouth and lets my fingers slide fully inside, and sucks on them hard before drawing them oh-so-slowly out, pulling my face close and murmuring with an especially erotic pout: “So what's your deepest, darkest fantasy?”

A silence as we stare into each other's eyes and feel this heat pass between us. My eyes flit between her red, open lips, her tongue wet and shiny behind porcelain teeth, and her beautiful orbs of dark blue, bare, where I've kissed off all her makeup, and suggestive.

“FLICK!” There's a loud bang on my window. Fucking Jesus. “FLICK!”

I throw it open. “WHAT?”

Fez appears from under the garage awning, Troy in tow. “You need to do me a favor.”

It takes about four minutes for me to pull on jeans and a T-shirt and walk down the stairs and out the back door to where my friendly neighborhood dealer is waiting, but with this short sharp staccato list of ordinary movements so many possibilities are strung out in my head that time itself is stretched, and my mind takes off of its own accord to dimensions we could have gone, should have gone, would have gone . . . Mindless and lost in lust and passion, intimacy beyond imagining, sweat glistening on pert teenage breasts, tits erect, legs spread and my own tongue, trailing around each pink nipple with delicate but firm ease, then sliding over each virgin-white rib, down her soft tummy, pulled flat and taut with wanting, switching from a curve to a line, cave to smooth rock with deep fervent breaths. Back to my tongue, the tip floating over the hill and pressing hard into the decline, tracking fast into a canal of warmth and wet, pushing my face deeper 'til I'm covered in Rainbow, soaked, saturated. I sit up, wriggle my knees nearer, grip my dick in one hand and guide myself inside her, stroke my fingers up to her hips, then, taking her weight, pull her curves—her body beautiful, skin white and moist, reflecting the moonlight outside—pull her slowly towards me and, from above, watch us writhe in sweat and heat in the pool of light on my bed.

Outside, Troy, a glimmer of apology on his face, pushes down on my shoulders as soon as I'm out the door. My legs cave in and I fall to the concrete, eyes on their silhouettes in the dark. Fez cracks me in the face with his knee. Everything happens quietly, softly, dangerously.

“What. The fuck. Were you thinking.” It's not a question. “There's no choice in this. You get rid of it. You don't leave it with the dealer who picked it up when I don't leave word. The reason I didn't get Kyle to keep it in the first place is A, 'cause the fuzz are all over him, and B, 'cause he's a little twat. I need every penny of this money to make up for what Gav cost me so no one is getting a cut of this deal, including Kyle. You are doing it because you are such a good friend to Gav you are clearing his debt for him and now you are also clearing yours and also 'cause no one's gonna turn up at your fucking house and search your drawers. The situation has changed, so listen. The fuzz are on me. All the fuck over me. So I don't want this shit anymore, I can't be involved in it in any way, I'll just wait for my fucking money, and I want it back with interest. You picked it up. It's your problem. So you, Kyle and a few others of your kind, and I mean little twats, are going to deal with it for me. Let me know when you're done, and give me my profit. And you are all checking up on each other. If you don't move it on, I will get in touch with Kyle and ask why. And if I don't get at least two hundred back on this you . . . are dead. So make sure no one else fucks it up either. We'll let Kyle know and that's the last you'll hear from me. When he calls you, it's on. Get talking to the others. Find a buyer.”

I'm bent over the pavement, catching drips of blood that ooze from in between my teeth, white shirt now spattered with dark droplets, jeans unbuckled, showing the hair at the top of my dick.

“Or next time . . .” Fez grips the back of my neck, then changes his mind, straightens up, and I feel the heel of his boot land heavily on my head, bouncing my nose, which I never realized was so soft, my forehead and teeth off the ground.

“Ah-ahhh-ahhh . . .” My mouth stays open, trying to breathe through the sticky tarlike liquid that's coming off my own body. My head hurts so much, tears involuntarily come out my eyes and mingle with the red/black mess on my lower face.

“Next time . . . I'll really fuck you up.”

Someone, it could be either of them 'cause my eyes are half shut and blurred, pushes me over onto my side with their foot. A package falls on my ribs—the coke. Footsteps as they stroll away, down the alley that acts as a shortcut through to the train station.

I taste the metallic bitterness of my own blood filling my mouth. Fuck that twat. Fuck that fucking wanker. I can't think of anything more constructive as I stand up and stumble in the back door. Fuck that bastard. I have to wash my face quickly, before Rainbow sees, before she gets suspicious and comes downstairs. I switch on the light in the downstairs loo and squint at the mirror. Fuck. I look like shit. But on touching my nose, it doesn't appear to be broken and as yet no bruises have appeared around my mouth, though I can see red patches that might be purple and blue when I wake up tomorrow. I hurriedly scrub myself down, sore as a bastard, and stretch out my jaw, then pull at my hair so it is, as much as possible, over my forehead. Too short to help much. I pull off my T-shirt and use it to wipe blood and sweat off my chest. New drops form where the old ones have been wiped away and I realize blood is pouring from my mouth. I rinse it out and it seems to stop. I pull on a T-shirt from the laundry pile, temporarily hide the coke in the cleaning cupboard and take three or four ibuprofen for the pain. By the time I'm back upstairs, Rainbow is peering out the window, wrapped in the dirty sheets, still unwashed from the last time she was here.

“Hey, baby.” I kiss the back of her neck and stay in the dark.

“Are you all right?” She turns to me, big eyes even wider, searching my face, pupils dilated. I think she looks stoned, then realize it's the combined lack of light and worry.

“Yeah, fine.” I place my hands gently on her hips. “They just wanted to talk.”

“Flick!” She hugs me tightly and softly kisses my face. “Tell me!”

“No, it's all crap.” I bite the warm flesh below her ear. “Let's get back to where we were, hey?” My hand slips down to part her legs and she moans a little and hugs my chest. Suddenly and with a pissed-off sigh I realize this is not going to work. My chest is aching from falling to the floor. It hurts to kiss.

“I . . . Rainbow, I'm sorry, they've pissed me off.” I push her away gently. Even though her features are obscured by the shadows I can sense her face immediately hardening, building a wall to hide behind. She feels rejected. Her eyes search mine, but I'm hiding too.

“Are you okay?” she mouths gently.

I shrug it off. I can't tell her. Can't fuck her. My jaw sets firmly. I hate Fez, I hate this shitty town, I hate the world. So I have to give her the brush-off. She'll forget about it by tomorrow. I fucking won't, but hopefully Rainbow will.

“Yeah, I'm fine. Let's play Crash.”

There's a silence. Her eyes fall to our feet. “Okay. Sure.” We survive two rounds before mutually begging tiredness and going to sleep, or, in my case, and possibly Rainbow's, though her back is turned, to confused and angry thoughts, eyes open, awake and alone in the dark.