Jam by Jake Wallis Simons

the roof, disappearing into the blackness.
    â€˜This traffic, Jesus,’ said Stevie. ‘It’s actually not moving at all. I wonder what’s happened?’
    â€˜Probably a smash-up or something,’ said Dave. He pulled out his phone and opened up Facebook again. He wasn’t online, but there was nothing else to do.
    â€˜A smash-up would suck,’ said Stevie, still in a faux American accent. ‘A smash-up would totally suck.’
    Natalie, in the back seat, lifted her hand and placed it gentlyon the glass of the window. Then she removed it; a ghostly imprint remained, then faded. She did it again, watching as the condensation echoed her hand, dissolved. She did it again, and again. Then she sat back and gazed out of the window through half-open eyes.
    â€˜I hope she’s not going to pull a whitey again,’ said Stevie. ‘I hate it when she does that. Natalie? Natalie?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Don’t pull a whitey. Don’t leave us. Don’t leave us alone. Don’t leave us.’
    â€˜Leave you?’ said Natalie slowly.
    â€˜Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re our only hope,’ said Stevie. ‘You, Princess Leia. I can see it.’ He laughed and sat back.
    It was complicated. They were friends from uni. Part of the same group of friends, anyway. All doing media studies. They had gone to the festival together. There were supposed to be more of them but everyone else pulled out, leaving just her, Stevie and Dave. And it had been fun, at least to begin with. No, no: it had all been fun, from beginning to end. They had seen some bands, drunk a lot, got stoned, watched the days haze by like a sepia film. As for the nights, there were parts she couldn’t remember. But in the tent that the three of them shared, as the apple-green canvas shone in the torchlight like a lantern, white hands had slipped into her sleeping bag, followed by white arms, white legs, mouths. She had pretended to be asleep for some of it. For some of it she was unable to pretend. But she might as well have been; in the morning, when they awoke with sleeping bags twisted like silkworms around them, nobody mentioned it.
    Those cars were terrifying, all those cars, like a stream of refugees or something. Nobody was moving, but still everything was very much alive.
    â€˜We’re like refugees,’ she said, without really meaning to. ‘You know, in this car. Like a family of refugees. Sort of, like, futuristic refugees. Alive but, like, not moving.’ The boys were laughing at her again, but they seemed too distant andirrelevant for her to care. ‘It’s as if everybody is running from something,’ she said. ‘Only now we’re having to wait to cross the border.’
    Yes, it wasn’t that it hadn’t been fun, but Stevie wanted to keep at it and she felt she couldn’t back out. Dave didn’t seem bothered, it was as if he’d forgotten all about it, as if it hadn’t happened. But Stevie – it was as if she owed him something now. It was his car, and his tent, even his rucksack she was borrowing, and now it was like she had to pay. It felt like he wanted to corner her or something. Trap her.
    All those cars, look at them. It was completely solid now, as far as the eye could see. Before, like, a while ago, you could see movement on the motorway over the hill back there. But now it was just completely solid. Millions of tiny lights. She raised herself up from her seat, waited for the dizziness to subside, turned her head slowly to look out the windscreen, then out the back, again and again. She heard the boys laughing at her from very far away. It was amazing: red lights out the front, all white lights at the back. Swarms of red lights, swarms of white. Red, white, red, white. Cars and lorries. Vans. She sat back.
    â€˜She’s out cold and shit,’ said Stevie. ‘The piece of meat is out stone cold.’ He nudged her