Page 26 of Oleander

“You’d better stop calling me that, or you can play with your bloody self.”

Too late I heard it in my own ear. Caspien’s eyes lit up and he smiled. It made me think about those noises he made on the phone.

“Oh, I think you are going to be fun, Jude.”

I didn’t even want to begin to imagine what that meant. Instead, I asked, “Who were you talking to on the phone?”

“No one you’d know.”

Maybe if we were friends, he would tell me?

“So, what do you say, Jude?” He stuck his hand out. “Would you like to play at being friends? For Gideon?”

I bit and chewed at my lip, trying to decide why this all felt like a trap. One I could see up ahead and yet was walking into willingly. I looked down at his hand. Hands that would soon come to haunt my dreams.

Carefully, I took it in mine.

“For Gideon.”

The smile he gave me then was slow and close-lipped, and it made my heart beat a little faster as if venom was swirling through my veins.

“Marvellous,” he said before letting go of my hand and breezing past me.

I could only stare after him, sweat licking at my neck and my hand burning like a brand where I had touched him.

Seven

Ellie came over after school on Wednesday. Beth was out at her gym class, and Luke was working in the bedroom down the hall, the one that was to be the nursery. We were on my bed with the door pushed slightly closed, kissing.

We’d made an attempt at studying; our books were open on the page we were supposed to be looking at. But then she’d surged toward me without warning and pushed me flat on my back and pushed her tongue into my mouth. I’d not known how to react right away, though after a minute, all the parts of my body that were supposed to react did.

“I like you,” she told me between kisses.

“I like you too.”

This made her smile – a shy thing that didn’t quite suit her. I wondered if it was an act. Or maybe the other Ellie, the confident, bold one I saw every day at school, was the act. She leaned in to kiss me again, but before she could push me back down on the bed, the phone rang – a brazen shriek from where it was on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

“Ah, I better get that.” Luke was drilling, so he wouldn’t have heard it. However, when I was at the door, the drilling stopped. “I’ve got it,” I called to him before flying down to catch it before it rang off.

“Hello,” I asked, breathless.

There was a moment’s pause. “It’s Caspien.”

My whole body felt like it had been shot through with electricity.

“Hello,” I said again. “Are you...I mean, Luke is upstairs.”

“I called to speak to you.”

Another zap of electricity. My breath thinned. “Oh, right.”

“I wondered if you wanted to come over. To...hang out.” His voice sounded strange. Stranger than normal. Stiff and careful, like he was reading the words from a page.

“Hang out?” I repeated. My shock at the sound of his voice on the phone had overtaken my confusion, so it came out as a question. “With you?”

“No, with bloody Gideon,” he said. “Yes, with me.”

“I...” I wanted to say don’t be bloody ridiculous, but part of me was too gobsmacked to get anything out. With horror, I realised I wanted to say yes. I was about to when I remembered Ellie was upstairs.