Chapter 74

Andrew had been struggling with his karmic balance for a long time. He was not sure he had ever been doing enough and it nagged at the edges of his mind. It came down to time and as Andrew had seen over the previous year, he was a very selfish person when it came to giving time to anything other than studying. He was trying to do too much academic work in a very short period of time and had let that dictate the rest of his life. Tanvi, Katie and Hannah were just the most obvious and recent examples of this. Something needed to change but he seemed incapable of making the adjustment. In the year and half since his grandmother won him all that money on the Grand National Andrew had been a sporadic visitor. She lived a 10 minute walk from the school and yet he rarely saw her. It was Grandma McLeod that changed his priorities.

As she neared her 77^th birthday, she was older and less steady on her feet. The weekend of Andrew’s debauched fun with Allison she fell and bruised her face. She was fortunate not to break any bones but she had a nasty shock. She was still drinking and that contributed to her tumble. It was a belated wake up call for him. Karma was not about buying solutions to problems it was fundamentally giving of yourself, giving of your time. This is what he had been doing for more than two and a half years at the Food Bank. It was part of his routine just like his morning exercise was. Other than the CCF camps Andrew had only missed one day in all that time, and that was for the hockey course. He prioritised it and it was now muscle-memory, it automatically happened.

So for the rest of his time at Heriot’s Andrew went and saw his Grandma every Monday and occasionally on a Wednesday afternoon, after school, for a couple of hours. He sacrificed study time and didn’t regret it. He felt better and knew he needed this balance in his life. Andrew’s unhappiness at his treatment of his dates all came back to an unhealthy set of priorities and time. As with all things in his life he quickly settled into a steady routine. Monday was alone time with her. They would chat and Andrew would give her the edited version of his life and the weekend before, sometimes heavily edited. He would then go and get the heavy groceries for her. Cans, bags of flour, potatoes, stuff like that. She would get the lighter stuff herself. The occasional Wednesdays were spent playing cards with her and Auntie Vi. They only played for pennies but there was no quarter given. Pair of ruthless old biddies.

At the same time as Andrew was getting a better handle on his karmic balance he also decided to try and right some wrongs in his personal life as well. Suzanne could read him very well, and would give him an appraising look on a Monday morning. This particular Monday when he came up to her at attendance she looked at him. He opened the conversation with the usual question on a Monday morning.

“Good morning, how was your weekend?”

“It sucked to be honest. Another miserable Saturday night date.”

Exactly the opening he was looking for.

“Would you like to go out with me on Saturday night this week then?”

Andrew felt surprisingly calm.

“You and I go out on Saturday? Really Andrew?”

“Yes, I would like to spend more time with you. You are my closest friend at school and we talk every day but it is as if this part of our life is ring-fenced. I am not going to study at the library after school on Monday and occasionally on Wednesdays for a while.”

He explained about his grandmother.

“I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I have not been treating people very well and you are one of the people that I most need to make it up to.”

So he and Suzanne agreed on dinner in town on Saturday. The movie part was left unanswered. More and more it was about spending time with friends and talking.

Allison, in a move rare among the young women at the school, did not immediately blab to her entire year about their Saturday night. Andrew didn’t care one way or the other, but was surprised at her discretion. Of course, when he smiled at her at hockey she blushed like a lighthouse and was useless at her drills, which was cute and funny.

Suzanne and Andrew met in town on the Saturday night. She looked fantastic but seemed nervous. Since they were clearly not going to the movies, they avoided the usual haunt and went looking for something different. Once they settled on a Chinese restaurant they started chatting.

“You seem tense. Is there something wrong?”

“No, I am just confused by tonight Andrew. We have not been out in nearly two years and then suddenly you ask me out again. I know you don’t want to date but it feels like a date to me and I am all confused.”

“I did not want to make you feel uncomfortable, in fact the exact opposite. You are a very dear friend and I don’t think I tell or show you enough.”

“Is there a reason why now?”

“I can only deal with issues when I know about them. I have been a complete mess with dating for the last two years. Do you know that you were my very first date?”

She looked surprised at this admission.

“Very first Suzanne. All the things that have happened since then. I needed to grow up, understand myself better, it all takes time. So that is why now.”

“Do you think you have changed in other ways?”

“What do you mean? What other ways?”

He looked curiously at her.

“Your secrecy. The secrets that you hide away behind this layer of friendliness and approachability. You are the nicest guy in school. Helpful, friendly, caring, supportive, all these things, plus you look the way you do. But we all know there is so much that you don’t share. Paula and I knew it, Tanvi and Katie knew it and Hannah knew it. You say I am your closest friend at school, yet I know little about your life outside school.”

“I see all that, but let me answer your question with one of my own. Why should I trust anyone at school? Everyone gossips. I would share more I think if I could trust people not to talk about it the next day.”

Suzanne look chastened at that but carried on.

“I understand. I haven’t done much to engender that kind of trust have I?”

“Not just you but no, you haven’t. There really are only a couple of secrets. I just don’t want them talked about.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I would tell no one.”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I would be skeptical. Why is knowing so important?”

“I want to understand you. You are someone I trust completely but because you don’t fully share, I keep some stuff back for now as well. I want to talk through some things with you and my stubborn nature is telling me that since you keep things hidden, I should too. It is not very logical but it is my way of shielding myself from the hurt of being excluded, even although most of that exclusion is my own fault.”

They changed the subject and the conversation flowed much more freely. Both of them had little sisters although his relationship with Rowan was non-existent now. They lived in separate worlds and both ignored the other. It was sad but Leslie was 1000 times more important to Andrew than his blood sibling. Suzanne had not as ruthlessly ignored her little sister when she was younger so she, as a consequence, was still being bugged by her, especially about boys. Andrew commiserated but could offer no advice, he had been walking away from Rowan’s drama for three years. They talked about music, how he was going to the Rush gig with Leslie the following evening. Andrew had a whole bunch of gigs between then and the end of the year and was pretty jacked to see some of the bands. The chat over dinner was the usual teenage stuff. After dinner, they walked down South Bridge on the way to Princes Street. Andrew more and more spent time walking and talking on his night’s out. He could not wait to get a car the following year and finally not freeze his arse off.

“I promise to keep your secrets Andrew, it would mean so much to me if you trusted me.”

Suzanne rather blurted it out but Andrew stood in front of a fork in the road. If he did not trust Suzanne at that moment then their relationship would start to fray. Not all at once but this was a moment that he would have to live with. Risk exposure of his most private memories or trust one of his best friends. There was no point in threatening her if she blabbed. He would have to deal with the consequences if that happened, so Andrew made the decision to tell her. He ended up walking home with her it took so long. The story of him and Faith did not take very long. She had suspected something very close to the truth, the way he talked about children dying and the platonic closeness between him and Leslie. She still cried when he told her about that fateful Friday where their paths diverged.

“They put you in the same room as Faith?”

Suzanne was horrified as Andrew laid out the sequence of events. He moved on past Faith and her death to the implementation of the life plan, with its six different goals. He gave her the missing framework and so much more of his life suddenly made sense. Then Andrew told her about the Open University.

“There is a reason for my obsessive studying. This sounds fantastical but it is true. I am doing an Open University course in Computer Science at the same time as studying at school.”

“A proper university course? How on earth can anyone do that? Even someone as bright as you can’t manage all that at the same time.”

“I am more than half way through the seventh course out of 12 for my degree. I am probably going to finish the degree right around the same time as I graduate school, or later that summer. It is this that has driven a wedge between me and the people I have been seeing. I work every night on my computing course, Monday to Thursday. When Hannah called me boring, it is because it is true.”