Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The front cover said Wildflowers of Great Britain.

There was no title or imprint page inside, and, even more weirdly, the text just started … and it was all text, no pictures or diagrams of … well, wildflowers.

Intrigued, I read on.

This was not a non-fiction book about botany.

This was a story about two boys.

About friendship.

Strange. How did the insides end up not matching the cover?

Then, within the first forty pages, something really resonated with me. The main character, Hal, tells this story about how he watched a children's TV programme when he was younger, about two boys who find a can of magic beans, and it enables them to time-travel, having all sorts of adventures and solving all sorts of problems along the way. And he recounts how, at the end of the first episode, the two boys swear allegiance to each other, cutting their hands and becoming blood brothers, and how he realized how much he wanted that sort of total, complete, no-holds-barred friendship with another boy.

And I thought: me too. Me too, Hal! That's what I'm looking for. A boy to share a can of magic beans with. To be my bosom pal, my always-there, my loyal sidekick, and me his. But where to find him?

I'd gasped, and then I'd smiled, because for the first time, I was reading words that described almost exactly what I was feeling.

Remember I told you about Dan earlier? How I felt this need to protect him? Well, that's what this was, only now more eloquently put, and now with the added hope that maybe what I was feeling wasn't so weird, but had been felt by others before me, by Hal, and so…

I read on.

And soon I realized.

This wasn't just a story about friendship between two teenage boys.

This … was a love story.

Between two teenage boys.

And, honestly, maybe those last two sentences should be individual chapters on their own, one each, because they deserve that emphasis, because this was huge.

Never had I ever read anything like this before.

I didn't even know this existed.

It felt … illegal.

And yet I couldn't stop reading.

Then … shame. And panic. Because I read a section, an … intimate section, and I think I was enjoying it a bit too much because it had an effect on me that should have happened when I was looking at Electra.

I closed the book. And in the TV show of this story, this would be an abstract, kaleidoscopic moment, with thoughts and visions appearing and intruding at random, like … why did Mrs C give me this book? It was a mistake, right? Because she thought it was about wildflowers? She didn't think I'd be interested in what this really was, did she? Because if she did know… Is this what she thinks I am? How did she reach that conclusion? And how do I prove her wrong? People can't think that of me!

Cut to: Jason in the library, laughing at me for dressing gay.

Cut to: newspaper headline I saw when I was younger: I'd shoot my son if he had AIDS, says vicar.

Cut to: "Who are you taking to the ball?"

Cut to: that photo of Freddie Mercury, gaunt and emaciated, before he died from AIDS – a surprise that shocked everyone.

Cut to: "Be you!" (Mrs C)

Cut to: who the hell am I, anyway?

And I didn't know, didn't know any of the answers, except that I did want to find a boy to share a can of magic beans with, and if it was just to share magic beans, was that the same thing, because that wasn't anything sexual, it was just magic beans, and was that so wrong?

I glanced up at Electra. I was clearly in some sort of state, because her eyes moved again, guiding me again, to the book.

I picked it back up and read on.

It was just a book.

It wasn't real.

Just because it was about a certain thing, it didn't mean that I was also that thing. Reading a book about an astronaut didn't make me an astronaut, merely an observer of someone else's life.

That made me feel better.

Keep an open mind, Mrs C had told me. Good advice.

And what was I thinking anyway, imagining boys with cans of magic beans? What was I? Five?! Grow up, Jamie. And, of course, fairy tales are for books; no, they aren't real life, how can they be? I'd lose that line from my rewritten story. This rose-tinted, sentimental mindset wasn't helping me.

I'd almost convinced myself, reading on, the story getting somewhat darker – don't worry, I won't spoil it – until about three quarters of the way through when I came across some handwritten words scrawled in blue biro in the margin.

Really?!

Because I couldn't believe this:

I feel like this too.

Then, just under that, in black biro:

Anyone else?

And then, finally:

Just me then.

And just like that, the story wasn't fiction any more. It was real. Because someone else had been here, reading these same words, and they felt maybe something like what I was feeling. I realized, in horror, that nagging in my stomach … it had been loneliness. Because now I felt better. Realizing someone out there was a bit like me.

More shame.

More guilt.

I didn't know who, of course, and I didn't know when. For all I knew, these words could have been written years ago. Whoever it was could have been long gone by now. Except … the ink looked bright. Fresh.

I stared at the words.

An invitation.

I couldn't quite place why, but it felt like a can of worms I shouldn't (couldn't?) open.

But the words…

Anyone else?

Just me then.

They sounded so lonely. The sense of hope and then the crushing sadness. No longer a question, a statement of fact.

Wasit a fact?

Was it just them?

Either way, I felt bad for the writer. And like I'd felt with Dan, I had this weird urge to protect whoever it was – or, if not protect exactly, then to help them.

Except…

I feel like this too.

Like what? Like the characters in the book, presumably. As in … they're a boy who loves other boys?

Was that really something I could (should?) help with?

"What are you waiting for?"

My head snapped up and I froze. That had been a woman's voice. It had come from… My eyes flicked to the poster. Electra. Obviously, it couldn't have been. And yet, those words had been clear as day inside my head. Was I losing it? Was I so deep in creating my little story worlds in my notebook that the lines between fantasy and reality had become blurred? Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy … they'd all suffered from mental illness…

I stared at Electra, the light from the setting sun glinting off her high-gloss lamination, basking her in a warm glow.

"What if he's your boy with the can of magic beans?" she asked.

A little squeak escaped from my mouth. It wouldn't have done to scream. A scream would have meant Mum and Keith coming up. And then what? Mum, I'm hearing voices! I wasn't sure where that admission would end, but I felt like it wouldn't be in a good place.

I released an unsteady breath. Then took another deep, slow one.

Come on, Jamie. When you write stories, you hear character voices in your head all the time. This was just that.

Wasn't it?

"Jamie?" she said.

I would go with it. Why not? See where it leads. "Uh-huh?"

"You want to find a boy to share a can of magic beans with. What if that's him? And what if you're about to miss your chance? Wouldn't that be sad?"

"If I write a message back, it would be like I was admitting something," I whispered.

"If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there, does it make a noise?" she replied.

"I have no idea what that means."

"If you write in the book, but no one knows it was you, did you really write it?"

"Ohhh. Makes sense. It would be anonymous. There'd be no proof it was me. No one's going to do a handwriting test. And, hey, I could deliberately fake my handwriting anyway, and, huh, maybe I'd only be doing this because it's intriguing. I'm intrigued. Messages in a book are intriguing, they're—"

"Seriously, kid, dress it up however you want, I'm just saying, now's your chance."

I grabbed a biro from the pot on my desk and told myself, what the hell, it didn't matter, even if I did put this out into the universe, it would be so easy to backtrack. I never even had to look at this book again if I didn't want to. In the scheme of things, this was utterly insignificant. But what words to put in reply? I was a writer. Words were my thing. I'd written so many – played around with form and structure, metaphor, juxtaposition, iambic pentameter – I needed something beautiful and moving and perfect for this.

I thought and thought and thought.

And in the end opted for what must be my most disappointing piece of work ever, because nothing felt right and everything was either too much, not enough, or all-out pretentious:

Hello!

Yes, even an exclamation mark.

God, Jamie, maybe writing isn't your thing.