Louder Than Words (7 page)

‘Neither has anyone else on here,’ Jake said gloomily. ‘They’re all talking about how they can clean their machines up, but no one’s got a solution yet. If I see that Lloyd, he better get out of my way. I don’t want this guy messing around inside my PC.’

Toby finished texting. ‘Silas, do you know how to fix this? I mean, can you clean us up?’

Silas stretched his legs out. ‘Probably. But he may be on the level, you know. He might really release them once he’s got what he wants.’

‘Yeah, and he might sell all my payment details halfway round the world too,’ Jake snapped.

Silas rolled his sea-blue eyes. ‘I’ll come round to yours later and see what I can do,’ he said. ‘Hey, sis, what do you want?’

The rest of them started at his words. They hadn’t noticed me.

I showed him the text.

‘OK, I’ll see you at home. You OK to get there yourself?’

Yes, I had a bus pass. I wouldn’t have to speak to the driver so I was OK.

I met Josie at the bus station. ‘Sorry!’ she said brightly. ‘I only found out about this today from the noticeboard in school and we have to go – it’ll be so amazing.’

I shook my head in confusion.

‘A face-painting workshop at the library! Like, they teach you how to do it. Don’t you think that’s the best thing ever to do after school on a horrible, wet Thursday afternoon?’ She beamed at me. ‘Come on! I’ve been looking forward to this all day!’

I chuckled to myself as I followed her. She really was nuts, in the best possible way.

Anarchy

noun

•  a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems

•  absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.

CHAPTER 9

‘The funny thing is, Raf,’ Silas said as he lounged on the sofa, staring out of the French windows on to our rain-swept garden, ‘that nobody suspects it’s me.’

Yes, I thought that was a bit odd too, but then I wasn’t sure how many people realised that Silas knew Josie now. Lloyd might have seen him with her, but he had no idea of Silas’s abilities. And Silas’s friends weren’t aware of the connection at all.

‘Online is an anonymous world,’ he said as the rain battered against the glass. ‘Or it can be if you know how to make it that way. But too many people have thought that and got caught. You have to keep your guard up.’

I looked at him critically as he turned to face me.

‘I
will
drop it all once Lloyd’s learned his lesson. Just because I could do much worse stuff with the bots doesn’t mean I intend to.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘Oh come on, don’t look at me like that. I’ve always been able to do stuff like this, but I’ve never had reason to. Nothing’s changed.’ He laughed. ‘What? You think I’m suddenly going to become some cyber-criminal mastermind and take over the world? In that case you need to get me a little white cat I can sit and stroke while I cackle maliciously as I execute my evil plans.’

My eyes rolled in disgust and he laughed again.

‘Look, it’ll work. Lloyd will leave Josie alone and he’ll learn not to mess with people that way. It’ll be good for him. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.’

I didn’t think Silas had ever had a day’s worry in his life. He practised the art of living in the moment to perfection. We were opposite poles, he and I: he repelled all the cares of life and I attracted them. Consequently nothing ever seemed to touch him that deeply. That’s not to say he was superficial, but he never appeared to feel anything with the intensity that tore and ripped at me. ‘Placid’ my mother once called him, her nose wrinkling slightly in distaste because the job of the artist, she said, was to feel passionate intensity. She looked as if she didn’t know how she’d come to have such a son. It was disloyal of me in that moment, but when I heard that I felt relief, because it wasn’t just me who disappointed her.

But I didn’t think Silas really cared about that either. He disregarded our mother’s opinion on most things, perfectly content in the circle of himself, which opened only to allow me in.

His phone rang and he glanced at it. I saw the quick grimace and knew before asking what this was about. He looked up at me, knowing my eyes would be asking the question.

‘Kirsty,’ he said. ‘I went on a few dates with her, but . . .’ He sighed. ‘I managed to screw up again. I try to keep it light, nothing heavy, but it always goes wrong, Raf. You know, I don’t get it. Toby manages to date without girls it getting so . . .
intense
. Why can’t I do that? Maybe I should ask him how he manages it.’

He manages it by being Toby
, I thought. No girl in her right mind would want to have him as a serious boyfriend. He was probably quite amusing from time to time, but you’d never get attached to anyone that, um, Toby-like!

I waved a finger at the phone.

Silas sighed more heavily. ‘She says she’s in love with me. Which is stupid. We’ve only been out four times. What is it with girls? Why are they like that?’

I couldn’t help him there. He knew more girls than I did and knew them far better too. Though I could ask Josie. That might be an idea. I didn’t have to tell her it was for Silas.

‘I don’t want anything that full-on with any of them. Raf, I just don’t feel those things they seem to feel. Perhaps there’s too much of Mum in me.’ He stared at the raindrops on the window in a rare moment of uncertainty. ‘Or Dad. They’re both messed up when it comes to relationships, aren’t they? One’s a control freak and the other can’t commit.’

I frowned.

‘Dad split up with the latest girlfriend. I guess Mum didn’t tell you that. You didn’t hear it from me, OK?’

Nod.

‘I’m going to have to tell Kirsty I don’t feel the same way. And that I
won’t
feel the same way. And it’d be better if we don’t go out again.’

I texted him quickly.

Silas flashed a smile at the unexpected communication. ‘I didn’t think you were ever going to text me. I thought you might be saving it just for girly chats with Josie. Yeah, I’m sure. I’m beginning to think I’m not capable of being in love. Don’t get me wrong, Raf, I like the girls I date. They’re great. But that’s it – it’s just like.’

‘No, that’s just a myth passed around by girls who are sore they got ditched. Boys fall in love, sure they do. I’ve got mates who have. Like Sam.’

That was true. Sam was notoriously besotted with Cassie and had been since they first got together two years before.

‘No, Raf. I think it’s me. Like there’s a bit of me missing that just can’t make that jump.’

I’d never heard Silas sound so unsure, so doubting. It never occurred to me that he would ever think he was the one in the wrong.

He got up and flicked the TV on and stared moodily at that for a while. I guess it was less wearing than staring at rain.

‘All the books, all the songs,’ he said after a while in a quiet, flat voice, ‘the films – all about love. Like it’s some amazing be-all and end-all. But what if there are people who just don’t have that capacity, Rafi?’

I didn’t know the answer to that, still trying to process this new side to my brother. But I couldn’t believe it of him. If there were people who couldn’t love in the way the poets and songwriters wrote about, then Silas couldn’t be one of them, could he?

He flicked through channels and appeared to lose himself in the news reports.

This was Dad’s fault. He should be here to talk to his son about male issues. He should be here setting an example, a role model for my brother, instead of being a dysfunctional mess who couldn’t stick at anything or fight for anyone. Let’s face it, he must know my mother wasn’t going to be of much help to a seventeen-year-old boy confused about relationships. Since he left she had eschewed men (I loved that word eschew – it reminded me of Miss Havisham for some unaccountable reason) and devoted herself to ‘her art’.

Silas sat forward, attracting my attention, and stared intently at the TV.

I crossed the room and tapped his shoulder in question as I sat down next to him.

‘Shush!’ he said.

I cast my eyes up at the ceiling. I knew what he meant, but oh, the irony!

The reporter on the TV said something about anarchists and a city riot. I was only half listening. The pictures showed the usual thing – teens and twenty-somethings all dressed in black, running around with masks on, throwing bricks at police and smashing windows.

Bunch of idiots. What was the point? They weren’t going to achieve anything. Some of the ones at the back had banners with anti-government messages painted on them in red, with circled ‘A’s daubed in each corner. You could see in the pictures that they were checking mobile phones all the time and relaying instructions to each other.

But why was Silas so interested? I poked his shoulder again.

‘They’re protesting against government corruption,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty fascinating how much dirt they’ve managed to dig up and leak to the media in the last few days. They’re all over Twitter at the moment, spreading the word on who’s done what.’

Corruption?

‘A lot of dodgy stuff that the Cabinet has tried to sweep under the carpet. If you ask me, these guys aren’t really that mad about it, but it gives them a stick to beat the government with and get the public more onside at the same time. But I reckon their main interest is just raising hell, whoever’s in power.’

Yeah, whatever. I couldn’t see the attraction at all. Like spraying graffiti tags on walls and smashing bus shelters – utterly useless and mindless. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t want to bother.

I made a drinking motion with my hand at Silas.

‘Oh yeah, thanks. Coffee would be good please.’

I wandered off to the kitchen, leaving him to watch the losers on the news.

CHAPTER 10

Josie was waiting for us when we got off the school bus.

‘You are not going to believe this.’

‘Oh, I think I might,’ Silas said under his breath. Only I heard him.

‘Lloyd turned up outside school today and apologised to me in full view of EVERYONE! And . . .’ She paused to check we were taking this in fully. ‘And he said, so they could all hear it, that the photos of me weren’t real and he’d faked them.’

‘Wow,’ said Silas, with a grin that bordered on smug. ‘Result!’

She chuckled. ‘Oh, and he added, very, very quietly, that would I please tell whoever it was on his back that he’d done
it
now and get them to leave him alone. Actually, his exact words were, “Now call off your pit bull!” Bless!’

‘Yeah,’ said Silas, kicking a pebble down the pavement as he walked, ‘I’ll take my teeth out of his neck now. As long as he keeps away. Hopefully he’s learned his lesson and he’s sussed that, when you try to be a player, you’ve got to face the possibility that there’s someone who will play nastier than you.’

Certainly if Lloyd hadn’t got that message by now then he must be really thick.

‘I owe you massive thanks,’ Josie said to him.

‘No, you don’t,’ Silas replied. ‘Not at all. You’re hanging out with my sister and it’s making her happy so you don’t owe me a thing.’

He didn’t see my face, but Josie did. I turned away abruptly and pretended to fiddle with something inside my bag. Silas walked on, but Josie shook her head at me as I followed slowly. ‘Later,’ she whispered.

My throat was tight and rough, as if sandpaper had been drawn down it. There was a scream waiting to come out. Of rage at Silas, that I didn’t want a friend bought by his actions. I didn’t want one on those terms. I wanted one like everybody else. One who liked me for me.

How did he not know that?

Josie invited me into her house as we got to the gate and I accepted gratefully. I didn’t even want to see Silas right now.

‘I honestly don’t think he meant it how it sounded,’ she said as we walked up her front path. ‘I know how you interpreted it and I know why – he didn’t phrase it well. But really all I think he meant was, “You’re my sister’s friend so I’ve got your back.”’

I nodded, because it was expected of me, but she wasn’t fooled.

‘Now are you going to be so dumb that I have to tell you that is
so
not why we’re friends? Please tell me you know that, right?’

I don’t know. Maybe
.

‘I will get really mad with you if I have to explain that we’re friends because we’re just made to be. Because I totally thought you understood that already!’

Possibly . . .

‘Oh, come on, Rafi!’

I forced myself to nod more certainly. Trust, right? That’s what friends did.

She twitched her mouth from side to side, assessing me. Then she got her phone out and opened up her Pinterest page. ‘See that?’

It was a quote by Emily Dickinson, written under a picture of an umbrella: ‘I felt it shelter to speak to you.’

Ridiculously, tears welled up in my eyes.

‘See, stoopid,’ Josie said gruffly and hugged me. ‘Now come in and I’ll make us milkshakes with ice cream.’

Josie’s house was a large Victorian villa with a double front. She pointed out a black VW Golf on the drive. ‘My dad’s old car. He’s saving it for me when I learn to drive next year.’ I looked suitably impressed.

We skirted round the path to the side of the house, through high, dense laurel hedges, to a side porch hidden from view from the road.

‘We never use the front door,’ she said, unlocking the porch and letting me into a big open-plan kitchen. It wasn’t at all what I expected from the exterior, which was traditional decor framed by the standard period-style garden. But inside the walls had been ripped down to make a huge space painted stark white with glossy white kitchen units and a pale stone floor. The kitchen ran on into a living space with contemporary white sofas and a giant plasma TV screen mounted on the wall.

‘This is where we mostly hang out,’ she said.

We
. She meant her and her dad of course. It seemed an awfully big space for the two of them. Come to think of it, it was a massive house for the two of them. I wondered if she had hoped to fill it with her friends before everything went wrong. Maybe two or three lounging around would make the room seem less barren.