Chapter 2

“I,” she announced, linking their arms and cuddling up to his shoulder like he was her boyfriend or something, “have a plan.”

“Oh, no.”

“Don’t gimme that.” She pinched his elbow. Jayden noticed that he’d grown, by the way her temple bumped lightly against his shoulder now. It didn’t last year. “I have a plan, and it involves you and me getting everything we ever wanted.”

“How about just pass our exams and survive the year?”

“No.” Charley pinched his elbow again. “Our year! Priorities! We are going to be successful, and rich, and everything everyone else ever wanted. You and me. Deal?”

“Deal, I guess.”

“You’re so moody,” she complained. “Step one: I am going to get a job. I’m sick of getting hand-me-downs from Lucy. She has no taste.”

Privately, Jayden thought Lucy at least had a better sense of what flattered her figure than her younger sister, but he had enough self-preservation instincts not to tell Charley that. She was scary when she got mad.

“Step two,” she continued as they crossed the main road and into the territory of Woodbourne Comprehensive. The line of weather-beaten oaks kept the grey concrete of the school from spilling into the road, but it was a near thing. “Step two is for you, and that’s to actually act in one of your plays, not just write them!”

“Okay, Charley, no, I get enough flak for…”

“And step three…”

“If it ain’t the skirt and the—oh yeah, the other skirt,” a familiar voice, gravelly with fag smoke, drifted over the chain link fence after them as Charley marched them defiantly through the gates and past the smouldering cloud of nicotine and danger that hung over the group of blazered boys at the entrance.

“Step three,” she continued defiantly as she rushed them into the main entrance and past reception, where the squeaking corridor was empty and only the tiles could hear her, “is to get us both boyfriends by Christmas.”

Therein lay the problem.

“Because that’s ever going to happen, Charley,” Jayden said, extracting his arm as they reached their lockers. It was simultaneously great and crap that they kept their lockers from the first year up. It was great because it meant he could get to it, sort out his things, and get out before any of the other boys had finished their morning fag. It was crap because they all knew where it was and defaced it on a weekly basis. Sometimes, if classes were really boring or someone’s girlfriend wasn’t putting out, on a daily basis.

“It will happen,” Charley said decidedly. “I’m done with being single, and so are you!”

“I’m happy to wait.” Well, he wasn’t, but he didn’t have much choice. Not round here.

“No, you’re just afraid you’ll get more crap,” Charley huffed. “Come on, Jayden, there’s no way you’re the only gay guy in town. Town’s too big!”

“Gay and out are different things,” Jayden pointed out, slamming his locker on his lunch and shifting his bag to the other shoulder for the twenty-metre walk to Charley’s. She still had a picture of Josh Meyer taped to the inside, he noted idly. So much for being over her crush from last September. “Anyway, university is going to have much more interesting, intelligent guys than this place ever would.”

Charley grumbled, sliding her arm back through his the moment that she closed her locker. “What about St. John’s?” she suggested. “All boys private, they’re bound to be gay.”

“You can’t make gay people, Charles.”

“So why do single-sex schools churn out so many of them, huh?”

“They don’t, it’s a myth.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed, hugging his arm. “I predict—listen to me, listen—I predict that you will go off to St. John’s for sixth form, and you’ll have half a dozen gay friends and a boyfriend within six months.”

“What happened to getting a boyfriend by Christmas?”

“You’ll do that too,” she said imperiously, waving a hand like his protest was a bee in front of her face. “And then you’ll find someone even better at St. John’s, and you’ll be the gay version of Don Juan by the time you go to university to become a famous whatever.”

“Playwright.”

“Whatever,” Charley repeated. English, for her, had been little more than an opportunity to stare at the back of Josh Meyer’s head.

“I appreciate your faith,” Jayden said as they approached the lists of new form rooms on the glass doors of the drama block. “But it’s not going to happen. Not in this town.”

He squeezed her arm warningly against his side as they reached the doors, where other students were already clustering. It might have been common knowledge that Jayden was gay, but it wasn’t exactly something he wanted to advertise. He got enough shit as it was.