Vivaldi in the Dark

Chapter 1-2

This is gunna be our year! xxx

Eight-thirty in the morning. Tuesday. A brooding September sun, low in a milky sky, and the crunch of leaves on the path that ran between Attlee Road and Churchill Street. That strange autumn warmth-that-isn’t-warm that made the school blazer too thin, but a coat overkill. That hushed lull of a neighbourhood evacuated to the rush-hour traffic, but not yet in the silent throes of abandonment. The kind of quiet contentment that came with a life used to its own course, but not yet jaded.

It would have been nice if it wasn’t the first day of school.

Jayden sifted his shoes through the leaves as he ducked through the gap in the hedge into Churchill Street, and wished—not for the first time—that he was an adult already. He had turned sixteen yesterday, but it still wasn’t close enough. In two-and-a-half years, he would never have to go to Woodbourne Comprehensive again, and those two-and-a-half years seemed like a lifetime away. A year before he could take the scholarship exam to St. John’s Independent, the boys’ private school on the other side of town. Eighteen months before he could apply to university. Three years before he could actually go.

He couldn’t wait—but he had to.

So Charley was a liar, or an optimist, or both. She said the same thing every year, and every year, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t going to be their year, or at least not his. It would be exactly the same as last year. And last year…kind of f*****g sucked, actually.

Charlotte Cross of Churchill Street was waiting on her garden wall for him, once Jayden stopped dragging his feet through the leaves long enough to reach her. After a blazing summer of denim shorts, a new style every day for her long fair hair, and perfecting the art of makeup and pouting in mirrors (apparently it looked sexy; Jayden wasn’t stupid enough to argue with her), she looked younger now, scrubbed clean, ponytailed, and those endless legs hidden in tights and a shorter-than-regulation black skirt. Younger, but still outrageous, as she demonstrated by sliding off the wall into a hug and crooning a greeting in his ear.

“I,” she announced, linking their arms and cuddling up to his shoulder like he was her boyfriend or something, “have a plan.”

“Oh, no.”

“Don’t gimme that.” She pinched his elbow. Jayden noticed that he’d grown, by the way her temple bumped lightly against his shoulder now. It didn’t last year. “I have a plan, and it involves you and me getting everything we ever wanted.”

“How about just pass our exams and survive the year?”

“No.” Charley pinched his elbow again. “Our year! Priorities! We are going to be successful, and rich, and everything everyone else ever wanted. You and me. Deal?”

“Deal, I guess.”

“You’re so moody,” she complained. “Step one: I am going to get a job. I’m sick of getting hand-me-downs from Lucy. She has no taste.”

Privately, Jayden thought Lucy at least had a better sense of what flattered her figure than her younger sister, but he had enough self-preservation instincts not to tell Charley that. She was scary when she got mad.

“Step two,” she continued as they crossed the main road and into the territory of Woodbourne Comprehensive. The line of weather-beaten oaks kept the grey concrete of the school from spilling into the road, but it was a near thing. “Step two is for you, and that’s to actually act in one of your plays, not just write them!”

“Okay, Charley, no, I get enough flak for…”

“And step three…”

“If it ain’t the skirt and the—oh yeah, the other skirt,” a familiar voice, gravelly with fag smoke, drifted over the chain link fence after them as Charley marched them defiantly through the gates and past the smouldering cloud of nicotine and danger that hung over the group of blazered boys at the entrance.

“Step three,” she continued defiantly as she rushed them into the main entrance and past reception, where the squeaking corridor was empty and only the tiles could hear her, “is to get us both boyfriends by Christmas.”

Therein lay the problem.

“Because that’s ever going to happen, Charley,” Jayden said, extracting his arm as they reached their lockers. It was simultaneously great and crap that they kept their lockers from the first year up. It was great because it meant he could get to it, sort out his things, and get out before any of the other boys had finished their morning fag. It was crap because they all knew where it was and defaced it on a weekly basis. Sometimes, if classes were really boring or someone’s girlfriend wasn’t putting out, on a daily basis.

“It will happen,” Charley said decidedly. “I’m done with being single, and so are you!”

“I’m happy to wait.” Well, he wasn’t, but he didn’t have much choice. Not round here.

“No, you’re just afraid you’ll get more crap,” Charley huffed. “Come on, Jayden, there’s no way you’re the only gay guy in town. Town’s too big!”

“Gay and out are different things,” Jayden pointed out, slamming his locker on his lunch and shifting his bag to the other shoulder for the twenty-metre walk to Charley’s. She still had a picture of Josh Meyer taped to the inside, he noted idly. So much for being over her crush from last September. “Anyway, university is going to have much more interesting, intelligent guys than this place ever would.”

Charley grumbled, sliding her arm back through his the moment that she closed her locker. “What about St. John’s?” she suggested. “All boys private, they’re bound to be gay.”

“You can’t make gay people, Charles.”

“So why do single-s*x schools churn out so many of them, huh?”

“They don’t, it’s a myth.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed, hugging his arm. “I predict—listen to me, listen—I predict that you will go off to St. John’s for sixth form, and you’ll have half a dozen gay friends and a boyfriend within six months.”

“What happened to getting a boyfriend by Christmas?”

“You’ll do that too,” she said imperiously, waving a hand like his protest was a bee in front of her face. “And then you’ll find someone even better at St. John’s, and you’ll be the gay version of Don Juan by the time you go to university to become a famous whatever.”

“Playwright.”

“Whatever,” Charley repeated. English, for her, had been little more than an opportunity to stare at the back of Josh Meyer’s head.

“I appreciate your faith,” Jayden said as they approached the lists of new form rooms on the glass doors of the drama block. “But it’s not going to happen. Not in this town.”

He squeezed her arm warningly against his side as they reached the doors, where other students were already clustering. It might have been common knowledge that Jayden was gay, but it wasn’t exactly something he wanted to advertise. He got enough s**t as it was.

“Right.” Charley turned on him and hugged him, kissing him on the cheek when she dropped back. “I’ll see you in maths. Remember! This is our year.”

Jayden rolled his eyes at her and let her go.