Page 41 of Boy Friends
‘I’ve got homework,’ I call back, and though it’s an obvious excuse to get out of a conversation, there’s a paper on Jane Austen waiting to be written.
She appears in the doorway and frowns at the dirt I’ve trailed in. ‘It won’t take long.’
‘Mum, I really don’t—’
‘It’s important, Simo. If you could join me and your dad in the lounge, we need to talk to you about something.’
She withdraws, and red warning lights go off in my head. She didn’t comment on my trainers muddying the hall, and now she and Dad want to sit me down and talk? I stand on the landing, rendered immobile by a sense of foreboding. They never want to talk, so this can only be about one thing. Or one person.
‘Simo?’ Mum calls, leaving me no choice but to follow her into the lounge. As I enter and see my parents sat side by side on the sofa like a panel of judges, I want to turn and run. It looks as if they’ve finally had enough of the rumours, the gossip about me and Luca, and refuse to keep turning a blind eye. If that’s what this is about, I don’t have answers. I barely understand my own feelings, so how can I give them clarity?
‘Don’t look so stricken,’ Dad says through his beard. ‘Unless you’ve committed a crime, there’s no need to worry.’
‘O-OK,’ I say.
Mum narrows her eyes at me. ‘You haven’t committed a crime, have you?’
‘No!’ I insist. ‘Just tell me what this is about.’
Mum doesn’t take her eyes off me, but she pats Dad’s knee, prompting him to speak.
‘We’re going back to Granada. All of us, together.’
A wave of relief washes over me, followed by another, bigger rush of fear.
‘I’m not moving,’ I force out through gritted teeth. If this is their strategy to put an end to Luca’s and my friendship, they can bite me. I won’t let them uproot me and drop me several countries away from him.
‘Moving?’ Mum asks. ‘Nobody’s moving.’
‘It’s only for a couple of weeks, during the Christmas holidays. It’s been so long since we’ve all gone together.’
I stare into Dad’s wide, bushy face, his dark beard peppered with streaks of grey.
‘We thought you’d like the idea. Did you not enjoy yourself there?’ Mum speaks into my silence.
‘No, I loved it. I – I’d love to go again.’
‘Good,’ Dad hums. ‘Because it took a lot of convincing to get your mum on board. Hates flying.’ He chuckles but stops when Mum sends him a stern look.
‘So we’re all going together?’ I ask, trying to comprehend. We’re not moving. Luca and I aren’t being separated. In fact, this isn’t about me at all. I finally allow myself to breathe.
We haven’t been on a family holiday since before Hamza died, and I barely remember that time. Happy memories have a habit of spoiling when the person you share them with is gone. Remembering becomes painful, and so they fall into disuse and begin to fade.
‘It’ll be just you, your dad and me,’ Mum explains. ‘Luca won’t be joining this time, but it’s only two weeks. You’ll survive the time apart.’
There it is again, that weird tone she uses when speaking about Luca. It’s so subtle I’m never sure it’s there. In another universe where I’m less of a coward, I’d challenge her on it. But when she leans back, signifying that I’m free to go, I’mso relieved to have escaped a confrontation that I decide it’s wisest to bolt.
In my room, I sink on to the bed. My hand automatically glides beneath the pillow, finding only air where the notebook used to be. Two fear-induced seconds later, I remember its new location and retrieve it from the desk drawer, my heart beating hard with relief. I don’t want to imagine the reaction if my parents opened the book, but something else is what’s upsetting me, and I’m trying to figure out the source of my unease. I take the conversation with my parents apart, or, to be precise, what I thought the conversation was going to be.
As I turn the tattered pages, something becomes obvious: Luca is everywhere. He’s lyrics from songs I listen to on repeat and quotes from children’s books, copied out in my handwriting. He’s fractured attempts at writing poetry, he’s poems stolen from better writers. He’s a splatter of apple blossoms covering a full spread. He’s unmissable, on every page.
Being confronted with the possibility of losing Luca had me about ready to start a war, guns blazing. I can no longer ignore that my feelings for him, tangled as they are by ten years of friendship with few days spent apart, go beyond loyalty. They’re not purely platonic, and perhaps they haven’t been for a while. It’s only taken so long for my brain to catch up with my heart. I try to sit with this admission and not think about its implications. What this means for us, I can’t tell.
My eyes stray to my bookshelf and the novels stacked there. Thousands of pages on matters of love and all thatmakes us human, and yet there isn’t one that will help me out of this situation. I get up and pull the photo album from the top shelf. It’s at moments like these that I feel Hamza’s absence the most. He was four years older, and in the eyes of little Simo, wiser by an eternity. The album starts predictably, with an ultrasound, followed by images of my tiny mum with a huge belly. My favourite picture is from my first day of school, not because I’m the centre of attention, but because Hamza looks so proud to be my big brother. The picture that hurts the most, the last one he ever appears in, was taken a few weeks after his tenth birthday. Hamza is outside, sat on the lawn of what must be the backyard of our old house. His face is turned away from the camera, and he closely examines something in the grass, a flower maybe, or a ladybird. There’s no point in wondering what caught his attention, but I always do. The album ends on a cliffhanger, a loose thread that won’t be resolved.
Maybe Hamza sucked just as much at feelings as me. But having him listen as I talked about Luca would have helped, even if he could offer little in terms of advice. Without thinking, I pull the photograph of us on my first school day from beneath the protective film. The album goes back on the shelf, but the picture remains propped up on my desk. Hamza doesn’t deserve to be hidden away. Like the daisies in the front yard, he should be seen.
CHAPTER 17 – LUCA
