Skippy Dies: A Novel

In the beginning he has to keep pinching himself to remind himself this is actually happening: it seems unreal, like one of those Kinder ads where everyone’s been dubbed into another language.

‘You’re here!’ she exclaims, holding her arms out to him. Her eye catches on the bruise on his temple as she leans in to kiss him, but she doesn’t say anything about it. ‘My parents are dying to meet you,’ she says instead, and taking his hand she leads him inside. They go down a hall full of paintings to an airy kitchen with a huge domed skylight, where a tall, slightly fierce-looking woman in a black dress is chopping courgettes. Skippy wipes his palms on his trousers, ready to shake hands, but Lori breezes right by her, through a glass door: ‘Hey, Mom, look who’s here!’

The woman stretched out on the divan is the image of Lori: the same magnetic green eyes, the same carbon-black hair. ‘Oh my goodness!’ she lays down her magazine and swings her bare feet onto the tiles. ‘So this is the boy! This is the famous –’

‘Daniel,’ Lori says.

‘Daniel,’ Lori’s mum repeats. ‘Well, you’re very welcome to our home, Daniel.’

‘Thank you for having me,’ Skippy mumbles, and then, remembering, ‘I brought some chocolates.’ He hands Lori the box, which in the cathedral-like conservatory looks downright microscopic; nevertheless, both women make exactly the same Ohhhh sound.

‘He’s adorable,’ Lori’s mum pronounces, skating her fingertips over Skippy’s cheeks.

‘Can we have some OJ?’ Lori asks.

‘Of course, sweetie,’ her mum says, and calls through the door to the other woman, ‘Lilya, fetch the kids some juice, would you?’ then kneels down on the floor in front of Skippy so her perfume swims up his nose and it becomes nearly impossible not to look down her top. ‘It’s nice to finally meet you,’ she says in a fake whisper. ‘I knew there had to be a boy on the scene. Though Lori’d deny it till the cows came home.’

‘Mom,’ Lori groans.

‘You may find it hard to believe, young lady, but I was actually a girl myself once. I know the tricks.’

‘Mom, go and do some Pilates or something,’ Lori pleads, moving towards the kitchen.

‘All right, all right…’ She resists her daughter for long enough to fix Skippy with an appraising eye and declare again, ‘Oh he’s just too adorable,’ before disappearing, laughing, back to her divan.

‘Sorry, I should have warned you,’ Lori says. ‘My mom is like the world’s biggest flirt.’ She reaches for one of two glasses of Sunny D that have appeared on the counter along with a big plate of chocolate-chip cookies, and shines Skippy a lighthouse-beam smile. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the tour.’

The house is endless. Every room gives way to another even bigger, each one an Aladdin’s cave of screens and sculptures and stereo equipment. Following after Lori, half-listening to her chatter, Skippy feels happy but strange, like a shadow that’s won some competition and been invited for one day to be an actual person and not just a fuzzy shape on the ground – ‘And this is my room,’ she says.

He snaps out of his reverie. Holy shit! It’s true! They’re in her bedroom! The walls are pink and covered with girl-type posters – two horses nuzzling each other, the Sad Sam dog, a boy-cherub stealing a kiss from a girl-cherub, BETHani in an almost-but-not-completely-see-through swimsuit, and again, in a picture cut out of a magazine, hand in hand with her boyfriend, the guy from Four to the Floor. On the dresser is a photograph of Lori, the beautiful mother and a man who must be Lori’s dad, kind of like if GI Joe was made of wood and wore a suit, the three of them looking so perfect together, like the example picture that comes with the frame.

‘Let’s watch TV!’ she says. There’s a television in here but she’s already going down the stairs to one of the living rooms, where she sits on the sofa about two feet away from him, the cat cradled in her lap and her pop-socked feet dug comfortably under a cushion. The Simpsons is on. Skippy wonders if he was supposed to have kissed her upstairs. She didn’t act like she was expecting him to. So should he kiss her now? She does seem quite interested in the programme. Bollocks, maybe it’s not a date! Maybe they are friends!

‘So are you still swimming?’ she asks him during the ad break.

He tells her about the swim meet coming up this weekend.

‘Wow, that’s so exciting,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding. (Hit by runaway hotdog cart, trip over cat, catch chickenpox, water shortage → all pools empty everywhere.) ‘It’s the semi-finals?’

‘Cool.’ She scratches her nose thoughtfully. ‘So you didn’t quit?’

‘Quit?’

‘Yeah, when I was talking to you the night of the dance, you said you wanted to quit it.’

‘Oh –’ when I was talking to you the night of the dance??!! ‘– um, well, it’s quite hard work, I suppose. Like, we have to get up at half six to train, and stuff. So it’s hard work, that’s what I meant.’

‘You told me you hated it,’ she says.

‘I hated it?’

She nods, her eyes fixed on his.

‘Yeah…’ he says vaguely. ‘Yeah, sometimes I feel a bit like that.’

‘Why would you do something you hate?’

‘Well, I suppose my parents are excited about it, so…’

‘They don’t want you to do something you hate, do they?’

‘No, but…’ The Game, even here! It rises up monolithic out of the floor like a staring tombstone: caught in its shadow he trails off, sitting there dumbly, miserably, wishing she’d stop looking at him – then the door opens and the tall man from the photograph comes in.

‘Daddy!’ Lori cries, and leaps up from the couch.

‘There’s my princess!’ The man puts down his shopping bags so he can lift her up and swing her. ‘And who do we have here?’ he says, looking at Skippy scrunched up on the couch.

‘This is my friend Daniel,’ Lori says.

‘Aha… so this is the man who’s been keeping you out till all hours,’ her dad says. ‘Well, well. Gavin Wakeham.’ He lopes round to crush Skippy’s hand in his and peer at him interrogatively.

‘Daniel’s in Seabrook,’ Lori tells her dad.

‘Is he?’ The man brightens at this. ‘I’m an old Blue-and-Gold myself! Class of ’82. Tell me, Daniel, how’s Des Furlong? He back yet?’

‘No, he’s still sick,’ Skippy says. ‘Mr Costigan is in charge.’

‘Greg Costigan! I was in school with that bastard. What do you make of him, Daniel? Talks a lot of shite, doesn’t he? Actually, tell him I said that, will you? Tell him Gavin Wakeham says he talks a lot of shite, will you do that for me?’ His big face looks down at Skippy avariciously, like a hungry monster that has discovered a plate of bonbons. Skippy doesn’t know what to say. ‘Good man, he’s true to his school!’ Lori’s dad guffaws, slapping his back. ‘Matter of fact, Greg is a good friend of mine. Still see him for the odd pint up at the rugby club. You play yourself, Dan?’

‘Daniel’s on the swimming team,’ Lori says, snuggled under his arm. ‘They’ve got a big race coming up. They’re in the semi-finals.’

‘Is that so? And who’s coaching you? It’s not still Brother Connolly, is it? Brother Fondle-me, we used to call him.’

‘Mr Roche does it now,’ Skippy says.

‘Ah yes, Tom Roche, of course. Tragic story. You know it?’

‘Yes,’ Skippy says, but Lori’s dad starts telling him anyway. ‘Probably the best winger of his generation. Could have walked on to the international team. Walked on to it, if it wasn’t for what happened. And now I hear the other fellow’s back in Seabrook too, the one who let him take the drop for him, what’s his name again…?’

‘Daddy, what did you buy?’ Lori tugs at his elbow.

Gazing into her upturned face, he brightens again. ‘Just some bits and pieces for the gym.’

‘More stuff for the gym?’

‘Just a couple of things.’

‘Mom’s going to kill you.’

‘Aha,’ smugly, ‘not so, because I’ve already taken care of that.’ He draws a smaller bag out of the larger and shakes it at her.

‘And what about me?’

‘What about you?’

‘It wouldn’t be fair if everyone got something except me.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, in that case.’

‘Let me look in the bag.’

‘I think not.’

‘Let me look – Daddy!’ She lunges for the bag, he hoists it out of her reach, matador-style, and Skippy takes a step backwards as the two of them become one giggling, wrestling mess. The woman from the kitchen appears in the doorway. She pauses there a moment, shooting a brief, expressionless glance at Skippy on the far side of the tussling couple; then, in a vampiric monotone, she announces, ‘Dinner is served.’ Lori’s dad and Lori split, gasping and emitting little leftover fragments of laughter.

‘Okay, Lilya, thank you,’ her dad says. ‘There, you little madam, though you don’t deserve it…’

He tosses Lori a shopping bag with a pair of lips on the side, and she lights up as she takes out a plastic case. ‘Oh, thank you, Daddy!’

‘Without make-up she looks like the back end of a bus,’ her dad winks at Skippy; and then sternly, to Lori, ‘But you can only wear it on special occasions, when your mum and I say you can, okay?’

‘Yes, Daddy.’ She nods earnestly, taking his hand and trotting alongside him into the dining room, with Skippy following behind.

They sit down at the table while the black-clad woman silently lays plates before them. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ Lori’s mum says. ‘I can’t think of the last time we all sat down for a meal together.’

‘Daddy’s always working,’ Lori tells Skippy.

‘Someone has to pay for all this, don’t they?’ Lori’s dad says, through a mouthful of food. ‘You girls seem to think it just drops out of the sky.’ Lori and her mum make identical eye-rolling motions. ‘So what kind of racket’s your dad in, Daniel?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your dad, what does he do?’

‘Oh – he’s an engineer.’

‘How about your mum? Is she working too?’ Across the table his tanned arms flex as he saws into his chop,

‘She’s a Montessori teacher. Well, not right now, but…’

‘That’s great. And how are you enjoying school?’

‘It’s okay,’ Skippy says.

‘Daniel’s one of the smartest boys in his year,’ Lori says.

‘Good for you,’ her dad says. ‘So what kind of career do you see yourself in, Daniel?’

Lori’s mum, laughing, lays down her fork with a clink on the plate. ‘Gavin, give the boy a chance to eat his food!’

‘What do you mean?’ Lori’s dad says. ‘We’re simply having a conversation, that’s all.’

‘You’re interrogating him. In a minute he’ll start burning your feet with cigarettes,’ Lori’s mum twinkles at Skippy.

‘I’m simply trying to find out a little bit about him,’ Lori’s dad rejoins. ‘God forbid I should want to try and find out a little bit about the boy my daughter’s been out roaming the streets with for the last month –’

‘I wasn’t roaming the streets,’ Lori says, flushing.

‘Well, you weren’t watching Buff y at Janine’s, were you?’

Wait a second – what?

‘Leave her alone, Gavin,’ her mom reproves.

‘I just think it’d be nice to have some idea what your own child –’

‘We’ve been through all this – oh, now look.’

Lori’s head is bowed, and jerks with sobs.

‘Oh sweetheart… sweetie, I didn’t mean…’ He extends his hand across the table, lays it in Lori’s sparkling black hair. She doesn’t respond; a tear splashes down into her half-eaten meal.

‘Oh God,’ he says heavily. ‘Look, I honestly don’t see what the fuss is about. Myself and Dan are getting along famously, aren’t we, Dan?’

‘Yes,’ says Skippy. There is a tense silence, filled only by Lori’s snuffles. He clears his throat. ‘Actually, I think I’d like to design video games. When I grow up?’

‘Video games?’ Lori’s dad says.

‘Or else be a scientist, you know like the kind that discover the cures for diseases?’

‘What kind of console do you have? Nintendo or Xbox?’

Lori’s dad turns out to know quite a lot about video games and they have a good conversation about that. After a little while Lori stops crying, and the black-clad woman brings in a lemon meringue tart on a tray. ‘So who’s knocking around Seabrook these days?’ Lori’s dad asks. ‘Is Bugsy O’Flynn still there? How about Big Fat Johnson? And Father Green, is he still dragging lads out to the ghetto? Ha ha, I remember carrying boxes around some kip, scared the life out of me. Didn’t forget to keep my arse to the wall, though. Old Père Vert.’

‘You and that school,’ Lori’s mother laughs, and as the woman comes in again to clear the dishes, she says to Lori’s dad, ‘Do you think our daughter could have Daniel back for an hour before she starts her homework?’ Lori’s dad grins and says, ‘I suppose so – okay, scram, you two.’

Lori and Skippy go back into the living room. This time Lori cosies right up next to him on the couch. ‘My parents love you.’ She smiles. Her legs are curled up and her toes wiggling against his hip.

‘They’re really nice,’ he says.

An old film is on the TV, the one about the guy in high school in America who finds out he’s a werewolf. Skippy has seen it before but it doesn’t matter: his hand is in Lori’s and her little finger is absently stroking his little finger and the whole universe is centred in those two little fingers. On the table her phone starts to ring, but she silences it and turns to him again and smiles. After a long time debating whether to put his arm over her shoulder he finally decides that he should, and he is just lifting his elbow onto the top of the couch when the doorbell goes. It makes both of them start. Lori jumps up on the couch to peek out through the curtain, then – does he hear a little gasp? – she runs to the door, shouting, ‘I’ll get it!’ down the hallway.

While she is gone, Skippy tries to focus on the film, where the guy is discovering that when he is a werewolf he is really good at basketball. But although he can’t make out the words, he can hear her voice – muffled, urgent-seeming – in the hall, as well as whoever is at the gate, the scrambling of the intercom making him sound ragged, angry…

Lori returns to the living room. ‘Just someone looking for directions,’ she says, wiping her hands on her jeans.

‘Oh,’ Skippy says.

She sits down next to him again, but this time with her feet on the floor and her body leaning forward, staring at the screen with her mouth tight shut. His hand now rests mournful and unloved on top of his knee. He pretends to himself he doesn’t notice the sick feeling in his stomach. ‘Do you want to start eating the chocolates?’ he asks her.

‘Actually, I’m on a diet,’ she says.

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t say it to my parents, I haven’t told them about it.’

‘Okay,’ he says, and then, gallantly, ‘I don’t think you need to go on a diet, though.’

She doesn’t seem to hear him; she is staring at the TV, where the werewolf-boy is having an intense conversation with the girl he is in love with.

‘Here, you know what you were saying, about quitting the swimming team?’ Skippy says.

‘What about it?’

‘Like, do you think I should? Just quit?’

She arches her back, wriggles her shoulders, first one, then the other, as though the cat is there clinging to her. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I mean, it just sounds so boring.’ She turns back to the TV. ‘Isn’t that the guy who was in that show and then he got that gross disease?’

Skippy doesn’t know what’s changed but everything has. They watch the rest of the film in silence. Then the door opens and Lori’s mum is standing there. ‘Homework time, missy.’

Lori looks up at her with a disappointed aw face.

‘It’s a school night,’ her mum says. ‘I’m sure Daniel has homework too.’

‘Can I just very quickly show Daniel something in my room?’

Her mum smiles. ‘All right. But be quick.’

Lori flashes a quick smile at Skippy. ‘Okay?’ she says. For a moment Skippy just stares at her uncomprehendingly like she’s a new letter of the alphabet. Then he remembers himself and mumbles something and follows obediently as she ascends the stairs again and leads him into her room.

This time the night framed in the window is utterly dark, and in the instant before she switches on the light the stars shine in on him deliberately like they’re trying to tell him something; then Lori draws the curtains and places herself in front of him. Her eyes are closed and she is standing there like a sleepwalker, her mouth slightly open, her hands slightly lifted. He tries to think of something to say, until the meaning of the closed eyes finally penetrates. At once it’s like some crazy carnival orchestra strikes up inside him, all the instruments playing at the wrong speed in the wrong key, everything whirling and toppling over, while outside him the room’s so quiet, not even the wind audible through the double glazing, and Lori so still, her lips parted. He leans into her and her mouth latches on to his, an alien being attaching itself to its host. But he can’t stop thinking of the voice in the intercom. Was it the same person that was on the phone? Who she was roaming the streets with? His eyes flick open and see hers, burning green and staring back at him, right up close like planets filling a Star Trek sky. Now they shut, her eyebrows furrowing momentarily – he shuts his too. She takes his hand and thrusts it under her shirt. His hand locks on her boob and squeezes, hard? soft? through raspy synthetic material. She makes small squirmy noises, her tongue licks his tongue. Why isn’t he happy? Why does it feel different?

A knock at the door. It’s already over. Lori walks away briskly to open it. Her mother is there with her hand raised to knock again. ‘Sorry, kids. It’s eight o’clock.’

‘Okay,’ Lori says. ‘Daniel was just about to go anyway.’ She passes under her mum’s arm to the landing, and now he is watching her shimmering black crown disappear down the stairs, chatting away to her mother as if nothing had happened at all.

In the kitchen, Lori’s dad sets down his PalmPilot and rises from the table. ‘Great to meet you, Dan.’ He outstretches his hand. ‘Give ’em hell at that swim meet, all right? Show them how we do things in Seabrook College.’

‘I will,’ Skippy says.

Lori sidles over to him and takes his hand. ‘Thanks for coming to see me,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ Skippy says, meaninglessly.

‘Do you want to hang out again sometime?’

‘Do you?’ He is surprised.

‘Sure,’ she says, swinging his hand a little back and forth.

‘Oh, don’t the two of them look sweet!’ her mother sighs in a pouty baby voice.

‘Maybe we could do something on Friday? I’m not grounded any more –’ shooting a look at her dad, who pretends to be fixed on his PalmPilot.

‘We could go and see a film?’ he says.

‘Sure, and then we could go for ice cream,’ she says.

‘Too cute!’ Lori’s mum exclaims, hands to her cheeks. ‘I can’t look at you any more, I’ll just die!’

‘Mom,’ Lori blushes, but she can’t help grinning down at her shoes. Skippy grins too but does not know why. He feels like he’s inside a sitcom, but he can’t find where they are on the script. Maybe if he just keeps smiling no one will notice. Maybe nothing was wrong after all – maybe second kisses are always different to the first.

She brings him to the door to say goodbye.

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she says again. She is boxed in the yellow light of the doorway like a toy fairy.

‘It was fun,’ he says. He is outside now, on the flagstones; as he stands there he feels the cold scurry away with the warmth of his body, hungry goblins happening upon an unguarded bakery.

‘Well, I’d better go and do my homework,’ she says.

‘Okay,’ Skippy says. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’

The door closes. He gets his bike and turns dazedly towards the darkness. The gates glide slowly open before him, a mouth spitting him out. Then behind him he hears the latch.

‘Daniel, wait!’ She is running over the flagstones, her bare arms luminous in the dusk. ‘Wait,’ she says, arriving.

He notices how sometimes her eyes, even when they are open, are closed, like when she was kissing him upstairs; now they are open-open again, urgent.

She composes herself, suppresses her shivers. ‘That was really brave, what you did today.’

Skippy semi-shrugs, pretending not to know what she’s talking about.

‘It was – I mean, I know I told you not to, but still it was so amazing that someone would care enough about me to do that, even when…’ There is more but it’s like she can’t say it; instead she just gazes at him, pleadingly, biting her lip, cheeks flushed with cold, as if she wants him to guess what it is, or she thinks he might even know what it is; but Skippy doesn’t know, and just looks back at her helplessly. ‘Oh,’ she moans, like this is something she shouldn’t be doing, and then the next thing she is kissing him again, and this time it’s like the first time, like they’re tumbling down into a dream, warm and sweet with sleep, everything above left behind a million miles away – it’s funny how a kiss, which is just two mouths, can feel like this, like for ever, like infinity.

‘Okay.’ She detaches herself so she can look at him.

‘I’ll call you about Friday,’ he says, not able to keep from smiling but managing at least to stop himself saying I love you.

She studies his face before answering, suddenly, for some reason, very solemn. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Goodbye, Daniel.’ She hurries back inside, and the door clunks shut behind her.

Skippy reels down the driveway and onto the road. He wants to paint her name across the sky. He wants to shout it out to the world at the top of his voice. He makes his way back to Seabrook through the starry night, barely noticing the time go, even though he has to wheel Niall’s bike alongside him – he must have ridden over glass or something on the way up here, because when he came out of her house both his tyres had punctures.