He starts moving again, fast mean-dog circles round the clearing. ‘OK. I gave phones like that to some other girls. Not Alison Whatever, but the others: yeah. A couple more, too. And? You don’t own me. We’re not even going out. What do you care who else I text?’
Selena stays very still. She wonders if this is her punishment: this, like a whipping, and then he’ll be gone and she can drag herself home through the dark and pray that nothing comes skulking to the smell of blood off her. And the whole thing will be over.
After a moment Chris stops circling. He shakes his head, almost violently. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t’ve… But those other girls, they were months ago. I’m not in touch with any of them any more. I swear. OK?’
Selena says, ‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t care about that.’ She thinks that’s true. ‘Just: when you say you’ve never told anyone something before, I don’t want to wonder if you’ve actually told the same story to a dozen other people and said “I never told anyone this before” every time.’
He opens his mouth and she knows he’s going to rip her apart, rip this into shreds they can never put back together. Then he rubs his hands up the sides of his jaw, hard, clasps them behind his head. He says, ‘I don’t think I know how to do this.’
Selena waits. She doesn’t know what to hope.
‘I should go. We can keep texting; I’d rather just do that than try seeing each other and have the whole thing go tits-up.’
Selena says, before she knows she’s going to, ‘It’s not like this
‘Yeah? We’ve been here two seconds, and look at us. I shouldn’t have come.’
‘That’s just being dramatic. We were fine outside the dance. All we have to do is talk to each other. Properly.’
Chris stares at her. After a moment he says, ‘OK: I meant it. I never told anyone about the house before.’
Selena nods. ‘See?’ she says, ‘How hard was that?’ and grins at him, and gets a startled half-laugh back. Chris blows out a long breath, and loosens.
‘I survived.’
‘So you don’t have to leave. It won’t go tits-up.’
He says, ‘I should’ve been straight with you about the phone. Instead of…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Being a prick to you, and all. That was shit. Sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ Selena says.
‘Yeah? We’re OK?’
‘We’re fine.’
‘God. Phew.’ Chris does a big exaggerated forehead-swipe, but he means it. He crouches to feel the grass. ‘It’s dry,’ he says, dropping down, and touches a spot beside him.
When Selena doesn’t move, he says, ‘I’m not going to… I mean, don’t worry, I know you’re not – or we’re not-
Selena is laughing. ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I know what you mean,’ and she goes over and sits down next to him.
They sit there for a while, not talking, not even looking at each other, just getting used to the shapes of them in the shape of the clearing. Selena feels the hidden things thinning away to black veils you could pop with a fingertip, puddling into harmless sleep on the ground. She’s a foot away from Chris, but that side of her is rich with the warmth off him. He has his hands clasped around his knees – they’re like a man’s hands, strong-knuckled and wide – and his head tilted back to look at the sky.
‘I’ll tell you something else I’ve never told anyone before,’ he says quietly, after a while. ‘You know what I’m going to do? When I’m old enough, I’m going to buy that house. I’ll fix up the whole place, and then I’ll invite all my friends round and we’ll have a party that lasts like a week. Great music, and lots of drink and hash and E, and the house is big enough that when people get tired they can just go off to one of the bedrooms and crash for a while and then come back to the party, right? Or if they want some privacy or just some quiet, there are all these empty rooms, there’s the whole garden. Whatever mood you’re in, whatever you need right then, this place will have it.’
His face is glowing. The house flowers in the air above the clearing, every detail carved and shimmering, every corner ringing and fountaining with someday music and laughter. It’s as real as they are.
‘And we’ll all remember that party for the rest of our lives. Like, when we’re forty and have jobs and kids and the most exciting thing we ever do is
It comes to Selena that Chris has never once thought it might not happen. What if when he’s old enough the people who own the house don’t want to sell it, what if it’s been knocked down to build an apartment block, what if he doesn’t have enough money to buy it: none of these have ever crossed his mind. He wants it; that makes it as simple and certain as the grass under their legs. Selena feels a shadow like a great bird’s flit across her back.
She says, ‘It sounds incredible.’
He turns towards her, smiling. ‘I’ll invite you,’ he says. ‘No matter what.’
‘I’ll come,’ she says. She hopes with every part of her that they’re both right.
