“I’ve never had a song dedicated to me before,” I shouted in Smith’s ear once I’d managed to tug him away. “I feel very rock ’n’ roll.”
“Oh, I’ve had songs dedicated to me a hundred times,” he proclaimed loftily, and looked so unutterably smug that I had to dig him in the ribs and make him dance with me again. It was all kinds of cute watching him shuffle just a few seconds behind the beat.
By the time Duckie went off stage, I was a sticky, sweaty mess of girl, made worse by Smith wrapping me up in these damp bear hugs every few steps we took. And there was nothing to do but give in to it and stop worrying about when I’d get to have a shower and if my hair looked like a fright wig. I didn’t even panic when we went backstage because backstage was just a tiny room with a plastic barrel full of cold beer being drunk by the official entourage. ’Cept now I was one of them, which meant that everyone acted pleased to see me, and I even got a towel so I could wipe away the mascara that had slid down to my chin.
We helped the band pack up, then the night descended into a seamless blur of the top decks of buses, dark streets, and sitting around someone’s front room with toast and tea and Buffy DVDs going in the background while each second of Duckie’s performance got dissected. Apparently, this was what you do when you’re in a band, though Jane nearly decked Sanjay, the drummer, for insisting she’d played the wrong bass line to “Teen Confidential.”
“I have to pee,” I whispered in Smith’s ear, and struggled up from the depths of the armchair that we were sharing.
He gave me a proprietary pat on the bum, earning him my most withering glare, but he was talking to Molly who wanted to know if her guitar amp had been distorting.
It was rather lovely to have a bit of peace and quiet even if it was for only five minutes. I pulled a comb through my hair, but it was like throwing a glass of water on a raging fire. So I sat on the edge of the bath, brushing my teeth and, well, mooning over Smith.
My whole life had split in two: Smith and not Smith. I liked the Smith parts of it so much better. Already I was calculating how much of the weekend we had left and greedily clutching every hour to me as if it was precious. Was this what it was meant to feel like when you were really into someone? Was this what it felt like if you were in love?
And as soon as I thought it, I knew that it was true. I kinda loved him. Or, like, I was in love with him. Either state of being was just too freaky to contemplate. The dripping toothbrush stilled in midair as I tried to pull myself together. I was a heartless, ungrateful wench of a girl who promised everyone who came into contact with me a one-way ticket to pain and hurt. I didn’t know how to love and I didn’t deserve to be loved back.
The almost-drunk feeling that had been softening my edges, disappeared and the world snapped back into focus, everything sharp and spiky again, including me. Not the girl I’d been fooling myself I could be, but the one staring back at me in the mirror with a thin line where her lips used to be and shadows under her eyes.
“Is? Are you in there?” Smith gave a gentle tap on the door and panic rose up in my chest.
“I’ll be out in a sec.” My voice could have cut glass. “I’m only cleaning my teeth, you can come in if you like.”
“You on the second rinse yet?” Smith asked me teasingly as soon as he opened the door, catching my eye in the mirror and giving the Isabel he saw there a tender look.
Luckily I had a mouthful of Colgate so all I could do was nod vaguely and scrub my teeth with renewed vigor.
“So, everyone’s about to crash out,” Smith continued, picking up one of the rubber ducks that were sailing across the windowsill. “I managed to bag us the box-room. I think we’ll both fit in there if we hold our breath.”
I spat out an unseemly amount of froth and delicately wiped my mouth. “That’s fine.”
“Hey, what happened to you in the five minutes that you’ve been in here?” Smith pulled me around so he got the full benefit of my stroppy face.
“Nothing happened, though I’m sobering up and it feels horrible. And I feel horrible,” I blurted out. “I’m like something out of Lord of the Flies or I’m one of those animals that eat their young or something.”
“Are you sure you’re sobering up?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know.” I put my hand to my forehead. “Why do I have to think so much all the time?”
Smith smoothed his thumbs into the hollows under my eyes. “Please don’t be sad. C’mon, give me a smile,” he begged, and I obediently pulled up the corners of my mouth.
“I’d give that effort three out of ten,” he said softly. “Four if I was being really generous.” He took hold of my hand and turned it over so he could press a kiss into my palm. And I don’t know where he’d learned these moves, but he must have been the teenage girl version of a horse whisperer because I could feel myself calming down, my heart stopped trying to escape from my chest, and I rested my head against his shoulder.
“Can we go to bed now?”
He didn’t let go of my hand as we inched down the hall and into a box-room that violated the Trades Description Act. It was more like a cupboard with a single bed in it. I lay down and let Smith peel off my clothes like he was unwrapping a present. Then he stretched out next to me so I could run my hands over his skin again and again, tracing patterns over his back, writing poetry with my fingertips down his arms; all the words I was longing to say. Then Smith was kissing me hungrily as if he hadn’t kissed me for months, not minutes, and maybe making love was the same as being in love.
Let'sGetLost
Let's Get Lost
19
Monday morning sent me crashing back to reality with a thud and a really shaky dismount. Even getting home last night, after spending the day entwined around Smith, hadn’t lessened my freakish good mood.
I’d sailed into the lounge—where Dad and Felix were making final adjustments to that stupid diorama—and given them a dreamy smile when they’d asked me if I’d had a nice weekend.
“It was totally awesome,” I’d enthused with a killer-watt smile that made my face ache. “I love spending time with Dot. She’s so caring and funny and . . .”
“Are you going to make dinner?” Felix had asked hopefully. “We had sausages last night and Dad burned them.”
“They weren’t burned, they were chargrilled,” Dad had insisted, giving me a curious look because I was still grinning inanely like I’d got all six numbers on the lottery during a rollover week. “Are you up to cooking, or should I order pizza against my better judgment?”
But I’d cooked a Thai curry so I could get a complete sense memory of kissing Smith’s fiery mouth and even played Scrabble and let Felix win. Which I don’t normally do because losing is character building.
I’d got a full eight hours’ sleep and sailed into school still wreathed in sunny smiles, and at first, I thought I’d just imagined the nudges and whispers that trailed in my wake like a little dust cloud. Or else they didn’t recognize the new, deliriously happy Isabel and thought I was some new kid with a dodgy haircut.
By the time the lunch bell rang, my good mood was long gone and I was forced to admit that, once again, I was fueling the school’s vicious-rumors industry single-handed. I lined up with the others to have some kind of vegetable gunk slopped onto my plate and racked my brains for anything particularly heinous that I’d done lately. There didn’t seem to be anything. I’ve been keeping my hood up and my head down.
“Hey, have you noticed how everyone’s acting weird around me?” I ventured as we sat down at our usual table so I had a bird’s-eye view of the smirk of every girl in the canteen as she looked in my direction.
And surely I wasn’t being paranoid, because Nancy and Ella, worthless bitches that they were, had just exchanged a look of unbridled glee.
“You’re just imagining things,” Dot assured me, glancing around the room. “I can’t see anyone acting weird. Well, no more than usual.”
I caught the eye of a fr
izzy-haired little witch from the year below and gave her the evil eye right back until I’d made her blush and spill yogurt down her top through sheer force of will. “They’re all looking at me,” I hissed, leaning forward. “Has someone been saying something about me?”
And ha! Ella was staring at her plate and blushing, but before I could totally call her on it, Nancy snorted. “Jeez, could you be any more paranoid? FYI, it’s not always all about you, Is.”
“I know that,” I replied with all the dignity I could muster, which actually wasn’t that much. “I’m just saying . . .”
“Could we get through one lunchtime without a bickering match?” Dot asked wearily, like her application for sainthood was already in the post.
Ella wriggled in her chair with a sly little smile. “Yeah, we do argue a lot for four girls who are meant to be best friends. Maybe we should do something bond-y.”
I was about to remind them that I wasn’t allowed out on school nights in case my A-minus average suddenly plummeted all the way to a B-plus, but Dot and Nancy were squealing like doing “something bond-y” was the best idea ever.
“Yeah! We should do something really old skool like hang out at the park, get drunk, and watch the boys play football . . .”
“And then cop off with someone,” Dot added, and she had to be winding me up, because it all sounded so low-rent that I was coming down with a severe case of scabies just thinking about it. “What do you reckon, Is? You up for it or you got something better to do?”
The silence that followed was so loaded with menace that every hair on my body stood up and danced the macarena. I peered at Dot through my lashes, but she just gave me the innocent smile of someone who hadn’t spilled all my deepest, darkest secrets to the two douche-bags we hung out with.
“Yeah, Is, how about it?” Nancy drawled. “You too good to slum with us all of a sudden?”
“No, don’t be ridiculous,” I blustered. “Just hanging out in parks is a little, well a lot, juvenile. Why don’t we watch DVDs and . . .”
“Because we want to go to the park,” Nancy insisted, her eyes flashing while Dot and Ella sat there coiled still, like snakes about to shoot venom.
And this wasn’t about going to the park. Not really. There was something underpinning this whole battle of wills that was making cold fingers of fear walk down my spine. All I could do was go for a little bit of damage limitation.
I shrugged, like the whole conversation was too boring for words. “Whatever. If your idea of fun is going to the park when it’s cold and wet then fine, count me in.”
As if I hadn’t told enough lies already, I then had to go home and play the devoted daughter, even though I didn’t know my lines.
I perched on the arm of the settee as Dad waited for Panorama to start with my eyes going all Bambi of their own volition.
“Daaaaadddddd,” I heard myself whine, and he stiffened.
“Oh, dear, I recognize that plaintive tone and nothing good ever comes of it,” he said, peering up at me. “What do you want?”
“Why do you think I automatically want something?”
“Isabel . . .” he said with a warning note in his voice. “I didn’t come down with the last shower.”
“Fine,” I sighed without any of my usual petulance. “I was wondering if I could go out tomorrow evening for a little bit.”
“We don’t have rules just for the sake of it. They’re there for your own good.”
That all depended on your politics, but I concentrated on pouting ever so slightly. “But if I absolutely promise that I’ll do my homework before I go and I’ll even show it to you, couldn’t you bend the rules just this once?”
“Where on earth are you going that your presence is so desperately required?” he demanded, folding his newspaper so I could have his undivided attention. Wasn’t I the lucky one?
“I need to go out with Nancy and Ella and Dot,” I blurted out to my surprise, because I already had an excuse that I’d made earlier about an urgent school project. “Things have been weird between the three of us lately, and I think it will just make stuff worse if I don’t hang with them.”
I was expecting some savage observation about the herd mentality, but he was nodding his head sagely. “I take it this is because you and Dot have been spending so much time together?” he suggested, and it was sweet that he thought that, though he couldn’t have been more wrong if he’d tried.
“Yeah, kinda,” I hedged. “You know how bitchy girls can be.”
“Thankfully, no. Boys are rather more straightforward—they just talk about football and steer clear of the emotional baggage.” He frowned at the exact same moment that I did because, hey, we were having a talk that involved actual feelings and stuff.
“Friendship can be so complicated,” I said cautiously. It was a relief to talk about it, even if it was in a completely guarded fashion. “People don’t want you to be yourself, they just want you to be the person that they’ve decided you should be.”
“So, your school days are not turning out to be the best days of your life?”
“God! I hope not!” I was so aghast at the horrific idea that Dad snorted with laughter and patted my arm.
“I want you back by ten-thirty at the very latest,” he said in his sternest voice—but he must have been abducted by aliens in the middle of the night because his face softened and he absentmindedly stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Or, just this once, if you wanted to sleep at Dot’s, then I suppose I could allow it, though I don’t want you to take advantage of my good nature.”
I wanted to crawl into his lap like I did when I was little and just the feel of his crisp cotton shirt against my cheek, his hand rubbing circles on my back as he recited Edward Lear poems to make me laugh, made me feel safe.
“Thanks,” I managed to choke out. “I don’t think I want to stay over at Dot’s.”
He was still stroking my hand, and I could feel my whole body straining to lean in so I could have a proper hug. But then he let go of me and sat up straight. “Goodness! Is that the time? I don’t want to miss my program.” He picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV.
“You need to switch it on at the set first, Dad.” I stood up and performed the necessary procedure.
“Does this mean you’re out of your difficult phase, Isabel?” he asked teasingly, and if he stopped being so bloody nice to me then I wouldn’t have to feel quite as shitty as I did.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” was all I said, but he’d already tuned me out and was engrossed in some political intrigue that was more than a match for my teenage psychodramas.
I’d been praying that it would piss down with rain so our little outing to Preston Park could be postponed. But no such luck. It was cold enough that my bright red, Amélie-style winter coat could have its first airing, even though the others were wearing the kind of clothes that owed very little to the elements or the imagination. Which was just as well because the four lads that were aimlessly kicking a ball about in the fading light looked like they were sharing a brain cell.
“Jesus wept,” I announced witheringly. “What’s that flapping around their knees? Oh, it’s their trousers. Are they too good to wear belts?”
If looks could have killed, I’d have been in a lead-lined coffin. “Shut the hell up, Is,” Nancy spluttered. “They’ll hear you.”
I flicked a glance at the four boys who were now shuffling the ball nearer and looking at us like we were red-hot Mamas shaking our collective booty in a rap video. “I don’t actually think they have the coordination to kick a ball about and listen at the same time. Maybe they’re the missing link between men and monkeys.”
“Aren’t they your type, then?” Dot said quietly, flicking back her hair with a coquettish move that didn’t really suit her. “Got your eye on someone else?”
“Yeah, like that geek you keep getting off with?” Nancy sniped.
I crossed my fingers behind my back. “As if . . .?
??
“So are we gonna do this or what?” Ella wanted to know, thrusting her boobs in the vicinity of the boys who weren’t even pretending to play football now but had gone into a little huddle—and I knew they were divvying us up between them. They should be so lucky.
“Well, go on then, Is. Go and talk to them!” Nancy demanded in a tone of voice that she was going to spend the rest of the week regretting.
“Since when did you become the boss of me?” I inquired icily, putting my hands on my hips and stiffening my spine ’cause I knew it made me look taller and scarier.
“You usually go and do the boy-thing for us,” Dot said plaintively. “But if you don’t want to . . . I mean, if you’re saving yourself for someone else . . .”