by Cathy Cole
“What were you and Megan talking about just now?” she said, trying to sound casual.
Ollie shrugged. “Nothing special.”
Polly noticed how his eyes flickered. He was lying.
SIXTEEN
Polly thought long and hard about her and Ollie over the next couple of days. The comments from the football groupies on Monday had hurt, and she wasn’t sure she trusted Ollie about Megan at all. She’d read a few more magazines and even watched a match on TV so she could say something a bit more intelligent next time Ollie tried to have a conversation about his beloved sport, but it had left her feeling flat and depressed and more convinced of her inadequacy than ever.
She would abandon the football research and focus on her make-up and clothes instead. She hated feeling so small and scruffy next to the other girls with their long legs and perfect shiny hair. Normally she loved her eclectic style and took pride in looking different than all the football clones, but hanging out with Ollie made her feel self-conscious about it.
On Wednesday, she decided to take a risk. She would do her outfit and make-up like she had for the football practice, but she would then take Ollie to do something she liked to do. It was all about compromise, right? Maybe she and Ollie could meet halfway.
They had arranged to meet at the end of school on Wednesday. Ollie was standing impatiently at the bottom of the steps as Polly ran to meet him, her bag bouncing on her back. Her short pink skirt still felt weird, but she was getting used to it.
He hugged her tightly, and Polly revelled in the feeling of his arms around her. Despite all her worries, just being around Ollie made her heart beat faster. They still hadn’t kissed. Polly found herself looking forward to the prospect more and more.
“So,” Ollie said, releasing her but holding tightly on to her hand. “What’s the plan?”
“I’m taking you to an art gallery,” Polly said.
Ollie looked a little dismayed. “A what?”
Stick with it, Polly told herself.
“An art gallery,” she said patiently. “You know, a place where they hang paintings on the wall for people to look at.”
“I know what an art gallery is,” Ollie said. “I just don’t get why we’re going there. Don’t you have to be really quiet when you go in places like that?”
Polly resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “It’s not a library, Ollie. It’s a place where people look at beautiful things and then talk about them.”
“I’m looking at a beautiful thing right now,” said Ollie, gazing into her eyes.
Polly could feel herself melting. Ollie was impossible to resist when he put on the charm.
“Come on,” she said, tugging on Ollie’s hand. “It’s just across town.”
“It’s not modern art, is it?” he said suspiciously. “That stuff looks like a toddler has just spilt paint and trodden in it.”
Polly forced a laugh. “There’s a bit more to it than that. Rhi’s dad works at a local gallery called the Periwinkle in the Old Town. The gallery supports local artists, which is really important. I often go there for inspiration when I’m designing or customizing something. They have the most amazing stuff.”
“Does it have a decent café?” said Ollie. “I’m starving.”
Boys and their stomachs, Polly thought with a sigh.
She let Ollie swerve sideways into the newsagent on the way to the Periwinkle. He came out with an armful of crisps.
“Is it much further?” he said, crunching loudly.
“It’s right here,” she said, and pointed.
The Periwinkle had sky-blue window frames. Three large paintings occupied the window: seascapes, created in whirls of thick oil paint. Polly stood at the window for a moment, savouring the artist’s textures. You could almost taste the whirling, grinding sea just by looking.
“What did I tell you?” said Ollie. “Toddler art.”
Polly bit her lip. “Hey, come on, be serious for once,” she said lightly. She really wished Ollie would ease up on the jokes. This place was important to her. Just as important as the football field was to Ollie. She was making an effort. Why couldn’t he?
“Polly!” exclaimed Mr Wills, looking round from where he was hanging a driftwood sculpture on the wall. “Good to see you. Who’s your friend?”
“Hi, Mr Wills,” said Polly. “This is Ollie. I’ve brought him to see some paintings.”
“Great!” Mr Wills exclaimed. “Are you into art, Ollie?”
Polly prayed Ollie wouldn’t say anything stupid. Mr Wills took his job in the gallery very seriously, and painted in his spare time. He was the last person in the world to understand and accept Ollie’s quips for what they were: a way of dealing with unfamiliarity.
“I’m more into football, if I’m honest,” said Ollie.
Mr Wills spread his hands in acceptance. “It’s a free world. Go ahead, Polly. We’re pretty quiet today.”
“And I can see why,” Ollie said in a low voice, staring dubiously at the driftwood sculpture on the wall.
Polly dragged him through to the back of the gallery, to her favourite artist in the world. She felt ridiculously nervous. What would Ollie think? Did it matter what he thought?
“Kazuhiro Mori,” said Ollie, reading the name underneath the painting. He turned to Polly in surprise. “I thought you said this was a local artists’ gig?”
“Kazuhiro Mori is local,” Polly explained patiently. “He’s been in Heartside Bay for twenty years. He has a really unusual vision.”
“You’re telling me,” said Ollie, looking around.
Polly was determined not to give up. “He’s a landscape artist, but not in the traditional sense,” she said. “He takes a view and breaks it down into its component parts. Lines and colours.”
“OK,” said Ollie. He had his concentrating face on.
“This one, for example,” Polly said, pointing at a picture that resembled a pile of brightly coloured matchsticks that had spilled haphazardly across a white floor. “Blue for the sea. Red for the roofs. Yellow for the sand. White for the cliffs. Landscapes are basically lines and colours, Ollie. Kazuhiro Mori takes that literally.”
She hadn’t done a very good job at explaining the painting’s appeal, she realized. It was hard to explain why she loved Kazuhiro Mori’s paintings of Heartside Bay so much. It was because he saw through everything. To the heart of everything. To what was real.
“OK, so I’d maybe have that one on a duvet cover,” Ollie said, staring at the painting. “I think I can see the sea, maybe. Yeah, and the roofs too!”
Polly felt encouraged. “Exactly! It’s really simple, but wonderful.”
Ollie sat down on the padded leather bench in the middle of the gallery. “I still don’t totally get it,” he admitted. “But I think I understand why you like it. You like to get to the bottom of things.”
“I suppose I do,” Polly said, feeling a little surprised at Ollie’s flash of insight.
Ollie waved at the pictures. “How do you think this guy would paint a football match?”
It was an interesting question. Polly sat down next to him and thought hard about her answer.
“Circles,” she said at last. “The ball and some of the markings on the pitch are circular, right?”
“Have you ever tried kicking a square ball?” Ollie enquired, grinning.
“There’d be squares too, and angles,” said Polly, warming to the theme. “The goal posts, the other markings.”
“Lots of green?” Ollie said. “For the pitch?”
“Maybe, but… ” Polly shook her head. “Green breaks down to the component parts of blue and yellow. He’d do it that way, I think.”
She realized that Ollie was looking intently at her.
“What?” she said, blushing.
“You find beauty and significa
nce in everything, don’t you?” he said.
His eyes flicked to her mouth. Polly’s throat went dry. Was he going to kiss her now?
“Aren’t you cold in that?” he said, pointing at her skirt.
Polly flushed bright red. “No,” she lied. She tugged at the hem.
“It’s not what you usually wear.”
“Do you like it?” she asked, with a smile.
Ollie made a face. “Not much.”
Polly felt like he’d slapped her. “W … what?” she managed. “You think it doesn’t look good on me?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Ollie said. “It’s just … not really you. Is it?”
Polly felt utterly humiliated. She obviously looked like a prize idiot.
“Anything else wrong with me?” she demanded angrily.
Ollie fiddled with his earlobe. “Now you come to mention it, what’s with the big black eyes?”
Polly felt like bursting into tears on the spot.
“I think I’m going to go home,” she said abruptly, and quickly turned out of the gallery. Why was everything she did so wrong? Why did it come so easily to everyone else and she couldn’t even put on eyeliner without it looking stupid?
Ollie followed. “Polly, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just … you asked me and I gave you an honest answer. Honesty’s good, isn’t it? I thought … I thought that’s what you wanted. Being more honest, not joking all the time… ” He trailed off.
“It’s fine, OK?” Polly said, walking as fast as she could. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
Ollie was looking worried now, jogging beside her to keep up. “We’re still going on that date on Friday, right?”
Polly spun round. “What were you talking to Megan Moore about on Monday?”
Ollie looked startled. “What are you bringing that up for?”
“Tell me!”
“I was asking her if she knew of any good places in town where I could take you on our date on Friday, OK? And she said there was a new Italian place down by the harbour,” Ollie said. “So much for the surprise. Happy now?”
Polly didn’t say anything. Her head was spinning.
“I think Megan was kind of hoping I’d ask her there instead of you,” Ollie added.
“Were you hoping that too?” Polly asked in a trembling voice.
“No!” Ollie protested. “I don’t like Megan. I like you. Aren’t you listening to me? I’ve booked a table for you and me on Friday. Or are you going to turn me down again?”
Polly took a deep breath. “I can’t do Friday, Ollie,” she said. “I’m going to the Funky Fox Festival with Eve and the others.”
“But I thought we arranged—”
She was about to cry. All those years she had wanted to be with Ollie, and now that she was actually getting the chance it seemed like nothing was going right.
She fled.
SEVENTEEN
The rest of the week was difficult. Ollie was avoiding her. Polly was sure of it.
There had been plenty of chances for conversation. She and Ollie took most of the same classes. But every time she’d looked for him, he had been among his friends, talking or laughing or looking at his phone. He hadn’t glanced up at her once. He hadn’t even texted her.
And that’s fine by me, Polly thought through gritted teeth. She never wanted to feel that level of humiliation again.
“Penny for them?” said Rhi as the bell went for the end of school on Friday and they gathered at the lockers.
“They’re not worth that much,” Polly muttered.
“She’s mooning over Ollie,” said Eve, flipping her hair briskly over her shoulders. “You have to snap out of it, Polly. Boys find mooners such a bore.”
I’ve definitely blown it, Polly thought sadly.
Why hadn’t she just gone out with Ollie the first time he asked? OK, so Eve had turned up unannounced that night. But that wasn’t Polly’s problem, was it? Then there’d been the fiasco at Saturday’s wedding, and the girls making eyes at Ollie during football practice. The final nail in the coffin had definitely been the art gallery.
This was all her own fault.
Polly wondered if she’d subconsciously sabotaged her own chances with Ollie. She’d been in love with him for so long, maybe on some level she couldn’t bear the thought of it not working out between them, and had done everything in her power to stop it from happening at all. The knowledge did nothing to make her feel better about the clothes and make-up disaster.
Eve paled and gripped her locker door as a wave of year eleven boys swept past. One of them looked over his shoulder with a knowing gleam in his eye.
“I’ll cure you, babe,” he said.
“You might cure rabies,” said Eve, looking at the boy like he was dirt on her shoe. “But you won’t cure me.”
The year eleven boy reddened. “Dumb lesbian,” he snarled.
Rhi patted Eve tentatively on the shoulder as his friends dragged him away and out of sight down the corridor. “Are you OK?”
“What do you think?” Eve snapped.
Rhi raised her hands. “I don’t want a fight,” she said.
Eve’s shoulders slumped. She passed a hand over her eyes. “Sorry, Rhi, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just – I’ve had it with all the comments this week. It’s very strange for me, you know?”
Her lip wobbled as she turned back to her locker, pulling out her weekend bag with a little more force than necessary.
Being an outcast instead of a queen, Polly thought. Eve would never have experienced anything like this before. It was all very character-building, her mother would have said. But no fun at all.
She pulled herself out of her Ollie gloom. “What an idiot,” she said aloud. “Forget him, Eve.”
Eve straightened her shoulders. “You’re right. I’m not letting some little rat spoil this weekend.”
“Funky Fox, here we come!” Lila hooted, and banged hard on the lockers with her fists. Rhi jumped about a mile in the air at the noise.
“Lila,” Polly warned, as a teacher put his head out of the classroom door and frowned at them.
“Don’t make that face at me, Polly.” Lila pulled a mascara wand from her blazer pocket and added a long lick of shiny black mascara to her already heavily mascaraed eyes. “You’re not my dad.”
Polly sighed. Lila still hadn’t explained about the bartender, or her recent string of footballer conquests. She was in her “girls just want to have fun” mode, and there was no reasoning with her. Polly really hoped Lila wouldn’t get into any trouble this weekend. Anything could happen at a festival. She was starting to wonder what she’d got herself into.
“Right,” said Eve, shouldering her large, brand-new rucksack with some difficulty. “How do we call the bus?”
Rhi giggled. “You can’t just call it like a taxi, Eve. We have to get to the bus station and wait.”
“What kind of arrangement is that?” Eve demanded. “I wish you’d let me call Paulo. He could get us there in less than an hour.”
“That’s cheating,” said Lila, shouldering her own infinitely scruffier bag. “You won’t get into the festie vibe, Eve. Besides, we might meet some cute guys on the bus.”
Rhi clapped her hands with excitement. “This is going to be such an awesome weekend. I can’t believe we’re going to see Polarize live!” She started humming a Polarize track, one that had been playing on the radio for weeks.
“Harry Lawson is hot,” Lila giggled, humming along as they walked out of school and into the bright afternoon light. “I might hang around backstage and see if I can get his number.”
The sun was setting as the four girls struggled through the farm gate. Polly’s rucksack straps were biting into her shoulders and her feet were wet. She hadn’t banked on trudging two miles fr
om the bus stop to get to this point. She thought longingly of her cosy bed. She wouldn’t be seeing it for two whole nights. Already, that was feeling like a lifetime.
“Whew!” Eve wiped her forehead. “This festival had better be as good as everyone says. I haven’t walked that far since our ski lift broke down in Chamonix.”
Polly found herself looking down at a great field full of people. Tents were already crammed in, forming brightly coloured lines down the hillside. Pennants fluttered from the bigger marquees, and there was a smell of barbecue in the air. Way down at the bottom of the field stood the main stage with its distinctive, point-eared Funky Fox canopy. The more she stared at the scene, the harder she was finding it to breathe. It was massive. She had no idea the festival would be this big, or this crowded.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” said Rhi in excitement, surveying the scene.
Lila whooped.
Polly concentrated on not being sick. The anxiety was creeping up on her in familiar, nagging waves. There was no running water or proper toilets. The crowd was getting bigger by the minute, multiplying like some horrible kind of virus. She gritted her teeth.
I’m stuck here for forty-eight hours, she thought in horror. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Our pitch is over there,” said Eve, pointing towards the sunnier side of the field. “Not too close to the stage, so we can get some sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Lila announced. “Not with all the fun I plan to have.”
Rhi had brought the tent.
“That is awesome!” Polly gasped as Rhi unfurled it proudly. “Where did you get it?”
“I saved up for it, and asked for the rest for Christmas,” Rhi said proudly. “I’ve been dying to use it ever since I got it. Isn’t it the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen?”
People started to gather, looking and pointing. The tent looked exactly like an old-style camper van, complete with yellow and white walls and split-screen-style plastic windows. When it was pegged into place, it looked even more realistic.