Love Me To The End

Chapter 16: Total Recall

You know when they say that at the end of your life, the universe  will open up its secrets and answer every question you ever had? You  ever heard that one? Well, it's a load of bollocks. The universe doesn't  owe you a thing, certainly not answers. When you die you're still the  tiny speck you were beforehand.

Neither do you get your life played back before your eyes in an  instant. It takes some time before the rushes get edited together, in  whatever way time exists in this place.

When I was five I saw my teacher sawn in half by a magician who did a show at my primary school. He probably used one of those crappy  jigsaws, but at that age I screamed the room down like I'd witnessed a  murder. When my teacher showed me he was OK, I was fascinated. At that  young age, I had found the other side of fear.

I never fit in at school. I did well academically, but socially I was  a disaster. I tried, I really did. I joined in on the pop fandoms, the  fads, the edgy jokes picking on whoever, but the kids could smell a fake  and I fooled nobody. When I was bullied I fought back first with my  tongue, then, when that escalated the situation, my fists. It got me  into so much trouble I had to learn the power of walking away, but by  then no-one was coming at me head on anyway, they knew better. It would  be lovely to say that that was the end of my bully troubles, but the  bullies just found ways to snipe at me from a safe distance.

In year nine, a boy called Richard Conners started telling everyone  who'd listen that he'd got in my knickers behind the bike sheds. No-one  really believed him except the bullshit lads who bragged about having a  supermodel mum and a Bugatti, but a lot of kids kept the rumour going  just as a way to get at me. It came to a head in English when we had to  give a definition of fantasy fiction. I stood up and gave mine out loud:

"Fantasy fiction is Richard Conners thinking I'd ever go near him  with a long stick and a hazmat suit, and not just because the only dick  he's got is the one on his forehead."

I got two weeks detention for that and one more when I refused to  apologise. I smiled through all of it, but before long everyone was  calling me Lexie the Lezzie behind my back. They made sure I knew about  it, too.

Chris was one of the only people to stay by me for any length of  time. I don't think he fancied me, at least I hope not because I never  looked at him that way, but he was the best friend I could have asked  for at that time or any other.

Our high school was the shits. They made all the girls wear knee  length pleated skirts with their uniforms and refused to let us wear  trousers – the policy would change after I left following a car crash  local news interview where the Headteacher tried to defend it and came  off sounding like a massive pervert. So after school I would seek out  Chris and got him to swap with me. I'd go home in his school trousers,  he'd wear my skirt. He wore it better than me anyway and knew that  anyone who picked on him for it would have me to answer to.

And then I met Maise. I first saw her at an inter-school maths event  where she was representing one of the OFSTED-rated schools it was always  assumed would win. My school, on the single occasion they gained a  "satisfactory" OFSTED rating, celebrated as if they'd brought back a  Nobel Prize.

Maise and I hit it off in the canteen at lunchtime. It turned out she  lived in a posh area on the far side of Lampew Meadows, an area of  wasteland that would eventually be sold off bit by bit to developers,  forcing the Decent People / Lower Class Scum borders to be revised  annually by the aspirational and prejudiced.

We (Maise, Chris and I) started meeting after school at various  locations in Lampew meadow and then went to each others' houses. Mostly  Chris's, because he lived in neutral ground between my sinkhole estate  and Maise's garden-fronted, double garaged Community. My parents loved  that I had friends and always made them welcome when we did go to mine.  Maise's parents didn't mind Chris but barely tolerated me. They owned a  chain of minimarkets and probably had their photos on posters in the  Daily Mail boardroom as exemplar demographic.