I was still feeling pleased about this when we arrived at the Knitting Factory and found Cass and Liz talking to Tall Paula from Exquisite Corpse. It was great to see them all.
‘I didn’t realise you’d got a practice space here!’ I said to Liz.
‘Neither did I until this morning!’ she said. ‘We got a cancellation. We’ve been on the waiting list since it started, but all you summer-camp people had first dibs. Which is fair enough.’
‘Hey, look who it is,’ said Cass.
I turned and saw three boys around our age. They were all wearing impressively outlandish garments – one was wearing a fur coat, cycling shorts and a sort of floral bum bag. They looked vaguely familiar, but it took me a few moments to realise who they were. Then it hit me.
‘It’s Puce!’ I said in surprise. The boys glanced over and waved, looking a bit shy. I definitely recognised them now. They had been on the summer camp, and when it started they were all wearing cardigans and played their instruments while staring shyly at their feet. But, by the end, thanks to some lessons in stagecraft from Shane Driscoll, the lead singer of The Invited, they were strutting around the stage in leather trousers and jumpsuits. It was quite a transformation. And it looks like they’ve kept up their commitment to eye-catching ensembles. They came over to say hello properly.
‘We’ve got a workshop with Shane today,’ said Niall, the lead singer. He was wearing a bomber jacket in a sort of Hawaiian pattern. It was very colourful.
‘We’ve got one with Kitty,’ said Alice. ‘Oh look, there she is!’
It was so, so cool to see Kitty again. We hadn’t seen her at all since the camp ended. Puce and Paula knew her from the camp, of course, because she’d taught all of them in the big workshops, but we introduced her to Liz and they all talked about guitar pedals for a minute until Kitty remembered she was meant to be mentoring us, so we told the others we’d see them later in the art space and we took her off to our practice room.
‘This place is VERY cool, guys,’ she said. ‘Now show me what you’ve been doing here.’
We played a couple of our newish songs, including of course ‘Pistachio’.
We finished that one by repeating the chorus a few times (which is, of course, Cass’s favourite approach). Then Alice said, ‘We’ve been having some trouble with the ending …’
‘Alice and I think it should end suddenly, straight after the last chorus,’ I said.
‘But I think we should repeat the chorus a few times,’ said Cass. ‘What do you think?’
‘I can’t tell you what to do with your songs, people!’ laughed Kitty.
‘We really do need outside input, though,’ I said.
‘Hmmm,’ said Kitty. ‘Okay. Well, I see what you’re going for, Cass, but let me hear it the other way. Just run through the last chorus and end there.’
We did. Kitty looked thoughtful. ‘I think that works better, to be honest. It’s tighter. But it’s still up to you.’
Alice and I looked at Cass, who rolled her eyes but conceded defeat in a good-natured fashion.
I knew I was right about that song! Though Kitty did say later that ‘there’s no right or wrong when it comes to music. It’s all subjective. But it’s about finding out what works best for you.’
Anyway, she stayed in the studio with us for a whole hour and it was really great. I’d almost forgotten how good she was at making us feel all enthusiastic and full of energy. And she showed Alice how to do a really cool thing with an effect pedal she’d never used before, which was awesome. But the coolest thing was that she told us she and the other mentors have been talking to Veronica and we can start doing afternoon gigs in the Knitting Factory in a couple of weeks! About three or four bands will be playing at each one, so we won’t be doing really long sets, but it’ll still be the first time we’ll have played more than five songs in public. I can’t wait.
After Kitty left, we had another hour of practice time left, so we tried out her suggestions and they all worked really well. Before we started playing ‘Ever Saw in You’ with added pedal effects, I remembered my great studying idea and suggested that we try talking in German for a bit, but Cass refused.
‘You can’t just spring the idea of talking in another language on me like that with no warning,’ she said. ‘I need to psychologically prepare myself.’
‘Oh, alright,’ I said. ‘Maybe next week, then. What’s the German for drum, anyway, Alice?’
‘Um, Schlagzeug, I think,’ said Alice.
Apparently Schlagzeug literally means ‘hit-thing’, as in a thing for hitting. Good grief. But what can you expect from a language where the word for glove is ‘Handschuh’, which just means ‘hand shoe’? Anyway, eventually Cass reluctantly agreed to do some German speaking next Saturday after I pointed out how useful it would be to know how to talk about music ‘auf Deutsch’ if we ever went on tour in Germany.
‘Or Austria,’ said Alice helpfully. ‘Or bits of Switzerland.’
When our time was up, we went back to the art space to meet the others. As soon as I saw Sam, I felt a strange fluttery butterfly feeling in my tummy. I was really glad he was there, but I also felt weirdly nervous. It felt like everything had changed since I saw him last week, like I wouldn’t know how to talk to him normally now. Luckily, so many people were there – Senan, Liz and her bandmate Katie, Paula and her bandmate Sophie, Ellie and Lucy, the Puce boys – that I didn’t have to say anything to him straight away besides ‘Hi’, which gave me time to collect myself.
In fact, after a while, I started to worry that I wouldn’t get to talk to him at all today. Everyone was sitting around the art room chatting and drinking cans of fizzy drinks or cups of coffee and tea from the tiny studio kitchen. But I was on one side of the room with Cass and Liz, next to Katie and the Puce boys, who were talking very enthusiastically about bass amps. Sam was right on the other side of the room talking to Senan, Ellie and Paula, and I couldn’t figure out a way of getting to talk to him, without it looking totally obvious. At one stage, he caught my eye and raised a hand in a ‘hello!’ sort of mini-wave, but that wasn’t exactly an invitation to march across the room to join him.
So I kept talking to the others, even though I was hyper aware of Sam on the other side of the room with his messy hair and his scruffy old shirt and cords and boots and his nice hands (he has such interesting hands) all covered with ink and charcoal. I was trying so hard not to look at him, I was worried I was making myself even more obvious. And, as time went on and we both stayed on opposite sides of the room, I got more and more depressed. I mean, I’d prepared myself for the possibility that he wouldn’t be there at all, but not for the possibility that we could both be in the same room and not actually talk to each other. Eventually, everyone was sitting around sort of talking together, but that meant I still didn’t get to talk to Sam on his own. All the excitement I’d had that morning seemed to drain away as it got later and later and we still hadn’t said more than a few casual words to each other.
Then everyone started getting ready to leave. Cass and Liz were going to Liz’s house, so they set off with Katie to get the bus on Nassau Street. Alice was meeting Richard, who hadn’t been practising today because the Wicked Ways guitarist has gastric flu and is too sick to play the guitar. And Lucy has been thinking of learning how to sew so she was going home with Ellie, who was going to show her how to use her sewing machine (well, technically it’s her mum’s sewing machine, but Ellie uses it more than her mum does these days).
So basically, when everyone was saying goodbye to each other outside the Knitting Factory, Sam and I ended up being the only ones who didn’t have anything to do straight away. I felt very self-conscious and I thought I should just get away before I said something stupid so I said, ‘Well, I suppose I should …’
And then Sam said, ‘Are you in a hurry to get home?’
And I said, ‘Um, not really.’
‘Do you want to go and get a coffee?’ said Sam. ‘Or what
ever hot drink you like? To be honest, I’m not in a huge hurry to get home myself. My parents are repainting the kitchen and they’ll just make me sandpaper skirting boards. And, besides, I haven’t talked to you all afternoon.’
I could feel my tummy fluttering again, only this time it was with excitement. But I tried to sound completely casual.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. ‘Where will we go? What about the Pepperpot?’
So that’s where we went. Thank heaven Mum had given me extra sandwich money for bringing those shoes down to the hall. Imagine if I’d had to say, ‘Sorry, Sam, I can’t go out for a drink because I only have thirty-five cents in the world, apart from the money in my savings account, which my parents won’t let me take out because they think I’ll “waste it”, whatever that means.’
Anyway, when we were sitting down at our table by the railings, I suddenly felt a bit awkward because I realised it was the first time Sam and I have actually gone anywhere together. I mean, we’ve talked loads, but it’s always been in corridors and at bus stops and while walking down the street or sitting around in arts spaces. It’s just been casual. But this all felt rather formal. Until then, I’d never found it difficult to talk to Sam, but now I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Sooo,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t, because I worried I sounded like I was nervous. Which I was. But luckily Sam didn’t seem to notice anything weird. He just looked at the wool shop next to the café and said, ‘Wow, I didn’t realise wool came in so many colours. That display looks really cool. Like an art installation or something.’ And then the waitress arrived and took our orders – hot chocolate (as usual) for me and a coffee for him.
‘I should probably be cutting down on coffee,’ he said. ‘I find myself drinking loads of it at night when I’m working on my comics and then I end up wide awake at four in the morning.’
‘Well, one won’t hurt,’ I said. ‘It’s only four o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘And it’s really good coffee. Right, this is my last one of the day.’
‘Do you find you work better at night?’ I said. ‘I don’t mean homework, I mean, like, art or writing stuff. I think I do. I mean, sometimes I’ll start writing something quite late and it’s like I get a second wind. I just want to keep going even though I was tired earlier.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Sam. He paused. ‘Although I suppose that could be the coffee.’
Our drinks arrived, and then we stayed there for ages talking about loads of things, about art and writing and books and our annoying families. He talked about how people still don’t think comics can be really great art, no matter how beautiful or serious they are. He pulled out a graphic novel from his bag by a writer and artist called Jaime Hernandez. The pictures were really brilliant.
‘Ooh, is there a band in it?’ I said, when I opened a page and saw a really cool picture of a girl holding a bass.
‘There is. The stories are amazing,’ said Sam. ‘But will we ever study something like this in school? No, because not enough people realise that comics are proper art!’
I told him that I wanted to write funny books and they weren’t given enough credit either.
‘Let’s drink a toast,’ said Sam. ‘To books that don’t get the credit they deserve.’ He raised his coffee cup and clinked it off my mug of hot chocolate. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘In thirty years maybe you’ll be a really famous writer and I’ll be a famous artist …’
‘And writer,’ I said. ‘Of comics.’
‘And writer of comics,’ said Sam. ‘And you’ll have won, I dunno. The Nobel Prize or the Booker or something. And I’ll have won whatever you get for doing great comics.’
‘And we’ll both be, like, in your face, everyone who sneers at funny books and comics!’ I said happily. Then I thought of something. ‘Of course, I might also be an international rock star too. With Hey Dollface.’
‘Meh, you can do that as well as the writing,’ said Sam with a shrug. ‘You could write on the tour bus. Or the private jet.’
He is so easy to talk to, about big ideas and little silly stuff. I’ve never really talked like that with a boy before. With Paperboy I never really had a chance because we were still kind of getting to know each other when he went away, and with John I spent most of the time just listening to his own grand plans and theories about life. But when I talk to Sam, it’s like we’re both into what the other person is saying. He actually makes me feel like I could become a famous writer. Or rock star. Or both.
We talked a bit about our families too. I told him about Rachel being dumped and how I was trying to cheer her up, and he said when his sister found out her boyfriend had left her for someone else she threw black paint all over a painting she’d been doing of him.
‘And then she left it on his doorstep and never talked to him again,’ said Sam. ‘It was a bit over the top, to be honest. She’s mortified about it now.’
‘Rachel hasn’t done anything like that,’ I said. ‘At least, I don’t think so. Did your sister get over it eventually, then?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sam. ‘I mean, she seems okay now. In her head-wrecking way.’
We ended up staying there talking for over an hour. I was scared to look at my phone to check the time, in case Sam realised how late it was and decided he had to escape, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Eventually, though, my phone rang, and, unsurprisingly, it was my mother wondering where I was. I should have just texted her earlier to say I was hanging around town for a while.
‘If you’re not going to be home for dinner, I need to know!’ said Mum crossly. ‘Now, get home as soon as you can. And it was your turn to help do some hoovering today, too.’
If I had been with Alice or Cass or Jane, or someone else I’d been friends with for ages, I would have just argued back to her, but I didn’t want to do that the first time Sam and I went somewhere on our own together, so I just said, ‘Okay, I’ll be home soon.’ I turned to Sam. ‘Yikes. I’d better be off.’
‘Me too, I suppose,’ said Sam. ‘I hope they’ve done most of the sandpapering.’
So we paid and strolled off to our bus stops. We reached mine first, and as soon as we got there a bus turned up so we just said bye quickly and I jumped on it. And that was that.
Of course, now I keep going back over the conversation and worrying if I said something stupid or if I made it really obvious that I liked him. I don’t think I did, though you never know. But even though I am worrying a bit, I mostly just feel very happy about it. I mean, I know asking someone to go for a coffee and talking to them for hours doesn’t mean they definitely fancy you. I have done the same with Jane and, much as I like her, I don’t want to go out with her. But asking someone for coffee does mean they definitely like you and want to talk to you properly. Which has to be a good thing.
The thing is, though, if he doesn’t fancy me (which is perfectly possible, I know), I really, really don’t want him to know that I fancy him. It would spoil everything, and I like him so much as a friend (as well as a boy I fancy) that losing his friendship would just make the nothing-romantic-ever-happening thing even worse. So I am trying to make it clear that I like him as a friend without making it obvious that I sometimes sit there imagining what it would be like if he just leaned across the table and kissed me. It is surprisingly tricky. But the thought of him knowing that I liked him and feeling guilty for leading me on – the way he felt about Gemma – is much worse.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should just stop thinking about all the bad things that might happen. Maybe I should just let myself be happy for now. Even if nothing ever happens, he is a cool person and I like talking to him. And that might be enough, mightn’t it?
I told Cass about fancying Sam. She called in to my house this morning because she’d left her maths book here on Friday (she realised she’d taken it out of her bag when looking for her phone and then forgot to put it back in again), and she n
eeded it to do her homework. Last night I realised it was kind of stupid to worry about my friends being sorry for me, so as soon as we were up in my room, away from my nosy parents, I told her all. It was actually really good to talk about it at last. Though of course, Cass claims she already had her suspicions.
‘I can always tell with you,’ she said. ‘I was right about John too, remember?’
‘Yeah, you went on about it all the time,’ I said. ‘It was really annoying.’
‘You’re just annoyed because I know you better than you know yourself,’ said Cass, annoyingly.
Still, she really was very sympathetic towards my lovelorn state. In fact, she was shocked to hear I had thought she might pity me or wouldn’t understand what I was going through.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘it’s not as if I don’t know what it’s like to fancy a friend and have no idea whether they like you back, is it? And in my case, I didn’t even know if Liz liked girls!’
I felt a bit ashamed that I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Though of course, I don’t know if Sam likes girls either.’
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure he does,’ said Cass. ‘He went out with someone in the Gaeltacht last year and he was really into her.’
I stared at her.
‘How on earth do you know that?’ I said.
‘I have my ways,’ said Cass.
‘What ways?’ I said. A terrible thought struck me. ‘You haven’t been, like, asking him questions on my behalf, have you?’
Cass looked insulted.
‘As if I’d do anything so crude,’ she said. ‘No, remember the other week when Lucy was going to her cousins’ in Rathmines and I was going to Liz’s house? We all got the bus together.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said.
‘Well, Liz said something about her time in Irish college this year, and then she and Lucy started comparing Gaeltacht stories. And somehow they got on to the topic of all the romantic scandal that goes on in Irish college.’
‘Scandal?’ I said. I didn’t like the sound of that.