“Shh, Noah! Remember Mum’s sleeping, yeah?” I whisper-shout after him.
“Oh sorry,” whispers back Leo, his arm outstretched on the back of the sofa looking super relaxed as I stand around the hall doorway not sure what to do with my hands. “How’s she doing with the whole breakup and everything?”
“What? Oh, that—no, it was nothing. She’s fine. You want a drink?”
I get us both a Coke as I hear Noah trundle back down the stairs and thrust his drawing into Leo’s hands.
“Wow!” says Leo, laughing. “That’s so cool, bro. And that’s me, right?”
“Yep,” says Noah.
“And that’s Haylah, right?”
“Yep.”
“And what are we doing?” asks Leo.
“You’re getting married and here’s all your babies.”
Oh. Holy. Bumcracks.
I drop the Coke bottle and it pours all over the work-top as I rush out the kitchen and over to Leo and grab the bit of paper out of his hands.
“Noah!” I shout.
“Shh!” Noah says, his little podgy finger up to his mouth. “Mum’s sleeping!”
“Leo, I’m so sorry, I had no idea he’d drawn this!”
“What?” says Leo, still laughing. “I like it—I think he’s really captured you.”
I look at the drawing. For Leo, he’s drawn a recognizable head, torso, and stick arms and legs, and colored everything in brown. And for me he’s just drawn a massive pink circle with lopsided eyes and an angry-looking mouth.
“Wow, thanks, Noah.”
“You’re welcome!” he beams. “You can keep it if you want, Leo.”
“No, I’m sure Leo doesn’t want—”
“Yeah, I do!” says Leo and he yanks the drawing back from me with a smirk, folds it up carefully, and puts it in his pocket. “Thanks, little dude.”
After getting Noah settled in front of some trippy cartoon about robot police bears, we go into the kitchen to sit at the dining table.
“Sorry, you have to add your own fart noises to our chairs,” I say.
He makes a huge authentic fart noise with his lips as he sits down and both of us laugh.
“The truth is that nothing any comedian ever wrote, or says, is ever as funny as a fart noise,” I say.
“True. We may as well give up now,” he agrees. “Sorry I’m late by the way.”
“You are? I hadn’t noticed—doesn’t matter.” I OOZE calm and cool.
“Just had some stuff to do.”
“Right,” I say and for an annoyed moment I think about bringing up the whole, “and why didn’t you even look at me at school the other day?” thing, but I think better of it. He’s here, now, with me and that’s what matters.
I grab my pen and notebook as he gets out his laptop from his bag and opens up the notes we made the other day.
“Okay, so we’ve got our list of teenage-guy topics to use only if we twist or, as you Cambridge boys would have it, ‘subvert’ them and so…is there anywhere you want to start, any more specifically Leo-esque ideas you’ve had?”
“I dunno, but I was on the bus the other day with my friends, and I kinda thought there might be funny stuff there?”
“Oooh, I love it,” I say. “I mean, God, yeah. I have to get the bus everywhere too. And they’ve got to be a comedy goldmine, I mean, they stink and they’re dangerous. There’s no seat belts, airbags…and yet parents encourage us to go on these things.”
He laughs. “I know, right? And there’s always one nutter on a bus.”
“Yep, we’ve gotta talk about the bus nutters. I mean, that’s standard issue on every bus I’ve ever been on, and hey, if there’s never been a nutter on the bus you’re on, guess what? You’re the nutter.”
“Right!” He laughs. “And then it’s just rows of teenagers and old people, ordinarily natural enemies, thrown together through circumstance,” he says. And I laugh.
We keep going like this, writing good stuff, making each other laugh, and it’s bliss. Then we start weaving what we have into something resembling a comedy routine, putting in as many punchlines as we can, saying the lines out loud to get the rhythm right. By the time Mum comes downstairs, we have a pretty strong comedy “bit” to kick off his set.
“Right, that’s a good little opener,” I say. “Now you need to practice it in front of an audience.”
“What, here? Now?” he protests, looking just slightly less than his normal confident and chilled self.
“Yeah, why not?” I say. “Mum! Noah!”
“Wait, Haylah, no. I’m not ready!”
Good God, it’s so cute that he’s actually nervous about this.
“It’ll be fine. You can just read it off your laptop for now, but it’ll help us make sure it all works.”
So me, Mum, and Noah sit on the sofa together with Leo standing in front of us.
“Oh, a bit of comedy’s just what I need!” says Mum, nestling her bum further down into the sofa.
“Okay, Noah,” I say, “you introduce him.”
“Live from our living room, it’s Leo…! Wait, what’s your second name?” he whispers.
“Jackson,” says Leo.
“Leo Duck-son!”
“Brilliant,” I say, and the three of us clap and whoop.
And Leo begins. “So, everyone always wonders why teenagers are so grumpy. You know, you hear adults going on about it. All the time. Well, you wanna know why we’re grumpy? BECAUSE YOU MAKE US TAKE THE BUS EVERYWHERE!”
Mum gives an appreciative laugh and Leo relaxes a bit.
“Yeah, that’s right. And you know what? It’s the same reason old people are grumpy.”
“Oooh, yeah, leave a pause there, that works well,” I whisper.
“Shh!” says Mum.
Leo takes a deep breath and gets back into it.
“That’s right, rickety old buses up and down the country are rammed full of old people and teenagers. Two groups of people who should not be in the same space. Natural enemies pushed together by the shared experience of nobody wanting to spend time in a car with us.
“So we’re stuck together. Only we teenagers have it worse than the old folk because it takes a lifetime to learn the bus schedules, so at least they know where they’re going.
“Then, of course, there’s the standard-issue bus weirdo. You know the guy. There’s one on every route. The guy who shuffles on, angrily muttering to himself. The guy who the bus driver knows by name. ‘All right, Norman,’ he says sternly to him as he gets on, as if to say, ‘I’ve got my eye on you, Norman, so don’t stab too many kids today.’
“But y’know the worst thing is our parents are in on this. My mum’s like, ‘No, I can’t take you, darlin’—just take the bus!’ And I’m like, ‘Just a few short years ago you wouldn’t let me sit in our car unless I was bound and shackled in a safety seat three times the size of me!’
“I mean, I know I’m not the cute toddler I once was, but seriously, woman, has your love for me gone downhill so quickly that you’ve gone from, ‘Nothing’s gonna harm MY angel!’ to, ‘Yeah, boy, you go sit in that giant metal deathtrap with the stabby lunatic. You’ll probably be fine.’
“And you wonder why we’re a bit grumpy.”
By this point, Mum’s beside herself with laughter, as am I, even though I just wrote the stuff down. Leo performs it so well, putting stresses on all the right words, leaving pauses in all the right places, and his high-pitched mum impression is just hilarious. Noah, who hasn’t got a clue why he’s laughing, giggles along too as he just thinks it’s funny when we laugh.
Leo slumps down into the armchair. “So it’s good, right?” he asks us.
Mum wipes her eyes. “It’s brilliant! You guys wrote that?”
“Well, Haylah wrote most of it really.”
“No, I didn’t,” I say, embarrassed. “We wrote it together and, well, you nailed it.”
He smiles at us.
“You’re so going to win that
competition, Leo,” I say.
“What competition?” Mum asks.
Leo stays for dinner and we tell her all about the competition next Saturday and she immediately goes online and buys us all tickets to see it.
“You should do a set as well, Haylah. Don’t you think, Leo?”
“Yeah, I do,” he says, though he doesn’t sound convinced. I’m certain it’s because he knows I’m not ready to get up onstage again after the last disaster.
“No, no way. I’m not even nearly there yet,” I say.
“Hmm, you’re probably right. Well, maybe in a couple of years, sweetheart?” says Mum.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say.
I see Leo out after dinner, even though everything inside me wants him to stay, possibly forever. We agree to meet up on Monday around his house and then maybe two more times next week before the gig. And I can’t wait. Before he leaves, he leans in and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Your family’s amazing,” he says, “and so are you.”
“Thank you,” I say, blushing red from the kiss.
Leo’s kiss. On my actual cheek!
But again I want to ask him why, if he thinks I’m so “awesome,” he didn’t say hi to me at school. But I don’t want to ruin the moment so instead I just say, “See ya Monday then, yeah?”
“Yep, see ya, Haylah.”
I go back into the living room, a big smug grin on my face.
“Come here, love,” says Mum and I slump down into her arms. “You’re so clever, writing all that stuff.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“You sure you’re happy for him to perform it though? I mean, doesn’t that mean he gets all the credit when you did the hard work?” she says, stroking my hair.
“What? No, it’s not like that—we’re a team. Me and Leo. Lots of comedians write together.”
“Okay, okay. Just make sure you’re doing what you want to do, not what some guy wants you to do for him.”
I sit up, moving my head away from her hand. “He’s not ‘some guy,’ Mum, he’s Leo.”
“They’re all just some guy eventually, love,” she says, staring into the distance, her mind elsewhere.
“I thought you liked him!”
“I do, I do,” she says, snapping her thoughts back into the room. “I just think he probably knows how much you like him, and I don’t want you to get used.”
“HE’S NOT USING ME! Why does everyone think that?!” I explode, getting up from the sofa.
Ugh, that was a mistake.
“Who else thinks that, love?” She narrows her eyes.
“No one, nothing. It’s all fine. In fact, it’s all great. He doesn’t know I like him like that, and who said I did anyway? Look, we’re just friends doing something cool together. He’s not using me—he just thinks I’m good.”
“Okay, babe, if you’re sure,” she says, sounding totally unsure that I’m sure.
“I am,” I say and I get up to go to my room. “Totally.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next week at school is super crappy, and I live for the times I’ll be meeting up with Leo again. I continue to avoid Chloe and Kas as much as possible, and they me. If they walk past me in the hallway, I immediately pretend to be best friends with the trio I’ve latched on to, laughing heartily as if one of them has just told the best joke I’ve ever heard, when the truth is I don’t think they’d know actual humor if it dressed up as a court jester and slapped them around the head with a rubber chicken. And, whenever she passes, Chloe throws her chin up high as if she’s balancing something of great importance on the end of it, and Kas tries to smile sheepishly at me, but I refuse to smile back.
Kas occasionally sends me messages, saying things like, “We miss you, Pig,” and “Please don’t be mad at me, I’m not taking sides with Chloe, it’s just, well, you know what she’s like,” and, “Chloe’s sorry, please come back!”
Sitting on my bed, I read through them on my phone again. I’m about to reply to Kas when I think no! Chloe’s the one who needs to say sorry, not Kas on her behalf. They’re just jealous of me and Leo. Don’t play them at their own game. They’re being childish and pathetic. I’m not like that—I’m mature. I’m sophisticated. I think this as I bite into my third donut, the jelly spilling down my chin and onto my onesie pajamas.
What gets me through the week are my afternoons with Leo. Which are crazy awesome. We talk, we laugh, we write. We come up with two other “bits” for his stand-up, one centering around his insistence on proper punctuation (“because knowing the difference between ‘Let’s eat, Baby’ and ‘Let’s eat baby’ can save a relationship, and possibly the life of an infant”). The other was him smack talking dystopian films (which he “wouldn’t even watch if they were the last films on earth”). He didn’t need to go to the movies to watch confused, weary teenagers with dull clothing and bad nutrition squinting in the hazy sunlight, as that was what he faced at school every Monday morning.
Before we know it, it’s Thursday and we have the whole required five-minute set finished, and every time I hear him practice it (which gives me a great excuse just to stare at him) it still makes me laugh. Before I leave, he performs it one more time as I sit on his sofa and watch him. Noah’s not with us today as Mum had a rare day off and could pick him up from school. So, for the first time ever, me and Leo are alone together. For the first and last time, I think. After all, when Saturday’s over, there’s no reason for us to spend time together again, at least not from his point of view.
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” I say when he’s finished. I bite my lip.
“But you’re coming on Saturday, right?” he asks, flopping down on the sofa next to me.
Oh God, our legs are just millimeters apart.
“Of course. Wouldn’t be anywhere else, right?” I say, drumming my fingers on my knees.
“I’ve got a load of my friends coming along so it should be a really good night. Why don’t you bring your friends too? The more people on my side laughing loudly, the funnier the judges will think I am!”
“Hmm, maybe, but I’m in a new group of ‘friends’ now and to be honest they seem to have had their sense of humor surgically removed and replaced with a meme of a kitten in a top hat.”
“Why you hanging around with them then? What happened to, what are their names? Chloe and Kas?”
I hadn’t told Leo about our falling out; too much of it was to do with Chloe-Leo jealousy and Chloe’s opinion of me being too unattractive and too ungirlie to ever attract a guy who wasn’t just using me for some other purpose. Neither of these seemed like things I wanted to talk to Leo about. On the other hand, we’re about to say goodbye, probably never to be alone together again.
So I blurt out, “Chloe and Kas think I’m making a tit of myself hanging around with you because you’ll never be interested in me like I’m interested in you…because why would anyone be interested in me like that, right? I’m just fat and ungirlie and an embarrassment.”
I stare at the floor, my heart thumping in my chest like it’s trying to get out and run away from the horrendous truth bomb I’ve just dropped. But Leo doesn’t flinch, and his breathing remains calm. Probably because girls say this kind of stuff to him all the time.
Who am I kidding? Of course he already knows I like him. Everyone likes him.
He takes a deep breath. “Well, I don’t think you’re fat or ungirlie and what was the other thing?”
“An embarrassment,” I murmur, still looking at the floor.
“Or an embarrassment. They’re idiots if they think that.”
I glance up at him. “Then why didn’t you say hi to me in the hallway at school last week?”
“What? When?” he says, actually squirming in his seat a little and trying not to meet my gaze.
Now I turn and look fully at him, and I see in his eyes that he knows exactly what I’m talking about. And I know in that instant what Chloe and Kas tried to tell me, and what I had sus
pected all along, that him ignoring me at school was no accident.
“You do know, Leo—when you were with Keesha and the rest of the cool brigade, and ignored me until Chloe said hi and fluttered her boobs in your direction, and then you were like, ‘Oooh, hi, girls,’ to them before telling your friends we were just your ‘fan club.’”
“Oh, then,” he says, sounding a little ashamed, rubbing his chin.
“Yeah, then,” I say, feeling embarrassed at just how embarrassed I am making him feel, but also a little pissed off and a little brave, like I’ve got nothing to lose here. So I continue. “And for that matter, any other time you could have said hi at school or, God forbid, made conversation with me. And don’t give me that ‘oooh, I don’t want other people to know I’m not writing this on my own’ crap because you didn’t have to tell them that to say hi, did you? I mean, it could just be that we know each other, right? That’s not so ridiculous, is it?”
Ours eyes meet and for once he’s not smiling. Not even a little bit. Oh God, I’ve pissed him off. And I don’t want it all to end like this.
Should have kept my big fat mouth shut.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I-I should have said hi. I should have talked to you. You’re right, Okay? I just, I don’t know, I’ve worked hard to get where I am at school, to get good grades and still stay, I don’t know, popular, I guess?”
“Oh, you poor thing! Good grades AND popularity—wow, that must be tough,” I say sharply.
He gets up and starts pacing around the room. “Yeah, all right. I know it sounds rubbish. I just figured if I’m seen hanging around with a girl two years younger it might not do me any favors, okay? If that makes me a bad person then I’m sorry.”
“Uh-huh, but you were quite happy sliding your arm around my friend Chloe the other night at the open mic.”
Probably shouldn’t have said that.
“What? No, I didn’t! I sat next to her, sure, but you know what we talked about? You—how amazing you were up there. I said you had ‘a natural comic voice.’ ‘Yeah, she’s so talented,’ she said, except then you went all mental, lost your train of thought, and started sexually harassing my dad.”
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