It’s worth another try. Surely it’s always worth trying. One day it might work. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The words stick in my throat again. I fail to say, I took it out of your bag because I thought it was a funny thing to do. Obviously it’s not a funny thing to do at all. I feel like it was someone else who did it. I’ve been meaning to give it back for, like, twenty years. Though I shout it in my head, the words won’t come.

He looks at me. I’ve seen this look a lot of times.

I reach into my bag to take the trophy out. I close my fingers round it, but it doesn’t move. I try to pull, but my hand flies away as I lose my grip. I show the bag to Troy.

‘It’s here,’ I say, ‘but I can’t get it out.’

He reaches in too, and the same thing happens to him. We can both see it glinting in there, the stylized boot kicking the football, and yet neither of us can move it.

‘Have you superglued it?’

‘No!’

‘Fuck’s sake, Joe,’ he says. ‘You just can’t help yourself.’

Troy tips his chair over as he storms off. I know it doesn’t matter, that this glitch is only affecting me, but it’s horrible and creepy that I can’t sort this out; that one stupid thing I did twenty years ago is still fucking everything up between me and my friend.

Later I sit in the cupboard, hoping that Ariel will come, even though I told her loads of times not to. I stare at the door. Four o’clock comes. Four ten. Four thirty. Four forty-five.

She doesn’t come. I told her not to. She’s doing exactly what I asked.

37

The more I stayed away from Joe, the easier it became. At first it was almost impossible, and I only followed his wishes because I felt bad that I had all the power. He had to be at Beachview at four. I didn’t so I made sure that I was busy after school, every single day.

The hallucinations at school faded almost to nothing. First I stopped feeling the blast of cold when I walked through them. Then I couldn’t see them clearly, and eventually they were just smudges of blue at the edge of my vision. I missed seeing them around. I often wondered whether one of the blurry shapes was my Joe, but I never let myself look for him.