French Kiss

by Sarra Manning

  Then, talk of the devil, Dylan walked past our park bench. He was wearing his scuffed-up suede jacket and jeans. He glanced at me and then quickly looked away like he didn’t even know me. Which I am so sick of. Is that all it’s ever going to be? That he kisses me senseless then ignores me?

  I was going to bunk Photography but I bumped into Martyn. Luckily he wanted me to help him set up a slide projector and operate the clicker so I kept away from Dylan all lesson. But at the end, as I walked past him, he seized my wrist.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ he hissed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Saw you getting cosy with Nat in the park,’ he said, his face flushing.

  ‘Why, are you jealous?’ I had the guts to say, before tugging my arm away and walking off.

  He has no right to start acting like he cares about what I do with my life.

  25th November

  Mum let me take the day off college so we could go to Selfridges in the Trafford Centre to pick up stuff for my newly-decorated room. We had a blazing row in soft furnishings ’cause she reckoned that the Cath Kidston shabby-chic cushions I wanted were too expensive. Then she got all weepy about me leaving home to go to university in, like, two years and let me choose this cool café for lunch. I was just investigating the inside of my jacket potato when all the hairs on the back of my neck prickled as if someone was watching me. I swivelled round to see Dylan staring at me from another table.

  My mum was wittering on about something and Dylan lifted up his coffee cup and gave me an ironic salute. It was awful. Mum wouldn’t shut up and I was terrified/desperate (still haven’t decided which) for Dylan to come over. I persuaded her to let me go off for half an hour.

  As I walked out of the door, I knew Dylan was following me. My heart was beating really fast as he drew level with me and pulled me into an alley. We both reached for each other and then we were kissing like it was the end of the world. By the time I pulled away my lips were sore.

  ‘You’re just a kiss slut,’ he sneered and then walked off.

  What a creep! I caught up with him and punched him on the shoulder so hard that I yowled and had to suck on my knuckles because they hurt. Dylan turned round and looked at me with that horrible smirky expression of his that I hate but it disappeared pretty quickly when I shouted, ‘Stay the hell out of my life!’ right in his face. And the weird thing is that for about five minutes I really meant it, but as I wandered off, all quivery and tearful, to M&S to find The Mothership, I was like, what was I thinking of?

  26th November

  I refused to go to college today. I just can’t face Dylan because I’ll want to kiss him. And I can’t face Shona ’cause she doesn’t want to be my friend any more. And I can’t face Mia because she’s a demon from the seventh layer of hell.

  I had my ‘teen angst, do not disturb’ face on, so Mum didn’t argue when I slumped in front of Daybreak and refused to budge.

  27th November

  Skived off college again. Mum asked if I was ill and I was just like, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ But later her and Dad ganged up on me and I got the whole, ‘You know you can talk to us about anything’ routine. They’ve got to be joking.

  30th November

  I managed to muster the energy to go to college. It was either that or face another lecture. I wore all black because it matched my mood and walked around with a scowl on my face as if to say, ‘OK, you losers, so you don’t like me? So what?’

  I saw Dylan sitting in the canteen with Simon and Paul. I sat with my back to him, so I wasn’t even tempted to look. Then the strangest thing happened. Mia suddenly plonked herself down next to me and started chatting as if we were the best of friends. I was so shocked I could barely speak. She was blathering on about some band that were playing on the weekend when I interrupted her. ‘Uh, last time I saw you, you practically tried to beat me up.’

  She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I was only mucking about. Anyway I heard on the vine that you and Dylan were finished.’

  I smiled sweetly even though I felt like throttling her. ‘And who said we ever got started?’

  ‘But I thought…’ Hah! That took the smarmy smile off her face.

  ‘A few sloppy kisses doesn’t make a relationship,’ I snapped. ‘So are you going to tell me why you’ve been slagging me off to the entire college?’

  She had the grace to look embarrassed about that. ‘Oh. Dylan and I have got unfinished business and there’s all this stuff going on with Paul and Shona and me.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Mia?’

  She smiled nastily. ‘Oh, Edie finally gets a clue! Everyone knows that Dylan and I had this really heavy thing going until Paul totally fell in love with me. Dylan was absolutely gutted but he understood that he had to let me go but Shona has this stupid crush on Paul. She, like, tries to throw herself at him and he’s beyond mortified and just wants her off his back. So I told her you weren’t really into Dylan, you were just using him to get close to Paul, so she’d come after you instead. Like, he walked you home once, didn’t he?’

  ‘YOU DID WHAT?’ I screamed at her. I didn’t even care that the whole canteen could hear.

  ‘Clever wasn’t it?’

  I was overcome with a murderous rage. I yanked her out of the chair by her lapels. She stopped looking so smug.

  ‘You evil cow,’ I hissed at her. ‘Thanks for ruining my life.’ I suddenly let go of her and she sank back into her seat.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she sneered. ‘As if Dylan’d fancy a kid like you. He just wanted to make me jealous. He told me that you’d be all right once puberty kicked in and…’

  ‘Why don’t you shut the hell up, Mia,’ said Dylan from somewhere behind me.

  I turned round to glare at him. He glared right back at me. In my head I see him in soft focus but when he’s standing in front of me he’s all hard lines and angles.

  ‘I was only letting Edie know the gossip,’ Mia laughed. ‘She told me some interesting things about you too. Like, you’re a “sloppy kisser”…’

  I got out of there. Sharpish.

  1st December

  Everything makes sense now. How could I have been so stupid? I love Dylan. Dylan loves Mia. Mia loves Paul. So does Shona. But what really hurts is that Dylan’s been stringing me along; using me to make Mia jealous. I just want to curl up and die. I can’t bear to feel like this. I told Mum that I wasn’t going back to college. I’d have to do A-levels with a home tutor or something. She was yelling at me and I was storming upstairs and yelling back when the doorbell rang. Mum answered it while I carried on shouting.

  ‘It’s for you, Edie,’ Mum snapped. ‘Stop acting like a three-year-old and come downstairs.’

  Mothers must take special lessons in humiliating their offspring ’cause when I looked round Dylan was standing on the doorstep.

  I felt all my blood rush down to my toes and I steadied myself on the banister.

  ‘Tell him to come back when I’ve reached puberty,’ I screeched in an incredibly mature fashion before running into my bedroom and slamming the door.

  I was so busy crying that I didn’t hear a gentle tapping on the door, but I did hear Dylan when he called: ‘Edie! Are you all right? Can I come in?’

  I wanted him to go. To turn around and go down the stairs and walk out of my life and never come back. I also really wanted to be able to stop crying. There’s always such a lot of mucus involved.

  ‘Come on, Edie. Are you going to let me in?’ Dylan called softly again.

  I was frozen to the spot, or rather, I pulled a pillow over my head. What was Mum thinking of? She wouldn’t even let my five-year-old boy cousin into my room and now she’d invited Dylan up. I staggered up off the bed, where I’d collapsed, and half-heartedly checked my reflection in the mirror. I looked revolting like a big cosmetics company had been squirting shampoo in my eyes or something. What’s more, I was in my pyjama bottoms and a holey jumper.

  There was another gentle knoc
k and with a deep sigh I opened the door an inch and peered through the crack at Dylan. He shifted awkwardly. Dylan was embarrassed. That had to be a first.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked icily.

  ‘Hey, don’t be so snotty.’ He gave me that look. The one where he arches his left eyebrow and smiles crookedly. He didn’t exactly push his way in, but all of a sudden he was there in my room. Then he sat on the edge of my bed and it was like the weirdest thing. Dylan was in my room! Sitting on my bed! In my room on my bed!

  I stayed standing. I couldn’t look at him. It was just too freaky to have him sitting there. But Dylan obviously thought that my silence was because I was still mad at him (which was kinda half true).

  ‘I never said that to Mia,’ he said fiercely. ‘Y’know the stuff about puberty. You’re one of the coolest girls I know.’

  I could feel myself going red. ‘Whatever! Like I can believe a word that either of you say,’ I snapped.

  He tugged at my hand and pulled me towards him, so I was sort of sitting on the bed and sort of sitting on his lap. If my mum walked in, she was going to have a fit.

  ‘OK, I’m going to be straight with you,’ he said, trying to cup my chin so I’d look at him, though I pulled away. He gave up in the end. ‘Mia and I got off with each other once and I am attracted to her on one level, but on another level, a much bigger level, she’s a complete ’mare.’

  I thought I was going to burst into tears again and I guess Dylan thought I was going to too ’cause he put his arm round me. I rested my head on his shoulder for one millisecond. Then I stopped myself.

  ‘What about me? Why do you keep kissing me? Why do you keep playing these games with me?’

  Dylan’s arm tightened around my waist. ‘’Cause I fancy you too,’ he admitted with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘You can fancy two people at the same time. But I need someone way tougher than you, Edie.’

  ‘I am tough,’ I protested.

  Dylan shook his head. ‘No you’re not. And if we went out, I’d keep hurting you and you’d do that thing with your face that makes me feel all guilty.’

  I frowned and he gently cuffed my cheek. ‘There!’ he said with a tiny smile. ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about.’

  We were both speaking English but we weren’t talking the same language. He was telling me all the reasons why we shouldn’t be together and I just wanted him to kiss me.

  ‘We can be friends,’ he was saying. ‘Really good friends and I’ll sort out this mess with Shona.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ I muttered, trying to disentangle myself from his arms. If he didn’t want to date me then he wasn’t going to get to snuggle.

  But Dylan gathered me up in this huge bear hug and ruffled the top of my hair! I could have spat nails…

  Then Dylan being Dylan, he was gone.

  2nd December

  I was still trying to make sense of Dylan’s visit when Shona came calling. There’d been a time when I thought we were going to become best friends or something but the way she just dropped me without even having the decency to tell me why still stung.

  I found her sitting on the doorstep after I’d popped out for emergency rations of Maltesers. She was clutching a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough and a mix CD she’d made.

  ‘I guess you pretty much hate me,’ she said with a wry twist of her mouth and all I could do was half shrug my shoulders.

  When we got to my room, she curled up on my giant beanbag and dipped a spoon into the ice cream. ‘I understand if you don’t want to be mates again after the way I’ve treated you but you need to understand why I acted like such a stone-cold bitch,’ she began.

  And then she told me all about her and Paul and how they’d spent six months eyeing each other up at clubs and parties before Dylan introduced them and they immediately got together. And that she thought they were crazy in love (‘I would just be dying to see him, just counting out the hours until we’d be together again’) until Mia had come between them. I s’pose I realised that Shona felt the same way about Paul as I do about Dylan but, God, at least she actually got to date Paul.

  And then she looked up at me with her huge manga eyes. ‘Sorry?’ she half-asked.

  I nodded and it was awkward for, like, one second and then she started crying and I started crying and we both sat there sniffing and clinking spoons as we each tried to bogart the chocolate chips.

  31st December

  I haven’t written for a while but I suppose New Year’s Eve is as good a time as any.

  I went to Brighton for a family Christmas and, quite frankly, even my annoying little cousins and Grandma moaning on about her rheumatism was better than being here.

  It’s been four weeks and already I can tell that this stupid, poxy ‘friend’ thing with Dylan is never going to work. He’ll call and ask if I want to go to the flicks with Shona and him and I just about melt. It hurts too much to be with him and it hurts too much not to be with him. Sometimes life is just so cruel…

  I thought him wanting to be friends was just an excuse for him to let me down gently and not have to bother with me any more, but it’s been the opposite. We go out all the time with Shona and Simon and he reckons that friendly (that bloody word again) means an arm round my shoulder and kissing me hello and goodbye. It’s even worse when he phones up. He’ll be talking about his James Bond sculpture (don’t even ask) and I’ll drift off and imagine that he’s saying, ‘Edie, I just want to grab you and kiss you,’ when he’s really saying, ‘Edie, I just want to be the next Picasso.’ Anyway Simon’s having a New Year party tonight and I guess that if I start psyching myself up a few hours beforehand, I might be able to face Dylan without begging him to ravish me.

  1st January

  Spent morning in bed recovering from party. It was ace and completely hideous in equal measure. I’d been looking forward to it because I’m sad enough to treasure every moment I get to share air space with Dylan. And I wore this really beautiful dress I’d got for Christmas from my auntie who lives in Amsterdam. It’s black lace with a red slip to go under it. Mum said it was too old for me but I wore it with bright red tights and my black Chuck Taylors and she decided that ‘dressed down’ it was acceptable. Though ‘you’d look much nicer if you wore a pair of heels.’ Like, I’d take fashion advice from a woman who only does neutral colours.

  Anyway, the party started off fine. It was wall-to-wall art students but then Dylan came over and started talking to me. He was wearing a black shirt with the word ‘Trash’ scrawled on it and we talked about Christmas. Well, he talked about Christmas, I was being frothy and amusing about the green triangles in a tin of Quality Street, which was actually a metaphor for how much I loved him. Not surprisingly, he didn’t get it.

  Then the whole night went downhill like a bus with faulty brakes. Paul and Mia showed up as an ‘official’ couple and Shona disappeared off the face of the earth. I found her half an hour later in one of the bedrooms in tears and in Dylan’s arms. I stood there trying not to think evil thoughts. I know she was upset but did she have to have one hand on Dylan’s leg and the other clutching his shoulder?

  They looked up and saw me and I was like, ‘Are you OK?’ Then Shona ranted for what seemed like ages about how Mia was a skanky bitch and Paul was just seeing her to mess with Shona’s mind. I was ummming and aaaahing in the right places but I sort of sensed they wanted me to leave them the hell alone.

  I hung out with Nat and Trent and one of their mates, Josh. He was really good-looking in a ridiculous, boy-band kinda way. We shimmied around the living room a bit. When I was dancing, I almost forgot about Dylan and Shona, and Mia glaring at me from behind the punchbowl. Almost forgot but didn’t quite succeed.

  Then it was practically midnight. Someone let off a bunch of party poppers and the countdown started. Everyone was shouting and screaming like it had never been midnight before. I stood there letting the noise wash all over me when suddenly Dylan was standing in front of me, laughing.r />
  ‘You’re not a joiner, are you Edie, hon?’ he teased, before pulling me into his arms to give me a New Year kiss. But somewhere between the pulling and the kissing, our eyes locked and when our lips hit, the kiss knocked me into the middle of last week. I could feel Dylan’s heart pounding, as I managed to summon up enough willpower to push him away.

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ I gasped, not looking at Dylan as I staggered into the garden.

  I didn’t see him after that. Probably because I skulked in the kitchen with Josh and bored him stupid by bleating on about how doomed my love for Dylan was. Gay boys are such good listeners.