The Mute and the Liar Page 9
“Jayce? Is that you?”
“Ryo?”
They share a moment of recognition, and suddenly both grin and do that weird ‘man-hug’ all boys do.
“Woah, what are you doing here, man?” Ryo laughs, and some of his friends have also started bundling around Jayce and throwing themselves on him.
“Oh you know, just visiting family and friends and stuff. But really just here for the parties and free beer. Just the usual, you know, sleeping in, sleeping with, same old, same old.”
“This is freaking awesome! I haven’t seen you in years! And what’s with the hair? Weren’t we ‘crazy hair brothers?” Ryo flicks Jayce’s flat hair.
“I know, I know. I was at a party all night so I didn’t have enough time to put gel in this morning.” Well, that’s clearly not true. It almost stings me to hear him so casually making up stories for no reason at all. How am I supposed to believe anything he says?
“I hope you’re not going soft, yeah? Like the way you used to be? You’ve got to stick to what I taught you.” There is a glimmer of a warning in Ryo’s suddenly low and raspy voice. In fact, it could even be mistaken for a threat.
Ryo seems to have only just noticed me, and turns to look at me questioningly. For a moment, he looks me up and down, inspecting me, no, judging me. I attempt to look as expressionless as possible, barely even blinking, almost daring him to find a fault in me.
“This your bird?” he sneers.
What a crude word. I have decided I don’t like Ryo. I've just got a bad feeling about him. The way his voice sounds - slow and drawling - makes everything he says seem like a threat. And there's something not quite right in his eyes, the way they seem to crawl over everything in a careful, slimy way, and leave a sticky, uncomfortable feeling, exactly like thick garden slugs.
Jayce panics for a second, jabbing his hand out awkwardly and hovering it over my shoulder. His eyebrows furrow and his hands lock together.
“Yes,” he eventually says with confidence, proving he has transformed back into the confident Jayce who always knows what to say.
“She’s fit,” Ryo eventually decides. He reaches out, and although I turn my head sharply to try and avoid him, it is no use; he pinches my cheek, his sharp fingernails digging into my skin. At the same time, I feel something rest on my shoulder, which turns out to be Jayce’s hand. He’s looking at me reassuringly, and I get the feeling he is trying to tell me to calm down. “Hold on to her, or someone might steal her.”
Well that was a very poor choice of words. “I will.”
“So how are your new friends? Jory and Steve? Oh, and that girl with the blue hair and body bikinis love to wear; Kaylie was it?”
“Yeah, they’re all good. We went to Thorpe Park two days ago, and you know I said about the party, well it was Jory’s party. Got so drunk I gave his cat lasagne thinking it was Garfield. I wasn’t the only smashed one; Kaylie got into this huge fight with this guy and they had to get the police involved. Steve also got done last week for trying to nick some wheels. The rest are the same as always. Still got expressive eyebrows and stupid nicknames on the back of their rugby shirts,” Jayce says breathlessly, his face not revealing any emotion at all. He continues with more ridiculous stories.
I feel a little crestfallen. I knew Jayce lied. The amount of absurd things he has said, the amount of times he has just rattled on about things that are impossible. It didn’t bother me as much up until now because it was impossible to say whether they actually were true or not. I could pretend it was all true. Now I have proof that everything he has just said is a lie. It’s just shocking to hear him say them aloud and know for a fact they are lies.
They are pointless lies anyway. If he lies about such insignificant things, how am I supposed to ever believe anything he says? Why is he lying anyway? Is it just to impress these people? But no, it can’t be, because he was lying to me even when it was just the two of us. There must be something engrained in his mind to make him lie so compulsively, with seemingly no regrets or reasons. Maybe he can’t even control it.
It’s not good. One lie supernovas into distrust. Soon it all snowballs together to create a whole avalanche of problems and questions and eventually, all you’re left with are just that: lies.
Chapter Twelve
2:05 PM
“That’s sick! I got to go now, yeah? Listen, me and Sasha are having a joint party tomorrow. My house, starts at six, and God knows when it will end. I know it’s short notice but come if you can, okay? Ask your mates if they can make it too. Any friend of Jayce is a friend of mine, right?”
“Yeah, that will be wicked. It was great seeing you.” Jayce says goodbye to Ryo and his gang and after a round of man-hugs and backslapping, they head off.
“Ryo Harada. My best friend. He likes to make sure I know that he’s my best friend, because he strongly believes he picked me up from the gutter all those years ago. A word of advice; don’t associate with people like him.”
Jayce turns to look at me. “I'm in an advice-y mood, actually. Want some more advice? Number one: never chase a limping man. Number two: never lean on a falling man. And number three: never trust a lying man.”
Okay then. I don't really know what to make of that.
We continue walking and reach a group of people all crowded around something. They all appear to be watching some kind of magician, who is just setting up his show. We manage to find a space right in front.
Eventually he greets his audience with a smile of crooked (And half missing) teeth. His voice is very croaky and raspy, probably choked from all those years of supposedly “eating fire.” His smile is sweet and goofy, although his teeth are a little crooked, and he’s got kind, soft brown eyes, He’s one of those people who are just instantly likeable.
He starts off his show juggling knives, which are unashamedly plastic. Still, it’s quite a performance he puts on. He has them whizzing above his head and artistically glissades beneath them, his nimble fingers quick to catch and send them spinning once more. He even messes up a few times, but he just laughs and says that 'nobody noticed' and continues. After a particularly impressive move, involving a kind of tap dance whilst catching the knives, he even has the cheek to grin and exclaim proudly: “Well, that surely deserves some applause?” They all immediately clap and cheer, and soon a huge crowd of people is surrounding him.
Several children hover around his box for donations on the ground beside him jangling coins and he jokes that they “Need to put the money in, not take the money out,” which everyone laughs at. “If there are any tourists who don’t know much about British money, just put in the purple note,” he continues in the same sprit.
“Does anyone want to see me eat some fire? Should I eat some fire? Is there anyone out there that wants to see a fire-eater?” He pauses after every question, making sure his audience all cheer in a pantomime way. He keeps this up until the cheering goes down. “Well, confession time, I don’t actually have a lighter. I was an idiot and forgot it this morning. Does anyone here have a lighter on them? Anyone?”
Everyone stops cheering and falls silent. They turn to each other shrugging their shoulders. After an awkward, suffocating silence, Jayce sighs and rummages in his pocket.
“This is dire. I can’t let him humiliate himself anymore,” he mumbles to me. He fishes out a neon green lighter from pocket, waves it in the air and throws it to the fire-eater.
He uses the lighter to set fire to a tin of something on the ground, and then puts three unusual sticks inside to make them catch fire. He proceeds to juggle them, and then in his big finale, he manages to extinguish them by 'eating' them whilst still juggling them.
*****
4:06 PM
Jayce took me to a café after that. He said he didn’t have a lot of money to buy me food, but said he knew a place that made a 'mean cheesecake.' We are sitting opposite one another on a small table outside. It stopped raining a while ago and the sky has really cleared up, leaving
the sun peeking through, so we decided to sit outside. The rest of the world carries on rushing past us, but it feels so comforting to know that at least for a moment, we are still, just breathing everything in. Jayce is going on about something, but he’s talking to the menu rather than to me.
“See, I’ve always wanted to die real Oscar movie montage style, after defending some chick from mutant ninja zombies. Or gingers. They’re obviously going to conquer the world one day. Oh, I knew this ginger girl once. She was so rich that her parents didn’t get her a card for her birthday. No, they said: ‘stuff that unoriginal crap!’ and just got her a whole post box instead. You know, so she can send and receive all the cards she wants. Oh!” Jayce exaggeratedly throws out his arms, in turn knocking over the ashtray on the table.
And of course, right now, in this moment of chaos, the waiter decides to turn up, greeting us with a heavy Irish accent.
“Erm… One coffee, one hot chocolate and two cheesecakes please.” The waiter nods and heads back into the building. “I love coffee. It’s the best drink in the world. I might even like it more than alcohol.”
A light breeze caresses my cheeks and ruffles my hair. I look up and see that Jayce is watching me intently, but somehow softly. There is something akin to sympathy in his eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that he feels sorry for me. Then the spell is broken and he waves his hands flamboyantly and carries on sprouting nonsense. I get the feeling he realised he was watching me differently and so started speaking again deliberately to let the moment pass. I think… I think he’s scared of silence.
“Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah! I remember now! Oh! Do you know what else is weird, right? You know polar bears, yeah? They put their paws over their noses while they hunt to help them camouflage in the ice, because their noses are black and so would stand out. But how on Earth do they actually know their noses are black? Are they like super intelligent? Are they aware of their own existence? Can they think? What is up with that? Forget mutant ninja zombies and gingers. The human race is going to become extinct because of polar bears; mark my words.”
There is a short pause as the waiter brings us the drinks and the cakes. Jayce thanks the waiter and pushes the hot chocolate to me and pulls the coffee in for himself. He then digs in to the cheesecake, raining crumbs all over the table as he shovels it down.
“It’s just stupid really. Some fluffy hairy monster thing that somehow knows stuff is just roaming around freely on this Earth and no one has thought: ‘you know what? This creature could actually conquer the world one day!’ Man, we are stupid. Maybe… No way!” he suddenly gasps and throws his hands over his mouth. “Maybe…. maybe humans already know this, and there’s been some secret government organization running for centuries to start global warming as a way of killing all the polar bears! Maybe it’s some huge conspiracy to save us from what will surely be the polar bear revolution!”
He then laughs and says that the government would never be clever enough to think up such a plan. He looks down at his phone. In that moment I realise something isn’t quite right – his eyes widen and his mouth parts a little, as if he is about to let out a gasp. Is it a text message? I wonder what he says. He continues staring at it, and if it’s a text message, he isn’t responding in a hurry to it.
Even more strange is that he turns to me almost accusingly, as though I am somehow to blame for whatever he has just read on his phone. Eventually, he seems to drag himself out of his initial shock and begins tapping on his phone again, apparently answering the distressing text. He switches off his phone and turns back to me, a perfect smile carving his face once more, as though that never happened.
Through a mouthful of crumbs, he pulls out another topic from thin air. “It was great that fire-eater guy used my lighter. I feel all famous now. I can’t wait to have a fag. I usually have at least nine a day.”
Clearly a lie! I wonder how stupid he thinks I am, and whether he thinks I actually believe anything he says. Maybe he thinks I don’t listen to him, and so I will never know about his fabrications. His obvious lies are getting irritating. Why don’t I prove to him that he can’t just say whatever he wants and expect people to buy it? That will certainly teach him a lesson. I begin scribbling a message on the next page of this notebook.
You don’t smoke.
“Really? And why do you say that?” surprised, he raises an eyebrow and tilts his head slightly to the side.
You have been by my side for over eight hours now and you have not smoked. If you are truly a chain smoker, as you claim, that would be virtually impossible. But the main giveaway was the ashtray.
“The ashtray?”
You knocked over the ashtray just now. A true chain smoker who has not smoked in over eight hours would have immediately seen it, yet you were so oblivious to it that you knocked it over. It’s just a game of conceptual schemes. We all see the world through our own biased perspectives based on our own upbringing and experiences.
“Hmm,” he contemplates this idea for a moment and then seems to find a loophole and grins. “So then that begs the question: why do I have a lighter?” Brilliant! I know exactly how to answer that.
That’s easy. For protection. You’re just a scaredy-cat really.
He stares at me incredulously for a moment, then he shakes his head in disbelief and breaks into a huge smile stretching from ear to ear.
“Wow… Maybe… Maybe I underestimated you. It looks like I won’t need the lighter for protection anymore now that I have such a clever companion.”
I feel my cheeks burn up and I look away, but I also realise a timid smile is creeping in the corners of my lips.
Stop it. Compose yourself.
I fix my scowl, forcing it to return again. I only look back at Jayce once I have made sure that smile, no, that sign of weakness, is gone for good.
Jayce has finished his cheesecake by now, having scoffed most of it down during his theorising about polar bears. Mine still stands there, untouched. I don’t eat anything other than cereal and pasta and fruit and vegetables. It’s just something I do. It’s something that defines me - my little attempt at individuality.
I’m not saying I’m not hungry. Actually, my stomach is currently making dying whale noises. It’s just that I don’t want to start breaking traditions. It’s not even a tradition; it’s a foundation. No one tears down the bricks of a house or digs up the roots of a tree. If I start now, who knows when I’ll stop? Suddenly I might start doing something reckless. I might even start talking. And who knows where that will leave me?
Jayce notices my mental war with the cheesecake and grins.
“Eat it. It’s good, honestly.”
This tall, gangly boy in front of me. I was so scared of him before. Now, sipping his coffee in the seat opposite, he just looks perfectly... normal. Someone I would walk right past in a street and take absolutely no notice of. I've got so many questions about him. Why can't I solve him?
I begin scribbling him a message on the next page of this notebook.
Do you ever tell the truth?
He looks confused for a moment and then his smile slowly falters and pulls itself into a thin line.
“What are you talking about?”
You lie about everything.
“No I don’t.” Another lie.
We sit in silence, just watching each other. His bulbous green eyes stare back at mine, his lips pursed together. It is only now that I notice he has ugly bags under his eyes and his skin is alarmingly pale. It seems he hasn’t slept all night. He is acting strange - his fingers are madly locking and unlocking and twisting around each other on the table, and his eyes are wide and unblinking.
This silence is a spider web, trapping us. We are both still, unmoving, just watching each other, almost daring each other, as if this is a competition of who can stay silent the longest. We are both desperate to win.
But Jayce forgets that silence is my life. Of course he breaks the silence first.
There is a slight pause in time as this random sentence sinks in. Obviously it’s not what I expected him to say. I’m fed up of this. He’s so unpredictable. It’s grating to know that there is one puzzling thing, one problematic being, that I just can’t work out. I can’t solve.
He continues watching me, but now stirs his coffee at the same time, which I realise he hasn’t actually drunk from. I can’t believe I didn’t notice earlier, and I feel myself crumbling into the pit of self-pity. I call myself a detective, but I can't even get myself out of a crime, or even understand one person.
With a steady gaze to match his steady gaze, Jayce continues.
“I wasn’t a choirboy in the Abbey,” he leaves another pause, perhaps contemplating what to say next. He then affirms this, as though to reassure himself that he really wasn’t. “No. No I wasn’t.”
What does that mean? What is going on? What is he doing?
“I love the colour green… I… I won a school talent competition when I was in year eight for singing and playing a song I wrote on the piano. I… I love all music from the 1980s. I’ve never met a rich ginger girl... I… I never studied philosophy in school… My father isn’t a sumo wrestler.”
Some of these sound familiar and it takes me a while to figure out where I have heard them before.
He’s… He’s telling the truth. He’s telling the truth! There is a wincing, pained expression on his face, the look of someone with a throbbing headache. It's as though every word hurts him. There is something about the truth that does this to him.
I don’t know what’s going through his head, or even what is going through mine. Because right now I feel something and I don’t know what it is. My chest is lurching in and a corkscrew is tightening itself in my throat and is cutting off my breathing. Saying these things is hurting him. I... I have to make him stop.
STOP.
“I’ve never been to McDonald’s or Burger King. I don’t really care about the environment. I never went on family fishing trips. I never got given any Christmas presents, including the video of the dancing hippo. We didn’t celebrate Christmas because The Woman-That-Gave-Birth-To-Me thought it was just a waste of time and money.”