He rolls his eyes, which is more familiar and relaxes me ever so slightly. “To talk, Celine, what do you think?”
“Fine.” It feels like someone’s stitching my stomach together. My voice comes out tight.
He treads lightly, as if the cream carpet might be booby-trapped. “I…er…brought you some stuff.” He unzips his satchel and goes to sit down on my bed.
I make a noise like a game show buzzer. “Nope.”
He straightens with a huff. “Well, where am I supposed to sit, Celine?”
“Who said you could sit, Bradley?”
His cheeks are too brown to show a blush, but his throat is turning splotchy red. “Jesus,” he mutters, and kneels (kneels! I should make a note of the date and time) beside my bed. Then he produces a little plastic box and unclips the lid. “Dad made you these.”
My heart calcifies and sinks down into my stitched-up stomach. “Oh…er…great.” Tucked neatly into the box are four chocolate cupcakes decorated with silver sparkles—my favorite. And they’ll be delicious because Trevor Graeme made them, but for that very same reason, I really don’t feel like putting one in my mouth.
It’s not that I don’t like Trev. In fact, it’s the opposite: he’s basically a caricature of a perfect father who was put on this earth to taunt me with what I don’t have. He and Bradley are best buds!!! And they go fishing!!! And Trev loves and admires his wife!!! Back when Brad and I were friends, the hardest part of our relationship was not drowning in mortifying jealousy every five seconds.
I know that’s childish and ridiculous and pathetic. I’m just feeling sensitive because my wrist hurts. I put my dark feelings carefully away and say: “Tell your dad I said thanks.” Now that I’m being mature, I could probably choke down a cupcake (or two, I deserve it), but eating dinner one-handed was a bit of an adventure and I’m not about to make a mess in front of Bradley. So, I put the box aside.
He nods. “I brought this too.” He pulls my philosophy book out of his bag. “Your, um, leaflet’s in there.”
I press my lips tightly together.
“How’s your arm?” he asks.
“Screwed.”
He has the absolute gall to look upset. “That’s not a real answer, Celine, come on.”
“Fine, it’s fractured. Happy?”
“Of course I’m not happy!” he says hotly, his face sort of crumpling. For so long, he’s only looked at me with smugness or irritation, but now he’s giving actual human expressions that change every five minutes and it’s—
I don’t know. It must be the fading painkillers that are making my internal organs jump around like this.
“You don’t think I did it on purpose, do you?” he demands. “You know I didn’t. Right? Celine. Do you?”
I’d almost forgotten the way he talks nonstop when he’s nervous. “Shut up. You’re giving me a headache.”
His jaw tenses. “You do. You think I did.”
Christ, what is he, a mind reader?! “I don’t know, Bradley. You had a perfectly good grip on me and then you pulled away—what, completely by accident?” Disbelief drips from my words like candlewax, but at the same time, I’m not certain what I believe. His eyes are pure kicked puppy right now, and surely he’s not that good an actor.
Instead of arguing, though, he just says, “Why didn’t you tell your mum?”
“Why didn’t you tell yours?” I toss back.
He grimaces. “Don’t want them to fall out, do I?”
“They wouldn’t fall out. They’d both be on my side and you’d be grounded for a century.”
For some reason, he grins. It’s so bright, I see dark spots like I’ve been staring into the sun. “Why didn’t you tell, then?” Before I can stammer out a reply, he almost murders me by adding, “Look, Celine, I’m sorry.”
I choke. “Pardon?”
“It’s shit, I know it’s shit, I realize we’re not friends or anything, but I didn’t mean…I didn’t want to hurt you. Of course I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I absorb this tangle of words with my mouth hanging wide open. Seriously. A passing bird could build a nest in here.
Bradley’s still talking, so disturbingly earnest it’s like his current body has been taken over by his twelve-year-old self. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I know I owe you. God, I fractured your wrist.” He props his elbows on my bed and looks down at the leaf-printed duvet, his dark eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. I should spray him with water like a misbehaving cat but I’m too busy having conniptions.
“Are you possessed? You are, aren’t you?”
He looks up with a frown. “What?”
“Something’s off. I don’t trust this at all. Quick, list your allergies.” It’s a trick question; he doesn’t have any. I squint at him, searching for evidence of ectoplasm.
All I can see is the faintest hint of stubble (stubble! How old is he, forty-five?) on his jaw, and familiar irritation as he rolls his eyes. “Give it a rest, Celine.”
Thank God. I pull back. “For a second there, I thought you were a victim of Monarch mind control.”
“God, you do my head in,” he mutters.
“That’s the spirit.”
Bradley huffs. “I read your leaflet, by the way.”
“Of course you did.” He’s just as nosy as our mothers. Honestly, I’m the only person in both our families who knows how to mind my own bloody business.
“How are you getting to the meeting on Thursday?”
“How do you know I’m going at all?”
He arches an eyebrow, looks at the picture of Katharine Breakspeare on my Steps to Success board, and remains silent.
I bite out, “I’m taking the bus.”
“With your arm in a cast?”
What, is he here to gloat, or something? “Yes, with my arm in a cast, Bradley. I can’t just take it off.” Mum works late on Thursdays, and Giselle has to cover an evening shift because she ditched today—the bus is all I’ve got.
Unlike Bradley, who has a car. Bradley, who has his license. Bradley, who rises to his feet, sighs and says, “People might bump into you. I’ll drive you.”
Aaaand I’m choking again. This can’t be healthy. “You’ll what?” I rasp.
“I’ll. Drive. You. Pay attention, Celine.” He grabs his bag and heads for the door.
“Wha— Where are you going?”
“I do have better things to do than hang around here, you know.” He falters, then looks over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you outside the Beech Hut after school, okay?”
I open my mouth to say, Um, no, not okay. What are you up to, you sneaky, slimy snake?! But the thing is…
Well, I hate the bus. And I don’t want to be all sweaty and tired when I see Katharine. And he does owe me, and shockingly, he is decent enough to know that, which is the bare minimum, so…
“Fine,” I say.
Just like that, I agree to voluntarily share a space with Bradley Graeme for the first time in almost four years. I am still dazed and confused by this series of events ten minutes later when Mum wanders into my room and sits on the edge of my bed.
“Has my room recently been declared a public thoroughfare?” I wonder aloud.
“Mouth,” Mum says in a tone that would terrify most of my friends but is only a 3 out of 10 on my mother’s annoyance scale. She must be tired. I focus on her face and strongly dislike what I see.
“Hard day at work?”
She tuts. “Isn’t it always? Those children are trying to kill me. So is my daughter, apparently.” She slides a reproving look at my cast. “What, are you doing parkour at school now? Consider my blood pressure, Celine.”
“Nobody does parkour, Mum.” And my mother doesn’t have high blood pressure, which is a miracle, considering what my dad put her through.
We look very alike, by which I mean, neither of us smile easily because we don’t have the time or the patience. People would be so shocked if they knew that, when my parents divorced, she let Dad off easy with the settlement and the child maintenance payments. At the time, I didn’t really understand what she was doing. I was confused by the arguments she had with Bradley’s mum, the ones I overheard by lurking on the staircase.
“He has twins now, Maria. Babies aren’t cheap.”
“That’s his problem! All of his children are his problem, so make him pay.”
“We don’t need that much—”
“Don’t be proud, Neneh.”
But that’s how Bangura women are: proud. So, she proudly accepted the absolute minimum from my so-called dad, and she proudly worked herself to the bone while studying full-time. She proudly bulk-bought our necessities with carefully cut-out coupons and she proudly worked her way up from a trainee teacher’s salary to her school’s assistant head. We’re not poor anymore.