This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  This edition first published

  2023 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2010, 2023 Patrick Ness

  Illustrations © 2020 Tea Bendix

  The right of Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix to be identified as author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  978-1-5295-1463-6 (epub)

  www.walker.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  The List

  Where It Starts

  Charlie

  The List Again

  Last Boxing Day

  Charlie

  Mark Ruffalo

  Walking Home

  Questions

  One More Question

  What Kind of Story This Is

  Sex Talk

  Jack

  The Final Weekend

  Parents

  A Message

  The Day The World Ends

  The Truth

  The Afterlife

  And Then

  The Evening After the End of the World

  Different for Boys

  THE LIST

  All right then, if we’re starting out honest, here’s pretty much everything I’ve done (it’s not as bad as it sounds):

  1. I’ve , of course. Everyone . They’re lying if they say they don’t, but doesn’t count, obviously. You can’t lose your virginity to yourself.

  2. And leading on from that, I’ve been by someone else, but who’s been to a Year 10 party and not gone home without doing that in the coat pile? It’s only someone’s hands.

  3. Getting a bit heavier, I’ve and . Still not really a shocker.

  4. A bit more strangely, I’ve . (Okay, I’m not allowed to even hint at the strange stuff. Not that kind of story. Fine.)

  5. And of course we wouldn’t be talking about this if I hadn’t actually . You know, actually which is pretty much the definition of losing your virginity if you’re a boy.

  And just so we’re clear, it’s not like I’ve done #5 once or twice either. I’m not one of those chess club virgins who goes into a closet and wonders if the real thing’s happened. It has. Trust me. Although it doesn’t really matter how many times you do it: you think it’s going to make your life less lonely, but it never does.

  I suppose my question, though, is where exactly on that list did I stop being a virgin?

  Is it obviously #5? Or can it happen sooner, like on #3? Or even #2?

  Are there degrees of virginity? Is there a points system? A league table?

  And who gets to say?

  Because maybe it’s not as clear as all that, maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there are people who’d still say I’m a virgin, even after doing numbers 1 through 5.

  In fact, I might be one of those people.

  WHERE IT STARTS

  There are lots of places this story could start, but it might as well start on the first day of Year 11, when Charlie and me are sitting in geography, waiting for Mr Bacon to get his seating plan in order.

  “Well, this is taking for ever,” Charlie says, then he blinks, surprised. “What the just happened? What are these black boxes?”

  I shrug. “It’s that kind of story. Certain words are necessary because this is real life, but you can’t actually show ’em because we’re too young to read about the stuff we actually do, yeah?”

  “Teens swear in stories these days.”

  “Not anything like we do in reality,” I say. “It’s the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.”

  Charlie nods solemnly at the truth of this. Then he gets a smirk.

  “ ,” he says. His smile gets bigger. “ .” He nods again. “Cool.”

  And just as he says, “Cool,” that’s when Freddie Smith walks in, which is where this all really starts.

  “No way,” Charlie says.

  We watch Freddie check in with Mr Bacon, who finds his name on the list and points him over to me and Charlie. Mr Bacon’s great new idea for this year has us sitting in “quads” rather than just boring rows. Four desks pushed together in little islands around the room. Says it’s meant to make learning “collaborative”, but any fool could see he won’t be able to control us like this.

  The quads are alphabetical, so I – being Ant Stevenson – am sitting with Charlie Shepton, who I’ve sat by alphabetically since primary school. And now here’s Freddie Smith, who Charlie and I were also alphabetical friends with from way back, too, before he left after Year 4 to move to Southampton with his dad.

  “Charlie Shepton and Ant Stevenson,” Freddie Smith says, coming over to us, grinning.

  “Freddie Smith!” Charlie says, standing up and punching Freddie on the shoulder, even though Freddie’s now twice his size. Freddie, in fact, is even bigger than me, not in any fat way, but like he just stepped off the Six Nations coach to buy a packet of cigarettes. “Where the have you been keeping yourself?” Charlie asks. “It’s been ages.”

  “Mind your language, Charlie,” says Mr Bacon from the front. “That’s your first warning. Now, sit.”

  “But it’s blacked out, sir,” Charlie says. “It’s like I’m not swearing at all. . See?”

  “Sit,” Mr Bacon says.

  “Mum and Dad got back together,” Freddie explains as we all sit down. “After seven years, if you can believe it.” His eyes stray across the crowded classroom. “Hey, don’t tell me the fourth is going to be little Jack Taylor.”

  “Aw, ,” Charlie says, as we see Jack Taylor already being directed over to our quad by Mr Bacon.

  “What?” Freddie says to me, confused. “It’ll be just like old times.”

  Because the thing you need to know is that the four of us, me and Charlie and Freddie Smith and Jack Taylor, used to be inseparable. All through primary, anyway. Apart from always sitting next to each other because of our names, we lived in the same few streets and for a while there, we were always together. Birthday parties and football teams and just plain old stupid hanging around.

  Then Freddie left and a few years later puberty hit and I suddenly got way bigger than everybody, like American football big, and Charlie got a foot taller without gaining any weight and Jack, well, Jack didn’t grow all that much, and though me and Charlie stayed friends, Jack kinda went his own way when we all went on to St Michael’s Boys’. And while Charlie and me just did the usual – football, skiving off class, more football – Jack, well…

  Jack got a little camp, if I’m honest.

  He joined drama club. And choir. And wrote opera reviews for the school newspaper. And he always picked Mark Ruffalo as best out of the Avengers, when, I mean, come on. Hemsworth is standing right there.

  I don’t mean any of that in a bad way, though.

  Because you don’t really notice when it happens over time, do you? Jack’s your friend. You like him because you’ve always liked him. And maybe one day you think, yeah, okay, he’s gone a bit pink, but so what? He’s Jack. And most of the time, you don’t even notice.

  Unless you’re Charlie, and one day, you start noticing. Even in this day and age. When we’re all supposed to be beyond all that.

  From about last Christmas, Charlie’s started noticing. And he isn’t handling it well.

  “Jack’s a little poof now,” he says, as we watch Jack come over. “Hey, you can say poof without the box. That doesn’t seem right.”

  Freddie raises his eyebrows. “Jack turned out gay?”

  “No,” I say. “He went out with Georgina Harcourt all last year. He’s just kinda camp.”

  “He’s gay,” Charlie says. “He was caught to a bunch of sixth-formers last year.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” I say. “Claudia Templeton from St Margaret’s spread that story to stop people talking about how her boyfriend texted around all those pictures of her .”

  “Oh, yeah,” Charlie laughs. “That was cool.”

  “It’s never Freddie Smith,” Jack says, dropping his bag on the fourth desk in our quad.

  “Hey, Jack,” Freddie says. “Heard you’ve gone all Graham Norton on us.”

  Jack shoots a glare at Charlie. “I see you’ve been talking to here.”

  “Hey!” Charlie says. “What was behind the box?”

  “Hey, Jack,” I say, nodding a greeting.

  “Hey, Ant,” he nods back, a little carefully.

  “Graham Norton is a rich man, Jack,” Freddie says, still smiling. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Please,” Jack says. “He’s got a head like a watermelon. And have you ever heard him sing?” He gives Freddie a look up and down. “And where’ve you been? Eating your way through Sussex?”

  “Aw, hell, don’t even start,” Freddie says. � ��I wasn’t on school grounds five minutes this morning before the rugby coach grabbed me.” He nods my way. “You’ve got pretty big yourself, Ant. You should come out for the team with me. Be nice to have an old friend around.”

  “We do football,” Charlie says, before I can even answer.

  “Quiet in the back,” Mr Bacon calls over to us, finally ready to start the new class.

  “So who’s this guy?” Freddie says, lowering his voice.

  I shrug. “Just Mr Bacon.”

  Freddie frowns. “He looks familiar.”

  “Nah,” Jack says. “He just looks like if Eddie Redmayne was a serial killer.”

  “God, Jack.” Freddie says. “That’s it exactly.”

  Despite ourselves, we all see it. You could totally picture your sister dating Mr Bacon, but then you could totally see him strangling her, too. I’m about to say so, but then Charlie sneers, “You want to date him, Jack? You want him to you right there on his desk?”

  Jack looks fake surprised. “Are you flirting with me, Shepton?”

  Freddie snorts under his breath. I laugh a little, too.

  And then I see Charlie giving me a look that could poison a whole tank of fish.

  CHARLIE

  Charlie isn’t a bad guy. He isn’t, despite how he’s acting and what’s going to happen in the rest of this story. He’s just got … issues. I mean, I know, yeah, fine, everybody’s got issues, but Charlie’s issues aren’t too nice to him and they give him a rough time and that sometimes makes him act like a total .

  But he’s not a bad guy. He isn’t. If the world were better, Charlie would be better. Try to remember that when the starts hitting the fan, yeah?

  Plus he’s my friend. I’ve known him for a long, long time, and that counts for something.

  “How cool is it that Freddie’s back?” I say, sitting on my bed. We’ve come over to my house and gone up to my room, firing up my dad’s old laptop that I got instead of the MacBook I asked for. We can hear it over there, failing to find the wireless signal floating around the house.

  “Yeah,” Charlie says, nodding. He’s sprawled on my floor, bouncing a football up and down. “The size of him, though. Did you see?”

  “Not much bigger than me,” I say.

  “Bigger,” Charlie says. “But you’re fatter.”

  “Screw you,” I say. “I’m not fat.”

  I’m not. Really, I’m not. I’m just big. I’m not fat.

  “Jack Taylor’s a mince, though, isn’t he?” Charlie says, frowning.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way he was practically hanging on Freddie. It was embarrassing.”

  “Ah, Jack’s all right,” I say. “Leave him alone.”

  “It shouldn’t be allowed,” Charlie says. “A poof like that. Swishing around school like Troye Sivan.”

  “A lot of people like Troye Sivan. Nobody cares about that stuff any more.”

  “In London, maybe, or Manchester. Not out here in the arse end of nowhere.”

  “Wouldn’t that be exactly where gay people hang out, though?” I say (please don’t judge me, not yet anyway). “The arse end?”

  And we laugh at that for a while because we’re young and stupid and we like laughing at stupid .

  “That was classic,” Charlie says, still laughing.

  The laptop makes a sudden pinging sound and the screen goes black. “Not again,” I moan, sitting up.

  “Leave it,” Charlie says, resignation in his voice.

  And then he’s silent in a way where somehow I know what it means.

  You ever noticed that about silence? That sometimes you can just tell what kind of silence it is? Sometimes silence is real loud, louder than anything.

  Charlie’s silence, for example, right now, right here, is asking me something, even though he hasn’t said a thing.

  And so I answer him.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

  THE LIST AGAIN

  You remember that list of all the things I’ve done? How long it was?

  Everything on it, I’ve done with Charlie.

  LAST BOXING DAY

  It started last Boxing Day. Charlie called and asked if he could come over because his mum was getting even more drunk than usual. His dad’s long gone, see, and his mum drinks. Nothing too special or interesting, but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard for Charlie just because it’s common.

  Anyway, my mum and dad know Charlie’s mum, so they said yes pretty easily and he came over with every present he got, including a Switch, because he was afraid his mum’d get into her torching frame of mind again, which she did once with all his school clothes in Year 9 (really; he had to borrow some of mine for weeks, made him look like a skeleton).

  He ended up staying most of the week before New Year’s. Do you know how many times Charlie’s mum called to check on him? Don’t ask.

  He slept on the floor of my room and we’d stay up all night talking and playing on the Switch and going on the internet. You know, the usual stuff.

  And then one night Charlie was on a porn site. Nothing weird, just your run-of-the-mill naked girls. We’d done it before, plenty of times, but this time Charlie started talking. Talking about sex and girls and how long it had been since he’d .

  Oh. I guess I can’t tell you how we led up to it (in case anyone uses it as a roadmap, horror of horrors, as if there aren’t nine thousand and one examples of boys and girls our age getting together on every possible level; you can find that on CBeebies, for Christ’s sake).

  Whatever. Just to say that we were laughing about it all, like it was all a big joke.

  And then there was this moment where it wasn’t a joke, not even remotely, and it could have gone any way, in any direction, and let’s just say, I was surprised at the one it took. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to, but because it was Charlie.

  Immediately after, it was like he didn’t want to look me in the eye, though, and the next morning, he went right back to his house, taking all his stuff. We didn’t talk at all until we were back in school and the first days were awkward and quiet and it took a while before things were back to normal.

  Then it was half-term. Charlie asked if he could come over again. That time, it was easier to look each other in the eye. And that’s how it’s pretty much gone since Christmas.

  CHARLIE

  Up in my room, Charlie’s and he’s and I’m and he’s and I’m saying “Okayokayokayokayokayokay—” and so then he’s and I and he’s and I’m , and he until he finally , too.

  And then we’re both breathing heavy and sweating from it all and he looks up at me and he gets this grin, this shy, embarrassed grin that makes you forgive Charlie everything but which also says, “Well, that was fun,” and says everything about how ridiculous it is for us both to be here like this, doing what we’ve just done. Every time, Charlie makes it clear we’re just goofing around, that it’s just a release until we both get girlfriends, and we spend most of our time trying to pretend we aren’t taking it seriously at all.

  Except for those few minutes when it’s the most serious thing on earth.

  “Football starts next week,” Charlie says, after a bit.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “We better make A team.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say.

  “No, I’m serious,” he says. “I’m sick to death of C team. And we’re both about a foot taller than last year. That ought to count for something.”

  “You might make striker,” I say. “There’s no way I’m making goalie over Olly Barton.”

  He looks over at me. “Have you seen yourself lately? You tower over Olly Barton now.”

  “He’s faster.”

  “You’re bigger. You’ll beat him into the pitch. Then we’ll finally be on a proper good squad together.”

  “If I’m so big,” I say, “maybe I should join Freddie Smith on rugby this year.”

  He looks surprised for a second, but then he sees I’m not serious. “You’d get your fat kicked,” he laughs. He looks up at my ceiling. “Nah, you’ll see,” he says. “The two of us on A team together. Un--stoppable.” Then he turns to me with his shy, embarrassed grin again.

  And that’s the Charlie no one knows but me. The one who grins like that. And I want to kiss that grin so bad I could cry.

 

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