We Are Not Okay

by Natália Gomes

  7.Actually know what CV stands for…

  So, as I said, this is where I fall in. And I mean, clearly fall in. Like there’s no mistake about that.

  And as you’ve probably guessed – the first section is where Rhys is. Although hopefully not the part about the pen with the fluffy top…or the afternoon tea with scones…but probably everything else, mind you.

  BUT that didn’t seem to bother him over the summer, did it?

  No actually, it was the total opposite. He seemed really into me over the summer. We even met up a couple of times the week before school started back. And now he’s acting distant, and I heard he’s even been talking to his ex Lucy again. I hate that girl. STUCK UP SNOB!!!!!!!!!!!

  She thinks she’s better than everyone else, and she’s not. She got dumped by Rhys before school ended for the summer and then got upset when he and I got together. She threw a drink in my face at Euan’s party and called me a slut. Nice. Yesterday, she called me the same thing in the middle of the cafeteria then pretended that she was just coughing. She’s so immature. What did Rhys ever see in her? And her friends are just as bad. I think I’m dumb – but Mollie Bridges? She takes the…whatever that saying is. And Cara and Lily are basically mini Lucys. UGGGHHHHHHHH! I can’t wait for Friday. This week is going to SUCK!!!!!!

  SOPHIA

  ‘Are you not eating today?’ Ulana asks me.

  I look down at my empty tray that perches lightly on the cold metal racks of the cafeteria island. Round white plates line the silver shelves in the middle. There are no healthy choices at Birchwood High School, except if you count the salads, which most people do. I don’t. Most swim in a sea of oily dressings. ‘No, I don’t really see anything that looks good today. I guess I’m not really hungry.’

  She’s looking at me in a weird way.

  ‘I had a big breakfast,’ I quickly add.

  She eventually nods and gets back to choosing between tomato pasta or a ham and cheese roll for lunch. She’s the only girl at school that I know who doesn’t talk about her weight, or know the number of calories in a KitKat, or even read those magazines that claim to have ‘the secret for losing a dress size in a week’. Which they don’t because no magazine can tell the public that if they actually want to lose a dress size in one week then they’d basically have to starve themselves for that whole week.

  I would give anything to have Ulana’s confidence, her self-assurance.

  But maybe not her parents. Gone would be my quiet evenings with Steve alone in the house if I had her parents. No, I’d be sneaking out back to meet my boyfriend too.

  She struggles to lift up her full tray, while mine rests lightly on my forearms. ‘Where do you want to sit?’

  My eyes skim the crowd, quickly locking onto Lucy McNeil and her friends in the centre of the cafeteria. ‘Maybe not there.’

  We shuffle to a table at the side, in the back, and plop our trays down. Streaks of ketchup and mustard left behind from the last occupants make my tummy flip.

  ‘You’re really not hungry?’

  I shake my head and poke at the bruised apple on my tray. ‘Told you. Big breakfast.’ I glance over to Lucy’s table, her tanned brown skin, shiny dark hair falling around her shoulders. Girls like that are just born that way, while we have to claw our way up or risk being mediocre and forgettable our whole lives. ‘Looks like someone’s enjoyed a holiday abroad.’

  ‘Who?’ asks Ulana as she digs into her plate with a fork a little too small for her fingers.

  ‘Lucy McNeil. Look how tanned she is. So jealous.’

  ‘Burned you mean,’ she says. ‘Anyone who intentionally sits out in the sun is just burning their skin.’

  I take a bite of my apple. The waxy skin tastes like shards of plastic in my mouth. I gaze down at Ulana’s pasta. ‘How is it?’

  She shrugs and takes another mouthful, some flakes of Parmesan falling from her fork. ‘It’s not Italia Nostra, but it’ll do.’

  ‘I love that place.’ Freshly ground garlic and rosemary seep out from under the kitchen door and float through the restaurant, occasionally out onto the street. Beautiful circles of brick-oven pizzas loaded with fresh basil and mozzarella that stretches for yards. Tubes of red pasta dotted with black pepper served in bowls that have yellow and blue swirls looping around the edges. I clutch my belly as a low gurgle moves through my body. ‘Have you ever thought about sex?’ I suddenly blurt out.

  Ulana coughs on a piece of pasta and sets her fork down.

  I slap her on the back. ‘Sorry.’

  She rubs her eyes, a few drops trickling down, and coughs up again. She clears her throat and turns her chair towards me a little. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘I was just wondering, you know, you…Aiden…?’

  ‘Sophia, have you met my parents?’ she laughs. The smile suddenly fades from her face as she edges in closer to the table and leans on her tray with an elbow. ‘It’s hard enough for me to get my head around the fact I’m dating a boy outside of my religion, but that…’ She shakes her head.

  ‘That’s a no, then?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’ She slides her tray away from her body and drops her fork down onto the plastic bowl.

  ‘But you’ve thought about it?’

  She shrugs and turns away, looking out beyond our little circular table.

  ‘You have thought about it, haven’t you?’

  She leans in, her mouth close to my ear. ‘Of course. I’m seventeen.’

  I smile and sit back in the chair.

  ‘But thinking about it is much different to actually doing it,’ she adds.

  I open my mouth to say something but an arm pulls me backwards. ‘Steve!’ He laughs and drops to his knees beside my chair. Leaning in, his lips meet mine.

  ‘Still here,’ Ulana loudly states, tapping my arm.

  ‘Sorry.’ I take his hand in mine and squeeze it gently. ‘Will you call me tonight?’

  ‘Yep, I will.’ He winks at me then rushes off to catch up with his friends who stand at the back, pointing at us, teasing us. He playfully nudges the tall one in the back, Rhys, as he passes him. I can’t help it; I turn to watch Rhys’ ex-girlfriend’s expression. Lucy McNeil watches him pass then flicks her hair in that Lucy way, before turning back to her friends, her posse. Those who I’ll never sit with, never talk to at a party, never text with. But that’s OK. Because I have Steve and that’s all that matters to me now.

  Ulana takes a big gulp of her water bottle and watches him walk away, eyeing his every step. She quickly puts the bottle down, turning into me again. ‘Just make sure you’re not getting pressured into anything, OK? It’s your body. Your choice. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you can’t say no.’

  I fiddle with the stem of my apple core, pushing it back and forth until it eventually snaps and breaks free from the fruit. ‘I know,’ I shrug, tossing it into the empty tray. I momentarily shake the idea from my mind, then commence a conversation on tonight’s biology assignment.

  But by the time I get home from school, I’m still thinking about it.

  IT.

  And before I’ve even changed out of my uniform for the evening, I’m upstairs, on my bed, at my laptop. Fingers quickly tapping at the black keys, and suddenly perfectly thin models with big bouncy hair and pouty lips stare back at me, all swathed in lace, chiffon and silk. My temples start to throb as dilemmas between ‘Brazilians’ and ‘cheekies’ and ‘babydolls’ and ‘chemises’ fill and overload my brain. Padded or push-up? Plunge or demi? And what’s a ‘merrywidow’? It sounds like a character from a Marvel movie.

  The bedroom swings open and my mum stands in the doorway, cleaning her hands with a mint-green tea towel. ‘I didn’t even hear you come in. Why didn’t you say hi?’

  ‘I thought you were at Aunt Bridget’s this afternoon?’ My swallow burns my throat.

  ‘I was but I wanted to get a start on dinner. Your dad’s finishing work early today. Quiet day at the office, I guess.
I’m making a roast tonight. That OK?’

  ‘But it’s not Sunday?’ We like to stick to traditions in our family, although the images in front of me are far from traditional. Is that a thong-filled Christmas tree bauble?

  ‘Your father and I are going to the golf club this Sunday with his work friends.’

  There was a time when Mum and Dad used to go there with Lucy’s parents. It’s funny that our parents were friends but we never were. Not even something like that brought us together. We were completely different people. Always will be. I bet she’d know what a ‘merrywidow’ is. She probably has one in black. Or maybe in red.

  ‘Not going with the McNeils?’

  ‘Oh no. We haven’t seen them in a while. I think it’s been about a year.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I did reach out a few times to invite them, but Julia never got back to me. I don’t even see her in town much anymore.’

  ‘Oh, weird.’ My fingers slowly reach for the laptop screen and I start to lower it half an inch at a time.

  She stands at the door, still rubbing her hands. How can they not be dry by now?

  ‘What are you up to, honey?’

  A crisp silence hangs heavy in the hair. My palms start to get clammy. I feel like I might throw up on my MacBook at any second. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Honey?’ she asks again, her eyes burning through to the back of my skull.

  I can’t lie. I never could. I tried once or twice, but it was like she knew, like she could smell the deceit and dishonesty on my skin like cheap perfume.

  ‘Um…a biology project,’ I croak out, my voice a little too high at the end.

  ‘What on?’

  Oh. She wants details.

  Think of something.

  Think of something.

  ‘Human anatomy,’ I finally say, nodding my head.

  ‘Oh, well I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I never did know much about the human body.’ Then she turns and leaves, closing the bedroom door tight behind her.

  LUCY

  I remember the day my dad left.

  Branches creaking, slight bounce in the back door that hadn’t been closed properly, it was a windy day. It howled and moaned, and dragged through our town like a rake in weeds, surfacing the weak roots in the soil. That was us that day. A weak root.

  I hadn’t always thought that. I’d thought we were a strong unit. That the three of us were a family, unbreakable to the core. We’d been happy. We watched films in the evenings during the week when I wasn’t allowed to go out with my friends or Rhys. The weekends were mostly our own. Mum and Dad went to the golf club with the Greers, while I went to the cinema with Rhys or occasionally drank cheap white wine from a cardboard box and gossiped with Lily, Cara and Mollie about the hideous outfits people wore to high-school parties. Short skirts, tied-up tops, low-cut necklines, bright-coloured tights, sequins that sparkled a little too much, fake leather skirts that were more fake than leather. But during the week, where homework, early bedtimes and nutritionally dense dinners took precedence, my time was our time. Family time. We always ate at the dinner table – TV off, phones on silent. We talked about our day, our weekend plans, things that were bugging us. I talked and they listened. Now I talk and no one hears me. Mum’s in a place that I can’t reach, and never will, and Dad’s ‘busy’. He says that a lot now. ‘Sorry, Luce. I’ve just been busy at work…Sorry, Luce, I can’t this weekend. We’re just so busy with the baby…’ Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Everyone is just so sorry, but nothing changes. Not even my memory of that night changes. I replay it sometimes. It makes me stronger.

  I think.

  My parents had been up all night – talking, arguing, crying. I don’t know. I wasn’t there in their bedroom. But I heard them. They never made me a part of the discussion or even considered me when making a decision. My dad had been late from work the evening before and his dinner had sat cold on the kitchen table for almost two hours before he walked in, navy coat strewn over his arm. They’d bickered about why he was always late from work, and my mum walked out of the living room. The bedroom door slammed upstairs and my dad had plopped down on the sofa beside me. I’d been texting Rhys so my phone had been in my hand. I remember that because after my dad said what he did, I’d dropped the phone and it’d hit my foot.

  He’d wrapped his arm around me, his fingers lightly resting on my upper arm. His voice was different, gravelly like he had a cold. He asked me how my day at school had been, and I told him about our social studies assignment and how I’d practised for the dance society’s next performance at the arts centre on the high street, which of course I’d got the lead for. But when I asked him how his day had been, his face turned pale and he looked like he was going to cry. He didn’t respond to my question, instead he coughed gently and turned his gaze to the yellow shaggy rug that I often lay my belly on while I finished my homework for the evening. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t do a lot of things that I used to.

  He didn’t look at me once while he said nine simple words. ‘Everything is about to change. Please don’t be scared.’

  Change.

  I didn’t want anything to change. Why did it need to? We were doing just fine how we were. But it was no longer about us. There was suddenly someone new in this family. Another voice, one that hid from us in the shadows and slowly poisoned my dad’s thoughts. One day there were three of us. Then the next, there were four. And soon, just two remained. The two left behind. The unwanted two.

  That’s why I hate Trina so much. Not because of what she wears, how she acts, what she says. But because all of a sudden she was just there. She became my Amber. And when Rhys ended it with me, saying we’d ‘grown apart’, all I thought about was how my mum must have felt being dumped, being tossed to the side for someone else. And I became angry. Really angry. And I started thinking about what people would say if they knew I’d been rejected by my dad and then by my boyfriend.

  Before then I never had to think too much about what people thought of me. I didn’t care. I did well at school, I had best friends, I had a boyfriend who treated me well, I was invested in after-school activities like the dance society and Amnesty UK. I was doing a good job at being me. Then one day Dad left the family and in a way, Mum left too. And I suddenly became aware of other people, and more importantly what they might think of me, be saying about me behind my back. What if they pitied me like the other ‘children of divorces’? ‘Poor Lucy has no dad anymore’… ‘Aww, Lucy’s dad left them…’ Or worse, what if I became the topic of gossip? ‘Did you hear, Lucy’s dad walked out on her and her mum?…Did you know Lucy’s parents are getting a divorce?…Guess what I found out this weekend?…’

  I became consumed with what other people thought about me, terrified that they’d find out that my perfect life was all a lie, that my dad chose his new family over us, over me. That despite all the happy meals we shared together at that big oak table, all the movies we curled up on the sofa to watch with frozen banana chunks dipped in dark chocolate, that despite the holidays we went on every year where we took family selfies and posted them on social media, that fundamentally my dad was unhappy. That hurts me more. That he took into consideration all the years, all the memories, all the love, and still came to the conclusion that he’d be much happier with another wife and another child. That. Kills. Me.

  So I decided that I wouldn’t be the focus of hushed conversations, the words on scrunched up paper notes passed along in class under tables, the target of people’s pointed fingers. And the only way to ensure that was to always be putting other people in that position. If I pointed the spotlight at others, no one could turn it on me. I’m not proud of who I became after my dad left, after Rhys left. But for now, it works. For now, I’ll keep going and no one will find out my secrets. Never. But I’ll keep finding out theirs.

  ULANA

  My fingers are red raw from rubbing. My nails ache from the pressure of pushing down. I think I chipped the middle nail because
something sharp just rubbed against my thumb.

  But I don’t stop.

  I get another paper towel from the girls’ room dispenser and dampen it under the warm tap. Then I return to the stall door and continue scrubbing.

  I know it’s not my name or my reputation, but it could be. And if it was then I would hope that some girl would do me the same favour, show me the same respect.

  Trina Davis is a SLUT

  I can’t leave it here, not that.

  Who would do this?

  Girls that have no idea. They trash reputation and then move on to the next victim. What if that said my name?

  Ulana Alami is a SLUT

  I can’t imagine. What would my parents think? What would my dad say? How would I ever be able to face them again?

  My fingers shake and the moist towel drops to the floor. My belly churns, a warm sensation moving upwards through my body, snaking its way up to my throat. I swallow it down, take a deep breath and tell myself: It’s not my name and it’s not happening to me. No one knows about us.

  I check my watch. I’m late. He’ll be wondering where I am. I have another go at the door then flush the paper towel down the toilet.

  Grabbing my book bag, I rush out and through the back door. Feet on dried brown leaves from the birch trees, hands on the trunks of pines, I reach the spot. It’s the perfect place, sheltered from the wind, and more importantly, from the school.

  He stands by the bench – our bench – then starts pacing in front of it. He checks his watch and runs his hand through his hair.

  ‘Aiden!’

  He spins round, a wide smile stretching across his face. That smile. My smile.

  I still remember the day I noticed Aiden for the first time. He’d been sitting in chemistry, one row in front of me, on the right. A PowerPoint presentation outlined the major components of atomic bonding and all around me people took frantic notes, our hands not able to keep up with the rapidly changing slides. My right hand was cramping and I rubbed, massaging into the muscle. It was at this time that I came to two realisations. Firstly, that I didn’t need to be taking this many notes because I already knew all this. And secondly, that the boy sitting in the row in front of me, to my right, wouldn’t stop turning around to look at me.