Chapter 26
The Speed of Friendship
Days, weeks, months, years flashed by.
Sometimes it was a blur and sometimes something would appear so near and with such precision he would recognise it instantly.
He saw himself in his best friend Charlie Applewood’s living room, playing dominoes in front of a black-and-white game show.
He liked Charlie a lot.
But because he knew Charlie well into adulthood, he had kind of forgotten the teenage Charlie. The Charlie with smart, parted hair and the most pristine short-sleeved white shirt buttoned to the top and the nervous smile.
The one who had been bullied at school and loved comics and B-movies about flying saucers.
The Charlie who dreamed of alien abduction and who stuttered when Miss Graham asked him to read out loud.
The one for whom listening to music was a religion.
The one who cried when Buddy Holly died.
The one who always seemed to be nodding his head to a tune he was just playing in his brain.
The one who had a mind that could travel far in any direction it was facing.
The one who would later on end up an unacknowledged genius of maths and physics, a long-haired hippy, a lover of Joni Mitchell songs and Ursula K.
Le Guin stories (thanks to Wilbur’s recommendation), then a deep David Bowie fan, then a married father of a daughter who wouldn’t be born for another three decades.
The one who would work for him. The one who would continue being his best friend until Wilbur blew it.
He remembered the strange atmosphere at Charlie’s house.
The quiet beyond quiet, even though his parents were in, all because his dad beat his mam except when Charlie had a friend round because they ‘put on a show’.
It made peace. And Wilbur was not just Charlie’s best friend but his only real friend at that point in his life.
Wilbur thought Charlie was amazing and that the world was stupid to only see the amazing in extroverts and fluent talkers and tough fighters.
Charlie could name the square root of 169 and explain the structure of an atom, as well as being the kind of kid who would hum music without knowing he was doing it.
They always talked a lot, but always about things.
In knowing Charlie it became clear that a big reason books and comics and films and music exist is to give people a way to talk about things without talking about them.
He told Wilbur that his book recommendation – The Count of Monte Cristo – had made him feel like he could survive anything.
But still, Wilbur didn’t like seeing his friend picked on.
And he was picked on for everything as a thirteen-year-old.
The stutter, the humming, the comic books, the narrow shoulders and general look of someone who would fly off in the wind.
Out of the window the Ghost saw his young self getting a bloody nose for sticking up for Charlie at school.
A blink after that he was watching Maggie say ‘hello’ to him as she walked out of the library as he was going in to study with Charlie. Charlie elbowed him and gave him wide, knowing eyes.
He saw himself writing a poem, after completing all his homework.
And there again was Wilbur and Charlie, this time out on the street watching a flat-capped steeplejack high on a ladder taking down a giant industrial chimney brick by brick.
A world he had thought was long gone, right outside the window.