Before I Die aka Now is Good

‘I can get you some if you want,’ he says.

‘You can?’

‘Today if you like.’

‘Today?’

‘No time like the present.’

‘I promised my friend I wouldn’t do anything without her.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a lot to promise.’

I look away and up to the house. Dad’ll be up soon and straight onto his computer. Cal will be off to school. ‘I could ring her, see if she can come over.’

He zips up his jacket. ‘All right.’

‘Where are you going to get them from?’

A slow smile lifts the edges of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll take you out on the bike and show you.’ He backs off down the path, still smiling. I’m held by his eyes, pale green in this early light.

Fourteen

‘Where do you reckon he gets them from, Zoey?’

She yawns hugely. ‘Legoland?’ she says. ‘Toytown?’

‘Why are you being so horrible?’

She turns on the bed and looks at me. ‘Because he’s boring and ugly and you’ve got me, so I don’t know why you’re even interested. You shouldn’t have asked him for drugs. I told you I’d get them.’

‘You haven’t exactly been around.’

‘Last time I looked, you were flat on your back in hospital and I was visiting you!’

‘And last time I looked, I was only there because you told me to jump in a river!’

She sticks her tongue out, so I turn back to the window. Adam got home ages ago, went inside for half an hour, then came back out and started raking leaves. I thought he’d have knocked on the door by now. Maybe we’re supposed to go to him.

Zoey comes to stand beside me and we watch him together. Every time he loads leaves onto the wheelbarrow, dozens of them fly off again in the wind and settle back on the lawn.

‘Hasn’t he got anything better to do?’

I knew she’d think that. She doesn’t have much patience for anything she has to wait for. If she planted a seed, she’d have to dig it back up and look at it every day to see if it was growing yet.

‘He’s gardening.’

She gives me a withering look. ‘Is he retarded?’

‘No!’

‘Shouldn’t he be at college or something?’

‘I think he looks after his mum.’

She looks at me with plotting eyes. ‘You fancy him.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do. You’re secretly in love with him. You know stuff about him you couldn’t possibly know if you didn’t care.’

I shake my head, try to put her off the scent. She’ll play with it now, make it bigger than it would have been without her.

‘Do you stand here every day spying on him?’

‘No.’

‘I bet you do. I’m going to ask him if he fancies you back.’

‘No, Zoey!’

She runs to the door laughing. ‘I’m going to ask him if he wants to marry you!’

‘Please, Zoey. Don’t mess it up.’

She walks slowly back across the room, shaking her head. ‘Tessa, I thought you understood the rules! Never let a bloke into your heart – it’s fatal.’

‘What about you and Scott?’

‘That’s different.’

‘Why?’

She smiles. ‘That’s just sex.’

‘No, it’s not. When you visited me at the hospital, you could barely drag your eyes from his face.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘It’s true.’

Zoey used to live her life as if the human race was about to become extinct, like nothing really mattered. But around Scott, she goes all soft and warm. Doesn’t she know this about herself?

She’s looking at me so seriously that I grab her face and kiss it, because I want her to smile again. Her lips are soft and she smells nice. It crosses my mind that it might be possible to suck some of her good white cells into me in this way, but she pushes me off before I have a chance to test my theory.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘Because you’re spoiling it. Now go and ask Adam if he’s got the mushrooms.’

‘You go.’

I laugh at her. ‘We’ll both go.’

She wipes her lips with her sleeve and looks confused. ‘OK, fine. Your bedroom’s starting to smell weird anyway.’

When Adam sees us coming across the lawn, he puts down his rake and walks over to meet us at the fence. I feel a bit dizzy as he gets closer. The garden seems brighter than before.

‘This is my friend Zoey.’

He nods at her.

‘I’ve heard so much about you!’ she tells him. And she sighs, a sound that makes her seem small and helpless. Every boy I ever knew thought Zoey was gorgeous.

‘Is that right?’

‘Oh yes! Tessa talks about you all the time!’

I give her a quick kick to shut her up, but she dodges me and swishes her hair about.

‘Did you get them?’ I ask, wanting to distract him from her.

He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a small plastic bag and passes it to me. Inside are small dark mushrooms. They look half formed, secret, not quite ready for the world.

‘Where did you get them?’

‘I picked them.’

Zoey snatches the bag from me and holds it up. ‘How do we know they’re right? They could be toadstools!’

‘They’re not,’ he says. ‘They’re not Death Caps or Destroying Angels either.’

She frowns, passes them back to him. ‘I don’t think we’ll bother. We’re better off with Ecstasy.’

‘Do both,’ he tells her. ‘These now and E another day.’

She turns to me. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think we should take them.’

But then, I’ve got nothing to lose.

Adam grins. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Come over and I’ll make some tea with them.’

* * *

It’s so clean in his kitchen it looks like something from a show home; there’s not even any washing up on the