Page 27 of Oleander

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” He almost sounded put out.

“Because my...because I have a friend over.” I didn’t understand why I hadn’t wanted to call Ellie my girlfriend, why I hadn’t wanted Caspien to know I even had a girlfriend, but at that moment, I told myself it was because the more stuff Caspien knew about me, the more advantages he had over me, and the more dangerous it made him.

But the truth, of course, was far simpler than any of that.

“Oh, it’s the girl, is it?” he said in a flat voice.

I didn’t even question how he knew. Maybe he’d seen her arrive somehow. Maybe Luke had mentioned it. Maybe he had cameras in my room.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

I hesitated too long. “Yeah, sort of.”

He was silent for a bit. “Okay then. Well, bye.”

“Wait,” I rushed before he hung up. I didn’t understand it; perhaps it was the sheer novelty of him having called me at all - that he wanted to hang out with me was something monumental, too - but I didn’t want him to go.

He hadn’t hung up and so I grasped at the first thing that came to mind.

“We’re going to the beach on Saturday,” I heard myself saying. “My friends and me. If you wanted to come with us.”

“Is your sort of girlfriend going to be there?”

“Yeah. And her friend. And my other two friends, who’re boys: Josh and Alfie. So like, it won’t be weird or anything.” I had no idea why I was saying this, why I was inviting him. Shit. Alfie. Alfie was going to be seriously pissed off.

“Yes, okay then. I’ll come.”

“Cool.”

“Bye,” Caspien said, and then he was gone.

After he hung up, I sat on the bench at the foot of the stairs with the receiver in my hand for five whole minutes, wondering what on earth had just happened.

He turned up early on Saturday morning.

I was still in bed, thinking about wanking, when Luke called up.

“Judey! Caspien’s here.” I heard him giving him directions to my room and the sound of the stair creaking, and then he knocked on the closed door.

I practically flew out of my bed and pulled on a pair of sweats, glancing around the mess of my room. There were still a few unpacked boxes, a glass by the bedside, some dirty underwear on the floor. I kicked the underwear under the bed and opened the small window wide before shouting for him to come in. He strode in like a gust of fresh, clean air.

He looked fresh and almost glowing in shorts and a crisp white t-shirt. He was wearing white trainers that looked new (and not his ridiculous too-big sandals), and his hair had been cut. Shorter around his ears and face but still longer than most boys I knew wore theirs.

He looked me up and down and then moved to sit on my bed. The sight of him there, on top of my bedcovers, on my bed, made me feel very strange.

“I wasn’t sure what time we would be going,” he said, glancing curiously around my room. His eyes lingered on my bookshelf before he stood up and went towards it.

“You could have called?”

He scanned the titles as he said, “Shall I go and come back?”

“No, it’s fine.”

He slipped out a book, flipping through the pages before turning it to read the back. It was my third-hand copy ofDracula.

“I’ll wait outside.” He looked at me. “I’m borrowing this.”