Sweet Sorrow(37)

I hold the water high above my head.

‘Give it here!’ and Lloyd throws himself at me, grabbing me around the waist, pushing me back onto the pool table so that I can feel the balls grinding into my spine, and it’s harder to laugh now because I’m coughing too, but I continue laughing even as the powder coats my face and stings my eyes, and I manage to keep the bottle upright, holding it out of reach and now Lloyd, red-faced, billowing smoke from both nostrils like a cartoon bull, is jabbing at my ribs with quick short punches and I try to push his hands away. ‘Ow! All right, here you go!’ and I offer the bottle so he can clear his throat.

But the moment for peace offerings has gone. I drop the bottle and use that hand to push at Lloyd’s face but he keeps jabbing away, and I’m alarmed by his expression, like my dad’s when he gets angry, and suddenly a pool ball is in my hand, heavy and smooth and satisfying, my knee is somehow up in Lloyd’s chest and I heave and push him right across the room and in the same moment sit, pull back my arm and arch my wrist and hurl the pool ball at his head.

Too many evenings ended like this. It seemed that we could only stop by going too far.

In this instance, the ball hit plasterboard with a great hollow thud and, just for a moment, stayed nestling in its new indentation before dropping quietly to the floor. Cinnamon dust hung in the air like the smoke from a revolver. I looked round, grinning, to see my three best friends crouched, covering their heads, silent until Lloyd spoke.

‘Fucking hell, Lewis, you psycho—’

‘I wasn’t aiming at you!’

‘Yes, you were! You could have killed me!’

‘Whoa!’ Fox stood at the wall, testing the depth of the hole with his finger. ‘Look at that! Jesus, Lewis!’

‘It’s fine,’ said Harper. ‘It’s just plasterboard. You all right?’ His hand was on my shoulder, consoling and sincere, and I loved The Prince at that moment, and wondered if I should say so.

‘Yeah, yeah. Just lost it for a moment.’

‘Too right you lost it,’ said Lloyd. ‘Good job you’re such a shitty shot.’

‘Lloyd …’

‘If you could actually throw I’d be fucking dead.’

‘LLOYD!’

‘I’ll pay for the wall,’ I said, ‘obviously.’

‘Forget about it.’

‘You can’t pay for a wall, you stupid prick.’

‘Lloyd, leave it.’

‘You lunatic, Lewis!’

‘I’m going to go home,’ said Fox.

‘Yeah, I should go home too,’ I said, as if none of this had anything to do with me, but when I got to my feet I found that I needed to sit, then lie down on the sofa, head back, and it was then I noticed that the den had started to twist and pitch, the walls elastic. Closing my eyes transported me to one of those machines they use to test G-force on astronauts and when I opened them to say goodbye to Fox, time had also taken on an abstract quality because Fox had vanished, and so I closed my eyes again. I could hear voices but the blood roared in my ears so loudly that I couldn’t make out words, and when I opened my eyes once more and tried to stand, the sofa cushions seemed like quicksand, sucking me down so that Harper had to pull me out.

‘God, Lewis, you’re really pissed.’

‘Going to go home.’

‘Yeah, you should.’

I raised one hand to Lloyd. ‘Bye, mate.’

But Lloyd did not look at me. ‘Yeah, bye.’

The house was quiet, the lights dimmed as Harper led me back along the corridor.

‘Hey. Hey! Now it’s just us, I want to tell you—’

‘Shhhh!’

‘I meant to tell you, I met this girl …’

‘What? Not now, eh?’

‘Okay. I’ll phone you. Goodnight, Mr and Mrs Har—’ I shouted up into the darkness, then stumbled over a stepladder, dragging it some way down the hall, entangled with my foot.

‘Sh! They’re asleep!’ hissed Harper.

‘I want to say goodbye to your mum …’

‘Shhhh.’

And then in another of those tricks of time, I had been teleported to the doorstep, Harper’s hand on my shoulder once again, propping me up.

‘Are you all right, Charlie?’

‘What? What? Yeah.’

‘You’re sure you can get home?’

I told him I’d be fine, was just a bit pissed.

‘Bit what?’

‘Bit pissed.’

‘You said “lost”. “Bit lost”.’

‘What? No, bit pissed.’

‘All right. All right. Here’s your bag.’

‘Love you, mate,’ I said, mumbling the offending word so that he might hear it and not hear it at the same time, and then I was alone.

My bike lay on the drive but someone had adjusted the seat so that I could no longer lift my leg high enough and I cursed and fell, and swore again, then found that if I stood astride the bike then hoisted it up to meet me, I could start to pedal. Home was ten minutes away and I longed for bed, for an antidote to the poison in my veins, or a transfusion, to be sucked dry, emptied out and refilled with something better, something pure. If I went home now, even if I managed to line up the key in the lock, I would not sleep, I’d close my eyes and find myself back on that centrifuge and what if Dad was awake or slumbering on the sofa, what if I had to speak? I dreaded the thought and swore to myself, never again, I would no longer live like this, I would start afresh tomorrow and I would be clean and honest and kind and new and better, better, better, like Alina said, I would find a way to move through this world, present and alive, find a way to be.