by Holly Bourne
I shrugged. “Yeah…I guess. He told me he liked the Smashing Pumpkins and I googled what that was.”
“Geez. Girls actually do that?”
“What? It’s just a google! So you wouldn’t google something for a girl you like?”
Guy looked down at his chest and puffed it out. “I’m perfect, I know everything.”
The top of his T-shirt sleeve rode up, displaying his half-arsed biceps. I spotted a scab.
“Wait! Have you got a new tattoo?” I leaned over to examine it as he rolled his sleeve up properly, looking all pleased with himself.
“I got it done last week. It’s at the scabby stage.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Delightful.”
He traced the twisted black design lightly with his finger. There was still a red outline, blushing angrily from where the ink had hijacked his skin.
“It’s tribal,” he said, proudly.
I rolled my eyes. “People always say that about tattoos. What does it even mean?”
“You know. Like, from a tribe.”
I glanced sideways. “But what tribe?”
“Well, you know, just tribal.” There was an edge of irritation in his voice.
“You can’t just get ‘tribal’,” I told him. “There’s not just like this one big ‘tribal’. Which tribe? Where from? What’s the tribe’s name? What does the tattoo mean?”
“Screw you.” He finished his drink and plonked his cup down with a loud clack.
“What’s that in tribal?”
And, despite himself, Guy laughed. “At least I’m not dating a premature alcoholic.”
Just as he said it, Lottie – an old friend from primary school – walked into the kitchen with another girl. Lottie and I used to be close, but she was a genius and got a free scholarship from Year Seven to Eleven at the local private school so we’d lost touch. She was at my college now and I’d seen her a few times – her long, dark hair cutting its way through the corridor.
“Oh my God, Evie, is that drunk guy with you?” Lottie interrupted, not even bothering to say hello.
I hugged her, then withdrew and took a medicinal sip of wine. “What’s he doing now?” I said. I’d only been five minutes. Ethan couldn’t have got that much worse in five minutes.
“Relax, he’s just, er, dancing a lot, that’s all.” Lottie started sorting through the bottles of booze. “Oh, this is Amber,” she gestured to the girl beside her. “She’s in my art class. Amber, this is Evie, we went to primary school together.”
I turned to say “hi” but was struck by how…intimidating this Amber was. She must’ve been six feet tall, with long red hair. She was absolutely stunning and yet had her arms around herself, like she was trying to block herself out.
“Hey,” I said, smiling.
“Hi,” she replied.
“Woooooooooooooooah,” Guy stared upwards at Amber’s face. She was at least four inches taller than him. “You’re like…huuuuuuuuge.”
Amber hugged herself tighter. “No I’m not.” Her voice didn’t match her body language at all. It was strong and bossy. “You’re just a midget.”
I decided I liked her immediately, though Guy looked stunned. He was a bit short…bless ’im.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said quickly, keen to impress her. “He’s just permanently tattooed a complete mystery onto his body for ever… In ‘tribal’.” I pointed to his tattoo.
Amber laughed while Guy chewed his lip, fuming.
“Whatever, I’m going for a smoke.” He took another beer with him as he left the kitchen.
“Boys,” Amber sighed.
I sighed back.
“Tell me about it.”
Four
I delayed returning to my drunken date. I chatted to Lottie and Amber and took my time pouring out some apple juice I’d found in the fridge, hoping Ethan was pissed enough to think it was more cider.
Brandishing two glasses, I returned to the packed living room where I’d left him.
Ethan wasn’t there.
The space he’d cleared for himself with his dancing was now full of people playing a drinking game. Joel and Jane lay half-horizontal on the sofa, shamelessly appreciating each other. I inched around the cheering circle of drunks towards them, scanning the shadowy faces for Ethan.
“Jane?” I asked the back of her head.
No answer. Just slurping noises.
“Jane?”
She untangled her tongue from Joel’s and pulled away. I imagined the noise of a plunger being yanked out of the loo.
“What?” She didn’t hide her annoyance.
“Have you seen Ethan?”
“Who?… Joel…stop it,” she giggled. He was stroking the tops of her legs.
“Ethan. My date,” I said.
“Dunno. Maybe he’s gone to the loo?”
Without hesitation she returned to Joel’s mouth. His hands inched round her back, pulling her on top of him.
I bit my lip to hide my annoyance and tried to work out where he could be. Jane was right. I should try the toilet. Maybe he was sicking up all the cider? I manoeuvred into the hallway, asking everyone if they’d seen a very drunk boy wearing a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt. Nobody had any useful information. The music was louder. People were wasted. The party was really kicking off. Nobody cared about my very first date going AWOL. I found the downstairs toilet door and tried it. Locked. I banged on the door.
“Ethan? You in there?”
“Who’s Ethan?” a voice called back.
“Never mind.”
I retraced my steps to the kitchen, peering inside. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the dining room either, where an elaborate game of poker had been set up – boys using Monopoly money as chips. I saw people had spilled out onto the back garden patio and tried there. I bumped into Guy as I slid through the glass doors.
“Evie, where you off to?” There was only the teeniest bit of white left in his eyes. The rest were pinky red. His pupils were huge.
“Hey, druggie. I’ve lost my date.”
“He’s run off already?” Guy burst into frenzied giggles that didn’t stop. I strode past him, leaving his hiccupping laughs behind me. Bloody stoners. I wrapped my leather jacket around myself as the now cold air hit me, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. A group passed a dubious-looking cigarette around in a tight circle, arguing loudly about retro children’s TV programmes. Past them, I saw two figures sitting under an ivy-covered gazebo.
Lottie and Amber.
I grinned and walked over, trying not to twist my ankle in the gravel. “Hey again,” I said, sitting next to them on the bench.
“Hey,” Lottie said, moving over to make room. “Where’s Ethan?”
I let out a big sigh. “He’s gone missing.”
“Seriously? You can’t find him?”
“Nope. I left him with Jane when I went to the kitchen but when I came back he’d disappeared.”
Lottie rolled her eyes, putting a cigarette between her lips and lighting it. “Let me guess, she was too busy sacrificing her entire being onto the altar of Joel to do anything else?”
I let out a giggle, immediately feeling guilty for being bitchy. Lottie’d never been one to mince her words.
“How do you know her?” I asked.
“She and Joel are in my philosophy class. She was pretty cool at first. Then, well…within a week she’d got with Joel. How do you know her?”
“We’re best friends…” I sounded like a child. “Well, maybe, we were in secondary school. She is a little…in love, I guess.”
“In love?” Lottie passed her lighter to Amber who also had a fag hanging out the side of her mouth. “She’s in love with herself.”
“Lottie…”
“Ahh, come on, it’s true. All she ever talks about is herself. Or Joel. I didn’t even know you were friends, she’s never mentioned you.”
That hurt, but then I thought of Jane’s hand in mine, clutching it reassuringly, as I bawled in
the school toilets after having a panic attack in assembly.
“She’s been a good friend…” I awkwardly tried to change the subject. “I didn’t know you smoked?”
Lottie looked at her cigarette like she’d only just noticed it. “I don’t usually. We’ve started tonight, haven’t we, Amber?” She bumped her tall friend.
Amber took a shaky puff, coughed, then looked at me. “So where do you think your date’s gone then?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. The whole night’s a mess. He’s obviously not interested.”
Amber exhaled, blowing a clumsy plume of smoke into the night. “I bet he only got so drunk because he’s nervous. Have you looked upstairs?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then go upstairs, find him, and suck his stubble off.”
“Eww. But thank you.”
I left them to their cigarettes. Inside, the stairs were littered with clumps of people as I picked my way upwards, shouting “sorry”. Music shook the walls and my eardrums thrummed in time to the beat.
I tried a door.
Bathroom. With a puddle of vom next to the loo. Grim.
Good thought
But you saw some sick and you didn’t freak out, did you, Evie?
I tried a couple more doors but no joy. The last door was Anna’s bedroom – strictly out of bounds – she’d been yelling at anyone climbing the stairs, “Don’t anyone shag in my bed.”
But she hadn’t forbidden anyone curling up in there in a drunken ball to pass out – like I reckoned Ethan had done.
I rattled the door handle and turned it. It was dark.
There were noises. Sex noises.
“God, sorry,” I mumbled, blushing as I realized what I’d interrupted.
Light fell over the half-naked entwined couple.
Ethan’s face emerged from behind Anna’s hair.
So she was allowed to shag in her bed… It made sense I guess.
I turned and left.
How it began
On. Our. First. Date.
On. Our. First. Date.
“On. Our. First. Date.”
“I know, honey,” Lottie said in a lullaby voice, gently pushing my head into a taxi. She and Amber climbed in after me.
“Can you take us to the top of Dovelands Hill?” she asked the driver.
He turned round to protest. “Isn’t it a bit dark?”
“We’re big girls. Just drive.”
I stared out the window as the darkness sped past us, stunned. Bad thoughts, followed by worse thoughts, mounted up in all my available brain space.
BAD THOUGHT
You can’t even keep a guy for a whole first date.
BAD THOUGHT
It’s because you’re ugly and stupid and disgusting and you’ll never get a boyfriend.
WORSE THOUGHT
He could tell you were mental. He just used you to get an invite to a party so he could meet normal girls.
I didn’t notice Amber stroking my hand, the sympathy in her eyes. Or Lottie paying the fare and dragging me out onto some scrubby grass. Not until they sat me on a bench overlooking the town and offered me a cigarette.
“No, thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Tonight you can,” Lottie said, shoving one between my lips.
“I don’t even know what to do.”
“Just suck it. It’s horrible. I think I’m only going to smoke this weekend, then give up.”
I huddled over her hands as she lit the fag and sucked as hard as I could. A coughing fit followed. “That. Is. Disgusting,” I announced.
“I know, right?”
“But I do feel more…dramatic. Maybe in a good way?”
Amber laughed then choked on her cigarette too. She spluttered and coughed while I sat back on the bench, feeling slightly happier by the fact I’d made a potential friend laugh.
It was a stunning view. The town stretched out below us in an ocean of yellow and red dots of light. So cold my bones ached, but beautiful. I felt a bit of the angst in my stomach dissolve like a throat lozenge. The bigness of the view stood Goliath-like next to my worries, forcing them to run into hidey-holes and think about what they’d done.
Lottie banged Amber’s back until the choking subsided.
“Thanks, guys,” I spoke out to the darkness. “For, you know, taking me away from the situation.”
Lottie stubbed out her cigarette a quarter of the way down. I followed suit, glad for her lead. “Don’t worry about it,” she shrugged. “I would want to get out of there if it happened to me.”
“And it was a shitty party,” Amber joined in. “I felt like I was on a rejection conveyor belt – being sexually rejected by every guy there.”
“I’d rather that, I think,” I said. “Rather than them leading you on a false first date so they could get pissed, humiliate you, then boink someone else.”
Amber wrinkled her nose. “True… Did you just say ‘boink’?”
“It’s retro. It’s funnier than ‘shag’, less cringe than ‘make love’, and less offensive than ‘fuck’.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
“I watch a lot of old movies…and people just talked nicer back then.”
My phone vibrated madly.
“DON’T ANSWER IT,” both of them yelled as I searched through my bag.
“Why not?”
“It will be him,” Lottie said. “With an excuse.”
“A lie,” Amber added.
“A manipulative lie.”
Amber put on a gruff boy voice. “I’m sorry, I just fell into her mouth.”
Lottie joined in. “I just got scared of my feelings for you, but it made me realize how much I care.”
“Yikes,” I said. “Have you guys created a boy excuse dictionary or something?”
“Did you just say ‘yikes’?” Amber asked. “Seriously? Are you, like, from a time warp?”
Lottie, sandwiched in the middle, put her arms round the both of us and talked out at the view. “Amber and I may sound bitter, but we’re not. We’re just realistic. About boys…”
“…and how crap they are,” Amber finished.
Lottie patted her head. “I met her in art and she was crying over some bell-end on the football team. We bonded over drawing his untimely death.”
“What did football guy do?”
Amber’s face ducked behind her sheet of auburn hair. “Stood me up.”
“God, that’s awful. I didn’t know people actually did that in real life.”
“They do to me.”
“Hey,” Lottie said. “It could be worse. Like me. I just have guys ‘boink’ me, then lose interest straight afterwards. Usually when they discover I’m smarter than them.”
Lottie was smarter than them. She wasn’t being big-headed, just honest. She was smarter than everyone. At primary school she’d gone to special classes with the headmistress to be more “academically challenged”. She’d read textbooks, for fun. And she was definitely going to Cambridge. Even though we were two years away from that.
A miserable silence descended upon us. My phone went off again. We all ignored it. I saw the tiny light of a car in the distance driving slowly away from our town, surrounded by night. I wished I was riding in it, escaping my disappointment. I thought again of this night, and what it was supposed to be. My first ever date… My first step into the world of normality. I’d just wanted to be like everyone else, and yet my attempt had turned out weirder than even my weird head could’ve imagined.
Finally I spoke. “You guys?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it…because I’m ugly?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lottie said. “You’re not ugly.”
“Yes I am. I’m Louise and everyone else is Thelma.” I threw my hardly-smoked cigarette into the mud dramatically.
“I wouldn’t say Susan Sarandon is ugly,” Lottie said again.
“Fine then, I’m Jane Eyre.”
“Jane wasn’t ugly, she
was just plain,” said Miss Going-to-Cambridge.
“Fine then. I’m the Elephant Man.”
“You’re not a man,” Amber pointed out.
“Stop ganging up on me.”
Their laughs punctuated the darkness.
“Anyway…” Lottie started. “I’m not exactly an oil painting.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I protested. She was gorgeous and she knew it. Men’s eyes practically goggled out of their faces when they met her. Her long dark hair, her everything-in-the-right-place face.
She smirked in reply. “If I were in a girl band, I would be the one that nobody fancied…”
“Hey,” Amber butted in. “That would so be me instead. I’m the ginger one! Nobody ever fancies the ginger one in bands.”
“Fine then. I’m Mary out of the Bennet sisters.”
“Well if that’s true,” I stood up. “I’m…I’m…Mr Collins,” I yelled, and the three of us dissolved into hysteria. We huddled together on the bench, chuckling and yelling “Mr Collins” until our tummies hurt and our teeth chattered from the cold.
“I really liked him,” I half-whispered, remembering far too soon why we were sitting in the middle of a field, gone midnight. I needed to message my mum actually; she would probably be freaking out.
Lottie cuddled me into her. We’d not sat like that since we were eleven.
“I know you did,” she replied. “Shitty, isn’t it?”
Amber gatecrashed the hug, giggling as she made room for herself between our heads.
“Screw guys,” she said. “Let’s meet for coffee tomorrow and spend the entire afternoon talking about everything other than boys.”
“Amen,” I replied.
And that’s what we did.
Five
By Monday I was ready and raring to see Ethan again.
I’d had so many dialogues with him in my head. They all ended with him on his knees, sobbing: “But I’ll never feel this way for anyone, the way I feel for you.”
Lottie and Amber firmly believed I should ignore him.
“Why waste time on him?” Amber’d said, the day before, at our first coffee meeting as friends. She slurped up her cappuccino. “He is not worth your H2O.”
“Oxygen is O2,” Lottie corrected.
“Oh, shut it, Einstein.”