-1A/N It feels stupidly good to be writing some romangst.

I’ve gone and got a couple of betas who have been absolutely fantastic helping me out with this--I owe them so many cyber-cookies. Thank you so much McQuinn and Audrey for being so honest and constructive and taking the time to plough through all my ugly writing!

Rated for language, (mild) sex, fdrugs, rock and roll, and a big fat murder. The M side of T, I reckon. I really hope you guys like this one, it’s been such good fun to write and it’s probably my favourite thing that I’ve done.

Reviews are very welcome and (eventually) returned.

1. Mikey

2004, Surrey

Getting caught was so damn stupid.

Morgan looks at me very carefully, assessing everything I do, while still trying her best to be understanding. I swear mentally, over and over again, until the sounds in my head mush together and become indistinct. Thanks to me getting caught hiding, I have to put up with Miss ‘call me Morgan’ Westblake trying to empathise with me for the second time today. And she does try. She tries her best, but she just doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand because she doesn’t listen, and until she listens, she’s going to be walking on razor blades barefoot in perfect wide circles.

She should see this for what this is and stop trying to be so nice; these little ‘chats’ are just a way for the school to get more funding by looking after people like me; the victims, the loners, the weirdoes—in my case, all three. They will never help me—they’re not really meant to. Morgan just doesn’t get it, but she smiles very kindly.

“You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”

Her tone is clear; even Morgan, the eternal optimist, knows this is going nowhere. Things must be bad.

“Luca,” she says firmly. “Mrs Nuthouse found you in your locker during third period. What were you doing?”

I glare at her. “I was hiding,” I say stiffly.

“Hiding from who?” she asks. Her brown eyes are searching me, scanning like X-rays through my whole body, cutting me up into tiny pieces and hoping that one of them might fit into her little mental puzzle somehow.

“No one,” I say. Poor Morgan, stumped again.

She sighs deeply. “Lying won’t do anything, Luca. Why don’t you understand that if you just told us who you were hiding from, we could do something about it? We could help you, Luca. We really could!”

She reaches out a hand and puts it on mine. Her warm palm feels oddly comforting for someone who doesn’t care much at all.

“We know this school has a problem with bullying,” she says softly. “But we can’t help you until you help us, Luca. Just think of all the other kids that are probably being hurt by the same people. If you just told us, we could sort this out.” She pauses. “They won’t know that it was you,” she says, her words lighter than feathers, barely touching my ears. “They won’t hurt you for this.”

The guilt trip is a low blow, but it won’t work. Morgan is fighting a losing battle, and the sooner she realises this, the better.

“Who were you hiding from, Luca?” she asks again.

“No one,” I say with a small smile. One thing Morgan’s right about: I am lying. A big fat lie. I’m hiding from everyone.

She shakes her head, and gestures towards the door. “Fine,” she says gruffly. “No one. Well, if you ever change your mind… I can only pray to God that you tell someone before anything worse happens. We all know what happened to Mikey.”

Yes we all know what happened to Mikey. I know too well. Mikey’s damn bleeding, battered face haunts every damn dream I have nowadays. I visit the cemetery most days, but never say anything. I can’t talk to him; I’m not strong enough, and I still haven’t forgiven him. I feel so bitter and twisted thinking this, but Mikey caused so much pain by what he did. But now my friend, one of the only people who could really relate to me, is gone; I’m left thinking that I should have done something to help him, something to stop him. I think I might always resent him for that.

“And now Liam,” Morgan adds as an afterthought.

Liam, unlike Mikey, is not dead, and, unlike Mikey, Liam was not bullied. I know this damn well too.

I smile bitterly. “I need to go,” I say, and I get up to leave.

“Wait!”

I turn to her, almost hoping she’s made an amazing breakthrough.

“That bruise on your cheek. Who did that?”

I rub my face subconsciously. My bruise is days old—black and yellow now—I’d forgotten about it. I smile again.

“How is Liam?” I ask.

Morgan stares at me, then probably realises that I’m just changing the subject. “I’ve heard that his leg has three screws in it. He’s going to be okay, though, in time.”

Liam’s battered, bruised face haunts me too, but whenever I see it, I smile.

Sandy cries in maths. Her thin, salty tears streak her face and drip down onto her work. Everyone is polite and nice, so everyone ignores her. Everyone but me. I stare at her red face, at her shaking hands, at the way she tries to restrain the heaves of her body. Mikey’s death has brought out the pensive side of me, and I wonder whether she feels alien, completely isolated, but still somehow desperate to find somewhere to fit in.

I think about this as we leave for lunch, and I think about it more as I sneak off into town for a smoke and a packet of chips. Maybe I should talk to her. Mikey is gone now and I need to find someone else capable of actually supporting me. When Sandy and a few of her friends walk past, laughing pathetically, I nod at her hopefully, but she doesn’t stop walking. Her head is down, her arms are folded, and she is miserable, just like everyone else here. Isolated like me? I don’t know. Katie would know; she’s always been better than me at these kinds of things—judging characters, understanding other people’s feelings; girl stuff like that.

I watch Sandy go curiously, wishing that I could drink up her thoughts and understand her. I would make her tell me who’d upset her, and I’d hurt them for her. I’m a very loyal friend like that. Loyalty. I’ve discovered that is one of the two things I’m actually good at.

In English I make an effort to sit next to Sandy. I keep looking at her as I half-heartedly take notes about Lady Macbeth and, after five minutes, she gives up trying to ignore me, especially since I‘ve seized her friend Jill‘s normal place for no apparent reason.

Jill didn’t care. Jill walked in my direction, stared, and then rushed away with a slight smile. I think the rumours are beginning to leak out now.

Sandy glares at me. “Why are you sitting here?” She sounds suspicious, her eyes are narrowed. This is not a good start.

“You were crying in maths,” I say. “Why?”

The half-smile on Sandy’s face is surprisingly bitter. Maybe we are similar. “I wasn’t crying.”

I nod, and continue to take notes. Mr Lamberry looks at us drearily, but doesn’t say anything, and my most twisted, horrible thoughts tell me that Mikey’s death has really helped me out. I’ve never been a bad kid, but now I’m immune because my best friend killed himself and they all feel guilty about it.

I surprise myself sometimes. I really hate myself sometimes.

“I hardly know you,” she says quietly after a while. “Why should I tell you?”

She looks pointedly at her book, before pausing and sighing deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m just…not really in the best mood today. I heard what happened to your friend, Luca. I’m sorry. I didn’t know Mikey, but—but I heard he was…”

She trails off. That’s the problem;no one knew Mikey. Like me, he kept to himself. Maybe if more people had known him, he wouldn’t have been hit so much. Maybe if more people had cared, he wouldn’t have been allowed to get so depressed. Maybe if more people had acknowledged his existence, he wouldn’t have gotten hold of one of his Dad’s hunting guns, brought it to his head, and pulled the trigger.

I could drown in maybes, so I tell myself there was nothing anyone could have done for him. Mikey was screwed up, deep down, and he had never been alone; he had me. I was alone now, though. All alone, except for Katie and my parents, and scared shitless because of it. Mikey and I were too similar; if he could do it, so can I.

“I heard he was a nice guy,” Sandy lies.

Mikey’s death has been good for another thing; he is more popular now than he’s ever been.

“Will you talk to me after English?” I ask her.

Sandy looks at me for a long time, before blushing and nodding.

Her blush is what confuses me the most.

I don’t know why people like her act funny around me. It’s happened ever since I started growing up, like puberty has stamped a great big arse on my forehead. The rumours will only make things worse, I suppose. I’ll be dangerous, as well as the arse-faced best friend of a dead guy.

Sandy is still blushing when she comes to talk to me by the school gates. Her giggling friends leave her, looking over their shoulders with horrible huge grins on their faces.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Sandy is all smiles and giggles too; she’s been hanging around with those friends for too long. The spots on her face make her big cheeks shine bright like two red toffee apples, and her smile stretches the shininess flat and stiff.

“Sorry? For what?”

“Your friends are laughing at us.”

Sandy shrugs and smiles. “Don’t mind them,” she says with a little snort.

“Come with me,” I say, beginning to walk away.

“Why?” she asks quickly, but she catches up with me.

I smile at her. “I want to talk to you.”

She folds her arms and tries to look strong, as if she’s not really at breaking point, as if she’s not really deeply, desperately sad. She stops walking. “Talk to me here.”

She sits down against the railings, her feet crooked and her arms loose, hands dangling onto the floor at her sides, quivering fingers tracing shaky circles on the dusty pavement. I sit next to her and light up.

“Why were you crying in maths?”

Sandy’s face creases into a frown. “Is this a guilt thing? Like you can’t stand seeing people upset because of what happened to Mikey?” She holds her mouth tightly, suddenly, violently. She thinks she’s said too much, but her words have no effect on me. She’s probably right anyway.

“Did someone upset you?”

“It was stupid,” Sandy says quietly. “It was just some girls in the toilets being cruel. Ugly, spotty Sandy. Smelly, scummy Sandy.” Her voice is all strained, like Kimberly’s gets when she puts on airs for the Social Workers. Is Sandy trying to impress me? “So childish,” she says. “I know that, but sometimes the stupidest things hurt the most if you know they’re true.” Her hands are clenched slightly, and she beats them on the concrete. “I’ve never done anything to hurt them; it‘s just not fair.”

“I could kill them for you,” I say blankly. It’s not true, and I don’t mean it, but Sandy stares at me, freaked out, but almost weirdly flattered.

“Shut up,” she says with a snigger. “Everyone knows where you were all morning, Luca, although God knows who you were hiding from—obviously not Liam.”

I smile widely. “Obviously.”

Sandy strokes a hand down her face and sighs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Here I am, complaining about myself and my stupid skin, and your best friend just died. I must seem like such a cow.”

“Would you like me to help you?” I ask her, seriously this time.

She frowns. “How?”

I swallow. “Close your eyes.”

She closes her eyes. Suddenly she turns scarlet.

I stub my cigarette out on the floor and kick it away, and then I begin to hum softly, carefully; I have never done this in public before, but I need to find new company and would sacrifice a lot for that. Singing is the other thing I am good at; a strange little talent from God knows where that popped up last year, when I turned fifteen. I’d never been a particularly amazing singer before, but, after that, whenever I sang, it came out good, and whenever it came out good it could make everyone who listened feel better. Everyone but me; I felt as cold and empty and lonely as ever, even when Mikey had been around.

The words come out of nowhere. The last song I’d listened to; some stupid band that Katie likes. Mikey would have got his arse kicked if he’d been caught singing this in public. I’ll be alright, though. I look at my knuckles thoughtfully, and my heart races. Somehow, I’ve always been alright; maybe me and Mikey hadn’t been so similar after all.

Sandy opens her eyes slowly. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

I keep on singing, and she smiles and closes her eyes again. “You’re good, you know,” she says. “No other guy could sing STEPs and make it sound so sexy.”

This strikes me as an odd thing to say, so I ignore it. I do that a lot.

When I get to the end of the song, Sandy smiles at me. Her smile no longer stretches her shiny skin; only makes her blush bright red.

“Luca,” she sighs. “You’re amazing!”

I grin, caught up suddenly, unexpectedly, in her happiness, which breaks through me like a bright yellow sunburst. I am so pleased with myself; dangerously so.

“Do you have a mirror?” I ask her.

She nods, rummages through her school bag, and pulls out a little pink compact mirror which she hands to me. I open it, see my own eyes flash back at me momentarily, then pass it to her.

“Look.”

She pulls the mirror away from me with a frown, before peering into it and gasping. She runs a hand over her smooth cheeks to check that it’s real, and does the same thing with her forehead. After several moments of staring and rubbing and swearing, she lowers the mirror and looks at me with wide brown eyes.

“Do I look better to you?” she asks, rather shakily.

I shrug. I don’t know. I never had a thing for Sandy, so the spots made little difference to me. Now that they’re gone, though, maybe she’ll be happy.

“Do I look better to you?” she repeats. There is an odd tone in her voice now, lurking just beneath her nervousness like a Great White shark.

“Are you happy now?” I ask her. “It will go in a week, but I can sing to you again.”

She stands up, shaking with anger—or fear? Or both? Then she leans down over me and breathes very heavily.

“What the Hell is going on here? What have you done?”

I don’t know what to say. I just focus on minor things and my singing makes them better; I can’t explain it in any more detail than that.

“I sang.”

The girl is still breathing heavily. Despite her new perfectly clear skin, she looks very ugly. She is weak; that is all we have in common. She is no replacement for Mikey, and she certainly doesn’t like me.

Her hand springs back behind her, before crashing into the side of my face. It doesn’t really hurt, and it doesn’t shock me either. In fact, it does nothing. I smile at Sandy.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Again. Goodbye, Sandy.”

She grabs her school bag and tosses it over her shoulder, before hurrying off and refusing to look back at me. As she crosses the busy road outside our school and her small form is quickly hidden by speeding lorries and cars, I realise that I now know three things.

One: Sandy will grow used to her new skin; she’ll like the attention it’ll bring her, and love the stunned expressions on the faces of those girls who tease her.

Two: Sandy will try to convince herself that this is a coincidence, that her new clear skin is nothing to do with me, but, in a week, Sandy will ask me to sing for her again.

I really am sorry. The pain and anger that will sprout up next week will hurt her terribly. The third thing I know: I will refuse to help her, every single time.