Wasted (5 page)

“They were certainly unlucky.”

“Exactly, unlucky! Brilliant! You've got it already!” Jess feels faintly proud but doesn't know why. He continues, bright-eyed, obviously off on one of his pet subjects: “But luck just depends on your viewpoint. See this?” Jack reaches past her and picks up a wallet and removes a pound coin from it. He spins it between finger and thumb. It seems to have its own energy. His body is still. Then he slithers it through his fingers and she watches it move fluidly like a minnow in shallows. After a few seconds – showing off, Jess knows – he flicks it into the air again, catches it and brings it down flat on the back of his other hand, closing his palm around it. “Heads or tails?”

“Tails.”

He opens his hand wide and reveals the coin. Head facing up.

“Bad luck!”

“Your point?” She is annoyed. She is being patronized, played with.

“No point. The coin landed as it did because of unseen but
physical
causes. Luck doesn't come into it. Luck is just how we see it. To the coin, it makes no difference whether it's heads or tails. To you it does. The coin just follows the laws of nature. We call it luck, good or bad.”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“That you're pretty pretentious. And I guess if you're into all this it explains why your band is called Schrödinger's Cats?” She's going to show him she's not ignorant.

Jack stares at her. “You understand about that?”

“Do you? I mean, it seems pointless to me.”

“I don't think anyone's supposed to understand it – I just thought it was a cool name for a band. We were talking about it in philosophy one day – about parallel worlds and different types of truth, but no one actually understood it. Our teacher said you can't understand it unless you're mad.”

Jess is relieved.

Then he grins. “Anyway, about being pretentious, can I carry on? Please? It's interesting.”

“Go on then. But I'm this close to being seriously bored by all this physics or philosophy or whatever.” She holds her finger and thumb up, perhaps a millimetre apart. Though she's smiling.

“Here's an example. This. Me hearing you sing. I didn't know you existed but I
needed
you to. And I walked past that door at the right time. Past a soundproofed room. Where the door wasn't properly shut. Invisible things came together to make it happen. Natural, physical things. Not chance, but definitely luck for me.” He's not looking cheesy when he says it.

Something stirs inside her. She's not sure what he means but she likes his eyes while he says it. He has one hand through his hair, holding it off his face. His fingers are long and flat and wiry. She'd like to touch them.

“The ancient Greeks used to sacrifice to the gods because they thought the gods would give them bad luck if they didn't. Sometimes I think you have to do something like that,” he continues. “See, those people” – and he waves towards the wall with the newspaper cuttings – “they weren't doing risky things. Stuff like that could happen to anyone. But if they'd done something a tiny bit differently they'd be alive now. Instead of just falling into the day as though they didn't care. You have to care. You have to take control even when it appears that you have none.”

“But how would they know what to do differently? If they didn't know what was going to hit them?”

“No, they wouldn't
know
. But supposing they'd offered themselves up, like a sacrifice. Supposing they'd tossed a coin that morning and asked it a question: Should I leave the house five minutes earlier today? Should I cross the road at the first lights or the second? Should I get a pizza at lunch or take a home-made sandwich? When I go to Northseas High, should I walk down
that
corridor or
that
one? Then everything might have been different. So they could have changed their lives, if they'd done a tiny thing differently. Like Buddy Holly's band member, Tommy Allsup. You know about that?”

“No, but I'm guessing you're going to tell me.”

“Tommy Allsup was supposed to be in the plane that crashed and killed Buddy Holly, but somebody else wanted to go. Tommy agreed to toss a coin for the seat and he lost. The other guy died. If he hadn't agreed to toss the coin, Tommy would have died.”

“Wow.”

He passes her one of the glasses with the clear liquid in. “It's OK – I'll just have water,” she says. She doesn't know why. It just seems to be what she wants to say, and yet she sort of doesn't. The words just come out of her mouth. Of course, she is the one who instructed her brain but she doesn't really know why or even when or whether.

“Sure? It's elderflower cordial.”

“Oh, right! Yes, please, then.”

“You thought it was vodka!”

“Well, yes, but…”

“So you don't drink then?”

“Yes, of course I do. But…” But what? Jess doesn't know. Is it an issue? It's like chocolate. She eats chocolate but she might easily have said no to chocolate. It doesn't mean she doesn't eat chocolate. Chocolate isn't an
issue
.

Jack gets up and goes to a cupboard. Removes an unopened bottle of vodka. “You sure? Just one?”

Now she's said no, she wants to stay saying no. Or she would feel manipulated. “No, thanks. It's OK.”

Jack places it on the table. Picks up the coin, does that showing off spinny thing again, looks at the coin where it lands. With a blank expression, he picks up the bottle and puts it back in the cupboard. “Me neither.” He sits back down next to her. “That bottle has been there since my eighteenth birthday. Someone gave it to me.”

“So, you don't drink?”

“Actually, no, I don't, mostly. Except sometimes, a bit, when I want to. It's a control thing. Alcohol removes free will. Sorry, being pretentious again. I get like that.” And Jack looks down at the floor and fiddles with a piece of thread from the edge of a rug and then looks up at Jess and she melts. There is something about him. There is a lot about him and half of it is strange but all of it is exciting.

She picks up the coin and tries to flick it into the air. It twists once and then drops like lead to the ground, where it performs a pathetic totter before rolling under a table.

He retrieves it. He takes her hand, and her heart tumbles as he manipulates the fingers into the right position. He balances the coin on the edge of her middle finger and places her thumb lightly beneath it. “Gently,” he says. “Flick.” She feels his breath on her face. She flicks, and the coin spins a couple of times. He catches it, spins it again and brings it down on the back of her hand, which he has taken in his left. He covers it with his right hand, looks at her and asks, “Heads or tails? Concentrate. Imagine the answer's important.”

She tries to think. It's not easy when he's holding her hand, but she tries. In her mind heads and tails vie for position. She could say either. Which will she say? Heads? Tails? Heads? Tails? How can she decide? Her mouth has to say one or the other – it would be ridiculous not to be able to decide. But what will make her say heads? Or tails? Heads? Tails? Come on, just
say
one!

“Tails.” It is tails. “Yes!” She is ridiculously pleased.

“Chance?” he asks.

“Luck,” she replies.

“Exactly! So do you want to play the game for real? After all, bad luck could strike you on your way home. Or later. And maybe by making a sacrifice to luck now, you will avoid that.”

“Well, I'd better do it, then, hadn't I? Wouldn't want a tortoise dropping on my head.”

“Exactly. So, here's what we do. We ask a really important question and we have to promise to go with the answer. You have to put yourself in the hands of luck and then luck will look after you. Sometimes. So you see, if we get the answer we don't want, it's OK because it makes good luck more likely to follow. Probably. It's a kind of win–win situation.”

He looks at her, sips his drink that is not vodka. “Ready?”

She nods.

“OK, here's the question.” He pauses. The coin is rippling through his fingers again. His lips part and then he asks, “Will you kiss me?”

Heart flips. Looks down, as though shy. Well, she
feels
shy. She can't meet his eyes. Her skin holds its breath. The universe has two parts: there is the bubble of airlessnesss that holds her body, and there is the world outside it.

He is talking again. “That's the question. Are you prepared to go with the answer? It could be yes or no. Fifty–fifty chance. In theory. Heads is yes, by the way.”

She takes a drink too. She wishes it
was
vodka. “Yes.” Sweat is on her palms. There are footsteps downstairs, the sound of a toilet flushing, a door closing. She breathes, but only just.

He flicks the coin with his thumb, high into the air. They both watch it spin and fall into his hand, where he grabs it and slaps his palm onto the back of his other hand but does not reveal the coin. He has not seen it either. And now Jess knows how much she wants the coin to land the right way up.

It doesn't.

JACK
has walked Jess home. They do not kiss because the game has not allowed them to. But he catches her hand as she opens the gate and something snatches her throat.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. It is dark but she can see his eyes in the streetlight. It should probably be moonlight but it isn't.

She says something ordinary. Maybe she says
Yes
or
See you
or
Thanks for walking me home
or something. It doesn't matter because it wouldn't make any difference to anything. They are now linked anyway and they both know it. Nothing needs to be said.

Of course, either of them
could
choose to say something that would stop this relationship dead. “Free will” should allow them to let any words out of their mouths. Like,
Sorry, I think we're making a mistake. I don't want to see you again.
Or
I am only interested in you for what you can bring to the band, by the way.
But it's not going to happen. Because although they technically could say that, the words that come from their mouths have to come from something that already exists inside them. Everything has a reason, purpose or cause. One thing leads to another and for now everything leads them to feel desire.

The coin landing the wrong way has only increased that. So, maybe it did make a difference.

Jack watches as she goes up the path and turns her key in the door. He sees her walk inside, turn the light on and wave to him. He waves back, stands a moment longer and then walks home. He reaches home safely. Although many things could happen, they usually don't. And for everything that happens, there are billions and billions more that don't.

On that short journey, he walks slowly, though he doesn't particularly mean to. Time has clunked into a new groove and there is more in the world to be sensed now. There are more star patterns than he thought and space is deeper and there is energy in every cell of him and the nearby chippy smells mouth-watering. Around him, the night is warm and close and treacly. He lifts his hand – the one that touched Jess's – to his face and then punches the air and all his excitement comes out in one word: “Yesss!”

Lucky Jack. He has a girl for his band. Not just any girl, not just the sort of girl you'd get if you measured the probability, or if chance was really random, or if dreams were in any way realistic, but
this
girl. A girl with wide brown eyes and caramel skin and a voice smooth and rich as chocolate.

Jess, meanwhile, walks into the kitchen and gets herself a drink of water, which she carries slowly up to bed. She feels alive. As though before she has merely been sleepwalking and now she is fully awake. In the bathroom mirror, before she removes her make-up, she stares and tries to see what Jack must see. She knows she must be the same as this morning, and yet it feels as though everything has changed, as if she's on the edge of something huge and invisible.

Soon, she is in her bed, childhood toys staring down from the top of a wardrobe. They are probably thick with dust because she has not touched them for a long time but she still knows they are there. One day they will no longer exist; it is not possible to imagine the moments when each will be thrown away, but for each toy that moment will happen.

Sleep is nowhere near. She gets out of bed again, sensing the carpet between her toes and her pyjama straps on her shoulders as she walks towards the window. The night is hot and thick and windless.

Something important has happened to her that ordinary day and she had not been expecting anything like it at all.

She thinks back to the luck that meant that Jack had heard her sing. And when she tries to take in the factors that had to be right for it to happen, when she tries to contemplate how easily it might not have, her mind is boggled and overwhelmed. It is best not to think, to take it in one's stride and just let things happen. Jack thinks he can manipulate luck. But she is not so sure. She wants to believe, but he could be wrong.

She's quite happy to go along with it though. After all, it's just a game. Won't make any difference. It's even kind of interesting.

As she's lying in bed later, not really trying to sleep, just enjoying thinking about the evening and all the feelings of it, she hears her mum come back. There's a crash of something being dropped, the door shutting too noisily, her mum cursing as she knocks against something. It's the sound of a drunk person trying to be quiet. Just one person – it doesn't seem as though Julia has come back with her. Which is lucky, since then there'd be double the noise and a load of laughing and in the morning Jess would have to look at Julia's large middle-aged body spilling out of the skimpy clothes she'd been wearing the night before and would have to remind her that no, she can't smoke in the house because that's the house rule. Julia would roll her eyes and look scathingly at Jess and Sylvia would say something vaguely irritating to both of them. And the house would smell of stale cigarettes and dregs of wine and residual sweaty perfume.