6. Crow
CHAPTER SIX
CROW
Goldie is the one who brings the bottle of vodka.
None of us are expecting it; we meet at the park again, under that same big oak tree, and she arrives last, smug grin showcasing she has something she’s dying to tell us.
And then she opens her backpack, which has a Cookie Monster key ring dangling from it, even though none of us have ever watched Sesame Street, and she produces a huge bottle of Smirnoff, three-quarters full.
“Patricia’s,” she says, by way of explanation, to our open mouths. “She’s got plenty. She won’t miss this.”
I have never drunk alcohol. Mum doesn’t have it at home, says it’s too expensive and that she doesn’t like it much anyway, though I have vague memories of her and Dad drinking wine back when he still lived with us.
I’ve watched television programs, obviously, where people go to parties and get drunk.
It mainly looks messy and unpleasant. Not something I would want to be.
But I am eighteen. It’s legal. I’m not breaking the law. Goldie and Cuckoo are only seventeen, but that’s their problem, not mine. Goldie is the one supplying the alcohol. I should probably try it at least once, and then I can safely swear off it.
Everything is going to be fine.
We don’t have cups, so we each take a swig straight from the bottle. At first I think it’s tasteless, a whole load of fuss about nothing, but when I swallow, there’s a sudden burning at the back of my throat, and I cough like mad.
“That’s horrible,” I say, while the others laugh. “Why do people drink this stuff?”
“To get drunk, obviously,” Goldie says.
“Have you ever been drunk?” I ask.
“Well . . . no,” she admits. “But let’s do it now. If we all do it together, it’ll be fun.”
“We can play drinking games!” Starling says. She’s in a dark tracksuit tonight, with black trainers. She takes a swig of the bottle, her freckled face scrunching up at the taste, though she manages better than me. “Like they do at parties.”
She passes it to Wren, who has been sitting cross-legged against the tree looking mostly terrified at the prospect of alcohol. I watch her take a cautious sip, barely any of the liquid entering her mouth, and she copies Starling’s scrunched-up expression.
“Does anyone know any drinking games?” she asks, quickly passing the bottle to Goldie again.
“I think I remember one,” Cuckoo says. “It’s called twenty-one. We go round and we have to count to twenty-one, and whoever says twenty-one has to drink. You can say up to three numbers at once.”
Honestly. How derivative. Is this what passes for entertainment?
It’s weird though. We start playing, hesitant at first, and it actually turns out to be fun.
Cuckoo, eager and reckless as always, has to drink first, a huge swig, and we all clap and cheer her on.
And then we start making up even more stupid rules—whoever says seven has to cluck like a chicken, whoever says thirteen and then also twenty-one has to drink double, whoever says nine can pick someone to drink anyway—and the vodka doesn’t taste quite as terrible.
After several rounds, even I’m giggling, and I feel funny, up close and far away simultaneously.
“I bet this is what parties are like,” Cuckoo says.
“We would have gone to them this summer,” Starling says. “I was so looking forward to it!”
We’ve never been before because we’re always busy studying, or to be honest, we’re just never invited. But the parties for the end of term were going to be legendary. Everyone in the year was going to be invited.
“Maybe we’d have got with someone,” Goldie says.
“Oh my God! Imagine.”
“Hayden Trent!” Starling swoons.
“Yuck!” Cuckoo pulls a face. “He’s foul, Starling!”
“He’s beautiful! He looks just like Zac Efron on my lock screen. Don’t come for Hayden Trent!”
We all groan.
“I stalked Mr. Brody on Facebook once,” Goldie says. “I even sent him a message pretending to be someone from his university, but he never responded.”
Cuckoo cackles. “Goldie, you’re sick!”
“Come on, you have to admit he was gorgeous.” She’s not embarrassed one bit.
“True.” Cuckoo sighs wistfully. “I wonder where he is now?”
“Probably baking soda bread with a girlfriend that looks like Zendaya.”
“Starling!” Goldie cries. “Don’t you dare put that image in my head!”
Even Wren can’t help giggling. “This is so nice, isn’t it?” she says.
“Picturing Mr. Brody with Zendaya?”
“No! Us saying things like this. Telling each other secrets.”
“That’s kind of the point of friends,” I say dryly.
And yet it occurs to me that we haven’t actually had many moments like this. Hanging out before, there’s always been homework or a book or revision or something in the way of just being. A pang churns my stomach—nostalgia, almost, for times we should have had. But we’re making up for it now.
Cuckoo of all people swoops in to defend Wren. “She’s right. This is great. We can tell each other anything. Starling’s poor taste and Goldie’s craziness included.”
Goldie grins. “Well, Cuckoo. Your turn then. Got any secret loves?”
“Hold on!” She puts a hand up. “Have I ever told you guys about when I caught Miss White and Mr. Groskop kissing?”
It has the intended effect; the others gasp and immediately clamor to know the full story.
Cuckoo has the spotlight, like she always does, and rises to her feet, arms spread wide, recounting an after-school session with Miss White that was interrupted by Mr. Groskop asking for assistance with something.
After a few minutes, Cuckoo stepped out into the corridor and supposedly saw them together.
Never mind that even if they were together, they wouldn’t be so stupid as to kiss where anyone could walk by at any moment.
Cuckoo is making this up for entertainment, too scared to reveal something about herself.
I watch her, her wide mouth and uneven teeth telling this ridiculous tale, and feel a prickle of dislike.
She’s always been like this. Has to steal the show, has to make sure the attention is on her. I told Goldie once I thought she was desperate, and she looked at me like I’d kicked a puppy. But that’s who Cuckoo is. A puppy in constant need of affection.
I look over at Goldie, wondering if she’s buying this.
She is leaning back against the tree, cross-legged, golden hair framing her face.
Behind her, a spider has been busy making its web, careful lines of silk in intricate patterns.
It is huge, the lockdown meaning it has been created undisturbed.
Sometimes I feel as if I am detached from everything around me, and I look for signs like this to remind me the world is as complicated as I am.
The road opposite the park, with its orderly rows of town houses and private gardens, is exactly the kind of place I’d like to live.
I picture myself at a desk, looking out at a view that can’t see back, surrounded by books and a cat at my feet.
I can go too far with this: I arrange the furniture, the color of the walls, the type of floorboards.
I recenter myself. The spider carries on, unaware it is being watched.
Goldie seems lost in her own thoughts too.
Cuckoo has finished her story, Starling and Wren are laughing, but she hasn’t reacted.
“Goldie?” I say, startling her. “What’s on your mind?”
She shakes her head. “I was just thinking about how I lied.”
“You lied?”
“I have been drunk before.”
“Oh.” I glance at the others, but they’re as lost as me. “When?”
“When I ran away,” Goldie says.
Starling laughs; she expects this is a joke. We all do.
Goldie doesn’t laugh along with her. She is staring down at her lap, running her thumb across her fingertips.
“It was my birthday. The first one after Mum left. I was waiting by the front door all day, thinking the past few months were a mistake. She needed time to grieve, and then she’d be back, and my birthday was the perfect opportunity.
Patricia told me I was acting dumb, but even she was hopeful, I could tell. I waited hours.”
Goldie never talks about her mum. She occasionally makes jokes about being abandoned, and she talks about her dad all the time, even though it’s been years. But I’ve never heard this before. And judging by the look on everyone else’s faces, neither have they.
“When it started getting dark, I realized my mistake,” Goldie continues.
“I was at Patricia’s—how would Mum know where I was?
She’d be expecting me at home. Where we used to live.
I grabbed some of Patricia’s alcohol, a bottle of wine—Mum loved to drink wine, she had it every night—and I snuck out and walked all the way to our old house.
It took hours. I didn’t know the way, had to beg a few passersby for help. I’m lucky I wasn’t bloody kidnapped.”
“Goldie.” Cuckoo’s previous humor has vanished. “You don’t have to tell us this.”
She waves Cuckoo off. “I got there in the end. It was raining by this point. And I was terrified, but I heard voices and saw the light was on, and it’s mad, but I believed the past year had all been some horrible dream, and Mum and Dad would be there and everything would be alright again.
I knocked on the door, and there was a stranger in my house.
I shouted at them and asked where my mum was, she was coming to get me, it was my birthday, and they tried to bring me inside, but I shoved them and ran away.
“I didn’t get far. I ran around the back of the house and stayed there for ages.
All night, actually. And I started drinking the wine myself.
Got sick. But the strangers must have called the police because they found me early the next morning, soaked to the bone and utterly wasted.
I had to go to hospital, get my stomach pumped.
Turns out I’d caught pneumonia too. Patricia got angry, especially about the alcohol.
Grounded me for weeks. And Mum never came back. But you knew that part.”
No one knows what to say. The spider has disappeared.
“God, what a downer.” Goldie tries to laugh, but it comes out more like a sob. “Sorry. Killed the mood, didn’t I?”
“Don’t worry,” Cuckoo says. “It’s not as depressing as Starling fancying Hayden Trent.”
And it works; the heavy atmosphere is lifted the moment Goldie giggles, permission for the rest of us to join in.
Cuckoo is irritating. She’s a liar. She’s an attention seeker.
But she also knows exactly what to say to make things better.
Maybe that’s why, when she sees Goldie wiping quickly at her eyes, she decides to stand up, making sure we all turn to her instead.
“I used to wish my mum was like yours,” Cuckoo says, directing this at Goldie, who blinks in surprise. “I know what you’re thinking. How could I possibly want a mum like that? But when I learned your mum ran out on you, left without a goodbye, part of me hoped that’s what mine did too.”
Cuckoo’s mum. We met her, obviously, before what happened.
She was that typical mumsy mum, the kind you genuinely felt could give you a hug and you’d melt into her and everything would be alright.
She was super cool too, rode her bike everywhere and ran a cycling club and different events to raise money so every kid on Cuckoo’s estate could have a bike.
I think Cuckoo even said she taught dance to kids in the community center.
“It’ll be two years this week,” Cuckoo says.
Two years already?
Two years since she went out on her bike and was hit by a speeding car.
A drunk driver who left the scene and was only found later because of the massive dent in his vehicle.
Cuckoo’s mum was left to die in the road, and it took a long time for her to die.
Long enough, Cuckoo’s dad was told later, that she could have been saved if that driver had stopped and called for an ambulance.
“I hate him,” Cuckoo says, anger as fresh and raw as the day it happened. “I hate him.”
Goldie stands up and extends her pinkie finger. It’s an old gesture, one we did in primary school before Cuckoo was even part of our group. But immediately I scramble to my feet and Starling and Wren do the same. We link pinkies, all of us, and nod for Cuckoo to do the same.
“We hate him,” Goldie says. “We’re here for you.”
“I’m sorry you ran away,” Cuckoo says. “I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sorry about your mum.”
Something has shifted. We’ve never had such a serious conversation before. Is it the drink? Or something else?
Are we changing already?