Free Crossing the Line by Gillian Philip Page A

would. Not Shuggie. I knew I’d never bring myself to hit Shuggie. I was sort of responsible for him; I’d made myself responsible for him quite by accident, and now, like he relished telling me, I was stuck with him. Anyway, I was his only friend, in some loose sense of the word. And vice versa, I suppose.
    I watched him rub his glasses methodically, one lens at a time, breathing on them in a finicky, delicate way that should have bugged the hell out of me, but was actually strangely calming. I liked the way he was taking such a ridiculous amount of care and time when the supermarket shirt fabric must have been scratching the lens surface anyway. I liked it that Shuggie was still enough like the rest of us to lose his special lens cleaning cloth and have to use his shirt. Glancing at his intent face, naked and funny and vulnerable without its highbrow horn-rims, I caught myself smiling, and had to force a frown.
    I don’t know why I put up with him. He turned up like some guru whenever I didn’t want his advice. If I did want something from him, such as Allie’s whereabouts, he was the most elusive geek on the planet. Any other time I could be swaggering down the corridor, giving the likes of Sunil the evil eye so that nobody would ever in the history of the world think they could get away with having another go at me, and I’d feel this presence andthere would be Shuggie, hugging some manual on rocket science or string theory or God knew what. And that would be him attached to my hip for the rest of the day. It was doing nothing for my image. He was a small planet sucked into my irresistible orbit. So how come it didn’t work this way with Orla Mahon?
    I wished I could ask Lola Nan. I wished I’d remembered to ask her this kind of thing earlier, when she was still capable of answering.
    â€˜And how is your nan?’ asked Shuggie now. ‘I suppose she could be worse.’
    That was another annoying thing. The little geek was telepathic, but I was in no mood for one of Shuggie’s philosophical lectures. ‘Piss off, Shugs,’ I snapped. ‘What d’you know?’
    â€˜Well, what does
she
know? Objectively speaking, she doesn’t know anything’s wrong, does she? Really, she
could
be worse. Look at my dad.’
    I was about to open my mouth and say something vicious but I stopped myself in the nick of time. I’d kind of gone off gratuitous cruelty when I heard the first sick Aidan joke within two weeks of his death.
    Shuggie told me once he didn’t grieve for his dad, not after he was dead, because he was glad for him and he wished he’d put a pillow over his face in the first place, like his dad asked him to (when Shugs was all of eleven). Maybe it’ll be like that for me. Maybe I’ll be happy for Lola Nan. Maybe I should do the pillow thing for her, notthat she’d ever asked …
    â€˜Why don’t you apologise to her?’ said Shuggie.
    What? To Lola Nan? In advance? The world swung on its axis. I opened my mouth, then I shut it again. Being with Shuggie was like virtual reality or something.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Orla,’ he sighed, with a martyred air of patience.
    â€˜Why would I apologise to her? I haven’t done anything!’
    â€˜Do you want to shag her or not?’
    That did it. I swung round and grabbed his shoulders. I could feel my fingers sinking into his scrawny flesh and I knew I must be hurting him, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to that reproachful, glassy gaze.
    â€˜Look, Nick, you’re not gay or something, are you? Because I don’t fancy you.’
    He blinked up at me nervously, while my grip and my jaw went slack even as I wondered how to disembowel him without attracting attention. I suppose nervous blinking was Shuggie’s incredibly clever defence mechanism. I was never going to beat him to death. So I let go of him and put my face in my hands to hide my