Big Bones

by Laura Dockrill

  I laugh. ‘Your face is nice,’ I tell her. ‘You have a nice face.’

  ‘Thanks, babes. You have a nice face too.’

  Cam winks at me. And then before I know it, it’s happening.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Elouise VuMart?’ I ask, looking down over the menu.

  ‘No, who’s that?’

  ‘An artist.’

  ‘Oh no, is this one of those trick questions when you ask someone if they’ve heard of someone cool and they say yes and then you go … Hahaha, they don’t exist, loser! Because it better not be. Once a girl in school asked me if I had heard of a band called Carrot Cake and I said yes they were my favourite and it turned out to be a set-up to make me look like a total fool.’

  ‘I love you. That is all,’ I reply but THEN I am becoming a boring basic cliché girl and I say it, I can’t help myself, it’s happening, it’s happening, it’s …

  ‘OK, so you know the one I made the broken-heart coffee with?’ (It’s happened.)

  ‘Zac?’

  ‘Max.’

  ‘Sorry, Max.’

  ‘The boy from work.’

  ‘Boy? BB, sorry, are we talking about a BOY? You never talk about boys.’

  ‘Yes, well, I might ask him out to see if I do want to talk about boys.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re going to ask him out? On a date? Just like that?’

  ‘Yes. He called me Blue.’ I grin; Cam rolls her eyes. ‘Why? How else are you meant to do it?’

  ‘No, no, B, that’s great, I’m just a bit … girls don’t normally … I dunno, it’s just …’

  ‘What? Am I doing something wrong? This clearly reminds me of the time I asked a boy out in primary school. I knocked for him at his block of flats and he opened up his little bathroom window, shoved his hand out and physically “sprayed me away” with Coral Peach air freshener as if repelling a frigging mosquito.’

  ‘Oh that is sad.’

  ‘I knew it was Coral Peach because my granny used it too. It was hard to go over there for a while after that. Still, I’m gonna roll my sleeves up and ask him … wait … why are you looking at me like that … I’m doing something wrong, aren’t I?’

  ‘No. It’s just … quite forward, that’s all. I’ve never really … wow … OK … you’re actually gonna … OK.’

  ‘Go on …’

  ‘Guys usually do that asking stuff. And what if … you know what?’ She snorts. ‘Ignore me. You’re amazing. Go for it. I love you.’

  ‘Camille. I don’t know how this works. Isn’t it just … you fancy somebody … you ask them out?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what it is. What it SHOULD be. It should be as easy as that. But it … you know what? Ask him.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘OK. Yes. I will.’

  ‘You’re a braver girl than me. Wish we had something better than a tap water to cheers with, I can’t even afford a Sprite.’

  ‘What are you even talking about, I am obsessed with tap water. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers, to Princess Charming.’

  I take my hair and shove it between my nose and top lip to make a moustache. ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  ‘And the worst that can happen is that you get sprayed in the face with air freshener … pshhhhhhh!’ Camille mimes spraying a canister of air freshener in my face.

  ‘And I know how that feels anyway, didn’t hurt too bad … psshhhhhhhh!’ And I pretend to hiss a can back at her.

  Our tacos arrive. Soft blankets stuffed with golden fried fish, bright green creamy guacamole, herbs, blackened juicy chicken and spicy ground beef. We have tortilla chips and a big bowl of more blobby guacamole with shreds of red onion and jalapeno.

  ‘Man, that’s so buff.’

  ‘Oh it’s hot, pass the hot sauce.’

  ‘Jeeeezz! SO banging! Wish I could cook like this.’

  We chew, warm spiciness zipping around our mouths like firecrackers. I swallow and say, ‘Camille, if you had to do an exercise, what would it be?’

  ‘I do do exercise.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Yeah. Course.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I’m not dicking about with you.’

  ‘But you’re always with me.’

  ‘OK, but when I’m not with you, I find time.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘It’s not a thing to tell, is it?’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘This exercise thing on YouTube.’

  I feel so betrayed. I gulp.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just in my bedroom.’

  I cannot imagine Camille working out in her bedroom. I am so shocked.

  ‘I thought you just did nothing, like me.’ Although Camille doesn’t look like me. She’s toned.

  ‘It’s easy, I’ll send you the link.’

  ‘No, don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I won’t use it.’

  ‘Come on B, it’s fun.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You just use cans of soup for weights and I turn the sound down and play my own music.’

  ‘I don’t have any gym stuff to, like, wear or whatever.’

  ‘You just wear your bra and knickers, you can shower right after, you don’t even need to leave the house.’ She stuffs more food in, licks her finger, winds it round the bottle of yellow sunshine sauce. ‘Want me to send the link to you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I sip my water. My cheeks blister in an angry rash. ‘I’m fine how I am.’

  ‘You don’t have to feel weird about wanting to keep fit, BB. It’s good to be strong, nothing to be embarrassed about.’

  ‘I KNOW that, thanks,’ I snap back.

  I’m angry at Cam. Why do I feel so annoyed? I guess I didn’t really think we could survive our whole lives eating what we wanted and ignoring exercise but I guess I just kind of hoped we, I dunno … could.

  Why does exercise feel so alien to me anyway? Why doesn’t it come naturally to girls like it seems to come to boys?

  I look about the restaurant. People seem to be eating what they want, laughing, talking, drinking alcohol, having fun, but they are all normal-sized … Eating food like this is maybe a treat to them, but I don’t even question it.

  Is it just me or does it feel like every girl is secretly on a diet?

  I thought we were all in this ‘eating what we want when we want’ revolution together but I’ve got a sneaky fear that I’m the only one actually taking it seriously.

  Or maybe even doing it at all.

  TEA

  Mum and Dove are sitting on the couch when I get in.

  ‘Hello, peach. Tea?’

  ‘Yes please, Mum.’

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘I ate with Cam.’

  ‘Ah, nice.’

  ‘Spending my whole day’s salary in one sitting.’

  ‘Always the way. You had fun then?’

  ‘Yep.’ I fan myself with the post. ‘Did you guys eat?’

  ‘Yep.’ Mum gives me that look. ‘Dove made Carbonara.’

  Dove looks up at me proudly, big smile on her face, eyebrows wriggling, all cocky. Meanwhile Mum, behind Dove, mimics throwing up, her face in contortion, shoving her fingers down her throat. I try not to laugh.

  ‘Oi, you better not be being mean about my cooking.’ Dove rears up and points at Mum. ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘I wasn’t. As IF I would. BB, I wasn’t, was I?’

  ‘No!’ I defend Mum, my mouth curling into a smile. ‘She wasn’t.’

  I throw myself down next to Dove.

  ‘You stink of garlic,’ she snuffles.

  ‘You stink of burnt pasta,’ I snigger, looking at her face.

  ‘It was quite burnt,’ she admits.

  ‘How do you even go about burning pasta?’

  ‘It’s when the spaghetti is too long for the pan o
f boiling water and sticks to the side and the ends go black and it stinks like that time you burnt your thumbnail on a candle.’

  ‘Oh well.’ I sigh. ‘I quite like the taste of burnt stuff.’ I close my eyes. ‘Burnt fish fingers, yum; burnt toast with Marmite, yum; burnt toast with peanut butter, yum; burnt noodles, yum …’

  ‘All right, we get it, you like the taste of burnt.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  I lean into Dove and she would lie and say she didn’t but she definitely put her arm out for me to scoot inside and let me lean my head on her tiny bony shoulder. The lights are low and the TV is blabbering away. Squares of silver, blue, gold and white illuminate the room. Mum comes in with three steaming cups, holding two handles with one hand.

  She sits next to me and we all bunch up together, holding our tea close to our chests.

  I like the idea of a house full of girls. Maybe you don’t even need a man to come in stomping around and being all there. Maybe I could love a woman? Maybe I’ll end up with a woman. We are humans. Men and women. You don’t know who you’re going to fall in love with; we fall in love with a person. Not a sex. And looking around, it seems women are just pretty cool anyway. But Cam and Dove might get jealous – I can really imagine them both giving my soulmate future wife a hard time.

  We’ve all fallen asleep on the sofa. The soft silver light paints Picasso edges on Mum and Dove.

  I creep up to get a glass of water before waking them both.

  I crumple up my receipt from the taco place and dash it into the bin so I don’t have to look at it tomorrow and feel guilty about eating out all the time and spending all my money on food. It lands softly on top of about fourteen thousand eggshells, flour, burnt spaghetti, raw fatty grey bacon, massive chunks of onion and a clump of scrambled egg.

  And underneath that I see some of Dad’s clothes.

  A tired Dove stands in the doorway having already seen what I’ve seen. ‘She’s slowly getting rid of him, you know. Bit by bit. It will be his head in the bin next.’ She stretches, showing her stomach, her ribs stacked neatly on top of one another, poking through her top. ‘Well, night then.’

  ‘Night,’ I mumble back.

  PANINI

  Some things in life are really hard.

  I’m not being all first-world problematic about it except I am. But they are. Like fifteen full buses going past you in the pouring rain and then one empty one comes and you get all excited only to find it’s not in service. But nothing competes with the daily struggle of having to toast, slice and serve a panini that doesn’t belong to you.

  That is something that truly tests your willpower and strength to the absolute maximum.

  Ohhhhhh. When the bread toasts and the mozzarella squidges out and the pesto hits the grill. When you slice it, the cheese smacks the knife and tears away … and you aren’t allowed to pick the cheese off the side because people watch you. Customers. Making sure you don’t cough or breathe or fold your hair behind your ear and touch the bread and certainly don’t plop any delicious scrumptious melted cheese into your mouth.

  ‘You make it harder for yourself,’ Max says as he leans over me while I stuff the ciabattas. ‘If you don’t want to eat them, stop making them look so tempting.’

  Was that a hint about how hot I look? I do look hot. Am I tempting? My mum tells me that electric blue brings out my green eyes and makes my skin look glowing. STOP BEING COCKY. How have I turned a comment about a sandwich into a compliment about myself?

  ‘I don’t like to give stingy portions. It’s not fair. You have to leave a bathroom the way you would want to find it, and make a sandwich the way you would want to eat one.’

  Max nods and smiles.

  ‘That’s true.’ He peers over my shoulder. ‘It says quite a lot about a person, the way they make a sandwich.’

  PLOT TWIST. ‘Does it?’

  ‘Oh for sure.’

  ‘So what does this sandwich say about me?’

  MELTING PANINI

  Let’s talk about Max. If I’m weighing him up as somebody who could potentially have their tongue in my mouth we need to discuss him. Properly … Firstly, is he too pretty? I realise you can’t see him and this is just a conversation between my head and me but the risk that he could be too pretty is actually really important for me. We are all beautiful but pretty is a completely different word with an entirely different meaning. I don’t want to make him my boyfriend and every three steps we’d have some annoying model scout girl ask him if he’s ‘ever considered modelling’. Perhaps he has considered it and is waiting for his moment to shine? His jaw does have the same angles as a packaged sandwich. I don’t know. I guess you can’t judge a person by their ‘alien’ clothes either because this is stuff they don’t mind getting covered in the soot of coffee and the splat of bleach. But he always wears cool trainers.

  And he smells of figs.

  ‘I think it shows that you clearly understand the good things in life.’

  He’s right.

  ‘I never understand why anybody who works in catering of any kind would ever want to short-change a customer with their portions. It’s not like the money is coming out of our personal accounts! There’s no excuse to be tight. That actually stands for everything. You’re going to get further in life if you’re generous. In EVERY sense of the word.’

  ‘Wait, I haven’t finished psychologically analysing you by your sandwich making …’ Then he snatches the panini from the board and bites into it.

  ‘MAX!’

  ‘Ummmm …’

  ‘Max! That’s for a customer! You can’t do that!’ But he doesn’t care.

  ‘Oh yeah, the vision is coming across much stronger now, oh yes, I can really taste the personalities and character of the –’

  By now a few hangry faces are staring at us. The panini making machine is so slow too.

  ‘Max, you’re gonna get us in trouble.’

  ‘Oh sorry, my bad. It’s just when I’m … summoning up this kind of … energy from the sandwich-making spirits I can’t have anything … you know … disrupting my flow …’ He closes his eyes, opens one to see if I’m still looking and tries not to laugh. His lips are pink. Full. Bee-stung. ‘It means your …’ He starts again. The queue of people are tutting angrily. I should be getting on with it, making new paninis, cutting bread and dicing tomatoes … but I want to know what Max is going to say about me. I don’t want him to use one of those ugly fat-people words like ‘caring’ or ‘motherly’. I realise I hate the idea of him deciding if he fancies me … is she too fat for me? Too bubbly? I don’t want him to usually only fancy skinny girls and then make me his wild-card exception to the rule and that I should feel grateful for that. I don’t want him deliberating over me to his friends, asking their advice on whether they’d date a fat girl or not. I once had a situation with a boy I really liked. We’d spent all day kissing at a skate park in the sun only for him to turn to me on the walk home and say, ‘My friends think you’re fat.’ As if I was meant to advise him on the tricky situation he now had on his hands, like I could help him out somehow. Half expecting me to respond with, Well, should I lose weight, would that make your dilemma easier? I was so embarrassed, I didn’t even tell anyone.

  Just tell me what you’re thinking, Max. SPIT IT OUT. GO HARD OR GO HOME.

  Is he really going to tell me if he fancies me or not by using the metaphor of a sandwich?

  I do hope so.

  Maybe he’s having the same image right now: us walking side-by-side on a sunny Saturday only to be stopped by a plus-size model scout who asks me if I’ve ever considered being a ‘curvy model’.

  I’m just gonna ask him what he’s thinking to save myself. I can do that. I think I look pretty today. And I’m nice. And kind. And interesting. And I’ve already proved that I can make a pretty decent sandwich. Equalling a completely stunning life partner/love of your life/mother of your future children.

  But how to say the words?

  �
��Oi, Max, so is this a thing or …?’ WEIRD. WHY AM I TALKING LIKE THIS?

  ‘Huh?’

  ROLL WITH IT. A few customers lose patience and walk out. Others stare.

  KEEP GOING. OH CRINGE. WHAT AM I DOING?

  I’ve turned into my dad and he’s a complete tit. Blush. Blush. Prickly red map-shaped rash darting up all over me and why have I even opened my mouth? My teeth feel all loose and wobbly and weird and my eyes are jolting left to right like a lizard. Where do I stare? Where do I look? Where am I meant to look when looking somebody in the eyes? Wait, where do I normally look? How do I normally look at somebody in the face? Your eyes can’t look everywhere at once – hold on, in the middle? At the edges? Why am I being so … Just look in the middle, the top of the nose. I’m cross-eyed … I’m cross-eyed and – just shut up and carry on …

  ‘What I mean is, if this is like a thing …’

  I can hear Cam telling me to shut up, Dove pointing and laughing, Alicia snorting.

  ‘… there’s a lovely place near me, well, sort of near me, that does vegan crepes … It sounds horrible, but it’s not. I’m not a vegan. I mean, I couldn’t be vegan, not that there’s anything wrong with vegans; in fact, if you’re a vegan I think that’s totally cool … because obviously I know all about the fact they fake-impregnate cows and stuff to make milk and all the boy chicks that are born they just, like, whizz into a blender to make a meaty milkshake …’ Max looks disgusted. ‘Horrible, HORRIBLE … but if you wanted to, if you fancied it, like, if you’re free and …’

  ‘GREETINGS, EARTHLINGS!’ Oh here comes Alicia. That woman has the worst timing. ‘Want to know why I’ve called you earthlings and NOT aliens?’

  OH NO, ALICIA! NO. YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS. You’re blatantly pregnant, you’ve had your time to shine, let me at least have a chance of TALKING to a boy without you getting in the way.

  HERE SHE GOES …

  ‘Nobody wants to have a guess? OK, sure, let me fill ya in. You’ve spent sooooooo bloody long standing here cruising like tourists that I’ve been left like Neil Armstrong bloody walking the planet on me lonesome. And it’s only school holidays! And there’s a queue. A big one. Marcel is about to lose his rag. Come on, aliens, get to it. Snap, snap, let’s get to work, BLAST OFF!’