by Alice Oseman
I was boring when I was with my school friends. I was quiet, work-obsessed, boring School Frances.
I wasn’t like that when I was with Aled.
BABAR
The next time we saw each other in person after the midnight logarithms session was at his house, the Saturday of the week I went back to school. I didn’t even feel nervous, which I found a bit weird because, as previously mentioned, I was usually nervous when seeing my school friends, let alone a guy I’d known properly for about four weeks.
I stood in front of his door and checked I wasn’t wearing anything ridiculous by accident and then rang the doorbell.
He opened it within two seconds.
“Hi!” he said, with a smile.
His appearance was markedly different to the last time I’d seen him. His hair was longer, covering his ears and eyebrows completely now, and gone were the mismatched hoodie and shorts – he was back in plain jeans and a T-shirt. They didn’t seem to suit him.
“Hi,” I said. I sort of wanted to give him a hug, but I sensed that might be a bit awkward.
Despite being friends with Aled’s twin sister for a year, I’d never been inside their house. Aled gave me a tour. There was a to-do list blackboard and a chores rota in the kitchen, fake flowers in vases covering the windowsills and surfaces, and a greying Labrador named Brian who loped after us until we went upstairs. Aled’s mum wasn’t home.
His room, on the other hand, was a treasure cavern. Every other room in his house was cream and brown, but his room had no visible wall due to all the posters, fairy lights covering the ceiling and the bed, several houseplants, a whiteboard with scribbles all over it, and no less than four different beanbags. He had a blanket on his bed that had the pattern of a city at night on it.
He seemed pretty nervous about letting me in his room. The floor, desk and bedside table were bare, like he’d tidied up and hidden things before I’d arrived. I tried not to stare too long at any particular part of the room and sat down on his desk chair – a safer option than the bed. Bedrooms are windows to the soul.
Aled sat down on his bed and crossed his legs. His bed was a single, less than half the size of my bed, but Aled wasn’t very tall – we were the same height – so it was probably okay.
“So!” I said. “Universe City! Art! Planning! Stuff!”
I clapped my hands in between each word and Aled grinned and looked down. “Yes …”
We’d agreed to meet on that day to have a ‘meeting’ about Universe City. I specifically used the word ‘meeting’ when I suggested meeting up. It felt a bit weird to just ask him to hang out with me because I wanted to see him. Even though that was true.
Aled opened his laptop. “I was just looking at your blog because there’s a few particular drawings that I thought would be really good for the videos … like, a good style …” He tapped away on the keyboard, but I couldn’t see the screen. I spun from side to side on his desk chair.
Then he paused and looked up. He gestured for me to come towards him. “Come and look.”
So I went and sat with him on the bed.
We went through my blog and chatted for a while about what sort of style would work for twenty-minute-long videos without me having to make a twenty-minute-long animation once a week (impossible). I did most of the talking at first, but he got more confident as we went on and by the end we were both rambling.
“But the thing with drawing the characters is that I think everyone’s idea of what they look like is slightly different and there’d always be some people who were disappointed,” he was saying, typing out notes on Evernote. We were both farther up the bed, leaning against the wall. “Like especially Radio – if you tried to draw Radio we’d face all sorts of questions like does their appearance change with their voice, or are they completely androgynous, and then what does total androgyny look like when gender isn’t even anything to do with appearance or voice?”
“Yeah, exactly, you can’t just have Radio in, like, masculine clothes with a skinny feminine body … that’s such a stereotypical view of androgyny.”
He nodded. “People can still be agender if they wear skirts and have beards and stuff.”
“Exactly.”
Aled typed ‘Radio – no physical appearance’ after a new bullet point, then nodded to himself, and then looked at me. “D’you want a drink or anything?”
“Yeah, sure! What’ve you got?”
He ran through the options and I picked lemonade and then he left to get us drinks. He made sure to shut his laptop, as if scared that I might immediately start searching his Internet history. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t trust me either.
I sat still for a moment.
And then I couldn’t resist my curiosity any longer.
I went first to the bookshelf above his bed. On one side was a collection of aged CDs, including every Kendrick Lamar album, which surprised me, and five different Radiohead albums, which surprised me again. On another side was a pile of well-used notebooks and it felt too invasive to see what was inside them.
There wasn’t anything on the desk, but after looking closer I noticed there were small splatters of dried paint and PVA glue. I didn’t dare open any of the drawers.
I read some of the scribbles on his whiteboard. Not much of it made sense, but it seemed to be a mix of to-do lists and notes about upcoming Universe City episodes. ‘Dark Blue’ was circled. On the right he’d written ‘stars – beaming down something, metaphor?’ In one corner were the words ‘JOAN OF ARC’.
I wandered over to his wardrobe, which was covered in film posters, and opened it.
This was extremely invasive, but I did it anyway.
I guess I wanted to know whether there was someone like me out there in the world.
There were T-shirts. A lot of T-shirts. T-shirts with patterned breast pockets, T-shirts with animals on them, T-shirts with all-over patterns of skateboarders and chips and stars. There were jumpers, huge woollen ones with wide necks, turtle-necks and ripped ones, cardigans with elbow patches, oversized sweatshirts, a boat pattern or a computer on the back or one that sported the word ‘NO’ in black Helvetica. There was a pair of trousers, pale blue, with embroidered ladybirds all over them and there was a five-panel cap with the NASA logo on it. There was a large denim jacket with Babar the Elephant on the back.
“Are you … inspecting my clothes?”
I turned, slowly, to find Aled standing in the doorway, a glass of lemonade in one hand. He looked a little surprised, but not angry.
“Why do you not wear any of this?” I said, feeling almost dazed, because this wardrobe might as well have been mine.
He chuckled and looked down at what he was wearing. Blue jeans and a grey T-shirt. “Er, I don’t know. Dan— Daniel thinks I’m really weird.”
I took his Babar jacket out of the cupboard and put it on, and then checked myself out in his mirror. “This is literally the best item of clothing I have ever seen. This is it. You have done it. You own the best item of clothing in the entire universe.” I turned to him and struck a pose. “I’m probably going to steal this. Just so you know.” I started rifling through his wardrobe. “This just … it looks like my wardrobe. I didn’t know whether you were joking when you told me on Facebook, I would have worn something better today, but I didn’t know. I have some leggings with Monsters, Inc. characters on them … I thought about wearing them but, like, I don’t know … You need to tell me where you got these trousers because they’re literally … I’ve never seen anything like them …”
I just kept talking and talking and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d rambled like this to someone other than my mum. Aled looked at me. The sun was shining through the window on to his face so I couldn’t really see what he was thinking.
“I honestly thought,” he said, as I finally stopped talking, “you were, like … just some quiet, work-obsessed study machine person. Not that there’s, like, anything wrong with being like that, but, er, I do
n’t know. I just … thought you were really boring. And you’re not.”
The way he said it was so frank that I almost blushed. Almost.
He shook his head and laughed at himself. “Sorry, that sounded way less mean in my head.”
I shrugged and sat back down on his bed. “I thought you were boring too, to be fair. And then I found out that you make my favourite thing in the entire world.”
He smiled, embarrassed. “Universe City is your favourite thing in the world?”
I paused, wondering why I’d just said that. I wondered whether it was actually true. Too late to take it back now.
I laughed. “Er, yeah.”
“That’s … a really nice thing to say.”
We got back to Universe City stuff, but very quickly got distracted when I was looking through his iTunes and we discovered we both liked M.I.A. and started watching her concerts on YouTube, sitting on his bed with the blanket over us and drinking our lemonade. I ended up reciting the full rap from ‘Bring The Noize’ as he watched in moderate amazement. I felt embarrassed about it until about halfway through when he started nodding along. After that we wondered whether we should get back to Universe City stuff, but Aled admitted he was kind of tired and I suggested watching a film, so we watched Lost In Translation because I hadn’t seen it before and Aled accidentally fell asleep.
We met up again the next day. We got the train into town to go to Creams, a milkshake café, with the pretence of talking about Universe City, but instead we spent an hour talking about all the TV shows we watched when we were children. We were both obsessed with Digimon and decided to watch the movie when we got home. I was wearing my Monsters, Inc. leggings and he was wearing his Babar jacket.
2. SUMMER HOLIDAY (a)
YOUR ART IS SO BEAUTIFUL
“Do you talk to yourself?” Aled said. “Out loud?”
It was the end of July and school was over and we were in my bedroom. I was on the floor, sketching ideas for my first Universe City episode on my laptop. I always brought my laptop with me to his house because Aled had a weird thing about other people using his laptop. He joked that he thought his mum checked it secretly while he was at school, and this had made him paranoid. I thought it was fair enough – I wouldn’t want anyone accidentally stumbling across my Internet history, even Aled. Some things you really should just keep to yourself.
He was sitting on my bed, writing the script. The radio was on and the sun shone a strip of light across the carpet.
“Erm, sometimes,” I said. “Yeah. If there’s nobody around. It just happens by accident.”
He didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Why?”
He stopped typing and looked up, leaning his chin on one hand. “I was just thinking the other day … about the fact that I never speak to myself out loud. And I thought maybe that was normal, but then I wondered whether that was actually really strange.”
“I thought talking to yourself was strange,” I said. Mum had caught me doing it several times and laughed at me.
We both looked at each other.
“So who’s the strange one?” I grinned.
“I don’t know,” he said, and then shrugged. “Sometimes I think if nobody spoke to me, I’d never speak again.”
“That sounds sad.”
He blinked. “Oh, yeah.”
Everything with Aled was fun or good. Usually both. We started to realise that it didn’t even matter what we did together, because we knew that if we were both there, we would have a good time.
I started to feel less embarrassed about all the weird things I did, like suddenly singing songs with absolutely no context, and my bottomless database of random encyclopaedic facts and that one time I started a four-hour-long text conversation about why cheese was a food.
I kept teasing him for having such long hair until he said one day, quite decisively, that he actually wanted it to be long, so I stopped teasing him after that.
We played video games or board games or watched YouTube videos or films or TV shows, we baked cakes and biscuits and ordered takeaway. We could only do stuff at his house when his mum wasn’t in, so we were at my house most of the time. He’d sit through me screaming along to Moulin Rouge and I’d sit through him reciting every line from Back To The Future. I tried to learn the guitar using his guitar, but gave up because I was shit. He helped me paint a night-time cityscape mural on my bedroom wall. We watched four seasons of The Office. We sat in each other’s rooms with our laptops on our legs; he kept falling asleep at random times of the day; I kept persuading him that Just Dance sessions were a good idea; we discovered that we were both very passionate about Monopoly. I didn’t do any homework when I was with him. He didn’t do any uni reading when he was with me.
But at the heart of it was Universe City.
We started sketching things for the video art and sticking all our ideas on my bedroom wall, but there were so many ideas that it took us ages to decide on anything. Aled had started asking me for advice while he was plotting future episodes and giving me spoilers and I felt so undeserving I almost told him to stop. Almost.
“I don’t think this is working,” I said, after we’d sat in silence for a while, sketching and typing. Aled glanced up, and I moved to show him what I was drawing on Photoshop – it was a cityscape of Universe City, with its flashing lights and dark alleyways. “I think the shapes are wrong. Everything’s too pointy and square, it feels really flat.”
“Hm,” he said. I wondered whether he knew what I was talking about. I often found myself suddenly saying things that didn’t really make sense in front of Aled and I think sometimes he just pretended to understand what I was saying. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“I’m just not sure …” My voice trailed away.
I made my decision.
I leaned forward, reached underneath my bed and grabbed my current sketchbook. I opened it, flicked through, and found what I was looking for – another sketch of the city, but in this one the city looked completely different. It was more of an aerial view, and the buildings were curved and soft, like they were swaying in the breeze.
I’d never shown anyone my sketchbooks before.
“How about something like that?” I said, showing Aled the drawing.
Aled slowly took the sketchbook out of my hands. He gazed at it for a moment, and then said, “Your art is so beautiful.”
I made a vague coughing noise.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Something like this would be really good,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Aled continued to stare at the sketchbook. He ran his thumbs over the edges, and then turned to me. “Is this all Universe City stuff?”
I hesitated, and then nodded.
He looked back at the sketchbook. “Can I look through this?”
I knew he was going to ask, and I felt stupidly nervous about letting him, but I still ended up saying, “Yeah, sure!”
ANGEL
Aled caught the flu a few days later, but we were still aiming for my first episode to come out on August 10th, so I continued to visit him while he was sick. Also, I was starting to get used to seeing him every day, and felt a bit lonely when I didn’t. None of my school friends had talked to me for a while.
Aled’s mum never seemed to be home. I asked him why, and he said that she worked long hours. All I knew of her was that she enforced strict curfews – Aled had to be home by 8pm every evening – but that was it.
One afternoon while he was curled up in bed under his cityscape blanket, shivering, he said, “I don’t understand why you keep coming here.”
I wasn’t sure whether he meant just while he was ill, or generally.
“We’re friends,” I said, “and I know I’m hilarious, but also I’m a worrier.”
“But this isn’t fun for you,” he said, with a weak laugh. “I’m ill.” His hair was greasy and stuck up in tufts. I was sitting on the floor, f
ully involved in the process of making him a sandwich with various items I’d brought from my house in a giant cool box.
“I don’t know, I’d just be sitting by myself if I was at home. And that’s even less fun.”
He made a grumbling noise and said, “I just don’t understand.”
I laughed. “Isn’t this what friends do?” But then I realised that I wasn’t actually sure. No one had ever done something like this for me before. Was this really weird? Was I overstepping a boundary, invading his personal space, was I being really clingy …
“I … don’t know,” he mumbled.
“Well, you’re the one who has a best friend.” I regretted saying it as soon as it came out, but neither of us could deny it was true.
“Dan? He wouldn’t visit while I was sick,” Aled said. “There’s no point. It’d just be boring.”
“I’m not bored,” I said, because it was the truth. “I have you to chat with. And sandwiches to make.”
He laughed again and hid his face under the blanket. “Why are you so nice to me?”
“Because I’m an angel.”
“You are.” He stretched out his arm and patted me on the head. “And I’m platonically in love with you.”
“That was literally the boy-girl version of ‘no homo’, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“Can I have my sandwich now?”
“Not yet. I don’t think I’ve perfected the crisps to cheese ratio.”
After his sandwich, Aled fell asleep, so I left a message on his whiteboard (‘GET WELL SOON’) along with a drawing (me driving an ambulance), and then walked back home, realising that the fact of the matter was that I didn’t really know how to behave around friends at all.
REALLY DUMB
I didn’t understand why Carys ever hung out with me until I realised that nobody else wanted to be friends with her, and essentially, I was the only option. This made me feel a bit sad because I knew that if she’d had the choice, she probably would have chosen someone else. She only liked me because I listened to her.