by Day, Susie
And then there he is. The real thing, at the front steps of the Manor on an already-dark Friday afternoon, brooding against a pillar. Black roots starting to take over from the peroxide, slight stoop to his shoulders as if they’re carrying the weight of a world or two, fingers drumming on the worn grainy stone. He glances up as I walk through the big oak doors and slam to a halt. I stand there like a dork. He stiffens against the pillar, and blinks. Eyelashes.
Eyelashes.
Eyelashes.
Eyelashes.
“So…uh. Hi.”
I just smile back. Words are not forthcoming.
“So…”
He shifts his arms to behind his back, as if he needs to hold the pillar to stand up or something. He’s as awkward as I am. He’s more awkward than I am. I sort of miss the debonair Mycroft Christieness he has when he’s being E—but then I’m not exactly feeling like the glamorous Miss Ryder right now.
“About this…stuff,” he says, waving a hand, then putting it back against the pillar, as if he might lose his balance and slip off the edge of the world. I wouldn’t blame him: I might, too. “I should…we should talk, maybe?’
I do the smiling thing some more. I think I fit in a nod, somewhere.
“Cool.”
He squints, turning to look down the driveway. The darkness is split by bright lights as the Mothership’s car rolls up to the steps. The engine whirrs: Gravel crunches under the tires. The headlights pick out his silhouette, framing him in darkness. He looks like a photograph, a poster, a still from the movie of Eric: The Boy Who Was Suddenly Really Inarticulate but Also Sort of Beautiful.
I may be staring.
I should say something.
“That’s my mum.”
Not that.
“She has to take me home now.”
Not that, either.
“I won’t be here all weekend. But, next week, maybe? I stay late on Wednesdays. There’s a musical rehearsal after classes; The Manor common room will probably be quiet. So I might be in there, watching TV, if you wanted to come and find me, maybe?”
He blinks at me few times, as if he’s deciphering it, as if he’s really getting what I’m saying. He catches my hopeful little smile, and for just a moment I catch a miniature glimpse of E.
The Mothership honks her horn.
He shifts against the pillar again, resuming Peroxide Eric mode: solemn yet amused, artfully arranged. Plus eyelashes.
It feels strange to walk into the Little Leaf as just another customer.
It feels even weirder to be in there as Heidi Ryder, soon to be girlfriended by Mysterious E. All the time me and Gingerbread Ed spent on the Sofa of Sex was made up by Betsy, after all. Me and Eric will be needing “Reserved” cards above it, with our names. So long as we don’t dance around each other for too much longer anyway. The place is already starting to change, in preparation for the big closedown: The hat collection’s gone from the top shelf, and the bottom half of the blackboard wall at the back has been wiped clean of all Teddy’s squiggly chalk art.
Most things are the same, though: the Daily Wisdom (THE CAKE IS A LIE! BUT YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BELIEVE IN THE LEMON SHORTBREAD); Teddy sticking his curly head out of the kitchen to give me one of his insane, totally unaware smiles; Betsy gently but firmly telling me when she thinks I’m being a loony.
“Are you drunk?” she says, dropping a triple-chocolate brownie onto a plate for me with a puff of cocoa dust.
I shelve my outstandingly clever metaphorical explanation of how Gingerbread Ed is vanilla and Mysterious E is rum, and I try for something a little more straightforward.
(Maybe she’s right, though. Mysterious E is rum, and I am tipsy from just thinking about him. Love is so weird.)
She pours us both cups of tea, frowning as she listens.
“So this other guy starts e-mailing you, and he knows all about your Ed? I mean, all about Ed?”
“Yep. But it’s OK. He’s not going to tell. In fact…well, we’re kind of…getting together. Going out. Or, you know, planning to.”
I fiddle with the end of my left braid and fidget. Apparently romance makes me act as if I’m about five. My first boyfriend was a gingerbread man: It’s not all that surprising.
Betsy informs me I’m insanely cute, though, which seems more in line with my newfound boyfriend ability.
“Anyone I know?”
“You might have seen him around,” I say, all coy and girly.
Teddy reappears from the kitchen, leans on the counter, and nicks a bit of my brownie. A good bit. A corner bit, crunchy on the outside, squidgy underneath. He even watches me while he’s doing it, grinning, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“I’ll let you off for that on one condition,” I tell him, digging in my bag for the list of costume requirements for Etienne and The Illyrians. “I kind of need four more sketches. Sort of urgently?”
“You think you can just stroll in here and demand I draw stuff now?”
“You’re stealing my job, my supply of peanut butter brownies, and my Betsy away to another country. Yes, Art School Boy, I can stroll in here and demand stuff.”
He mock-sighs, and takes the list. So far, all I’ve got is four names, and the words EMBARRASSING LYCRA? with a big red circle around them.
“Lo-fi album cover art?”
I poke him with a pencil. “I’m a little short on inspiration, OK?”
He tips his head to one side, chews his lip, then grins, and disappears upstairs. A minute later, he returns with his laptop and a DVD.
“You want embarrassing Lycra? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Tron.”
He’s not kidding. Two hours of lightbikes, Bruce Boxleitner, and the total ignoring of our one and only customer later, I can confirm that I have indeed witnessed the most ‘80s film of all time.
AH.
MAY.
ZING.
“You certainly enjoyed that a whole lot more than Safak did,” says Betsy, clearing away our empty mugs with a meaningful roll of her eyes.
I look to Teddy.
“Apparently it takes a special personality to appreciate CGI that crappy,” he says, with a rueful shrug. “So we, uh, kind of decided to call it a day.”
“You broke up over Tron?” I wrap a braid across my mouth, trying to hold in a giggle. “That’s…definitely special.”
He nods, curls bouncing gloomily. If curls can do that sort of thing.
I feel a little sad: Here’s me, skipping about in romantic glee, and Teddy’s doing the opposite. I feel the same every time I see Ludo, with a bonus twinge of guilt. There might be a super-cunning way around that, though: one of those two-birds-with-one-stone kind of plans that Mycroft Christie’s oh so fond of. Ludo’s always liked Teddy, after all. She’s the kind of girl who absurdly lustable guys like Teddy always get, all swingy hair and the scent of peaches wafting from their elbows. She could be his Lovely Ludo. And if she’s got her own new swoonsome lovemonkey, she’s not even going to care what Peroxide Eric’s getting up to.
I vaguely outline my genius idea, neatly sidestepping the part where the whole thing is not quite as noble and selfless as a genius idea might want to be.
Teddy just sort of blinks. A lot.
I suppose not everyone is into Ludo.
“It’s sweet of you, hon,” says Betsy, filling in the long, long silence. “But we’re gone in, what, four weeks? Not really the time to be starting a whole new thing.”
I sigh. She’s right, of course. That’s probably the real reason Teddy broke it off with Safak in the first place. And I definitely don’t want Ludo to be heartbroken all over again.
“Four weeks?” I mumble, the words hitting me at last. “That’s all?”
Betsy grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I know it’s hard, but it’s not all so terrible. We get to go back home, catch up with family. Some of us like to do that once in a while, you know.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?”
> “Exactly!”
It’s not really what I meant, but then she knows that.
“Means you’ll love us even more once we’re gone?”
“We could kidnap her?” says Teddy, finally emerging from his blinky daze. “She’d fit in a suitcase. If we squashed her a bit.”
I nod encouragingly. “I might not look it, but I’m quite bendy.”
Betsy grins. “Sure there’s nothing back here you wouldn’t want to leave behind?”
I look round at the bright colors, the mismatched mugs, the familiar swoop of Teddy’s chalked handwriting on the blackboard menu, the list of teas indelibly in my head (Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Orange Pekoe, Green…).
Once upon a time, back in the Frog Girl days, I might have wanted to parcel myself up and cover myself in stamps at the thought of losing this place. But I’ve got somewhere else to belong to now—and an E to keep me company.
I spend the night before The Big Date getting all my clothes out of the wardrobe, attempting to make my hair do something that isn’t two braids (total failure), and ducking all efforts by the Mothership to “help.” I feel a bit guilty, doing it all under the watchful eyes of my gingerbread boy. But we broke up ages ago, so it’s not as if I’m cheating. I bet Ed would like Eric: I do, after all. Ed and E should hang out, and talk about imaginary guy things. They could invite Mycroft Christie around for poker. I’ll end up one of those whiny girlfriends who is always sending “where r u?” texts in no time.
I think I might be a bit nervous. I’ve never actually been on a date before that didn’t only happen inside my own brain.
Not that it’s a date, exactly: just an afternoon, drop-by-if-you-feel-like-it path-crossing in the Manor common room. We’re just both happening to feel like doing the dropping-by part at the same time.
Well, almost.
He’s already there when I arrive.
He’s sitting on the armrest of the Garden common room sofa, as if he’s too wired to flop down into the cushions. One big boot rests on the edge of the coffee table, nudging the Finchtastic pseudosculpture of crunched Red Bull cans and photocopies on Sikhism. He’s got his coat collar turned up again. It does things to his cheekbones. Good things. Very appealingly watchable things.
I watch from the door as his stubby fingers fiddle with the remote, jabbing it at the plasma screen as if infrared works better if you give it a push.
Some crappy game show plays on the plasma screen.
I should’ve got here earlier and set up the DVD player: Set the timer so while we were talking, Mycroft Christie Investigates could suddenly start playing, and we could have our first kiss to the opening credits, and then snuggle on the sofa to watch the rest. The very first episode, to symbolize our new beginning. Or maybe episode 2.13, “Chaos Theory,” for the Mycroft/Jori snog that we were waiting for all along. Or…
Eric looks up, and sees me, and OK, I’m really not going anywhere.
“Hey.” I wave.
“Hey.”
“You having trouble there?”
“Yeah. Volume control.”
“Probably the batteries.”
“Yeah.”
“It works sometimes if you take them out, and sort of warm them up with your hands.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Well, that’s what my dad says. Although he’s probably just trying to get out of buying new batteries.”
“Uh-huh.”
SHUT.
UP.
“So…”
“Yeah.”
In the multiple preshoot rehearsals of this scene, I’m pretty sure I gave myself a better script. Him, too. I pictured him playing the whole thing in Mysterious E-speak, in fact. Although his stumbling nervous thing is kind of thrilling, all dark and suggestive. I’m just stumbly and nervous, without any subtext. He gets dramatic pauses: I’m the goof who can’t remember the next line.
Heidi sucks at this.
H is going to have to take over.
I come in properly, and swing my leg over the other arm of the sofa, so we’re sitting like bookends. For, you know, really big books.
“So you wanted to talk?”
Oh yeah: H is all kinds of daring.
Eric shrugs. “Yeah. I figured…yeah. Like, you were the person I should be talking to, you know?”
“That would seem logical.”
He does this sweepy eyelash thing that could stop clocks and traffic and maybe save the world.
“So…how’s Ludo doing?” he says, fingertips softly dabbing at the rubber buttons on the remote. “If you don’t mind me asking?”
I don’t mind him asking. I love him asking. Gingerbread Ed was the asking type, which means the asking type is totally my type, and this is all destiny. Or something.
“She’s OK. In the not-very-OK sense, natch. I think she really liked you. As in, more-than-liked you, you know?”
He doesn’t smile at the reference. He just looks sad.
I kind of want to reach out and hold his hand, and for that to sort of tumble us into some kind of inevitable lying-on-top-of-one-another-oh-however-did-that-happen? thing. But this stupid bookends position (that seemed like a fabulous artistic decision at the time: We’d look awesome in widescreen) means I’m too far away for it not to involve trampling across the sofa, and probably the middle cushion would slide off halfway across like it always does, and I’d just fall on the coffee table and break it, or me.
“She’ll be all right, you know. She’s got lots of people looking after her.”
He nods, slowly. “Yeah. I still feel bad, though.”
“About moving on so fast?”
“I guess you could call it that,” he says, and smiles.
His eyelashes rest on his cheeks when he does that. I should make him do that more often.
“I think it’s like Fili says,” I say, smiling myself. “You like who you like. You don’t do it because it’s convenient, or good timing, or appropriate. You just…feel it.”
“Well, she’d know, right?”
He’s looking right at me now. Those soulful gray eyes. Fingers still wandering over the remote as if they can’t quite stop themselves. Little crease in his brow.
“I didn’t think she’d go ahead and break up with Simon over it, though. Or if she did, at least we’d end up together. Now it’s like nobody’s happy, know what I mean?”
He’s still looking at me, all eyelashes, eyelashes doing their thing, me nodding, listening, listening to…
Wait.
Stop.
Break up with…Simon?
“Anyway, you’re the kid who seems to know everything around here, right? So I figured you’d know if I’ve got a shot.”
I don’t know how I’m breathing. I feel like I’ve eaten the sofa instead of sat on it.
“With Fili?” I croak.
“Yeah. Because, you know, we had a good time. But I hear Etienne Gracey split up with that chick with the crazy name, so, you know, if Fili’s not interested…”
“I…really…couldn’t say.”
Eric sniffs, and shrugs. “That’s girl-code for no, right?”
He tosses me the remote and jumps up, his coat brushing my elbow as he sweeps past.
“Tell her I’m sorry and all that. And thanks for being cool about it, yeah? Sweet.”
Then he’s gone, and it’s just me, and the TV, and…that’s not what I want.
SWEET.
SUITE.
AI.
LASH.
IS.
Recipe for Disaster
INGREDIENTS:
Heidi
Reality
METHOD:
• Place your Heidi in the presence of other people.
• Watch as she proceeds to not notice anything that’s going on around her, despite thinking she’s a detective.
• Point and laugh at results.
“If someone broke your heart, babes, you can tell me,” says the Mothership, over watermelon and apple soup. “I
’ll give them as much detention as you want.”
Motivational: not so much.
And I’m not heartbroken. I’m horrible. I never imagined in a million years that it would be Fili who cheated—and that’s mostly because if it were going to be anyone I would’ve expected it to be Ludo. Or maybe myself, apparently. So I’m back to spending nights sitting at my desk, staring at Gingerbread Ed, wishing real boys were also handily pocketsized, cinnamon-scented, and altogether less likely to make the whole world feel so meh.
I get sick of looking at his sarcastically squished eye after a while, so I turn him around and somehow knock him against the lamp. One arm snaps off. He looks even more sarcastic. I decide to take revenge and nibble on his nonexistent elbow.
It’s like biting into a telephone. Or rocks. Or some other very hard thing, like diamonds, except for the vague taste of treacle, orange peel, and spices. And dust. Lots of dust. Like a sort of gray icing made from ick.
Even my imaginary boy has gone off.
A dimly lit penthouse: so dim that it’s quite impossible to see the face of dashing detective Mycroft Christie as he converses with his plain and extraordinarily thick colleague Miss Heidi Ryder.
MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Truly, my dear, you have a gift for metaphor.
HEIDI: Least I’ve got a gift for something.
MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Might I detect a little wounded pride behind my reappearance? I was under the impression you didn’t need me anymore.
HEIDI: I thought I had an E to talk to instead. But apparently I’ve thought lots of stupid things lately.
MYCROFT CHRISTIE: The true identity of the peroxide-headed gentleman’s Girl B was rather a surprise, certainly. But as that piece of the jigsaw slots into place, it does bring a few others along for the ride.
HEIDI: I suppose. I get why Fili was being quite so down on herself now. And why she didn’t want to talk to Ludo. Or me, in case I got all judgey about her stealing Ludo’s bloke.