“Text you later!” Josh calls, already at the bottom of the stairs, swinging round the bannister into the communal hallway.
And it takes everything I can muster and one great drag of air to call, “Be careful!”
I shut the front door, a wave of relief washing over me, and slump down on the mat, burying my head in my hands. Even after all these years, the feeling is terrifyingly familiar.
“Breathe,” I whisper to myself, trying to drag in air, “breathe.”
And when I can’t even make the word sound out anymore, I continue to mouth it silently.
“Breathe.”
“Breathe.”
Chapter 2
Breathe
I remember it was my fault we were running late. Mine and that damn polar bear.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” asked Michael, stumbling over some brambles. He was trying to sound casual, but I knew him well enough to catch the anxiety in his voice. We all should have been home by now, and while fifteen minutes wasn’t going to mean the end of the world for the rest of us, Michael’s dad approached life with military precision. The consequence for him being back late would be well beyond the raised eyebrow and disapproving glance at the clock that the rest of us would get. I was the only one who knew what his dad could be like, but I hadn’t been thinking about Michael when I held everyone up that evening. All I’d been thinking about was that stupid polar bear.
“Yeah, this is the right way,” I assured him, although I was having doubts.
Tom and I had come this way once before, and I’d suggested it as a shortcut home. But although I remembered skirting the overgrown, abandoned allotments, I didn’t remember trudging through them. We stumbled over dried clods of soil, hard and lumpy beneath the soles of our trainers.
“This is the right way, isn’t it?” I muttered to Tom, catching my ankle in a tangle of plants. The light was fading quickly and it was becoming a struggle to see where I was walking.
“Yep,” he replied, with certainty, “the canal’s that way, we just need to drop down there and follow it along.”
I could see he was waving his arm, presumably pointing to the things he had just mentioned, but the precise nature of his gesture was swallowed by the descending darkness. I trusted him though. We all did. He was always so sure of himself, it was hard not to. Tom and I lived our lives in competition with one another, and in most matters we were on a par, but he had natural leadership skills I lacked. Faced with options, I often faltered and looked to others for reassurance, whereas Tom quickly made a choice and stuck to it.
“Ah, crap,” shouted Max, “not again!” The rest of us laughed mercilessly, the sound of poor Max fighting a losing battle with the stinging nettles overriding any concerns about being late – or lost. “How come none of you are getting stung?”
“I’ve already been stung!” called Tom over his shoulder. “By a giant hornet!”
“Oh, man up!” I called back. “It was a tiny wasp.”
“Our legs aren’t getting stung ’cause we’re wearing jeans and not gay shorts,” Michael told Max, Max’s rather tight sky-blue shorts having been the butt of our jokes all evening.
“Yeah, well, that’s ’cause none of you have got sexy legs like me,” quipped Max. “The ladies were all lovin’ my muscular calves this evening.”
“Yeah,” joked Tom, “if by sexy you mean fat. And by muscular you mean—”
“Fat,” Michael and I chimed in at once, leading to more guffaws.
“And if by loving you mean they were all totally ignoring you,” Tom added.
“Or looking at you like you were a total div,” said Michael.
“They were weighing up the talent, gentlemen,” insisted Max, sounding slightly out of breath.
“They’d have trouble weighing anything about you up,” I said, evoking yet more laughter.
To be fair to Max, he wasn’t really fat, or at least he hadn’t been since primary school. In the last couple of years, his height had started to even out his weight, and his developing talent as a goalie meant he was putting his bulk to good use and toning up at the same time. But to us he would always be the lovable “Fat Max”.
“I don’t know how you can say I look gay, anyway,” said Max, “I’m not the one carrying a flippin’ stuffed polar bear.”
“Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’d have no one to give it to,” I retorted, hoping to play the jealousy card, for want of anything wittier to say. Actually, there was no indication that any of them was jealous I had a girlfriend. Far from it, in fact. All I seemed to get were digs about being tied down, and jibes about how it must be luurrve and how I’d gone soft. Perhaps they were right. I was feeling a bit of an idiot walking around with a giant polar bear, and as I hugged the soft fur against my chest I was glad of the falling darkness.
“You gonna give it to her tonight then, Jamie?” asked Michael. He was by far the most sensitive one of the group, and the only one to show any genuine interest in my relationship.
“Nah, it’s too late. I’ll give it to her tomorrow.” I hoped she’d be pleased. I’d spent seven quid in my efforts to shoot a cardboard alien with an air rifle, which was clearly more than the bear was worth. But it seemed important, like a nice boyfriendy kind of thing to do. I wondered now if the guy would have taken seven quid for the air rifle. She would have probably preferred that.
“Yeah, you should definitely give it to her tomorrow, Jay,” Tom agreed, uncharacteristically helpful.
“You gonna give it to her at her place or yours?” asked Max.
“You should
