This Still Happens

Chapter One - Angel: Gordon

Two months ago

Well, I'm absolutely delighted with this delicious weather, to be quite perfectly honest, Officer. Finally summer has decided to arrive and the sun's out (guns out, of course), and it actually feels like the end of May.

Which is considerably more than I can say for last week, truth told, and I'm just telling it like it is, so I feel no regrets at all when I say it had no right to piss it down like it did. Disgusting behaviour, the like of which you might expect from a Year Seven or something, but not... not from something as ancient and supposedly wise and mature as the sky. Which was in disgrace.

Until the rain stopped yesterday morning, and the sun decided it was going to do its job and roast the muddy ground into something resembling terra firma. It's always the same when it rains for more than an hour or so at a time, you see: Chase Valley turns into a swamp, because the lake overflows and turns everything into a sticky goddamn mess. Looks like my brother's cooking, actually, and he's nearly as big a disappointment to the Benn family as I am.

So you can imagine I was a bit worried—until yesterday, at least—that Soph was going to have to cancel her birthday camping trip, since we're going to be using the field by the lake, but that seems to be OK now. The grass still looks a bit disgusting all matted, but at least it's fairly dry. I love camping a lot, and I love Soph a lot—she's top—but there are things even I will not do for love, and one of those things is sleeping in a cesspit of sludge.

But the sun—which, like certain people, doesn't do so very often—has finally come out, and walking home from school today has been a treat.

Usually we have to take the bus, and it's a long, grisly drag over the grey, drizzly hills, along the lumpy road between Wooler and the Valley, but today—today, oh most merciful and heavenly of days—the ground's dry enough to walk on, so we're taking the woods route.

I love the woods. Summer's their best time, I think. Broad old branches of bright yellow leaves hang overhead, birches framing the path into a twisting avenue. They make my friends look like some kind of vintage photograph, tinted all gold with age. Beautiful.

Quite honestly, I can't wait to get home, though. All of this lovely weather has put me in the mood to write a poem or seventeen, so I'm going to dig out my writing journal and then shut myself in my room for a few hours, I think. Or I might sit on my windowsill. It all depends on what I can get away with. It all depends on whether Mum's home yet.

So I'm gallivanting ahead when I remember all over again that it's Soph's party tomorrow night, and spin around on my heel, grinning at her and her boyfriend. "Oi, oi," I say, flashing all my teeth, "Who's looking forward to the soirée of the century, then?"

Sophie shimmies her shoulders and flips her gold-tipped hair. "Birthday girl, of course." She laughs. "I take it you're going to treat us to your usual spectacular dancing skills?"

"Oh, my dear Sophie, I would never come to any party of yours without them! How on earth could I deprive you of this—" (box step, jeté—narrowly avoiding tree—jazz hands, slut-drop) "—on your birthday of all days? That you would even imagine such a thing as—"

"All right, all right, I'm sorry I accused you of not dancing!" Sophie exclaims. "Of course, I would expect nothing else. I'm looking forward to your latest beautiful choreography. And your dancing shoes."

I scoff, feigning offense with the palm of my hand pressed against my collarbones. "All my shoes are dancing shoes."

Chris, Soph's boyfriend, snorts with laughter. "As you've demonstrated," he says, hiding his sniggers behind the back of his hand, "You know, if I didn't know you better, I might be a bit, um..."—he raises his eyebrows and sticks out his jaw—"...worried about you, Benn."