Page 68 of Pansies

“Look.” The words tumbled out of Alfie like he’d dropped them. “Just think about it, okay?”

Fen wouldn’t look at him. Just pushed open the passenger door.

“I’m going to stick around for the weekend. Just in case like.” Arching his hips awkwardly, and nearly doing himself an intimate injury on the steering column, Alfie navigated his wallet out of his back pocket. Dragged out his business card. “Call me if you change your mind. Or whenever. I mean, even if I’m back down south, you can still call me. Next week, next month, next year. Call me and I’ll come. I’ll come wherever you are.”

He flapped his hand hopefully at Fen, who was neither getting out of the car nor reaching for the card. So Alfie leaned over and slid it into the breast pocket of Fen’s waistcoat. Felt the familiar responsive tremor in his body.

That seemed to jar Fen into action. He gave the slightest of nods and slid onto the pavement. Closed the door behind him with a neatclick.

And that was that.

Fen was gone: a sleek, slightly dandified figure, lost in the shadows of his mother’s shop.

12

Dear Mum,

I can’t tell if I’ve been very sensible or very stupid. Story of my life.

I keep remembering this time when Alfie Bell got suspended from school. Which should have been the happiest week of my life. Except it wasn’t.

It was Thursday, summer term, one of those wet-hot days—muggy, you’d say—when the sun couldn’t get through the cloud. Everything hazy yellow, the air so heavy with salt it was like breathing sweat. We were in Assembly in the sports hall, which was where we always had Assembly because it was the only room big enough to hold us all.

I hated that room, with its grey walls and its high windows which were tinted grey as well. It was always too hot or too cold. And it smelled of sport and cruelty and old cabbage, though why it would smell of cabbage, old or otherwise, I never understood because you weren’t allowed to take food in.

We sat on plastic orange chairs we had to put out and put away again every morning. That day, there was a butterfly throwing itself against one of those high grey windows. I remember itswings were red and black. And in the silences you could hear it, this slapping sound that shouldn’t have been so loud, but was. I don’t think anybody was listening to anything else. I’ll never forget the smell of the sports hall, and I’ll never forget that sound either. The sound of a butterfly relentlessly dying.1

And, suddenly, Alfie Bell stood up. And then he began blundering his way between the rows. He was going through his ungainly stage, all size and no grace, hands like footballs, knuckles practically dragging along the ground, the biggest boy in school. He’s grown into himself now, so much so that I almost forget how tall he is until I have to stretch up to kiss him. Maybe I shouldn’t like that, maybe it should make me feel small or weak or threatened, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’m reaching for something and he’s giving it to me, and some part of me finds it all so ridiculously romantic, it’s a wonder I’m not flicking a foot back like the heroine in a rom-com. All we need are pastel skies and a field of daisies, and a soaring orchestra to bring us to the credits and happy ever after.

In some other story.

Anyway. Alfie Bell and the butterfly. It seems such a trivial thing, looking back: just a kid, standing up in Assembly. But at that age, school, with its rules and routines and savage hierarchies, is your whole world.

So that kid had changed the world.

Silence followed him, down the rows, down the aisles, across the floor. Though by the time he reached the monkey bars, the headmaster was demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing.

“Nowt,” said Alfie Bell calmly, and began to climb.

When he reached the top, he swung himself out over nothingness, one hand slung casually between the bars, the other reaching towards that grey window.

I still remember the tightness in my heart. I hated him and I loved him and I was so very afraid he’d fall.

Everyone was yelling at him by now, but he still wouldn’t come down. Not until he’d coaxed the butterfly onto his palm and trapped it tenderly beneath his huge, blunt fingers. As soon as he was safely on the ground again, they marched him out of there, so I don’t know what happened next. I just know he got suspended for a week. But I imagine him outside, his hand uncurling to release that red-winged creature safely into the sticky, summer air.

I think Alfie Bell has decided I’m his butterfly. And some part of me desperately wants to be. I would love to be held in his hands, sheltered and made precious, especially now, when I feel so very alone.

The first time I went with him, I used him like a knife or a bottle of whisky. But, truthfully, it was easy, far too easy, to get past the anger and the shame. And that’s what scares me most of all.

I think I’ve half forgotten what it’s like to feel good, so it creeps over me like a spilled secret or a broken promise, this deep, sweet relief that’s as wrong as wrong can be. And how weak must I be to turn in to it so readily? A space of joy as wide as Alfie Bell’s outstretched arms. Is that all my love is worth? After everything you gave me, I can’t even give you a little grief.

I know you wouldn’t want this. You’d want me to be happy and comforted. You’d want me to live my life. But I can’t just carry on, unchanged. There are a thousand places I could hide. But I won’t let you be nothing. You made your choice. And this is mine.

Except Alfie Bell would make it so easy to make different ones. I want so badly the way he looks at me, the way he touchesme. I want all of it. The person I remember how to be—just a little bit—when I’m with him. He’s pursuing me, actually pursuing me (or, at least, he was before I turned him down), in this old-fashioned, troublesome, silly, slightly overwhelming way. And I’m supposed to be more sophisticated than this, but I love it. He’s always been like this, this axis pulling the world into shape around him. But now it’s all for me, and it feels exactly the way I used to daydream it would.

How can I let him give me this now?

I keep trying to convince myself it’s about me, not about him. That if things were different, he’d be nothing more than a relic of my adolescence, stripped of all power. Or perhaps it’s not that simple. Perhaps he’ll always be some part of my loneliest self. The boy who hurt me so much I had to make him a fantasy. Except he’s so much more than my memories of hurt. So much more than my silly imaginings. And now that I’m lonely again, and full of hurt, he’s here, and he’s offering me…well, I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure he does either. Except the hope of it is rich as pollen between us.

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