We All Live Here

Chapter Twenty

Celie

Truant never gets onto the bed—it’s one of his “things,” along with never asking for a belly rub, only taking treats from Mum and Celie, and acting like everyone who comes to the door has come to murder them in their beds. But right now he is gazing at her from her duvet and Celie could not love him more. He understands. He is literally the only person in the world who does. The moment she walked into her room and finally let out the tears that had been swelling inside her head for the entire bus journey home, he had put his nose around the door, stood on the threshold for a minute, then nimbly leaped up and settled beside her. Not actually touching, his body is curled so that he is not suggesting he is definitely there in a support role, but she knows he is. Because Truant never gets onto the bed, and Celie has never felt sadder in her life.

The party is going to be a big one. China’s parents are away, and she and Meena have sent out invites on Snapchat and she is literally the only person in year eleven who hasn’t got one. The girls who were her best friends in the whole world for the whole of school have organized a party and she isn’t invited. Even Martin O’Malley is going. Martin O’Malley and that weird girl Katya who only joined in year nine and everyone says smells of cheese. And the only reason she even knows about the party is because Martin O’Malley came up to her in the lunch queue and asked her if she was going. She had thought briefly that she might keel over from the shock—it was like being kicked in the stomach—and then she recovered and said no, maybe, not sure, she hadn’t decided yet, but she was pretty sure she has no poker face because he had a horrible look of sympathy in his eyes when he walked away.

She reaches over and strokes Truant’s soft black head. He looks a little wary, his eyes sliding toward her, but doesn’t move, and then she puts her face into the pillow beside him and cries hot, silent tears.

She is not sure when Gene appeared, but it becomes obvious when Truant sets up a long, warning growl. She lifts her head and sees him standing there, his wrinkly old fingers on the door handle, his head cocked toward her. “Hey, what’s going on, chica ?”

She turns away from him. She does not want to have a Gene conversation right now. “Nothing.”

“You got a headache? I have some Advil in my—”

“No.”

A pause.

“You mad at your mom?”

“No, I am not mad at Mum.”

She turns away from him and stares at the wall, willing him to disappear. And his voice comes from behind her. “Got your period?”

She pushes herself upright. “Oh, my God, just go away !”

He pulls a face. “Yeah, see, that’s the thing. I can’t just walk out and leave a lady crying. Doesn’t feel right.” He stands in the doorway, while she rubs furiously at her eyes, wishing he would just leave. But he takes another step toward her. Truant’s growl grows louder. “You sure you don’t have your period?”

“Please just go.”

He goes, and she breathes a shaky sigh of relief, but he is back within minutes and this time opens the door without even knocking. She is about to yell at him but he throws something toward her, which lands on the bed. Truant jumps out of his skin and disappears behind the curtains, letting out brief warning barks, interspersed with growling.

She picks it up, trying to ignore the noise. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. “What’s this?”

“Try it.”

He is clearly not going to leave until she does. She opens the wrapper and takes a small bite. She can taste peanut butter and overly sweet chocolate. It isn’t bad, but she isn’t really hungry. She takes another bite, letting it melt on her tongue. She will eat it and thank him, say something about how great he is, which is all Gene ever wants from anyone, and then he will go.

But instead of leaving, he sits on the bed beside her uninvited, and opens a second packet, popping a whole one of the chocolate discs into his mouth and letting out a little “mm” of pleasure. He speaks with his mouth full. “I keep a supply of them in my case. All this low-calorie stuff that Bill does—it’s good for you, I guess, but a man needs to have a little sugar in his life, you know what I’m saying?”

Celie nods, and starts on the second. They eat in silence, listening to Truant’s protests fade into sporadic grumbling growls, just to let Gene know he is still there, behind the curtain.

“I had a little cry this morning,” Gene says, as he finishes chewing.

Celie twists to look at him.

“Didn’t get a part. Kind of crazy, really, but I just knew I would be great in it. Just one of those medical dramas. It would have got me out of a hole. Would have got me back in the game over here. I got a call-back and then—after making me hold my breath for three days—goddammit if they didn’t go with the other guy. He couldn’t even act!”

He pops the other peanut butter cup into his mouth and chews. “And I know he wears a hairpiece.”

Gene lets out a long sigh. And then he nudges her. “C’mon. Help me take your dumb dog out for a walk so it likes me and doesn’t bite me again.”

Celie sinks back onto her pillows. “I don’t want to go out.”

“Aww, c’mon, Celie. Help me out. I need to get this mutt on side. And you know the women are mad for me over here. The only way I can keep them off me is if I have an attractive young chick at my side.”

“You can’t call women chicks any more.”

“Young ladies.”

“Worse.”

“Really? Okay. Let’s settle on arm candy.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I’m talking about me, not you. C’mon, finish your Reese’s and let’s get outta here.”

···

The Heath is busy at this time of day, its pathways covered with a carpet of ginger leaves, couples with takeaway coffees walking arm in arm, and children released from school jumping stray branches on the ground, brought down by the autumnal winds. Celie doesn’t want to talk, really, but Gene never stops so she just lets him go on, about his failed audition, about how he misses the LA weather, about a woman who looks like a girl he once dated who cut the toes out of all his socks and he didn’t even discover it till a week after she’d gone. She wonders whether that means he wore the same pair of socks all week, or whether he just walked around LA barefoot, but she can’t be bothered to ask. She keeps thinking about how awful it’ll be in school on Monday, the way the excitement about the party is going to ramp up toward the weekend, and how everyone will gradually find out that she’s the only person not invited. It’s like a disease, she thinks, being unpopular. People might not even know about it, but when they see you being isolated they’ll be worried they might catch it and steer clear. She’s already eaten lunch by herself four times in the last week.

“I think I might change schools,” she says, when it’s clearly impossible for her to say nothing. “There’s a sixth-form college up the road I might go to.”

“Okay. Sounds like a plan. Why’d you wanna change schools, though?”

Gene has hold of the lead and Truant is lagging behind them, as far as it’s possible to get from Gene without actually pulling himself out of his harness.

She shrugs. “I might get better exam results.”

He looks at her for a moment, then pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and flips one into his mouth. He lights it and takes a long drag, blowing a thin plume of smoke into the air. “You don’t like your school?”

“It’s okay.”

“Nobody leaves at your age unless they hate their school.”

She kicks at a stone. Her voice when it emerges is choked, as if there is a giant pebble lodged in her mouth. “I used to like it.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just keeps walking but she can feel his gaze on her. And suddenly she’s crying again. About Meena and the party and the anxiety knot she has in her stomach the whole time.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey.” He puts his arm around her and she doesn’t even care if anyone sees. It’s just all too much. “C’mon. Tell your old pal Gene. What’s going on?”

“You won’t talk to Mum?”

“Do I look like a tattle-tale?”

So she tells him. About how she might as well have leprosy because not a single person except the absolute rejects will talk to her, and how Meena was her best friend and knows all her secrets—including the fact that she wet the bed until she was eight and how she used to sleep with Mum for ages after Dad left because it felt like everything was falling apart and she was suddenly weirdly afraid of the dark and how she went with that boy from year thirteen in the park last November because she was stoned. Now it’s like her whole life is in a box that Meena is just carrying round letting everyone peer in and laugh at her. And how she feels sick all the time and she can’t talk to Mum because Mum is always stressed and miserable and distracted, and Dad doesn’t think about anything but Marja and the new baby, and she doesn’t know how she’ll survive the next two years if she stays where she is because it feels like heading into a war zone every day.

And when she stops, Gene is standing beside her and he has his big old arm around her shoulders and he is pulling her into him and her face is against his T-shirt, which smells a bit of beer and cigarettes but not in a bad way. And he just squeezes her and kisses the top of her head and lets his face rest there for a minute. “Ah, sweetcheeks,” he says. “That’s rough.”

“I don’t know how to make it stop. Because I don’t know what I did.” She is wiping at her eyes, embarrassed, and he walks her over to a bench and sits her down until she can stop crying. It only takes about ten minutes. She can’t look at him now, just sits with her shoulders hunched, her elbows resting on her knees, hiccuping gently.

“You know, I don’t know much about much. But the one thing I do know about is acting.”

Oh, God , she thinks. Not another Gene On Stage story. But he continues.

“Now, I don’t know what you did. Or if you even did anything. But I do know that these girls—mean girls—they’re going to be reading you all the time. Girls are super good at that. Boys, you know, we’re just going to throw a few punches at each other and sort it out and it’s all pretty much forgotten. But girls, they’re complex. And right now, you’re walking around just like—”

He gets up and stands in front of her, hunching his shoulders and dropping his chin. He looks sorrowful, defeated.

“I don’t walk like that.”

“Yeah, you kind of do. Body language is my special skill, sweetheart. That’s what I do. And what you’re projecting right now is defeat.”

She stares at him, horrified. She pushes herself a little more upright.

Gene is talking directly to her now, his face uncharacteristically serious. “Now I’m not saying how you stand is going to make a whole bunch of difference, but it will make a difference. And right now these girls know you care about what they’re doing to you. They know you’re hurting and it makes them feel powerful. It makes them forget what’s going on with their own lives. Because, honestly, they will all be having a crappy time individually.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because it’s only hurt people who hurt people.”

She stares at him.

“Celie, baby, you look around at people who are happy in themselves in their lives—they’re just busy living, having a good time. They don’t set out to be mean to other people. Their energy is going into other things. It doesn’t even occur to them to hurt someone else, or to try to make them feel small. In fact, they’re more likely to be building other people up. So you know what you’re going to do?”

Celie shakes her head.

“You’re gonna feel sorry for them. These stupid, sad, mean girls who can only get their kicks from trying to make other people feel bad. Yup.” He holds up a hand as she starts to protest. “But, also, you’re not going to give them anything to make them feel better.”

She frowns.

“You’re going to change the way you show up. So instead of this”—he walks, shoulders hunched, looking sad, glancing sideways as if he was apologetic for even being there—“you’re going to go in there on Monday looking like you don’t give two shits.”

She blinks.

Gene corrects himself. “Sorry—you’re going to look like you couldn’t care less what these girls think or do. You’re going to walk in, own your space, hold your chin up, and change the energy around you. Like this.”

He lifts his chest a little, walks determinedly to the patch of grass in front of her, and has a small smile on his face, like everything is faintly amusing.

“I can’t do that.” She pushes a curtain of hair from her face.

“Sure you can. You just have to practice. Go on. Do it.”

She shrinks into herself, glancing around at the people who are walking their dogs nearby. This is too much.

But Gene keeps standing in front of her. “C’mon. Do it. I’m not going anywhere until you’ve done it. Stand up.”

She sighs. He really isn’t going anywhere. She gets up reluctantly from the bench.

“Straighter. C’mon. You’re still bent double.”

She straightens up a few more degrees, lifts her chin.

“That’s it! More! You got it! Now walk to that tree.”

She starts to walk, lengthens her stride, keeps her chest up. She feels a little self-conscious, but she doesn’t want him yelling at her in public so she tries her hardest to stay really upright. It is actually a little shocking to feel how different this is from how she has been walking.

“Breathe! C’mon! A lot of this is in your breath. Breathe deep from in here! You’re strong! Powerful! You’re in a bubble that they can’t penetrate. Now walk back past me and give me some attitude!”

He really isn’t giving up. She turns, lifts her chin and walks back toward him.

He’s animated now, gesturing toward her. “I’m one of those girls, okay? Look at me, being all mean and pouty.” He flicks at his hair and purses his lips. “You know what I’m up to but you don’t care. I’m basically beneath you, Celie. I’m pitiable! You put it on, baby, your body is going to start feeling it! And then you’re going to feel it! C’mon!”

He is yelling now, pouting his lips together, and it makes her half embarrassed, half want to laugh. She slows her walk as she passes him, lifts her head and gives him a faint, dismissive smile.

“Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! Sassy Celie! Give me Sassy Celie!”

She laughs. He is so ridiculous.

“C’mon. Back again! Give it to me worse now. Hands on hips! You can’t even be bothered to engage with me! I’m barely worth your attention! I’m dirt under your shoe!”

She pivots, walks past him the other way, and she gives it to him. A sly flick of her gaze, up and down and up again, the smallest of sneers in her smile. She tells him silently he is nothing. Her chin is up, her shoulders locked, and she pivots again.

“Oh, yes ! C’mon, baby. Now you’ve got it! Oh, man. More of that look! I’m dying here. I’m shrinking. I’m shrinking. Look, I’m nothing!”

Gene is crumbling, falling to his knees and then onto the ground. “I’m dead!” he says, flopping backward onto the grass. “I’m actually dead. You killed me.”

She stops, laughing, feeling suddenly lighter. Weirdly, it works. She doesn’t know how well she’ll pull it off on Monday, but it does work. Or, at least, it’s something, a tiny piece of armor to take to the war zone. She thinks of walking past Meena and China and their shock as they see she doesn’t care what they say. She visualizes the bubble protecting her. She will move through her day like this, letting their unfriendly stares bounce off her, their whispered words unable to get through her invisible shield. Then she relaxes her position and grins, waiting for him to get up. He rolls over onto his side and pushes himself up to a sitting position in the grass, staring at his legs.

She waits. Finally he raises his head and looks at her, and lifts a gnarled old hand, puffing slightly. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to give me a hand up, pumpkin. The old knees aren’t what they were.”