“Tavey McKenzie,” he says as he exhales. “Call me Tay. You like to smoke?” He holds the joint out to me, smiling. His arm presses against mine, and my raincoat rustles. I wish I’d taken it off earlier—I’m suddenly really hot and now I can’t seem to move.
I’ve never smoked a joint before, but the other S4s smoke behind the school field all the time. They are much nicer to me in the afternoon, patting me on the shoulder, smiling, and sometimes even offering me a cigarette. I never take one, though. I don’t want to owe anyone.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, and reach out my hand. I think about how I’m going to get out of here.
He doesn’t look like the boys at my school. They have styled and gelled hair; this boy’s hair is messy and long and hangs down over his ears. They have smooth round faces; this boy has a rectangular face with dark stubble. I wouldn’t describe him as good-looking, but he does have nice brown eyes and really long eyelashes that I can’t help but stare at. He reminds me of a boy I saw on a documentary about youth prisons a few months ago. Even though the boy in the prison had been in a fight that ended badly (really badly), I remember feeling sorry for him because I knew he’d been misunderstood. I recognized the furrowed brow of the prison boy—the same furrow I see every morning in the mirror. Tay has this look too, like the world just doesn’t get him.
I suck on the joint and get a faint taste of strawberries. Strawberry lip balm. I wonder if he’s just been kissing his girlfriend. My throat tightens and I try not to choke. Discreetly, I shuffle away from him so we’re no longer touching but watch him out of the corner of my eye. I want to show him I’m not afraid, and that I meet people like him all the time.
“I’m Elsie. Are you a friend of Dillon’s?”
The boy blinks. “Who?”
“Never mind. What’s your name again?”
“Tay,” he says slowly. “You’ve got a bad memory.”
“Like the river?” I ask. “Did you know that an earthquake once reversed the flow of the Mississippi?” I know a lot of rivers, thanks to the encyclopedias that Granny gave Dillon one year. When I was younger I used to read about all the underground rivers around the world and wonder if that’s where Eddie had gone.
“Yeah, like the river,” Tay says, seemingly amused. “And no, I didn’t know that. Thank you for educating me. So you must be the mystery squatter. It’s quite the setup you’ve got here.”
“Have you touched my stuff? This is my spot, you know.”
Even though he seems okay and is named after a river, this is my secret place. The joint makes me feel lightheaded, so I pass it back. I quite like the taste of it, though.
Tay tilts his head back and blows smoke rings, which float up and last for ages. I stare at them until my neck aches.
“I think you’ll find this was my spot before yours,” he says when the rings have dispersed. “I’ve just been away for a while.”
“Really? Where’ve you been, then?”
“Just away.”
“You must’ve been away at least a year,” I reply. There was no sign that anyone had been here before me when I discovered this place.
“Over five years. I moved away when I was twelve,” he says.
Five years. Prison, I bet. I wonder what he did. Although twelve is pretty young to go to prison, even a youth one. Maybe it was some kind of boarding school. This is actually good news, though, because he likely won’t know about Eddie.
“I have to admit,” Tay says, “I thought a small child had moved into my hideout.” He holds up an empty sweets bag as evidence.
“I don’t just keep sweets.” I point to the packet of cigarettes on the floor by our feet. Tay seems to find this amusing.
“Nothing wrong with sweets,” he says, and flicks the empty bag behind him. “So, you go to school in Fortrose?”
“Yeah, but I hate it. There are these girls that are always horrible to me.”
“I hated school. Girls were horrible to me, too, so I gave it up,” he says, laughing. “I go to the school of life now.”
“Is there a school of death?”
Tay sits forward and grins at me. His long eyelashes flutter and somehow soften his angular face. His teeth are shiny white and his lips look smooth. I wish I could apply another coat of lipstick.
“School of death? So you can learn to die?” He seems amused. I hope he can’t see how red my cheeks are.
“Maybe,” I mumble, trying to think of something else to say.
“You’re very interesting, Elsie.”
We smoke for a bit. I watch the way he maneuvers the joint to his lips and back down to the floor. I watch him cross and uncross his legs and play with a torn bit of leather on his shoe. He tells me that he once ran all around the Black Isle in a day and got attacked by farm dogs. I tell him that I once hid in a bus shelter during cross-country at school and only joined in for the last lap. He commends me on my initiative but says I should practice running in case farm dogs come after me. I tell him I’m not scared of dogs. I don’t tell him what I am afraid of. When the joint’s finished, he says he has to go.