Tracks - unfinished novel (excerpt)
Ten
Now
Bollocks. It had all gone wrong. All the good work I'd done that afternoon - talking to Terri, enrolling on the course, even getting to the college in the first place - undone in a few paranoid moments, me panicking like a freak and running out into the street. God knows what Terri must have thought. It didn't matter anyway - I couldn't go back to the college, not now. I'd been a fool to think I could do it, a fool to try and fit in, a fool to attempt to be normal.
The information I had gotten from the college lay on the table in front of me, where I had thrown it when I had come lurching into the house, desperate to be inside. I looked away from it, towards the window where the curtains were drawn together, blocking out the outside world. I felt calmer now I was home, but there was still an ache in the back of head, almost gone but still hanging on. I'd taken two aspirin as soon as I got in but they were kicking in as slowly as they possibly could.
Terri. Terri. I bounced her name around my head, felt its weight, its warmth. For a moment back at the college I had dropped my guard, allowed myself to think that she had seen something likeable in me, something desirable. For that moment I had almost felt normal. Closer to normality than I had ever been. She must have known about my past - she had been playing games with me, deceiving me into thinking she was interested in me. She must have heard me talking in the big hall, telling the English tutor about my family. That was it. She had heard me talking and was messing with me, playing around for kicks. What other reason was there? She was pretty, really pretty, too pretty to have looked twice at me without an ulterior motive.
People can be so cruel.
But then again, maybe not. Maybe I was just being paranoid again. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference, to distinguish between the tricks my mind could play and the tricks people could play. Both equally vicious.
But she had seemed so nice. And she had the most engaging eyes - not the eyes of a liar. So perhaps it really was just me.
Fresh from beating myself up over my freak-out at the college I cracked open a cold can from the fridge and settled down onto the sofa. It wasn't the first panic attack I'd ever had, obviously. I'd had them for years, ever since the crash. There are some wounds that never heal.
But heck. Talk about one step forward and two steps back. The college leaflets were glaring at me from the table, mocking me, a multicoloured reminder of everything I'd lost today. The college course. A potential friend. Maybe even a potential girlfriend. More likely just a friend, though, which would have been just as good. I'd done so well, only to see all my positive work undone in the middle of that damned canteen.
I leapt off the sofa and snatched up the leaflets, tearing at the pages, ripping the paper apart, bits of leaflet dropping onto the carpet. I tore at the pages in a rage, and I didn't stop until there was nothing left but crumpled scraps of paper littering the table and floor. I was breathing hard and there were tears stinging my eyes.
'Fuck. Fuck.'
The sound of my own voice startled me. I reached for the can of lager, took one deep gulp, then another. I felt a little calmer. I went to the stereo and put a CD on, a compilation album called Chillout Dancefloor, hoping it would help settle my nerves. It did. I had a few albums like that one, laid-back tunes, which I often played to calm my moods when I got uptight. Since I had spent most of my life in my own company I had grown to love music, and I had amassed an impressive collection of CDs over the years. Not just dance music, all kinds of genres and styles, past and present. And books too, shelf upon shelf of them. I had learned to enjoy solitude. And yet despite that I knew that being alone wasn’t the best way to be.
I laid out on the sofa, clutching the lager. I let my eyes close and concentrated on the music, and soon enough the tension in my head was gone completely, at least for now.
I thought about the events of the day. I could see the paperwork from the college scattered over the table and floor and I suddenly felt stupid and petulant for throwing a tantrum like that. I was supposed to be moving on. I considered whether I could go to the college again. I’d destroyed the paperwork of course, but that was really by the by as I was already enrolled. These pieces of paper were only for my records. One of them was just a receipt for the money I had paid.
If I went back to the college on the first day - went along to the course, my course - then the chances were I would see Terri again. Despite everything I felt a tingle of anticipation at this. But then what if she ignored me, or worse, gave me a mouthful for running out of the canteen like that? What if she laughed at me? What if she told the other people on the course that I was some kind of weirdo, a fuck-up, a mental-case? That would be that. There’d be no more college then, not ever.
I decided I would sleep on it. I wanted more than anything to be normal and to get on with my life, and I had felt so empowered after I had signed up for the Creative Writing course that I couldn’t bear to blow my chance. I had never felt like that before. Never. I couldn’t just throw that away.
I was good at persuading myself to do things. And so within an hour or so I had persuaded myself that I would go to the college course after all - at least for the first day, to see how it went. If I thought I couldn’t handle it, well, I could be out of the door and a fading memory before anyone could stop me. And that couldn’t be any more embarrassing than the canteen episode earlier.
And as for Terri… well, maybe I could just avoid her. Or tell her I had suddenly taken ill. Or something. I’d think of something.
Author's note: Another section from "Tracks", my would-be debut novel, which remains unfinished. As I noted before, the novel is written in dual time lines. The previous excerpt, chapter five, was "then" - this one is "now".
