by Hayley Long
Gareth shrugged. ‘Well, they’re going out together, I can tell you that much.’
‘WHAT?’ I said. ‘WHAT did you just say?’
Gareth said, ‘I just said that they’re going out together.’ I looked at him in amazement. ‘They can’t be,’ I said. ‘She’d have told me.’
The tops of Gareth’s ears went a bit pink and he started to look uncomfortable. ‘Goose and Spud. Spud and Goose. They’re an item. Have been for at least a week. I thought everyone knew.’
‘WHAT?’ I said. ‘How can Goose and Spud have been going out for AT LEAST A WEEK? We’ve only been back at school a couple of days! And anyway, SHE’D HAVE TOLD ME!’
Gareth shrugged and this time he didn’t say anything.
I stared at the graffiti in confused silence for a moment and then my eyes flicked across the road to where Samantha Morgan and Lee Fogel had emerged from the doorway of the Dragon Coffee House. They were leaning against the cafe window and Lee was sucking Samantha’s neck.
‘YUCK!’ I muttered in disgust. I must have muttered it a bit too loudly though because Gareth said, ‘Oh, lighten up, Lottie. They’re only kissing.’
And then he stooped down and brought his face right close up to mine and put his lips on top of my lips and I have to admit that, in this context, there is actually nothing yucky about the experience at all.
fLatteNING the humPs
This afternoon, I had another session with Blake the not remotely-ugly counsellor from New Zealand. I’m glad I did because I had quite a lot of negative stuff that I needed to work through with him. When he saw me, he said, ‘Hiya, Lottie. Howzit going?’ and then he set the timer on his alarm clock and placed it on the desk next to us.
I said, ‘It’s going quite shittily to be honest, Blake,’ and then I clenched my left hand into a fist and started chewing my knuckles because I knew I’d just sworn and I wasn’t totally sure whether Blake would be hunky-dory with that.
Blake frowned. ‘Hmmm. That good, eh?’
I stopped chewing my knuckles and relaxed slightly. If Blake was offended by my language, he wasn’t showing it. But now I come to think of it, I’ve seen some of the other teenagers who visit the adolescent mental health unit where Blake’s room is and most of them look a lot more messed up than me. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Blake gets to hear stuff which is more challenging than the word ‘shittily.’
I said, ‘Yeah, well . . . so much for being a surfer on the Sea of Tranquillity – I actually feel like I’m on a jet ski to Hell. Since I saw you last, my best friend has started acting all weird, a total stranger on a bus told me I’m sexually frustrated and then another random bus passenger told me I’m about to die.’
Blake said, ‘Which of those things most gives you the hump?’
I tried thinking about it but I was too wound up to be able to concentrate properly and, to be honest, it seemed like a totally stupid question because none of these situations are what you might exactly call ideal. So I just said, ‘THEY ALL GIVE ME THE SODDING HUMP.’
Blake sat back in his chair and stroked his chin.
After a minute or so of total silence, I said, ‘Well, they do all give me the hump.’ I didn’t say it quite as nastily this time though.
Blake said, ‘Maybe what you need to think about is why these situations have occurred. That way, you can try to avoid them happening again in the future. Did you start keeping that diary like I asked you to?’
‘I don’t do diaries,’ I said really quickly.
‘Not diary,’ said Blake, even quicker. ‘I meant to say Emotion Notepad. Have you started writing it?’
I nodded. ‘So far, I’ve written about twelve and a half thousand words. But I only started it four days ago.’
Blake’s eyes widened and, for a second, he seemed to forget what he was about to say. Then he said, ‘Crikey Dick! Well, that’ll certainly do for starters.’
‘I’ve printed some off. Do you want to read it?’ I asked.
Blake smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s private stuff. You’re not writing it for me; you’re writing it for yourself.’
‘I’m writing it because you asked me to,’ I reminded him.
Blake smiled again. ‘Fair point. But the thing that matters is that you’re keeping a record of the events which make you feel a bit up and down. And that will help you get your head around it all. So let’s start with these random people on the bus. What did you say about them in your Emotion Notepad?’
I didn’t need to get my printed pages out of my bag because I could still remember very clearly what I’d said.
‘First of all there was a chubby fat man and he was rubbing noses with his chubby girlfriend and then they were kissing and then I said, “Yuck,”’ I said.
Blake looked thoughtful for a second and then he said, ‘Let’s look at it from a different angle. How do you think that this chubby feller might have felt when you said yuck at the sight of him kissing his girl?’
I frowned and started to bite my thumbnail. I wasn’t feeling very comfortable. In fact, I was feeling so completely uncomfortable that I was starting to wish that I was back in double science listening to Mr Thomas talk about the periodic table. If I had to put my finger on the cause of my discomfort, I’d say that I’d probably just realized that I’m not actually any good at seeing things from a different angle. Sometimes, I get so carried away with being me that I forget about how different it must be to be someone else.
Eventually, with my eyes firmly glued just to the left of Blake’s head, I said, ‘I probably aggravated him.’
Blake hunched his shoulders and gave me a little shrug which seemed to say that he agreed with me. ‘Chances are that he’d be wanting to say something ratty right back at you. Negativity breeds negativity. And what about the other person on the bus?’
‘She told me I’d be dead by the end of the week,’ I said.
Blake raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s a strange thing to say to someone.’
I scratched my head. I was starting to feel confused. It did seem an odd comment for a random stranger to have made. ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said to Blake and pulled my papers out of my bag. I shuffled through them and found the bit about the bus and re-read my words from two days earlier.
When I’d finished reading, I felt a bit stupid. ‘I think she was just annoyed because I’d lied to her about my age,’ I mumbled.
‘Well, there you go,’ said Blake. ‘Two easy ways to avoid getting the hump in the future. Don’t tell people that the sight of them snogging makes you wanna chuck up and don’t tweak the truth. Does that seem so awful?’
‘I suppose not,’ I said.
‘Now, what about this best friend of yours?’
When Blake said this, my face fell and I realized that the words of a million stroppy strangers on a bus couldn’t worry me more than the fact that me and Goose aren’t talking.
I said, ‘Goose is going out with Spud and everyone knows about this except me, apparently, and I’m supposed to be her best friend.’
Blake said, ‘Have you asked her why she hasn’t said anything?’
I shut my eyes for a second and rubbed my forehead, which was starting to ache. ‘I was going to say something this morning cos we usually walk to school together but then I remembered that she prefers to hang out with Samantha Morgan these days so I got the hump and walked to school on my own.’
Blake looked even more thoughtful and then he said, ‘Who is Samantha Morgan?’
‘Someone who once called my mum a rozzer – only I thought she said lezzer, and so I threw her stuff out of the classroom window and got excluded. I don’t like her much.’
Blake said, ‘You seem quite upset with Goose. Perhaps you just need to have a proper talk to her about these things.’
I bit my thumbnail and stared into space, somewhere just to the right of Blake’s head. I was having problems looking him straight in the eye.
‘If you talk to Goose, what’s the very wor
st that could happen?’ asked Blake.
‘She could say something I don’t like which might cause me to start chucking her things out of the window and then I’ll get excluded and fail all my GCSEs and not be allowed into the sixth form and feel a total sad failure for the rest of my life,’ I said.
When I said this Blake looked worried. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘then how about you talk to her in a less direct way. Over the phone or on the Internet. What could be the worst that would happen then?’
‘One of us would slam the phone down or else my paranoid mum would walk in and see I was using an Internet chat room and think I was talking to a sixty-year-old Texan man and ban me forever from the computer.’
‘And the best that could happen?’ asked Blake.
‘Me and Goose would get talking again,’ I said.
And then Blake’s alarm clock went off and I knew what I needed to do.
GOOse MCkenzIe thiNks she’s ChoCOLate
It was gone three o’clock by the time I got back to my mum. She was sitting in her car and reading a newspaper. When she saw me, she folded up her newspaper and said, ‘Session OK?’
‘Not bad,’ I said.
My mum gave me a shifty smile and said, ‘Was Blake looking as handsome as ever?’
I glanced sharply at my mum. She’d turned a bit pink. ‘I didn’t particularly notice,’ I muttered.
My mum giggled and turned on the ignition. Frowning so hard that it made my face hurt, I stared out of the passenger-side window and ignored her. Being the child of a criminally tasteless police sergeant gets me down sometimes.
I stared out of the window all the way home and as we got closer and closer to our house, I saw that the streets were already filling up with kids from my school. It occurred to me that I’d just LEGALLY missed an ENTIRE AFTERNOON of double science and, instantly, this made me smile. But only for one micro-second. Because then, I thought about Goose and how I needed to have a serious conversation with her about some serious matters and I stopped smiling and just felt anxious.
Once we were back inside the house, my mum put her arm across my shoulders and said, ‘How about a quick game of Sonic the Hedgehog with me before I start tea?’
I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Nah, it’s boring – you always beat me.’ And then I said, ‘Besides, I need to go upstairs and have a private telephone conversation with Goose.’
My mum looked puzzled. ‘Can’t you just catch her as she walks by from school and save yourself some credit?’
I said, ‘It’s complicated. I’ve got things I need to get off my chest and Blake recommends that I speak to her in a less direct manner.’
My mum shot me a suspicious glance. Then she said, ‘Well, don’t give Goose a hard time. Friends like her can’t be ordered out of a catalogue.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said.
‘Exactly what you think it means,’ said my mum. ‘Goose is a good friend to you and you haven’t always been the easiest person to get along with.’
For a moment, I just stood and stared at her in total disbelief. And then I said, ‘Why are you having a go at me?’
My mum opened her mouth and then she closed it again and just sighed. Finally, after a long pause, she said, ‘I’m not having a go at you, Lottie. I’m really proud of how well you’ve been coping recently. You’ve got a gorgeous boyfriend, you’re back at school, you’re really positive about these counselling sessions with Blake and you’re about to start a new Saturday job. You’re brilliant! Just remember, please, that Goose is very much a part of your recovery.’
I went red and smiled. ‘Gareth is gorgeous though, isn’t he?’
‘He’s good enough to eat,’ said my mum and kissed me on the nose. ‘And so is Goose.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ I said and rubbed the kiss off. Quite blatantly, my mum thinks Goose should get a Heart of Gold award just for putting up with me.
Upstairs in my room, I sat down for a while and tried to work out what I was going to say on a piece of paper. Despite what my mum thinks, I don’t WANT to fall out with Goose. I really don’t. She is the best friend I’ve ever had. On my piece of paper, I wrote:
But the more I tried to think about what I was actually going to say to her, the more muddled my head got and the more uptight I felt. Putting down my paper and pen, I lay on the floor for a bit and listened to some Jimi Hendrix songs on my MP3 player. I’d hoped that Jimi’s voice would be a calming influence on me but, if anything, he just wound me up even more. After that, I tried listening to a bit of Beyoncé but I can’t say that I found her particularly soothing either. She actually gave me a bit of a headache, if I’m honest.
Finally, I took a deep breath, selected Goose’s number on my phone and pressed Call. While the call was connecting, I kept muttering ‘Don’t give Goose a hard time . . . Don’t give Goose a hard time . . .’ over and over so that I wouldn’t forget.
‘Hi, Lotts,’ said Goose’s voice in my ear. ‘I’m just around the corner from your house. Shall I stop by?’
‘NICE OF YOU TO TELL MEYOU’RE GOING OUT WITH SPUD,’ I said. I didn’t say it very nicely either.
There was a bit of a pause and then Goose said, ‘I was going to tell you, Lottie. It’s just that –’
‘When?’ I said. ‘When exactly were you going to tell me?’
‘Well, I would have told you this morning on the way to school,’ said Goose. ‘But when I called for you, you’d already left without me. What was that all about?’
Goose’s voice was starting to sound a bit agitated.
‘I just can’t believe that you’ve been going out with Spud for a week – AN ENTIRE WEEK – and you didn’t bother to tell me. I’m supposed to be your BEST FRIEND, Goose, but I had to hear about this from Gareth. And Gareth said that the ENTIRE SCHOOL knows. Everyone in Cardiff knows probably – except me. THANKS A LOT!’
I was crying now. I’d also screwed up the piece of paper which was advising me not to give Goose a hard time and thrown it into the bin under my desk.
On the other end of the phone, there was a long pause. Finally, Goose said, ‘I’ve been meaning to phone you, actually, but . . .’
‘But what?’I said.
There was another pause and then Goose said, ‘But I’ve used all my credit talking to Spud.’
Confused, I said, ‘But you could have just TOLD me! I was with you in town ALL AFTERNOON last week and you never said a word!’
Goose said, ‘Will you STOP shouting at me, please?’
I said, ‘I’m NOT shouting.’
Goose sort of laughed in my ear – although it wasn’t a cheery laugh. Then she said, ‘Well I’m sorry,’ - although she didn’t sound sorry – ‘But how am I supposed to talk to you if you WON’T EVEN walk to school with me? THIS WEEK, the only time I’ve seen you is in English lessons and I’m hardly going to tell you intimate details about my private life in a poxy old English lesson, am I?’
Goose was sounding really REALLY agitated now. I think she was crying a bit too.
‘Well, it’s not MY FAULT if you’d rather hang around with Samantha Gorgon-Morgan, is it?’ I shouted.14
‘WHAT?’ said Goose. ‘WHAT?’ She made a big angry noise in my ear and then said, ‘Samantha Morgan’s all right actually. Whatever your problem is with her, you need to get over it right now because SHE doesn’t keep whining on about YOU every ten seconds. And at least I can have a PROPER conversation with her and tell her stuff about MY LIFE once in a while.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said.
‘Ohhhh!’ Goose made another big angry noise in my ear. ‘I mean that I can have a two-way conversation with her. It’s no wonder I never told you I fancied Spud. I never had the chance. Because it’s always YOU YOU YOU. Except just recently when it’s been YOU YOU YOU talking about GARETH GARETH GARETH. You never listen, Lottie. You only ever talk. About yourself. You’re probably not even listening to me now.’
I continued to hold the phone
to my ear but only because all my brain cells had seized up and I’d gone into some kind of weird trance. My mouth was hanging open but not a single sound was coming out of it.
‘Well it’s true,’ said Goose, a little bit quieter now and between big sniffs. I could tell she was DEFINITELY crying. ‘You’re bloody hard work sometimes and I’ve just about had enough of it.’
My brain couldn’t quite believe what my left ear was hearing. Goose is supposed to be my very best friend in the whole world. I’ve always assumed we would be best friends forever. I even have this future image of us hanging out together, just being old. We go to The Jean Genie to each have a shampoo and set and then we have Pensioner’s Portion lunches at the Dragon Coffee House before shuffling off to Vogue Marché to buy our matching culottes . . .
But instead of telling Goose any of this, I said, ‘FINE. Then why don’t you go and get yourself a new best friend.’
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement and I shouted it at her. If I’d had something of Goose’s that I could have thrown out of my window and broken, I would have done.
Goose said, ‘OK, I will,’ and then she switched her phone off.
And that’s how she ended our friendship. As casually as that.
For a little while, I was a bit shocked. I just sat on the floor of my bedroom and wished that I could start the conversation all over again and do it differently. In the back of my head, there was a niggling voice which kept saying, ‘Don’t give Goose a hard time.’
I bit my thumbnail and said out loud, ‘Whoops! I think I just did though.’ And then I plugged my MP3 player into my speakers and listened to some Jimi Hendrix with the volume on maximum so any niggly voices would get totally drowned out.
And after a while, I stopped feeling bad and started feeling a bit annoyed with Goose. Because if things had been the other way round, I’d NEVER have agreed to go and find a new best friend as readily as she did. I value her friendship much more than that. It’s like my mum said – she’s not the sort of friend you can just go and order out of a catalogue. But CLEARLY Goose thinks she’s got people queuing up round the block just waiting to step in and take my place. In fact, Samantha Gorgon-Morgan has probably elbowed her way right to the very front of the queue.