by KE Payne
Finally, nearly a week after I’d last spoken to Fickle, I woke up and didn’t feel like I wanted to cry anymore. My pain and grief had turned to silent fury, literally overnight, it seemed, and I didn’t want to feel like shit anymore, didn’t want to waste another second of my life hurting over Fickle and what she’d done to me. I missed being human; missed talking to Mum and Dad, missed being at college, missed Beth and Emily, and missed chatting to Joey, Twiggy, and all the other friends I’d made on the message board. They were the ones that mattered now; they were my real friends.
I switched on my phone for the first time in ages and listened guiltily as it beeped with loads of texts and voicemail alerts. There were some from Beth and Emily, just saying hi and asking me where I’d been, with a few from Twiggy too, asking me if I’d be on MSN and stuff like that. Most were from Joey, though, telling me she was worried about me and begging me to let her know I was okay. There were none from Fickle, but then I hadn’t really expected any more from her.
Instinctively, I dialled Joey’s number, listening to it ring as I pulled a brush through my hair and peered at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t pretty.
“Imms?” Joey’s voice sounded at the end of the phone.
“Hey Joe.” I looked at myself in the mirror.
“Oh thank God,” Joey breathed out. “I’ve been worried sick about you, after everything that’s happened.”
“Yeah, I went a bit crazy for a while, Joe.” I tried to make my voice sound light. “But I’m okay now, I think.”
“Everyone’s been asking about you on the message board,” Joey went on. “Twiggy’s been worrying herself silly as well.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch,” I said truthfully. “I just didn’t wanna know anyone for a while, you know?”
“Yeah, I understand,” Joey said. “I’m just glad you’re…you know…okay.”
“I’ll live.” I laughed. “Mind you, I wasn’t so sure about that a few days ago, but that was then.”
“Good on you, kiddo,” Joey said, with more sincerity in her voice than I think I’ve ever heard.
She paused.
“So you spoke to Fickle, then?” she asked, kinda tentatively.
“Yeah. On Saturday. Exactly a week after we first met and she’s telling me it’s over. How about that?” I laughed, but the laugh was laden with irony.
“I don’t know what to say, Imms,” Joey said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Better to know now, I guess,” I said, “than later, when I was in deeper than I already was.”
“I could wring the little cow’s neck, I really could,” Joey said savagely. “What she did to you was just downright brutal. I tell you what, Imms, if I ever see her name on any message board anywhere, I’ll kill her. I mean it.”
“You can’t kill someone over the Internet.” I laughed. “But I appreciate the offer anyway.”
“I had to tell you, Imms,” Joey said. “I couldn’t let her do it to you.”
“I’m glad you told me,” I said honestly. “Imagine how awful we’d both have felt further down the line? Like I said, best to nip it in the bud early.”
I felt my voice wobble at those words, and cleared my throat quickly, hoping that Joey hadn’t noticed.
“Did she tell you why she did it?” Joey asked.
I thought for a second.
“No, not really,” I replied. “She just said that me and her was just a bit of fun and that it was never going to go anywhere, and that she couldn’t help but flirt with other girls. It was in her nature to do it, she said.”
“For crap’s sake…” Joey gasped.
“I know,” I said. “I just wish she’d made that clear from the start. That it was a game, you know?”
My voice threatened to crack again.
“Silly little girl playing with people’s emotions,” Joey said bitterly. “What a selfish idiot she is.”
“She told me she loved me, Joey,” I said simply. “That’s not a game, is it?”
“It’s not, Imms,” Joey said gently. “That’s just darned cruel.”
“I really liked her—loved her, I think—Joey,” I said, still looking at myself in the mirror, watching my face crumple slightly.
“I know, kiddo, I know,” Joey said. “But you have to find some positives in amongst all the negatives, if you can.”
“Like what?” I said. I found it impossible at that moment to think there was anything positive about the whole sorry mess.
“Well, it allowed you to be true to yourself,” Joey said. “It confirmed what you’d suspected for a while—that you like girls.”
“You’re right.” I nodded to myself in the mirror. “And I s’pose it got me out of a dead-end relationship with Matt.”
“See? Another positive. You might still be with him now if you hadn’t met Fickle.”
I thought about that for a second. Joey was right; Fickle might not have been the cause of my deciding to finish with Matt, but she’d sure been the catalyst.
“I guess she gave me the guts to finally get round to doing something about it,” I said. “He’s seeing my mate, Beth, now. Did I tell you?”
Joey laughed.
“You didn’t, no. And you don’t sound down about it, so I’m guessing you’re cool with it?”
“Oh, totally!” I said, laughing as well. “If anything, it’s a relief to know he’s with someone who wants to be with him, ’cos by all accounts, Beth’s crazy about him.”
“See? Another positive!” Joey giggled. “And let’s face it, kiddo, he’s probably getting a helluva lot more action in the sack with her than he was with you. No offence, like.”
I laughed out loud.
“None taken, you cheeky bugger!”
I looked at my reflection and saw that I was actually smiling, seeing life in my eyes for the first time in days. Joey was good for me, I decided. She was saying everything I needed to hear, and I figured in that moment that I needed Joey in my life, probably more than I’d ever needed anyone before, and I needed her to keep telling me the things I wanted to hear. Maybe that way Fickle would eventually fade from my memory.
“Wanna Skype later?” Joey’s voice jolted me back to reality. “I’ll wear a silly hat, make you laugh?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’ll be nice to see a friendly face after hiding myself away in my room for nearly a week!”
“I’m glad you’re doing better,” Joey said. “I missed seeing you around. I only had Twiggy for company last night, and she’s lovely and all, but, well, you know!” She laughed.
“Argh, Twiggy!” I sighed. “I s’pose I’ll have to face her at some point as well.”
“You don’t have to face anyone you don’t want to,” Joey said kindly. “But she’s been worried about you too. Just send her a text, tell her you’re alive?”
“I will,” I said. “And Joey, thanks. Thanks for listening and not judging. I’m sorry if I was rude to you last week when you told me about Fickle.”
“Ah, pff!” Joey laughed. “It’s water under the bridge now, Imms.”
She hesitated.
“Not everyone’s like Fickle, you know,” she said. “Not everyone you meet online is a total shit. Don’t let what happened with her cloud your opinions of others ’cos there are some great people out there—people who care about you. Just ’cos we’re a face that talks to you through a computer screen doesn’t mean we don’t care, okay?”
I nodded to my reflection. “Thanks, Joey.”
“No problem, kiddo,” Joey said. “Speak to you later.”
And with that, she was gone. I sat down on my bed and thought about everything Joey had just said to me, and finally felt a pinprick of something that resembled optimism.
*
A hot shower and my first proper food in days made me feel 100 percent better. Mum and Dad had come back from work, and Sophie was lurking somewhere in her bedroom, on the pretext of doing homework, which meant she was probably either texting, Twe
eting, or on Facebook.
I smiled as Mum came into the lounge just as I was finishing off my second bacon sandwich. She ruffled my hair as she sat down next to me and looked across to me.
“You feeling better, my love?” she said, picking up a magazine and flicking through it.
“I am, yeah.” I nodded, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Some sort of nasty bug got me, but I think it’s gone now.” I smiled at her.
“That’s all it was?” Mum cocked her head and gave me a look that only mothers can give you. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else, Mum.” I nodded. “I’m much better now. I’ll go back to college tomorrow, I think.”
I picked up my phone, not wanting to talk any more about it with Mum. I sent Twiggy a text, just telling her I was okay and that I’d be on MSN later if she fancied a chat. I started deleting some messages from my in-box and saw some of Fickle’s texts to me from the week before, and felt my heart momentarily drop. Without another thought, I pressed Select and deleted them all before going to my contacts box and deleting her name as well.
Perhaps I was finally beginning to get rid of the bug, once and for all.
Chapter Nineteen
As the weeks passed, I managed to clear myself of every trace of Fickle that had ever existed in my life. I removed her from my MSN buddy list, deleted every fake e-mail she’d ever sent me with all its fake words within, removed her from Skype, and deleted all the photos she’d sent me of herself.
It was only after I’d done that, that I felt, I dunno, sort of cleansed, like I was starting over again.
I still missed Fickle like crazy, but Joey’s words to me from before kept swimming into my head, about how Fickle had at least given me the courage to stop denying to myself that I was gay and to start believing in myself more. I took Joey’s words on board and got used to being, well, me, and stopped beating myself up about being gay, telling myself that, for the first time ever, I could live my life the way I wanted to live it, not the way I thought people expected me to. I figured by being true to myself, at least everything I’d shared with Fickle, and all the shit afterwards, wouldn’t have been for nothing.
I finally started to feel happy once more, happy with who I was, something I’d not ever really experienced before. I’d come out to Beth too, in an extremely frank and funny conversation one day over a few beers in the pub, the beer having loosened my tongue and my anxieties, and it had been another huge weight off my shoulders. Of course, I’d been vague with Emily when she’d asked me questions about Fickle, just telling her that things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped and that my experience with Fickle had been just that—an experience.
“There’s plenty more girls out there, Ems,” I’d said to her. “And I plan on having fun finding them!”
To my relief, both Beth and Emily were totally cool about me being gay, and to my complete amusement, took it upon themselves to embrace it as enthusiastically as I had, and I began to think that I’d finally turned a corner. In fact, their enthusiasm towards my new life extended way beyond the call of duty, which is how we found ourselves, one Friday night around three weeks after Fickle had dumped me, sitting in a gay bar called the Porter in town, chatting over drinks while Emily and Beth eyed up potential new girlfriends for me.
“It’s buzzing in here, isn’t it?” Beth had to shout to be heard over the sound of the music. “Who knew this place even existed?”
“Not the sort of place you’d normally come to.” I laughed. “Nor me, for that matter!”
I looked round the room, thinking that even six weeks ago I would never have dared come to a gay bar. Times were changing for me.
“What about her?” Emily leant over and nodded towards a girl standing at the bar.
I looked at her. She looked to be in her early twenties, shortish hair, cool clothes. She looked nice, and I watched as she gazed around the room, kinda hoping she’d look over my way.
“She looks cute,” I half shouted back to Emily, dissolving into a fit of giggles with her as we watched another girl come join the girl at the bar and put her arm around her waist.
“Ah well, there’ll be others!” Beth laughed.
I stared around the room, watching in, well, awe really—there’s no other word to describe it—as women danced with other women, women kissed other women, and women arrived and left with women. What struck me was how normal it all was. And why not? I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Joey when she’d told me being gay was nothing to be ashamed of, that it was totally normal and if people couldn’t hack that, then it was their problem, not mine.
Looking round the place now, I felt, I dunno, at home. Like I’d waited all my teenage life for this moment; like anything that had gone on before was immaterial. This was a new chapter in my life, and I was going to grab it with both hands, not do what I’d done in the past and stick to doing something just because it was considered the “right thing to do.”
“She’s cute as well,” Emily leant over and said in my ear, jerking her head towards another girl leaning on the bar, drink in hand.
I looked at the girl. Emily was right; she was kinda cute.
“You should go talk to her.” Emily jerked her head back to the girl at the bar. “She’s well hot. If I weren’t straight, I’d have a crack at her.”
Beth and I collapsed into giggles.
“Do you know what you sound like?” Beth playfully punched Emily on the arm.
I looked back at the girl. Yeah, she was hot, and if I didn’t make a move now, I never would. I drained my glass and rose from my chair.
“Wish me luck!” I grinned down to Emily and Beth before wandering over in the direction of the girl, just in time to see her finish her drink and walk onto the dance floor. Within seconds she’d disappeared into the crowd and I was left standing next to the bar like a spare piece. I turned and looked back at Emily and Beth, shrugging then frowning in mock fury as they both collapsed into a fit of giggles again.
“Guess this whole ‘picking up a girl in a bar’ stuff isn’t so easy,” I said with a sigh as I sat back down.
“Maybe wait to be picked up, rather than doing the picking up,” Beth said. “It’ll happen when it happens, Immy.”
“Yeah, that’s just what Joey said to me,” I said absent-mindedly.
“Who?” Emily looked at Beth and winked.
“No one,” I replied. “Right, I’m gonna call it a night, girls. I’m not sure if this is me after all.”
“You give up too easily,” Emily said. “But yeah, I’ll agree we should call it a night now.”
“Until the next time,” Beth said, finishing her drink.
A thought struck me as we all three walked home together, all arm in arm, giggling like a bunch of schoolkids. I figured that in the weeks since all the shit with Fickle, I’d become closer to Beth and Emily—closer to them than I had been in years. It was almost like me coming out to the pair of them had changed something, but it had changed it for the better. I was no longer a closed book to them, like when I’d been with Matt and hadn’t wanted to talk about him, like, ever.
In the past I’d found it so difficult going out with them, having to endure the torture of a night of eyeing up boys, or talking about boys, or chatting with boys I really didn’t want to chat with. Now I was happier because, I guessed, I was freer. I didn’t have to pretend to be something I wasn’t with them; I could actually be me, Immy Summers, and our friendship had blossomed because of it. Now I could open up to them, tell them what I was really thinking and feeling, and it felt great.
We said our good-byes and headed in our separate directions, with me arriving home shortly after eleven p.m. After passing the time of day with Mum and Dad, fending off questions about where I’d been, I took myself off up to my room and, on a whim, switched on the computer, happy once more to chat on the message board and on MSN. Fickle hadn’t been seen or heard anywhere on the Lovers and Sinners message board for weeks, and I assume
d she’d now taken up residence on the Ali and Jess website instead. Making a promise to myself that I would never, ever go on there to see what she was up to, or who she was talking to, I found I could cope with life back on the L&S message board. People knew, of course, that Fickle and I had become close, and then people knew, of course, that we were no longer together. I’d had the odd message of support on the board, and a few personal e-mails telling me to “keep my chin up”, but soon my news became old news and everything quickly got back to normal again. Such is the life on an Internet message board.
I grinned as I saw Twiggy and Joey were online, and joined into their MSN conversation so that we were soon having a three-way chat, bouncing thoughts and ideas off each other and generally taking the piss out of one or the other. I saw a new message from Joey appear next to our three-way conversation box, and figured she wanted to talk to me alone, without Twiggy seeing.
Joey: You okay? It’s fun talking to Twiggy but she does tend to just piss about a lot, LOL.
Barnaby Rudge: I’m good, thanks, yeah. You?
Joey: Yeah. You sound happy! What you been up to this evening?
Barnaby Rudge: I went to a gay club with my friends! It was the best! Such a laugh!
Joey: A gay club??? You ARE getting more confident, aren’t you?!
Barnaby Rudge: I know! I surprised myself! Girls’ only night. It was wicked.
There was a bit of a pause, so I went back to Twiggy’s conversation, thinking that Joey was writing there. She wasn’t.
Joey: Did you pull?
Barnaby Rudge: LMAO, no!
Joey: Any hawt girls there?