Jack kissed me at the bus-stop. He didn’t announce it beforehand this time, which was good but he doesn’t know what to do and I don’t know what to do and it’s just lips touching lips and not much else.
24th November
Dan was waiting for me outside the station. He liked my American diner waitress dress and jeans combo, said it was boss and smiled slightly. I’d forgotten about the little freckle on his chin that makes him look dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. Atsuko and Darby would definitely think he was sexy.
When we got to the Roller Derby bout Dan paid for my ticket and my bottle of water and when we sat down, he put an arm round my shoulders. As he absently stroked my arm with the tips of his fingers I wondered if maybe he’d got me confused with someone else, but then the bout started and it was really exciting and I stopped worrying because Dan was too busy shouting and punching the air each time the Checkerbroads scored.
Then outside the venue he took my hand and asked me what I thought about the bout.
That’s the great thing about going to see something – there’s stuff to talk about afterwards as you share a squidgy sofa in Caffé Nero.
After we’d discussed the Roller Derby and the band and comics and whether sarcasm is an attractive trait, I realised that Dan was staring at my mouth really intently. I wondered whether I had a coffee ’tache and tried to surreptitiously poke at my upper lip and then Dan was leaning in and kissing me.
It was then I realised I’d never really been kissed before. Not properly. Because when Dan gently coaxed my mouth open so he could slide his tongue inside and pulled me closer to him so he could cradle my face in his hands, I didn’t know what to do. So I just copied him. It seemed to work because these two girls at the table next to us told us to go book a room.
Dan walked me to the minicab office and every time we came to an empty shop doorway, he’d pull me in and ravish my mouth again and I felt all tingly. And he said I was ‘hot’. Me! Hot! It was wonderful!!!!
29th November
I’m so down. Dan hasn’t rung or texted me or anything.
1st December
Dan still AWOL. What did I do wrong?
3rd December
It looks like I’m never going to hear from Dan again so I agreed to go to a club with Jack who I’ve sort of been avoiding lately. We had a good time though we didn’t really talk or anything and Jack won’t dance. I don’t mind dancing. Dancing is way easier than having to make conversation.
Then when it came to the lip pressing part of the evening, I decided to practise my new technique. Jack seemed thrown by the whole tongue thing but he quickly got the hang of it. It was much, much, much better than before.
‘Where did you learn that?’ Jack asked suspiciously when we came up for air but I couldn’t tell him, so I just shrugged and reached up to kiss him again because there was definite sparkage.
If Dan isn’t going to call and the whole Jack situation has suddenly become thrilling then it’s all worked out OK. Hasn’t it?
17th December
Mum wanted me to come straight home tonight to talk about Christmas. (Like, what’s to talk about? It’s Christmas!) But Jack and I walked home together and ended up in a clinch outside Smith’s. I was dimly aware of a furious hooting but I thought it was a random road rage incident until my mum suddenly slapped me and Jack upside our heads and dragged me carwards. She says a) that she brought me up much better than that and b) I’m grounded for a month. My life sucks!
18th December
I can’t believe Mum hasn’t relented. I’ve seen Jesse and Poppy practically doing it in the kitchen when they’re meant to be cooking dinner and nobody batted an eyelid.
19th December
I take back all the mean things I’ve said about Poppy. She’s managed to get the grounding revoked.
‘It’s Christmas, Mum,’ she yelled, when she came round to get her washing done. ‘You can’t ground her. I mean, it’s inhumane.’
I was starting to have warm, fuzzy thoughts about Poppy but she ruined it by adding, ‘We’re booked to play a gig on New Year’s Eve. How am I meant to explain to the promoter that the guitarist has been sent to her room until January?’
Anyway, it worked. Although Jack is banned from coming within a mile of me and I have to wash up after Christmas lunch but that I can deal with.
26th December
I’ve just eaten my body weight in Quality Street at Edie’s ‘anti-Christmas party’. She reckoned that post-Turkey, nothing decent ever happens and invited everyone round for Twister (oooh, I have bad memories of her Twister mat) and Death Metal charades.
It was weird. Edie and Dylan seem slightly separate from us these days. I mean, they’re still super-lovely but Edie is distant, like her mind is somewhere else and all Dylan’s energy is focussed on getting out of Manchester and being with Edie.
So it was meant to be anti-Christmas but Darby suddenly produced a sprig of mistletoe and though Jack was visiting his grand-’rents in Chester there seemed to be no shortage of boys who came at me with their lips puckered. Dylan gave me an uncle-style peck on the cheek but there were Jesse’s bandmates and Will and Rob from the record shop and Atsuko’s brother. I realised that the way a boy kisses is as individual as the way he does his hair. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. And you don’t have to be absolutely crushing on a boy to enjoy the kissing. It was, like, a major revelation.
1st January
We saw in the New Year live on stage, which was cool ’cause last year I had to persuade Mum to even let me stay up. All this silver glitter dropped down on us and Jesse leapt on stage to snog Poppy. I had to make do with hugging Darby, and Edie who was doing a special guest spot. After we finished I could see Jack waiting outside the dressing room for me and I knew that he’d pull me into the darkened alcove behind the stage so we could get gropey for a couple of hours. But it seemed like a waste, you know? There were all these other boys with equally effective lips and hands.
I knew what to do, I mean, I’d seen Darby and Atsuko in action enough times. You just go over to a boy you like and smile mysteriously and ask if you can have a sip of his drink. The first boy told me to go and buy my own and the second boy tried to stick his tongue down my throat within two seconds but the third boy (who looked a bit like Fazer from NDubz) smiled back and handed me his glass. I didn’t know his name, I didn’t need to. I sat on his lap and took baby sips of his drink while he traced circles on my back with the tip of his finger. Then I took little baby sips of his mouth and still he made patterns on my back. I felt spangly and light-headed and it was all because of what his mouth was doing with my mouth. When he drew back, we smiled at each other and I stood up and walked away. It was so easy.
As I was re-applying my lip gloss in the Ladies, Edie cornered me.
‘I thought you and Jack were seeing each other,’ she said accusingly.
I shrugged. ‘Mum thinks he’s a bad influence.’
Edie raised her eyebrows at the idea that Jack could ever be a bad influence on someone.
‘Who was that boy you were kissing?’ she demanded.
I smiled dreamily. ‘Oh Edie, he was just a random boy. Haven’t you ever wanted to just kiss someone and not have to do all that awkward talking stuff?’
Edie shook her head. ‘You can’t go round kissing stray boys. Kisses always have consequences. Always,’ she warned darkly.
15th January
Jack and I still see each other at college and sometimes I let him kiss me but mostly I’ve been hanging out a lot with Darby and Atsuko. They’ve been teaching me stuff. Like using serum on my hair so it’s not such a wild mess and that on-stage clothes and college clothes should be the same thing. And, most importantly, how to kiss boys and get away with it. No muss, no fuss.
Mum lifted her Jack ban and made me invite him round for dinner. I think she thinks we’re ‘dating’. She just doesn’t get that we’re only hanging out. Then she made a big deal about lettin
g him go up to my room so we could listen to music but we had to keep the door open. It was so lame. Except only hanging out with Jack was not lame. He helped me with my Sociology coursework and he was wearing his Abercrombie hoodie and for a few minutes I thought that maybe we should see each other in an exclusive, proper way but then he ruined it.
‘Do you like Rihanna, Gracie?’ he suddenly asked. ‘I mean she is a really good singer, isn’t she?’
‘You only think that ’cause she’s sexy,’ I snapped. ‘If I suddenly said I liked Justin Bieber because he writes really insightful songs, you’d call me a teenybopper.’
Then he got all huffy and left.
22nd January
After rehearsal I went clubbing with Darby and Atsuko. ’Cept when you go out with them you pretty much have to fend for yourself after five minutes ’cause they’re usually glomming on random guys. I bumped into a boy who had been at Edie’s anti- Christmas party. We were slouching against a pillar kinda nuzzling each other when I felt someone looming over me. It was very distracting. I glanced up to see Dylan looking absolutely furious. The boy I was nuzzling opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and sidled off. Dylan grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the corridor by the loos.
‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ he began angrily. ‘What about Jack?’
I shrugged. ‘Jack and I are just friends,’ I said in a tiny voice ’cause Dylan was being all thin-lipped and flary nostrils and it was scary.
‘Jack’s here and seems pretty gutted for someone who’s just a friend,’ Dylan said sternly. ‘To see you all over some other guy.’
‘I wasn’t all over him,’ I whined. ‘It was just a kiss. Little kisses. They didn’t mean anything.’
Dylan wasn’t having it. I knew he’d been talking to Edie when he said, ‘A kiss is never just a kiss. Kisses can change your life, can change you. The people you kiss define who you are.’
I knew he was right and I wanted to think about what he’d just said but then Atsuko and Darby were there.
‘God, Dylan,’ Darby pouted. ‘You’re so boring these days. You’re not Grace’s dad, she can do what she wants.’
Atsuko nodded. ‘Grace is just having a laugh. You and Edie think everybody should be deeply, passionately in love because you two are.’
They turned to me, waiting for me to diss Dylan too. ‘Yeah,’ I said, all blustery. ‘I can do what I want.’
Dylan looked at me in this incredibly sad way. Like I’d disappointed him on this profound level and his life would never be the same again. He shook his head in despair and as he brushed past me, I heard him mutter, ‘Grow up, Grace.’
What does he think I’m trying to do?
24th January
I hadn’t seen Jack at the club despite what Dylan had said but he turned up first thing this morning. I thought we were going to walk into college together but he had this big speech all prepared and stopped right in the middle of the street to deliver it.
‘I thought you were sensitive and shy but the truth is you don’t care about people,’ he said in this quiet voice. ‘You’re such a bitch.’ And the expressionless, flat way he spoke carved into me much worse than if he’d ranted and raved.
I tried to explain how I felt. That you could kiss people and not be connected to them and how most of the time it was different with him ’cause we were friends too but my words wouldn’t come out right and it sounded like I was a boy-hungry troll.
‘So when I kiss you it doesn’t mean anything?’ he asked incredulously.
‘It means something,’ I protested. ‘But it’s the other stuff that’s really special, like, hanging out and talking.’
Then Jack went really quiet and we walked along not saying anything until he suddenly hustled me behind a bus-stop and kissed me so thoroughly that I thought my heart was going to burst through my ribcage.
‘Was that special enough for you?’ he snarled before walking off.
21st February
Jack hasn’t spoken to me since seeing me kiss a strange boy and then pulling me behind a bus-stop to do unmentionable things to me.
But Edie is speaking to me. She called and asked if I wanted to go down and see her this weekend. Yeah! I can NOT wait to get out of this town. Jack is being so ridiculous and self-righteous. Like, if he’d ever bothered to stake his claim I might not have kissed other boys. Or I might have but I’d have probably felt much guiltier about it.
Also, Poppy has reached new levels of annoying. She’s written this song that has this weird chord in it that I can’t play. I bet she did it on purpose. And I think Darby and Atsuko are going to get me grounded (again!) if they keep forcing me to go out and Dylan’s still glary and Mum’s whiny and, honestly, Edie couldn’t have called at a better time.
25th February
I’m sitting on the London train and missing my English class. Go team me! Poppy got all aerated about me missing a rehearsal and my non-ability to get to grips with the new song. I don’t see why we can’t keep playing the three chords that we normally play. Why add a fourth chord just to make things more complicated?
I saw Jack in the canteen before I left. He was trying to play it cool and acting all nonchalant and avoidy so I let him. I do miss him though. I miss the being important to someone and even the kissing, after the kissing got good. Maybe I should get him a make-up present while I’m away?
26th February
Edie’s student friends are very intimidating. I can’t understand anything they say but Edie starts rolling her eyes when they start going off on one about ‘hidden subtexts’ and ‘feminist theory’. It’s weird seeing her in her new life. You can tell that everyone thinks she’s super cool. I think it’s because she always looks like she’s laughing at some private joke. But we sat on her bed and ate spaghetti on toast and talked and talked. And I told her about the business with Jack which she already knew courtesy of Dylan. She didn’t tell me off, which was good but even Edie couldn’t resist saying: ‘I told you so.’
I pretended not to understand and Edie sighed and arched her eyebrows. ‘Kisses always have consequences,’ she reminded me.
‘There wouldn’t have been any consequences if certain people hadn’t been there and now Jack’s never going to talk to me again,’ I grumbled. ‘He’s so angry with me and it’s not even that big of a deal. It’s not like we were boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘Are you mad at him for being mad at you or mad because you’re really into him?’ Edie wanted to know.
I didn’t know whether it was all of the above or none of the above and just thinking about it made me feel sad so Edie changed the subject.
27th February
I’m on my way back to Manchester. My head hurts due to drinking too much wine at this party Edie took me to. I don’t usually drink but someone shoved a cup in my hand and it just kinda kept getting filled. At the party everyone was snogging each other and then having a drink and snogging someone else. And there didn’t seem to be too many consequences going on either.
Edie spent most of the night being followed around by this guy called Alex who’s on her course. She was politely not interested at first but he wouldn’t leave her alone and kept trying to be all deep and saying, ‘You look like something out of a German expressionist movie, sweet Edie.’ And then Edie wasn’t so polite. It was quite funny actually.
There were lots of boys at the party and I was nervous about being too young and also being lame but none of them cared. All they wanted to do was tell me how great they were and then lunge at me. That was quite funny too. I felt as if I could be anyone I wanted to be because I was never going to see any of them again. So when this dreadlocked boy called Billy came over and asked if I was in his tutorial group I told him I was studying to be a zoologist and how I was doing an internship at the Elephant house at London Zoo. He tried to kiss me but his breath was beery and Edie came in and said that we were going. So we went. And now my mobile phone’s beeping.
r /> Oh my God! The message was from Atsuko: ‘Jack & Darby. Snogged! Call me!’ What the hell is going on?
1st March
I’ve texted Darby about a million times but she hasn’t replied! It’s hard to convey casual greetings and subtly hint about her foxing around with Jack via text message. Atsuko seems to have her phone switched off and even Poppy is being very avoidy. Like, I ask her when we’re having the next rehearsal and she’s all evasive and stuff.
3rd March
What have I done? I mean, am I such a bad person? My whole freaking life is falling apart. I hate them!