The Worst of Me

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jonah said. ‘I’m not angry with you.’ He smiled at me. ‘I’ve loved being with you.’ He almost laughed. ‘I’ve had a nice time.’ He was making fun of himself, sounding like a child leaving a birthday party. ‘See you, Cass.’

  ‘It’s not you,’ I said.

  ‘I know, it’s not me, it’s you. It’s okay.’ Jonah started to walk away.

  ‘It’s not me! It’s your friends. It’s my friends.’ I took a breath. ‘I love you.’ The words sounded stupid, as if I was a bad actress reading lines, but I meant it. I think. I couldn’t get the outside me to say what the inside me felt, it was like I was trying to sabotage myself.

  He turned back to me. ‘Why do you care what people think?’

  ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know I want to be with you.’

  ‘Do you want to go out in secret?’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  He wasn’t laughing. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Well, then, I suppose we’ll have to just go back to the way we were. Because I can’t stand the alternative.’

  Jonah’s face right then was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen in my life. He looked so happy, and it was for me, it was about me, and I felt happy and sorry and excited and humble.

  ‘Come home with me?’ he said.

  ‘What am I going to tell my mum?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘There is that.’

  ‘It’s a school night. I shouldn’t even be here now.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He reached out and pushed my hair off my face. ‘I just think if I go now I’ll never get you back. You’ll forget how you feel and the next time we talk you’ll have made your mind up. But right now I still have a chance.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to change.’

  ‘It changes all the time. Not me. I know how I feel. But you don’t really feel the way I do.’

  ‘Why do you want that, then? That shouldn’t be enough.’

  ‘I don’t think I have a choice,’ Jonah said. ‘I can’t stand the alternative.’

  It was getting dark, and I had to go home.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ my mum said. ‘Tea’s ready. Listen, would you be okay for a couple of hours? I have to drive round to a colleague and pick up a load of paperwork because she’s not going to be in tomorrow and she was off sick today.’

  ‘Where’s Paul?’

  ‘Paul’s out this evening. Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘I’m sixteen. I could be living alone at my age. I could legally move out tomorrow,’ I said. I searched her face for a reaction to this. If she felt guilty it didn’t show.

  ‘I always worry about you,’ she said. ‘Tracey lives forty miles away, so I’ll be gone till at least nine.’

  ‘I’m fine!’

  ‘I’ve made your tea. It’s just ricey soup. Is that okay?’

  ‘It’s great, Mum.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll dash off now so I can be back as early as possible.’

  Before she’d even got in her car, I texted Jonah: Has your bus come yet?

  Jonah: On it now. Why?

  Me: Oh nothing then. Mum out for next 2 hrs ish. Alone, thought you might want to come round.

  Jonah: Getting off bus. Only gone 2 stops. Will run.

  Chapter 10

  I knew. I was looking out of the window, waiting for him, and when I saw the shape of his body, his walk with the slightly lowered left shoulder . . . I knew. I opened the door before he knocked and pulled at his arm, dragging him over the threshold.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I said. ‘My mum made soup.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  He held my face and kissed me hard, fast, so I couldn’t keep my balance, but he caught me in his other arm, and steadied me against the banister.

  ‘You can keep me a secret if you want,’ he whispered.

  ‘No way!’ I said, still kissing him. ‘I only go out with you because you’re easy on the eye. What’s the point of a secret trophy boyfriend?’

  We snogged in the hallway for a while and I was so excited and nervous I wanted to giggle. I led him upstairs and we sat on my bed and then everything seemed to slow down and I wasn’t sure what was going on. My stomach rumbled and I was embarrassed.

  ‘Maybe you should eat something,’ Jonah said.

  ‘I’m not hungry. Well, obviously parts of me would disagree with that, but I really don’t feel like eating.’ I leaned forwards and started kissing him again. ‘I think we should . . . right now . . . I think I want to go all the way,’ I whispered.

  ‘Cassidy,’ Jonah said. ‘We should talk about this first . . .’

  ‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘But your mum will be back.’

  ‘Not for ages.’

  ‘But if it happens, when it happens, I want to . . . you know, hold you. All night. I don’t want you throwing me out the door with my trousers over one arm.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I was suddenly mortified, as if he was calling me easy.

  ‘Don’t look like that. Do you think I don’t want this more than anything in my whole life? I’m just not used to you being so . . . direct, it’s a bit . . .’

  ‘It’s putting you off?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just want things to be, you know, I don’t want you to feel —’

  ‘This is all the time we ever have. I can’t stay with you, you can’t stay with me. This is . . . seriously, have I freaked you out? I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to say. You know I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t you? I’ve never . . .’

  I looked for reassurance and couldn’t find it. I’d killed the mood. Why hadn’t I stopped myself from talking? In the movies people didn’t talk, they didn’t try to arrange things like an over-eager puppy. They let the boy take the lead, or knew how to take the lead themselves.

  ‘This is my first time, too,’ Jonah said. He swallowed quite noisily, and I tried not to look as though I was bothered. In actual fact I was glad. It was nice, and I was relieved, but it terrified me too.

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘Well . . . it just is. My last girlfriend didn’t feel ready.’ He looked a little like Ian as he pressed his lips together shyly.

  ‘Oh.’

  Jonah laughed. ‘Don’t look like that. I have a fairly good idea of what I’m doing. It’s going to be okay.’

  It wasn’t okay. As soon as he started it hurt so much I wanted to cry. I thought I might be able to hold on, but I had to tell him to stop. I thought there must be something wrong with my body. Then I whispered that I was ready to try again, but I realised he was getting further away from me, in every sense, until he shook his head and rolled on to his back, lying with one arm on the pillow, looking at the ceiling.

  I lay next to him, shrinking as much as I could in my skinny little bed, staring at the posters on my walls. When my skin moved against his, I felt like I was bothering him and he probably couldn’t stand to be near me. I would have given anything to undo what had just happened. Maybe he was the right boy, but it hadn’t been the right time: I didn’t know him well enough. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I couldn’t laugh with him about things going wrong. I listened to him breathing and tried to make my breathing silent. If he’d gone another second without speaking I would have screamed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Your mum’s probably gonna be back pretty soon?’ Jonah said, and I realised he wanted an excuse to get dressed, and to get out. I didn’t want to be undressed any more either, but the clothes I’d taken off seemed too much a part of what had happened. They lay baggily all over my bedroom. I thought about my mum and felt sad, as if I’d lost some jewellery she’d given to me. Eugh, that sounds so naff! I don’t mean my virginity was like a jewel, or precious, I mean, it felt as though I’d lost something that mattered
to someone else too. I wasn’t sure I even had: I didn’t feel like a virgin any more, but I definitely didn’t feel like I wasn’t, either. I was desperate to talk about it, I wanted Jonah to say everything was fine, but he didn’t.

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t think she’s going to want to find me here.’

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, avoiding looking at me.

  I reached for my bra and put it on; it felt cold on my skin. Jonah threw on his T-shirt, putting both arms in before his head, the way boys do.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m really rubbish,’ I said. ‘I was expecting it to —’

  ‘Really, look, don’t be sorry,’ Jonah said. ‘Stop saying you’re sorry. I should go.’

  We kissed a little bit behind my closed front door, and when I opened it to let him out, he hooked my fingertips in his and gave me a sad little smile. I closed the door and watched him walking away, a reverse repeat of the moment when I saw him walking towards the house earlier in the evening, and I’d believed I could do anything.

  When he’d gone I ran the bath and cried in it, adding more hot water until my skin turned pink. I’d messed up the most important moment of my life.

  I was already out of the bath when my mum finally came home, carrying a huge pile of papers in a cardboard box. She dumped them on to the kitchen table and looked around.

  ‘Didn’t you have any soup?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yeah, I did, it was nice,’ I said.

  ‘Really, and you washed your bowl and spoon and put them back in the cupboard?’ she said. But she smiled.

  ‘I just ate some junk while I was on the internet,’ I said. ‘I’ll eat it tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not telling you off. I never said I was a good cook. Fortunately, we have Paul.’ My face must have fallen, because she stopped smiling. ‘I know . . .’ She sighed. ‘I know you . . .’ Stopped again. ‘I know you don’t . . . like Paul,’ she said. She looked up at me, and her nervousness freaked me out.

  ‘It’s not about me not liking him . . .’

  ‘And it kills me. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. If I let myself think about this, though, it is like someone has taken away all my breath and my stomach hurts and my heart hurts and I hate myself for making my little girl sad and I don’t know how I can go on being selfish.’

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘I think I just keep believing you’ll see him the way I do sooner or later. Because he is a good man, Cass, and he’s so good for me.’

  This just got me angry again, because at the heart of it, it was all about her and her feelings, and wanting me to agree with them, rather than her trying to see things my way.

  ‘Well, it’s not like I’m going to live here for ever, is it?’ I said, trying to make her feel guilty, but also, I think, trying to hurt her. I did believe that she loved me, and that having to think about losing me would make her sad, even if she wanted it sometimes. I felt wild and reckless, mainly because I was mad at myself for being stupid earlier and wanted to take it out on someone else. But also because I’d needed this conversation and imagined having it for so long that I almost had a script to work from, as long as my mum said everything she was supposed to say.

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ my mum said. ‘But I’m going to have to deal with that, and I’m going to have to be grown up about it.’

  I didn’t really know what she meant. There was a strange atmosphere between us, I had a kind of ache through my body because she wasn’t holding me, and I needed her to hold me. I kept imagining the feeling, the softening through my muscles, but I couldn’t go to her and couldn’t trust myself not to push her away if she tried to touch me – I felt prickly and sore-skinned. In a way, it was enough that she was there, and not telling me off. Her timing was so good I worried my face was giving something away. I had a million questions in my head, all shouting for attention at the same time, until I realised I wasn’t going to ask any of them.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like Paul, Mum,’ I said. ‘But I don’t really know him, and he talks to me as if we go all the way back. It’s hard to know how to take it. I don’t think I’m ever going to feel like I can talk to him like that.’ I could hear the way I sounded, cold and bored-sounding, and suddenly realised it wasn’t an affectation.

  I didn’t really care about Paul.

  This wasn’t about Paul being there, it was about my mum not being there. It made me so angry. I felt like she’d abandoned me without any warning, she’d just gone. Once, post-Dad, it had been the two of us, and we had been strong and amazing and loving. And all of that had ended almost in a flash, and Mum didn’t even seem to have noticed, or feel like she owed me anything, and maybe she didn’t. But we’d had it, it had been real, and now it was gone. Tiny little things that added up: the way she used to surprise me with little presents when she came back from shopping or baked me brownies. Not the things, even, the fact that I was on her mind. The way she used to come in at night and talk to me in my room until I started to drift off, the sound of her voice making me safe – even watching telly together, that almost never happened now. Gone. And I missed it and I needed it more than ever, especially tonight. I didn’t know if it was fair to resent her, because maybe she did deserve her own life back already, and she probably thought she could have both. I tried to stay angry, but feeling guilty kept getting in the way.

  And then she said: ‘You’ve already left me, haven’t you, Cass?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, you’re talking about leaving home, but you’ve checked out already.’ She looked so sad. I hated the way she let me see her sadness. It was frustrating because I knew I could be exactly the same way with her and let her know how bad I was feeling, but I kept so much hidden. So many times when I’d been hurt and lonely and hated Paul and even hated her, I went to my room and stayed quiet or poured things out to an anonymous talkboard, somewhere she’d never see it. She had no idea how much I felt. Like now, I so wanted to talk to her about love – and sex – as I knew so many of my friends did with their mums – but there was no way it was going to happen, she would have freaked out. She wanted me to be a grown-up when she talked about her relationships, she always said she thought I’d want to know the truth about what happened between her and my dad – as if by being honest she was doing me a favour – but there was no way she’d have been able to take me being the same way back.

  I didn’t have the energy to contradict what she’d said, but she was wrong. This evening I wasn’t ready to look after myself, I wanted my mum to be my mum, however she wanted to be. I walked around the kitchen table to her and put one arm around her. The whole time I was terrified she’d reject me, and she almost did, staying stiff and cool for a long time, but it was too late, I couldn’t stop now. Then I felt her arms around my shoulders and smelled that Mum smell that no one else smelled like, and I stayed very still, hoping she wouldn’t let me go.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning, I ran into Dee outside the school gates. She seemed to have been waiting for me, and looked stressed out.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re not going to like this,’ she said. ‘Well I hope you’re not going to like this.’ Her voice was tight and angry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know Nash’s friend Saira?’

  ‘I think so? Sixth-former, kind of big . . .’

  ‘Kind of big, yes. Very fat, but so what?’ She almost shouted this.

  ‘I was just checking we were talking about the same person. Come on, Dee, how long have you known me and I’m suddenly a bitchy fat-fascist?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, over a sigh. ‘I’m just worried about you.’

  ‘Why are you worried about me?’

  ‘Okay, so last week there was more of this stupid contemporary society or whatever it’s called discussion in Nash’s general studi
es class, and this time apparently Saira was defending the fact that she wears the hijab.’

  ‘Oh. What did they say?’ I said. I felt a sense of dread.

  ‘Nothing there. But she was seeing a film with some friends on Sunday, ran into your friends, and they were pissed, and Steve was like, “Thank God you’ve covered up your beauty or we’d be completely unable to stop ourselves from ravishing you!” and he came up to her and touched her.’

  ‘What do you mean, “touched her”?’

  ‘Look, no big deal, I don’t mean touched her up. Just put his arm around her waist. But it was horrible for her. She knows they’re taking the piss because she’s not pretty, and she’s the one who used the word “beauty” in the class, because that’s the line on the hijab, but to have to deal with pissed-up boys in the street – and she’s not great with boys, she was really scared – that kind of talk is frightening and threatening even if you’re not “pretty”, you know!’ She was furious now, talking faster than I’d ever heard her talk.

  ‘I didn’t say it, Dee!’

  ‘Saira said there was a girl with them.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, you think it was me? Saira knows me, doesn’t she?’

  ‘She wasn’t sure. The girl had curly hair.’

  ‘IT WASN’T ME!’

  ‘Well, is there a difference?’

  ‘What the hell? Is there a difference between all girls with curly hair? What?’

  ‘NO!’ Dee sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Cass. I just mean, what’s the difference between being the girl with them on Sunday night and being the girl with them tomorrow night?’

  ‘You can’t think that about me.’

  ‘No,’ she said, and she was nice, reassuring, pushing me to take her word. But I realised I was trembling.

  ‘Was Jonah there?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you ask?’

  ‘She said Steve and some mates and some girl. I can find out.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I can find out.’

  ‘Just find out everything. Be aware of what you’re into, and who you’re involved with, and know that people are talking.’