“Not really.”
“That means there is.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Who is she? Have I seen her? I bet it’s Grace Carey.”
“Grace Carey!” Rich concealed his amazement at Kitty’s insight. “Why Grace Carey?”
“Because she’s so pretty. It is, isn’t it?”
“I’m not saying.”
“So it is.”
“I’m not going on talking about it.”
“It is, it is, it is!”
Rich scowled and didn’t respond.
“Purples,” murmured Gran, watching a flurry of pigeons. They were purple, too, or at least a blue-gray on their breasts.
“So have you told her?” persisted Kitty.
“No, of course not.”
“You have talked to her, though.”
“Not exactly.”
“You’ve not talked to her?”
“Not much. No.”
“Oh, Rich!”
“Now you shut up about all this, Kitty. It’s none of your business.”
“Oo! Oo!” She danced about, pressing her hand to her mouth. “None of my business!”
Rich didn’t need Kitty to tell him how stupid he was being. His waking dreams were filled with thoughts of Grace. But still he made no move.
Alone in his room he wrote in his diary.
Why am I so afraid of rejection? One rejection doesn’t mean everyone will reject me for the rest of my life. Only Grace. Only the beautiful girls. Only the ones I want. So what happens if all the girls I want turn out not to want me? Then that’s it for the rest of my life. Second best. Always wondering what it would have been like to have first best. Fuck it. It’s too soon to give up on my life.
He sat and stared at the diary page. The obvious and only conclusion stared back at him. He had to try. He had to give it a shot, if only for his self-respect. He couldn’t go on in this fantasy love, walking into lampposts, having everyone laugh at him.
Piss or get off the pot.
But still he quailed at the thought of a direct approach. If only he could test her response from a distance. If only he could draw himself to her attention without any need for her to respond, so that any subsequent move he might make wouldn’t come as a complete surprise. He wrote again in his diary:
Bring back dragons. You put on your armor, name the lady you love, and go out and slay a dragon. When you come back with the dead dragon she has to love you. It’s understood. You know where you are. But where are the dragons when you need them?
Or I could find a friend to talk about me to Grace. That way, if there’s just no point at all, I don’t have to take the risk of talking to her myself. Plus it would start Grace off thinking about me.
For example, Maddy Fisher. Maddy and Grace are close.
The prospect of talking to Maddy Fisher didn’t frighten Rich at all. She was one of the few people in Mr. Pico’s English class who actually read the books they were studying. There, right away, was something they had in common.
So there was a plan.
He closed his diary and picked up his English homework. Time to respond to Matthew Arnold’s poem.
8
Maddy the go-between
Mr. Pico read out loud to the class from a single sheet of paper.
“The poet knows his love is hopeless but that does not stop him dreaming about her. His dreams make him happy. Waking hurts. But he would rather dream and be hurt than not love at all.”
The teacher folded up the sheet of paper, closed his eyes behind his thick lenses, and repeated:
“He would rather dream and be hurt.”
Everyone in the class was looking round at Rich Ross. He alone had his head bowed over his desk.
“That is a personal response to a poem, and a very insightful one. This writer is musing aloud about what the poet’s lines mean to him. That is all you have to do. Please, my friends, remember this. A poet is a person like you, living a life more like yours than you imagine, trying to put into words the feelings and ideas that come to him. A famous poet is someone who has done this so well that readers have responded, Yes, that’s how it is for me too.”
Maddy was impressed by what Rich had written. She had paid only passing attention to the poem herself. As a result she associated the feelings more with Rich than with the poet.
She and Cath were talking about it during break when Grace joined them. As Cath said, Grace seemed to be honoring them with her presence more often these days.
“I think it’s a bit sad,” said Cath about what Rich had written.
“I think it’s sick,” said Grace.
“Why’s it sick?” said Maddy. “Don’t you ever feel that way? Like you’d rather dream and be hurt than not love at all?”
“Are you saying I want to be hurt?”
“Chill out, Grace. I’m not saying anything, okay? We’re only talking.”
“It is all a bit creepy,” said Cath. “He’s got a sex manual that Pablo gave him.”
“Pablo gave it to him? How do you know?”
“Max told me. Rich is Pablo’s pet.”
“He must be gay,” said Grace.
“He doesn’t have to be,” said Maddy. “Though it’s true he doesn’t have a phone.”
“Maybe he can’t afford a phone.”
“He says he doesn’t want one.”
“He’s gay,” said Grace.
Maddy looked round. Rich was over by the Paddock with his friend Max. Because the others were being so hard on Rich she felt the urge to be nice to him.
“Well, I liked what he wrote,” she said. “I’m going to tell him so.”
She crossed the bald grass to Rich. He looked up as she approached, openly surprised that she was coming to speak to him.
“Hi,” she said. “How’s the bang on the head?”
“Fine now.” The bandage was gone.
“Was that your thing Pablo read out?”
“I wish he hadn’t.”
“It was good. I liked it.”
“I wish he hadn’t done that.”
He seemed about to say something more, but nothing came. She found herself taking in the detail of his face, and realized she had never looked at him properly before. His skin was very pale, his eyes a light hazel, and unexpectedly open, undefended. It would be easy to hurt him, she thought. Then came another thought: He doesn’t deserve to be hurt.
“So anyway,” she said. “Good for you.”
There seemed to be nothing more to say, but as she turned to go he called her back.
“Maddy?”
“Yes, Rich?”
“You’re friends with Grace, right?”
Maddy’s heart sank. Something in her had wanted to believe that Rich was different to the other boys. He was different, in some ways; but not this way, it seemed.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t really know,” said Maddy. “Why?”
“I was just wondering. She’s always going about by herself. I never see her with a boyfriend.” His eyes told her what he dared not put into words. “So I thought I’d ask you.”
“I think you have to ask her yourself, Rich.”
“Yes, I know.” He looked down. “Only, I’d rather not make a complete idiot of myself. If there’s no point.”
Maddy was quite sure there was no point at all. But she didn’t know how to say this to Rich without hurting his feelings.
“I’m not sure she’s ever thought of you that way,” she said.
“I’m sure she hasn’t.”
“She’s always saying the boys in our year are useless. Not you ’specially. Just all of them. I think she likes older boys.”
“The thing is,” said Rich, “I’m not really like the others.”
“No, I expect you aren’t.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve landed from some other planet. I know that makes me a bit strange. But maybe Grace would go for strange.”
Maybe she would, Maddy t
hought. It struck her for the first time that she had no idea at all who Grace would go for. Maybe she needed someone odd like Rich, but didn’t yet know it.
“If only she’d give me a chance,” said Rich wistfully. “Get to know me.”
“That’s the thing,” said Maddy. “She might not.”
“You could say something to her, maybe.”
Here we go again, thought Maddy. What is it about me that makes everyone pick me as their go-between?
“What would I say?”
“Anything, really. Just to get her past the first surprise. If you know someone’s thinking about you, you can’t help thinking a bit more about them.”
“You want me to tell her you’re thinking about her?”
“No. Not like that.”
“What then?”
“You could tell her I’m a genius.”
“Are you?”
“Well, I might be. A whole lot of unusual stuff goes on in my head. It might just be random clutter, of course.”
Suddenly he grinned, and Maddy grinned back.
“Don’t tell her that.”
“All right,” said Maddy. “I’ll tell her you’re a genius. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“I expect nothing and everything,” Rich said.
“That sounds like something you read in a book.”
“It is, in a way. It’s from my diary. But I wrote it.”
“Okay. Maybe you are a genius.”
“My diary’s full of stuff like that.”
“But only you get to read it.”
“Not even me. Once I’ve written it I never look back.”
“So what’s the point of writing it?”
“I don’t know, really.”
He gave a shrug that said, “What can you do?” Maddy found herself liking him.
“If you do talk to her about me, will you tell me what she says? Really truthfully?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You get to watch me blundering about and you feel superior.”
Again that wry grin.
“Okay,” said Maddy.
She returned to Cath and Grace, smiling to herself.
“What was that all about?” said Grace.
“It was about you.”
“Me?”
“He wants you to know he’s a genius.”
“Genius?” Grace almost snorted in her contempt. “He’s not a genius. He’s just gay.”
“I don’t think he is gay. He fancies you, for a start.”
“Yuk!” Grace shivered.
“So don’t you feel like getting to know him better?”
“Like I want a hole drilled in my head.”
Maddy felt this was unreasonable.
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“Except that he’s Pablo’s pet and reads sex books and doesn’t have a phone and hangs about looking sad. Give me a break, Maddy. I’m not that desperate.”
“Okay. Forget it.”
When Maddy got home after school she was annoyed to find Imo’s boyfriend, Alex, in the kitchen. He was sitting at the kitchen table half-heartedly doing the quick crossword.
“Hi, Maddy.”
“Hi, Alex.”
“So you heard the good news?”
“What good news?”
“The world isn’t going to be sucked into a giant black hole.”
“Oh, that.” Maddy had some dim notion that some nuclear experiment had been due to take place that morning, somewhere in Switzerland.
“They’re looking for the God particle,” said Alex.
“God’s a particle? That’s a bit of a let-down.”
Alex grinned.
“If you want Imo, she’s washing her hair.”
“Washing her hair? What, literally?”
“So it seems.”
Usually at this time of day Maddy had the kitchen to herself.
She always came home starving. Furtively, not watching herself, she would fill a bowl with porridge oats, add a large lump of butter and three tablespoonfuls of golden syrup, and put it in the microwave. Then all she had to do was stir and eat. It was a treat she looked forward to all afternoon.
There was no way she could spoon the sweet sticky mixture into her mouth under Alex’s lugubrious gaze. It looked too much like baby food.
“Want a cup of coffee or something, Alex?”
“No, thanks. We’re supposed to be going out.”
Maddy helped herself to two digestive biscuits as a temporary substitute. Imo appeared with a towel round her hair, turban-style, wearing a kimono bathrobe.
“I’ll be at least fifteen minutes,” she said. “You and Maddy can have a nice little chat.”
She shot Maddy a meaningful look and retreated back to her bedroom. Maddy resigned herself to her fate.
“So how’s things, Alex?” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “You know.”
“Haven’t you got fed up with Imo yet?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Oh, most of her boyfriends do. There’s something about Imo, I don’t know what it is, they get a certain way with her and then it’s like there isn’t any more. Like getting to the bottom of a milkshake.”
“Really?”
Maddy warmed to her theme. There was a lot she could say about Imo now she thought about it.
“I’m not saying Imo’s shallow. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s fear of intimacy.”
“She can be quite remote sometimes.”
“Almost like she wishes you weren’t there.”
“Almost.”
“That’s when her boyfriends usually dump her. Poor old Imo. It keeps on happening.” This was quite untrue, but Maddy was letting herself get carried away. “She thinks there might be something wrong with her.”
“Have there been many who’ve dumped her?”
“Well, they call it giving her space.”
“Doesn’t she mind?”
“Not at the time. She’s usually quite grateful. She’s quite weak herself. She needs people to take the hard decisions for her. She respects that a lot.”
“Yes. I suppose she would.”
“What she really hates are clingy people.”
“Clingy people?”
“You know. Weak boyfriends who let her kick them around.”
Alex said nothing to that. Maddy thought maybe she’d gone too far. But Alex seemed not to notice.
“So she’s had several boyfriends dump her?”
“At least four that I know of.”
Maddy told the lie with a straight face, hoping that Alex would find safety in numbers. Alex gave a deep sigh and rose from the kitchen table.
“Oh, well. That’s life, I suppose.”
Imo came back downstairs, now dressed and ready to go out.
“Let’s go if we’re going. This place is miles away.”
“Where are you going?” said Maddy.
“Some kind of do somewhere,” said Imo.
“It’s supposed to be very beautiful,” said Alex sadly. “Holkham. On the Norfolk coast.”
Left alone at last Maddy felt her spirits slump. She put this down to the lack of golden syrup oats. The shop would close soon and her mother would return to the house. She took another two digestive biscuits out of the packet and retreated to her room. Digestive biscuits were basically dull but if you ate them slowly they turned out to have some taste. Then she had an idea. She could spread them with lemon curd.
Alone in her room, trying to concentrate on the origins of the Cold War, she found her thoughts drifting back to the enigma of Joe Finnigan and Gemma Page. Joe was so acute and unusual, Gemma so blank and ordinary. How could he bear to have her trail round after him? Boys were supposed to be obsessed by sex, but it seemed to Maddy that it would be as uninteresting having sex with Gemma as it was having a conversation with her. But maybe sex was different. Maybe some people had a natural talent for it that you couldn’t spot in their
everyday lives. For something that was everywhere, in all the papers, on billboards, in every movie, sex somehow managed to remain hard to fathom. It couldn’t be as simple as big tits and short skirts. Could it?
Maddy struggled on with the Cold War for another half hour, then gave in and opened her laptop. There was no one on MSN she wanted to talk to. After a little while she felt cold, so she got into bed. In bed, she closed her eyes and curled up into a ball. Something deep inside her began to ache, but not like a hurt. Like an emptiness.
I don’t want to live in that world, she said to herself. She meant the world where the interesting boys chose the sexy girls, where Joe loved Gemma and Rich loved Grace. That was the victory of the obvious. If that was all there was to love, why bother with it? Love could be so much more. It could be so wonderful to be special to someone, as close as two people could be, telling each other everything, kissing because you wanted more than anything in the world to feel his lips on your lips.
Her phone rang. It was Cath to remind her they had a plan to meet later that evening and look at Internet porn.
“Let’s do it some other time,” said Maddy. “I’ve got too much reading to do.”
She wasn’t in the mood. You needed to be a little bit happy and a little bit drunk for porn, and she was neither.
9
The sex lives of teenagers
Cafés in bookshops were a terrible temptation. Behind the glass wall on the café counter, presented enticingly on sloping glass shelves as if eager to tip themselves into your hands, lay chocolate croissants, custard crowns, maple pecan plaits. Rich had not found a single book he wanted to buy, but the pastries called to him.
Then he realized that the hunched figure at the table before him was his English teacher. Mr. Pico sat alone, sipping a black coffee, intent on the pages of a thick volume.
Rich hesitated to speak to him, not wanting to interrupt his reading. But he was so close to him that it seemed ruder still to say nothing.
“Hello, sir.”
“What? Oh, hello.”
As always, Mr. Pico’s attention swam up from the depths to break surface in his thick-lensed glasses. He raised the book he was reading.
“I’m taking a look at the new translation of War and Peace. It’s supposed to be the first really authentic English version. Have you read any Tolstoy?”