Sick Minds

"I'm having a gathering," were the first words that Callie heard when she answered the phone.

"Oh. When?"

"Tonight." Only Gus could pull off something as last minute as that.

"What time?"

"As soon as you're ready. My parent's just left for Manhattan so bring whoever and whatever you like. And a change of clothes." That was purely for Callie sake. Gus knew she was particular. "And don't bother about eating, there'll be food."

"Fine." Callie said, and was just about to hang up when a thought occurred to her. "Will May be there?"

"Not unless someone invites her," Gus said lightly. Callie had known that would be the response but she'd hoped that just maybe it would be different this time.

She'd actually liked May.

"I see." And she was just about to put down the phone again when for some reason she said "well I'll give her a call. If you don't mind."

And of course Gus did mind but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Callie put down her phone, proud of herself but also terrified.

Gus threw his at a wall then cursed as he tried to find the sim card.

~

"May, Callie-Rose Smith asked you if you'd like to come out tonight," Mrs Linden said from behind her daughters closed door. "I said you'd be delighted."

"I thought I was grounded," May said around the spliff in her mouth. There was a pause as May's mother tried to talk her way through that problem.

"Well, Callie-Rose was such a lovely girl," was her final, lame excuse. "It'll be good for you to meet her friends." May didn't bother point out that she had indeed met Callie's friends and they were the exact same one's she was prohibited from seeing.

"Fine. When?"

"She said she'd come for you in an hour." May grunted, and her mother took that to mean that she wasn't going to argue. "Please don't keep her, darling."

But May had stopped listening, she had reached a difficult point in her game. Callie-Rose could wait.

~

Callie arrived for May at five, as she had said. May was not ready.

"I'll just call her for you," Mrs Linden said, pulling out the phone.

"No, that'll be okay. But... can you tell me where her room is?" Mrs Linden nodded hesitantly, experience told her that May's room wouldn't be fit for guests of any kind.

"It's on the second floor, turn to the right. Far end of the corridor." She said finally, after what seemed like hours of deliberation. Callie nodded and made the way over to the stairs lightly. She found she liked the emptiness of the house. Of course it needed a hoover, and a dust and the walls could probably do with washing but the lack of furniture made it seem more airy then it was and all that marvellous space almost made up for the dirt.

May's room really rather let the side down.

The air was now hazy and stale and the stench of weed made Callie choke. A pile of clothes in a corner nagged at Callie like an itch in an unreachable place and the bed...

It deserved an award, it truly did. The sheets had been changed just yesterday but you wouldn't be able to tell because May had been lying in them for twenty seven straight hours, give or take a few toilet breaks. A plate of cold, mostly uneaten Spaghetti Bolognese was placed on the floor at the foot of the bed. And all over the sheets and hidden in folds lay empty packets, the crumbs of their contents littering the bed, a jar of Nutella- now empty, peanut butter, bread, Weetabix, Haribo's, Cheddars, an empty wrapper which once held Edam and a half empty jar of olives... She could really put away.

And amongst it all lay May.

Her hair had once been in a bun but now most of it had escaped and framed her face like the halo of some dysfunctional angel. She had bags under her eyes, her red eyes, and her large t-shirt had holes the size of Callie's fists in it.

But for the first time Callie wasn't repulsed. There was something beautiful in May's evident unwashed state. It was the way, she thought, that May's tiny figure was swamped by the half-dead shirt and the blank, incomprehensible look in her eyes.

It was that she looked so forlorn.

"Oh... Hi." May said, her voice toneless as always. Callie smiled. She really liked May. The sound of her flat voice made her forget the room she was in and that very girl’s appearance.

"Hello May," she replied to the lacklustre greeting with a cheerful smile on her face and real feeling in her voice.

May didn't respond, but she did pause her game and sit up in her bed. And she stretched, arching her back with a felinity that few posses.

Callie watched. She noted, with fascination, what Gus had seen; the way May's bones and muscles danced underneath her thin skin and equally thin shirt.

Bulimia? She wondered to herself. How else could she be so skinny? She wasn't anorexic, that was for sure.

She watched silently as May got up from her nest and walked over to a wardrobe, pulling out a bundle of clothing and stalking off in the direction of another door.

"I need to shower, do you mind?" May said, and Callie assumed it was a question although there was no inflection and she carried on in without waiting for an answer.

It took her a while to shower but Callie didn't mind. The fact that it was May made it somehow forgivable.

She came out with her once straight hair now hanging in dripping curls about her shoulders, soaking round the neck of the forest green long-sleeved leotard she was wearing.

"Where the fuck is it?" she muttered under her breath, casting her eyes about her room. Then with the May-esque equivalent to 'eureka' showing on her face she crossed her room to the double bed and pulled a small box from underneath it.

Callie couldn't see what was in the box, nor did she see what was taken out, and that really did nag at her consciousness.

May didn't notice, or didn't care, she was already back in the bathroom.

When she next came back her hair was held of her face by a black ribbon and toothed Alice-band and she had... She had spikes in her lobes. One of clear Perspex with metal bands around it, the other two a translucent green.

She opened her wardrobe and pulled out a black skirt with an elasticated waistband and green suede-looking heels with silver detailing.

The outfit, Callie thought approvingly as she beheld the final effect, was beautifully matched.

"Well I'm ready," May said as she pulled her phone and a cigarette tin from the tangle of bedclothes.

They clattered- well, May clattered, Callie more clopped- down the stairs and found May's mother waiting for them at the door.

"For God's sake May, you're not in London," her mother said chidingly. "You can't dress like a slut round here-"

"I don't see why not mother."

"Because what will people think?"

"They'll think that I'm a slut. Nothing more, nothing less. Goodbye mother." And Mrs Linden couldn't argue because May towered over her and anyway she had just slammed the door shut.

~

Unlike Gus Callie didn't drive. She had a chauffeur, she was generally too afraid to try and learn how to drive herself.

She and May sat in the back of the family's stately Bentley in silence for five minutes.

The silence was eventually broken by May, to Callie's unending surprise.

"So who's easy?"

"Pardon?" Callie replied, perplexed.

"The guys. Who's easy?" May was beginning to sound exasperated.

"Umm... All of them? They're all up for 'it' if that's what you mean." May didn't push her after that. The allusion to sex seemed awkward and heavy on Callie's naïve tongue; it wasn't meant to be there.

May respected innocence, although she didn't possess any.

Gus's house was all lit up when they arrived. He really could throw a party.
The door was opened by one of the maids wearing fishnet stockings and a much shorter version of her regulation uniform.

The mansion was packed already, with people from the town and from their school. Those who would kill to be associated with Gus and the little group that formed this town’s teenage upper crust.

They followed the music to the epicentre of the party where Gus was found in a corner with Ginny on him. In his hand he held some sort of alcohol but he couldn't drink it because he was too busy telling Ginny that he wasn't going to go down on her: he wasn't in the mood.

"God Gus you're getting boring," she was declaring loudly. "Fuck I need a cigarette. Do you have any cigarettes?" Gus didn't but plenty of others did, and they offered them very eagerly.
Ginny accepted every one with a smile and a drunken kiss.

She was perfectly capable of holding her liquor and she had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of her limits which is why was able to exceed them with such haste and ease.

Gus's eyes wandered round the room as he waited for Ginny to stop give giving out kisses to other people and return her attentions to him.

He saw Guy talking to an unknown girl who was practically killing herself with pleasure although he was barely paying attention to her- he was staring at Ginny and Gus. He looked away as Gus's cool eyes met his own, and Gus continued his sweep of the room.

It halted once again soon enough, on the curly-haired apparition in a tight green top and black skirt.

May.

She had gotten a drink already, and was being talked at by another unknown person, a boy with excited gelled hair and red cheeks which, if questioned about, he would no doubt put down to the heat.

May looked thoroughly bored.

"Ginny, you're not interesting me. I'm going to talk to the undead," he said, lifting Ginny out of his lap and propelling her in the direction of someone else, a boy from their school who received her eagerly.

"Enjoying yourself?" Gus asked as soon as the two were in earshot. The boy nodded happily.

"Yeah! This is awesome!" he exclaimed happily.

"I'm bored as hell. No one's even dancing," May said, ignoring the gushing boy next to her."

"Then why don't you dance?" Gus challenged.

"I can't dance to fucking Radiohead," she spat, disgusted.

"Well this song is almost finished," Gus pointed out fairly. "So dance to the next. I'll dance with you."

"Can you even dance? And I mean dance like a teenager, not an old man from the seventeenth century." Gus cocked an eyebrow, rather enjoying the insult.

"Well I'm sure I don't know. How, exactly, do teenagers dance?"

"They grind. Because they're all horny bastards desperate for sex but too reserved to actually do it."

"And are you desperate for sex May?"

"No. But I wouldn't mind it."

"I'll have sex with you," they both turned to the pink boy with the happy hair. They had forgotten about him.

"No thanks," May said flatly. The boys peaks begun to droop but his face became still pinker.

"She did say she wasn't desperate," Gus added mercilessly.

The boy seemed to slump from within and May felt a twinge of guilt.

"Get me another drink and I'll dance with you. If it has vodka in it I'll kill you," she instructed, handing her empty glass to him.

"He'll probably spike it," Gus pointed out as they watched the peaks bob away, his tone indifferent.

"In which case you have to watch me carefully and make sure the only bed I wake up in is yours," May replied, also indifferent.

"Was that invitation?" Gus asked.

"No, it was an order," May said, absently, scanning the room for the blond peaks.

She found them presently, they were talking to a girl about a year younger then the boy and they were considerably more perked up than they had been when he'd left

"I'm never going to get that drink," May sighed. "Where can I sit down?" In response to her question Gus slipped an arm around her waist and led her out into the garden. There were quite a few people outside too but it was nowhere near as crowded as the house had been.

They found an unoccupied bench under a tree with a gnarled and twisted trunk.

"You have cigarettes?" Gus inquired, tapping the tin. May shook her head and pulled it out of her waistband.

"Just baccy and Rizla. Do you smoke roll-ups?" she asked oh-so politely. Gus shook his head. "Well thank fuck." She opened the tin and pulled out the Rizla, the tobacco and a clear plastic bag.

"Weed?" Gus hazarded a guess and was rewarded with a small nod from May.

He watched as she rolled the spliff, first laying out the baccy then shredding in a few buds of weed.

"Why the cardboard?" he asked as she placed a bit of rolled-up card torn from the Rizla box at one end.

"Roach," she said briefly, staring intently at her work.

"It looks easy," Gus commented.

"Operative word being 'looks'," May replied. "You'd be surprised at how few people can roll a decent spliff." She licked the sheet of Rizla finally and twisted the end. "I take it you've never blazed before." It was a statement, not a question. Gus was too embarrassed to ask what the hell she meant by 'blazed' instead taking the view that if he didn't know what it was he'd probably never done it.

So he shook his head.

May nodded as she stuck the joint in her mouth and lit it; she had been expecting him to answer like that.

"Here, try it." He took the tight white cylinder from her and gingerly put it in his mouth and took a pull.

He pulled it out again and turned away from her so he could cough uninhibited. Beside him May was shaking with silent laughter.

"God, that's vile!" He said when he could breathe again. "Why the hell would anyone do that to themselves?"

May simply smiled.

He watched her smoke as the music filtered through the open windows and doors into the garden, and he inhaled the weed freely, although it made him choke every now and again.

She was about halfway through the spliff when the tone of the music coming from inside the house changed.

A synthesised beat, low heavy bass line. Gus didn't recognise the song but May sure did.

"Piste 11, The Parachute Ending," she said appreciatively, nodding her head to the beat. "For a rich country boy who knows nothing you have decent taste." She stood up and begun to dance. "Get up and dance with me," and she pulled Gus up by the hand.

At first he protested, knowing full well that he would look like an idiot if he tried to emulate May, but then she drew him closer to her, wrapped his arms around her waist and begun moving once more and he had to move with her.

Elaborate foreplay, he thought as May's hips ground against his and his hands found their way to places on her anatomy they hadn't seen in about- oh, two weeks?

"We might as well just do it now May," he said, affecting, or trying to affect, disinterest.

"But where's the fun in that?" she asked- innocently- as she turned round in his arms. Gus shut his eyes so he didn't have to see her face with it's full, slightly parted lips and dark, half closed eyes. It didn't help, mostly because her groin was still moving in rhythmic circles against own.

"God, you're such a fucking tease," he muttered. Most girls would have been offended, would have broken away from him and flounced off slowly enough for him to catch up to them and give a halfway plausible explanation.

May, however, laughed.

"So I've been told. It's nice to know my efforts are not in vain," she said, and would have added something more had Guy not come up to them then.

"Gus, where are the controls for the sound system? Some idiot's found it and attached their own iPod."

"Leave it Guy," Gus said opening his eyes once again.

"You mean we have to listen to this crap all night?" Guy asked, slightly indignant.

"I don't think it's crap," May said, turning to face Guy. He started. From behind and with her hair curly May looked like a completely different person to the person he had dined with two weeks ago.

He'd not expected to see her again, especially not anywhere near Gus. It was assumed that she'd just fade into the background.

He would have preferred it that way.

"Do you want to dance?" He looked at May questioningly. "You're staring. Do you want to dance?" So she repeated her question.

Guy shook his head violently. He did not want to dance, not with her. Dancing with her would only serve to make things worse.

"You sure?"

He didn't need worse.

"Absolutely," he was resolute.

He needed Callie.

"Your loss," she shrugged, and turned back to Gus.

Where the fuck was Callie?

~

Callie was being talked to by Jay. She didn't mind too much, Jay was a nice boy, not too loud. Presumably neat, although she'd never seen the inside of his room. He presented himself well.

But she was worried. She'd lost May almost as soon as they had arrived and she felt bad for abandoning her to the tender mercies of one of Gus's parties.

She was brought back to Jays' side only when he mentioned that sacred name.

"Sorry, what was that?" Callie asked, polite as always.

"I asked what you thought of May," He repeated as patient as she was polite.

"Oh. Her. I like her, she's nice," was Callie's undeveloped response.

"She's beautiful. Do you think that Gus is finished with her?" He was talking about the groups unspoken rule of ownership. Gus found and introduced her to the group and so she was 'his'. No one else could make any moves on her till he was done.

"I don't know," Callie said although she was completely sure that Gus was 'finished' with her.

She didn't want to see May become the boys' toy.

"Oh. Have you seen Cat?" Cat was Ekata Shah, Jay's sister. For the most part she wasn't hard to find; she always had a group around her, and she was always the loudest in it.

But sometimes she went missing, without a trace, and she could stay that way for days.
"No, sorry," Callie shook her head.

"Damn. The mother will have a bitch-fit. I promised I wouldn't let her go off again... The mother almost called the police last time."

"Oh," Callie said politely, not understanding at all. The rest of the group never got the Shah twins' undying loyalty, love and absolute fear of their mother because they hadn't been brought up with a mother who played judge, jury and executioner.

Their own parents' discipline had been rather lax and dependant solely on how they were feeling at the time. They couldn't comprehend the idea of their mother slapping them for some misdeed then following up with solitary confinement and a five course meal for doing well at school.

For the twins' part, they didn't really understand the rest of the group either.

Callie, for example, had taken it as a personal insult when the twins' didn't speak with an Indian accent, however she became rather attached to Jay, despite having a mother who thought she was a left-wing liberal because she 'loved the Shah family- salt of the earth doncherknow' but was still highly offended when her daughter had come home with their son in tow.

That had been three years ago though, and their relationship had taken a blow when Jay realised that she really didn't see him as anything but a friend.

"Callie!" She turned to Guy, who was now breathless, having pushed his way through the unknown dancing bodies.

"Oh... Guy, hi. Have you seen May?" and for a second he looked constipated, but the expression passed and he was free to answer.

"Yes, just now with Gus. They were in the garden but I wouldn't recommend going to see them. They looked about ready to pro-create," and the constipated look had come back with a vengeance.

"Oh," and Callie too felt dejected. "What was it you wanted Guy?"

"We need to talk," he said and Callie knew what that meant.

Jay did too, so he slipped away and continued his search for his sister.

~

Ginny's drunken enquires after as to the whereabouts of Gus had led her instead to Cai, which he saw as a stroke of luck.

He was always up for a fuck.

~

It was, Guy realised, entirely his own fault. He should have known better than to bring Callie into Gus's room.

No one was saying anything. Guy was frozen over Callie's naked body, Gus with May leaning nonchalantly against him.

Gus stared at Callie. Callie stared at May. May stared at Callie, then Guy. Guy stared at Gus.
Then, as Callie said 'sorry, we'll go', May said 'I think this calls for a flippant remark', and they were all pitched right back into dithering and indecision.

"Well fuck this." May said, when the silence and the staring had gone on for too long. "I'm finding someone else." And she tried to leave only to find that Gus's arms had tightened around her.

"You're mine tonight May."

"In your dreams," May spat, pulling harder against his arms.

"You want it just as bad as I do," and like that Guy and Callie were all but forgotten. They watched, shocked, as May was spun around and pressed against the nearest wall, arms held firmly behind her back and Gus's mouth attacking her neck.

Neither of them had seen Gus so obviously involved in anything before. It was almost painful to see his sudden lack of control as he tried to pull off May's leotard.

And May's face too was a thing of nightmares; the expression she wore was the inbred child of pleasure and pain.

"Guido... Guy, you have to do something," Callie whispered. But Guy was frozen, staring in horror at the vicious scene before him.

May got free of Gus, momentarily, and made for the door but Gus caught her once again, pushing her over in the process. Her scream pierced right through Guy, lancing his guts and the pocket of fear that was stopping him from acting against this nightmare.

"Gus, you bastard!" He roared, rising, ignoring the fact that he was naked.

He was ignored. Gus was over May now, and her screams were subdued, into sobs of masochistic pleasure, but Guy didn't know that.

He pulled Gus roughly off of May, adrenaline pulsing through his veins and the filaments of his muscles.

"What the hell is wrong with you? What were you doing?" Gus stared back at him, his chest heaving with the force of his breaths, regaining his composure.

"What did it look like I was doing?" He panted despite his best efforts.

"You were going to... Going to..." the adrenaline left him suddenly and he found himself unable to finish, wondering how he could even think about doing what he had just done.

One look at a panting May reminded him why.

"You were going to rape her."

"Hardly," Gus scoffed, shaking Guy off and standing up and making his way to the door. "May, are you coming?" he asked, turning back to her. She stood up shakily, picking up her cigarette tin, and made her way over to where he was standing, limping a little and wiping the tears away from her eyes. And then they were out of the door.

Guy sunk down and let his head drop into his hands.

What had he just done?