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!

Welcome to part five, in which we’re introduced to the biggest red herring in the story. But first, have some callous disregard for other people’s grief!

“That’s your dad, your uncle and two of your brothers,” Estelle called. She was working her way through a box of éclairs while keeping a list of the members of Joe’s family that had called her to share the grief. “Our suspect list is getting pretty long.”

You’ve heard of “fiddling while Rome burns,” right? Well, I’m pretty sure that “eating a box of éclairs while your friends sob over their dead son and your dead husband” is similar.

Joe smiled again. I didn’t know if it was possible for him to do a halfway normal smile or if he was a snake in a previous life. “You know what? I think if someone fancied you they’d call in person. So cross off anyone who just got someone to give you their love or whatever.”

“That’s why your mum isn’t on this list,” Estelle replied, “Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

The other reason is that that would make the story far too interesting.

So, we need to look at other motives. I know your dad never liked you, that was obvious, but your brothers?”

“Well, I got the impression they thought I was betraying the family when I went to live with Aunt Jean. They didn’t have enough imagination to work out what was going on.”

We will not get this impression when we actually meet Joe’s brothers.

Estelle nodded. “Well, I guess not all your family can be like you and Jean. If they didn’t have that much imagination, though, they probably wouldn’t have had the imagination to do that thing with the lights. Robbie’s out anyway, I think he’s a little too young to know how to do anything like that, but I’m guessing Vick didn’t know either.   Not to mention that thing where Anja was kept in at school, if that was part of the plan to get her on the bus and not just a funny coincidence.”

“What about Jack, though?”

“Joe, I know Jack and he’s basically a nice person.

And that’s enough of an alibi for them!

(I’m serious. The idea of Jack being the murderer will not be brought up again. Estelle says he’s a nice person, and that’s enough to completely exonerate him.)

He wouldn’t kill his own twin. Besides, he got engaged last month.

Which has nothing to do with anything. Joe’s dad is married, and that didn’t stop him trying to kill Estelle’s husband!

(Oh yeah, SPOILERS- It was Joe’s dad. There will occasionally be half-hearted attempts to convince you it wasn’t, but basically, we know it was Joe’s dad for most of the story.)

Your uncle, what about him?”

Joe thought for a second. “I don’t think he had anything against me.”

Joe’s uncle will not be appearing in the story, but I expect he’s glad to have these two sentences of characterisation.

I had no idea what was going on, and Joe and Estelle didn’t look like they were planning on telling me. “What was with your dad, Joe?”

They suddenly remembered that I was actually in the room. Being incredibly cool, self-controlled people they didn’t jump or anything, but Joe shifted in the chair. Weird, I was sitting in his chair’s identical twin and I couldn’t get into that position. He must have had bones made of rubber.

What position? What do the chairs look like? How does Anja know that Joe and Estelle are incredibly cool and self-controlled? Details, fifteen-year-old me, details!

Having recovered, Joe looked serious for once. “He couldn’t stand me. I’ve got no idea why, but the way he acted you’d think my mother had died giving birth to me or something, which she didn’t. I mean, all of the boys in our family felt like second best, because my parents made it really obvious that my sister Leah was their favourite… That’s an understatement, because the way they acted you’d think the Pope was offering to canonise her…”

We will see no evidence of this when we actually meet Joe’s family. Are you noticing a pattern here?

Estelle could tell that Joe was rambling, so she interrupted, “Anyway, Joe’s dad always treated Leah like a saint, the other brothers like normal human beings and Joe like dirt, right Joe?”

Joe nodded. “I could always tell he didn’t love me, because I had my mum to compare him to. Still, she also thought that the sun shone out of Leah’s…”

“Joe!”

Joe put on a joke-scared face at Estelle’s anger. “Please don’t kill me!” he whimpered. Estelle picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed at the air just as Mark came in.

Who does that?!?

He scurried out of her way and landed on the sofa.

“Shame on you, Estelle!” he laughed, “What did that oxygen do to you? One minute it’s just floating around, helping to breathe, you heartless cow, the next…”

Estelle put the knife down and giggled. “Mark, if you don’t shut up, you’re going the same way as the air.”

Mark sniggered again. “So, what’s going on, gorgeous?”

“We were just filling Anja in on a bit of background. There’s so much we haven’t told her and the others.”

Estelle, they’ve been in your house for the best part of a week! What have you been doing for all this time that you didn’t have time to explain this stuff?

“Catch me telling that Mr Daly anything,” Mark sniffed, “Miserable old get. Gary seems alright, though.”

Oh, right. Sniping pointlessly at Mr Daly.

“Yes,” Estelle murmured, giving Mark a look, “For one thing, he’s quiet.”

I couldn’t help thinking back to the previous night. Gary hadn’t been quiet then. Neither had Joe been very slimy. They’d both dropped the most prominent aspects of their personalities, and I’d been the only one who’d heard. It was as if I’d slipped into a parallel universe or something, where those two actually acted like normal people. I mean, my eyelids had been glued together. Anything could have happened.

“They’d both dropped the most prominent aspects of their personalities.” I don’t know if this is Anja being confused by people having more than one personality trait, or fifteen-year-old me quietly admitting that Gary and Joe aren’t very well-characterised.

Joe seemed to be having the same thoughts. “He was being really strange last night. Said everything that had happened was his fault. Said he’d wrecked our lives.”

I didn’t see any reason to keep quiet after that. I mean, it had been only me that Gary had talked about, not any of the others.

Eh?

“Oh yeah! I think I heard part of that.” Joe looked annoyed that he wasn’t the centre of attention anymore. Feeling weirdly pleased, I carried on.

“Nobody gets more attention than the Sue! Nobody!”

“I think he’s got an inferiority complex or something. Someone must have put ideas into his head, Joe. Remember he went on about someone called Jordan?”

By “went on about him,” she means “mentioned him exactly once.”

Joe thought for a minute. “He said, ‘Jordan was right! I shouldn’t exist!’ You’d have to really hate someone to tell them something like that.” The expression on Joe’s face showed that he knew what it was like to be really hated.

Estelle didn’t know what it was like, but by the looks of it she could guess.

How do you know Estelle doesn’t know what it’s like? You’ve known her for less than a week!

“That poor child,” she murmured in shock, pretty much echoing my thoughts.

“He’s not a child,” Mark commented, trying to change then atmosphere a bit, “He’s only a couple of years younger than you.”

Mark’s plan didn’t work. “This is no time to be pedantic, Mark,” Estelle snapped…

But that’s his only character trait!

“I can’t think of anything worse to be told. Imagine telling someone they shouldn’t exist… If someone had told me that, I’d have killed myself if I’d believed them.” She was getting angry. “What gave this Jordan person the right to say who should or shouldn’t exist? What could Gary have done that was so damn terrible that he shouldn’t…”

I didn’t know why Estelle stopped talking until I saw where she was looking. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway, as if she’d seen something tragic happen through it.

Gary stared back for a second, looking as if he’d just stepped into his worst nightmare. Then he turned and sprinted up the stairs.

We all knew someone had to follow him, and I was the one he liked.

I’d like to point out that, at this stage of the story, Gary and Anja have never actually had a conversation.

By the time I’d got upstairs, Gary had locked himself in the bathroom. I knocked on the door, knowing this wasn’t going to be easy. “Gary!”

He replied in a voice that told me he’d been crying. “Go away. Please.”

“Gary, I’m sorry I was talking about you behind your back. It’s just that you haven’t talked to us much. We guessed you wouldn’t tell us straight out about this Jordan person, so we were trying to work it out ourselves. I’m sorry.”

“We could have just asked you, I suppose, but where’s the fun in that?”

There was a long silence before Gary said, “I can’t tell you. You’ll hate me.”

“Why?”

“It was something terrible. Seriously. I don’t mean stupid stuff like shoplifting or whatever. Something really, really bad happened and it was my fault.”

That shocked me. It would have shocked me even if Joe had said it, but Gary had seemed like an inoffensive sort of person. I’d only known him for a week and that side of his personality had hit me in the face. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything terrible.

Once again- this is the first proper conversation they’ve ever had. Anja has no way of knowing whether or not Gary’s likely to have done anything terrible.

Though actually, he hadn’t said he’d done it…

“Gary? Did you mean that you didn’t mean for it to happen, or what? You can tell me.” He clearly didn’t think he could, so I leant against the door and tried something else. “Whatever it is, it sounds like you regret it. I’m not going to be angry at you for something you regret. It can just be between you and me, OK?”

SPOILERS- This is a complete lie.

There was another pause. “Look, Gary, if you don’t tell me we might not be able to work out who tried to do us in, and why. That means he could kill other people while we’re trying to work it out. Don’t you want us to get to the bottom of this?”

This worked. I heard a scraping sound as Gary undid the lock. The door opened a little to let me in, the closed as he locked it again. He fixed me with his sapphire eyes, looking more fragile than ever. “The others don’t have to know, right?” Gary pleaded.

“Not if you don’t want them to,” I said, sitting down against the radiator with him, “Now, tell me about this Jordan guy.”

SPOILERS- Again, complete lie.

He inhaled in preparation. “OK. It all started about four years ago, when my mum had a heart attack and died. She’d always had this thing wrong with her heart, so it wasn’t really a shock, but I still missed her. I don’t know when my dad started getting new girlfriends, but whenever I met them they always seemed to like me. I’d inherited my mum’s heart condition, so I was always a bit delicate, and I guess women often like people they can feel protective of.” He looked up at me to see if I agreed with this. “Yeah, we do,” I replied, thinking, You in particular, Gary.

And so begin the weird, Oedipal overtones that will come to define Anja and Gary’s relationship!

“Anyway, my dad met a widow named Claire. She was similar to his other girlfriends, a bit… you know, ditzy, but really sweet natured. I knew they were getting serious when they introduced me to her two kids, Jordan and Helen. Helen was eight when I met her, and because she’d heard I was unhealthy she acted really nervous around me, like I was going to explode. She talked to me occasionally, though, because she thought ignoring me would make her a bad person. Jordan, on the other hand,” Gary’s voice began to quaver, “was older than me, went out of his way to ignore me, and I got the impression that he was a bad person. And I was right.”

We don’t find out how Gary got this impression. Maybe Jordan spent a lot of time twirling his moustache and laughing evilly.

He was looking down at the thick indigo carpet, which I thought was a bit unhygienic in a room with a toilet in.

I think the bath’s more of an issue than the toilet, myself.

I put my arm around his shoulders. “So, this is the person who told you that you shouldn’t exist?”

Gary nodded.   “He didn’t at first, though. He looked right through me, like I didn’t exist. Jordan just seemed to want to break up my dad and Claire.

Again, we never find out how Jordan tried to break up Gary’s dad and Claire. Or maybe he didn’t actually try anything, and instead just glowered at them and thought evil thoughts.

Dad was the first man Claire had gone out with since her husband had died five years before, so they thought he just wasn’t used to his mum seeing someone. I think maybe he thought she was betraying his dad’s memory or something.” Gary closed his eyes. “Things didn’t get really bad until the wedding.”

“I’m guessing your dad and Claire, right?”

No, it was Gary and Helen’s wedding. Of course it was Gary’s dad and Claire, Anja, you pillock.

“Yep. I was fifteen, and Helen had just turned nine, but there weren’t any people of her age at the service, so she hung around with me. She kept asking me all these questions about my life, and I didn’t want to tell her that everyone in the whole school hated my guts and thought I was a freak.

“Because, you see, I was the king of the woobies, and fate had decreed that no aspect of my life was allowed to be less than hellish.”

I can’t remember what I said, but I know I made something up. Probably the same thing I told my dad and Claire, so they wouldn’t worry about me. She was more interested in my drawings than my school life, anyway, so it didn’t matter. Anyway, Jordan was chatting up one of my cousins, I think, but when he saw me talking to Helen he came up and punched me in the stomach.” Gary looked right at me, for the first time since he’d started talking. “You know I was picked on at school, Anja, but everyone knew I had a heart condition, so nobody ever beat me up or anything, because they thought that would have killed me. They just made it clear that I didn’t belong. Jordan was the first person who hit me on purpose. He told me not to contaminate his sister.

“Everyone knows that being an over-the-top woobie is catching! No sister of mine is going to be someone’s unrealistically tragic love interest!”

So Helen went, ‘Sorry, Gary. Jordan’s just being stupid. I’ve got to talk to you now, even if I didn’t want to, ‘cause you’re my brother too now, and Jordan wouldn’t like it if I ignored him…’” Gary went quiet, so I decided to prompt him. “What did Jordan do then?”

“He said that he wouldn’t be seen dead with someone like me in his family. Then he hit me again and walked off. But that wasn’t as bad as…”

I didn’t find out what it wasn’t as bad as, at least not then. There was an impatient knocking on the door, and Mr Daly’s testy voice echoed across the bathroom. “Will whoever’s in there please get out! I need to use this room.”

And so the chapter ends. Next time, there’s more Mr Daly bashing, and plenty of squicky speculation about Anja’s love life. See you then!

Welcome to part four of “Memory Lives On,” in which fifteen-year-old me tries to slip in a touch of poignancy. It works about as well as you might expect.

Watching my own memorial service was pretty much the strangest experience of my life up to that point. Even now, when I’ve had more strange experiences than I can shake a stick at, it’s still in the top five.

After writing this sentence, fifteen-year-old me then made coming up with “more strange experiences than (Anja) can shake a stick at” top priority. This explains a lot about the rest of the story.

First of all, they showed the road outside my school being knee deep in flowers and the like. They were playing Everybody Hurts at such a pitch that everybody in the room really did hurt, around the eardrum area.

Like the Pearl Jam thing earlier, R.E.M. reference is there solely to have an R.E.M. reference. At least my taste in music wasn’t bad.

(Also, “flowers and the like”? I can’t think of anything that’s like flowers except, you know, flowers.)

There was a huge photo of me in the middle, probably the only one they could find where I forgot to do my “Calculating woman of mystery” smile and grinned cutely instead. It said Anja Cleary, 198_-200_: Rest in peace all over it, which at least covered up the hideous T-shirt I was wearing in the photo. I’ve really got to learn that yellow isn’t my colour.

Bloody parents, giving the media a picture of their presumed-dead daughter in an unflattering outfit. Fashion should be the top priority for grieving family members.

The voiceover somehow managed to shout over the music. “The nation grieves over the death of Anja Cleary, killed in a freak accident at a tragically young age. Today, Anja’s memorial service took place, and her friends and family expressed their sadness.”

Actually, I’d better tell the truth. It was put together pretty well. In fact, I’ll be doubly honest. If it had been anyone else on the entire planet, I think I might have cried. I don’t usually cry at stuff on the TV, so that’s saying a lot.

Behold the awkward attempt to make Anja look as though she has actual human emotions. It was worth a try.

But as it was, it was about me, and crying over my clearly non-dead self would have been a bit stupid.

Well, that’s enough of that!

Other people were. My parents for a start. Because of this, I didn’t hear all of what they said, but some of it was “Why Anja? She hadn’t done anything!”

She was a smug drunk sociopath, Mr and Mrs Cleary. It’s really all for the best.

It’s Mark that’s done something, the git, I thought. Mind you, it would be against my principles to resent someone just for marrying a woman that a psycho fancied.

“Principles,” she says. That’s a good one.

But he was being a pain in the neck at that point. The music was loud enough, without him singing along. If only he’d known all the words, and hadn’t given up and stalked off halfway through the second verse, I’d have been spared a few other horrors.

This is Anja’s primary concern upon watching footage of her parents grieving over her alleged death. Oh, and apparently their grief counts among the “horrors” that Anja wants to be spared from. You really are better off without her, Mr and Mrs C. Remember the good times, eh?

I don’t think my friend Trixie has ever cried before in her life. She’s usually a front runner for the Miss Cheerful trophy, and when she’s upset (an annual event, pretty much) she tends to spout all the swearwords under the sun rather than spoil her eyeshadow. But I think I’d have cried if she or one of my other friends had died. That didn’t make it any less strange.

I don’t think Anja gives Trixie a second thought throughout the rest of the story.

They didn’t interview her. Instead, they skipped right across to Lydia.

But enough about the people Anja allegedly cares about- let’s give her somebody she can really sneer at!

I think I’ve already mentioned that Lydia thought I was a geek. But there she was, doing her Hypocritical Cow thing for the cameras; her excitement at being on TV barely concealed. “Anja, you can’t hear this but you were really loved by everyone. You’ve been loyal and kind to us, and I’ll never forget you. You’ll always be with me.”

We will learn nothing about Lydia for the remainder of the story, since her only purpose is to be a shallow popular girl for Anja to look down her nose at, so we have no way of knowing whether or not her professed grief is sincere. Maybe she really was shocked at Anja’s supposed death. Maybe it really did force her to re-evaluate their relationship. We’ll never know, because Anja’s certainly not going to tell us.

How do you know that, super-blob? For all you know I’ve been reincarnated as a porcupine. I know it’s heartless and cynical to say…

…but why break the habit of a lifetime?

…but that’s what I always think when they say stuff like that about dead people. Also, if I turn up anywhere near Lydia when I eventually do die, I’ll be supremely put out.

“Supremely put out.”  Put out in the manner of Diana Ross, no less.

Fortunately, Lydia’s face was soon replaced by that of my cousin Svetlana. If I was going to make a list of how much I liked each of my relatives, Svetlana would be top. I think at the time of my “death” she thought of me as a bit of an annoying little kid…

Svetlana is now my favourite character.

…but since she was fairly mature and fulfilled for an eighteen-year-old I’ll let her off. She had a two-year-old son, Ben, but she’d found a job in a nightclub that paid better than jobs in nightclubs usually do, so she didn’t have many financial problems. I think in a previous life Svetlana must have been one of those mountain people with really tough lives, because she gave off an air of being tough and determined enough to cope with anything. I was a bit put out to see that my supposed death was listed under “anything.”

“Come on, Svetlana, I tuned in to see tears! Where are the tears?”

“It was really shocking,” she was saying, “I mean, you don’t expect that kind of thing to happen to your cousin, do you? Anja was, like, really spirited and energetic, and I guess you don’t really expect that kind of person to just die on you. You expect it to happen to little quiet people who you don’t notice much.”

Geez, don’t sound too emotional, Svetlana. Anyone would think that you were pleased to be rid of your smug, drunk, sociopathic cousin.

Just then, three really strange things happened.

Strange Thing number one- there was something not quite right in Svetlana’s face. She’d decided on a look for the memorial service. She was trying hard to be someone bravely coping with the loss of a young cousin, in order to hide something. But what was she hiding?

The fact that she’d had “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead” stuck in her head since the vicar started speaking.

She didn’t have anything to do with what had happened on the bus, did she?

Now that would have been a good twist. But no, she doesn’t.

The screen changed before I could work out what Svetlana was hiding. But then we got propelled straight onto Strange Thing number two. To be honest, this wasn’t as strange or as significant as numbers one and three. But it was a first for the TV coverage of the bus “accident” that they actually remembered I wasn’t the only person who’d died a tragic death.

“How dare they take a break from stroking my ego?”

I was jolted out of my suspicions about Svetlana by the voiceover saying “Gary Wolf, aged seventeen, was killed in the same accident as Anja.” Gary’s immense blue eyes grew even wider at this. If his lids had been any further apart, his eyeballs might have dropped out.

I mentioned that Gary was based on Elijah Wood, right?

“Shell!” he gasped as he slammed his sketchpad shut.

An auburn-haired girl who looked a bit like a giraffe in a padded bra was speaking angrily. The subtitle read Michelle Glass, Gary’s friend. “I don’t think Gary should take second place just because there was someone younger and cuter than him on the bus. I mean, Anja Cleary sounds like a lovely person, and of course it’s a tragedy that she died…

Even complaints about the ego-stroking turn into more ego-stroking! It’s like a black hole of self-congratulation!

(Also, “a giraffe in a padded bra”? Classy, Anja.)

…but the only difference between her and Gary was that he was two years older. Gary was an unsung hero.

We will later find out that Gary did absolutely nothing heroic in the entire time he knew Michelle.

He was the sweetest guy I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not just saying that because he’s dead…”

I stopped listening.

“Pah! This isn’t about me!”

Michelle, like Svetlana, was hiding something, and I had enough time to work out that it was the same thing.

They didn’t want anyone to know that they were in mortal dread. Gary had seen it too, and, what’s more, he knew why Michelle was feeling it.

I now know that he was feeling it for the same reason.

We never find out exactly how Anja knows any of this. Psychic powers?

I’d never shared a room with two boys before, but then I’d never made a habit of sleeping on a mattress on the floor before. Mark and Estelle only had one spare bed, and Mr Daly had claimed it because of some bizarre health problem, which I’m 99% certain he made up.

Anja’s a doctor now!

When Estelle told him that she thought this too, he replied, “How dare you, Mrs Freeman! I’m aware that you are a great deal younger than me, but that’s no excuse to treat me like a second-class citizen.”

“OK, I’m sorry,” Estelle defended, “But I think Anja’s got more right to the spare room. Teenage girls need a lot more privacy than… than…” I could tell that she was trying to find a polite way of referring to Mr Daly, but apparently he couldn’t.

“Than fifty-year-old has-beens?” Mr Daly looked as if he was about to explode, which would have been more interesting to watch than him in the usual state. Estelle regarded him with her eyes, which are cool in every sense of the word.

“Estelle regarded him with her eyes.” As opposed to regarding him with her nostrils.

Oh, and it’s worth noting that Mr Daly is apparently only fifty, because the rest of the story insists on treating him as though he’s about two hundred.

“No, Mr Daly. Unlike some people I could mention, I don’t like to pick petty fights.”

Very mature, Estelle.

Neither of them looked as though they were going to back down, so I cut in and said that I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. I did this partly to stop the argument, but mostly to save Joe and Gary from sharing a room with Mr Daly. Creepy though Joe was, he didn’t deserve anything as horrible as that.

Very noble, Anja.

And anyway, I could always get changed in the bathroom.

The night after the memorial service, I was sort of hovering between sleep and consciousness when I heard something. At first I just thought one of the boys must be asthmatic or something, but then I realised it was a bit too loud and squeaky for… Oh man, someone was crying.

It’s about bloody time. 

And despite the fact that my eyes couldn’t be bothered to open, it didn’t take long for me to work out that it was Gary.

I knew that I should comfort Gary or something…

“Or something.”

but considering that I couldn’t even wrench my eyelids apart it was probably a good thing that Joe got there first. It was hard to believe it was him talking. All the slime had gone from his voice, and he started talking to Gary like he was five. “Hey… Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” sniffed Gary (in the face of all the evidence), “I’m just worried about Anja.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s a demon from hell! Please don’t let her consume my soul!”

Huh? Wasn’t Anja my name?

Nope. Your name is Mary Sue.

At least Gary could be bothered to pronounce it right, unlike Mark. But why would he be crying over me?

“I saw her memorial service earlier today,” he continued, “Her family looked as if they wanted to die. Anja just looked horrified. I thought, I’ve done that to her. Joe, I’ve wrecked her life!”

“Horrified.” Right. I could really see the horror in her comments about coming back as a porcupine.

“Sh,” Joe consoled. Then he realised what Gary had actually said. “Why you?”

Gary wasn’t listening. “Jordan was right! I shouldn’t exist!”

“Who’s Jordan?”

Gary remembered that Joe was still in the room, and replied, “Someone who was right, that’s all. I shouldn’t be here, I just wreck lives like I did Anja’s…”

“Gary, I don’t know who this Jordan person is, but if he told you all that, he was wrong, alright? You’re… you’re an OK person.

“I’m not sure what I’m basing this on, since this is our first actual conversation, but trust me!”

The bus disaster wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of whoever made those lights explode. And also indirectly Mark and my Great-Aunt Jean, I guess. And I don’t know about my aunt, but Mark isn’t crying about wrecking people’s lives, is he?”

“No… He’s a bit creepy in general, isn’t he?”

Gary sniffed. “That’s because all he did was marry Estelle. He didn’t do anything really bad.”

Even though my eyes were still welded together, I could see Joe’s slimy grin in my head. “I dunno. Some people would say that stealing such a stunning girl from the other 3 billion men on the planet was a crime against humanity.”

“Stunning girl.” Because that’s how teenage boys talk about women they fancy.

“Not seriously, though. All Mark did was marry a woman he loved. And she agreed, so it wasn’t as if it was really stealing, was it? If someone else liked Estelle…”

“Not just someone,” Joe corrected, “I’d say every guy she’s ever met fancied her.”

“You’re not taking me seriously.”

“That’s because you’re being dim. Look, you haven’t wrecked Anja’s life, OK? She’s been in a better mood than anyone else for the past few days. Well, except possibly Mark. She told Estelle yesterday that this is the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to her.

This should really make Joe and Gary wonder a bit about her. But no, Gary proceeds to fall in love with her anyway. Glutton for punishment, that Gary.

So stop worrying and go to sleep!”

Gary took Joe’s advice, and I copied him.

And so should we all. Next time, we’ll learn a thing or two about Gary’s tragic backstory, and Joe’s murderous family.

(This series of posts originally appeared, in a slightly different form, on my Deviantart journal.  I’m putting them here so they’ll be easier to get to.)

Hiya. I’ve decided to make fun of a story I wrote when I was fifteen. We’ll see how that works out.

My reasons for doing this are threefold: First, I think it’s always good to remind yourself of how much you’ve learned, and how much you’ve still got to learn.  Second, it’s also good to remind yourself that just because somebody has written a terrible story, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re a terrible person. Even if somebody has written a terrible story with awful moral implications, it might just mean that they weren’t paying attention to how they might come across to other people. I know I didn’t.

Third, I just thought it might be funny.  So there’s that.

So let us begin. The following story was initially called “Memory Lives On,” but was later renamed “Memory” after I realised that “Memory Lives On” didn’t make much sense. Still, I thought it was pretty clever at the time. It was supposed to be a title with a double-meaning, since it was about a group of people who’d inadvertently faked their own deaths.  “See, the newspapers are always going on about how their memory will live on forever, but little do the papers know that their memory living on will help them solve the mystery of their attempted murder! Oh, I’m so wise.” In the end, though, the main characters’ memories don’t have all that much to do with how the plot is resolved. The villain more-or-less self-destructs while the heroes spend their time wangsting about their problems. This was before I learned how plots actually worked, of course.

Anyway, enough preamble- here’s “Memory Lives On”:

“Anja Cleary is a tragic loss to her family, to her friends, and to us. The fact that a loyal, caring, intelligent, hardworking teenager could die such a tragic death is a sign of the carelessness of our times. The world needs to use the memory of this smiling blonde beauty to ensure that this kind of hideous accident never happens again. Anja’s parents and brother can now only be comforted by the thought that they now have an angel in Heaven looking down on them. Rest in peace, Anja.”- 25^th October 200_

I’m not sure where I got the name “Anja Cleary” from. Or why I felt it was so important that I didn’t say which year the story took place.

The story started off as a Mickey-take about how tabloids cynically shovel on the treacle when talking about major tragedies. It’s a bit unfocused, because at the time I didn’t actually know much about tabloids and their inner workings. If I was to write it now, I’d probably emphasise the falseness of it, or bring in a few more elements about their focusing on the pretty, middle-class, white victims over everybody else. Either way, though, the whole tabloid-satire theme is quickly shoved to the side in favour of a really dull murder mystery and an even duller romance subplot. Priorities!

What a load of rubbish. I can’t believe someone would actually print that in a newspaper. It’s so saccharine it makes my teeth ache, plus it’s all wrong.

In the words of Pearl Jam, I’m still alive, but the person who wrote the article can be excused for not knowing that. The whole country thinks I’m dead. Only five other people know I’m not, and some of them are meant to be dead themselves. But Mark and Estelle’s house couldn’t be called Heaven without anyone laughing. It’s pretty cool, as houses go, but they aren’t the neatest people in the world. Mind you, I don’t think they were expecting four guests, so I’ll let them off the hook.

That’s three or four subject changes in the space of one paragraph. My English teachers must have been so proud.

The Pearl Jam reference is there purely for the sake of having a Pearl Jam reference. I did this a lot.

While we’re on the subject, people don’t become angels after they die, even really good people. Angels are completely separate beings. I learnt that in RE. I think the difference is that they don’t have free will. And besides, Satan apparently started out as an angel, so being one isn’t a guarantee of good behaviour.

This has nothing to do with anything. See what I mean about the lack of focus?

There, that’s the first and last time anything I’ve learnt in school will be applicable to real life.

Frankly, I think “applicable to real life” is stretching it a bit even there.

Although the chances of my ever seeing the inside of a school again are fairly small. So there are advantages to everyone thinking you’re dead.

One of the disadvantages is being made out to be sweet and innocent in the papers.

Is “never getting to see your loved ones again” another one?

(Seriously, that barely comes up in the story. I didn’t mean to make my main character come across as a sociopath.)

I could hardly be less sweet and innocent if I tried. Gary’s sweet and innocent, I think. I haven’t known him that long. But I’m pretty certain he’s more sweet and innocent than me.

I also didn’t mean to make her sound drunk.

Incidentally, Gary is the love interest. His two character traits are a) expressing love for Anja, and b) weeping over his tragic past. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of these is more irritating.

In fact, I told Mark earlier today that Gary might as well have had his picture plastered all over the newspapers instead of mine.

“Yeah, but you’re the obvious choice, aren’t you?” he said, “You’re the youngest and the only girl. You’re A Young Life Cut Tragically Short, see?”

“And Gary isn’t? He’s not much older than me.”

“Well… Oh, I know. You’re cuter than Gary.” As you probably know, once you get to the age of fifteen it’s very annoying to be called “cute,” but I let Mark go on. “I mean, you’re textbook cute. Gary looks cute, but he looks weird as well, so they can’t make him their Tragic Accident poster kid. Weirdness and cuteness mixed would bother the public,” he said knowledgeably.

OK, I still quite like the phrase “Tragic Accident poster kid.” But I’m not sure how often men refer to each other as “cute.”

I don’t really think Gary looks all that weird, but maybe he looks different from all his photos. I know I do. Three days before the crash, I dyed my hair strawberry-red, and there weren’t any photos taken of me between then and now. So all the photos of me give the impression that I’m blonde.

This is a bit of a handwave on my part. Apparently, dyeing your hair a different colour means that absolutely nobody will recognise you, even if they’ve known you for years.

One more thing. There was another mistake in the article.

The reason we’re in hiding is that what happened wasn’t an accident. The only accidental thing was that we all survived.

SPOILERS- There’s actually no good reason for them to be in hiding. They could easily just tell the authorities that they’re alive, go home, and let the police handle it. But then there’d be no story, and we can’t have that.