We Go On in Sunlight

By Insomniac Owl

The First Post is the oldest pub in town, but the Famous Cock is Gary's favorite. He likes the way it's set up, everything leading out from the doors to the toilets at the other end, the bar in the middle like an island. He likes the lighting, and the black leather chairs. He likes how the five of them can crowd in at the end of the bar with no space between them. Sometimes, when it's not too busy, the bartender brings out card games, and then they spend hours swearing at each other for lost matches, for wrong guesses, for Gary slipping Andy cards under the table. It's one of Gary's favourite places in the world. He feels at home here, in a way he doesn't living with his parents, because home has always been wherever his friends are. He's known Andy since they were kids, and Steve since they were twelve; when they met Ollie and Pete their first year of sixth form they all sort of fell together, a natural rotation, like planets around a sun.

They have different interests, of course. Different hopes and dreams. But they all like girls, they all like music, and they all like drinking. They've spent a lot of time in Newton Haven's pubs since Pete was old enough, finally, to pass for the 18 on his fake ID; the Famous Cock and The Mermaid are particular favorites, but Andy likes The Cross Hands, and Peter's developing a fondness for The First Post, with its close spaces and easy exits. Gary's already decided they're going to do the Golden Mile. Maybe over Christmas, or at the end of the year, or in January, because his and Andy's birthdays are both that month. Maybe over the summer, before they all leave for uni. Maybe they can do it twice.

"What do you think," he asks Andy, who's so close one of his elbows presses against Gary's ribs. Andy's shed his jacket and is wearing suspenders over his shirt; Gary told him it made him look like a twat, but he actually kind of likes it.

"What do I think of what?"

"Doing the Golden Mile?"

"Yes. Yes. Brilliant idea. You want another beer?"

"Mm."

As Andy flags down the bartender, Gary swings around to scan the crowd. It's not a busy night, and though he recognizes a few people from school, there's no one he likes well enough to call over. Except Mad Basil's just a few feet away, vulture-thin, blue eyes sharp despite the crazy shit he's always saying. He keeps glancing toward Gary and then away. Then, at Gary's left, Steve sees him too.

"Basil!" He throws an arm up, and Gary snickers into his drink. Steve's on his fourth beer, but Basil's his best friend even when he's sober.

"If you boys are planning on doing the Golden Mile," Basil says, shuffling closer, "there's something you should know."

Ollie leans in from Andy's right. "We're doing the Golden Mile? When?"

"What's that?" Steven asks Basil.

Basil looks at the bartender, who rolls his eyes but moves away down the bar. "In June of 1889," Basil says, "five local boys were the first to ever finish Golden Mile. You'll have heard what happened to them afterward."

Steve nods. They have. Gary's heard it, same as the rest of them. The Golden Mile is Newton Haven's second biggest claim to fame, and five deaths, accidental or not, is something children whisper about during sleepovers and into dark mirrors when they're alone. The details change. Gary's heard a hundred different versions over the years and invented a few himself, but this was the first: five local boys were the first to ever complete the Golden Mile, and one of them was stabbed to death outside a pub in London, two years later, though no one remembers why. The other four went on to lead nominally successful lives. Two became doctors, one a tailor, the other some sort of academic - but the academic eventually hung himself. One of the doctors was shot in a brawl, the other in a duel, and the tailor drowned at twenty-six. Or so the story goes. The story also goes that their ghosts haunt the pubs in Newton Haven, but Gary's never bought into that.

Basil stands on the edge of their group, nervous and shifty, until Steve pulls him in toward the bar.

"Those boys," he says then, voice quavering, "they were good boys. It's a shame what really happened." Basil looks around at each of them, blinking. "They were murdered, every last one of them."

"Hang on," Ollie says, "I heard one of them hung himself."

"Hey, yeah," says Pete.

But Basil coughs, the way he does before every story, and begins, "This is true," which is how Gary knows it isn't, and tells them how a man from Newton Haven whose name no one knows went round murdering these five guys, one by one, over a space of five years. It sounds like something out of a movie, or a bad horror novel. Still, Gary finds himself leaning closer. He's buzzed by now, the beer Andy bought him cradled half empty in his hands, but that's not why it's so interesting. Perched on a bar stool, one elbow propped on Andy's shoulder for balance, Gary's mind sketches out the similarities. There were five of them. There are five in Gary's group, too. And this is the hundred year anniversary of when those guys first completed the Golden Mile, which has got to count for something.

When Basil's done, Steve buys him a drink and he drifts off again, but Gary keeps thinking of a man hanging in a dark closet doorway, of a man stabbed to death lying a pool of blood. They overlap in his head like a bad Ven Diagram until he can't tell which is real and which is someone's imagination. The way the world looks, thick and distant through the faint buzz of alcohol, seems somehow sinister.

Gary downs the rest of his drink in three long swallows, then turns to Steve, who happens to be closest. "I like his version better."

"Mm?"

"It makes sense they were killed." Gary burps a little, stands. "I've gotta piss, be right back."

"Wait, Gary?" Stephen leans up on his elbows to watch him go. "They weren't really, you know."

Gary doesn't turn back, but he flips him off over his shoulder, the gesture as easy and familiar as a cigarette between his lips, as black hair dye under his fingernails.

Because what if it's true?

"Think about it," Gary says, leaning forward. Smoke slips between his teeth like some young, slick-scaled dragon; he gestures at them all with a cigarette in one ring-cluttered hand and a can of Marston's in the other. "They were the first guys to ever do it; they were fucking famous. And, two of them were shot. Pretty suspicious."

Steve, flat on his back in the grass a few feet away, shakes his head. "But they died in different cities, and five years apart."

"Only five years apart."

They met at Pete's house over the summer, swimming and playing billiards, smoking weed where his father couldn't see them, but during the year they spend most of their time here, sprawled in the low grass at the back of the school, bickering, talking about music and movies and girls. Already, though, Gary can feel the pull of real life. Of adulthood. He's lived his entire life in this tiny nothing town, and he's meant for bigger things than high school Hamlet productions and bagging groceries at Lidl's till he's sixty. He can feel his potential, curled and waiting under his skin, and it itches.

"What if it's true, though?" he says around his cigarette. "A serial killer from Newton Haven. It'd be the biggest thing to happen to this town since they built the fucking ring road."

"But even if it was true, Gary, it happened nearly a hundred years ago. Who's gonna care?" Steve asks.

"A lot of people, actually." Andy flicks a bit of grass at Steve's head. "The Golden Mile is this town's second biggest claim to fame; everyone's gonna be interested."

Gary reaches over for a fist bump. "That's Andy in, then. Who else?"

"Me, I guess," Ollie says.

Pete looks at Gary, then at Steve, then raises his hand. "I'm in."

"Peter-tron," Gary crows. "Come on, Steve, Basil's your mate. I think he had something."

Steve's quiet, squinting up at the sun, at the clear blue sky overhead, and Gary knows he's about to give in. After a moment Steve pushes himself up on his elbow. There's a bit of grass caught in his hair and his cigarette's gone out between his fingers; he flicks the butt away into the grass, then wipes his hands on his jeans. When he looks up he's smiling, a wry, amused twist of his lips. "Alright," he says, "fine. What's the plan?"

Gary doesn't have a plan, not really, but he talks loudly and he smiles and they all start leaning forward. They'll go to one of the pubs tomorrow night - any one of them, it doesn't matter; Pete requests the World's End, and Gary stabs a finger toward him. They'll go to the World's End, talk to the bartender, talk to the patrons, see what everyone knows. Then they can follow leads from there. The idea takes shape in his mind as he speaks, and it looks like a quest, like some great, impossible feat. And isn't that what he's been after his whole life? He wants to do something people will still talk about a hundred years after he's dead. This is a good place to start.

Gary leans back, grinning, as the conversation drifts to the movie they saw a few weeks ago, then to Peter's father, and then, as always, to the girls in their classes, who they've fucked and who they want to fuck and who they'd only fuck if they had to.

It's the first week of their last week of school. Gary is seventeen years old. He looks out over the rugby field and the setting sun beyond it and feels the limitless possibility of his future, waiting.

Does Gary believe they were murdered? That's not the point. He doesn't care, really, if they were struck by lightening, the hand of God reaching down onto a hilltop or the doorstep of a London pub. It's a Friday night; they're young; they're free - it's about having fun. It's about the legacy those guys left for people like him, not whether or not they were murdered. That thought sits with him all the next day, through Maths, through History and English and into the hallway after, when Steve pulls him aside to ask what the fuck is wrong with him.

"Nothing." Gary grins, to make himself believe it, then slings an arm over Steve's shoulder. "Hey, you haven't seen Andy yet, have you?"

"Nope. He's here today, though."

"Right, right." Gary glances around, looking over dandruff-flaked shoulders, hair pulled into ponytails or blown out in curls. Pete's Maths class is on the other side of the school, so he'll meet them in the courtyard, but Andy has PE this period, and the gym is on the way to the cafeteria. They're standing just across from the boy's locker room, but Andy's nowhere in sight. "He said he had something for me. Probably for tonight."

"Not weed," Steve says. "The Reverend's been out of town for the past couple days."

"Hey." Gary brightens. "Maybe it's coke."

"You've never even done coke," Ollie says.

"David Bowie does it."

"So do the blokes in East London."

"Does that mean you don't want any?"

"Whatever he's giving you, it's not coke."

Steve sniggers. "Maybe it's a blow job."

"You wish."

The rush of students has crowded them back against the lockers, and Gary pushes himself up on his toes for a better view, one hand splayed back to steady himself.

"Hey," he says to Steve, still looking out over the crowd. "Do you still have a hard-on for Ollie's sister?"

"I - what?" Steve's head snaps around, but not as fast as Ollie's.

"Does he what?"

Gary looks at Steve, grins. Across the hall, Sam's just slipped out of one of the classrooms, stork-limbed and blonder than he remembers, but tan. He'd almost forgotten what she looked like, only Ollie's faint familial resemblance to remind him over the summer, while she was in Greece or Italy or wherever. Now she's less than ten meters away, and he wonders how he ever could have forgotten.

"Oi, Sam!"

She looks up, wide-eyed, and smiles. "Gary - hi."

As she comes toward him Gary throws his arms wide, then folds her into them. Her hair smells like shampoo and sunlight. "How was Italy?"

"Spain."

"Yeah, how was Spain? You look well." He winks at Steve over her head, but Steve's too busy staring at Sam, who's too busy laughing at at how Gary's digging his fingers in between her ribs, a high, girlish squeal of delight. She's only a year under them, but she seems so young, then. She's a whole two years away from starting her life. But she's wearing red lip gloss, and it makes her lips shiny and dark against her skin, her bleach-blonde hair. It'd probably taste like cherry.

"Spain was brilliant," she says, smiling. Ollie has a strangled-looking expression on his face. "I can show you the pictures sometime, if you want."

"Absolutely."

Over her head then, finally, he sees Andy coming out of the locker room, and he reaches a hand out toward her shoulder. "Listen," he says, "I've got to go, but I'll catch you later, alright?" She smiles, pulls her books up to her chest as he moves away. It's a defensive gesture. Means she's shy. Means she wants him, or will. Gary flashes her a quick grin and a wink, then turns. "Andy," he calls, "over here!"

Steve hangs back, which is fine, since he can't string two words together when he's around Sam. Ollie stays with him. and Gary shoulders through the crowd alone. He's taller than most of their classmates, but Andy is built big, and plays rugby besides, so he reaches Gary first. Gary's still getting his classes changed so they can be in gym together; they'll kick arse at all the team sports.

"Hey," Andy says, pulling his rucksack from his shoulder. "Hang on." He shoves in close to Gary in the press of people around them; they're stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Gary counts four dirty looks before Andy holds out his rucksack, zipper gaping open. Gary peers in. There's a Maths book, a couple notebooks, and a copy of Hamlet, which they're reading in class and which Gary, despite himself, is really liking. People get murdered and people go mad; there are ghosts and kings and swords.

But there isn't anything else.

"What am I looking at?"

Andy wrinkles his forehead at him, then shoves an arm into the rucksack, pulling out the copy of Hamlet. "Here." He slaps it into Gary's hands. "I nicked this off of Shane. Fucker signed his name all over the title page, though, so you'll want to tear that out. Or change all the 'i's so they have little hearts instead of dots."

"Aw, cheers, mate, you're the best." Gary flips through the book, grinning. "I''ll get you a beer tonight."

Andy smiles a little. On the nights they stay out so late they have to walk home, stumbling and singing down quiet suburban streets, Andy has that same look on his face. Like he'd steal a book for him or lay down his life with equally little thought. "No you won't," he says, fondly.

The World's End isn't Gary's favorite pub. It's too far from town, and the drinks are expensive, and one time they were there Ollie vomited in the sink in the gent's toilet, so the manager doesn't like them much. So Gary convinces everyone to go to the Cross Hands instead. Andy volunteers to get the first round while Gary sprawls at their usual table, backed up against the window with a view of the street through the blinds. It's getting dark out, but inside there's a good crowd, even for a Friday night.

"Gary," Andy says, "what do you want?"

"The fittest girl in the room." He casts a quick glance around, sizing up breasts and hair and the curves of girls' lips. There are a few he'd fuck if he didn't have to buy them drinks, but no one that really stands out.

Steve grins, leaning back in his chair. "He's taking drinks orders, not going to a brothel."

"Brothel." Gary turns, one arm still stretched over the back of the booth, and makes a face at Andy. "Who the fuck says brothel anymore?"

"Steve, apparently," Ollie says, and then, to Andy, "Get me a Bass. And, I'll get the next round."

"Me too," Peter says. "Um, the Bass, not about the next round. But I can get the next, next one, if you want."

"Sure." And looks up. "Gary?"

"Imperial Stout," he says, sliding toward the end of the bench, "but I'll come with. You'll have a hard time of it with only two hands."

They weave through the tables toward the bar, slipping in next to two older girls, both probably about twenty-two. Gary pauses, eyeing them. Older women are tougher, but he once fucked a twenty year old from Edinburgh. She'd had dreadlocks and small, warm tits, and her mouth tasted like weed and chocolate.

Andy elbows him. "Hey."

"Hey." He turns, leaning over the bar until he's laid half across it. The bartender, a guy named Phillip who's owned this place as long as Gary's been alive, raises an eyebrow at him.

"You want to draw these beers yourself?"

"Fuck, would you let me?"

"No way, kid. What do you want? Water?"

"No. No, listen. You know those five guys who did the Golden Mile? The first ones ever to do it?" Phillip nods. "Someone told me they were murdered."

"Huh. I heard they all got shot or hung themselves."

Which is hardly a surprise. It's what everyone's heard. That's how stories become legends. But they'll talk about this day, too, Gary knows; Phillip will tell his patrons about the night Gary King uncovered a string of murders. He'll be a legend. Gary leans back a little, thinking, If Basil was right about the murders, what else was he right about? Not the Aqua-Nazis, not the Bermuda Triangle. But maybe about the ghosts. "Well, have you ever felt cold spots or anything?" he asks. "Flickering lights?"

"What, like ghosts?"

"Yeah."

"Let me get you that water."

So Phillip gets him a water, then draws five beers for Andy, and Gary leans to watch the beer pour into the glasses, rushing back to the surface as white foam. He'll never get tired of seeing that.

"Hey Phillip," he says, as the bartender's sliding the third glass forward, "who's the oldest person in town?"

He reaches for another glass. "Probably Basil."

Which doesn't help at all. Basil has stories, but he doesn't have facts, and Gary needs something more substantial to prove those boys were murdered. But no one's alive that remembers anything more than stories, now. Gary lifts his glass from the counter, and then another.

Andy's leaning against the bar with the other beers. "You ready?"

"Yeah. I knew that would be a bust." There are plenty of other people around to talk to, but few older than they are, and all less likely than the girls at the bar to know anything about the Golden Mile. Gary takes a long swallow of beer. "We'll have to hit the other pubs, too."

"Next weekend though, yeah?"

"Mm."

At the table, he and Andy pass around the beers. Gary's glass is a fourth empty now, so he gives it to Ollie instead.

Ollie eyes it, tilts it, then raises his eyebrows. "Gary, what the fuck."

"You'll thank me later."

"I say again: what the fuck." But Ollie knows he can't hold his alcohol, and so does everyone else; Gary just rolls his eyes, and slides in next to him.

The night soon devolves into singing and increasingly drunken rounds of Never-Have-I-Ever, which Gary loses, resoundingly, for having kissed Andy once two years ago after thirteen wine coolers and a dare. Ollie snorts into his drink, then spends the next five minutes making fun of him for having drunk wine coolers.

"But was there tongue?" Pete wants to know.

Around him, things have begun to recede into a gentle haze. The world swings whenever he turns his head, to track the passage of a pretty girl, or old Mad Basil, who moves back and forth between the gents toilets and the bar in the same sweater he's worn the entire time Gary's known him. Gary reaches for his glass, misses. It's been an alright night, he thinks when he gets a hold of it, lips curved against the rim as he drinks, drinks, drinks, until the glass is empty and the world sways like a lady at a waltz. But he hasn't seen any ghosts, or any murderers. Gary pauses. There are fingerprints curved against his glass like white shadows, and a stray thought in his head he can't catch hold of. He's too drunk to think straight anymore.

Gary leans to the side a little, and then keeps going onto Steve's shoulder. The pub is starting to slow down. When he looks toward the bar everything is muted, distant, like looking down a tunnel into a tiny cosmos of light.

"Steve."

"Yeah mate."

"Those guys, the ones who did the Golden Mile. How… how do you think they died?"

Steve shrugs. "I dunno. Murders or accidents, it's just a story now, either way." He leans back to look at him. "Why's it matter so much?"

Gary blinks, laboriously. "It just does."

Those boys had such promising lives. Gary doesn't even know their names, but they paved the way for people like him, like Andy and Steven and Ollie and Peter. He stares at the bar, thinks of a string of groups of boys, running on and on like an unbroken daisy chain into the future. He thinks of nights spent over at Andy's, of stories whispered under a bed sheet in the dark.

"None of them even died here," he tells the table. "There wouldn't even be ghosts."

Peter leans forward. "That's not always how it works, you know. Maybe this was their favourite pub."

"Maybe."

Andy's started making his way back from the bar, and Gary pulls himself upright. Runs a hand through his hair to mess it up a little. Andy's carrying another round of beer, four glasses pressed together between his hands and a fifth wedged in the crook of his elbow, and he lays them all out on the table.

Steve pulls two toward him. "Here," he says, smirking, sliding one to Gary. "You look like you need this."

The glass is cold and wet and the beer amber in the lamplight.

Gary drinks.

"Gary," Andy's voice says. "Gary."

It's dark. Gary is still drunk and half-asleep, but he pulls himself up, fumbles for Andy blind. There aren't any lights on, and his hair is folded the wrong way over. He can feel it in his eyes.

"What the fuck, Andy." His voice is blurred with sleep and alcohol, and he feels unsteady. Are they still at the pub? Phillip likes them; he sometimes lets them sleep here. He might be in one of the booths. Someone else's jacket is draped over his chest, and when he finally gets a hold of Andy - it's an arm, maybe, or an ankle - Gary holds on and lets him anchor him. "What is it?" he asks again.

"Get up," Andy says. "Come on, you've got to see this."

Gary grumbles, but he goes, flattening his hair back over as he stands. He can't see much, but Andy is a dark shape in front of him, leading him around the glass-cluttered table and catching him when he sways toward it. "I don't think you need any more, mate," Andy says.

In his head, Gary agrees. But his mouth says, "You can never have too much beer."

Andy laughs. "Come on, this way."

They're approaching the bar, Gary thinks. He's trying to remember the layout of the place, but it gets mixed up with all the other pubs in his head, and he can't remember if the toilets are to the left or right, or if that's the Hole in the Wall, or the Good Companions, or maybe they've already passed them, in case he needs to vomit, later. They keep having to go around tables. Then Andy puts a hand on his arm. There's an open window to his right, and Gary sees Ollie standing near it, Peter perched on a barstool beside him.

"Right there," Andy says. He's pointing above the bar, and Gary swings his head around to look, expecting nothing - and then he freezes.

There's a ghost there, hanging suspended above the taps, against a background of colorful liquor bottles, as white and strange as death. It's eyes are two black holes in its face and it doesn't have a mouth, but it speaks.

It says, "Gary King."

Gary's mouth pulls apart into a grin. "No way," he whispers.

He's seen ghosts in movies, and read about them in plays, and there they always look at least a little human. This one doesn't. It's an oblong shape in the darkness, so unremarkable he might have walked right past it if Andy hadn't pointed it out. But now that he's looking at it, he can't look away. And it's bad form, probably, to smile at someone who's been dead a hundred years, but he can't help that, either. It doesn't occur to him to worry about his sanity, or the fact that he's looking at a ghost; he's still a little drunk, but he knows this is probably the only chance he's going to get.

On Wednesday, and even before they walked into the bar tonight, he would have said he didn't believe in ghosts. That he was coming just to have a good time with his friends, because they hadn't been out in a while and he was feeling restless. And was he feeling restless. It comes over him every so often, a burgeoning need to move, a frantic energy that spills out of him as bright and hot as fire. But that isn't what tonight is about anymore. He feels connected to those five boys, and he needs to know what happened to them. What really happened to them.

"How did you die?" he asks.

Silence.

Come on, he thinks, staring. Come on. Then it says, in a voice so low it cracks and rumbles and makes Gary thinks of thunder, of something coming from a long way off, "It was a foul and most unnatural murder."

Gary whirls toward the others, face opening in childish delight. "Murder!" he says, and does a fist-pump right there at the end of the bar with the ghost lingering behind him in the dark. He was right. He was right.

"Murder most foul!" the ghost says. And it's voice is still low, still unfamiliar, but something about what it says makes Gary pause.

He whirls back around. "Hang on," he says. Hang on. "Is that… are you quoting fucking Shakespeare?"

The ghost stills, half-turning to look behind itself. And now Gary's eyes have adjusted. He's awake enough to see the edge of the tablecloth it's wearing, the sneakers poking out from the bottom. They're blue trainers, which means it's -

It's fucking Steve.

The force of his anger surprises him. Rage boils up hot and ragged in his veins, along a quickly receding tide of drunkenness to his shoulders, his shaking fingertips, his snapped-shut jaw. Gary should be laughing as loudly as Steven is, who's doubled over in hyena laughter next to the taps. He should. He isn't. He's taking two running steps toward the bar, slamming into Steve's legs and dragging him down to the floor with a crash; he's laying into him, Steve's lip breaking open under his fists. He's wild with inarticulate rage, and it doesn't get any better when Steve flips him over into a chokehold. Gary digs his nails into Steve's arm, opens his mouth like a snapping turtle, but there's nothing within reach.

"You broke my nose," Steve's voice says in his ear, surprised, so Gary elbows him in the stomach. He's never known when to let go, never known when to stop; it's what got Andy that scar on his middle finger and it's what puts Gary on the floor of a pub in a town he was never meant for, scrabbling in spilled beer with Steve's arm locked around his neck so hard his vision's going spotty. He chokes, then, an awful, grating noise he can't control.

"Steve," Andy says, "Steve, you've got to -"

Steve lets go.

Gary's elbows slam down against the hardwood floor with a jarring thump. They'll bruise tomorrow. So will Steve's face.

"You broke my fucking nose!" Steve says again. The sheet's gotten all twisted around his waist like a skirt, and Gary opens his mouth to comment on it, or to apologize, or to justify himself.

"Fuck you," he says instead. "Fuck you you fucking arsehole."

He doesn't know why he's so angry. It shouldn't matter. He's done things like this to Steve before, trick toilet seats and itching powder in his clothes and other, less kind things, and he should be laughing. It's the kind of prank he should appreciate.

Steve's chest moves up and down, heaving, backed up against the dark wood of the bar. "Jesus," he says. Someone's turned on a lamp. There's a bit of blood dribbling from his nose, and he tilts his head back to clamp it shut. "It was a joke."

Gary stares at the blood on Steve's fingers. There is a lot of it. Any remaining haze of alcohol has gone out of him, and suddenly Gary feels tired. It is two in the morning, and he spent the last few hours sleeping at a bar five blocks from his house. He lies back, slowly, sprawling on the floor where Steve dropped him. The pub's ceiling is dark, but in the light it is green and gold brocade, to match the chalk signs and the hardwood floors. "I'm going to fuck Sam," he says. The words sound strange and distant, disconnected from him in the dark. They float up toward the ceiling and hang there, waiting for judgement.

"Oi, no you're not," Ollie says, indignantly, "she's my sister."

Steve bares his teeth. "Sure. Go right on ahead."

Gary nods, to himself, then closes his eyes.

Things are awkward between him and Steve all next week, their exchanges full of glares and sudden silences. Steve's nose isn't broken, but his face blossoms into a spectacular network of bruises, expanding across his nose and eye sockets like oil spills, purple and green and yellow. Gary tells everyone Steve got into a fist fight with a couple of IRA. No one believes it, but Steve stops glaring at him quite so hard whenever he speaks.

Things settle.

They start reading A Winter's Tale in English, and Gary gets a C on his first maths exam. Steve slips him the opening chords of a new song during Chemistry.

He and Andy are out on the rugby field three weeks later when Andy glances at him, lowly, and says, "I'm sorry." Steve and Ollie and Peter have left, but Gary can still see them at the other end of the grass, Peter lagging behind, Ollie already on his cell phone.

"It's alright," he says.

"You don't even know what -"

"Yeah I do."

"It wasn't my idea. But I went along with it. I should have -"

"Jesus, stop being such a girl."

Andy punches him in the arm, and fuck, that actually hurt. Gary tackles him to the ground, and they roll around in the grass for a bit, both of them trying to get on top. At the end of it, they're both tired and Gary's sides are sore from laughing, or maybe from where Andy accidentally kneed him in the ribs.

He flops back onto the grass, listening to Andy breathe beside him. "Really, it's okay."

"Is it?"

Gary sighs, turns his head away. "I knew our chances weren't good," he says, "but I… I wanted…." He trails off, and doesn't pick it up again.

The sky overhead is a cool and clear and cloudless, and it is the first month of their last year before uni. Gary wipes at his eyes, quickly, so Andy doesn't see.

When he was younger, Gary's mother would take his face in her hands and tell him, "You can do anything you want to." Mr. Shepard says the same thing, whenever Gary ends up in his classroom after school. He's heard that refrain for so long that he's taken it into himself, cradled it close to his chest and let it build him up, let it form his ideas about the world and his place in it. Gary is seventeen, now. He thinks of those five boys dying before they were thirty, of the boy who hung himself at twenty two, before he had accomplished anything. He thinks of old stories and blood on his knuckles and the way Steve had looked when Gary thought he was a ghost, strange and cold and beautiful.

For years, whenever he dreams of ghosts, they have coal black eyes and Steve's face, and sometimes they recite Shakespeare at him, or bits of things he thinks are Shakespeare. The world is your oyster. You can do anything you want to. But years later, in London when he's all grown up, paying more for rent than his shitty apartment is worth, writing song lyrics on the backs of napkins that no one will ever sing, he lays a razor blade against the fine skin of his wrist and the only thing he can do, it seems, is press down.