‘Well,’ I said. ‘I really wasn’t.’ And I even put some comedy sulkiness into my voice, on purpose, as if maybe there had been a bit of that, me being a teenager, all difficult and angry.
‘It’s hard for Paul to know how to talk to you,’ Mum said. She made herself busy filling the fridge, and she didn’t look at me once. ‘He’s afraid of coming on too much. He knows he’s not your dad.’
‘He doesn’t have to try to be,’ I said. My mum shoved at an overstuffed freezer drawer and the noise it made was like fingernails down a blackboard.
‘Do you want to talk about this new boy?’ she said.
I laughed. ‘No!’
She turned away, looking hurt.
‘Well what do you want to know? I told you his name, where he’s from, what he looks like. That he’s nice. That it’s really early days!’
‘I don’t know how I should talk to you about boys,’ she said, and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I didn’t have a mother at your age. I don’t know what everyone else is doing. What is everyone else doing?’
I poured her a cup of tea and sat down too. She sipped the tea quietly.
‘I think they do it the same way you do,’ I said. ‘It’s like you said, it’s hard when Paul talks to me.’
‘Are you seeing him again tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t even asked me if you can!’
I felt the rage rising in me again. It was the way she made it like a game, and only she knew the rules. Sometimes we were grown up and talking together like friends, then in an instant things changed and I had to remember that we were not equal at all.
‘You asked me if I was seeing him again tonight. I should have said that I wanted to see him again tonight. Will that be okay?’
‘What’s his name again?’
‘Jonah.’
‘I know that. Jonah what?’
‘Jonah Brooks. Are you going to google him?’ Every time I made a joke I knew she might take it the wrong way – but I kept trying, because I wanted her to loosen up.
‘I probably will, actually,’ she said, not making a joke, but aware that it sounded like one. The older I got, the more I understood my mum’s sense of humour. She hardly ever laughed but she often said funny things, knowing they were funny to other people, and liked it when they laughed. ‘Do you want to bring him round? You can sit downstairs with him, I’ll stay upstairs. I won’t embarrass you.’
‘We’re meeting up with his friends,’ I said. ‘I can’t bring them all round here.’
‘Hmm,’ my mum said. ‘All boys again?’
‘Probably.’
‘Just be careful with boys. When they’re all together, they make their own rules.’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’
She sighed, as if I was wearing her down. ‘It just means, be careful.’
I was feeling triumphant when I called her later that evening. The five of us: me, Steve, Lewis and Dom, and Jonah, had opted to go to Jonah’s house. A big house, on a street full of big houses, quiet outside, posh and lovely inside. We were drinking red wine with his parents while his ten-year-old sister, Lucy, made everyone laugh by insulting her big brother and doing impressions of him. Jonah’s dad said he’d give me a lift home, and his mum asked if I wanted to let my mum know because she might let me stay out later.
‘We’ll all talk loudly in the background when she picks up,’ Jonah’s mum said. ‘So she’ll know it’s true and you’re safe, and not necking in a park with a bottle of alcopops.’
I must have blushed, because she said sorry and smiled even more. She wasn’t very like my mum – she was warm and confident, but scary too.
My mum answered her phone and agreed to letting me stay till midnight, asking about five times if that would be okay with Jonah’s dad. She sounded very timid, as if she could tell I was with posh people just from the way her phone had rung.
‘Which film are you going to watch, anyway?’ Jonah’s dad said. ‘I could let you have something that will actually change your lives, something genuinely good, you know?’
‘We’re always very grateful for your recommendations, Mr B,’ Steve said. ‘But I don’t think we should watch porn when Cassidy’s here.’
They all laughed, Jonah’s dad the loudest. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him, Cassidy,’ he bellowed. ‘I’m talking about Godard, maybe The Godfather. Something that will educate these hoodies. I’m afraid you’re not likely to get anything improving from them.’
‘Actually, we met Cassidy at a clever film,’ Jonah said.
‘Go in by mistake, did you?’ his dad said. He turned to me. ‘You probably had to explain the plot to them.’ I paused, starting to smile, while the guys exploded with laughter around me. ‘You did?’ Jonah’s dad said. ‘Ha-haaaa!’
It was nice, genuinely funny, but in some ways the friendliness was as full-on as Paul’s awkward, forced strictness was at my house, and I could have done with less attention. I was relieved when the guys moved into a room they called the den, leaving the grown-ups and cute little sis behind. There was a massive telly and Blu-ray in there, and Jonah’s mum had given us plates of bread and cheese, olives and ham and sausagey things to eat. There were two sofas making an L-shape in one corner. Jonah and I took one, Steve and Dom took another, and Lewis sat on the floor in front of them, leaning against their sofa. Jonah put his arm round me straight away, and maybe no one noticed or maybe no one cared. Dom put a horror film on and there was silence for the first twenty minutes. Then Steve said something funny, then Jonah said something funny, and after that they all commented most of the time. I was happy for them to talk over the film because it was really scary, and I was glad I wasn’t getting a bus home.
We sneaked in a couple of cheeky little snogs at the most gory moments, but mostly we just held hands and joined in with the joking. There was a lovely mellow vibe. It made me feel like part of a long-standing couple, the way things had been at Isobel’s house when Ian joined me and my mates. Better, though. These people were letting me pretend to be someone I’d never been before, someone quicker and braver and prettier and better. I even seemed to be getting away with it.
Chapter 5
‘So what’s with the Cinderella story?’ Sam said. ‘The last time I talked to you you were moping around, not being invited to the ball.’
Hmm, freaky! Jonah had called me Cinderella because I had to go home too early. This was a sign, or something. ‘I know,’ I said.
‘These plastic chairs are really uncomfortable.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ I’d taken Sam to the café in the record shop where Jonah and I had gone on our first proper date. ‘I’ve only just discovered this place, I thought it was cute.’ I noticed that the cake was dry and the coffee had been brought to the table already cold. Things were always worse when you recommended them to other people.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Sam said. ‘With a guy I thought might be straight and confused, but wasn’t: he was definitely gay. And definitely didn’t want me. Did you come here with Jonah?’
‘Oh, Sam,’ I said. He always skimmed over his romantic failures, and if I pressed him about them, he made a joke and changed the subject. ‘And yes, Jonah brought me here on Friday. I’ve never been in before, I thought it was just a record shop.’
‘So he’s a bit of an indie kid?’
‘No, you definitely wouldn’t say that if you saw him.’
‘What is he, then?’
‘Not everyone belongs to some kind of tribal category,’ I said, comedy-scolding him. ‘I think Jonah’s really too mature to be put into —’
Sam laughed.
‘All right, when I say mature, I just mean . . . he talks about real things, you know, the world, politics, not just —’
‘But you don’t!’ Sam said. ‘What are you talking about when he’s talking about the world and politics?’
‘Oh shut up!’ I laughed. ‘I?
??m listening. He’s good for me.’
‘Do you really like him? Or are you just trying to improve yourself while you’re getting over Ian?’
I thought about Jonah. His sexy, gorgeous, film-star face, the way he seemed to have been designed for me to hold, to walk with, exactly the right shape and size for me. My head got light and fizzy, like lemonade sparkling in sunshine, and my lips pulled back in a smile so silly and wide that I tried to fight it.
‘OK, you don’t have to look so happy,’ Sam said. ‘I had about ten minutes of you being my fellow sad single friend, it’s not fair.’
‘You had all summer!’
He talked over me. ‘I don’t want to hear it. Don’t tell me. But I do want to meet him. You said he’s got rugger-bugger mates, though – aren’t they usually homophobic? The kind of homophobic who take naked showers together, wear each others pants on their faces and call me a shirtlifter?’
‘I said Dom looked like a rugby player, I don’t know if he plays it, though. Look, Jonah’s got sweary, liberal parents, they gave us wine to drink, they’re the kind of people my mum’s boyfriend would be terrified by. I think the one thing I can count on Jonah being is politically correct.’ My phone beeped with a text. I glanced at it. Fron Jonah. I tried not to smile.
Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Ughh, don’t show me, don’t tell me, I don’t want to see it. What’s he saying? Miss you already? Ooh you’re such a good kisser? I heart you?’
I grinned and said nothing. He glanced at me and I rolled my eyes.
Sam laughed. ‘Let me see.’
* * *
Monday morning was the next test. We were definitely a couple now, and that was never an easy thing to debut in a school setting. I was eating breakfast in the kitchen, distractedly watching telly programmes made for tiny kids. The same ad for hideous sparkly pink shoes had appeared in every single break, and its weird little jingle was starting to feel like part of my brain tissue. My mobile rang in the living room. My mum didn’t seem to hear it, she was eating toast and reading the Daily Mail.
‘How about,’ said Jonah’s voice, ‘meeting up now-ish, and we can get each other out of our systems before we have to go into school and mostly ignore each other?’
Happy, sad, amused, confused. Oh, and lustful. But if I was going to meet Jonah before school I wasn’t going to waste time getting clarification on the phone. I didn’t have any make-up on yet.
‘Mum, I’m gonna set off now and get in early,’ I called. I drew hasty kohl lines around my eyes, then added lipstick, blotted with my fingers and rubbed the excess on my cheeks. A smudged coat of mascara. The light in the living room was flattering, it looked good enough.
My mum came in. ‘How come?’ she said.
‘That was Isobel on the phone, she left her jotter in her locker, she hasn’t done her physics homework,’ I said. ‘She needs to borrow my notes, so she can try and do it before first period. I’m gonna go and meet her for a coffee.’
She yawned for a long time. ‘Cassie?’ she said.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘I love you, sweetheart.’
I stopped throwing stuff in my bag so that she wouldn’t think I was being dismissive or rude, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. We both heard the door bang upstairs as Paul came out of the shower. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I have to go,’ I said, shaking my head. I didn’t lie to my mum very much, and there was really no reason to lie to her that morning. I just had a feeling it’d make things easier.
Jonah had called me from the bus and I actually got to the stop before he did.
‘You’re always early!’ he said. ‘You make me worry that I’m late.’ We held each other’s fingertips and I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘So we’ve got half an hour,’ he said, softly. ‘Let’s go mad with it.’
We walked down the hill to the school entrance, Jonah’s arm curled around my waist and me holding his hand.
‘I think I have to apologise for my dad’s terrible jokes when he gave you a lift home the other night. I . . . think I must have been adopted, it’s the only explanation.’
‘Your dad’s great,’ I said. ‘Both your parents are. You have no idea!’
‘Everyone thinks the worst about their parents.’
I shrugged. ‘Some parents don’t give you much to be positive about.’ I worried I sounded too dark and miserable, so I smiled. ‘Yours are cool, believe me.’
We reached the school gates, and paused.
‘Shall we go in?’ Jonah said.
‘It’s not even ten to eight.’
‘They let you in, though.’
‘Well, not in the building.’
‘Yeah, I think in the building.’
‘But, we’re not allowed in the building. And where would we go anyway?’
Jonah grinned. ‘It’s cold out here. Warm in there.’
‘But . . .’
‘We could lurk inside the sixth-form block? The study library’s open.’
‘Oh noooo. What if I get stuck there when people start coming in? And they see me and think I’m a serial sixth-form groupie?’
Jonah clasped my hand and pulled me forwards.
‘We’ll start at the other end, then,’ he said, and we slipped into the first entrance to the junior high school. It was the oldest school building, made in Victorian times, with lots of long corridors and dark recesses to hide in.
‘This is worse!’ I whispered, as the doors closed behind us and we got used to the warmth and silence. ‘Neither of us has any reason to be here.’
Jonah pushed me against the wall. ‘Shhh.’ He kissed me. Oh wow. And in conclusion, the point of kissing is there is nothing else on earth that feels that good. I know, whatever, there are other feelings that get good reviews. But kissing, great kissing? Accept no imitations.
We heard footsteps and Jonah pushed me again, into the dark shadow behind a wide, curling staircase. He held me there while my heart raced. A couple of Year 7 kids ran up the stairs swearing in that weird aggressive way they have of swearing, as if they think that sticks and stones are one thing but these words really can hurt people. When they’d gone, I made a move out of the stairs, but felt a sharp tug on the front of my shirt, as Jonah pulled me back. And then I was leaning against a wall again . . .
Quite a bit too much later, we emerged again, encountering a swarm of juniors who stared, but not all that suspiciously. The seniors’ classrooms were in the building next door, but Jonah had further to go to the sixth-form block. I gave him a little shove in the chest, and, wordlessly, looking happy and ruffled, he went. I straightened my own shirt, and trying to keep the smile off my face, headed to registration.
Almost every day that week, I had lunch with Jonah and his mates in a greasy-spoon café a couple of streets from the school. Just like the cinema where I’d first met them, this wasn’t really a school hang out, they seemed to find places that were stranger, with older people. It added to the feeling that I’d moved on to a new chapter of my life. If they minded a girl muscling in, a younger girl, too, they didn’t show it. We always started off quietly and ended up very loud, making each other laugh, talking about serious things. The conversations I was having with my old friends now seemed impossibly stupid, and it sometimes made me angry: soap operas, calories, film stars’ bodies. Just this endless rating of famous women – who was pretty, who was desperate, who was up her own arse. And Jonah’s mates agreed with me about how pointless and destructive it was. The guys in my year would have rated the women we talked about on a different scale: whether or not they’d deign to have sex with them, with real outrage reserved for the imaginary attempts the not-hot-enough ones might make to seduce them. It felt weird talking to guys and not having to brace myself for the inevitable sexist attitudes.
But while they were expanding my horizons, they weren’t making a lot of friends. They told me about the general studies lessons and the follow-up forum discussions, Sam Bond pupils breaking out into capital
s, getting riled and threatening, and how weird it was that the school thought that was healthy discussion. But it didn’t bother them, they thought it was funny. For instance, apparently some vicar’s son had been arguing with them about people’s right to believe in creationism.
‘Except we are right,’ Steve said, laughing. ‘We have evidence, honest-to-goodness, hold-it-in-your-hands-and-feel-the-weight-of-it evidence.’
‘Meanwhile they come back with stuff about Noah’s Ark washing away all the proof and . . . uh . . . resetting radio-carbon dating, or something?’ Dom said.
‘They have a book,’ said Steve. ‘Poorly translated and hugely manipulated over several thousand years. Oh, and faith. Bollocks to faith. I'd rather get hit in the head by faith than a dinosaur bone.’
‘A six-thousand-year-old dinosaur bone,’ Lewis said, and they all laughed.
‘This guy doesn’t even believe in creationism,’ Jonah said. ‘He’s just saying it’s a good thing if people believe these fairy tales, because he says they need to believe life has meaning and that’s where it gets really dangerous.’
‘But why is it dangerous?’ I said. I liked to ask questions. I was still weighing everything up. I honestly didn’t have an opinion most of the time, I wasn’t playing dumb. ‘I would like to believe life had meaning.’
Jonah gave me a little smile. ‘Because when people are allowed to use religion to explain history, they’re allowed to use it to judge behaviour, and to enforce behaviour, and those books, those stories that someone made up, can be reread by any psychopath to say anything from abortion is always wrong, to women shouldn’t be educated, to —’
‘Oh, Sharia law, that’s what they want,’ said a workman at the next table. He had a quite high voice, and it temporarily silenced my friends and seemed to echo for a moment in the café. He seemed to wait for an answer before he tried again. ‘They’d like to make us cut people’s hands off and put women in tablecloths,’ he said. ‘I mean, the cutting people’s hands off is one thing – cheaper than prisons I suppose, but women in tablecloths? Wouldn’t like that much!’ Then he laughed. And we laughed too, sort of pretending it was at whatever he was laughing at, but we all met each other’s eyes and I had to stick my fingernails into my palms so I didn’t just howl.