The Gap of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

shore. Leo put his arms round him and pulled him down on the sand.
    “Do you think about girls when we do it?” said Xeno.
    “Yes,” lied Leo.
    And then Xeno worried about being gay.
    Later, in the dorm room they shared, they lay with their legs wrapped round each other watching
Rebel Without a Cause
. They both wanted to be James Dean but Xeno wanted to sleep with James Dean too.
    “James Dean was gay,” said Xeno.
    “Was Elvis gay?”
    “No, he fucked cheeseburgers.”
    “I wouldn’t want mayonnaise on my dick.”
    “Not even if I sucked it off?”
    Leo was instantly hard. He undid his trousers. Xeno knelt down and licked his balls. Leo stroked Xeno’s head. Then he started laughing. Xeno looked up.
    Leo said, “I did it with a watermelon when I was a kid. Knifed a hole in the side and fucked it. It was amazing. I was always asking my mum to buy watermelons after that and never eating them. Then one day my mum came in the kitchen and I was standing there with my pants down and this fucking green watermelon stuck on my dick.”
    “You twat! Did she kill you?”
    “Yeah! She got my dad to give me a lecture on inappropriate objects of desire.”
    “Is that me?” said Xeno.
    “Don’t stop,” said Leo.
    —
    Their school was near the coast, and on Saturday afternoons when the other boys had gone home Leo and Xeno took their bikes and cycled down to the cliffs.
    One Saturday Leo said, “Let’s see who can cycle the fastest nearest to the edge. Like the car chase in
Rebel
.”
    Xeno didn’t want to. But Leo was taunting him.
    They set off racing. They were both standing on the pedals, pumping as fast as they could go. Leo was on the outside. He hit a rut and slowed. Xeno surged ahead of him. Leo threw himself low over the bike and pushed forward with all his strength. He came level, pulled past, and then cut in. His back wheel grazed Xeno’s front tyre.
    Xeno fell. The bike separated from his body, turning and turning in slow motion down the cliff.
    “XENO!”
    There was no reply. Leo saw the bike hit the water.
    He remembered the out-of-time feeling of the moment. His heart rate slowing after the race. The sweat on his chest. A gull circling, its lonely cry like his own cry, high-pitched and long.
    “XENO!”
    Leo cycled back to the school, his strength done, pedalling on fear. He was sick over the caretaker’s boots. The caretaker called the police. Leo took them to the cliff path, the police Land Rover radio crackling. The helicopter circling overhead.
    Xeno was unconscious on a ledge invisible from the top of the cliff. He had concussion and a broken pelvis but he had fallen into thick heather and by some miracle not rolled over the edge.
    The air ambulance lifted him in a sling and took him to hospital, where he remained for the rest of the term.
    Leo stopped going to lessons. He walked every day back to the spot on the cliffs.
    His father came to talk to him. He made a speech that began, “I know we’ve never been close,” and ended with, “Try to get over it.”
    Leo wanted to tell everyone that what had happened to Xeno was his fault. He went to the headmaster’s door. He stood outside. He went away again. This happened several times.
    At last he was able to visit Xeno in hospital. Xeno looked thin and tired. His torso was in traction. His head was bandaged. He was on a drip. Leo sat in his school uniform by the bed. Xeno took his hand.
    And then Leo cried. Silent tears like a close-up in a movie. It was unreal. That this should have happened was unreal. Someone else’s life, not his. He had almost killed his best friend.
    —
    Xeno came back to school the next year and sat his exams. He did well in maths, computing and English literature and badly in everything else. Leo did badly in everything. It didn’t matter. His father had got him an entry-level job with Barclays Wealth Management.
    Xeno turned eighteen and bought a camper van with some of the insurance money his father had accepted