Chapter 76 Damon
Damon
I first meet Daisy a few months after Callum’s death.
She has joined the school midway through the September term.
She tells me she recently moved to the area after her mum separated from her father.
I am completely besotted, and she seems to like me too.
I love everything about her, from her poker-straight, dark blonde hair, pushed back and held in place with an Alice band, to the way she smiles or glances at me with her piercing amber eyes, which makes a tingling sensation spread from my stomach to more intimate areas.
And she smiles and glances at me a lot, much more than at the other boys in our year.
We might both be twelve but she has a maturity I lack.
It doesn’t stop her from choosing to sit next to me in shared lessons and at lunchtimes.
She doesn’t ask me before buying double portions from the school canteen when Mum is too distracted by Maud to remember to give me money for food.
She invites me back to her house for tea and we play for hours.
There are times when I try to pluck up the courage to kiss her, but I’m always too nervous to risk rejection.
So I keep my feelings – and my lips – to myself.
I want our relationship to remain like this forever.
Her and me, the best of friends. But life moves on and I watch as, to my dismay, so does Daisy.
Her mum begins dating a work colleague, an older man who drives a brand-new Mercedes and has two mid-teen daughters of his own.
Soon, Daisy starts spending more of her weeknights with them than me.
Her appearance is altering too. She starts wearing baby-pink lip gloss and a little eye make-up.
Her T-shirts now expose her belly button and her skirts are creeping up above her knee.
When we are together, she is barely off the brand-new iPhone her mum’s boyfriend bought her.
She’s messaging and replying to names that flash across her screen, people I’ve never heard of.
She is leaving me behind. That’s when my inherent possessiveness rises to the surface.
I do my best to try to prevent it. I even try to shoplift a pay-as-you-go phone from Tesco so I can join in with her text chats.
But to my shame, I’m caught by a security woman and my furious mum has to come to the store to pick me up and apologise.
I feel sick when I discover Daisy had a thirteenth birthday party she didn’t invite me to.
But I don’t want to give up on her. I ask her to join me at a family fun day at Archbishop’s Park, close to where she lives, to celebrate the forthcoming London 2012 Olympics.
She apologises, saying she can’t because she’s poorly with ‘girl’s problems’, and I pretend to know what she means. Despite my disappointment, I go alone.
The familiar tingling sensation appears when I spot her amongst the crowd of thousands later that day.
I assume she must have changed her mind and come to find me.
I raise my hand above my head to wave, stopping short when I see she’s with a group of older girls and boys I don’t recognise, along with the daughters from her recently blended family.
Witnessing them all in this tight-knit group suddenly makes me self-conscious.
They’re dressed in cool T-shirts and trainers, their hair is styled, and they carry portable speakers playing music.
I am not like them. I’m angular and awkward, skinny and clad in clothes bought from Brixton Market.
I know nothing of their world. So for much of the afternoon, I watch from afar as Daisy dances, laughs or yells in faux-terror as fairground rides spin her in different directions.
I continue to follow her until dusk begins to fall and the event prepares to draw to a close.
As her new friends make their way towards the Tube station, Daisy is left alone.
She sets off by foot through a much quieter section of the park until she crosses a road then reaches a second area of greenery.
There is no one else about so I take my opportunity to talk to her alone.
‘Oh hi,’ I say, appearing from the darkness behind her.
‘Damon!’ she shouts, her face flushed. ‘Oh my God, you scared me to death. Why are you creeping up on me?’
‘I wasn’t, I was on my way home from the park when I spotted you. Are you feeling better?’ I ask, even though we both know she has lied. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll forgive her for anything. That’s what you do when you’re in love.
‘Yes,’ she continues. ‘My stepsisters asked me if I wanted to join them.’
So they’re already family to her. ‘You should have called me.’ I smile. ‘I’d have tagged along.’
‘It was a last-minute thing and you don’t have a mobile phone.’
My face reddens. ‘Well, do you want to do something tomorrow instead? I’m free all day. We could get McFlurries from Maccy D’s? Or take our bikes round Victoria Park?’
Her flinch is slight, but it’s there.
‘What about a film?’ I persist. Movies were our thing. During the Easter school holidays, she’d rent at least one DVD a day from Blockbusters and I’d borrow them from the library. ‘We could watch the new Toy Story movie at the Odeon?’
‘That’s a kids’ film,’ Daisy scoffs.
‘But you liked the other ones.’
‘When I was twelve, but I’m thirteen now.’
We walk in silence while my brain races through other suggestions. The thought of losing her makes me anxious.
‘Do you want to be my girlfriend?’ I suddenly blurt out.
Daisy stops in her tracks. ‘No thanks,’ she says firmly.
‘Why?’
‘Because you have to love someone to be their girlfriend.’
‘But we’re together all the time.’
She eye-rolls. ‘Things change.’
‘Why?’
‘They just do. Anyway, I said I’d go to the cinema with Luke tomorrow.’
A chill skitters across my shoulders. ‘Who?’
‘I met him at the park. He told me he thinks I’m pretty, and he asked me out.’
I know the boy she’s referring to. A tall lad with snow-white Air Jordan trainers and Beats by Dre headphones hanging loosely around his neck. He was stuck to her side like a leech for much of the afternoon.
‘I think you’re pretty too,’ I offer. ‘And he’s old. He must be like, fourteen.’
Her forehead furrows. ‘How do you know Luke?’
I can’t lie quickly enough. ‘I saw you with him.’
She scrunches up her face. ‘If you were spying on me, that’s creepy.’
Daisy picks up her pace. This is going badly.
So in a last-ditch attempt to prove to her how much I care, I grab her arm, spin her around and plant my lips on hers.
I desperately try to find an opening in her mouth with my tongue like I’ve seen men do in the porn films Callum used to show me on his dad’s computer.
Hard and fast, that’s how they like it. But her response is to shove me backwards.
I lose my footing and fall to the ground, landing on my side.
‘What do you think you’re doing, you weirdo?’ she yells. ‘You don’t force yourself on a girl!’
‘I didn’t!’ I reply. ‘I’m showing you how much I love you.’
‘Damon, get this through your head. I don’t love you and I’ll never love you. You’re just a boy.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m more of an adult than you.’ She laughs and I desperately try to find something, anything, to make her stay. Make her realise I’m more mature than she knows. ‘I killed someone once!’ I blurt out in desperation.
Her face pales. ‘What?’
Shit! What have I said? I know I should stop, tell her I’m joking and walk away, but I can’t help myself. ‘His name was Callum. He was bullying me and tried to poison my mum against me, so I killed him. I couldn’t have done that if I was just a kid.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she says. But when my expression doesn’t falter under her scrutiny, I see she knows I am telling the truth.
And instead of it demonstrating I’m more mature than she believes, she’s scared.
She turns her back on me and hurries further down the path and deeper into the encroaching night until she is little more than a wavering shadow amongst the trees and a flickering streetlight above. Nobody but she and I know we are here.
The girl I adored wants nothing to do with me.
The rage that first made its presence felt the day I killed Callum returns within the blink of an eye.
My head pounds like thunder rolling through the sky above us and I know the only way to relieve it is to hurt her like she is hurting me.
So I clamber to my feet, pick up the first object I can find – a rock – and now I’m running after her.
She must hear the crunching of gravel under my feet because she also begins to run, but she is no match for my grit and urgency.
I hit the back of her head so hard with the rock, she staggers forward, which makes it easy for me to shove her to the path.
I turn her over and mount her, forcing her to see what she is making me do.
But she is impossible to pin down properly and keeps squirming and turning her head to one side, in a vain attempt to protect herself as she yells for help.
Instead of trying to silence her cries by stuffing a handkerchief down her throat like I did with Callum, I hit her once more with the weapon, and then over and over again, until no one can ever call her pretty again.