Izzie has always come home with me, ever since I’ve known her. Her mum and stepdad don’t get home from work until after seven so it was arranged ages ago that she’d come here until one of them picks her up.
Izzie says I have to give Nesta a chance and get to know her properly but I’m not sure how I feel about her being here all the time. It’s like, first she moves in on my best friend, and now she’s moving in on my family. I’m trying to be friends and I do sort of like her — it’s hard not to, she’s great fun — but I can’t help feeling pushed out. Everyone loves Nesta when they meet her. She’s so confident and pretty.
It all started a few weeks ago when Izzie came to find me after school. She looked out of breath as if she had been running.
‘Can Nesta come back with us to yours?’ she asked, looking behind her as though someone was following.
She saw me hesitate.
‘She needs friends,’ she said. ‘She’s not as sure of herself as she makes out. I know she acts all tough, like she doesn’t need anyone or care what anyone thinks of her but I just found her at the bus stop, crying. That creep Josie Riley and her mates have been calling her names and she doesn’t want to go home until her mum’s back. I don’t want to leave her there on her own.’
I’d have felt mean refusing and I did feel sorry for her. I know what those bullies in Year Eleven can be like.
‘Yeah. Tell her to come,’ I said. ‘That is if she doesn’t mind my mad family.’
Course Mum and Dad made her welcome straight away. They always do with people. They may not have enough money to paint the kitchen walls but they don’t seem to mind feeding the neighbourhood. Love, peace and have a chunk of organic bread. That’s what they live by. Share what you have. The world is just a great big family.
Because Dad runs the local health shop we’re fed all sorts of weird stuff. All organic, preservative free. Tastes OK though. But some nights I don’t know what I’m eating. Tahini. Gomasio. Miso. And herbal teas. Disgusting. Especially camomile. Smells like cats’ pee. What I’d give for a McDonald’s followed by a big fat chocolate milkshake. But no, Mum and Dad are veggies so the only burger you get round here is the tofu variety and milkshakes are made of soya.
Izzie says it’s one of the things she likes best about Mum and Dad but then she’s into all that stuff as well. New Age, alternative.
‘I wish my parents were cool like yours,’ she said once. ‘They really care about stuff. The environment. What we put in our bodies. They’re not like usual boring parents.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I used to love the way they were when I was younger but I wish Mum would look a bit, well, a bit more bland these days.’
‘Why?’ said Izzie. ‘I think she looks brilliant.’
‘Brilliant?’ I said. Not a word that would spring to my mind when describing Mum’s style. Peculiar more like.
‘I love a bargain,’ Mum’s always saying. ‘Which is why I shop at all the charity shops. You get a good class of cast-off in North London.’
Mostly I don’t mind but last month’s parents’ meeting was the worst. I wanted her to look normal for once but she came down the stairs ready to go, wearing red and white striped tights, a purply tweed skirt and a green checked jacket. She has no sense of colour co-ordination at all and slings it all together with total disregard for what mixes and matches.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, giving me a twirl.
‘Er, very colourful,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘But why not try your green jacket with some navy trousers? Or maybe the purple skirt with a grey or blue shirt? That would look nice.’
‘But I love the tights,’ said Mum. ‘I have to wear them.’
‘Well how about with a plain black dress?’ I suggested, ‘and you could accessorise the red and white stripes with red and white bracelets?’
She sort of listened. Sort of. She went upstairs and changed into a black dress. Then threw a multicoloured poncho that looks like an old blanket over it. And, of course, she was still wearing the red and white tights. I give up. Everyone was staring at her when we got to school. She stood out amongst all the other mums in their Marks and Spencer’s navy and white. Even her hair is different. Most mums have the standard short haircut but Mum’s is really long, halfway down her back. Too long for her age, I think, though it does look OK when she puts it back in a plait.
Then again, it could have been the car that people were looking at that evening. We’ve had the same one for years. I think Mum and Dad bought it at university, which is where they first met. It’s a Volkswagon Beetle. And for some reason Dad painted it bright turquoise. No, you definitely can’t miss it amongst the Range Rovers and BMWs.
Dad dresses pretty normally. Cords and jumpers. I mean, he doesn’t exactly have to dress smart to dole out people’s muesli at the shop but I wish he’d get rid of the ponytail. Does he listen? No. According to a mag I read, balding men compensate by having a ponytail. Poor Dad. It must be awful losing his hair but it would look so much better if he had what little he has left cropped short.
‘So how was school today?’ he asked the assorted chomping faces in the kitchen.
‘Mmphhh, OK, fine,’ came the reply.
‘What have you been doing?’ he asked, turning to me.
‘Career choices, GCSE choices,’ said Nesta, butting in. ‘Making decisions.’
And that set them all off again. Even Lal, Steve, Matthew and Tom joined in.
‘I want to be a record producer,’ said Lal.
‘I want to play in a band,’ said Tom, getting up and playing air guitar.
‘I want to be an inventor,’ said Steve.
It was a repeat of the morning at school with everyone knowing what they want to be except me. I could see Mum looking at me as everyone babbled away.
‘What about you, Lucy?’ she asked. ‘What do you want to be?’
I shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
Izzie and Nesta burst in with their brilliant career plans and I could see Mum was watching me with concern as they enthused away. She doesn’t miss a trick. She winked at me when no one was looking.
‘The longest journey starts with the first step,’ she said.
Steve, Lal and I groaned. We’re used to her coming out with her ‘quote for the day’. In her work as a psychotherapist she spends loads of time with people who are fed up with their lives in one way or another so she’s always looking for new things to say to them to cheer them up a bit. She reads all the latest self-help books and likes to pass on words of wisdom to the rest of us.
‘OK, who wants an Angel Card?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Mum,’ I said, feeling embarrassed, ‘I’m sure no one’s interested.’
‘What’s an Angel Card?’ asked Izzie enthusiastically.
‘A box of cards I bought last week to use in my counselling sessions,’ said Mum. ‘I haven’t got round to taking them into work yet. Each card has a quote written on it.’
She got up and found her pack.
‘You pick one,’ she said, shuffling the cards and selecting one, ‘and let it speak to you.’
‘The darkest hour is just before dawn,’ she read, then handed the cards to Izzie. ‘Your turn, Iz.’
Izzie loves stuff like this. Tarot cards, astrology, I Ching. She took a card and read out,’ ‘Choice not chance determines destiny.’
‘Very sensible,’ said Dad. ‘Better to choose what you want than let it all drift by you and end up doing something you don’t really want to do.’
I started to feel panicky again. Was that going to happen to me because I didn’t know what to choose? I’d just drift along in a haze of confusion?
Suddenly I felt a cold, wet nose pushing against my hand. Ben’s dopey face gazed up at me from under the table as if to say he understood. Sometimes I think dogs are psychic.
Izzie handed the pack to Nesta. ‘You choose one.’
Nesta picked and read, ‘The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The
tragedy lies in having no goal.’
Arggghhhh. It was getting worse. I have no goal. It’s a tragedy.
‘That’s OK,’ continued Nesta. ‘I’ve got a goal. Clothes Show in a few weeks. I get spotted by talent scout and become a super-duper supermodel.’
Lal’s jaw dropped even more as he goggled at Nesta. ‘A supermodel? You’ll get picked easy.’ The creep.
Nesta handed the cards to me and I let my hand hover, then shuffled. Let it be a good one, I prayed, let it be a good one.
I picked one out. ‘Don’t wait for your ship to come in,’ I read. ‘Swim out to it.’
‘Good one,’ said Dad.
Psychic Ben clearly liked the card as well. He tried to jump up on my knee to lick my face. Seeing as he’s an enormous thing, he almost knocked me flying, making everyone laugh.
‘Down, Ben,’ I said. ‘You know I love you but you’re too heavy.’
Reluctantly he got down but sank his head on to my lap and refused to budge it.
I read my card again. Right, I thought. I’ll be positive. I’ll swim out to the ship. Right. I will. But how?
Once again Mum clocked my anxious expression. She squeezed my hand. ‘There’s no hurry, you know. You don’t have to decide what you want to be this minute.’
I knew she meant well but I thought the sooner I swam out to my ship the better.
Chapter 3
Girls’
Night Out
Saturday night. Girls’ night out.
We’re going to go to the Hollywood Bowl in Finchley. Dad calls it teen paradise. Everyone from our school hangs out there. It’s a huge complex with a bowling alley cafés and a cinema, all built round a square where you can park if you have a car or stand about looking cool if you want to be seen. At the weekend, this is most of the teenage population of North London.
Talking of which, what am I going to wear? Nesta and Izzie always look fab so I’d better make an effort.
I rifled through my wardrobe but all that stared back at me were last year’s oddments, worn out, boring or babyish. I had a pink phase for a while but it looks too girlie girlie now. I really need some new clothes.
Suddenly I had an idea.
‘Mum,’ I called down the stairs. ‘Where did you put that pile of stuff from Oxfam?’
‘In the hall cupboard,’ she called from the kitchen. ‘I thought you didn’t want any of it.’
Mum had arrived back this morning from her weekly shop with the usual carrier bag of Oxfam bargains. I wouldn’t be seen dead in most of it, too big or too patterned, but there was one shirt: size twenty. I don’t know who Mum thought was going to wear it and initially I cast it aside. But it was nice fabric, silver and silky.
I pulled it out of the bag, got a large pair of scissors and went to the sewing machine in the sitting-room. I cut off the sleeves and the front panels, leaving me with the back. I cut it down, hemmed the bottom then set about shaping the top and sides.
In under an hour, I’d finished. Posh girls eat your heart out, I thought as I tried on my new handkerchief halter top. It didn’t look half bad either. I could wear it with my black jeans.
‘You’re not going out in that,’ said Dad as I modelled my top for the family. ‘It’s October, you’ll freeze to death.’
‘I’ll take a jacket,’ I promised.
‘It’s far too revealing for someone your age,’ he frowned.
‘I’m not a baby any more, Dad,’ I said.
‘I think you look cool,’ said Lal, looking up from the Sci Fi channel.
‘What do you think, Steve?’ I asked.
He gave me a cursory glance up and down. ‘Not bad.’
That’s praise coming from him.
‘You’ve done a really good job,’ said Mum, examining my stitching, ‘that silver brings out your blue eyes beautifully. Oh, let her wear it, Peter.’
‘Can’t you sew some sleeves in?’ said Dad, still not convinced.
‘This is the look; it’s not meant to have sleeves.’
‘Well, all right but make sure you keep your jacket on. And I’ll pick you up at nine thirty. No later. I don’t want you staying out late looking like that.’
‘Oh, Dad, please, ten at least. I’ll be with Nesta and Izzie. They can stay out later. Please. Pleeease.’
‘Ten o’clock, no later,’ said Mum. ‘And Dad will be there waiting for you.’
‘And don’t do anything I wouldn’t,’ smirked Lal.
Permission from a fifteen-year-old to snog anyone, I thought.
I began to get ready in plenty of time. First I had a bath but unluckily for me Steve and Lal had been in after their football practice. The soap was all slimy from where one of them had left it in a puddle of water in the soap dish and the towels were on the floor and dripping wet. The joys of elder brothers. Not.
I went into Mum’s room to get clean towels from the cupboard and that’s when I noticed the jar. Wax for removing unwanted hair. Just the thing. I had a fuzz of hair growing under my arms and didn’t want to get caught like that time the press saw one of the Oscar winners on her way to a film premiere. When she waved at them, they all photographed her hairy armpits. Not that the paparazzi are going to be at the Hollywood Bowl tonight but you never know who else might be. One day my prince will come.
Mum was out visiting next door so I snuck the jar into my room and read the instructions. Heat up, apply to the area, then pull off. Sounded simple enough so I went into the kitchen and warmed the wax up in a pan of water on the stove. I waited until it began to bubble.
‘What you doing?’ said Steve, coming in and sticking his nose in the pan. ‘Toffee?’
‘Waxing,’ I said and showed him my underarms.
‘Erlack,’ he said, backing away. ‘Girlie stuff.’
‘I’ll do your chest if you like,’ I offered. His ‘chest hair’ was a family joke. He has just the one. We all saw it in the garden this summer when he stripped off. We sang ‘Macho Macho Macho Man’ to him. He was dead embarrassed.
‘Won’t it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘It’ll be easy. And so cheap. Izzie went for a leg wax last month and it cost her twelve quid. This is costing nothing.’
Steve looked doubtful. Ben and Jerry looked up from their sleeping spot under the table. Even they looked doubtful.
When the wax had cooled slightly, Jerry followed me upstairs and watched with interest as I took the spatula and smoothed it on liberally under both my arms.
Rip it off, in one firm upward motion, the packet directed.
I lifted my left arm, eased a bit of the now hard wax and began to tug.
Ohmigod. OHMIGOD. Argggghhhhh!!! Agony. My eyes began to water and my face flushed red. I tugged again. No way. Absolutely no way. It wouldn’t come off. What was I going to do?
I took a deep breath and ripped. ARGGGHHHHHH! I fell back on the bed, sweating in agony. Jerry immediately pounced up and gave my face a great wet lick.
Fending him off, I gasped, ‘Why does nobody tell you it’s torture? Izzie never said.’
Then I realised; I’d plastered the horrible stuff under both arms. But I couldn’t go through that again. I just couldn’t. But it would show if I didn’t get it off. There was no way out.
I lay on the bed with my right arm above my head and timidly began to pull at the wax. The pain was indescribable. Jerry began to bark as I heard Mum come in through the front door.
‘Mum,’ I called. ‘MuuUUM, I need you!’
I could hear her running up the stairs. ‘What is it?’ she said, bursting through the door. ‘Has something happened?’
I nodded and pointed at my arm. ‘I used your wax to do my underarms.’
Mum sat on the bed and started shaking with laughter. ‘Serves you right for snooping in my things,’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to look like a hairy reject,’ I said.
Mum looked at me as though I was mad.
‘It’s not too bad when you use it on you
r legs,’ she said. ‘But your underarms,’ she started laughing again, ‘your poor underarms are a bit more sensitive.’
‘Have you got something that will dissolve it?’ I asked hopefully.
She shook her head. ‘’Fraid not. Come on, let’s get it over with. Arm up. Come ON. Arm up.’
Tentatively I lifted my arm.
‘Eyes closed, deep breath,’ said Mum.
I took a deep breath and she ripped.
'ARGGGHHH!’ I screamed and Jerry howled in sympathy. It was like someone had sliced my skin off.
Mum leaned over and looked under my arm. ‘Bit of talc on there and no harm done.’ Then she grinned. ‘Welcome to the world of you have to suffer to be beautiful.’
‘Is she with you?’ asked the ticket lady at the cinema.
Nesta nodded and tried to brave it out. ‘Three, please.’
I turned away and tried to make myself disappear as everybody in the cinema queue stared at me.
‘You do know that you have to be fifteen to see this film?’
Nesta nodded. ‘Yeah. Course.’
‘Do you have proof of your age?’ said the lady, looking pointedly at me.
Nesta shook her head. ‘Not on me.’
Izzie tugged Nesta’s sleeve. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
As we made our way out of the foyer, I could hear the ticket lady tutting as she took money from the people next in line. ‘Honestly, kids these days,’ she said. ‘They’re always trying it on.’
I tried not to meet anyone’s eyes as we snuck out. I felt awful. It was my fault. Izzie and Nesta could both easily pass for sixteen. It’s me. Even though I’ve put some kohl on my eyes and am wearing lipstick. I’ve ruined their evening.
‘Bad luck,’ said a voice from the queue.
We all turned back and saw Michael Brenman standing with a bunch of his mates waiting to get in. He was smiling at Nesta.
‘Anyone can see the midget’s underage,’ sneered Josie Riley, looking at me. She’s a snotty Barbie lookalike from Year Eleven and well-known as a bully in our school, always picking on younger or smaller kids like me. She linked her arm through Michael’s and pulled him away then looked back at us to say, ‘Stick to Disney in future, kids.’
Mates, Dates and Inflatable Bras Page 2