Junk - Melvin Burgess [41]
She said, ‘Yeah, great.’ I smiled at her, trying to look as if I was having a really great time. She held out her hand.
‘Can I have some of that?’
‘Sure.’ I was, you know… wow, she thinks my drink’s worth drinking. She took it and went jiving off. I felt a bit naked, sitting there without my drink. I thought, How pathetic, I mean, she didn’t feel naked even with no clothes on. I watched her nervously as she boogied about with my glass. She sniffed it but she didn’t drink any of it. She just put it down on the mantelpiece and started to pick cups off the floor and stick them together to make a long tube.
‘Power,’ she said. She was swinging it round at a group of people sitting on the floor like it was a zap ray or something, ‘Pow, pow… power…’ She laughed, chucked the stick of cups into the bin and went dancing off, waving her body to the beat. The people on the floor smiled self-consciously. You couldn’t tell if she was teasing them because she thought they wanted power, or because she already had all of it.
I got up and made for the kitchen for another drink. I was pouring it out when there she was again, behind me.
‘You don’t need that stuff, what do you think you need that stuff for?’ she said crossly. She wasn’t smiling. I looked at her in surprise.
She reached out and took my drink off me. ‘Why do you think I took the last one off you?’
I clutched my head. ‘I know, I know, I don’t know what I’m doing,’ I wailed.
‘You’re doing okay, you know that?’ she said.
She seemed to know everything about me already. I just stood there like an idiot clutching my head and going, ‘I know, I know, I know…’ And of course I didn’t know anything.
Suddenly she put her arms around me and hugged me. She held me close. I just hugged her straight back and I felt the tears coming. I’d been thinking I was having a good time but she only had to touch me and I was crying.
A couple of people came into the kitchen and saw us like that and then went out again. She didn’t say anything. After a bit she began to move to the music again still hugging me tight and I realised she’d stopped moving to hold me. I was the only thing that made her stand still. I began to move and we stood there a little longer, just swaying to the music.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great? The music’s the only drug… yeah…’ I put my head on her shoulder and tried not to think.
I don’t know what it was she had. She was sharing her magic with me and I could feel that tight bubble in my stomach get softer and softer and softer.
‘Come on, let’s see what’s going on…’ She broke away and moved to the door, still dancing in that way she had.
I followed her through.
I sat on the sofa. The girl, the magic girl, was still dancing around the room, dancing as she went and kissed her boyfriend on the ear, dancing as she put someone’s drink on top of her long sausage of cups, dancing as she pushed another on top of that so that… whoops! The drink spurted all over the floor and all over her. Everyone laughed – even the girl whose drink it was laughed. The magic girl licked the wet off her arms and looked over to me as if to say, See? You don’t have to behave like them, you don’t have to behave like anyone. Then she reached over and plucked a joint out of someone’s fingers and came over to sit next to me.
We talked – I don’t know, all sorts of stuff. I took a couple of puffs but then she had a look at me and took it off me.
‘You don’t need that either,’ she laughed. Even sitting down, she was still dancing. She didn’t ask anything about me or where I came from. She talked about music and bands and she talked about herself and her boyfriend, what he was like, how amazing he was.
‘Yeah, he’s on the right side, you know,’ she said, nodding her head and puffing down the smoke.
‘I don’t even know what the right side is,’ I told her, beginning to giggle again.
‘The right side. Your side. My side. You know.’ I didn’t know if she was talking