The train hisses and pulls away, leaving the station in silence. Jason is alone, sat on a bench so low his backside is hanging off the seat, hands in his pockets, coat zipped up to his chin. A white cloud shoots from his nostrils every few seconds. He stares at the rails between the platforms trying not to think about what he can’t stop thinking about. A voice over the tannoy tells him to keep back from the edge of the platform.
A group of lads come up the stairs and stand near Jason, talking about whatever. He hears them but doesn’t listen. Jason wrinkles his nose at the smell of their aftershave, the same that he uses. He hates that it smells nice. One of them laughs and the sound punctures the quiet like a pin through a balloon.
The next train finally arrives, screeching to a halt, and the lads get on, pushing through the crowd getting off. Jason stares at his shoes as the throng shuffles past, shopping bags banging off thighs and suitcases rattling on their plastic wheels. Maybe this wasn’t such a good place to mope after all.
The last dregs of chatter die away as the crowd goes down the stairs to the street. The train leaves and only the sound of the wind in the trees remains, but Jason doesn’t mind that. It’s sort of nice, in its own way.
‘You look how I feel.’
Jason jumps and looks up, frowning. A girl stands near him with a bottle of vodka in her hand. She falls onto the bench beside Jason and leans back. Her elbow bumps against his. Jason pushes himself up and slides away from her.
‘Need a drink?’ She holds up the bottle. About a third of it is already gone.
‘Who the hell are you?’
A wide smile slowly stretches her lips but doesn’t reach her red-rimmed eyes. ‘I’m Rebecca. I just got dumped.’
‘Oh.’
‘Thanks. It means a lot.’ She opens the bottle and takes a swig. ‘You sure you don’t want some?’
Jason looks the other way. Maybe she’ll piss off if he ignores her. He can do without some drunk girl making a show of herself.
‘I’m not hearing a no.’ Her breath drifts in front of his face.
‘Can you leave me alone, please?’
‘I don’t want to. I need a mate. Looks like you do, too. We can help each other out.’ She shakes the bottle. ‘And this is step one.’
‘How will that help?’
‘Shhhh. Stop thinking so much.’ She puts the bottle on his lap. ‘Drink.’
‘I don—’
She gives him a look. Pouting lips, creased eyebrows, trying to look cute and angry at once. He looks at the bottle.
Why not? It’s not as though he needs to be sober. The only plan he had was to sit here and scowl, hoping for people to notice and give a shit. Well someone has noticed. It’s not what he expected but it’s better than sitting in the cold feeling sorry for himself. Surely.
Jason picks up the bottle, unscrews the lid. He winces as it stings his throat.
‘Again.’
Rebecca still looks at him insistent but there’s a shadow of a smile at the corners of her mouth. So he drinks again, longer this time, a couple of short gulps. It seems to satisfy her, for now.
He hands the vodka back but she’s taking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She holds one out to Jason.
‘I don’t smoke,’ he says.
‘I didn’t ask. Take it.’
He goes to argue but before he can get a word out she puts the thing in his mouth. She has a lighter to it before he can spit it out. Smoke and heat enter his throat like breathing fire. His lungs rebel and he coughs everything inside him out. The cigarette falls onto the ground with a lot of spit.
‘I told you I don’t smoke,’ he says with wet eyes.
‘Yeah, but now it’s true.’
‘What do you mean?’
She smiles and squeezes his hand. ‘You remind me of someone. He didn’t do a lot of things, either.’
She lights herself a cigarette, takes a drag, and lets the smoke flow out in a thick, grey cloud. Then she coughs. A lot. Which gets her laughing. Which makes her cough more. Jason can’t help himself and finds a grin on his face for the first time in five hours that have felt like five months.
Rebecca drops the cigarette and crushes it. ‘Now I don’t smoke either.’
They look at each other. Her mouth twitches. He doesn’t know whether to look angry or smug or what. They last a couple of seconds before she loses her fight and starts howling. Jason can’t help himself and he laughs, too. It feels wonderful, like something squeezing his heart has let go.
‘So you’re just as much a coward as I am? I see how it is.’
Rebecca snorts and covers her face. She gives him a little shove and they sit for a while and let their laughter turn to a warm fog in the air between them.
‘This is how I deal with being miserable,’ Rebecca says once she’s got control of herself. ‘Something shitty happens, I do one new thing I’ve never done before. Sometimes it goes well’ — she lifts the bottle of vodka — ‘sometimes not so well.’ She looks at the pack of cigarettes and, smiling, throws it at a bin. It falls short and cigarettes spill out over the platform.
‘Shit shot,’ says Jason.
‘That’s no way to talk to a lady.’ Rebecca gasps and grabs Jason’s arm. ‘Is that what you’re so moody about? Lady trouble?’
Jason feels his face go red and he knows Rebecca sees it when her eyes widen and her smile grows bigger.
‘Did you get jibbed, too?’
He turns away, shoulders hunched. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Big fight?’
‘It doesn’t even matter.’
‘Come on, tell me. I’d rather hear about your problems than think about mine.’
‘How selfless of you.’
‘Talking can be a big help, you know. And I’ve been told I’m a fantastic listener.’
Jason takes the bottle from her, swigs, and lets out a long breath, watching it disperse in the air. ‘The girl I like started seeing someone else.’
Rebecca snorts. It comes out of her face like a fart before she can stop herself, her hand immediately covering her nose, eyes screaming an apology. But she’s still smiling, he can see the lines either side of her hand. Jason glowers at her then stands up.
‘No, I’m so sorry, don’t go.’ She follows him to the stairs, trying to suppress her giggles. ‘Sorry sorry sorry. It’s just… It’s just…’
He spins around when he reaches the bottom. ‘It’s just what?’
‘It’s just so… “So?”, you know? Like, so what? Jesus, you looked like you were about to jump in front of a train.’
‘Maybe it’s fuck all to you but it matters to me.’
He stomps off down the street but she rushes after him and links his arm. He doesn’t have the energy to try and shake her off, certain that it won’t do any good. If he just keeps walking and says nothing, maybe she’ll leave, maybe she’ll get bored and go drink herself asleep somewhere else.
‘I’m sorry I laughed,’ she says. ‘It’s really shitty.’ Her head rests on his shoulder. ‘But sitting around moping about it won’t make things better.’ She brings the bottle to her lips.
‘And that will?’
‘It won’t make it worse.’ She lifts his hand out of his pocket, opens his fingers, and closes them around the neck of the bottle. ‘So bottom’s up!’
They drink as they walk and they walk to nowhere in particular, taking it in turns until more than half the bottle is empty. The night feels fuzzy. Jason tries to blink his eyes clear but it doesn’t help. He feels fine though. Perfectly fine. He’s swaying a little as he walks but that’s just cause of all the grey slush on the pavement. It used to be snow but it got all dirty. And people are allowed to sway about a little. Everyone knows that. Rebecca is holding his arm and leaning against him a bit but it’s fine. It’s all fine. She just needs a little support because she’s drunk. And it’s good that she has someone responsible to help her out.
An uneven flagstone makes Jason trip and he grabs someone’s front gate to save himself from falling. He stays perfectly still for a few seconds, then starts laughing, his face scrunched up.
‘You lightweight,’ Rebecca says, dragging him off.
‘I’m fine. Everything’s all fine.’
Christmas lights glare from the houses along the road, blue, gold, red, mixing with the chemical yellow of the street lamps to make Jason feel dizzy, like he’s walking through a dream, unfocused. Rebecca squints and he’s about to ask if she feels the same when she pulls him across the road.
‘I know a shortcut,’ she says.
‘Shortcut to where?’
‘To not here.’
There’s a school on the other side of the road surrounded by a rusty fence painted green to pretend it’s still good. Rebecca taps the posts until she finds the one she wants and pushes it aside, the metal scraping. Jason looks at the houses behind to him to see if anyone’s watching, but every house has the curtains drawn and no one is walking about.
‘This is trespassing,’ he hisses.
‘I didn’t ask for a list of charges, officer. Get in here.’
She climbs through the gap and grabs his sleeve when he hesitates, pulling him through. The walk across the school field, enjoying the darkness, past the faded white lines of the football pitch, and the bottle empties a bit more as they pass the sand pit optimistically installed to encourage track sports.
‘I am sorry I laughed,’ Rebecca says. ‘It’s just, I bet you never even told her you like her.’
Jason’s cheeks get warm. He tells himself it’s the vodka. ‘Not exactly.’
‘So you’ve got no one to blame but yourself, haven’t you? All you have to do is let her know how you feel.’
‘You say that like its easy,’ Jason says, eyes down.
‘It is easy. Watch.’
She stops walking, puts a hand on his cheek, and kisses him. Jason’s heart pounds in his chest, but before he can kiss her back she pulls away.
‘See? Simple. What you’re upset about is that you didn’t do anything.’ She drinks. ‘And that is exactly why you need me to take you on this magical adventure.’
She takes his hand and they walk on. At the far end of the field is a car park with an open gate. They go through onto a new estate made up of orange-brick houses with faux-Tudor timbering. A left turn brings them to a gap between two houses with a path leading into the woods.
The snow is still white here. The moonlight reflects off it, making the ground glow and lighting up the trees. It’s like they’re walking through a silent movie with crunchy footsteps.
‘So,’ says Rebecca. ‘Smoking was my new thing. So it only counts for me. We need something for you.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like anything. The only criteria is that you’ve never done it before. Any ideas?’
Jason has a head full of ideas, none that he wants to say out loud, especially to someone he doesn’t know. He feels the prickle of embarrassment on his skin just thinking about them. He looks around his own mind for something simple, something easy. Memories of missed opportunities float round his head and he latches onto one.
‘There was this playground when we were kids that had a climbing frame and swings and all that and this slide. Big long one. The old ones that were just a ramp of metal, like, they never did anything to make it look fun, they just said “There’s your slide” and made kids sit on it. And we used to go to this playground every day and the slide was always the best. There was always a line of us waiting for our turn and I wanted to make the most of it so whenever I was up, so I’d do all kinds. Like, I always went down feet first on my back, the way the government says to, but one day I said “I’m just gonna do it different” and went down feet first on my belly. And it was sick cause I got to look at everyone at the top waiting and they were all in shock. So they started copying me, thinking they were boss. And then I went down head first on my belly, with my arms out front like I was flying but flying down at the floor, not up at the sky.
‘But I never went down head first on my back. I always thought that if I did that then I’d die, like, I’d break my neck or something. So I never did it. But when you think about it, you don’t go down a slide fast enough to die, do you? So, really, the only thing that’d happen if I went down a slide backwards is I’d get to look at the sky. And I know this is controversial, but I quite like the sky.’
Rebecca laughs into her sleeve, her smile making her eyes shine. She lifts up the bottle and drains the last drops before tossing it into the trees.
‘That’s perfect. Come on,’ she says as she grabs his hand. Together they run through the woods, her leading him forward, slipping on the snow and not caring. They reach a crossroad and go left along a curving path and out of the trees onto a field. There’s a five-a-side pitch next to a community centre that looks like it has a disease. Rebecca guides Jason behind the building to a playground. The fence around it has so many bars missing it may as well not exist and they climb through.
It’s just like Jason remembers, more or less. The climbing frame is a weird shape instead of square and there’s black plastic on all the joints and there’s plastic around the chains on the swings and the floor is made of some kind of weird orange spongy stuff instead of gravel but it’s a playground.
Rebecca lets go of his hand and scrambles up a ladder half her height to sit on a fake pirate ship with a slide at the other end. ‘Get up here, before the sharks get you!’
Jason pulls a face of mock fear and jogs forward, swinging his arms in what he imagines looks like a swim, and grabs the top of the ladder, pretending to splash around. Rebecca yells ‘I’ll save you!’ and pulls his arms as he climbs up onto dry land. They sit with their knees up because they’re too tall to fit in the narrow space.
‘So,’ Rebecca says, ‘is this like your playground?’
‘Exactly the same.’ He smiles. ‘Except for the floor. This boat. The swings. The roundabout. Those exercise machines. That basket thing. And everything else. But apart from that, exactly the same.
She hits him on the shoulder but they’re both laughing. Then she springs to her feet. ‘Get up.’
‘No, I’m comfy here.’
‘Get up, captain’s orders!’ She stamps her foot.
‘Oh, right away cap’n.’
‘Good. Now. We be goin’ down this here slide and we be goin’ down it backwards. I don’t have no cowards in me crew so everyone’s got to do it or it’ll be fifty lashes ‘gainst the mizzen mast.’
‘What?’
‘Just copy me.’ She steps to the top of the slide, sits down with her back to it, grabs the little arch above it. ‘See you on the other side.’ She leans back and slides down. She’s nearly as long as the slide and her journey is over in about a second. She rolls over the side onto her hands and knees then stands up with her arms stretched out. ‘Your turn!’
Jason leans over the side smiling at her, feeling ridiculous and embarrassed and happy and stupid and silly and excited and he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna go down the slide. He climbs under the arch and his heart beats harder. He feels the same fear he did as a child, or thinks it’s the same anyway, it was so long ago, how can he even remember? Maybe he never even went to a playground, maybe he made the whole thing up and right now he’s just doing something pointless because the girl down there kissed him and he wants her to keep smiling. Maybe maybe maybe. Fuck maybe. Go down the slide.
It’s over in the longest two seconds of his life. He is weightless, floating free, cold and hot and wet and dry, moving and not moving. And all he can see above him are hundreds of stars, stars glittering at him from a pool of black water that ripples before him, the shimmers sending their points of light into long lines and curves. There is air on his face, crisp air that feels like the breath of a glacier, and he thinks this is what the stars feel like, so sharp and real.
He lies on the slide for a while thinking he’s still going down it. One of his legs dangles over the side and the knuckles of his right hand brush against the fake floor. He hears Rebecca giggling somewhere out of view and he knows he’s done something good, he feels it in his guts, warming him up like blood in his veins. Getting up doesn’t enter his mind. So he stays there, lying on the slide, looking up at the nicest sky he’s ever seen.