The Secret Place

James Gillen is a babe, in a dark slicked way, with a curl to his mouth that puts you on the defensive: he always looks amused, and you can never tell whether it’s at you. Plenty of girls are into him – Caroline O’Dowd is so in love with him that she actually bought a can of Lynx Excite and she puts it on a piece of her hair every morning, so she can smell him whenever she wants to. You look over at her in Maths and she’s there sniffing her hair, with her mouth hanging open, looking like she has an IQ of about twenty.

‘Hi to you too,’ Julia says. ‘And: what?’

He flicks her phone. ‘You look good. You don’t need a photo to tell you that.’

‘No shit, Sherlock. I don’t need you, either.’

James ignores that. ‘I know what I’d like a few pics of,’ he says, and grins at Julia’s boobs.

He obviously expects her to blush and zip up her hoodie, or squeal and get outraged – either one would be a win for him. Becca is blushing for her, but Julia isn’t about to give him the satisfaction. ‘Believe me, buddy,’ she says. ‘You couldn’t handle these.’

‘They’re not that big.’

‘Neither are your hands. And you know what they say about guys with small hands.’

Holly and Selena are getting the giggles. ‘Jesus,’ says James, eyebrow lifting. ‘You’re pretty fucking forward, aren’t you?’

‘Better than being backward, dude,’ Julia tells him. She clicks her phone shut and puts it back in her pocket, ready for whatever’s going to happen next.

‘You’re so disgusting,’ Joanne says from her breeze block, wrinkling her nose cutely. To James: ‘I actually can’t believe some of the stuff she actually says?’

But Joanne’s out of luck: James has his eye on Julia, not on her, for today anyway. He gives Joanne a grin that could mean anything and turns his shoulder to her. ‘So,’ he says to Julia. ‘You want some?’ and holds out the bottle of cider.

Julia feels a quick puff of triumph. She shoots Joanne a super-sweet smile, over James’s shoulder. ‘Sure,’ she says, and takes the bottle.

Julia doesn’t like James Gillen, but that’s not the point, not out here. In the Court, back in the Court any eye you catch could be Love peal-of-bells-firework-burst Love, all among the sweet spray of the music and the rainbowing prisms of the lights, this could be the one huge mystery every book and film and song is sizzling with; could be your one-and-only shoulder to lean your head on, fingers woven with yours and lips gentle on your hair and Our Song pouring out of every speaker. This could be the one heart that will open to your touch and offer up its never-spoken secrets, that has spaces perfectly shaped to hold all of yours.

Out here in the Field it’s not going to be Love, it’s not going to be the mystery everything talks about; it’s going to be the huge mystery everything talks around. The songs try so hard to pump it in your face, but they’re just throwing the right words into the air and hoping they sound dirty enough to fuzz your mind till you can’t ask questions any more. They can’t tell you what it’s going to be like, someday when; they can’t tell you what it is. It’s not in the songs; it’s out here, in the Field. In the apple and smoke of everyone’s breath, in the reek of ragwort and the milk of broken dandelion stems sticky on your fingers. In the emos’ music, rising up through the earth to pound at the bottom of your spine. Everyone says the reason Leanne Naylor didn’t come back for fifth year is because she got pregnant in the Field and she didn’t even know which guy it was.

So Julia not liking James Gillen is beside the point. The point out here is the hard handsome curve of his lips, the flecks of stubble along his jaw; the tingle sparking down her wrist veins when their fingers touch on the bottle. She holds his eye and licks a leftover drop off the rim of the bottle, with the tip of her tongue, and grins when his eyes widen.

‘Do we get some of that?’ Holly wants to know. Julia passes her the bottle without looking at her. Holly rolls her eyes and takes a good swig before she passes it on to Selena.

‘Want a smoke?’ James asks Julia.

‘Why not.’

‘Oops,’ says James – he doesn’t even bother patting his pockets first. ‘I must’ve dropped my smokes over there. My bad.’ He stands up and holds out his hand to Julia.

‘Well,’ Julia says, only a tenth of a breath of hesitation. ‘Then I’ll just have to come help you find them.’ And she catches James’s hand and lets him pull her up. She takes the cider bottle off Becca and winks while she’s got her back to James, and they walk away side by side, into the tall bobbing weeds.

The sunlight opens to receive them and blinks closed again behind them; they’re lost in its dazzle, vanished. Something between loss and pure panic shoots through Becca. She almost screams after them to come back, before it’s too late.

‘James Gillen,’ Holly says, half-wry, half-impressed. ‘For God’s sake.’