“But she doesn’t want to. Even you must have seen that.”
“But Ben said—”
“What else was he gonna say, man? He was trying to look cool in front of his stupid mates.”
“So how does that help me?” I said.
“Well, that’s your Angle. If you wanna get her away from Ben, you’ve got to be the guy who doesn’t push. The guy who’s respectful. Maybe even a bit aloof.”
I frowned. “So what you’re saying is that the way to get her is to pretend I’m not interested.”
“No.” Ryan put his elbows on the table and lowered his head despairingly into his hands. “Why d’you have to make this such hard work? You make it clear you’re interested, but you don’t push. You let her come to you. It’s perfect. After all, your biggest problem is coming across as this eager little kid. But with this Angle you’re overcoming that and blowing Ben out of the water at the same time.”
The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Tones,” Ryan said. “I invited him round for Step Four revision – it’s his weakest point.”
“Great,” I said, sarcastically. “It’s only my house. Invite who you like.”
Ryan grinned. “Well I would have said come to mine, but you and your sister are still grounded, aren’t you?”
The doorbell rang again.
“Are you getting that?” Chloe screeched from upstairs.
Step Four was Humour. Ryan was convinced that making a girl laugh got you halfway to everything else. “Of course,” he said, pacing up and down the kitchen. “Numbers doesn’t bother much with Steps Four onwards, but if you want to get someone hot you’re gonna need something special.”
Tones nodded seriously from the kitchen table. “I bin trying, Ry,” he said. “D’you wanna hear this joke I learned?” Ryan gazed at him fondly – rather like a mother duck might look at a particularly hopeless duckling. “Tones, we talked about this.” He sighed. “Telling jokes is not your strong point. For you, it’s gotta be low key. Like saying Mr Hedges has gotta face like a potato.”
Tones grinned. “That’s a good one. I’ll remember that.”
I shook my head as Ryan sat down beside Tones. A sense of humour wasn’t something you could teach.
“Right, chat me up, Tones,” Ryan said. “And be funny.”
Tones did his best, but privately I thought he would have learned more if Ryan had given him another couple of observations about the teachers. Still, Tones seemed pleased, especially when Ryan told him he was really improving.
After about ten minutes Ryan turned to me. “You take over for a bit,” he said.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you’re already good at this sort of thing.” Ryan smiled. “Anyway, I gotta have a crap, so I may be some time.”
“Nice.” I made a face, then slipped into the chair Ryan had vacated.
As Tones droned on with some interminable story about how he had been amusingly rude to his maths teacher – a story I suspected he had witnessed rather than actively participated in – my mind drifted off to Eve and whether Ryan was right about the Angle thing.
“. . . so d’you think that’ll work, Luke?”
I blinked, taking a second to register Tones was speaking to me.
“Sure,” I said, then, feeling guilty, lied: “Ryan’s right. You’re doing great.”
Tones grinned self-consciously. “I’m gonna ask Kirsty out, this week. Ry thinks I’m ready. I’ve bin chatting to her for a couple of weeks now. I can’t wait any longer.”
“Kirsty?” I said.
“Yeah. She’s the year below us. Short. She’s got curly red hair and freckles.”
I frowned, unable to place her.
Tones’ eyes lit up. “She’s amazing.”
I stared at him, wondering if it was possible that Kirsty was anywhere near as hot as Eve. I decided she couldn’t be. No one was.
After the weekend I was no longer grounded. On Monday I went to the shops after school and bought a bag of wooden buttons, ready for Art Club later in the week. When I came home, Mum and Chloe were in the middle of this massive row about the fact that Chloe was still grounded for another three weeks while I was allowed to go out. They’d been arguing a lot since the party. In fact, Chloe had basically been in one, long, bad mood for weeks. She hadn’t used to be like that. Not that she and Mum didn’t argue. But, before, with Dad, it was different.
I set down my buttons on my bed and closed the door.
Dad used to make them laugh. When Mum and Chloe had their rows and Chloe would storm off to her room, he’d go from one to the other, coaxing them round, making them smile, until they’d calm down and come to the kitchen and . . . and somehow Dad would be there, making it all right.
I looked over at the records, still in the corner.
I could see Dad now, really clearly, peering round my bedroom door and rolling his eyes. “What is it with girls, Luke?” he’d sigh. Then he’d wink at me. “Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them, eh?”
I don’t remember what I said back. Nothing, probably.
I sat, staring at the records, listening to Mum and Chloe shouting. They sounded like they were crying. For a second I felt like crying too. Then a door slammed and the house went quiet and I felt nothing.
Nothing at all.
At last it was Thursday. I arrived five minutes late for Art Club, hoping Eve would be there already and Ms Patel would suggest I joined her table. But Eve wasn’t there. Worse – she didn’t turn up later, either. After half an hour I wandered over to the two girls I’d seen her chatting to the week before.
“I wanted to ask Eve something about my collage project,” I said. “D’you know if she’s coming.”
One of the girls half looked up at me. “She’s gone to watch her boyfriend in a football match.”
I walked back to my table and stared down at the stupid piles of buttons on my piece of paper.
What the hell was I doing?
I felt this tremendous urge to hurl the table over on its side. Eve was totally into Ben. I was wasting my time even thinking about her.
And then she walked in.
8
Staying late
He looks through his window
What does he see?
He sees the bright and hollow sky
He sees the stars come out tonight
He sees the city’s ripped backsides
He sees the winding ocean drive
And everything was made for you and me
All of it was made for you and me . . .
‘The Passenger’
Iggy Pop
Eve’s face was flushed, as if she’d been running. And there was a dusting of raindrops on her hair.
Without taking off her coat she rushed over to Ms Patel. “Is it all right if I stay late?” she said. “I promise I’ll clear up afterwards.”
My stomach flipped over.
Ms Patel pursed her lips.
Say yes, Ms Patel. Say yes and I’ll make you the best wooden-button music collage you’ve ever seen.
“All right, Eve,” she said. “But only for half an hour. The caretaker locks up at six.”
Eve pulled off her coat and raced over to the tray that I knew contained her collage. She pulled the paper out and carried it carefully to the nearest table.
I bent over my buttons. I’d wasted the last hour looking up at the door every ten seconds, but now I had a plan and I worked as if my life depended on it. I arranged the buttons in zigzagging lines across the page, then waited for Ms Patel to walk past.
A few minutes later she arrived at my table. “So how’s your work going, Luke?” she said.
“Good,” I said. “The wavy lines are sort of sound vibrations, but there’s something missing. It needs some sort of background.”
Ms Patel examined my work. “Well, I suppose you could paint a background.” She looked at me doubtfully. I could tell she was remembering last week’s alien-head flowers.
“I wa
s thinking of a collage within a collage,” I said. “Putting torn-up pictures of people playing music under the buttons.”
Ms Patel nodded thoughtfully. “Mmmn, there’s a nice dissonance in that. Well, the old newspapers we use for papier-mâché are by the sink. Or you can ask Eve if she has any spare magazines.”
I nodded, grinning.
At five-thirty everyone else started packing up. I looked up from the pile of newspapers I’d been examining. Ms Patel was picking up her bag. She glanced at me as she walked to the door.
“I’ll just be a couple of minutes,” I said.
She nodded and walked out, leaving me and Eve alone.
Alone. The space between us stretched out like an ocean. Eve was oblivious to me, her head bent over her work, her tongue peeking between her lips as she concentrated on sticking a piece of paper with glue.
My heart pounded as I walked towards her. Look up at me. Look up.
She looked up and smiled – a warm, genuine, friendly smile. “Hi,” she said. “How’s your collage going?”
“Good, thanks. I wanted to ask you. D’you have any spare magazines I could use?”
She nodded and pointed to a pile by her feet. “Those are ones I’ve finished with – I’ve taken so much out of them there’s no point keeping them. You can have what you like.”
I bent down and picked up the magazines.
“So what’s your coursework about?” I said, looking at the paper spread out on her table. It was divided into four sections. Each section was made up of tiny scraps of paper. In one the papers were all blue, in another different shades of red. The other two were whites and greys/blacks.
“This is just the background,” she said. “It’s going to be a face from the Eighties. Cut-up and stuck-together bits of my mum’s face from when she was a model. I’m really behind. That’s why I came back to work on it tonight.”
I racked my brain for something to say other than: Is your mum as hot as you?
“Sounds more interesting than a football match,” I said.
Eve laughed. Not a high-pitched giggle like every other girl I knew – but a throaty, grown-up laugh. “You’re not wrong. I got freezing cold watching.”
“Who won?” I said, not liking the way our conversation seemed to be taking a turn Ben-wards.
“Ben.” Eve blushed. “I mean, Ben’s team. They were going out to the pub to celebrate, but I didn’t feel like it.”
She looked up at me. There was just the faintest hint of laughter in her eyes, as if what she was really saying was: I wanted to come here and see you.
I backed away, holding my magazines. I must be reading her wrong. There was no way she could blush about her boyfriend and flirt with me in the same sentence.
“Thanks for these,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.
Eve was still looking at me. “Hey, why don’t we put on some music?” she said. “Maybe it’ll give you a bit of inspiration – you know, for your collage.”
She glided across the room to Ms Patel’s desk and switched on the radio. Her teeth bit lightly into her bottom lip as she twiddled the dial.
White noise, a blast of rap, something classical.
Then a dance record came on. I hadn’t heard it before. A woman was singing, her voice whirling round this steady bass.
“Oh, I love this,” Eve said. She twirled away from the desk into a pool of sunlight flowing in from the low sun outside the window. She swayed from side to side, her hips rippling in small circles in time with the beat.
“What is it?” I croaked, trying hard to keep my eyes on her face.
“It’s a cover of ‘The Passenger’. Here, come and dance.”
She held out her hands towards me.
Somehow I managed to cross the room without falling over. Eve grinned at me as I arrived at the big teacher’s desk. “You might want to put those down,” she said.
I looked down. The pile of magazines was still in my arms. I laid them carefully on the desk, hoping Eve couldn’t see my hands shaking. For a second I stood awkwardly in front of her.
What did she want me to do exactly? Normally I quite like dancing, and I think I’m OK at it too – not brilliant, but not one of those dorks who thinks it’s cool to flail around all over the place either. But right now I was lost. My legs felt like jelly. Eve was twisting and turning in the sunlight in front of me, like some kind of sexy angel. And I was trying to work out whether I should just shuffle about a bit where I was or go right up to her and . . .
She made the decision for me, by reaching out for my hand and pulling me closer, into the circle of sunlight on the floor. As I started moving in time with the music she dropped my hand. But we were still moving together, only half a metre apart, staring into each other’s eyes.
I bet that sounds really hot.
In fact it was quite possibly the most terrifying experience of my life. I was nearly sick. All I could think about the whole time was when the music was going to finish and whether I could avoid collapsing before it did. The more I tried to move smoothly, the more I felt I was jerking about like a robot on speed.
At last the song was over and the DJ’s rapid chatter filled the air.
We stood still for a second, staring at each other, then Eve stepped backwards, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was great, I loved the way they sampled the original ‘Passenger’,” she said breathlessly.
The song title connected with something in my head. “Hey,” I grinned. “I think I’ve got the original. Was it Iggy Pop?”
Eve nodded.
“It’s one of the records my dad left me.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “Your dad left you vintage records?”
Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Dad.
“Yeah, from the late Seventies and early Eighties. Would you like to come back to my house and hear them?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.
Eve visibly shrank away from me. “Er, no, I’m meeting Ben later.” She glanced at her watch. “In fact I’ve gotta go now. Crap. And I hardly got any work done either.”
She bustled back to her table and cleared away her stuff. She didn’t even look at me as she said goodbye.
I walked around for about half an hour. What had I done wrong? One minute she was asking me to dance with her – the next she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
I ended up outside Ryan’s house. I’d only been there once before and didn’t know the street number, but I recognised the iron gate, hanging off its hinges, at the end of the tiny front path.
Ryan’s mum, a tall, smiley woman with the same wide mouth as Ryan, opened the door.
“Ry – aaan,” she yelled up the stairs. “Friend for you.”
Ryan appeared on his landing a few seconds later. He looked surprised when he saw me and not, I have to say, in a good way. He trotted down the stairs towards me, clearly annoyed.
“What is it, man?” he hissed, dragging me off into a small living room where an enormous TV was blaring into empty space.
I told him.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How did I blow it?”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “You haven’t blown it,” he said. “Though you didn’t stick to the Steps I told you to. What happened to your ‘being cool’ Angle? And why did you get so heavy? You were supposed to make her laugh, man, not terrify her into running away.”
I groaned. It was true. Practically begging Eve to come home with me was hardly acting humorous and aloof.
“It’s like I sent her into Ben’s arms.”
Ryan sighed. “It’s always so all or nothing with you. I expect she just started feeling guilty about him. Look on the bright side. At least you know she’s interested.”
“She is?”
“For God’s sake, man.” Ryan shook his head in frustration. “She asked you to dance with her. In the art room at school. You should have just kissed her.”
“You told me not to be pushy,�
�� I snapped.
Ryan grinned. “You bottled it, didn’t you? There’s a time and a place, man. Situation like that, you either seize the moment, or you leave stuff unsaid. What you don’t do is invite someone back to your bedroom to listen to your records. It’s either gonna come out dorky or creepy. Anyway, I gotta go back upstairs.”
“Oh, right,” I said, bitterly. “Got some amazingly hot babe up there, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Ryan lowered his voice, so I could only just hear him over the TV. “But my mum doesn’t know she’s there. That’s why I gotta get back.”
I noticed for the first time that Ryan’s shirt was untucked and the back of his hair was all rumpled up.
“Who is it?” I said, trying not to sound envious.
“Like I’m gonna tell you.” Ryan winked at me. “She’s totally Premiership, though.”
He edged towards the door.
Half-term started tomorrow, which meant it would be two weeks until I saw Eve again at Art Club. I remembered what Ben had said in the burger bar and realised, with a sickening lurch, that would be the week of her sixteenth birthday.
I wanted to ask Ryan what he thought I should do next, but knowing he had some girl upstairs waiting for him made it just too humiliating. So we walked out to the front door in silence.
“I’ll come round later,” Ryan said. “We can talk about Step Five then. I think it could help.”
“Whatever,” I grunted – knowing, and not caring, that I sounded ungrateful.
As I walked home I saw Tones going in the opposite direction, his arm round a short, plump, red-haired girl whose face was as covered with freckles as his was with spots.
Kirsty.
I didn’t want to cramp his style, so I just gave him a friendly wink as we passed each other. He looked like he might explode with pride.
Oh well. At least the Six Steps had worked for someone. Seeing Tones looking so happy cheered me up a bit. And Ryan was right. Eve had wanted to dance with me. My mind filled with how amazingly horny she’d looked, pulling me towards her in that patch of sunlight.
As soon as I got home I went up to my room, played my dad’s single of ‘The Passenger’ and let myself think about her, over and over again.
Six Steps to a Girl Page 5