The Worst of Me

  ‘They’re not racists, Dee.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘It’s bullshit, isn’t it! It’s some kind of stupid showing off about how clever they are. They’re just parroting some books they’ve read.’

  ‘Well look, Cass,’ Dee said. ‘Ask yourself this: is it nice?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not nice.’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Is Saira going to tell someone at school?’

  ‘I doubt it. It’s not like she’s not used to hearing crap like that, worse, in the street. She only told Nash last night, and she told him because Nash hates them.’

  ‘Really, Nash hates them?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Is someone going to complain about them?’ I said.

  ‘Why do you keep asking that? Are you more worried about them being slapped down by the school than the fact that they’re doing it?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘There’s no point us talking about this any more. You know how I feel.’

  ‘Cassidy, I don’t,’ Dee said.

  I walked off. Not out of anger, I just couldn’t face her anymore, I was too depressed, I couldn’t make myself talk.

  I had to walk past the sixth-form block anyway, and I stopped outside it, looking up at the common-room window to see if I could see Jonah, but the windows were full of ads for the Moth Ball. I’d heard girls in my class discussing their costumes, some were going for those stupid sexy cat or slutty she-devil things, and in happier moments I’d been daydreaming about mine – something creepy and not so obvious. I’d been waiting for Jonah to ask me to come with him, but I guess I’d been giving him other things to think about. Now, if he asked, there was absolutely no way I would go.

  ‘Well, Miss O’Neill! Are you checking up on your husband?’ It was Steve, on his way into the block. ‘Would you like me to send him out to you?’ His eyes flicked from my face all the way up and down my body as if he was checking me out. I thought about him grabbing Saira, and how getting attention from the wrong boy can make you feel sick to your stomach.

  I was about to bleat something apologetic and run away. I remember avoiding looking at him, feeling small and flimsy. But then I forced myself to face him and saw his broad, not-quite-bearded face with that mocking, yellow, smoker’s grin and I knew I wasn’t scared of him, just furious. I had the urge to slap him and keep slapping him, could picture his cheek reddening with repeated slaps from the hardest part of my hand. I couldn’t remember ever being so angry.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ I said.

  ‘I’m pathetic?’ he said. I knew that people repeated things to buy themselves time when they didn’t know what to do, but his loud voice and laugh still made me wobble a bit. The fear was back, edging in on the anger, as I realised I didn’t have a plan.

  ‘I heard about what you said to Saira,’ I said. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  ‘You weren’t there, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Steve said. ‘And I’ve seen you laughing well enough when Joe’s made jokes like that.’

  ‘Never,’ I said, biting my lip hard to stress the word. ‘Was Joe . . . nah there?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Steve asked. His grin broadened, then he frowned in mock concern. ‘It seems to me you have some communication problems.’ Sensing an audience gathering around us – a couple of sixth-formers had stopped to listen – he added a more obvious insult: ‘Seems to me you’ve got problems full stop. I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘Was he there?’ I asked again, even though I knew it was stupid.

  ‘Ask him,’ Steve said and the door swung shut behind him.

  One crappy year’s difference in our ages, but I was the loser in school uniform standing outside in the cold, while Steve was the grown-up in a tweed coat closing the door in my face and going inside to laugh with the handful of friends he still had. It was nearly registration and I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I was halfway back to the senior block when I heard Jonah behind me, running to catch up.

  ‘Cassie, wait.’

  I sighed, and it hurt to breathe. ‘I can’t, I have to go.’

  ‘But we need to talk. Can’t you be late?’

  ‘No! We’ll talk at break.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He held out his hand to take mine, but I was gripping the strap of my bag and flinched away from him.

  He seemed different when we met up again a couple of hours later. Stronger, as though he’d used the time to prepare and had come back with a great case. We stood behind the gym, we didn’t have enough time to find anywhere more private. Some gymnastics fanatic kid was inside flipping around on parallel bars, and when we weren’t looking at each other – most of the time, in my case – we stared through the big windows at him. It was a strange backdrop, but I was glad of something to watch when the conversation was sticky.

  ‘From what I can make out,’ Jonah said, ‘Steve and Dom and Dom’s little brother and his girlfriend got into some kind of —’

  ‘From what I heard —’

  ‘Let me just . . .’ Jonah said, trailing off as if it was too much for him. ‘Let me just tell you how I heard it, then you tell me.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, coldly. ‘But we don’t have much time.’

  Telling people to hurry up with telling you something always slows them down.

  ‘Steve and Dom and Dom’s little brother —’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘No. Is that okay?’

  ‘It’s not,’ I said, ‘okay enough.’

  ‘It would have been better if I’d been there?’

  ‘It would have been easier if you’d been there. I wouldn’t be listening to whatever you’ve got to say next. But it’s not great even that you weren’t there, because —’

  ‘What, it’s lose either way?’ Jonah shouted. ‘If I was there, if I wasn’t there, it seems to piss you off just as much.’

  ‘BECAUSE,’ I went on, ‘you are going to bloody defend them and this time I know for sure they are not worth defending.’

  ‘Were you there?’ Jonah asked.

  ‘You know I wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about this!’

  ‘So why are you defending them?’

  ‘I haven’t said I am!’

  ‘We can’t do this now,’ I said.

  ‘I know. When?’

  ‘Well, lunch?’

  ‘This is stupid,’ Jonah said. ‘All these summit meetings where you tear strips off me. I understand that you’ve had a few problems with my friends fitting into your school, and that for some reason your friends have taken against us and this is a big deal to you. I mean, I know why it’s a big deal, not why your friends all hate me. But at some point, you have to ask yourself whether you need your friends to approve of who you’re going out with. And at some point you actually need to ask yourself whether you think I’m a total prick or not. And if you can’t honestly answer that, then maybe it’s best that we don’t go out at all. So look, we’re not going to meet at lunchtime, you’re just going to have to take my word that I am not a BNP supporter or someone who beats up women and old ladies in the street or kicks kittens in the face. And if you do take my word for it, you’re going to have to come and find me and tell me, and make me believe you. Because I literally can’t be arsed with this any more.’

  ‘What are you saying, then? You’re finishing with me?’

  He didn’t say anything, he seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. Then he sighed. ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

  I shut my eyes as he walked away from me. When I opened them again, the kid in the gym was throwing himself over the metal bars, his arms trembling with the tension. He stopped and looked straight at me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Isobel asked, when we were heading into French together. I wasn’t crying, I was just feeling dazed, and was surprised that something showed on my face. Maybe she’d seen us talking and looking serious, or seen Jonah walking away.
r />   ‘We broke up,’ I said, sitting down and taking books out of my bag. I lined my pens up carefully on the desk, as if it was important that they were exactly the same distance apart.

  ‘Oh, why?’ Isobel said, not sounding all that sympathetic. She leaned down to my desk, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. ‘Well, look, maybe I heard something about some of it from Ian already. Maybe you don’t want to go into it. I don’t know him, but I think you did the right thing.’

  ‘Actually, he broke up with me,’ I said. This was true, but not all of what had happened. I just wanted Isobel to consider the fact that I might be shocked and hurt, because I was both. If I’d been the one to end things, she would have just thought I was angry.

  ‘Oh,’ Isobel said. She threw her bag and coat on the chair next to Finian behind me, but leaned back to me again. ‘If you want to talk about it . . . we could go for a panini at lunch, or call me this evening?’

  I did want to talk about it, but I had someone else in mind. Still, now that I’d told Isobel, I didn’t have to tell anyone else in my year.

  At lunchtime I was getting panicky because I couldn’t find Sam anywhere, and then I remembered it was school band practice today, so he’d have brought in his clarinet. I found him changing a broken reed in one of the little music rooms. It was the perfect place to talk, as long as he kept putting out the odd tune to prove the room was occupied. We sat down on the carpet together.

  ‘I wish you were still in the band,’ he said. ‘Clarinets have got sexist since you left. They spend too much of the time making lewd remarks about flutes and oboes and I don’t feel equipped to join in.’

  ‘Have you heard the news?’ I said. ‘Jonah dumped me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think it was because I kept breaking things off or nearly breaking things off and we were always in this are-we-broken-up? state.’

  ‘That’s not enough to put a bloke off. On the contrary, some of us live for that state.’

  ‘The other thing he seemed angriest about was that, underneath it all, I didn’t trust him to be a nice guy in the face of the gossip and accusations.’ When I said it out loud I knew that it was true, I didn’t trust him at all. It made me feel horrible, not because I should have believed in him, but because I knew part of me didn’t care whether he’d been a racist or not. I would have forgiven him anything. If he’d said what I needed to hear – and before you ask, no, I don’t know what that might have been – I wouldn’t have cared if he’d been part of Steve’s gang that night, or what he thought about Islam or any of it. I just wouldn’t.

  ‘You can see his point,’ Sam said. ‘Why were you going out with him if you didn’t trust him?’

  Because I wasn’t a nice enough person to care about it? ‘You’re on his side.’

  ‘Obviously not. If there are sides, I would punch him for you. Or speak to him harshly, anyway. I just want to understand the difference between the Jonah you thought was a dreamy boyfriend —’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ I said limply.

  ‘I’m not. Really. I need to know the difference between that Jonah, and the one where you’re willing to believe the worst of him. What does he do that makes it worth it?’

  ‘He feels like my first real boy. Ian has always been around, he was just part of the phenomenon where everyone in our school eventually goes out with everyone else in our school. Jonah was the first person who made me feel that there might be someone in the world who thought I was worth it. He listens to me, he seems excited if I agree with him, as if I’m someone you’d want to be agreed with by! That feels nicer than you can imagine.’

  ‘No, I can imagine.’

  ‘And it was like, by not knowing anything about me, he was better at getting the real me. The me I’d always hoped was real.’

  ‘So for you it was all about him understanding you, whether or not you felt you knew him?’ Sam asked.

  I wondered if he meant this was bad. ‘If someone really knows you, it’s like they signed up to you with full knowledge of what they were getting. So they won’t ever be disappointed.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ Sam said. ‘People don’t get divorced after ten years because they suddenly realise what the person is like.’

  ‘What about my mum? She found out her husband had a kid with another woman!’

  ‘Fair point.’ He stood up on his knees and started playing ‘Maria’ from West Side Story. His eyes smiled at me over his tightened lips. He finished off with a couple of scales, then he stopped and sat down with me again. ‘Someone walked past. Look, Cass, I’m not going to persuade you of anything, but I’ve known you for a few years, and I keep finding you more adorable.’

  It was one of those times I really wished I could have given him a hug.

  ‘Anything happening with that boy you’re in love with? Rashad?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing whatsoever. No awkwardness, no arguments, no excuses, none of the things that are giving you so much grief right now. The perfect relationship.’

  ‘But none of the nice things either,’ I said.

  ‘It’s so much better this way,’ Sam said. He pushed my shoulder gently with his shoulder, and the contact was so unexpected I jumped. ‘You’re going to love it.’

  ‘Oh God, I don’t have a boyfriend!’ I said, mock-wailing. We both laughed.

  ‘Are you okay, though?’ Sam said gently.

  ‘I am now. I may not be when I get home.’

  ‘And when you’re not, give me a ring.’

  Chapter 12

  My girl friends were being carefully tactful around me, emailing me funny YouTube sitcom clips about breakups, stopping to chat after school, just talking a lot more – so I found myself talking a lot more. The difference was so noticeable and sudden it made me wonder how many people had actually not been talking to me when I was going out with Jonah. Maybe I’d just been charging around not needing anyone, swept up in my world with him.

  Most conversations were about the Moth Ball. Everyone I knew had tickets, even the fifteen-year-olds. They knew there’d be teachers there, I suppose they just thought they’d brazen it out or wear enough Halloween make-up to be unrecognisable. The issue was clear cut for me: I was sixteen already, and I definitely wasn’t going.

  On Friday morning, Isobel asked me a couple of times if I’d come to her house for a pizza that evening. I said no first, and then I said really no, and after you’ve said no twice it’s quite hard to say yes. I thought there was no way of going without making an entrance when I arrived, because my story was possibly the best gossip of the week. But I didn’t want to spend Friday night with my mum and Paul either. So I just came out and asked Isobel, on the way out of school.

  ‘Tonight: is the offer still open?’ I asked, and I’m not sure why, but I was bracing myself, even though she wasn’t likely to laugh in my face.

  ‘Oh, yeah of course!’ Isobel said. ‘Okay, I’ll see you tonight, then! Fantastic that you can make it! Bring chocolate!’ We started walking in opposite directions, and then I heard Isobel call, ‘By the way, Josette’ll be there.’

  Josette was just a reminder that life hadn’t gone quite back to pre-Jonah normal, and it was cool of Isobel to give me the warning – not because I had a problem with Josette, just because she understood me and knew it made a difference. I would be among friends, but I might not be relaxed enough to talk – on the other hand, the evening wouldn’t be all about me, now, which was good.

  I turned up a little bit early because I wanted to be the first there. Isobel and I sat in the kitchen with her mum and dad while they ate their dinner, and they let us drink some of their wine. Isobel’s mum asked about my mum, and Isobel’s dad told boring stories about the time he worked for my mum’s company. Even though I hated the taste of wine, I sipped it a lot because I had nothing to say, and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast so I was light-headed by the time the other girls had turned up. We all crowded around Isobel’s computer, looking up boy
s from school through their Facebook pages, leaving comments on their photographs. I felt slightly outside of my body, not really joining in the laughter, or the apparent bump in excitement of talking to someone we could talk to any day of the week in real life, just because it was through the internet. I thought about Jonah all the time, whether he’d be embarrassed by the way I was acting and the crowd I was with – which was a bit crazy given that we broke up over whether I was ashamed of him. I missed him, even though I might still have been there even if we hadn’t broken up. And I missed the person I’d been with him.

  But I was a bit interesting to other people now, I had a break-up story to tell, and my friends did want to hear it.

  ‘I heard he broke up with you?’ Finian said, and Isobel blushed, because who else could she have heard it from?

  ‘It’s not a big secret,’ I said, to get Isobel off the hook. ‘I think he thought I was messing him around a bit.’

  ‘Did you . . . did he want to go further than you?’ Finian asked.

  ‘No, it was nothing to do with that,’ I said.

  ‘How far did you go?’ asked Finian.

  A smile broke out on my face without me meaning it to. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘How come?’ Josette said, and I turned to look at her face for a moment. I realised how much I’d needed female friends around me. All the attention from guys and blokey talk had been great fun and very flattering, but guys didn’t talk the same way as us. I knew this was the wrong thing to do . . . but I started telling them the story of our unsuccessful attempt to go all the way. I needed to tell someone. Maybe telling everyone wasn’t smart, but at the time I really wanted to. Their reactions were great, I got seduced by the way it seemed to make them accept me back into the inner circle, the way that sharing a secret with other people can make them trust you.

  I think Isobel must have told Ian I’d be there that evening, because he didn’t come in to chat with us, probably hoping to avoid a repeat of the last time when he’d been drunk and started dissing Jonah. I didn’t know he was home until I went to the loo and ran into Sophie, Ian’s too-good-to-be-true girlfriend, who was coming out. Ooh, go to the loo, do you? I thought childishly. We both said ‘hi’ shyly at the same time. When I went back into Isobel’s bedroom, I suddenly realised I was sad. My energy was gone and I couldn’t talk or pretend to laugh any more. It wasn’t the fact that Sophie was Ian’s girlfriend, it was that she was anyone’s girlfriend. She was here with a boy who was crazy about her. She would have rushed in to tell him about bumping into his ex, and they’d giggle over how embarrassing it had been (not nastily) and talk in whispers.