by Joanna Nadin
“So.” She leans back. “Miss me, then?”
I laugh. Can’t believe she’s asking. “Jesus. You’ve got some nerve.”
“Yeah. Well . . . I bet you did.”
You’re wrong, I think. I didn’t. Not once did I miss you. Not once did I wish you were here, instead of Ed. Because I don’t need you anymore. I’m grown up. I can do it all by myself.
Can’t I?
“Why do you do it, Stella?” I say at last.
“Do what?”
I shake my head. “Mess up, then disappear.”
“I didn’t mess up,” she says. “Or disappear. Just gave you some space. Looks like you made good use of it.”
She lies back on the bed. “Is he good?”
“Stella —” I protest.
“Come on. I want to know. Is it Harlequin Romance? Some little bubble of teen magazine bliss?”
And my head is full of him again. His lips on mine. Teasing. Pulling. His hands on my back. His eyes watching me. His words, his laughter, his love. The clumsiness and beauty of it all. I realize I’m smiling. And I want to tell someone how it feels.
“It’s not like that.” It’s not like anything. Not like any film, or book, or Cosmopolitan article. It’s everything and nothing I imagined.
“He’s told you he loves you, hasn’t he?”
I nod.
“What about you?”
“It’s . . . you know.” I want to explain what it feels like. The newness. And the safety of it. The peace. “It’s . . . nice.”
Stella scoffs. “Nice is for cups of tea or biscuits. It’s not nice.”
“OK. Amazing. It’s bloody amazing. Happy now?”
“Not as happy as you, evidently.”
“Ha, ha.”
I look out the window and watch Mrs. Penleaze trudge up the hill, pulling a tartan shopping trolley behind her. I remember that day in the shop. Me and Stella laughing at her. Her daring me. And I feel a prick of shame. When I look back, Stella is in front of the mirror, fiddling with her hair. Putting it up and down in my cherry hair bobbles.
“Where did you go, then?” I ask.
“Nowhere.” She pulls the hair elastic. It breaks. “Shit. Sorry.” But she isn’t. Just takes another and starts again.
I watch her watching herself. She pouts. Then picks up a lip gloss. Squeezes out the fake watermelon goo and rolls it over her lips. “So, has Emily freaked about me and Blair?”
“No. She doesn’t know. Well, I don’t think she does. She’s still with him.” I saw them at Matt’s. She was draped around him in the garden, Blair slapping Ed on the back, saying, “Nice one.” Then some blah about double-dating, like we’re in an episode of Friends. Then shooting me a look I don’t understand. Worried, maybe, that I’ve told Ed about him and Stella. That I’ll tell Emily. As if.
“Yeah, well. Her finding out isn’t the point, anyway. It’s us knowing that she’s nothing. Not to Blair. Not to us.” Stella looks at my reflection in the mirror. “OK. Million-dollar question. If you could be one person for a day, who would it be?”
“I don’t know . . . the queen?” I don’t mean it. But I don’t feel like playing.
“Yawn. Cliché.”
“Why? It’d be good,” I lie.
“What, so you could give yourself thousands of pounds and abolish exams and things?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. If you’re eight years old.”
“OK.” I sigh. Grab another name. Anyone. “Mrs. Applegate, then. I’d get my stomach stapled and send Emily to the town high school.”
“Better.” Stella contemplates herself. “Know who I’d be?”
I think. Bound to be someone famous. Or dead. Or both. “I don’t know. Greta Garbo?”
She shakes her head.
“Jackie Onassis?”
She rolls another layer of lip gloss on. “Not . . . even . . . close.”
“Who, then?”
She blows her reflection a kiss, then smiles at mine. “You.”
“What?” Not sure if she’s joking. Not sure if I heard her right.
“I’d be you.”
I look at myself. My roots growing out. Lipstick kissed off. My eyes, tired from late nights. I was a pale imitation of the original next to me, a cheap copy, a knockoff. But now I’m fading back into the old Jude underneath. The Jude I know I want to be now. But I don’t understand why she does too.
She laughs. “You can’t even see it, can you?”
And I should be happy that she wants to be me. That I’m somebody worth being. But instead I go cold. Because for a second there’s something weird in the way she’s looking at me. She was supposed to be my fairy godmother. But what if she was the wicked witch all along? “I don’t —”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says suddenly. “Forget it.”
“Stella —”
She pauses. “OK. So I could . . . I don’t know. Order American Vogue. Nick all the cigarettes from downstairs. Get myself a year’s supply of stamps.”
But she’s lying. That look stays in my head. And it scares me.
THE LETTER arrives two days later. Ed and I are on my bed listening to a CD of some band he reckons is the Next Big Thing. Not doing anything else. Just lying next to each other. Like we always did. He’s been over almost every day. Dad must know something is going on, suspect at least. But he hasn’t flipped out. I think he’s happy. Sees Ed as some sort of protector.
Alfie must have picked the envelope up. I hear him shrieking and thundering up the stairs. Dad telling him to calm down, not to run. But he bursts in anyway, eyes wide, talking so fast that I can’t hear what he’s saying.
“Hey.” Ed turns down the music and moves his legs so my brother can climb on the bed with us.
Alfie pushes the envelope into my hand and I see the two short words printed in the corner. The Lab. Advertising its significance. Shouting it. Suddenly I feel dizzy, overwhelmed. My future on a piece of paper. In my hands. It seems wrong. These thin, weightless sheets for something so heavy.
“Open it, Jude,” Alfie urges.
I’m still staring at the envelope. “I —” But I hear a noise and look up. Dad is in the doorway. Quieter than Alfie, but feeling the same. Hope, and fear. Just better at hiding it.
“I tried to stop him,” he explains. “Thought you might want to do it in private, you know.”
“It’s OK.”
“Would you like us to leave?”
I nod. I’ve never been one for audiences. Not in real life, anyway. On a stage it’s different. You’re someone else. But here, now, when I’m just me, I want to be alone.
“Come on, son.”
“But, Dad —”
“But nothing. You can help me do the papers.”
“Fine.” He slips off the bed.
“You can come down to the beach with us later, mate.” Ed grins. “Borrow the board, if you want.”
“Can I?” Alfie is bursting again, looking at me for approval.
“Sure.” I nod.
Alfie grins. “Dad says I can have your room if you get in.”
I try to smile. But it’s not funny. Not really. Because what if I don’t? What if I’m still here in three weeks, three months, three years? My hands shake. I push them into my lap to hide it.
“Downstairs. Now.” Dad steers Alfie to the door and watches him clatter out. He is still for a second, trying to find the words. The courage.
“Good luck,” he says finally. And I know he wants to mean it, at least.
“Thanks.”
He closes the door. Then it’s just me and Ed. And the letter.
“Do you want me to go too?” Ed touches my face. Moves my hair back. I press my cheek against his hand.
“No.” I need him here, to hold me up. Or just to hold me.
I drop my head and look at the envelope, my hands still shaking, the knuckles white from gripping it.
“Jude, if you don’t . . . If . . .”
<
br /> He can’t say it. If I don’t get in.
“What I mean is, whatever happens, you know it won’t change us.”
I look at him. His dark eyes, the irises circled in black. His hair, longer now, touching his shoulders. Growing it for college, before the adult world makes him cut it off and wear a suit and tie. His lips soft, vanilla sweet. I touch them. He kisses my finger. And I close my eyes. Want that second to last forever. That image of him, the feel of him. The peace, and safety.
But I know I have to face things. I open my eyes.
“OK. Here goes nothing.” I turn the envelope over in my hand. Slide my finger, still wet from the kiss, under the flap, and tear.
The letter is two pages, stapled. White vellum.
I read.
“Well? Come on, Jude, I’m dying here.”
I hand him the letter. He scans the first line. All he needs. I am delighted to offer you . . . “Oh, my God, that’s brilliant.”
“Yeah,” I say. And for a moment I believe it. I am elated, high on it, on the reality of it, of me leaving. But then I remember. It wasn’t me who read the lines. Or sang pitch-perfect. It wasn’t me who won the place. It was Stella.
I feel my heart beating and my stomach fill with butterflies, battering against the walls, trying to escape. I feel sick. Really sick. My mouth fills with saliva.
“Are you OK, Jude?” Ed asks. “You’ve gone white.”
I don’t answer. Can’t open my mouth. Climb over him, run to the bathroom, and throw up.
Maybe I should call them, tell them there’s been a mistake. I don’t have to go. I can stay here, I think. I’ll be fine.
But I won’t. I want to go. I need to go.
Ed knocks on the door.
I look in the mirror. I am pale. Like a ghost of me.
“Jude?”
“Coming.” I try to sound normal. Hide the fear in my voice.
I open the door.
“Eeuw. Must be the shock.” Ed grins. “Lucky you didn’t look like that when you auditioned. Check it out. You rock.”
He hands me the second page of the letter. And there it is. My name. Address. Height. Singing range. Blah I must have filled out for the application. And at the top, a photo of me. Not the one I sent in, because this Jude has bleached hair, makeup. This photo was taken that day. My head spins. “Where did they get that?”
“What do you mean?” Ed looks confused. “They took it at the Lab, didn’t they? One of those digital things? Like at the sports center.”
I think back. Joan Crawford tapping a red fingernail on the keyboard. Staring at me and Stella. Asking my name. I don’t remember a photo. But, then, I was drunk, I think. “I guess.”
“You look hot.”
“Thanks.” But I’m not listening. I’m thinking, If the photo is of me, then that’s who they’re expecting to show up, isn’t it?
“So, you want to tell your dad?”
“Uh . . . sure.”
“I’ll take Alfie down to the beach, then.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m so proud of you.” He kisses my head. “Your dad will be fine. Honest. And even if he isn’t, he’ll pretend to be.”
I smile. “I know.”
But as we walk downstairs, it’s not Dad I’m worrying about. It’s Stella. And what she’ll say. And do.
Alfie jumps up and down on the sofa. Dad acts pleased. Like Ed said he would. Saying the words he knows he should.
“Well done, love. You deserve it.”
“Thanks.”
Then I think he’s going to say it. But he stops. And I say it in my head for him, Your mum would be proud. And she would be. But, then, I think, If she were here, would I want to leave?
“We should call Gran.”
I nod. I haven’t told him yet that there’s a spare room available in Ed’s house. A four-bedroom in Battersea. Sharing with one of his brothers and some girl he knows — a third year at St. Martin’s. The house is run-down, Ed says. No central heating. But no Gran, either, or being home by six, or endless questions, or watching her play bridge and get quietly drunk on Madeira.
“Later.” I need to go out.
“When you get back, then. You’ll want to tell your friends first.” It’s not a question, thank God. Because there’s only one person I have to tell. I push the letter into my pocket and go to find her.
She’s sitting on the wall outside the launderette, eating gummy cola bottles and jelly babies.
“Want one?”
“Thanks.” I take a cola bottle. Feel the fizzy coating sting my tongue.
“So, what’s new, pussycat?”
I pause, not sure whether to just blurt it out or to lead up to it. Not even sure why I’m worrying. I don’t get the chance to decide.
“Oh . . . my . . . God. You got the letter, didn’t you? Shit. Did you get in? I bet you did.”
“Yeah.”
“I told you I was good.”
“I know.”
She sees what I’m thinking. “You would have done it anyway, without me. If you hadn’t been so strung out.”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe. You would. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.” She bites the head off a jelly baby.
“Do you remember this?” I hand her the sheet with the photo.
Stella looks at it, still chewing. “That’s brilliant, huh?”
“When did they take it, though?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs.
“But it can’t have been at the audition,” I say, “because I never went in.”
“Must have been in reception.”
“But when?”
“God, Jude.” Stella swallows the sweet. “Who cares? You’re in. They’re expecting someone who looks exactly like you. What’s not to like?”
“Nothing. Just . . . It feels weird.”
“Get over it. You’re going to Hollywood, baby!” She throws her arms open.
I sit down next to her. Smile. Trying it out.
Stella takes a cola bottle and stuffs it in her mouth, her legs dangling against the wall, kicking out. “OK. So do you think your gran’s going to mind me staying there too? I mean, just for a while until we get somewhere. Oh, God. This is so cool. Unless we move back to Notting Hill. Then you can just stay with me. And Piers. Oh, you’re going to love Piers. He will so fancy you —”
“Stell . . .”
“What? Oh, and you can meet Luella. She’s that girl, the one I was telling you about. You know, she once —”
“Stella.”
“What? Oh. OK. I get it. Tom won’t approve. Well, we’ll just let him down gently. Start off at Gran’s and then, I don’t know, say someone in your year has a room or something. Make out like it’s really cheap, closer to the Lab.”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then? Oh, wait. Don’t tell me. Ed.”
I don’t say anything.
“You’re not living with him? There is no way Tom will go for that.”
“I’m sixteen.”
“OK. Gran, then. Your sugar granny. She’s paying, isn’t she? Do you think she’s going to let you shack up with someone who’s screwing her darling granddaughter? Dream on.”
“They like Ed.”
“Of course they do. Now. Because he’s ‘nice.’ But as soon as they find out he’s had his hands down your hipsters, alarm bells are going to ring, believe me.”
“Maybe.” I cringe at the thought of them seeing me like that.
“Honest, Jude. It is never . . . going . . . to happen.”
I say nothing. Because there’s no point. Not now. I’ll wait. Tell her before I go. Just leave her here. Or we can meet up in Portobello or something. Like Kate Moss and Sadie Frost. Trawling the stalls for vintage. But, somehow, I know that’s not what she’s planning.
“So, party tonight?”
“Sure.” And I smile. So she can see it’s fine. That she’s right.
But as she smiles back, I can see t
hat she knows. Knows what I’m planning. That I don’t want her anymore. Not just because of Ed. But because I want me. I want to be me. And I’m scared, because I know she’ll find a way to stop it. She won’t let me win. And I feel lost again. Small. Because I’ve started something I can’t finish.
I AM leaning over the sink. Retching again. Seem to spend half my life throwing up. But this isn’t cheap vodka or stolen Pernod. It is something else. Fear. Realization.
I don’t know when I clicked about Stella and Ed. Just a look between them, that’s all. A second. That night in the pub. We’re all sitting, talking. Matt’s telling everyone about this festival he’s going to in Wales. I’m nodding, smiling. But all I can hear is Stella. She’s talking to Ed, quietly. Telling him how amazing he is. That I’m lucky. And I see him smile. Laugh quickly at her cockiness. And then I see it. Under the table. Her hand on his thigh. Then moving up. He pauses, pushes it away. But that pause. And what he says. “Not here.” I look away, hoping that I’m wrong, that I missed something. A joke perhaps. So I say nothing that night. Because anyone can slip like that. And Stella — I mean, who wouldn’t want her to want them? Even Ed, who always held her in contempt. Part of him must think she’s got something. Because it’s not a maybe. She just has.
Then yesterday. I’m sitting on the wall outside the shop. Ed skates down the hill to say he’s going to London today. Taking some stuff up to his brother’s in the Land Rover. Asks if I want to come.
“Sure,” I say.
Then Stella does her appearing trick. “Me too,” she says. “I call shotgun.”
Ed looks at me. I shrug.
“You’ll have to navigate,” he says.
“I can do more than that.” She’s got a finger in her mouth.
And he’s laughing. But there’s something else. Desire.
And then I knew something had happened between them. Maybe not even this week. Maybe a while ago. I replay the images in my head. Her going into his room, in the dark. All he can see is blond hair. Smell of Chanel. And I bet she’s better than me. Knows what to do. Done it before. And then he sees who it is. Hates himself for not knowing. But wants her anyway. His eyes closed, hands on her, pushing her down. And she’s watching him. Not even enjoying it, just what it means. That she’s won.