The Worst of Me by Kate Le Vann
‘Wow, is this what they call denial?’ says the Joker. ‘From what I heard she doesn’t want anything to do with you. She thinks you’re scum.’
The priest reddens and bites the inside of his cheek. He has nothing, he can’t even be sure of being able to talk right now.
‘And of course I’m not obsessed with her,’ the Joker says. ‘Because, unlike you, I’ve got a girlfriend. But yeah, I think it’s fair to say your ex is still very interested . . . in my advice.’
The Joker’s head snaps back when the priest punches him. The girls on the stairs who are closest to them scream, while a ghost near the top of the stairs swears at the Joker for standing on his girlfriend’s hand and kneeing her in the face as he stumbles. When he regains his footing, the Joker grabs hold of the priest’s throat, and his dog-collar scrunches and flicks out of the shirt. The snoggers on the stairs start getting up and trying to squeeze past them up to the balcony. The priest’s friends and the dead rock stars start to head over in case they’re needed, as the priest and the Joker start gripping and hitting each other.
The nun shouts at the priest to stop. The Devil and Michael Jackson reach the staircase at the same time, elbowing each other to be first to help. The Joker’s spine curls back horribly over the banister with the priest’s hand under his chin. Eve screams for them to stop. Michael Jackson grabs the priest’s arm and he topples backwards so they both fall over. The Joker stands heavily on the priest’s leg as he tries to steady himself, but as the priest fights to stand again, shoving him back, the Joker is unbalanced, the banister clunks out of position, and the Joker falls over the staircase. They watch helplessly as he drops like a pile of clothes, there is a sickening smothered crack, and the side of his head hits the floor below.
When Alice arrives at the bag check area, she sees the last of the teachers running in a panic into the main hall. For a moment she’s frozen by confusion, but she can tell something very bad is happening. She runs after him.
Chapter 14
The first time I saw a film version of Alice in Wonderland I was very young and off school with German measles and I kept falling asleep, and after I’d seen it I wondered how much of it had been a dream. Years later I saw it again, the same one, and it made me tingly inside, as if part of my childhood had been imprisoned inside it and I could glimpse it while the film was on. I used to read the book over and over, and I thought it was amazing, but it was that strange film of it that seemed magical to me, the real Alice in Wonderland.
So it had to be Alice. But I could hardly go to a Halloween party looking that cute. The Alice outfit was easy to make – I already had a full-skirted blue summer dress that had felt a bit too girly for me to wear normally. I put it over a short-sleeved white school shirt, and got some net underskirts from the market to puff it out, and customised a white apron and sewed it in place. Then I smeared the apron with fake blood and daubed the blood all over a white furry toy rabbit and cut it into two pieces.
I’d started straightening my hair almost as soon as I got home from school and I finished it off with a black Alice band. I picked up the hacked-apart rabbit and my big plastic bowie knife. I did look cute, I thought. But funny, too. For a moment, the pleasure of wearing clothes I liked myself in and feeling pretty allowed me to shut out reality. I had half lost my friends – I hadn’t told them I’d bought a ticket and planned to go. My boyfriend had dumped me. For some reason I’d honestly believed I could just turn up alone, snap on the fake confidence force field, and . . . And then what? Get the boyfriend back? The friends? There was no way I could walk into a party of mostly sixth-formers in my little girl dress. You know how you wake up from a dream in which you’ve had a brilliant idea – like you’ve written a song or solved a problem – and you start trying to piece together the idea from what you remember, and suddenly you realise it’s rubbish, and it falls apart like a handful of sand.
I put the bunny down gently as if he was real and hurt, and stroked his decapitated head. I got my hand smeared in the fake blood on my apron, and wiped it off lower down. I looked ridiculous. I took a big bag of crisps out of the cupboard and sat down in front of EastEnders.
Paul walked in. ‘What time are you going?’ he said. He stared at me too long, then said, ‘There’s a very old non-cartoon version of Alice with an actress called Fiona Fullerton as Alice, and with your hair straight, you look like her.’
I stared at him open-mouthed. ‘That’s the version I like.’
‘Really?’ Paul said. It felt like there was more to say, a real conversation ready to go, but we were trapped by the fact that we’d always been enemies. ‘What time are your friends coming?’
‘Er . . .’ I was embarrassed. ‘They’re not. I was going to walk round by myself.’ I braced myself for him asking why.
‘Oh, okay,’ Paul said. ‘I can walk round with you, if you like. I mean, ’cause it’s dark and that. Don’t worry, I’ll come back before anyone sees me.’
‘It’s only two minutes away,’ I said. ‘You’d be coming back by the end of our street.’
‘That’s okay, though . . .’ He tapped his pockets a bit nervously. ‘Anyway, let me know.’ He went through to the kitchen. I ate some crisps. He came back in. ‘You are going, aren’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe not, dunno if I feel like it.’
‘Well, be a waste of your outfit.’ Paul turned to go again, and then stopped and turned back. ‘When are you going to get a chance to be Alice again?’
He went back into the kitchen. I was worried he was going to tell my mum that I wasn’t going and she was going to come in straight away and make a big deal about everything, and I sighed and decided to just go to bed. Then I heard Paul asking my mum if we had any garlic, then they were talking about spaghetti, and that was that.
I went to my bedroom and looked at myself in the mirror again, with my straight hair and thick black eyeliner. I didn’t look anything like me. I looked the way I always hoped I’d look when I looked in a mirror, before seeing the disappointing reality. I didn’t know what would happen if I went, but I knew what would happen if I didn’t go.
‘I’m going to go now,’ I said, looking into the kitchen, where my mum and Paul were reading a newspaper together, my mum standing behind Paul and resting her head on his shoulder.
‘You’ve got your phone?’ said my mum.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll just pop out with you, eh?’ said Paul, reaching out for his shoes with his toes.
‘Um. Sure,’ I said.
I could hear the music from the party before we reached the gates.
‘Obviously if you’re walking home with a friend, that’s fine,’ Paul said. ‘But don’t walk home alone, you know your mum worries.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Listen,’ Paul went on. ‘I know I’m not a member of the family. I don’t expect to be. It’s you and your mum and I’m the weirdo bloke who hangs around annoying you . . .’
I wondered why he was talking this way. I guessed that my mum had had a word with him, since our weird needy hug on the night I didn’t really sleep with Jonah. ‘It’s really not like that . . .’ I hoped he wouldn’t keep talking. It was me and my mum who needed to sort things out, not me and Paul.
‘I know that, and I don’t mind. I don’t mind being a guest of the O’Neills and not one of them. It may look like she’s not on your side, but it’s because she’s embarrassed about being so much on your side that she has to stick up for me sometimes.’
‘But she should be on my side,’ I said, like a five year old.
Paul smiled. ‘She would kick my ass if she thought it amused you,’ he said.
We couldn’t really see things so differently, could we? I knew her better, I knew best, but if he believed that – really believed it – maybe I didn’t know everything.
‘Okay, Alice, I’m going to make like the Cheshire Cat before any of your friends see me. Have a good time.’
It was a fre
As I pushed open the double doors the sudden warmth prickled my cheeks. There was a really loud clang that made me jump as a chair got pushed over, and I could see Mr Travis, my history teacher from Year 9, running through into the main hall. There was no one around to check my ticket or tell me where to leave my coat, and it gave me a weird feeling. I started to run.
There was a crowd, getting bigger all the time, and people shouting. The first person I saw was Nashriq halfway down the main stairs, dressed as Michael Jackson. In the middle of the crowd I could see Isobel, in her zombie Dorothy costume, and she was crying, in a way I’d never seen her crying before, maybe never seen anyone crying before. Really screaming, as if she was in pain. Sophie was next to her, with her arm around Isobel. I reacted slowly, confused, and I remember I even had time to look Sophie up and down and feel stupidly jealous of her beautiful body in the shiny catsuit, before I saw Ian. He was lying flat in front of them and one of the teachers was carefully pressing rolled-up jackets and jumpers around his neck to try to keep him still. But he wasn’t moving. His face was ghost white, covered in Joker make-up. His shirt was bloody. One of his legs was twisted in a way that seemed impossible, like a trick leg with nothing in the trousers. It made me want to throw up.
I shouted, ‘IAN!’ trying to make my way through the people, and Jonah heard me and looked up. We were staring at each other, frozen to the spot, while around us kids jostled and pushed and shouted, and then there were sirens and an ambulance and police and they took Ian and Jonah away. Isobel and Sophie went with Ian. I didn’t go with anyone, and I felt that people could see how useless and disconnected I was, and would laugh at me.
I saw Finian and a nun talking to a policeman. I’d known she was going as Marilyn Monroe but it took me a while to realise the nun was Steve. The only person I could get to was Josette, who was sitting on the floor in a flesh-coloured body stocking covered with sewn-on leaves, crying into her mobile. I asked her what had happened but she didn’t seem to hear me. I could hear people asking if Ian was dead and saying he was definitely not dead and saying he was definitely dead. Under the strip lighting everyone’s streaked make-up and badly made costumes looked horrible. I guess mine did too. Lewis was sitting on his own, scared and close to tears in a long white robe and Jesus sandals.
I called home. Paul was there in minutes.
Two months later
I heard that Isobel’s dad was suing the school but I don’t know if it’s true. I didn’t ask Ian about it, anyway, when he finally let me come and visit him, a few days after Christmas.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he said. One of his legs was hooked up in traction, with pulleys and strings and weights tied to it. His arms were in plaster, and around his head there was a big collar thing with fat metal rods sticking from it into blood-crusted holes in his forehead and shoulders.
I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t let myself. I knew if I did, Ian would feel sorry for me and try to make me feel better, the way he always had when I’d cried during our fights. He had the right to hate me as much as he liked and I wasn’t going to interfere with that. I clenched my teeth together hard.
‘I brought you a book,’ I said. ‘But that seems pretty stupid, given . . .’
‘No, I can hold books fine,’ Ian said. He took it from me with tiny fingertips poking out from his plastered arm. ‘It looks good.’
‘It’s stupid, sorry,’ I said.
‘No,’ Ian said, trying less hard.
‘You must hate me. I know I don’t have any right to be here.’
‘I don’t hate you. It’s not your fault.’
‘Well, whether it’s my fault or not, you must hate me.’
‘Cassidy —’
‘You must hate him.’
‘Do you?’ Ian asked.
‘YES,’ I said. I sat down on the chair next to the bed. ‘Of course I do. I can’t believe he didn’t have to go to prison.’
‘It was just a fight,’ Ian said. ‘He wasn’t trying to kill me. Look, it’s done now.’
‘Are you going to be okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isobel said you might not be.’
‘Isobel’s just worried. I don’t blame you, Cassidy.’
‘But I do.’ I started biting my nails. ‘And I blame you.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t have got involved, you’re right. But it was still the right thing to do, because it turned out you didn’t really know what you were doing.’
I got angry before I could help it. ‘No, I mean, I blame you for breaking up with me. I know how stupid that sounds. But that’s where it all started.’
‘Well, you’re right that that sounds stupid.’ We sat there, both angry, me knowing I had no right to be.
‘I just wish you hadn’t made everything different,’ I whispered.
‘And if I hadn’t?’
‘Well, I’m not saying you’d have been happy, but none of this —’
‘Rubbish,’ Ian said. ‘We were bored with each other. You would have seen Jonah and run off with him if I hadn’t moved first.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I miss you.’
‘No,’ Ian said. ‘You miss the old you, and the place we were in where you didn’t have to think about what happened from one day to the next.’
I knew what he was saying was true. I think I wanted him to believe he had made all the choices, though, so that he wouldn’t blame me. That he’d started everything going in the wrong direction.
‘How’s Sophie?’
‘Sophie’s great,’ Ian said, nodding, and his eyes smiled at the thought of her. That still hurt. ‘Look, Cassidy, I’m not about to tell you something good will come from this, because I have spikes in my head and I have to ask for help peeing, but we have changed. You are not the girl who was my girlfriend, and you shouldn’t want to be. You’ll find a better guy than me. For one thing, you’ll find someone who loves you.’ It was a cruel thing to say, and I was happy to take it.
‘I don’t care about boyfriends,’ I said. ‘Do you really think I’m miserable because you’re not my boyfriend and I haven’t got a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t have any claim on knowing what you think any more,’ Ian said. ‘But you need to know that I’m not angry with you. I don’t blame you. And I want you to be okay.’
I wasn’t sure how much of that was true. He was angry about something and he was angry with someone, and it was hard to believe I didn’t qualify. But I was beginning to realise that I’d gone to visit him to make myself feel better – whether that came from seeing he was okay, or from having him forgive me, or from soaking up some of his anger because I thought I needed punishing. Maybe I hoped he’d tell Isobel how sorry I was and she’d start speaking to me again. One thing I was not doing was making Ian feel better, and that wasn’t right.
I saw Sophie on my way out, hiding behind the drinks machine, waiting for me to leave and hoping I wouldn’t spot her. She didn’t want to confront me or make me feel guilty. Ian was going to be fine. He had already found his better girl.
I went round to Sam’s house in the afternoon.
‘You can’t stay,’ he said, excitedly, as he sped down the hall into his bedroom. ‘But come and sit down now, I have to show you something.’
He pulled up an email on his computer screen. He had emailed: Got Fortress of the Serpent for Christmas. Any good?
The reply went: It is X-L-ENT. Already played the demo. Any chance u can bring it round l8r? Rashad.
‘He does text-speak in his emails,’ I said.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Sam said. ‘That’s how people younger than you talk.’
I growled at him because I couldn’t shove him hard, like he deserved.
‘So, is it a date?’
‘Of course it’s not,’ Sam said. ‘And you’re wrong if you think that’s what I want. He’s just my mate.’ He gave me a wide, gorgeous smile, and his eyes were sad for so short a time that I almost thought I’d imagined it. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘It wasn’t bad,’ I said. ‘You know, considering I don’t have any friends except you, I had to sit through the most awkward Boxing Day of all time with my dad’s other family, and my mum gave me a warm coat for Christmas . . .’
‘A nice warm coat?’
‘You’ve just seen it.’
‘Oh, that. Yeah, that is a nice coat,’ Sam said, with a smirk.
‘Isn’t it?’ I said, smiling. ‘But Paul gave me my own tiny laptop. He said he’s sick of me snooping around in his browsing history to check on the academic sites he’s visited.’
‘Really?’
‘He was joking.’
‘What do you think?’ Sam asked. ‘You’ve been a bit hard on him?’
‘If he thinks he can buy me off with cool stuff . . . well, I can live with that.’
When I got home I booted up my tiny, new, powder-blue laptop and checked my messages. There was one from Jonah, as there was every day, but it didn’t have any text today, just a song. I clicked it open. An Ella Fitzgerald track: ‘What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?’ I hadn’t realised it was New Year’s Eve the next day. I wouldn’t be doing anything, I wanted to tell him, but I hadn’t replied to a single one of Jonah’s emails since Halloween. He’d moved to the sixth-form college in town and I didn’t see him around even accidentally, but the emails still came. Sometimes short ones, sometimes long ones – I felt worse ignoring those. When the song ended I felt sad and played it again, but I didn’t reply.
It’s New Year’s Eve today, and I’m not doing anything.
I went out this morning to buy my mum her newspaper and it started to snow. I tilted my head up to the sky to watch it falling – it makes you dizzy and is impossibly, amazingly beautiful that way – and when I looked forward again, Jonah was standing there in front of me.