The Friendship Fling

36 this must be what killed the dinosaurs

36

this must be what killed the dinosaurs

Finn

I meet Ava outside South Kensington Tube station at six thirty. Well, no, I arrive at six thirty as planned and she shows up eight minutes later, but it’s better than I expected. As soon as she comes into view, I have to smooth my features so she won’t see me react. I’ve been expending a lot of energy keeping our relationship platonic. The part of me that’s desperately trying to forget everything that happened between us last weekend has been constantly warring with the part that replays it on repeat at extremely inopportune moments.

Her hair’s tied back in her usual ponytail and she’s wearing clothes that lead me to believe she’s either going camping or on a hike, but I know her well enough by now to know we are doing neither of these things. She gave me instructions to wear comfy clothes too and I’ve obliged, although I’d imagine seeing me in my sweatpants doesn’t make her heart stutter the way mine does at the sight of her in hers.

I pull her in for a hug. It’s self-serving, sure, but she relaxes against me too. When I pull away, her shoulders inch up again like she’s on edge. It’s subtle, but I notice. She’s been like this for a few days now and I can’t figure out why.

‘What’s in the bag?’ I nod towards the giant backpack she’s wearing. Maybe distracting her will make her feel more at ease.

‘Do you really want to know?’ She removes the bag from her shoulders and positions it against the wall as she opens it to show me the contents.

My head shoots up. ‘Sorry, is that my underwear ?’

‘I got Julien to take stuff from your room when he was over the other day without you noticing.’ She’s extremely cavalier for someone admitting to aiding and abetting undergarment theft.

‘Is it, like, a fetish or something? I didn’t accidentally put sex club on the list, did I?’

‘No, Finlay, it is not a fetish. If you’ll notice, he also stole a hoodie and a T-shirt.’

‘I’m gonna be honest, that hasn’t eased my concern.’

She tightens the drawstring and closes the bag, before lifting it and looping the straps over my shoulders for me to carry it instead. A grin flashes across her face, like she believes she’s tricked me into being her pack mule. In reality I’d probably carry her if she asked me to.

I remind myself that this agreement is what’s best. I wasn’t lying when I told Ava that being her friend is my favourite thing. I like who I am when I’m with her, and I’ll take any variation of her if it means we can keep spending time together before I leave.

‘Let’s walk,’ she says, and I follow her along the pavement. ‘All will be revealed. You trust me, don’t you?’

‘You know my answer.’

Her expression’s coy as we wander along paved streets for a couple of minutes, and I sneak glances to capture as much of her as I can; the way her ponytail swings as she walks, the slight upturn of her nose, how she keeps tugging the sleeves of her hoodie down. Just as I come to the conclusion that whoever decided to call them the apples of your cheeks must’ve been using Ava as their source material, we arrive at our destination. It’s an ornate building I recognise, with four pillars holding up the stone facade.

‘Here we are,’ she says with a flourish. ‘The Natural History Museum.’

I think back to my list. See the dinosaurs. She grins, her whole face hopeful, and I peer at the entrance. ‘Is it open late tonight?’

‘Better,’ she leads me towards a sign near the door, which says A Night at the Museum . She watches my face to gauge my reaction. ‘It’s this event they do every so often where they invite guests to eat and drink at the museum until late and then sleep in the main hall under the massive dinosaur skeleton. Josie and Alina’s friend, Sage, managed to get us tickets. I thought you’d like it. Especially after your intense week.’

I don’t know why, but there’s a lump in my throat, and it stops me from speaking. Her eyes flick between mine and the longer I don’t say anything, the more the excitement fades from her face. She scrabbles for a caveat. ‘But if you’re not interested, we can just go inside to look at the fossils and then leave in an hour or whatever, that’s fine too.’

‘Ava, no,’ I grab her arm and the lump finally shifts. ‘This is perfect. What the fuck?’

Relief floods back into her expression and I let her smile soak into me.

‘Let’s go and see if our names are on the guest list. If not, then this is going to be extremely embarrassing.’

Sage pulled through; we’re let in with no further questions and I get to see what else is in the bag. Ava’s planned it all: there are two sleeping bags – turns out Alina’s an avid camper – along with mini toiletries and inflatable pillows. We set the bag in a storeroom with everyone else’s stuff so we won’t have to lug it around the museum with us.

‘You can take your pillow with you on the plane,’ she says as we step back into the main area.

I’m trying not to think about the move. It’s coming together quicker than I have time to process. I don’t need to wait for a visa like I have in the past – thanks for that American passport, Dad – and I’ve got a few apartment viewings lined up in my first week. There’s that familiar buzz at the prospect of starting afresh, but I know saying goodbye to this part of my life is going to be harder than usual. For now, though, I’m here.

We spend the evening exploring the exhibits, which involves me showing Ava the fossils I like and her pretending she’s interested. We spot Sage in one of the galleries and I talk their ear off about armoured dinosaurs while Ava watches like we’re speaking a different language. There’s a sit-down meal at around eight, and then the bar opens and I’m kind of obsessed with the fact people are getting drunk at the Natural History Museum. Just what the dinosaurs would’ve wanted.

At the end of a science show, while I’m peppering a palaeontologist with approximately fifty questions, Ava pulls away and spends a few minutes on her phone, frantically texting, periodically drawing her fingertips up to her mouth like she’s trying to pull out the words to send. When I catch her eye and mouth, Are you okay? she smiles and nods, but I can tell she doesn’t mean it. Her real smile makes my stomach drop – this one just twists it.

She rejoins the group with that insincere smile, acting like she’s listening and pointedly ignoring every concerned glance I send her way. Then we head back to the galleries, slower this time, taking in the artefacts we didn’t notice on our first round. The more we roam, the tighter Ava’s eyebrows pull together, and I know she’s not here with me anymore.

I wonder if she just needs some time alone, so we’re quiet for a while, and I reluctantly let her drift away as we wander.

‘Hey, look. Send a photo of this to your brother,’ I say at last, pointing at a plaque that reads Maxakalisaurus : sauropod, herbivore . ‘Did you know there’s a dinosaur called the Avaceratops too? I might petition for them to place both sets of fossils together, in honour of you two.’

It’s a terrible joke, but it feels like a disproportionate response when her eyes well. If there’s one thing I know about Ava, it’s that she is not a crier. I step in front of her. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She says it immediately and I don’t believe her. My hand moves down to her wrist and I pull her to a corner of the gallery that’s free of people.

‘Ava, please. What’s really going on? There’s something bothering you.’

She slides down the wall to the floor and I try to give her space by sitting against the other wall. For a few moments, we listen to the quiet murmur of people at the other end of the room, our legs outstretched on the floor, feet almost touching.

She scrunches her nose as she thinks, and I hold my breath while I wait for her response. ‘Do you remember ages ago I told you that Max had cancer a few years back?’ She lets out a long exhale. ‘He’s ill again. It wasn’t confirmed until today.’

A few other people enter the gallery, either studiously analysing the plaques or drunkenly giggling at some of the funnier names, but they steer clear of us.

‘How are you feeling?’

I ask the question, but her emotions sit across her whole body; the sadness pulling her shoulders in, anxiousness in the twist of her mouth, and something else in her eyes. Guilt?

She frowns like it’s a stupid question and picks at a loose thread on her trousers. ‘It’s knocked me. Because he seemed okay, you know? And he will be again.’ She nods decisively. ‘He has to be. But it’s brought back some memories I’ve spent a long time trying to push down. It took me a while to get out of that space the first time, and now I can feel myself going back.’ She sighs. ‘It’s never been fair that I’m healthy and he’s not. Sometimes it feels like . . . It feels like anything that’s happened to him could’ve happened to me, if the tiniest thing had been different. Like maybe it should’ve been me.’

Trying to ignore the way my heart is shattering at what she just said, I shuffle over to sit next to her, hoping that my proximity is as healing to her as hers is to me. ‘You can’t think like that.’

She doesn’t respond, only continues to tug that loose thread.

I murmur, ‘It must’ve been a shock.’

‘It was last time. It was hard to even process while it was happening. We just had to deal with it day by day. Sometimes I wonder if it would’ve felt less scary if it were a more common type of cancer, because I would’ve heard about more people who’d survived it. But then, it’s not exactly like there’s ever a good type. It’s always terrible, no matter who you are, no matter what form it takes.’ She looks straight ahead, breathing shallow, fingernails curling into her palm. I take her hand, sliding my fingers under hers to unfurl them, reminding her that she’s on solid ground, and I’m with her. ‘I can’t really explain the feeling of watching him when it happened. It’s this weird, prolonged sense of grief. Like, a pre-emptive mourning. It was draining. Constantly fighting against the what-ifs. What if this doesn’t work? What if—’ The words snag in the air, bulky and difficult to see past, and I feel her tense. ‘What if this is the last version of him I see?’

‘Hey.’ I squeeze her hand. ‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

‘I think . . .’ She looks down at our hands like she’s only just noticed she’s been drawing circles on mine with her thumb and, slowly, she says, ‘I do want to.’

She inches closer, pressing the side of her body against me, and I desperately wish that, at the very least, I can absorb some of her sadness by osmosis. Her throat bobs as she swallows. ‘Last time, he responded really well to treatment and was getting better. He had chemotherapy first, which got rid of most of the cancer, and then was set to have what they call limb-saving surgery. After the initial shock wore off and we realised he was improving, it felt like things were looking up. Max got very good at making awful jokes. Our parents never laughed at them, but it was his way of coping, I guess.’

Briefly, she smiles almost like she’s nostalgic, and then sadness contorts her features into something I don’t recognise. ‘He was healing from treatment, waiting out the weeks until surgery, when he took a turn for the worse. Because the twisted thing about chemo is that while it kills all the bad cells, it gets rid of the good ones too. And when Max didn’t have enough good ones to fight an infection, he ended up hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU with severe sepsis. He seemed so out of reach.’ Her voice cracks on the last word.

‘I dropped out of uni not long before he got the infection. I’d been going home a lot anyway, but I realised I needed to be with everyone. I didn’t even tell Josie why at the time. I thought that if I didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t real. I distanced myself from the few friends I’d made at uni. It was only because Josie’s so relentless and wouldn’t stop messaging me that we managed to keep up the friendship afterwards.

‘My parents and I were staying at a hotel by the hospital, and I’d lie in bed every night pleading with the universe, wondering what kind of deal I could strike to make Max better. Then I worried that by thinking about those horrible what-ifs in the first place, I was putting negative energy out and would unintentionally end up speaking them into existence. So I tried the best I could to stamp the fear out.

‘Some mornings I’d wake up and realise my face was wet, so I’d dry my cheeks and go next door to my parents’ room and be the one who didn’t cry, because they were already going through so much. I can’t imagine how it feels to watch your child deteriorate, knowing it’s entirely out of your hands.’

‘He’s your brother, Ava,’ I say, brushing a tear from her cheek. ‘You were entitled to be upset too.’

She shrugs, and I realise there’s not much I dislike about Ava, but I despise how she deflects, how she discounts her own feelings.

‘One night, we got a call from the hospital. There’s only one reason hospital staff call you in the middle of the night, so we got there straight away. And he was just so small. So fragile. So unlike him.

‘I probably just imagined it as some twin telepathy thing, but I swear I felt the moment he slipped away. It was like a tug on a piece of rope, like he’d stumbled off a cliff. Then the heart monitor made that terrible sound, and the doctors came in and I knew I was right. I knew it because it felt like my own heart had been torn open. Like he’d grabbed at it for purchase as he fell and took a piece with him over the edge.

‘As we were bundled out of the room, I prayed to every single god I didn’t believe in. What do I have to promise to get him to stay? I’ll do anything. Take whatever you want from me, take me instead if you have to, just please, give him back. ’

Tears trail down her face as she continues to look blankly ahead, and I blink the moisture away from my own eyes.

‘He used to joke that the minutes I was out in the world and he wasn’t were the loneliest moments of my life. But that’s not true anymore. It was that night in the ICU. Knowing he was on the other side of us. In the dark.’ She sniffs and pauses before she speaks. ‘Then, they managed to restart his heart, and he came back. Reckless and stubborn until the end. But I won’t ever forget that feeling. It lives and breathes with him.’ She lifts our linked hands to her face and wipes more tears away.

‘It was touch and go for a while. He took such a long time to heal. It really took a toll on him, and he still had to have his surgery, heal some more, and do physio after that. But in the end he was okay. And I guess I’ve always felt like I’ve never had the right to be sad about any of it because he got better. Because he came back.’

‘You have the right,’ I say. ‘You spent months in this state of anxiety and dread and then the worst thing happened, and then you still had to live through more of that fear while he healed. There’s no way that wouldn’t affect a person. Especially not when you’re as close as the two of you.’

‘So many people aren’t as lucky. We got him back.’

‘Your family is lucky to have you too, you know.’ She ignores me, and I’m willing to repeat it over and over until she admits it’s true. ‘They are. If I can see it, so can they. You try so hard to hold your emotions back, but you feel so much for the people you love. It’s a wonder they don’t collapse under the weight of it.’

‘I don’t think it matters. If saving someone were as simple as sending out love and tear-stained pleas, no one would die.’ She swallows hard and continues, ‘So even though I knew in my head that it was medicine and sheer coincidence that brought him back, on the off chance it wasn’t, I couldn’t risk it. I kept my life small and quiet, hoping the universe wouldn’t notice me and remember I owe it something. But slowly, I started to let the happiness in. Started to think it was safe to relax. And now, here we are. It’s happened again.’ She grits her teeth and mutters, ‘And I hate that I’m scared and upset when Max is the one who has to go through it all. I’m ashamed of it.’ Her chest heaves when she stops, and mine tightens at the sight.

‘They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be sad for both you and him.’

She blinks a few times and says, ‘Maybe.’

There’s enough time between each of her tears now that they dry on her cheeks.

‘Not maybe . Definitely. You’re allowed to feel, Ava. I’m not a therapist, but I know they’d tell you the same.’ I run my thumb over the soft skin at her wrist and hope she doesn’t recoil against what I’m about to suggest. ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if it helped telling me everything, it could be even more helpful telling a professional. Someone who you can be sure won’t say the wrong thing.’

She turns her head, looking at me for the first time since she started talking, and the intensity of it shatters my heart into a thousand pieces. ‘You never say the wrong thing. I don’t know how you do it. It’s like you live in my brain.’

It feels like you live in mine too , I want to say.

But I don’t. Instead, I let her rest her head on my shoulder and breathe.

I don’t know how long we sit like that. As the minutes pass, I’m sure I see some of the weight roll off her, grey smoke uncoiling and dissipating, until eventually her head is light enough to lift off my shoulder and face me. Her voice is croaky when she asks, ‘Be honest, how puffy are my eyes?’

She’s trying to bring back a sense of normality, so that’s what I’ll give her.

‘They look fine if you just,’ I gingerly put my hand over them, ‘cover them up.’

Even in her laugh’s weakened state, the sound of it fills my chest.

‘I’m glad I told you all of this,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d be okay with keeping it quiet, but I realised I didn’t want you to leave and not know what was going on.’

‘Thank you for trusting me. I’m really sorry I won’t be here to help out. Now feels like the time to have people around you who—’ I swallow the word down and continue, ‘People who care about you.’

She nods, and I’d do anything to be able to take away the memories that hurt her and stomp down the fears that plague her, but I know I don’t have that power.

‘I’ll have Josie nearby this time around. I won’t be by myself.’

‘She’ll be a good support for you.’

‘She will. And maybe it’ll be easier than last time. I’ve been through it before; I know what to expect. I think I’ll deal with it better.’ She heaves a sigh as someone yells to their friend from the other end of the room. ‘Fuck, this was meant to be a fun evening. I’m sorry for crying.’

‘Ava.’ I peel a few strands of hair away from her cheek, her dried tears acting like glue. ‘Don’t ever apologise for that.’

‘Okay.’ She peers at the doorway. ‘Come on, let’s look around some more. You only get to sleep under the dinosaurs once.’

‘Finn,’ Ava’s voice comes from the floor next to me in a stage whisper. I turn in my sleeping bag to face her. ‘Do you think anyone’s going to try to get it on beneath Dippy the Diplodocus?’

Everyone’s chatting in low voices and hushed giggles as they set up their sleeping mats around us, and it feels a lot like we’re at a primary-school sleepover. But looming over us is a full dinosaur skeleton, its shadow casting funny shapes over Ava’s face; her eyes still slightly swollen.

‘You know what they say, Ava. There’s no aphrodisiac quite like sauropod fossils.’

‘You’re telling me.’ She kicks her leg out towards me in her sleeping bag and I twist away to avoid it. ‘But you are wearing grey sweatpants. Everyone knows men wear grey sweatpants when they want to get slutty.’

A laugh jolts out of me and I tuck my arms deep in my bag, tugging a cord to pull the hood tight around my face so that all she can see are my eyes and nose. ‘No funny business over here.’

‘The funny business is you using the phrase “funny business”.’ She stretches across and loosens the hood from my face, and I feel the accidental graze of her fingertips against my skin long after she’s settled back on to her mat. For a while, all I hear is a series of rustles as she wiggles around. With a grunt, she says, ‘I just want you to know, I am outrageously uncomfortable right now.’

‘I can be the big spoon if that’d help?’ I look over at her just in time to catch her rolling her eyes, just about visible in the dim light.

‘You and I both know you’d be the little spoon.’

I lean back against my pillow, eyes on the vaulted ceiling. ‘Goodnight Ava.’

‘Goodnight Finn.’

‘And goodnight Dippy.’

She laughs and whispers, ‘Goodnight Dippy.’

It’s the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.

In my dreams, I wonder if the dinosaurs knew what they were in for when that asteroid hurtled towards them on its one-way course to ruin.

Maybe they did. Maybe they welcomed it.