by Jean Ure
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing!”
“Look, Carmen, just be honest. If it was a maths test, or you hadn’t done your homework, I can sympathise. I know what it’s like, I’ve been there! No one’s expecting you to turn into some kind of mad boffin. Just don’t lie to me. All right?”
I said, “Yeah, all right. Sorry.”
It seemed easier than going on with the headache thing. Mum’s never expected much of me, so not doing homework or avoiding a maths test was no big deal as far as she was concerned. She left school without any qualifications; why should I do any better? It would have upset her far more if I’d told her the truth. Not that I would! Not in a million years. I’d have curled up and died sooner than tell Mum.
Indy rang me after tea. I knew she would; I’d been dreading it. I didn’t want to talk to her! I wouldn’t have minded so much if she’d texted me, but Indy is practically the only person I know that doesn’t have a mobile phone. Or a computer. It makes life very difficult.
Mum took the phone call. She came back into the sitting room and said, “It’s your little friend on the phone. The little plain one.” I do wish Mum wouldn’t refer to Indy as the little plain one! I really hate it when she does that. She knows perfectly well what her name is.
“Well, are you going to speak to her,” she said, “or not?”
I dragged myself out into the hall and picked up the phone. “’Lo?”
Indy shrieked, “Carm! What happened? Where did you get to?”
“Hadda headache,” I said.
“Cos of Marigold? I knew it was cos of her! Honestly, that girl is just so putrefying! I’m glad you told her she was a moron. Everybody’s glad! They all reckon she asked for it.”
I said, “How does everybody know? Did you tell them?”
“No! It was Connie.”
Connie Li; I hadn’t realised she was there. Connie is OK. She is definitely not a Marigold groupie.
“Carm?” Indy’s voice squeaked anxiously down the line. “You haven’t let her get to you? Cos all those things she said, about her sister… they’re not really true! She hasn’t really had professional experience.”
“You mean she hasn’t appeared in a commercial?”
“Only some stupid thing for local radio. Not telly.”
“What about the demo disc?”
“Yeah, well… anyone can make one of those.”
I said, “Huh!”
“She isn’t any competition,” said Indy. “She has a voice like a… I dunno! Fingernails scraping on a blackboard. Yeeeech!”
Indy was trying really hard, but what she said about fingernails just wasn’t true. Marigold’s sister is chosen every year to sing solo when we do carols. It’s not a bad sort of voice. A bit small. A bit tinny. She couldn’t do rock! But obviously some people like it. Anyway, I couldn’t care less about Marigold’s sister. It was all the other stuff. The stuff that Indy was too kind to mention, or maybe just too embarrassed.
“You’ve always said not to take any notice of her,” said Indy. “So why start now?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I don’t give a damn.” It’s amazingly easy to lie when you’re on the other end of a telephone. You can almost, even, lie to yourself. “Marigold Johnson is just sewage,” I said.
“She is,” said Indy. “That’s exactly what she is! And we’re not the only ones that think so. Lots of people have been going on about her. It’s made her really unpopular.”
I knew Indy was doing her best to be a good friend and make me feel better, but I hated the thought of everyone knowing what Marigold had said. Everyone talking about it. Feeling sorry for me. Did you hear what Marigold called Carmen? She called her a fat freak!
“Dunno what she meant by that last remark, though,” said Indy. “D’you?”
I said, “What last remark?” Though in fact I knew perfectly well.
“Fag hag… what she say that for?”
I said, “No idea.”
“I thought when people called you a fag hag it meant you were friends with someone that was gay.”
I grunted.
“You’re not friends with anyone that’s gay! Unless she was talking about Josh. Was she talking about Josh? Trying to make out he’s a fag?”
I snapped, “Don’t use that stupid word!”
“Sorry,” said Indy. “Was she trying to make out he’s gay?”
I said, “I don’t know! She’s completely mad.”
“But what a thing to say! About Josh. I bet she’s just jealous, I bet that’s what it is, cos she used to fancy him. Probably still does. And just cos he doesn’t fancy her—”
“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t tell him!”
“I won’t,” said Indy. “I wouldn’t!”
“I s’pose people are gossiping?”
“Not about that so much. They’re more saying how Marigold got what she deserved… you calling her a vegetable!” Indy giggled. “Someone said she ought to have a new name – she ought to be called Cabbage. Then someone said she ought to be a root veg, cos of you telling her to take root, so we’re all, like, trying to think of root vegetables, like Turnip. Turnip Johnson!”
I said, “Yeah, that would suit her. But please don’t tell Josh about the other thing. Please!”
“I won’t,” said Indy. “I won’t! Don’t worry!” She added that in any case it was so stupid it was ridiculous. “No one’s going to believe it.”
I said, “That’s not the point! I don’t want him to know.”
If word got round, it would be all my fault. I should just have kept quiet! I’d done what I always swore I wouldn’t: I’d let myself be provoked. I’d insulted Marigold in front of her groupies, and now she’d gone and dragged Josh into it. He was going to think I’d betrayed him! Why, why, why couldn’t I have kept my big mouth shut? Just a few weeks earlier, before I’d even known about the Top Spot contest, I’d gone round to Josh’s place and we’d written a new song – How Cool am I? – and afterwards we’d sat and talked, cos Josh and I do a lot of talking, and he’d said he had something he wanted to tell me. And then he’d hesitated, and I said, “Well, go on! What?” and it all came out in a great rush.
“I’m not absolutely certain but it’s this feeling I’ve had for a long time… I think I might be gay!”
I said, “Oh.” And then, “Really?” And then, “Gosh.” Like something out of Enid Blyton. I gave up reading Enid Blyton when I was about five. To make matters worse I then added, “Wow.”
Josh said, “Yeah. Wow.”
“Well, but I mean…” What did I mean? I didn’t mean anything. I was just, like, totally thrown. It’s not very often I’m at a loss for words, usually I have too many, but for once I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So I went and said something even stupider than wow, I said, “How do you know?”
“I dunno,” said Josh. “It’s just something I feel.”
“Mm.” I nodded. “OK. So…”
He looked at me, rather solemnly. “So how do you feel?”
“Me? I feel like – so what? What difference does it make? You’re still you. So long as we’re not going to fancy the same guys!”
I said that just to show him that I was cool. That now I’d got my head round the idea I was just, like, totally and utterly relaxed.
“You’re the only person I’ve told,” said Josh.
“Not even Robert? Not even Damian?”
Josh said, “Specially not Robert or Damian.”
They are two boys in our class. They’re clever, like Josh. The three of them tend to hang out together.
“Why specially not them?” I said. “Don’t you reckon they’d be OK with it?”
“I guess – yeah! Probably. It’s just… I don’t particularly want anyone else to know.”
“Just me?”
I think that was one of the proudest moments of my life. That Josh had chosen me! But I still had to ask him. “Why me and not anybody else?”
He sa
id, “Cos I feel you’re someone I can talk to. Maybe the only person I can talk to.”
“Not even your mum and dad?”
“God, no!” He reared away in horror. “I’m not gonna tell them!”
“Why not?”
“Are you mad? Would you tell your mum?”
I said, “N-no. But I’d tell yours!” Josh’s mum and dad are really nice. Really supportive. “You should tell them,” I said. “Otherwise you know what’ll happen… they’ll start teasing you about girlfriends, and it’ll just be, like, so embarrassing. It’s what my mum does about boys. It curls me up! You should tell them now,” I said, “so they have time to get used to it. You don’t want to spring it on them later.”
Josh said he didn’t want to spring it on them at all. “There isn’t any reason for them to know. There isn’t any reason for anyone to know.”
Just me. I assured him that I wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul, not even Indy, and I snatched up my guitar and started singing the song we’d just written.
How cool am I?
Think about about about a
NICE cube
Think about about about a
NICE cream
Think about a nice dream
Ice dream
Well, it went on for a bit and now I’ve forgotten the rest of it. But it did seem significant that we’d written it that particular day.
“See?” I said. “How cool am I!”
“I knew you would be,” said Josh. “That’s why I knew I could tell you.”
Everyone needs someone they can tell things to. Josh had told me he was worried cos he thought he might be gay – but I couldn’t tell Josh that I was worried cos I thought I might be too fat to be a rock star. I was too ashamed. I didn’t have anyone I could tell.
He said, “Promise me you won’t say anything!” and I gave him my word. I promised him. He had confided in me in strictest secrecy. He had trusted me. And now that hideous hag Marigold had gone and blown it. How had she found out? I hadn’t told a single solitary person. It had nearly killed me keeping it from Indy, cos me and Indy tell each other everything, but I hadn’t even so much as hinted. I wouldn’t do that to Josh!
My only hope was that everyone would be so busy gabbing about how Marigold had called me a fat freak and I’d called her a moron that they’d forget the words she’d yelled at me as I stalked through the door. Maybe Josh would never get to hear of it.
But I knew that he would. School is just like a seething cauldron when it comes to gossip.
CHAPTER THREE
Next day was Wednesday. Only Wednesday! I felt like I had lived through a whole week already. Mum was on early turn. She came breezing into my bedroom while I was still wrapped in the duvet with my eyes gummed shut. She started making noise almost before she even got through the door.
“CAR-MEN!”
I burrowed deeper down the bed. Mum’s voice goes all shrill when it gets loud. Not what you need, first thing in the morning.
“Carmen, I’m off now. I’ll be back about six. OK?”
I mumbled into the duvet.
“OK?” shrieked Mum.
I said, “Yes. OK!”
“Right, well, it’s time you were up. Come on, get moving!”
Mum tugged at the duvet; I tugged back.
“CAR-MEN!”
“All right, all right!” I poked my head out, and forced my eyes open the merest crack. “I’m coming!”
“Well, just see that you are. I’m pulling back the curtains –” Whoosh. Blinding daylight. I quickly screwed my eyes tight shut again. Why did she have to be so brutal? “You’ve got twenty minutes to get yourself up and out!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Just go away.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
Yeah. See you tonight. Now go.
She went. I heard her footsteps down the hall; I heard the front door open and bang shut behind her. Within seconds, I had gone back to sleep.
If the telephone hadn’t rung, I might have gone on sleeping all day. As it was, it was almost two o’clock. I couldn’t believe it! Two o’clock. I had been asleep the entire morning.
The telephone went on ringing. I jumped out of bed and went into the hall to look at it, while I decided what to do. To answer or not to answer? Not. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. But it kept on ringing, like it was determined to get some sort of response, so in the end I gave in and picked it up – and immediately wished I hadn’t cos it was Indy again. Indy was one of the last people I wanted to speak to.
“Carm?” I held the receiver away from my ear. If Mum’s voice goes shrill, Indy’s goes all high-pitched and squealy, like a car alarm. “Carm, what’s happening? Why aren’t you in school?”
Rather sourly I said, “Still gotta headache.”
“Still?”
I said, “Yeah. Why aren’t you in class?”
“I’m going. I just wanted to speak to you – I’ve borrowed Connie’s phone. Carm…”
“What?”
“You know you said not to tell Josh? Well… I think he knows.”
My heart did that plummeting thing, like when you’re sitting on a plane and there’s turbulence and you fall into an air pocket, or whatever it is that planes do. When they lurch, and you think your last hour has come.
“Pleeeeez don’t be mad,” begged Indy.
I said, “I’m not mad.”
“You sound like you are.”
I snapped, “Well, I’m not! I’m just sick of people tittle-tattling. Who was it?”
“I don’t know, but Lance S—”
“That thug?”
“He was making these really stupid remarks, and Josh was there, so he must have heard, but— What?” She broke off. “Yes, OK. I’m coming! Carm, listen, I’m sorry, I’ll have to go. I just w—”
“Don’t you ring off!” I screeched.
“I’ve got to, it’s the bell.”
“Damn the bell! I want to know what that thug said?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. You’re gonna be here tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know! Tell me now.”
“Carm, I can’t, it’s maths, you know what Mr Dearden’s like. If—”
“Tell me right this minute,” I bawled, “or I won’t ever speak to you again!”
There was a pause.
“I mean it! I’m not joking. You either tell me what he said, or—”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” said Indy. She said it in this very dignified tone of voice. No squealing. No car alarms. “I have to go now or I’ll be late for class.”
“Well, don’t bother ringing,” I snarled, “cos I won’t be answering!”
Whether she heard me or not, I wasn’t sure. The phone had gone dead, leaving me in a kind of trembling fury. Fury with Marigold, fury with the Thug; fury with Indy for not telling me, fury with myself for having set the whole thing off. Answering back to Marigold. It was asking for trouble. And now I’d gone and brought it down on Josh, as well as myself.
There was only one way to find solace: for the rest of the afternoon I let Urban Legend pound my brain to atoms. Mum always says that I’ll damage my hearing if I listen to music that loud. “You’ll be deaf by the time you’re my age!”
I tell her that lots of rock stars end up with dodgy hearing. “It’s part of the price you pay.”
That afternoon I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to deaden my brain. It suddenly felt like my whole life was falling apart.
Round about four o’clock I lugged myself out to the kitchen to forage for food. Breakfast stuff was still on the table, so I ate a bowl of cereal and made some toast, then decided that maybe I should get dressed before Mum arrived back. Just as well I did, cos the doorbell rang. I thought it was probably Mrs Gasbag come to beg a bowl of sugar or a packet of peas. She’s always doing that, it drives me nuts, but Mum says we have to be neighbourly. Anyway, it wasn’t her, it was Josh. For the second time that day my heart plumm
eted. Thunk, like a sack of cement.
I said, “Oh – hi.”
Josh said, “Hi.”
And then we both went quiet. And then we both spoke at the same time:
“Did you—”
“Do you—”
“After you,” said Josh.
I swallowed. I have never been self-conscious with Josh. Not even right at the beginning, when he picked me instead of Marigold.
“Do you… want-to-come-in?”
It wasn’t even my voice! It was like some kind of growl. We went through to the sitting room and stood, awkwardly.
I said, “Mum’s still at work.”
Josh said, “Ah.”
Then we both said, “So—”
“Your turn,” I said.
“Yeah. OK! I was just, like… wondering how you were. Indy said you had a headache, she was worried about you. So I said I’d call round after school. I’ve brought your homework.”
No one but Josh would think about bringing homework. He held out a sheet of paper. “English and history. I printed it off for you.”
I thanked him as graciously as my voice would permit. It was still coming out in a growl.
He said, “I didn’t think you’d want to fall behind… I know they’re your best subjects.”
“After music.”
“Oh. Yeah! Well. After music.” He grinned. I tried to grin back, but I couldn’t seem to get my lips moving in the right direction. “So… you OK?”
I said, “Yes! I mean… you know… Apart from a headache.”
“I heard what happened.”
“Before you say anything else—” My tongue suddenly broke loose. The words came babbling out, unstoppable. “I wasn’t the one that told them! Lance and Marigold… I didn’t say a word! Honestly! I didn’t even tell Indy!”
“It’s OK,” said Josh. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But I—”
“Carm, it’s OK. I told you, don’t worry! I can handle it.”
“You shouldn’t have to handle it! They shouldn’t be saying things like that! I just don’t see how they f—”
“Carm, for God’s sake, will you just SHUT UP!”
I was startled into silence. Josh is such a together person; he almost never shouts or loses his cool.