Lily kept looking back at Conor as Miss Kwan pulled her away, but Conor turned from her.
To find Harry holding his rucksack out for him.
“Well done, O’Malley,” Harry said.
Conor said nothing, just took the bag from him roughly and made his way inside.
LIFE WRITING
Stories, Conor thought with dread as he walked home.
It was after school, and he’d made his escape. He’d got through the rest of the day avoiding Harry and the others, though they probably knew better than to risk causing him another “accident” so soon after nearly getting caught by Miss Kwan. He’d also avoided Lily, who had returned to lessons with red, puffy eyes and a scowl you could hang meat from. When the final bell went, Conor had rushed out fast, feeling the burden of school and of Harry and of Lily drop from his shoulders as he put one street and then another between himself and all of that.
Stories, he thought again.
“Your stories,” Mrs Marl had said in their English lesson. “Don’t think you haven’t lived long enough to have a story to tell.”
Life writing, she’d called it, an assignment for them to write about themselves. Their family tree, where they’d lived, holiday trips and happy memories.
Important things that had happened.
Conor shifted his rucksack on his shoulder. He could think of a couple of important things that had happened. Nothing he wanted to write about, though. His father leaving. The cat wandering off one day and never coming back.
The afternoon when his mother said they needed to have a little talk.
He frowned and kept walking.
But then again, he also remembered the day before that day. His mum had taken him to his favourite Indian restaurant and let him order as much vindaloo as he wanted. Then she’d laughed and said, “Why the hell not?” and ordered plates of it for herself, too. They’d started farting before they’d even got back in the car. On the drive home, they could hardly talk from laughing and farting so hard.
Conor smiled just thinking about it. Because it hadn’t been a drive home. It had been a surprise trip to the cinema on a school night, to a film Conor had already seen four times but knew his mum was sick to death of. There they were, though, sitting through it again, still giggling to themselves, eating buckets of popcorn and drinking buckets of Coke.
Conor wasn’t stupid. When they’d had the “little talk” the next day, he knew what his mum had done and why she had done it. But that didn’t take away from how much fun that night had been. How hard they’d laughed. How anything had seemed possible. How anything good could have happened to them right then and there and they wouldn’t have been surprised.
But he wasn’t going to be writing about that either.
“Hey!” A voice calling behind him made him groan. “Hey, Conor, wait!”
Lily.
“Hey!” she said, catching up with him and planting herself right in his way so he had to stop or run into her. She was out of breath, but her face was still furious. “Why did you do that today?” she said.
“Leave me alone,” Conor said, pushing past her.
“Why didn’t you tell Miss Kwan what really happened?” Lily persisted, following him. “Why did you let me get into trouble?”
“Why did you butt in when it was none of your business?”
“I was trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Conor said. “I was doing fine on my own.”
“You were not!” Lily said. “You were bleeding.”
“It’s none of your business,” Conor snapped again and picked up his pace.
“I’ve got detention all week,” Lily complained. “And a note home to my parents.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“But it’s your fault.”
Conor stopped suddenly and turned to her. He looked so angry she stepped back, startled, almost like she was afraid. “It’s your fault,” he said. “It’s all your fault.”
He stormed off back down the pavement. “We used to be friends,” Lily called after him.
“Used to be,” Conor said without turning around.
He’d known Lily forever. Or for as long as he could remember, which was basically the same thing.
Their mums were friends from before Conor and Lily were born, and Lily had been like a sister who lived in another house, especially when one mum or the other would babysit. He and Lily had only been friends, though, none of the romantic stuff they got teased for sometimes at school. In a way, it was hard for Conor to even look at Lily as a girl, at least not in the same way as the other girls at school. How could you when you’d both played sheep in the same nativity, aged five? When you knew how much she used to pick her nose? When she knew how long you’d needed a nightlight after your father moved out? It had just been a friendship, normal as anything.
But then his mum’s “little talk” had happened, and what came next was simple, really, and sudden.
No one knew.
Then Lily’s mum knew, of course.
Then Lily knew.
And then everyone knew. Everyone. Which changed the whole world in a single day.
And he was never going to forgive her for that.
Another street and another street more and there was his house, small but detached. It had been the one thing his mum had insisted on in the divorce, that it was theirs free and clear and they wouldn’t have to move after his dad had left for America with Stephanie, the new wife. That had been six years ago, so long now that Conor sometimes couldn’t remember what it was like having a dad in the house.
Didn’t mean he still didn’t think about it, though.
He looked up past his house to the hill beyond, the church steeple poking up into the cloudy sky.
And the yew tree hovering over the graveyard like a sleeping giant.
Conor forced himself to keep looking at it, making himself see that it was just a tree, a tree like any other, like any one of those that lined the railway track.
A tree. That’s all it was. That’s all it ever was. A tree.
A tree that, as he watched, reared up a giant face to look at him in the sunlight, its arms reaching out, its voice saying, Conor–
He stepped back so fast, he nearly fell into the street, catching himself on the bonnet of a parked car.
When he looked back up, it was just a tree again.
THREE STORIES
He lay in his bed that night, wide awake, watching the clock on his bedside table.
It had been the slowest evening imaginable. Cooking frozen lasagne had tired his mum out so badly she fell asleep five minutes into EastEnders. Conor hated the programme but he made sure it recorded for her, then he spread a duvet over her and went and did the dishes.