He sits at my desk and glances around. ‘Hey, cool poster,’ he says, pointing at my Mandrake the Magician frame.
I shrug. ‘It’s stupid. It’s a stupid bloody thing for a grown guy to have on his wall. Take it if you want.’
‘Yeah, nah,’ he says dryly.
‘How did you even get here? How d’you know where I live?’
‘Bus, train, tram,’ he says evenly. ‘Your sister let me in. And Camilla tracked you down. Actually, Camilla dragged me into the city and railroaded Amy.’ He smiles wryly. ‘When she’s in the right mood, I think my girlfriend might be the only person on the planet who’s scarier than your boss.’
I grunt. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered. Anyway, I can pretty much guarantee you’ve got no advice that’s gonna be of any use to me.’
‘Yeah, advice isn’t exactly my thing. I’m not the most useful guy when it comes to this stuff. But believe it or not, I think I know what you’re feeling.’
‘You have no idea –’
‘Like getting kicked in the nuts, repeatedly, by a giant with a steel foot would be less painful?’
‘Nice metaphor.’
‘Accurate?’
I sigh. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’
Sam hoists his arse onto my desk. His eyes follow mine to the distant blue ceiling. ‘Josh, Camilla is …’ He shrugs with a sheepish smile. ‘Camilla is my person. But not because I think she fell out of the sky or anything asinine. We got really lucky. And, if circumstances were different – if her dad moved somewhere else, or if I was a bit stupider – we might never have happened. Circumstances, dude. Like, statistically, how many people are likely to end up hanging in an abandoned campsite that doubles as a serial killer’s lair, or building their house on an Indian burial ground –’
I groan. ‘Please, I’m begging you, no horror movies –’
He holds his hands up. ‘All I’m saying is, there are a thousand scenarios in which Millie and I could be passing each other as strangers on the street. And yeah, occasionally I wake up in a sweat thinking about that, but my point is – I don’t think it was fate. I think it was luck. Luck, and that bizarro chemical thing, and not being a complete arsehat. And timing.’
‘Right. Timing,’ I echo. I bury my face under my pillow again. I think I can safely say that my timing isn’t stupendous. Who am I kidding? If it were to rely on its current brilliance, my timing would probably see me strangled in my own straitjacket, drowning in an underwater torture cell, my face eaten off by tigers.
I sit up. ‘God, you’re right, Sam. I mean, seriously, what the hell am I doing? I can’t make a decision beyond the next five minutes. I can’t think about anything after this year without my brain melting. I have shit hair. I live in a bloody cupboard. I am a loser, a joke, the tail end of a failing trick that’s gonna fizzle into nothing –’
Sam rolls his eyes. ‘Josh, do you think you could maybe focus on one crisis at a time?’
‘Where do I start? Sophia was the one thing I was certain of.’ I hear the words come out of my mouth. They sound pathetic even to my ears.
Sam grimaces. ‘Right. Well, maybe then – there’s your problem?’
I blink at him. Without my glasses on, everything is blurry, yet something hovering on the edge of my vision seems to suddenly become clear.
I know that what I’m feeling for Sophia is real. That thing, the sad crush I had before I knew her properly, has been replaced by something solid and true, and the thought of letting it go makes me feel like I’m sinking. But while I’ve been pouring all my energy into thinking about her, I have successfully managed to ignore the fact that it is now September, and I still have no plan, no ambition. I have written off the rising terror that I have totally crapped all over this school year, because as long as my attention was misdirected, nothing else needed to matter. I remember Camilla’s irritated words from what seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe I have been unfair. And not just to Sophia.
I dig my palms into my eyes. ‘Sam … maybe you’re right,’ I whisper.
Sam dusts his hands. ‘And she says I suck at this stuff,’ he mutters under his breath.
I look around my room. It looks like a tomb, and smells like a tomb’s dirty sock basket. It’s so small in here, my little cave, made smaller by my blockade of books and broken clocks, which I always meant to learn how to fix, but somehow have still never got around to.
I reach for my glasses. ‘Sam, man, I think something might have died in here. I mean, something other than my pride and heart and all hope for the future.’
Sam rolls his eyes. ‘Dude, the theatrics? I don’t think I’ve included anything that melodramatic in any of my scripts. And I have one where a staffroom of teachers gets eaten by a horde of mechanical slugs. But yeah, it reeks in here. Can we go somewhere else? Your sister said I looked like a Yaoi character. I don’t even know what that means. But I’m not sure it’s supposed to be flattering.’
I swing myself off my bed. The room sways; whether from days of inertia, or the shock of an epiphany, I can’t say. I grab my mobile, noting approximately eighty-five thousand messages from Damien, and not all of them featuring Harry Potter gifs.
‘Yeah. Think I need some air. And, ah, I have this mate, I guess, who I should say hey to.’ I send Damien a text, and am immediately spammed with replies. I sigh, but I can’t help but chuckle, too. ‘You should meet him. Picture Adrian’s taller, more disgusting cousin.’
Sam’s eyes widen. ‘Jesus. This I need to see.’
He hands me my jacket. Stepping out of this room feels dangerous, a confident statement I’m not sure I’m ready to make.
I take a deep breath and crack open my door. ‘All right. So plunged the Bolsheviki ahead, irresistible, overriding hesitation and opposition –’
Sam wrinkles his nose. ‘Dude, do you ever get the feeling that we might not be the coolest people in the universe?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah. I reckon that’s pretty much a given.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The illusion of spacetime
Time, as it is annoyingly prone to do, passes. I manage to kill a whole swathe of it with Doctor Who, and even a bit on the vague pretext of studying for the upcoming Drama exam. But mostly, it’s maths that saves me.