Lolito (6 page)

At home, in the garage, I picked my scooter up by the handlebars and tried to swing the standing-on part at an invisible bear. It swung all the way around and into the back of my head. When I woke up, there was a lump that felt like an extra head throbbing on the back of mine. It made me think of Voldemort’s head being on the back of Professor Quirrell’s. I went inside and made a pint of strawberry Nesquik and cried. I took a butter knife from the cutlery drawer and buried it at the bottom of my school bag. The first weapon.

9

My body is tired and my head is tired and everything inside of my head is tired. I listen to Vanessa Carlton and jump on the bed. It makes
I am ready to fall apart
sounds. I think about actually walking one thousand miles, non-stop, towards a secret castle lined with blankets and wildlife posters. I think about sitting in bed with Vanessa Carlton and exchanging lovebites and crying into her hair. It hurts, Vanessa. Really lots. A headbutt to the heart. Make it stop. Make it disappear. Let’s hide inside each other. Let’s never go outside.

The doorbell rings.

I’m scared to answer the door but I do, in case it’s someone from a television prank show coming to tell me that it’s all a big joke. A joke that Alice and Marie
and Aaron Mathews are all in on. They will have put tiny cameras in every corner of my house.
My Pathetic Boyfriend.
When Ashton Kutcher reveals the truth, I will try to laugh but I will be crying heavily.

It’s not Ashton Kutcher. It’s Hattie.

She’s wearing a yellow dress and a parka and large, metal earrings. She’s holding two Tesco bags and a blue duffel bag.

‘Hattie,’ I say. ‘You’re at my house.’

‘Aslam said you might need cheering up,’ she says, pushing past me. ‘I am here to do that. I brought oven chips and chicken dippers and Titanic. Also, you can borrow my panda suit.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. I stare at a man talking on his phone in the street. I close the front door.

‘Here. Put it on.’ She passes me the duffel bag. ‘Now?’

‘It’ll make you feel better.’

‘Will it?’

‘Put it on. I’ll put the food in.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Go on.’

Me and Hattie never have sex. We dryhump each other and kiss. She gave me a handjob once but it hurt and I told her to stop. It’s fun. It never matters that James and Alice exist because we aren’t doing anything wrong because nobody gets upset. Alice did it wrong. I can tell because I’m upset. She could have sexed one
hundred people and if I hadn’t found out she wouldn’t have done anything wrong. People say lots of nice things about honesty and I think that honesty is like a piñata with nothing inside. People should make other people happy and you don’t need to be honest to do that.

I wish
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
was real. As Jim Carey, I would be extremely happy to let Kate Winslet disappear from inside of my head. I wouldn’t fight. I wouldn’t run around in memories trying to stop her evaporating. I would say goodbye and kiss her and forget about her for ever. That is probably the only way to ever be happy.

Keep saying bye.

I should hit myself with something heavy and give myself amnesia.

Joking.

I reappear in the panda suit. It’s oversized and extremely comfortable. I’m a safe toddler. We go upstairs and lie on the bed and put
Titanic
in. Hattie watches
Titanic
once every three days. She says it gives her good perspective.

We lie on our backs and Hattie puts her hand on my hand.

‘How many times did you see it this week?’ I say.

‘I watched it once already. I was going to watch it yesterday but there were too many moths in my room. They come when I’m menstruating. Mum says it’s the smell.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you want to talk about Alice? It’s okay if you do. I never even liked her that much really because she thinks that ghosts are real, which they aren’t. Also I don’t think she should have instagrammed her mum’s grave so much.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Do you want to take it in turns saying things we don’t like about her?’

‘Um.’

‘She smells like margarine.’

‘Not really.’

‘She never laughs properly and she spits on people’s backs.’

‘She spits on people’s backs?’

‘Yes. I saw her and Marie doing it in the corridor. Only to fat people and Ann Barry.’ I think, that sounds like something Alice would do. Ann Barry has learning difficulties and often falls asleep while picking her nose. Alice takes photos.

Hattie rearranges herself. She rests her head on my chest.

I try to focus on the film.

I mentally photoshop Aaron Mathews’ face onto Leonardo DiCaprio’s, and Alice’s onto Kate Winslet’s. I feel tiny bubbles of anger rising up from my ankles and bursting behind my eyes. I mentally encourage the plot of the film to change, abruptly and drastically, so
that they both get beheaded by a rampaging murderer before kissing for the first time.

I feel heavy weather for thinking like that.

When Kate tries to suicide off the boat, we kiss. Hattie climbs on top of me. She’s close and I want her to be closer. I want her face to melt into my face and I want my face to melt into Kate Winslet’s face.

‘You’ve got a boner.’

‘Do I? No, I don’t.’ I try to nudge my boner to one side but it’s impossible because Hattie’s sat on top of it, looking down at me like I’ve committed a violent and calculated crime. She’s pinning it down like a winning wrestler.

‘Yes, you do. You haven’t had one before.’

I think, smackdown.

‘Yes, I have.’

I think, The Alice Gulf.

‘Not against my leg.’ She scratches her eyebrow. ‘It’s because Alice doesn’t matter any more. We should stop. One of us could get attached.’

‘No, we won’t. I will always never love you.’

‘Everything isn’t you.’

‘What?’

She climbs off me and settles onto her back to watch the film. I don’t understand. Leonardo is eating dinner with Kate and Kate’s horrible boyfriend. They offer him caviar. I think, is caviar real? You can probably get it at Waitrose. Alice’s dad probably eats it on his Weetabix.
I’m hungry. I want to eat Hattie’s sweetcorn fritters. How do I make her cook them?

‘Leonardo’s face looks great in this,’ I say. ‘It looks like a sweetcorn fritter.’

I stare at Hattie.

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘It looks great,’ I say. ‘Like a sweetcorn fritter.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Can you cook sweetcorn fritters, please?’

Hattie sits up and looks at me. Her eyes have sad dogs behind them. She shakes her head. She picks up her shoes and walks out of the room and quietly closes the door. I pull the duvet over my head.

10

Amundsen watches the rest of
Titanic
with me and we eat. Afterwards, we watch a documentary about wild Alaskan salmon and fall asleep on the sofa. When I wake up, the sky’s coming down a little and Amundsen’s pacing in the kitchen. I attach his lead and we go into The Outside.

The sun is hiding behind swelling clouds. A girl on a bike is smoking. I can’t see Mabel anywhere. I imagine her lying dead in the shower, with Mushroom kissing her folded ears and clambering across her back. I walk to the centre of the field and sit down. I call Alice.

‘Alice?’ I say. ‘It’s me.’

‘Etgar? Where are you? It’s windy. I have to go in a minute.’

‘Go and eat a bag of dicks.’

‘What?’

‘Sorry, nothing. Aslam told me to say that. I am breaking up with you.’ I look at Amundsen. He’s being stroked by a man beneath an open golf umbrella.

‘What? Etgar? Why? What’s happened?’

‘Because you lied about Aaron Mathews. You said he raped you with kisses but he didn’t, you kissed each other which I understand because he is taller and more muscly and has more facial hair than me but it’s not okay to do that because you were my girlfriend and I was your boyfriend and that isn’t what girlfriends and boyfriends do.’

There’s a pause and Alice starts to cry. I thought I’d be crying but I’m not. A lot of bad things have happened in my head already and now my eyes are empty.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she says. ‘I can explain.’

‘You can explain to your mum.’ I don’t know what that means.

‘I was drunk. And you weren’t there. I was being stupid. I thought you’d be kissing someone in Leicester.’ ‘I was staying with my gran in Leicester.’ Amundsen comes to sit next to me. He drops his wet snout onto my shoulder. I imagine that he is my sidekick and Alice is an evil villain we need to defeat. I will hold her down by the wrists. Amundsen will tear off her head.

‘Etgar?’

‘Alice.’

We’ll play Frisbee with the severed head.

‘I can’t go to sixth form without you. I don’t want to. Please.’

When we’re tired, I’ll let Amundsen eat it.

‘I’m still going to sixth form.’

It will have the texture of underdone pork and taste faintly of garlic.

‘You know what I mean.’

He will give up after six bites.

‘Then you shouldn’t have handjobbed Aaron Mathews. Go back in time and hit him or something.’

I don’t want to tear off her head.

‘I love you.’

I want to kiss it.

‘Do you?’

I want to rub my head against it.

‘Yes.’

Wait, I don’t.

‘I’m going to go now.’

I don’t know.

‘Etgar, please.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll let you finger someone. Anyone you want.’

‘I don’t want to finger anyone. You’re the only person I want to finger.’

‘Then finger me.’

‘I don’t know if I want to finger you any more.’

I hang up. I feel like a serious man in the emotional
climax of a film that ends with teary defeat. I wish this was in a film. I wish I was sitting on a sofa watching the film with Alice and eating Doritos and laughing. I’m not. I’m in the middle of a cold field with a stupid dog. There’s nothing in the sky. There’s no one else here. I lie down in the grass. I lie on my front. Amundsen lies next to me, our faces turned toward each other. He’s panting. My heart is going tripletime. I know I definitely want to do something, but I don’t know what the something is.

11

I type
severe depression
into Mum’s computer. It says to eat vegetables and run around outside. I don’t think I have that. I type
autism.
I don’t have that either. I type
cancer.
I type
Alice Calloway is a piece of shit.
I type
how to disappear
. There are lots of people talking about throwing themselves off buildings or eating lots of paracetamol or other painful-sounding activities that require courage and also a car.

The computer says that there’s a forest in Japan where a lot of people go to suicide. They tie coloured tape to trees and walk with it in their hands in case they stop wanting to disappear and need to find a way out. There’s a lot of tape. The forest looks like a room in a museum filled with diagonal lasers to stop people
stealing things. Volunteers walk through the forest looking for dead bodies and for people who want to be dead bodies but aren’t one hundred per cent sure yet. There are a lot of empty tents in the forest and old cars in the car park.

I imagine a film where two sad people meet in the forest and fall in love and leave the forest and are happy for ever. The film would be a romantic comedy with a lot of jokes about dying. The tagline would be
Sometimes you find everything, when you’ve got nothing left to lose.
The soundtrack would be Sigur Rós.

I wonder if I will ever fall in love like people do in films. I wonder if I will take girls out to dinner and invite them back to my house then prematurely ejaculate into my well-ironed trousers.

Nothing is going to happen from now until for ever.

I’m being melodramatic.

I’m hungry.

I eat a Ryvita and check the computer. Macy’s sent me an email. The subject line is ‘this was you’. There’s an attachment. I download and open it. I’m looking at a large, pink dildo being held up to a webcam in the hand of a thin woman. The woman’s fingernails are immaculately painted the colour of Ribena. The dildo is the length of both of my hands put together. I stretch out the waistband of my boxer shorts and look down at my dick. I sigh. She’s online.

‘I’m not that big,’ I say. ‘I’m not pink.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘It’s not about length. This was a gift from my ex. It’s about people.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Great. I fuck the woman too. I like looking at the woman in the face. I like looking at the woman in the eyes.’

I have no idea what we are talking about.

‘Mm. I think you’ll like my eyes hehe.’

‘Me too.’

‘What colour are yours? I couldn’t see in the pic.’

I stand up and walk over to the mirror and stare at myself.

‘I’m not sure. Grey or blue or something.’

‘Metallic.’

‘I guess.’

No. Absolutely not.

‘Mm.’

‘Mm.’

‘Mm.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘You hard?’

No.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m wet. I wish you were here.’

‘Me too.’

‘Are you in the office now?’

I look at Amundsen. He yawns.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s a nightmare. I wish I was tucked into a warm bed with you.’

‘Me too.’

‘I wish the bed was floating in the middle of the ocean.’ ‘We could fuck each other all day.’

‘Birds would drop parcels of chocolate down to us.’

‘Hon, that sounds like heaven.’

It sounds wildly dangerous.

It sounds better than anything happening here.

‘I know.’

‘Do you have time to play?’

‘I’ve got some work to do. And a meeting. Later I’ll lock the door and we can do that.’

‘Okay. I’ll be waiting.’

‘Okay.’

I’m bored and I don’t want to be anywhere so I decide to walk to the corner shop for cider because what else. I put Mum’s coat on and apologise to Amundsen, who whines behind the front door like a child locked out of his parents’ party.