Everyone laughs again. When things settle, Eliza looks at her phone and says, ‘Nelson, tell the group about your best and worst kissing experiences.’
‘Ah,’ he says like he’s been let off the hook. ‘Too easy. My best was when I was on holiday in Thailand.’ He traces an hourglass shape in the air with his hands. ‘She was tall and blonde and sexy —’
‘And imaginary!’ someone yells out and people laugh, but Nelson doesn’t let that stop him.
‘And she had the best lips ever. We were lying on the beach, side by side, and it was so hot and she just leant over and it was great. Ten out of ten.’
‘And your worst kiss?’ Eliza reminds him.
‘It was at school, about two months ago. Her breath was gross and she slobbered. I give her zero out of ten.’
Some people are sort of twittering. I wonder if they know the girl he’s talking about? It would be so horrible to be her if they did.
I wriggle my bum over closer to Edi and as far away from Nelson as I can go. My heart is beating so hard I’m sure the others will be able to hear it.
‘All right,’ Eliza says, shaking her phone already and looking at me.
‘You,’ she says to me. ‘Truth or dare?’
Truth, dare? Dare, truth? The two words flick through my mind. I’ve been so worried about my turn I haven’t had a chance to worry about which one I should pick. I breathe.
I have to pick dare, don’t I? What if I got asked a question like the one Nelson got? Imagine if I got asked about my best and worst kissing experiences!
How would I answer that?
Oh, my best and worst are the same. In year five, Tyson Banks kissed me on the cheek and ran away.
It would be … it would be like suicide. I’d rather suck a smelly-sock icy pole than tell everyone that.
‘You planning on answering anytime soon?’ Eliza says, her hand on her hip.
I clear my throat. ‘Dare.’
Edi pinches me on the thigh as though this is all really exciting.
Eliza looks down at the screen. ‘Seven minutes in heaven,’ she says.
A cheer goes up around the room. I have no idea what that means, but clearly everyone else does. I look over at Leo. He looks uncomfortable. Eliza rolls her eyes at my blank face, as though having to explain it to me is a pain.
‘Go into a dark space for seven minutes with a boy.’
For a moment, I feel a twinge of excitement mixed up in my fear. Could I dare to choose Leo?
Eliza interrupts with bad news. ‘With the boy closest to you,’ she says.
Even though I’ve squished up as close as I can get to Edi, there’s no question which boy is closest to me. It’s Nelson. The one who told us all about his best kiss. And his worst.
‘And you can just do … whatever,’ Eliza finishes. She says ‘whatever’ really slowly, like she’s suggesting something should happen in those seven minutes that I don’t even want to think about.
Nelson gets up straight away. He holds out his hand and pulls me up. His hand’s all sweaty.
I don’t look over at Leo as Nelson leads me across the circle towards the cupboard. I can feel the extra socks in my boots and it’s like a reminder that this situation is too big for me, the same way Romy’s boots are.
I’ve already passed by Leo when I look back, but he’s staring down at the concrete in front of him.
Nelson opens the cupboard door. It’s pretty big, for a cupboard. But with all the mops and brooms and cleaning stuff it still feels tight.
When we’re squeezed inside, Nelson closes the door behind us. It’s dark, but at least there are shafts of light from the gap under the door so I can see his face. He leans back against the side of the cupboard.
I can hear the others outside getting on with the game.
‘So,’ Nelson says, peering over at me in the dark. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Hazel.’ I wonder if he can hear my heart thumping. I take a step backwards and trip on a dustpan and brush. He reaches out and grabs me around the waist. I know he’s trying to steady me, but he doesn’t need to keep his hands there after I’ve got my balance back. I think about pushing his hands away, but I don’t.
‘Nice name,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ I say, just to say something.
His hands are hot and sweaty against my singlet top.
‘That’s okay,’ he says, sounding smug, like he’s said something smart or romantic and he’s made a connection with me. Which he hasn’t. Does he honestly think no-one’s ever told me Hazel is a nice name?
My mind flashes back to the talk I had with Leo earlier.
‘Wanna hook up, Hazel?’ Nelson asks next.
I wriggle out of his grip and side-step as far as I can go. I hear laughing coming from outside. Pezza’s sock is out of the freezer. I wish I was out there to see it. I wish I was anywhere but here.
‘Nervous, huh?’ Nelson says. He’s probably trying to be kind but he just sounds arrogant. ‘Don’t worry, Hazel. If you haven’t done this before, I can break you in.’
I hold my breath. I’m not a horse. And I don’t want to be broken in. Not by Nelson anyway. I so don’t want my first kiss to be like this, in a broom cupboard with a guy like Nelson. Maybe if it was Leo I’d do it. But even then, I’m not sure. All I know is that I don’t want to kiss this guy.
I try to send the vibe, but Nelson’s not getting it. He dips his head towards me. There’s nowhere for my feet to go, so I swivel my head to the side. He does a little face plant, all wet on my ear. It’s so awkward. I can’t believe it but I think he’s going to give it a second go when there’s a knock on the cupboard door.
‘Guys? You in there?’ comes Alice’s voice. ‘It’s time to cut the cake.’
I love Alice. I can hear footsteps going up the stairs as everyone else heads back up, and Nelson finally moves away from me and leans against the cupboard door again.
My heart starts to settle down and I can breathe.
‘Don’t want to hook up, right?’ Nelson says. Genius.
‘Right,’ I say, and then I feel like I have to soften it a bit. ‘Sorry.’
Nelson shakes his head. ‘Orright,’ he says. ‘Reckon we would have done seven minutes by now. And you’re too young for me anyway.’
I wasn’t too young for him a minute ago, but I’m definitely not going to argue. I’m just glad it’s over.
He’s just about to push open the door when he turns to me again. ‘If anyone asks, just say we did, okay?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say quickly.
It seems like a good solution. I get to save my first kiss for someone else, and he gets to save face.
Nelson opens the cupboard door and we practically sprint up the stairs.
Archie is standing between his mum and Alice at the head of the table, and everyone’s gathered around singing Happy Birthday. Well, the girls are singing. Most of the boys seem to be just moving their mouths.
Edi grabs my arm and pulls me away into the lounge room where we can be by ourselves.
‘What happened?’ she asks, flopping down on the couch and pulling me down with her. I think of the deal I made to Nelson. But I have to tell Edi what happened.
‘It was sooo awkward, Edi,’ I groan, putting my head into the back of the couch. ‘He tried to kiss me.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I turned my head at the last moment.’
I do a dramatic head-swivel to demonstrate, and Edi laughs like she doesn’t think it was such a stupid move, which is a relief. Then she shakes her head and I think she’s going to ask me more, but she doesn’t.
‘I chose dare,’ she says.
‘Oh! What was it?’ I’m annoyed I missed Edi’s turn.
‘I had to choose a boy and sit on his lap for the next round.’
‘At least you got to choose!’ I say. ‘So you chose Archie?’
‘Of course,’ she says, as though it’s obvious. The thing is, if I got that dare I don’t know if I coul
d have even chosen Leo, because then everyone would think I like him. Which I’m pretty sure I do, but I’m so not ready for everyone to know about it.
That stuff doesn’t seem to bother Edi, but something is bothering her. She’s frowning.
I can picture Edi sitting on Archie’s lap. If it had been me, I’d probably be really uncomfortable and I’d look like an idiot. Not Edi.
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I offer, but I can tell something’s not good.
‘Yeah, but I wanted to stay there for the rest of the game. But when that round finished, that Eliza girl goes, That round is over, Edi. You can get off Archie’s lap now.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I would’ve been relieved that she said that. Plus, I’m pretty sure Eliza wouldn’t have a clue what my name is. In a way, I’d be flattered if I was on her radar enough for her to know who I am. But Edi doesn’t seem to be thinking along those lines at all.
‘So I get one lousy minute on Archie’s lap and nothing else happens? And now it’s just about time to go home. Dad’s already texted. We have to be out the front in five minutes.’
I lean back on the couch. If I had got Edi’s dare and I was brave enough to sit on Leo’s lap, that would have totally been amazing. It’s weird that she’s younger than me and I’m always the one behind her with no clue how to catch up.
People start coming into the lounge room. First there’s Eliza and the other girls. Then Leo walks in.
I look at him and I hope to god he’s going to come over to the couch, and that he knows that nothing happened with Nelson and me in the cupboard. I try to send the nothing happened message to him through my eyes. But it doesn’t look like it’s reached him. He doesn’t even return my smile. He just turns around and walks out of the room.
I don’t see him again before we go home.
‘Why was Alice invited to Archie’s party?’ Olympia asks.
It’s Monday morning, and we’re at our lockers. Edi and I spent ages yesterday on Facebook, messaging Jess and Olympia and filling them in about the party. We told them about Alice being there and my dare and Edi’s dare. But even so, they still want more details.
‘She’s a family friend,’ I explain. ‘Apparently she’s known Archie and his whole family forever.’
‘That’s so weird,’ Jess says. ‘You wouldn’t expect that, would you? Like, people don’t know that my family knows the Kingstons. Mum used to work with Eliza’s mum and — ’
‘So, why didn’t you kiss Nelson?’ Olympia interrupts Jess, who was definitely gearing up for one of her long stories. ‘Not even one little peck?’ she prompts. ‘Even if I didn’t really like him, I reckon I would have done it just for the practice.’
‘Yeah, kind of like kissing training,’ Jess adds.
I get a funny feeling in my tummy. Jess keeps talking, but I’m not listening. Maybe I should have just done it? Like it was no big deal. Like it was kissing training. God knows, I need the practice more than anyone.
‘Hazel didn’t hook up with Nelson because Leo was there and she likes him better,’ Edi explains for me, and it makes me feel better, but I’m not sure it’s totally true.
I don’t think I would have wanted to hook up with Nelson even if Leo wasn’t there.
‘Oh my god, you like Leo, Hazel?’ Jess practically yells.
‘Sshhh!’ I say quickly, looking around to see who might have heard her.
To my horror a few of Archie’s soccer mates are walking down the hallway.
I’m pretty sure that even if Leo did like me at the start of the party, he didn’t like me by the end of it. And anyway, I don’t want any rumours to fly around that make me look like an idiot. Well, like even more of an idiot.
I don’t see the girls again until lunchtime. We meet up at our lockers, like we usually do.
‘What’s going on over there?’ Olympia asks, pointing with her half-eaten muesli bar.
I look over to where Olympia is pointing. There’s a bunch of people gathered around the noticeboard. It could just be an excursion notice or a call for auditions for the school play or something like that. But I have a funny feeling about it. It’s like there’s a block of lead sitting in my tummy. The four of us walk over.
There’s a new hot list for our year up there. On the noticeboard. For everyone to see.
Edi is still number one.
I notice my own name really quickly, because there’s something written next to it. I’ve dropped down to number twenty-three. And next to my name, in capital letters, there’s this:
FRIGID. MIGHT BE HOTTER WHEN SHE GROWS UP.
‘Come on, Haze,’ says Edi. ‘Don’t look.’ She sounds angry.
‘Yeah, come away,’ says Jess or Olympia. I don’t even know who’s talking because everything is churning. My head. My stomach. I can’t move. I just stare at the writing.
I can feel tears spring up in my eyes. The list is wobbly through them, but I manage to pick out Alice’s name. She’s got my old position. Number seventeen.
The girls have to practically carry me to the toilets. I’m too stunned to even cry properly. I’m shaking as I slump onto a toilet seat. Edi puts her arms around me.
‘Haze, it’s just a stupid list,’ she says.
‘I’m going to find out who wrote that stuff and I’m going to kick them in the gonads,’ Jess says.
But I already know who wrote it.
‘Nelson,’ I say, looking around at my friends.
He’s obviously found out that I didn’t stick to our deal. This is his revenge. And it’s the perfect revenge. My life is over.
‘I’m going to get a giant fire hose and spray him until he squeals,’ Olympia adds. They mean well but it doesn’t help. It’s probably gone around the whole school by now.
It’s so humiliating. It burns inside me and I can feel it burning on the outside too. My cheeks are flushed hot.
Everyone will know that I couldn’t just shut my eyes and kiss a random boy in a closet. And I probably wouldn’t even be ready to kiss the boy I like. Now everyone will think that there’s something wrong with me. Actually, maybe they’ll know it. They’ll know that I’m way behind everyone else. They’ll probably even work out that I haven’t got my period yet.
The toilet door swings open. It’s Alice, just like the last time. This time, though, she marches straight over to us. She’s holding up the list between her thumb and forefinger, as though it’s a dirty tissue. I look at Alice blankly, wondering how she got it.
‘I ripped it off the noticeboard,’ she says, as though she can read my thoughts. ‘And if they put it up again, I’ll rip it down. As many times as it takes, Hazel.’
The girls are quiet. I am too. I haven’t seen Alice like this, not since we started high school anyway. It’s like being angry has made her confident again.
‘You did the right thing at the party, Hazel,’ she says. ‘Anyone with half a brain could figure out that Nelson only wrote this stuff because you wouldn’t kiss him. Why would you want to kiss a toad like him anyway?’
She looks around at us all. ‘It’s just rubbish,’ she goes on. ‘He walks around, scoring girls out of ten like he’s the judge of everything? If you’d kissed him, he probably would have given you a score, just like he did Phoebe. Zero!’
Phoebe must have been the girl he talked about kissing on the oval. For a moment, I think about how horrible it is that he scored her kiss out of ten. But what he wrote about me is probably even worse.
It’s weird because suddenly it’s anger that’s bubbling inside me instead of shame. Maybe I’m catching the feeling from Alice. The anger is almost kicking out the humiliation. Almost.
‘Archie reckons Nelson’s always going on about this girl he met on holidays,’ Alice continues, ‘but nobody’s seen a photo of her so she probably doesn’t even exist. Archie doesn’t even like Nelson, but he had to invite him to the party because he’s on the soccer team and the rest of the team were coming.’
Alice has been looking at me the
whole time she’s been talking. Now that she’s paused, it’s like she’s realised that Edi, Jess and Olympia are there too. Edi is staring at Alice, and I reckon she’s probably wondering how Alice got to be so close to Archie that she knows this stuff, but of course Alice doesn’t know that.
I want to say something. Alice has actually gone up in the ranking but it’s clear she doesn’t care. This obviously matters more to her.
‘Thanks, Alice,’ I say. And I start crying for real this time. I’m not quite sure why, but it might be the relief and also realising how stupid it all is. ‘What you did was really … brave.’
She shakes her head as she looks at me. ‘What you did was really brave, Hazel. You didn’t let Nelson push you into something you didn’t want to do.’
I hadn’t thought of it like that. But maybe Alice is right. Maybe not kissing Nelson was brave in a weird way. Just thinking about it like this makes me feel stronger, but I don’t get much time to think about it because Edi reaches out and takes the list from Alice.
‘This,’ she says as she rips the paper in half, ‘is wrong. Even without the nasty things about Hazel, it’s wrong. Why should we let a bunch of boys rate us?’
She tears the list into quarters. Then Jess takes it and rips it and hands the rest to Olympia. Limps holds it high in the air. Her eyes are wide as she looks at me.
‘Whoever wrote this must be a complete loser, Hazel. Stuff him! You are smart. You are funny. And you’re quite pretty in your own way.’
I shake my head as Olympia starts ripping. The last bit was kind of weird. I’m not sure about the ‘quite pretty’ thing. And I’ll probably never really know which way is up with her, but right now she’s got my back and it’s enough.
Olympia hands the remnants of the list to me and it feels good to tear it to shreds. By the time we’ve all finished, the list is like pieces of confetti strewn all over the floor.
‘Come on, Haze,’ Edi says. ‘We’ll all walk out there together.’
I try to breathe deeply. I feel better. Not totally better. I’m still embarrassed about what was on the list and I’m worried about facing everyone. I still feel that lump of lead in my tummy. But at least we’re all going to stick together and I won’t have to face the world alone.
Waiting for It Page 6