Looking for a Hero

by Cathy Hopkins

  ‘Can’t do tomorrow,’ said Joe. ‘Family thing. But I could have done later today, shame . . .’

  ‘No. OK. Today, I can probably get out of things. I could do um . . . er . . . f-f-four o’clock.’ Oh God, I just developed a stutter, I thought.

  ‘Done,’ said Joe. ‘See you there. I wanted to see you anyway.’

  ‘Later,’ I said and clicked off the phone. ‘Done deal,’ I said to my judges and jury.

  Zahrah shook her head.‘ Way too easy’

  ‘You’re the one who said not to play games,’ said Leela. ‘And she didn’t.’

  ‘And he said he wanted to see me anyway’ I said and punched the air.‘So, result.’

  Brook looked thoughtful. ‘Hmm. See how it goes. Least you got a result which is more than us three saddos.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Zahrah.

  I got to Ruby Red’s ahead of time and went straight for the Ladies so that I could make any last minute repairs. Hair. Lipgloss. Dab of cinnamon perfume.

  When I walked back into the café, Joe had arrived and was sitting at a table in a quiet corner at the back. He was looking his usual handsome self in jeans and a blue fleece and he waved when he saw me.

  I made my way over and as I got to him wondered how to greet him. Casual kiss on the cheek? Maybe. Hug? Too sisterly. Handshake? Definitely not. I sat down opposite and gave him a strange kind of salute which was like a hand flick.

  ‘So. Hi,’ I said.

  He looked quizzically at my hand and then did the hand flick salute back. ‘Yeah. Hi. So . . . what’s up?’

  ‘Next scenery meeting in two weeks’ time. Can’t do.’

  Joe shrugged. ‘OK. No prob. What you got on?’

  ‘My grandmother’s seventieth. Italy. All the family are going. Sorry to dump it all on you but there’s no getting out of it.’

  ‘Wow. Italy. Fab. No prob about the scenery though. It sounded like everyone loved the designs from what Tim said –lime, orange and bright pink, yeah? Great. And maybe we could put up some fairy lights to make it really magical and Bollywoodish. So most of it is sorted, yeah? Everyone seems to know what they’re doing and it’s ages until the show in December, so we’re right on target. You could see everyone individually before you go if you wanted to check up on anything.’

  ‘Yeah. But no need, um, as you say, everyone knows what they’re doing. I ... I just wanted to make sure that someone took the official meeting,’ I said. He looked ill at ease. It’s obvious that this meeting is totally unnecessary, I thought. He’s probably thinking that I am desperate. Oh God, I wish I hadn’t arranged it.

  ‘No prob. Will do.’ Joe jerked his chin at the counter. ‘Want anything?’

  Yeah, a snogathon somewhere cosy with you, I thought as I glanced at his gorgeous mouth and felt the rush of chemistry that I always did when I was with him, but I just nodded and said, ‘Juice. Anything. Thanks.’ I rummaged about in my pocket and found a few coins which I offered him. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Should he pay? Should I pay? We weren’t dating and, even if we were, I still wouldn’t be sure what was what on the who pays front. I liked to think of myself as an independent type who would never rely on a boy to cough up for everything, but I’d read in a girls’ mag that boys can feel emasculated if you come on too in control because sometimes they do like to pay. But, then again, I’d invited Joe to meet up and he was at school like me, not earning, and I knew his parents weren’t loaded. What to do? How to be? It was so complicated.

  Joe pushed my money back at me. ‘On me,’ he said gruffly.

  I sat for a few minutes staring around the café, trying to look cool and alluring as he went and got the drinks. I needn’t have bothered though as he didn’t even glance in my direction when he queued up at the counter. An older man on the next table noticed me though. As he got up to leave, he glanced over and said, ‘Cheer up, love. It might never happen.’

  ‘Exactly’ I replied to him. ‘It might not. That’s exactly what I’m starting to think.’

  The man shook his head, as if puzzled by what I’d said, then left the café. Moments later, Joe came back and put an apple juice in front of me. ‘That OK?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘So?’Joe asked.

  ‘Yes. So. Um, what you been doing today?’

  ‘Coursework mainly. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. You?’

  ‘Same. Um. Er . . . I was round at Brook’s. It was really funny because her mum was looking on a dating site and we all got talking about relationships and what we wanted and oh . . .’ I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I’d totally said the wrong thing and Mrs Holmes wouldn’t appreciate me blabbing on about her search for a man to all and sundry. Maybe it was supposed to be top secret. ‘Um. Maybe don’t tell anyone that. I mean, some people don’t like it made public that they’re looking for relationships.’

  Joe smiled for the first time that day. ‘It’s cool. I won’t say anything. So, you got into a discussion. So what is it you want then, Miss Ruspoli?’

  I shrugged and then before I could stop myself I blurted out Aunt Sarah’s line. ‘Buddha with balls and a Bentley’.

  Joe almost spat his drink out. ‘Pewffff. Wow. You don’t want much, do you? The Buddha, huh? Won’t find many of them wandering round Notting Hill.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Someone kind and sensitive and wise who isn’t a wimp . . . I guess I don’t mind about the Bentley’. I wondered whether to say a boy with a bike would do as Joe cycles to school but somehow, the mood didn’t seem right for flirting.

  Joe nodded. ‘Wise but not a wimp. Yeah. Won’t find many of them wandering around Notting Hill either.’

  ‘Got to aim high. Why? What do you want?’

  Joe seemed to visibly relax as if he was glad I’d asked him. ‘Good question. What do I want? Well, that’s just it. I really don’t know. Early days.’ He glanced around the café. ‘I guess I want the chance to play the field a bit, sample all that’s on offer so that, when I do “go steady” or whatever, I’m not going to want out after a few weeks.’

  I felt my heart sink. He’d talked like this before. When I’d first met him in Greece and also just before our first kiss at the Bollywood party at Leela’s. He said he’d liked me then but didn’t want to mess me around, partly because he didn’t want to be a rat, partly because he didn’t want to hurt me and partly because his mum and my aunt Sarah were best mates and he didn’t want to have them on his case.

  I decided to be brave. ‘So . . . how does all that relate to us?’

  Joe flinched. I immediately regretted asking him because I know that boys hate to be confronted about their feelings. Even my mum jokes that the four words my dad hates the most are, ‘We need to talk’.

  ‘Look, India Jane . . .’ he started. I felt my heart sink further. ‘There is no us.’ He must have seen my face fall. I’ve never been good at keeping my feelings hidden. ‘Look, I really do like you, just. . . I’ve told you before. I don’t want to commit at the moment. It’s not you . . .’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not you, it’s me. Nothing personal. You just want to be friends.’

  Joe sighed heavily. He and Zahrah would make a great pair, I thought. They seem to speak the same language. ‘Look. I see relationships as being like a train, you get one compartment at a time – not the whole lot straight off, it has to build.’

  ‘So let’s let it build then,’ I said and smiled as if to say I could be light and casual. ‘Let’s play builders. You can be Bob the Builder.’

  Joe half smiled. ‘Too late for that.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked and immediately regretted it. Shut up now India, I thought. You’re beginning to sound desperate.

  ‘Just, well. . . remember I said about not committing? Well we haven’t, have we? I mean, we’re not a we, are we?’

  ‘No. ’Course not.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘because I don’t want you to think that I’ve let you down, but I’ve go
t to tell you this. I . . . I . . . I’ve started hanging out with someone. I’ve known her for a while so it’s not new really. Nothing serious. I met her last year and . . . well . . . see, she has the same attitude to relationships as me, that it’s, er . . . for fun. I was going to tell you, India, honestly I was, because I know, least I kind of know, that you were hoping that something was going to happen with us and, as I said, I don’t want to start something then let you down. And it’s important to me that you hear it from me after what happened with Mia. I didn’t want that to happen again.’

  I felt like he’d stuck a knife in my heart. ‘That’s big of you,’ I said and immediately regretted it because I knew that I sounded bitter. When I started school after I’d met Joe in Greece, I found out a small fact that he’d forgotten to tell me – and that was that he had a girlfriend called Mia.

  ‘I just want things to be clear between us and I want us to be—’

  ‘Friends,’ I finished for him.

  Joe looked around the café as if he’d rather be anywhere but there. ‘You know that I rate you, India Jane. I think you’re a great girl just... I don’t feel comfortable dating someone so close to home in case things don’t work out and you got hurt.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. But what if I’d dumped you first?’

  ‘I’d say that I probably asked for it,’ said Joe. ‘You deserve someone who doesn’t mess you around.’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t be that person.’

  Joe smiled sadly and reached out and put his hand over mine. ‘Maybe later. When we’re away from ... oh you know.’

  I pulled my hand out from under his and got up. ‘I was only kidding,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I only wanted to see if you could be there for the scenery team while I’m away really, to get the designs in motion, so that’s cool. I didn’t mean the other stuff about us. As you say, there is no us. I was just messing about. Teasing.’

  Yeah. ’Course. Cool,’ said Joe.

  Yeah,’ I said.

  We both knew I was lying. When I left the café, I felt tears prick the back of my eyes. I hate boys, I thought as I stomped back out into the dark wet afternoon. I hate Joe. And I’m going to be a nun.

  ‘No way,’ said Leela when I told her my plan on Monday as we gathered around the radiators outside the sports hall in break.

  ‘I’m serious. I’m off boys for good. They do my head in,’ I said.

  ‘Not all boys,’ said Brook. ‘Just Joe Donahue. There will be someone else much nicer than him out there.’

  ‘Yeah, he was the wrong boy for you,’ said Leela.

  ‘I think you’re being very sensible,’ said Zahrah. ‘Just forget about him and boys in general.’

  ‘No,’ Leela objected. ‘Come on, guys. It’s the beginning of November. The skies are grey. It’s ages before Christmas comes along to cheer us up. You have to drop the defeatist attitude.’

  ‘Christmas might be a way away but we still have bonfire parties we could go to this week,’ said Brook.

  I shook my head. ‘I am going to be a recluse,’ I said.

  ‘No!’ said Leela. ‘I forbid it! What you need, in fact, what we all need is a challenge. And . . . I have just the one.’

  Zahrah rolled her eyes. ‘Oh no, here we go,’ she said.

  ‘Cool,’ said Brook and did a low bow. ‘Speak forth, O my captain, for I will do thy bidding.’

  ‘OK, so get ready. It’s about seven weeks until the end of term so . . . the challenge is that we all have to get a boyfriend – and I mean a proper boyfriend – before then.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Zahrah. ‘Not interested.’

  ‘Nor me,’ I said and joined my hands as if in prayer. ‘I am now Sister Mary Consuela Bernadette India. No boys allowed.’

  ‘Chickens,’ said Leela and she put her hands under her armpits, stuck her elbows out at an angle and started making clucking noises. Brook did the same. If you can’t beat them, join them, I thought and did the same and added a bit of pecking motion and clucking for further effect.

  Of course that had to be the moment that Joe went past and he was with Callum Hesketh, the school babe who I’d dated briefly in the first part of term.

  Joe cracked up. ‘Nice one, India.’

  Callum stood for a moment with a hand on his hip and surveyed us. ‘Er yeah, do the funky chicken, girls,’ he said.

  I immediately straightened up and tried to look cool. Too late. They’d moved on and disappeared around a corner.

  ‘Ah well, at least he’ll remember me as being different,’ I said.

  Leela linked her arm through mine. ‘Forget him. He’s so not worth it. So ze challenge. It will be so good for us. Boost our confidence. Who’s in?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Brook.

  ‘Not me,’ said Zahrah.

  I laughed. ‘Doesn’t that just sum up our attitudes to life? Leela’s a yes yes yes. Brook’s a maybe, let me think about it and Zahrah’s a no.’

  Zahrah stuck out her bottom lip. ‘That makes me sound negative and I’m not,’ she said. ‘Just Leela’s always got a plan and most of them are mad. You don’t know her as well as Brook and I do. Stick around a few more months and you’ll be plugging your ears when she announces that she’s got a plan!’

  I squeezed her arm. ‘Sorry Zahrah, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you’re negative. I know you’re not.’

  ‘Sensible is the word you were looking for,’ said Zahrah. ‘One of us has to be. Like Brook and Leela have got their heads in the clouds about a lot of things, whereas I have my feet firmly on the ground. But what about you? Are you in with Leela’s latest?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that you can force love or put a deadline on it. It’s either going to happen or not.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be love,’ said Leela. ‘Just a boyfriend.’

  ‘You said a proper boyfriend,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. And what’s a proper boyfriend anyway?’ asked Zahrah. ‘Define.’

  Yeah,’ said Brook. ‘Do you mean someone you’re actually dating or do you mean kissing with tongues?’

  ‘Both,’ said Leela. ‘Er . . . basically someone who phones you back if you call them and someone you don’t feel weird about calling in the first place and who actually turns up if you have a date.’

  ‘And what if we fail?’ I asked.

  Leela grinned. ‘Aha. So a flicker of interest then, eh?’

  ‘Oh, let’s go for it,’ said Brook. ‘It will be a laugh. And I’ve already got a few contenders in mind.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘A boy who lives on our street. Liam Wiseman. Doesn’t go to our school. And Mark Mitchell from the Sixth Form.’

  Leela nodded. ‘Yeah. Mark’s nice but you can only have one.’

  ‘So there are rules now are there, Miss Bossy Boots?’ asked Zahrah.

  ‘Not really but he wouldn’t be a proper boyfriend if you were seeing someone else, would he?’ Leela replied.

  ‘I guess,’ said Zahrah.

  ‘What about you, Leela?’ I asked. ‘Got anyone in mind?’

  Leela looked coy but was saved from replying as the bell for the end of break shrilled behind us, and pupils began to swarm up and down the corridors heading for their next class. Ours was double English and we were having a treat. We were doing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as part of our coursework and our teacher Mr Pacey had arranged for us to see the film version of the play directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo Di Caprio.

  ‘It’s soooo romantic,’ sighed Brook when the movie got to the part where Romeo gatecrashes Juliet’s family party and they see each other for the first time and zing ping go their heartstrings.

  ‘It is at first,’ whispered Zahrah. ‘And then . . .’ She acted out someone having their throat cut.

  ‘Shhh at the back,’ said Mr Pacey.

  As I sat and watched the star-crossed lovers go through their series of mix-ups and miscommunications on the screen, part of my
mind started to drift away. There’s no getting away from it, I thought. Love is a tragedy and I am a tragic heroine. I started imagining a series of paintings I could do for my art project. Mr Bailey, our teacher, had asked us to paint a series of self-portraits and I thought it would be good to do some like the Pre-Raphaelite painters who were big on tragic heroines. Millais, Burne-Jones, Rossetti – they had all painted beautiful women with a distant look of sadness in their eyes, as if they had been let down big time by love. One of the most famous was of Ophelia. Millais’s painting shows her lying in the river covered in flowers after she drowned because Hamlet had driven her mental. Is that how I’m going to end up? I wondered. Floating in the Thames with a poetry book in my hand, flowers in my hair and a tattoo with Joe’s name engraved on my arm so everyone can see who has done me wrong. I could see the painting in my mind’s eye. People would come from far and wide, look at it, feel sadness and ask, Who was that poor girl? I sat back in my chair, assumed a tragic heroine’s pose (wistful expression that hints of sorrows untold, a slight weariness around the shoulders and limp wrists) and watched the film. I felt a bond with all the women through the ages who had been let down by love. Zahrah passed along some mints at one point and I wondered if she had noticed my pose, but she didn’t comment. Clearly it was lost on her.

  As the film continued, I found myself starting to get cross. Romeo was acting like a total love rat, in love with some girl called Rosaline at the beginning of the play and then changing his mind in a flash as soon as he meets Juliet. What happened to Rosaline? I thought. That’s what I’d Iike to know. Poor girl. Romeo is clearly nothing more than another stupid boy with a phobia about commitment who can’t make up his mind who or what he wants. Like Joe. I started wondering why I am attracted to boys like Joe who make me feel uncomfortable or don’t want to commit. Love is a funny thing, I thought. Then I remembered that I wasn’t in love with Joe any more. And then I felt even crosser. With him and myself. Blimey. No wonder those tragic heroines look so miserable, I thought. Love is rubbish.

  I made myself focus back on the movie. The scene where Romeo spends the night in Juliet’s room. Quite sweet actually but then he’s off. Gone with the larks or was it the nightingales? Whichever.