This Is Yr Life

Chapter Eighteen

‘You’re friends are really cool.’

When they arrived at Summer and Shaun’s house, huge and half-empty bottles of spirits were brought out and placed along the table. Kyle was asked twice if he wanted a drink, and if so, what did he want. He told them he wouldn’t mind a beer, but nobody made any effort to make this request a reality. Music started pulsing from the speakers that hung in the corners of the room. People laid on the sofa and then, as more people arrived from the tundra that had fallen upon the city outside, they were forcibly removed from their resting places and sat up, half slumped. It had just gone two AM when everybody had arrived.They lived in a house, not an apartment. It was an old house, much like the one Kyle had lived in as a child except this was only an old house on the outside. Through the doors, they sat in the living room and Shaun fiddled with the artificial fireplace that caused him to moan and complain about the engineers not sending their machines round to fix it when they said they would.‘They said the weather was too shit.’ Summer told the back of him with his head hidden underneath the grate.‘They said that?’‘Well, they didn’t say it was too s**t. They were a bit more diplomatic.’‘Do they expect us to freeze?’‘Relax Shaun,’ said a girl, Rebecca. ‘We’ll just have to huddle up for warmth.‘Cute,’ Jessica said.Kyle’s drink was finally given to him and they held their glasses up and clinked themtogether as much as they could reach.‘To what?’‘To not freezing to death. Hopefully.’‘We’ll be fine.’Kyle excused himself and found the toilet and pissed and allowed it to flush itself as he ran the water. He stared at himself in the mirror, washing his hands and face. He mumbled to himself. He went over his history. What he knew of Chloe. What Chloe knew of him. Where he went. What they did as children. Why he left. He listened to the water flowing and draining, there was laughter on the other side of the door, down the hallway.When he returned, Shaun offered Kyle a thick, deep mud brown drink called Stroh 80 which, Kyle was assured, was something that everyone who hung out at this house had to drink at least one shot of if they wanted to stay.‘It’s an initiation,’ said Summer, handing Kyle a shot glass that was full to the brim with this liquor. He looked around the room and everybody’s eyes were on him. Jessica put her hand on his arm.‘You don’t have to,’ she whispered. But Kyle felt he didn’t have a choice and he brought the glass to his lips and opened his mouth and tilted his head back and let the drink fall into his mouth and to the back of his throat and wash down into his stomach and it was a taste that he hadn’t expected and when he thought that it was over, he felt the taste again rise back up into his mouth and he covered his mouth, eyes wide, everyone looking at him, still, with an expression of expectation or horror or a mix of both.‘Is he going to spew?’‘f*****g initiation.’Kyle was okay, though and when they all realised that he was okay, that he was certainly not going to throw up all over the floor and the rug, one from Southeast Asia, one that Chloe also had in her flat, except where this one was blue and gold, Chloe’s was red and green with gold fringe, they cheered. High-fives were thrust into his face. Summer wooed and clapped. Shaun grabbed Kyle hard on the shoulder and shook him, Kyle smiled at him but all he saw in return was a glazed half-look that didn’t seem to register anything expression Kyle pulled and when he relinquished his grasp of Kyle’s shoulder, he slumped down onto the floor and let himself fall backwards to stare at the ceiling. Someone, one of the group whose name Kyle was still unsure of, grabbed him around the waist and squeezed. He felt hiccoughs bubbling deep in his stomach and prepared for the unexpected but inevitable bop of his insides when it finally rose up his throat and breached into the world.Someone changed the song, but this didn’t matter to Kyle, each song was as unfamiliar to him as the last.‘How about a game?’ Rebecca asked.‘What game?’‘Impressions?’‘No, that always ends up getting mean and offending people.’‘King’s Cup?’‘What’s that?’ Kyle asked.‘Ring of Fire,’ said Jessica.‘Circle of Death.’‘The Worst Game in the World,’ said Shaun, who was lying on his back with his eyes closed and a half-drank glass of something in his hand.Shaun did not look well.‘Oh f**k off Shaun, you used to love this game at university.’‘Yeah, at university.’He trailed off and instead of continuing their encouragement of him to join in, the rest of the party started playing. Kyle was at first unsure of what was required of him, but Jessica and also Summer walked him through the first round or two before, eventually, he started to understand the rules. He realised, after a six was pulled by Ralph across the table and the girls all joined together in singing out ‘d***s!’ that this was a game that Finn and Lewis had played with their friends on nights where Kyle had pretended to be out with his own friends but instead hid in his bedroom making as little noise as possible and kept the lights low, and the volume all the way down so he was just watching images on a screen without any context. Sometimes, he would elect to utilise subtitles but often found himself too distracted by what might be present in the darkness. His stomach would rumble and growl and he would search through boxes under his bed or his backpack for the remains of last week’s lunch or breath mints in desperate, futile attempts to satiate an ever growing, ever discomforting hunger. Only when Finn and Lewis and whoever they had invited round departed for the night or disappeared into their bedrooms to pass out would Kyle give himself the privilege of leaving. His anxiety calmed by the silence of the apartment, but even then, he would give himself fifteen or thirty minutes or somewhere in between, just to ensure that nobody stumbled back inside having forgotten their wallets or IDs or road drinks and he would take out something from the fridge or the cupboards around the kitchen and return to his bedroom, finally full, and the next day would answer questions about his night as vaguely as possible.The game continued but the longer it went on, the more people seemed unable or unwilling to see it through to completion. Kyle, with his liquid confidence and not wanting to come across as someone who loathed party games despite memories of being forgotten about during Hide and Seek, despite conveniently being ignored by the halting music during Pass the Parcel, tried to encourage the others; but instead they pulled what they had decided was the last card, a King, and everyone wearily held up their glasses chanted something that ceased to bear any resemblance to recognisable syllables, and did their best to down whatever remained in the bottom of their glasses.It was this that sent Kyle back to the toilet.As he relieved himself, he took his phone from his pocket and found Chloe’s profile. He skimmed through picture after picture, realising that the background of many of these photographs had been taken just fifty feet away from where he was currently standing. As he finished, he put the toilet seat down and instead of returning to the party he sat and continued to scroll through. He saw Chloe, he saw Summer, he saw silhouettes of people that he now recognised as those who remained in the living room. Kyle stared at these pictures, smiling when Chloe smiled, laughing when she appeared to laugh. He mumbled to himself about wishing she could have been there with him tonight.‘Next time, maybe.’There was a knock at the door.‘Just a second.’ He stood up too quickly and his vision blurred and his head wobbled on his neck. The flush of the toilet faded into the running tap. He wiped his hands on his jeans, no hand towel immediately present, and opened the door.‘You were in there a while,’ Summer said, smiling.‘I, erm,’ Kyle was unsure of how to respond.‘Do you need another drink?‘Uh, sure, yeah.’‘Cool, help yourself. I’ll be out in a minute.’ Summer closed the door behind her and Kyle, his phone still gripped in his hand, stared at the door for a time that some might consider being just the slightest bit too long. Down the hall, he heard the clinking of glasses knocking against one another. He heard taps running, of bottles opening, the smallest, almost unidentifiable trickle of something being poured. When he returned, he looked for Jessica to enquire if she too wanted another drink. He looked around the room but could not locate nor identify the one considerably familiar face. Jessica, he realised, was gone.‘Did she…?’‘Not sure, I saw her grab her coat and stuff but I just thought she went out for a smoke.’Kyle went to the window and peered out into the frosted streets. There was no movement from the city at this time of night, not even scorned lovers shuffling their way back home with a still-full bottle of wine in hand, not even lairy punters stumbling across the street, aware of nothing except for the silence of the streets and their takeaway in their hands, bits of chicken or kebab meat falling onto the road as they tripped over mere air on their way home.‘She’s not out there, what about the back?’They called Jessica’s name but there was no response. Kyle tried to call her but the dial tone just rang and rang and rang, eventually coming to her call inbox, where Kyle was encouraged to leave a message.‘Hi, it’s Kyle, where did you -’But he never finished the message. He was called back to the party where the lights hadbeen turned down low, the table cleared from the middle of the room and everyone with their glasses of water or, perhaps vodka, were dancing to a song that Kyle, finally, recognised. Kyle woke up the next day alone with little recollection of the hours that had passed before he ended up in his bed. He was struck by what he remembered Jake calling The Fear and before doing anything else, he reached for his phone to survey any damage.But there wasn’t any. All he saw were friend requests from Summer, from Shaun, both Rebeccas, Ralph, and others whose faces he recognised but the names of which he did not remember.Kyle lay in bed until the time informed him that it was nearly three o’clock. He didn’t want to move but knew he had little choice. He had not seen Chloe in a couple of days and was determined to tell her all about his first meeting with her friends. He wanted to tell her how they had made him laugh, how his hazy memory revealed vomit, dancing, drinking, singing, and playing games which he was so unfamiliar with but was encouraged to participate in regardless. After willing himself out of bed, he took a long, hot shower, allowing the flowing water to wash away any of the grubbiness that he felt had soaked into his skin. He got dressed and left the apartment with a bag packed full of whatever he might need for his visit just as Finn and Lewis were emerging from their bedrooms.And now, he found himself sitting with Chloe on a day which had started bleakly for Kyle, unsure of how he would do anything at all. But now he was here, he could not think of anything else he would rather be doing today. The sun crested over the skyscrapers and shone down, reflecting light that bounced over ceramic graves behind him. The chill of the previous night had evaporated and now the air was crisp, almost warm. Kyle looked at Chloe and offered her a sip of her coffee.‘Yeah, really cool.’