We begin with the group on their way to Southend.  We will never find out where they started off from.  Let’s just call it the Town With No Name.

The day we went our separate ways was the 30^th October.  As we piled our stuff into the car, a strange smell of cheap sweets and bonfires reminded me it was going to be Halloween the following day.  I usually liked this time of year, even though my parents had never let me have a Halloween party or anything.  For some reason, they hadn’t liked the house being stuffed with my friends, which was odd because the house was stuffed with my brother’s friends on a daily basis and they hadn’t minded that.

“Therefore, they deserved to have their daughter fake her death and never contact them again!  You’d have done the same thing!”

“Are you really going to call yourself Maureen?” Gary asked me as we sat down in the back seat.

I thought for a minute.  “Nah.  I think I’d better stick to something that sounds a bit like Anja.  Do you think Honour’s a good name?”

He looked confused.  “Well, it isn’t spelt much like Anja…”

…Neither’s Maureen!

I was going to tell him that it didn’t matter, when I noticed his sketchbook.  “Hey, can I have a look at some of your pictures?  I haven’t seen any of them.”

He handed me the pad.  “Knock yourself out.”

As the others got in and Mark started the car, I opened the pad. 

The sketchbook, which will has only been mentioned once before and will not be mentioned all that much in the future, serves as a way of showing the readers how DEEP and TROUBLED Gary is.  Because that certainly hasn’t been pounded into our heads so far.

I was just looking at the burning fortress he’d drawn on the first page when Mr Daly started up.  “I presume you’ve come up with a plan of action?” he asked, “The others appear to regard you with a great respect, young Mr Foster.”  He said that grudgingly, as if he felt he should be regarded with a great respect himself.   Fat chance.

After eight chapters of declaring Joe to be his nemesis, Mr Daly has decided he likes him now.  Mr Daly’s personality and behaviour operate solely on the basis of what will be most annoying to Anja.

Joe looked surprised that Mr Daly had given him, if not exactly a compliment, something that didn’t really sound like an insult.  “I wouldn’t know about respect,” he replied, smirking at me and Gary, “but I know what we’re going to do once we get to Southend.  We’ll see what Cherry thinks.”  I could tell he was looking forward to seeing Svetlana.

So can the readers, Anja.  You don’t need to point it out.

Mr Daly actually seemed to be getting into the spirit of things for once.  “Should we really rely on this Cherry character?  How are we to know she’s not a double agent?  We’re in dangerous territory now, boy, and you must learn quickly that you can’t trust anyone!”

“Except Cherry,” Mark interrupted, “She’s never liked Joe’s dad. 

“And Joe’s brother Jack!  My wife says he’s a nice guy, so he can’t possibly be a murderer!”

Says she’s amazed that nice people like Jean and Joe could be related to such a bastard, doesn’t she?”

“Couldn’t that be a front?” Mr Daly asked hopefully.

 “No.  Sorry.  She keeps saying he makes her flesh crawl, and I can tell she really means it. 

He can tell.  Psychic powers, y’know.

I stared at Gary’s picture.  Most people draw fire in really basic red, yellow and orange colours, but Gary’s flames actually seemed to glow.  He’d done them in glaring white with yellow around the edges.  The fortress or castle or whatever it was looked ready to collapse in on itself, almost as if it was fed up of staying upright and wanted to implode at any minute.  And the evil-looking people at the door weren’t exactly helping by trying to hammer it down.

What could this subtle symbolism possibly mean?  Could it be saying that Gary is a perpetual victim, constantly under siege from “evil-looking people” who like to poke him just for a laugh?  Which we’ve been told about five hundred times already, and is in fact the only thing we know about him as a character?

Mr Daly was continuing with his “doomed hero” act. 

Dammit, Mr Daly, that’s Gary‘s job!

He put on a pained look.  “I didn’t have time to say goodbye to your wife, Mr Freeman.  In case she never sees me again, can you tell her that I wish you both all the best for the future?  And I hope your child is a strong, healthy boy.”

“Er… thanks,” Mark replied. 

Gary spoke out of the blue.  He’d mainly been looking out of the window at the chaotic fields by the motorway until now. 

How are the fields chaotic?  I’d much rather be hearing about that than about Gary’s sketchbook.

“I get what you’re saying” he told Mr Daly, a strange look on his face, ” According to you, boys can’t have any worth if they’re not strong and healthy, can they?”

“How dare…” Mr Daly began, before seeing me giving him the evil eye.  He knew that if he started on Gary, I might humiliate him again.

Yes, fear the Mary Sue, Mr Daly.  Your whole universe was designed to revolve around her.  You are but a troublesome speck in her eye.

Mark cut in instead.  “Easy, Gaz,” he pleaded, “He was just trying to be polite.”

Shut up, everyone.  Back to Gary’s sketchpad. 

Aww.  I wanted to hear about those chaotic fields.

The second drawing was pretty normal, at least compared to the first.  It showed a girl crouching in a room with mirrored walls.  She was surrounded by endless plants, multicoloured candles, lava lamps and what appeared to be tarantula cages.  The room was such a mess of colours that the girl fitted right in. 

The point of this paragraph is to show what a free spirit Topaz was (oh yeah, SPOILERS), but all I can think about is where she got the money for mirrored walls.  And whether or not candles are bad for tarantulas.

She was wearing a T-shirt that seemed to have been dyed using a rainbow with tie-dyed jeans.  The less said about her hair the better, but to say it was blonde would be like saying the hard shoulder of the M25 wasn’t a very good place to sunbathe. 

That’s some great prose there, fifteen-year-old me!

She was crouching while she reached for a CD, but she looked like a coiled spring about to snap straight.

Call me stupid if you want…

I do!

…but I didn’t work out who she was until I saw the cactus on her shelf.

*

There was barely a parking space left in Southend when we got there, and the one Mark eventually found was about half a mile away from the Black Heart hotel.  You try dragging suitcases across fifteen busy roads (Mark kept getting lost).  I think this was one of the reasons I was so angry when we found out how the rooms were arranged.  Well, I was angry about the rooms issue itself, but the fact that my feet were threatening to fall off didn’t help.

We will not see any of this anger in the scene itself.  You know things are bad when the writer forgets what she wrote less than a page ago.

Just after Mark had left, we walked through the dark, airy corridors to the lift, which stopped conveniently outside our rooms.  But when he squinted at the keys in the half-light (the architect had spent more money on the royal blue wallpaper than on the lighting) Joe had noticed that we only had three.  It didn’t take him long to work out that there were four of us, so we went back to the desk to complain.

They didn’t notice this at the reception desk because the hotel staff just handed over the keys without a word.  Because that’s how hotels operate.  No “That’s two double rooms,” no “Here’s the wifi password,” just “Here’s your keys, now bugger off.”  Who’d have thought a place called the Black Heart Hotel would have such lousy customer service?

The reception wasn’t well lit either.  The entire building seemed lifted out of some Victorian horror story, and this room, with its black and white walls and plain black flooring, was no exception.  I half expected to see candles on the walls, instead of the tulip-shaped lightbulbs hanging from the light fixture in the ceiling.  I hate tulips. 

I hate you, so shut up.

The receptionist squinted at her notebook, then looked up at Joe apologetically.  “I’m very sorry, sir,” she told him, “But Mrs Freeman gave us the impression that two of you were… um…” she looked flustered, “…a couple.”  She then started to stare at Gary and me, partly because Joe and Mr Daly were doing the same. 

So she’s booked a double room for two confused teenagers who met less than a week ago.  Estelle Freeman- de facto foster parent of the year!

“Well,” Mr Daly snorted, “I can see where she got that idea.  Am I to assume that it would not be appropriate for the two young men here to share a room?”

“Put it this way- there’s only one bed in each of the rooms.”   

…So?  From what we’ve seen, both Joe and Gary are heterosexual, so having them share a bed means there’s no chance of hanky-panky.  Problem solved!

Joe and Gary flinched, Gary looking suddenly scared.

“Huh,” said Mr Daly, turning to Gary, “I can only allow this if you agree to be a perfect gentleman towards Miss Cleary.  Remember how young she is- you wouldn’t want to be responsible for ruining her reputation, I hope.” 

If Mr Daly’s so concerned about protecting Anja’s virtue, why doesn’t he insist on the boys sharing?  Or on him sharing with Gary, so he can keep an eye on him?  There’s absolutely no reason for him to give in this easily!

“Sure,” Gary replied, “I’d never do that to anyone.”  And I can tell by the look in his eyes as he glanced at me that he meant it, then.  But I felt that my reputation had been damaged so much since I’d “died” that I had nothing to lose.

Anja’s newspaper obituaries failed to mention her love of Venus fly traps.  Therefore, she will forget about the fact that she’s underage and jump into bed with a boy she met less than a week ago.  I can’t fault her logic there.

Once we got up there, we could see what the receptionist meant.  Room 125 had a double bed just next to the bathroom door, and just by glancing at it I could tell that it had other purposes than to be slept in.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a duvet in that shade of pink before.

“That cheeky cow!” I gasped.  Gary looked at me in bug-eyed surprise.  “I mean Estelle,” I explained, “Should have guessed she was up to something, really.  Did you see the looks she kept giving me every time someone mentioned our names in the same sentence?”  I couldn’t help pretending to be annoyed. 

You see?  In ten paragraphs, we go from “I was angry about the rooms issue itself” to “I couldn’t help pretending to be annoyed.”

Basically, Estelle had done the same thing as Mr Daly- assuming something on the grounds of not very much.  But I couldn’t be really angry with Estelle because…

“…she’d completely condoned it and bought us an expensive hotel room.”

unlike Mr Daly, she hadn’t been a hundred per cent wrong. 

Unlike when Mr Daly assumed the exact same thing, she wasn’t a hundred per cent wrong!  Wrongness depends on who you are, after all.

Mind you, it was still unfair for her to spring this on us.

Gary was looking at me hesitantly, sitting on a chair at the table nearby.  “Um, Anja..?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to ask you something, but you’ve got to know that I’m only asking out of interest.  I’m not going to think you’re a tart or anything if the answer’s yes.  I was just wondering, have you ever…” He looked embarrassed as he tried to think of a good way to put it.  “You know…”

“Done it?” I guessed abruptly. 

Having the characters talk like twelve-year-olds is a brilliant way to show that they’re mature enough for sex!

(SPOILERS- And more than mature enough to get married a few months later.)

He nodded, relieved.  “Nah,” I said, knowing exactly why he’d asked, “Lack of opportunity really.  I’ve never fancied a boy who’s felt the same way back.  You?”

He looked right down at the table so I couldn’t see his eyes.  “Well, you know I told you about Shell?”

“Oh yeah?”  I hadn’t been expecting this.  “You two were an item?”

“Not exactly.  But after all the fuss about Jordan and Topaz had died down, everyone saw us together and…  Well, you know what people assume when a boy and a girl are spending all their time together. 

“Usually, they book you an expensive hotel room and tell you to go nuts, of course.”

“So we thought we’d try it out and…” He looked embarrassed again, but I wanted all the details.  Well, probably not all.  My imagination knows no limits, so it was probably a good thing that Gary eventually finished his sentence.  “Well, we didn’t really enjoy it.  I mean, we didn’t feel that way about each other.”  He looked at me awkwardly, and for some reason I started to feel uncomfortable.  “Anja, can I tell you something?”

There it was again.  My heart was making it loudly clear that it didn’t like what I was doing.  I wished the neckline on my blouse wasn’t so low, though come to think of it, why did I care?  If it had been some pervy teacher, or one of the maggots from school, I’d have known why I was feeling like that, but I liked Gary.  Actually, “like” is a stupid word for what I was feeling.  Look, the point is that I was feeling uneasy. 

Hmm.  It seems that Estelle’s plan has added a ton of awkward pressure to the proceedings.  Who’d have thought that openly encouraging two nervous teenagers to undergo a major rite of passage against their better judgement would have led to anything but happiness?

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, “And I bet I know what it is you want to tell me, too.”

He stepped towards me.  “Yeah.  The thing is, I think I do feel that way about you.”  He grinned.  “You’ll hate me for this, but I was sort of glad when I realised what Estelle had done with the rooms.  Well, glad and nervous.”

I nodded.  By this time, I was biting my lower lip so hard I was going to turn into the amazing one-lipped wonder if I kept it up.  Happiness and nervousness were at the top of my mood statistics as well.  Oh, I’d feigned anger at Estelle…

Barely.

…but that just mysteriously disappeared the minute Gary took hold of my arm.  The nervousness followed it a few seconds later.

And a good thing too, because otherwise Estelle’s boneheaded decision might have backfired and made everybody miserable!  Oh, it’s great when things work out.

Since some of you might be of a prudish disposition, I’m going to leave what happened after that to your imagination.

They played Cards Against Humanity for six hours, then passed out fully-clothed.  You can’t prove they didn’t!

Next time, we meet Cherry/Svetlana and her adorable kid, and there’s a snail statue.  That’s about it.  It’s a truly thrilling chapter.