I watched Felix drag his heels away. “I get that you pretty much hate my guts, but don’t take it out on him,” I said.
That got me another flinty glare, as he practically hurled a bottle of fabric softener into the trolley. “I do not ‘hate your guts,’ Isabel. I just find you rude, willful, and thoroughly unpleasant.”
Felix was padding toward us, clutching a multitude of variety bags, chin set like he was expecting another argument, not realizing that the first one hadn’t finished.
“I can see I’ve been entirely too lenient with you, Isabel,”
Dad continued. “But these tantrums have gone on long enough and . . .”
I turned to him and gave him the calmest smile I could muster, which threw him. “Oh, piss off,” I said, and flounced away.
It was really liberating, the acting out or whatever you want to call it. Like, I’d drawn a line between us, one that had been there, anyway, but we didn’t have to tread around it anymore.
My foot was poised to step off the curb so I could cross over Western Road and head down to the beach, when his hand came crashing down on my shoulder. God, I bet he wished that they’d never made spanking illegal.
“How dare you talk to me like that?” he spluttered. “Apologize at once.”
“Get your hand off my shoulder,” I told him pretty reasonably, considering it felt as if he was trying to mold my collarbone into a new and exciting shape.
He let go of me and we stood there, staring at each other. I wondered if he could even really see me as anything other than the shopping list of adjectives that summed up what a major disappointment I was.
“I’m still waiting for that apology, Isabel.”
A guy pushed past us—and something in the way he held himself, the way his hair looked like it had had an accident with a vat of perming lotion, seemed familiar, even though I couldn’t see his face. It was that boy, Smith, or whatever his name was, from the party.
“I don’t have time for this,” I told Dad, and walked away. I knew he wouldn’t come after me again—that would actually have required some effort on his part.
Smith walked fast with a loping gait, almost bouncing on the soles of his sneakers, and I liked that he was so free, so unaware, not knowing that I was looking at him. Like, when you’re on the bus and you stare into someone’s front room and you see them watching television or slumped on the sofa, and it’s like you’re taking a tiny piece of them home with you.
He ambled into a couple of charity shops and rifled through piles of battered vinyl records and tattered paperbacks. I loitered by the racks of musty-smelling polyester dresses—I was going for this whole melting into the walls vibe, but I just looked really shifty, if the suspicious attention I was getting from the blue-rinse brigade manning the tills was anything to go by.
I hadn’t been able to get a good look at him before. It had been dark, and there had been huge quantities of alcohol involved, but daylight softened out the slant of his cheekbones and the hard lines of his jaw, so he looked less thuggish. Didn’t do anything to lessen the effect of his nose. If you were being kind you’d call it aquiline; if you weren’t, you’d call it beaky. And I could see those lips that I’d kissed—how they looked as pillowy as they’d felt. His hair was still ridiculous, he’d obviously never got intimate with a pair of straightening irons. But what I liked about him (and I did appear to like him, even though he had a stupid name and needed to stop kissing girls at parties because he thought they were other girls he’d kissed at other parties) was his serenity. There was something utterly calm about him, no matter how fast his elegant hands leafed through records or pored over books. It was as if everything was out of focus except him.
He brushed past me on his way toward the door, and I pressed myself against a rail of coats. I waited for the door to shut behind him, then cautiously slunk out in time to see him disappearing into the newsagent’s next door.
Luckily, I could pretend to read the ads for exotic Swedish massages while I peered through the window and watched Smith buy a packet of cigarettes and some chewing gum. As he was walking down the length of the shop, I realized my cover was about to be blown, so I dived into the nearest doorway, which happened to be a hardware shop and looked with feigned interest at the display of screwdrivers and oooh, power saws. Imagine the damage I could do with one of them.
At first I thought it was the wind brushing against me, but then it happened again, someone was tapping me on the shoulder. Even before I turned around I knew it was him.
I’d forgotten how blue his eyes were. I wanted to compose sonnets in my head about ocean depths and cloudless skies because I was obviously suffering from severe sleep deprivation. He was frowning at me, this little furrowed line popping up between his eyebrows.
I felt like I’d finally been caught shoplifting. My cheeks were burning traffic-light red as he fixed me with an intractable look. “Are you following me?”
There wasn’t really much I could say in my defense, and besides, talking suddenly became this really difficult art that I hadn’t quite mastered. I just shrugged and shuffled my feet instead, focusing my attention on my scuffed-up ballet flats.
“Well . . . ?” Smith prompted.
I wound a strand of hair around my finger for a bit until he tapped his foot impatiently. “Go and find someone else to annoy.”
I finally looked up and he was all I could see. I could already feel my mouth getting ready to form the words, though my brain was trying to slam the brakes on. “I don’t want to,” I said, and my feet weren’t moving away, so it must have been true.
The faint ghostly blur of a smile danced across his mouth. “Can you only speak in monosyllables?”
“Yeah.” If I couldn’t be quiet then monosyllables seemed like the way to go. And less is more. Maybe he thought I was mysterious and enigmatic—and I might have been until my stupid stomach let out an ungodly roar to remind me that it hadn’t had anything to eat since the moldy cheese omelet I’d made last night.
That hateful, stupid blush flared up all over again as if my whole body had been immersed in Deep Heat. But Smith just laughed.
“Seems like your tummy has plenty to say even if you don’t,” he said, and smiled at me properly. It was the kind of smile that could knock a girl into the middle of next week, if I was that kind of girl, which I so wasn’t.
“My tummy never knows when to shut up,” I replied as my belly let out another gurgle just to remind me that it was righteously pissed.
There was a moment’s pause. “Well maybe your tummy would like me to buy it lunch,” Smith offered casually. “You could come, too, if you like.”
It was strange walking along the street with him. Like, if people saw us they’d automatically assume that we were together. In reality, I was actually racking my brains for some amusing conversational gambit and coming up empty. Smith didn’t seem to mind and when we crossed the road, he gently held my elbow as if he thought I might suddenly plunge headfirst into the oncoming traffic.
I’ve been mauled by boys for the last two years. It leaves me cold and worrying that I’m a freak because a sweaty hand on my tits and a tongue tickling my esophagus does nothing for me. But Smith’s hand on my elbow made me tingle all over.
When we got to the other side of the road, I tugged myself away from his touch, as if it was radioactive. He didn’t say anything, but then he kept this six-inch distance away from me at all times, as if he was worried I was going to go off on this sexual harassment rant. I knew, I just knew, that he wished that he’d never invited me along for lunch. I could see the fricking words hovering above his head.
But it was all right when we got to the café. The smell of bacon and freshly ground coffee made my growly stomach kick up a notch, as we snagged a table in the corner. There was the whole menu thing to deal with, but after the waitress had taken our orders, it was just the two of us and the condiment tray.
“So what’s your name again?” Smith asked, te
aring the cellophane off of his cigarettes.
“Isabel,” I answered unwillingly. “It’s a stupid name. But everyone hates their own name, I suppose.”
Smith was rummaging in his jacket pocket and eventually pulled out a box of matches. “Why do you think I use the name Smith?” he commented cryptically. “Anyway, Isabel seems pretty not stupid to me.”
That was easy enough for him to say. I decided to turn the tables. “So, Smith isn’t your real name?”
He shook his head and grinned. And really he should do that more, because it creased his face into a pleasing pattern of white teeth and smile lines. “Nope, surname, and before you ask, I’m not gonna tell you what my first name is.”
I was intrigued. “Why? Is it a state secret?” I asked as the waitress brought our coffees.
Smith nodded solemnly, but his eyes were dancing with mischief. “I could tell you . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, but you’d have to kill me,” I finished neatly for him, and took a cautious sip of my coffee.
“Are you making sure that the five sugar cubes were enough?”
He really thought I was a freak. “Well, it’s just I need a sugar rush to get me kick-started.”
Smith grinned again and looked pointedly at his watch. “It’s lunchtime.”
“Exactly.”
There was another pause, and I sipped at my coffee and tried not to notice how he was looking at me. I knew there wasn’t enough concealer in the world to get rid of the dark circles under my eyes, and there hadn’t been time to do anything with my hair but try to scrape it back into a tufty, scraggly ponytail. I was wearing Felix’s Sea Scouts T-shirt and school cardie with my jeans because they were the only clean things I could find. If I’d been some fashion bitch, I’d have called it androgynous chic, but it’s hard to pull that off when you’re a gawky sixteen-year-old.
“You never told me why you were called Isabel,” he said gently, leaning forward. “I got the feeling there might be a story there.”
“Isabel Archer. She’s this character in a Henry James novel,” I added, even though he probably didn’t have a clue who Henry James was. There still didn’t seem to be much evidence that he was packing a big old brain in that not-so-pretty head of his.
“Portrait of a Lady?”
“Well, yeah,” I spluttered, taking one of his cigarettes and lighting it. “Have you read it or have you just seen the film?” I didn’t wait for him to reply. “My Dad’s a professor of American literature and he was having this big Henry James thing when I was born, and it’s the most depressing book ever and Isabel just gets, like, totally suppressed by this guy she has to marry, and why would you call your daughter after some character in a book who’s miserable and hates her life?” I finished off with this angry exhalation of breath that gusted the napkins across the table, then I closed my eyes.
Why couldn’t I just sit across the table from a moderately cute boy and be normal? Like, ask him questions about himself and giggle when he cracked a joke and generally be charming and witty and like ninety-nine percent of the rest of the girl population. Instead I was, well, being way too much like me.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered so quietly that I didn’t think he heard me, but he gave me a contemplative look and then leaned closer.
“Can I trust you to keep a secret?”
“What kind of secret?” I asked him suspiciously.
“The secret kind of secret. You do know what a secret is, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I snapped, and his eyebrows shot up. “Please . . . will you tell me? See, I asked nicely.”
He let the suspense mount for about ten seconds, staring at me just enough so that I was beginning to get wigged out all over again before he relented.
“I’m named after someone in a book, too,” he announced in a hushed voice, looking furtively over his shoulder, which was a touch too overkill-y.
“Yeah? Who?”
“You ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “No way! Oh, my God, did your parents name you Boo? That sucks.”
He gave a throaty little chuckle. “You’ve just ruined my punch line.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “So what’s your name, then? Let me think. Jem? Scout? It can’t be Calpurnia . . .”
He remained admirably stoney-faced while I threw names at him.
“Atticus? You kinda look like an Atticus, now that I come to think of it,” I mused, and his nose twitched almost imperceptibly, which must be an occupational hazard when it’s that big. “Atticus! I don’t fucking believe it!”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed, reaching over to tap my arm. “It’s not something I want to see on the front page of The Argus.”
I crushed the end of my cigarette in the ashtray. Really mashed it down hard because I hate it when they keep on smoldering. “That’s a big name to live up to.”
“My parents were all into anti-apartheid and banning the bomb, and I think they had this deluded idea that I’d go into politics and make the world a better place.” He smiled faintly.
I clapped my hands in glee. “Like, hey, come on, help us fight racism, little baby Atticus.” I giggled. “Did you have an Anti-Fascist Action logo on your onesie?”
Anytime soon, I was actually going to shut up, but Smith didn’t seem to mind. Or else he was hoping that day release would soon be over and I’d go back to the psych ward.
“You’re really pretty when you smile,” he said, tilting his head. “You should do it more often.”
He didn’t say it like it was some line to get me to drop my knickers, but I still had to clamp my mouth shut not to snap a reflexive denial. Instead, I looked around for the waitress because really, how long does it take to shove some cheese on a jacket potato and nuke it?
And just once, something in the universe went my way, because two steaming plates appeared at the serving hatch so I could turn to Smith, who was drumming his fingers noiselessly against the tabletop, and mutter, “I think our food’s coming.”
It took every last scrap of willpower I had not to lower my head and shovel the food into my mouth. I managed to cut myself delicate, girl-like bites and not make any embarrassing moaning noises as my taste buds suddenly kicked into life.
Every time I looked up, our eyes met, and he’d open his mouth like he was trying to think of something to say and I’d shoot him a vague smile and carry on eating.
Eventually, short of licking a few crumbs of potato and a bit of stringy cold cheese off my plate, I was done. He’d been super nice to me and bought me lunch, so I started to think of how I could extricate myself politely.
“So what kind of music do you like?” he asked abruptly.
“Different things. The Shins; Babyshambles, though Pete Doherty is so tragic; everything ever recorded by Belle & Sebastian. Maybe a little Destiny’s Child for some light relief.” I dug my iPod out of my pocket so I could show him my eclectic song stylings.
“Cool . . . cool . . . I can’t believe you like him,” he sneered as he saw my Bright Eyes playlist. “Camera Obscura? I’m impressed. Wanna swap?”
“Wanna swap what?” I asked, but he was already pulling out his iPod.
“I’ll let you have mine for a week,” he explained, scrolling down my playlists and wincing. Probably because he’d just seen the McFly album. “You take mine. I do this all the time with my mates.”
“You sure this isn’t some elaborate plan to stick me with your broken iPod?” I asked warily, and he gave me another of those elastic grins.
“God, you have serious trust issues. Look, I’ll even keep my own headphones because they’re a little on the gross side,” he said, whisking them away before I could see any ear gunk.
“Well, how do I know I’m going to even like what you’ve got on yours?”
“How do you know you won’t?” he replied with a mild smile.
I pouted, but I let him place his iPod in my hand, even though this whole schem
e seemed a little dubious. “But what if I break it? Or, like, drop it if I have to run for the bus and what if—”
“Stop having so many what ifs and give me your phone number so we can arrange to meet next week and swap them back,” he continued imperturbably.
“I’ll have to give you my home number. I don’t have any money to top up my phone.” I frowned. “I so need to get a job.”
“I thought you were a student,” he remarked, still spinning my click wheel. “How old are you?”
I didn’t even break a sweat. “Eighteen, and you?”
“Oh? Just turned twenty. So what’s your number, and is it Isabel with an ‘a’ or an ‘o’?”
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