I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided to deviate from the formula for the first half of this post.  On rereading the following chapter, I decided the subject matter was far too unpleasant for me to get any laughs out of without sounding glib. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not any better written than the previous chapters (although Gary’s narration is slightly less obnoxious than Anja’s), but it’s just a little too realistic to be funny. I think it’s best if I summarise it quickly and then move on to the next one.

Anja wakes up the next morning to find a ten-page note from Gary on her pillow.  He tells her about how Jordan used to bully him into doing his homework and tidying his room by threatening to cause him a fatal heart attack.  After Jordan wrecked Gary’s room (going as far as to burn some of the furniture), his mother, Claire, punished him, making him angry.  The following morning, before the rest of the family was awake, Jordan dragged Gary into the kitchen and poured boiling water on his chest, giving him a massive heart attack.  Gary survived, but didn’t tell anybody what Jordan did.

After returning to school, Gary befriended two girls named Topaz and Shell.  They noticed that Gary frequently had bruises, and asked him where they came from.  Gary tried to come up with excuses, but eventually told them about Jordan.  The three of them agreed to pack up Gary’s stuff and go back to Shell’s house, where they would presumably contact the authorities.  Unfortunately, while at Gary’s house, Jordan cornered the three of them on the stairs, and a fight broke out.  Shell and Gary got away unhurt, but Jordan somehow killed Topaz.  Jordan was jailed for his actions, but Gary thinks that he may have paid somebody to blow up the bus and kill him.

Please note that none of this has anything to do with the actual plot.

The next chapter opens with another newspaper quote.

“Jesus wanted Anja Cleary to be one of His angels.

So that we mortals wouldn’t have to put up with her?  How thoughtful!

Just to look at her face makes you wish we lived in a better world, but sadly we don’t.  We need to get our act together if we don’t want any more tragedies like that of Anja.”- 28th October, 200_

Yes.  Poorly-maintained buses are the greatest humanitarian crisis facing the world today.

OK, I admit it.  I was enjoying this “nation’s sweetheart” thing…

Right, everybody make a note of that.  She was enjoying watching everybody weep over her.

…but it was getting out of hand.  The bus company was being sued (not, I hasten to add, by any of our relatives), everyone was getting their light fixtures checked lest they get fried to ashes, and people were using the explosion to back up arguments that had absolutely nothing to do with it.  At this rate, we were the only ones with any hope of working out what was going on.  The police didn’t even seem to think it was weird that no remains had been found, and something that just incinerated five people would seem a bit suspicious to me.

The police in this story are hopelessly incompetent, because the plot says so.

(We never find out who’s suing the bus company.)

Fortunately, I was distracted from the article after reading the first few sentences.  Mark was keen to get some information from me.  “Um…  Listen, Anj.  Did Gary tell you anything about this Jordan guy?  Only we need to find out as much as we can to see if he’s connected to Joe’s dad.  So, anything?”

I looked at Mark.  I didn’t want to betray Gary, so I only gave him the basic details.  “Jordan was his stepbrother.  He was on trial for murder, and Gary would have been the main witness.”  There, that was all Mark needed to know.  He nodded.  “This detective thing is easier than I thought.”

They’re so incompetent, in fact, that Anja and pals feel that they only need to make the faintest attempt at research to declare themselves “detectives.”

It was funny how quickly I felt comfortable with him and Estelle.  Usually when  stayed in other people’s houses I felt on edge, constantly reminding myself that I wasn’t at home.  But that feeling had evaporated about ten minutes after crossing the threshold, around the time I saw the size of their TV.

Yay, priorities!

That was a joke, in case you were wondering.

It wasn’t, Anja, admit it.

The quality of their house didn’t have all that much to do with it.  It was Estelle and Mark’s whole demeanour.  They were easygoing, cheerful and not easy to shock.  Having said that, Estelle had been pretty shocked when we’d all turned up on her doorstep.  If it had just been me she’d have assumed that I was Joe’s new girlfriend, but Gary and Mr Daly had been harder to analyse.  My mind would probably have boggled pretty quickly.

We don’t get to see this scene, of course.  That would be far too interesting.

By now, the entire group were sitting around the room.  Mr Daly was too, though for some reason I never counted him as part of the group.  The others seemed not to, either.  Joe was already a friend of Mark and Estelle, and Gary and I had slotted right in.  Mr Daly had stayed at the edges, never abandoning what he considered to be his right to be considered superior to us frivolous younger people.  Usually when there’s a character like that in a book, you’re encouraged to feel sorry for him, no matter how much of a cantankerous jerk he is.  But I just couldn’t get past the constant stream of insults.

“Yeah, other stories might have things like pathos and subtlety and complex characters, but we’re far too special for that!  Mr Daly was introduced as a verbal punching-bag, and that’s the way he’ll stay!”

“Alright, everyone,” Mark announced, “We’ve got our prime suspect, and although he might not be working alone, I think he’s the source of our problem.  James Foster- that’s Joe’s dad- needs to be tracked down and interrogated.  Chances are he’ll be in Southend.”

James Foster…  For some reason that name seemed very familiar to me.  Still, I had to push that to the back of my mind when Mr Daly started up.

“Are we playing detective now, Mr Freeman?” he sneered, “Why can’t you leave it to the proper authorities?”

…This is only occurring to him now?  They’ve been playing detective for best part of a week!

Mark looked annoyed, and rightly so.  “Because…  Tell him, Estelle.”

Estelle told him.  “We haven’t got any evidence.  If we told this to the police, they wouldn’t be able to do much. 

Except bringing him in for questioning, putting Anja and pals under police protection, and other boring stuff like that.

We, on the other hand, aren’t acting officially, so we can do what we want.”

“And if we catch this James Foster, what then?” Mr Daly sarcastically persisted, “Do we subject him to a citizens arrest, or do we simply tell him why what he did was wrong and let him go?”

I love how Mr Daly valiantly tries to point out the plotholes.  Nobody pays him any attention, but it was worth the effort.

Joe looked up moodily.  “Leave Estelle alone, alright?  She knows what she’s doing.  Which is more than you do.”

“Well, that’s just the kind of attitude I’d expect from someone like you!  You’re so disloyal you can’t even forgive your own father!”

I personally thought this was a bit rich after Mr Daly had been so hostile about the “telling him what he did was wrong and letting him go” issue, but there you go.  Joe held his ground.  He gave Mr Daly a blank look and said, “He tried to kill me.”

Mr Daly opened his mouth to say something else, but something had really annoyed Joe.  He slapped Mr Daly round the face.

Huh.  Not just a verbal punching-bag, then.

(Not that Joe isn’t in the right here, but the Mr Daly bashing is getting seriously out of hand.)

I was so impressed that I could barely take anything in, but I saw Mr Daly’s mistake.  If Joe had hit me, I’d have hit him right back.  But Mr Daly had such an inflated ego, he imagined Joe respected him too much to slap him.  He stood there with his mouth open until Joe had left the room.

Once Joe was gone, though, there was no holding him back.  “Mr and Mrs Freeman, I demand you throw that… that piece of scum out of your house!  Assault, that’s what that’s called!  I could sue!”   

“Legally dead people sue other legally dead people all the time, right?”

As Mark and Estelle were still doing their guppy impressions (I was too), Gary said something.

It’s funny how one sentence can change the whole course of a story. 

SPOILERS- This one doesn’t.

If Gary hadn’t said that one thing, I wouldn’t have got angry, so I wouldn’t have said all those things, so I wouldn’t have worked out something blindingly obvious about Cherry the next day…

SPOILERS- She almost certainly would have.

and thanks to what wouldn’t have happened after I hadn’t worked it out, you’d be looking at a different story.

Tell me more about this other story.  Does it have an actual plot?

But as it was, those three words, clear and true, spilled forth from Gary’s lips.

“You deserved it.”

In a split-second, Mr Daly had grabbed Gary’s arm and started screeching at him. “Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?  I’ll tell you!  I thought, he’s never contributed anything to society!  Stupid, weak, lazy people like you are all the rage nowadays!”

I lost it.  “Weak?!?  Gary’s not weak!

“He’s a woobie!  Get it right!”

Oh, sure, physically maybe he’s a little on the weedy side, but mentally he’s like iron or something!  Listen, he’s been…”

“How dare you?” Mr Daly bellowed. 

I would usually have been a bit scared by a man who was half a foot taller than me screaming in my face, but I was too angry to feel fear.  “I dare very easily, in fact!  Now listen to this.  What Joe just did isn’t even the smallest patch on what’s happened to Gary over the last two years!”  At this, I put my arms around Gary so he couldn’t run off again.   

Very caring behaviour.  After all, who needs personal space and autonomy when you’ve got LURVE?

“He’s been bereaved, threatened, abused, tortured and almost killed.  And before you say anything, he deserved none of it.  It didn’t come from him having no moral fibre or whatever.  Someone too cowardly to hit someone who’d hit back used him as a punchbag.  You know those situations on NSPCC adverts?  Well, I bet none of them could shock Gary, because he’s lived it.  He’s lived through Hell.” 

Yes, I’m sure Gary needed to be restrained in order to hear all that.  So much for not wanting to betray his secrets.

(Note how Gary has no input in this conversation whatsoever.  He might as well just have slept through this bit.)

I looked around.  Everyone was hanging on my every word, even Mr Daly.  “You know, I like to think I’m a fairly strong person, for a stupid, lazy, disillusioned teenager,” I concluded sarcastically, “but if half of what’s happened to Gary happened to me, most of my brain would have to shut down to block out the memories.  If it hadn’t, I’d probably have killed myself.  Gary’s stared those memories in the face every day since they’ve happened.  He’s a strong, brave person, alright?”

So strong and brave that he desperately needs Anja to stand up to Mr Daly for him.

By this time, I was so furious I think I’d have punched Mr Daly’s lights out if he’d disagreed.  But everyone, including him, looked horrified.  Joe had heard my shouts and come back downstairs to see what was going on, and he looked the same.

Estelle’s eyes turned to Gary, full of pity.  “Is this true?”

Gary nodded,  “It all started…”

 ***

Gary woke me up the next morning.  He’d had his arms around me the whole night, and when I woke up he quickly assured me he wasn’t going to “do anything.” 

That doesn’t make it any less creepy, Gary.  Wait til somebody’s awake before trying to cuddle them, alright?

I knew that.  And I also knew that his feelings for me had changed.  He’d liked me a lot, as Mark had suspected, from the start, but Gary later told me that my big hissy fit at Mr Daly was the moment when he realised he loved me.

“It was when she physically restrained me and blabbed things to our friends that I’d told her in confidence that I realised she was the one for me!”

I can’t pinpoint a moment when I realised I loved him back, but I did.

“Listen, Anja,” he whispered; “I want to show you something in town.  The others won’t be up for a while yet.”

My brain made my legs move before they had any idea of what was going on.  That’s about normal for me in the morning.  I somehow managed to trip over Joe without waking him, and got to the bathroom to change. 

Please note that a few days ago, all it took to wake Joe up was Gary crying faintly.  But today he can sleep through Anja tripping over him.  Maybe Gary slipped him some sleeping pills so he could have a bit of privacy.

The cold outside hit me right in the face.  That, mixed with the damp of the rain the previous night, made me surprised not to be breathing in ice.  The darkness didn’t help either.  It was 5am, an hour I’d never seen before.  I didn’t like it.  It was eerily lit up by the dark yellow glow of the lamps, the sky getting gradually brighter as the minutes went by.  I always feel a bit scared walking outside in the dark, and had to keep reminding myself that I was not alone.  I wasn’t even accompanied by another girl, which could have been almost as dangerous as being alone, depending on who the girl was.

Oh, whereas Gary makes an excellent bodyguard!

I’d never been alone with an attractive boy before, let alone one who liked me.

The streets were freakishly silent.  Even at midnight there would have the noise from a few wild parties, but now even the most eager partygoers had mostly got bored and wandered off.  The world seemed to have shut down and left Gary and me behind.  Here and now, in the silent hour, two worried teenagers, believed by the nation to be dead, reigned supreme.

I decided I should probably stop to take in my surroundings before I crashed into something.  After I did, I gave a start.

“Gary!  Why the hell are we going into a cemetery?”

“Because WE BELONG DEAD, Anja!  Let us surrender to the quiet dignity of the grave!”

He gave me a surprised look, but even then those icy blue eyes flashed with depths I wasn’t sure I wanted to delve into.

See?

“I need to show you something.”  I was too tired to argue.

Outside the cemetery itself, there were endless rows of light grey gravestones, each adorned with flowers and other plants, apparently well cared-for. 

Gary walked towards a far corner of the plot.  As he seemed to stop, I spotted a plant I liked a lot more than all the roses and lilies.

“Now that person had taste,” I whispered, pointing at the tiny cactus, “It’s not a Venus flytrap, but it’s better than a pansy.”

Yeah- bloody grieving relatives, putting unimaginative flowers on their loved ones’ graves.

Gary smiled strangely.  “It’s funny,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to show you.  Read the epitaph.”

I did as I was told, recognising the name almost before I read it properly.

Topaz Geraldine Seaman

Beloved sister, daughter and friend

Born 30^th October 198_

Died 25^th September 200_

“May you fly on the wings of angels forever.”

Gary looked casually at my shocked face.  “I knew you’d be impressed by the cactus,” he explained, “Topaz always had to stand out from the crowd, and after she died her mum wanted everyone to remember exactly what kind of a person her daughter had been.  Whenever anyone went on about, say, what a hardworking girl Topaz had been, Mrs Seaman would remind them that she was always getting detentions for missed homework.”

That’s a very realistic way for somebody to act after their daughter’s been murdered.

“Hmm.  Nice.”

“It was, kind of.  Mrs Seaman wanted everyone to remember Topaz’s personality, warts and all.  She said that if people didn’t have bad points, you wouldn’t notice their good points as easily.”

I nodded.  It wasn’t exactly dawn, but the sky had gone from ink-soaked black-blue to the colour they always paint the sea in kid’s books.  “I understand.  What you’re saying is, Topaz’s mum did the exact opposite to her memory that the media are doing to mine?”

 “Precisely.  They’re saying you’re an angel, but they’re not saying how interesting and optimistic you are. They’re also not saying how you never get up before ten, how you sneeze your head off when you go within a million miles of an air-freshener, how you…”

I’m pretty sure Gary could have delivered this compliment without dragging Anja to a graveyard.

(“Interesting and optimistic.”  I guess that’s one way of putting it.)

“That’s enough of that, bright-eyes,” I laughed.  Gary grinned cheekily, and I did the same back.  He bent down to look at another gravestone next to a bunch of tulips.  “Oh no,” he groaned, “Take a look at this.”

“This” turns out to be creepy and Oedipal, much like Anja and Gary’s entire relationship.  Find out in the next chapter!