Eight Foot Blue - 2

I crossed the room, slipping in and out of the other folk, with my ten pence still in my hand. When I reached Quest and her, I watched over her shoulder as her wizard was zapped, and her elf was zapped, by spectres and ghouls, which were white blobs on the screen.

“You know I could do better than you,” I said, then stopped. My words slipped out like prisoners escaping through my teeth, because I wouldn’t normally speak unless spoken to.

Lily’s last cartoon body crumpled in a heap and red cartoon blood dripped in clumsy blobs from her head, before her body disappeared. Her score came up. She was dying, then dead, and as she looked from the lights of the screen she tutted annoyed, and then brushed her blue hair from her eyes. She scraped it behind her ears, so that they stuck out all funny and odd.

Then she looked me up and down.

I could feel myself burning all over, in my stomach, the ends of my toes, and I already wished that I’d kept quiet. Lily looked at me as if to say, hey you’re just a boy, and I’m a girl, and you’re shorter than me, so how could I possibly be interested in you. She looked at me as if to say these things, but she didn’t exactly use these words.

“Piss off,” she said slowly and loudly, almost pronouncing each letter, which is when I suppose I fell in love and when I realised that I’d never been in love before. I mean my stomach stopped burning and started churning, and my feet started tingling like my socks were giving electric shocks.

Lily had been sort of rude, she would have got a detention if Mr Griggs, my form teacher, had heard her at school, and her rudeness was all aimed at me. And also if we had been at school say, then I might have turned and run away, locking myself in the toilets until break was over, and I would’ve cried, though I wouldn’t have let anyone see. But now I was on holiday and I felt different. Maybe the sea breeze took my embarrassment, because for whatever reason, it didn’t matter so much and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her.

And I was trying to understand why.

Was it because of her red lips, or her cheek bones, or her blue hair itself, or the way she swore? Piss off, piss off, piss off. Or perhaps it was the clothes she wore, the long sleeved black T-shirt with a purple flowery pattern on, and the long black skirt that brushed the floor. Or perhaps even it was because she was taller than me and a second earlier she’d been hunched over Quest which was in fact my favourite game.

I liked Space Invaders, and I was good at it too, but still everyone was playing it now. And hadn’t I spotted Lily because I’d been waiting for her to finish Quest? So maybe I loved her then, because I was going to prove I was better than her. Without saying anything, I began to push Lily out of the way, not hard exactly, but like we’d been playing musical chairs at a small kids party. I mean I used to push girls then, when I was younger.

I already had my hot and sweaty coin in my hand. She didn’t seem to notice how I wiped my palms on my jeans, because the main thing about Quest, other than the concentration you needed, was the fact that your hands shouldn’t slip.

“Oi,” said Lily as I edged past her. “I’m still playing.” There was an irritated sharpness to her voice, like she thought I’d done something wrong. I was trembling inside and my heart was boom-boom beating, so it might even have been visible through my T-shirt. Still, kind of to my surprise a bit, Lily shuffled aside to let me take my place. I took a quick look over my shoulder, just to make sure she was watching, before I dropped my money in straight through the one player slot. The coin rattled and I pressed the start.And it was easy because I’d done it all before.

First I took my wizard with his wands and spells, my elf with his arrows and bows and my fighter with his axe, right through the forest, killing trolls. No problems. I didn’t need to use any of my magic, or my healing potions, not even in the castle. All the time I was doing this, I could hear and feel Lily breathing behind. The tingle to my skin got worse, or better, especially when I was in the maze, my fingers moving faster as it was getting more difficult now.

I killed an ogre, but lost the fighter, which didn’t actually bother me much, because the fighter wasn’t so good, and the maze wasn’t such a bad place to lose him, considering he was the first of my cartoon characters to go.

The game was almost half way through.

I only had one more level to complete before I would have gone as far as she went. And I’d been here so many times before, that I knew I could do it without losing anyone else, especially as behind the hidden door in the room in the centre of the maze was an extra life that Lily hadn’t known about. When I got there, I heard her gasp a little breath that came hissing out.

I looked over my shoulder and smiled. “See,” I said. “Watch me,” Then I went down into the dungeons, which is where Lily had ended up.

“You’re just a little shit,” she said seriously, though I knew she was watching still.

“Uh-uh,” I said, unsure, and I carried on anyway. I guessed she was impressed, and I killed another ghoul, not getting caught by its poisonous breath.

I’d got this far and I felt anything was possible, a good feeling, so then I killed three spectres next, right at the point where Lily had died. I turned to look at her again, because I was going to say something like, see how easy it is. But when I turned she wasn’t smiling anymore, not that she’d been exactly smiling anyway. Instead Lily was swallowing hard. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say, so I watched her throat bob up and down, because at least it was better than watching the screen.

And then without saying anything more, Lily turned and walked quickly away. She went suddenly, unexpectedly, and it seemed she didn’t want to watch anymore, though I was nowhere near finishing my game. I wasn’t sure if I should follow her. It was the hardest decision I’d ever had to make, because I’d never left a game unfinished before. Still, hadn’t I just fallen in love? And wasn’t there this line between her blue hair and me?

My stomach churned again as I watched Lily go, as I watched her swerve between some other kids on a driving game, two lovers playing pool. Then she bumped into an old man who looked like he was always here, dropping coppers into the Penny Falls.

Lily left me standing by the machine and I had a second to make a choice. It was the longest second I’d ever known, longer even than the seconds before a maths test, or the run up of the bowler when we were playing cricket and I was in bat. And always at times like this, a voice got turned on in my head. Turn over the paper, George, turn over the page. Watch the ball, George, hit the ball. Follow the girl, George, talk to the girl.

But also I was sort of still playing Quest and I’d been feeling good. The killing was so easy that in the back of my mind I’d started thinking, really thinking, that I was definitely on for my highest score. Perhaps even get to type my name into the hall of fame.

GEORGE O’DELL.

On the other hand I remembered Mr Porter, my history teacher, saying George, your arguments need two points of view. I mean I knew I felt good because Lily was watching, and that in some way I was playing Quest for her. Now she was gone, I realised it may as well have been the end of the game already, and I realised too that I didn’t want to be standing in front of the screen of the machine, hitting buttons on my own again.

I started after Lily, leaving the game to finish itself. I left my characters frozen. They were just standing still, accepting. Little bits of me, waiting to be killed. And I knew after all that I wouldn’t be getting the highest score.

I saw Lily’s blue haired head bobbing up and down as she went left, and she went right. She was taller than me, so walking faster than me and without actually meaning to, I found myself breaking into a run. It helped, but still I almost lost her by Madam Imelda, the gypsy fortune teller, who had a little booth by the entrance of the arcade, that had been made out of wood, but painted in red and white stripes to look like a tent.

There were crowds in between Lily and me, and after she turned out of the door, I didn’t catch sight of her until I’d also pushed my way outside.

Here I crossed the street and looked up and down, scanning the length of the pier. It was completely different to inside the amusement arcade. There were mothers with daughters and fathers with sons, and on the floor empty fish and chip wrappers and candy floss sticks. Above gulls cawed, flying just beneath the moon.

I don’t know how long it took me to take it all in, and I was thinking my love affair was over already, and I was almost crying, in fact I probably was crying, but then I saw Lily again. She wasn’t on the pier at all, but was walking toward the beach. I went after her with my footsteps rattling on concrete. The wind on my face took my hair and blew it in front of my eyes, and she must have slowed a bit, because I was close enough to see the same wind take her hair. It fanned out behind her like a hundred thousand baby blue snakes, each strand alive and twisting, like she was the Medusa witch Mr Miller had told us about in Classics. We had Classics with the headmaster, though he was really meant to teach R.E.

At the near end of the pier, where it joined the land and where if it were a finger, the knuckle would have been, Lily went right, down steps that led to the sand. She was slowing even more now. I suppose she didn’t know that I was still behind, yet by the time I made it to the steps, she was already walking away from the lights.

The sand was grey with the night. I strained my eyes but I couldn’t see her footprints, though, strangely, I felt I could sense them, feel them, imagine them as uneven little dents. I thought about shouting aloud. Something like STOP say, or WAIT FOR ME. I even got as far as opening my mouth, but nothing came out. I was back to being the old me. The me of twenty minutes before. The me before Lily, and so the wind took my words and threw them back, pushing them down my throat.

Lily carried on and her pace remained the same. She got closer to the sea, then changed direction slightly, so now she was going straight, but in a line that followed the shore. And I saw how her silhouette was marked, defined by the moonlight as it bounced against the water. The white tips of the waves frothed up in a foam and then came their breaking crash as they hit the beach. As we got further away from the pier, the crash became louder than the electronic beeps from the arcade.

And I suppose I still didn’t know what to do. All the short time I’d been following, I’d been trying to shout to her, to tell her I was here, but now I realised I didn’t know what I’d say if I reached her.