“The woollen hat? You saw that?”
“Yeah. You wore it all summer. I could hardly miss it.”
Oh shit.
“It was kinda cute,” he said.
“Which sort of means it wasn’t cute, right?”
“Okay. Time out. I’ll admit that it wasn’t cute, if you admit that I’m an idiot.”
“That’s easy enough,” I said. “You’re an idiot.”
*
We agreed that he would call me Lauren and keep my origins a mystery. Mike liked the idea because he said it would drive the others mad with frustration. But as we walked up the drive, me balancing precariously on high heels, I feared that my deception would be exposed.
The house was like a Southern Governor’s mansion on steroids. It belonged to Stella, whose father was big in fracking. She liked to go around the school making the same joke over and again –
“My dad’s fracking big,” she would say, before launching into a description of the latest thing that the natural gas bonanza had bought her. Last year it was a Range Rover Evoque, and this year it would be a place at college.
Somehow I had allowed Mike to bring me to the headquarters of the people I detested the most, whilst wearing my mother’s cast-offs. I wondered if I shouldn’t get myself checked into the clinic on Monday for that PET scan to see if my brain had shrunk.
Just as we reached the bottom steps of the portico, which was about the same size as the Bellagio only less tasteful, Mike did something wonderful.
He squeezed my hand and leant over to whisper in my ear.
“Don’t worry, Lauren. Your secret’s safe with me.”
*
And so began a night of firsts.
The party was so loud! It was held in Stella’s own annex, the house proper too regal to host a riot of teenagers. Her wing, which included a pool and a games room, was bigger than the R Murray Science Block. The glass in the windows rattled with the thump of bass, and the rooms thronged with people. It was too loud to talk.
And the smell!
Hormones on heat, barely masked by cheap perfume and the stink of spilt beer. The deeper we burrowed, the hotter it became. Boys and girls gave off the scent of sweat and sex in the semi-darkness. And I realised why no one was interested in talking. They were eating each other’s faces.
It was intimidating. But I had the wherewithal to check out what everyone was wearing. Apart from a few stabs at Halloween costume – mummies, sexy witches and zombies – most of the girls were dressed just like me. Cocktail dresses, in a variety of colours, though none as special as my vintage teal.
The crowd parted, as if Mike were Moses with the beard and the robe. But as people fell out of the way, a curious thing began to happen. No one fell back to kissing. Instead they were following me with their eyes, whispering to each other.
The news of our arrival rippled through the room. Someone snapped a shot on their phone. Mike sailed through his admirers. I followed his lead, taking on a new persona. Even walking in the heels seemed right.
“Woody!” came a shout. “Woody the Woodsman!”
Tyler Drift pushed his way through the mass of teenagers, a paper cup of beer in each hand. I had to credit his footwork because both cups were still more than half-full by the time he reached us.
The captain of the soccer team, Tyler had never before glanced in my direction. Now he checked me out, eyes travelling up to where my legs disappeared into my skirt, and then onto my breasts. He finally drew his gaze up to my face, made a cursory inspection to check that I didn’t have three eyes, and blew out his cheeks.
“And I thought your dick had fallen off!”
“Quit it, Tyler,” said Mike, punching him on the arm. His best pal wasn’t to be deterred. Tyler took a sip of beer and leant in for a closer look. He mostly spoke to my cleavage.
“I’ll tell you this, my beauty - I was becoming worried about Mike. I haven’t seen him with a piece of—”
“Watch it!” shot Mike.
“With a lady, is what I was going to say. He’s been without female company since the summer – can you believe it?”
Mike scrunched his face into a grimace as his friend spilt the intimate details.
“He’s had nothing to comfort him for months, ’cept for Verizon, if you get what I mean. I thought maybe he’d caught one of those terrible diseases, you know the kind? Sexually transmitted. Maybe it had gone all green and fallen off.”
“That’s gross, Ty,” said Mike, pulling me away. “We’re heading for the barbeque before you spoil my appetite.”
“Don’t you want a beer?” asked Tyler, holding up a paper cup.
“Not tonight, TyTy,” he said, swinging me ahead of him as we left Tyler behind.
“You still on the wagon?” asked Tyler.
“Yep,” shouted Mike over his shoulder.
“Did you two meet at AA? Is that where it was? You in the programme?”
But by then we had reached the terrace, and Tyler was lost in the crowd. Jack-o’-lanterns were strung around a patio which would have made a decent enough landing pad for a helicopter. We made it to the barbeque past an honour guard of high-fives from Mike’s soccer team and a battery of curious stares from their girlfriends.
“They’re all looking at me,” I whispered to him.
“Course they are,” replied Mike. “You’re my date.”
“Is this really a date?” I asked.
“Sort of.”
“It’s a ‘sort of’ date? Which means, really, that it’s not.”
“No, silly,” he said as we pulled up at the griddle where uniformed staff were cooking burgers and steaks. “You are my date. I asked you, didn’t I?”
So Moyheddin was right. It was a date.
A sticky moment came not from the barbeque sauce but when I recognised one of the girls serving food. It was Juanita, who had worked alongside me at The Bean Counter until she found a better-paid alternative. She had finally made her move into catering.
Our eyes met through the smoke, but Juanita remained cool. There was a brief flicker as she realised who I was, and then a smile spread on her face as she checked out Mike.
“Way to go, girl,” she whispered as she handed me a burger.
I had made it all the way from behind the counter to the front. If that’s not a dream, I don’t know what is.
It couldn’t last, of course.
Just as we drifted over to talk soccer with some of Mike’s team, a languid arm pushed its way through the crowd and draped itself on his shoulder.
“Well, well, well,” came a slurred voice.
Following the arm was the model-elegant body of Brianna Jordan. Five foot eleven in heels, blonde hair falling like quicksilver across her shoulders.
Her elbow crooked possessively around Mike’s neck as she leant aggressively towards me.
“So you’re the new bitch,” she said.
“Sorry?” I snarled. It shocked me, because I had never snarled at anyone in my life.
“Just leave it, Bree,” shot Mike, trying to prize Brianna’s stranglehold from around him.
“I just wanted to see the new piece of trim, that’s all. See what you’ve been banging.”
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, wresting her arm from him, only for her to grip tight to his wrist.
“’Course I’ve been drinking!” she said. “It’s a party.”
The other members of the soccer team hung back, mostly embarrassed, and dumbfounded as to what to do. A few of the girls, whom I now recognised as Brianna’s friends, shot daggers at me, wetting their lips and waiting for the fight.
Brianna refused to let go of Mike.
I should have expected it. They had spent their sophomore and junior years together. It must’ve been a messy divorce.
�
�You’re drunk, Bree,” said Mike, extricating himself.
“Oh – and you’re the saint?” Then she turned to me. “And where the hell did he drag you from?”
She was so drunk that she didn’t recognise me. In pre-school, we had shared a classroom. We had been friends, of sorts. But Brianna Jordan hadn’t looked my way since first grade – her head was stuck too far up her ass.
“Let’s go,” said Mike, reaching for my arm.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” she asked, blocking our move. The other girls had formed a circle, not exactly joining in but positioning themselves like spectators at a bare-knuckle fight.
“You don’t know one thing about me,” I said.
“I seen your face before,” she said, not letting us go. Mike turned me away, but Brianna reached forward and grabbed my shoulder.
“Screw you,” I said, and shoved her backwards. It wasn’t very hard, but I was strong for my size, being used to hefting Eileen. Brianna had been on a booze and starvation diet, dropping below zero in the dress size, so she flew across the paving slabs and into the arms of her female buddies.
“Don’t you curse at me, bitch!” she shouted, and made to come back at me.
Her brother Dylan sprung out of the crowd and wrapped his arms around her. He was an inside linebacker, stood six four and weighed 238.
“Hold it, Bree,” his voice surprisingly soft for a big guy.
“Let go of me!” she shouted. He held her tight, with muscles built for the gridiron.
“Dylan!” she screamed, and tried to kick back with her foot.
“I’m sorry, guys,” said Dylan, a pained look on his face.
“Don’t apologise to her!” shouted Brianna.
“She doesn’t mean it,” continued her brother. “She’ll be a different person in the morning.”
That must have jogged her memory.
“Latte!” shouted Brianna, the word surreal and indistinct amidst the music and the burble of laughter and chat.
Oh, shit.
“Skinny latte with almond syrup!” she shouted gleefully at me. “That’s you!”
Mike was trying to find an escape route through the crowd, but Brianna’s outburst had brought people out onto the terrace, and the crush was impossible to penetrate.
“You’re the coffee-bean girl!”
I tried to turn away, but the press of onlookers pushed us back.
“Just let us through,” said Mike, but no one was listening.
“Wait a second! I do know you!” shouted Brianna, pulling an arm free of her brother and pointing at me.
Oh God. Here it comes.
“You’re Scout Mann!”
In the sudden hush, I could hear nothing but the pounding of blood in my head. Countless faces turned towards me, stripping off the make-up which Moyheddin had so carefully applied, and the dress which Riley had so skilfully altered.
I was naked, Brianna Jordan’s jubilant cackle trailing after me as I wrenched from Mike’s grip and plunged headlong through the partygoers.
“Scout Mann!” she shouted. “That’s who you are!”
Chapter 11
Mike must have checked every bedroom in the annex, before he found me, crouched on the tiled floor of a guest bathroom.
“Scout?” he asked, tapping on the door. “I know it’s you in there.”
“How? How d’you know it’s me?” I snuffled.
I hugged my knees, ducking my head so that I wouldn’t catch sight of my reflection in the mirrors. I’d tried to be someone else, and it hadn’t worked.
“Listen, Scout,” he said through the solid wood, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It was stupid of me to think I could get away with it.”
“She was drunk, that’s all.”
“You’re going to tell me that she didn’t mean what she said?”
“No, she meant it. She can be a cruel bitch most times, which is how she clawed her way to the top of the ladder. But the drink makes it worse.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “Everyone knows who I am.”
“And they don’t care.”
“Don’t confuse your feelings with theirs, Mike. They care. Of all the gossip on Monday, this will be the juiciest.”
“But I don’t care. Isn’t that what matters?”
“I get it,” I said, feeling sorry for myself. “It was to make a point, wasn’t it? That’s why you brought me here.”
“Not really.”
“‘Not really’? That means that it is – kinda – why I’m here.”
“I didn’t mean that!” he said defensively.
“You were trying to make a point by inviting me. Show all your friends how you’d got over Brianna, and maybe parade me around like a charity case.”
“No! That’s not it at all, Scout. I wanted to make you happy. There’s no agenda here. It’s Halloween. We go out, drink too much beer and goof around. It’s not complicated.”
“Not to you, maybe,” I said. “But they weren’t laughing at you.”
From the room beyond, I heard a squeal as the door flew open and partygoers burst in. The thump of music followed them.
“Just leave it for a moment, guys,” asked Mike.
“Sorry, Woody,” came the reply. It was Chico, one of the soccer team. A girl giggled next to him.
“Someone told us to ‘get a room’,” explained Chico. ”So we thought we’d take ’em up on the advice. You know, for a little private time?”
The girl giggled again.
“Sure thing,” said Mike. “But give me a minute or two, okay?”
The bedroom door was shut and locked, and I heard Mike slide down against the other side of the bathroom door. When he spoke again, his head was resting against the wood, his voice a soft whisper.
“I’m gonna tell you something, Scout,” he said. “Just so as you know. Me and Bree used to be an item.”
I didn’t say anything. Everyone in high school knew it.
“And we used to party. I mean, real hard. You saw her tonight? Well, I used to think that was funny! Beer was my thing, vodka hers.”
“And you’re going to tell me that you ‘saw the light’?” I cut in.
“Me and Bree nearly died,” he said. “I was loaded. Came off the road behind the Doughy factory and totalled the car. It was wrapped around a fence post, with hardly any room left for us to crawl out. That was it. I was finished with the booze.”
“And Brianna?”
“She never missed a beat. It took a few weeks for the booze to clear my system – to see people for who they truly were. So, yeah, I saw the light. I saw the bitchiness and the cliques, and when senior year started I didn’t want any part of it. That’s when I broke up with her.”
Good riddance. Brianna had been poison since kindergarten.
“The joke is that my soccer has improved,” he told me. “In a couple of weeks the varsity team is playing in the national championships in California, and I’ve got college recruiters sniffing around like I’m on heat.”
Mike was one of those guys for whom everything worked out just fine.
“Scout?” he asked. “If you want to go home, I’ll take you. I don’t drink and drive anymore.”
I imagined arriving home early and having to fend off the boys’ disappointed questions. I didn’t want to accept defeat at the hands of someone like Brianna Jordan.
I pulled myself off the cold floor, catching a glimpse of my mascara-streaked face. On the marble top, amongst the creams and the soaps, there were wipes for make-up.
“Just wait a moment,” I said, cleaning my face.
I opened the door and took a deep breath for courage.
“It’s Halloween,” I said. “Let’s party.”
*
Mike towered over me as we joined the crowd, brushing against me accidentally-on-purpose, his teeth flashing white in the dark light. Some of the guys from the terrace came over to gawp, but they were no longer laughing. I could see them sizing me up.
“My God – it really is her,” one whispered.
“Scout Mann? Really?” came the reply.
One of the guys leant in and shouted into my ear –
“You ever think about ditching this jerk, let me know, yeah?”
Mike bumped him out of the way.
“Piss off!” he said.
“Hey, hey, Woody!” pleaded his friend, hands held up in surrender. “A guy’s gotta try!”
I was welcomed into the circle of his soccer buddies and their girlfriends. Brianna, who had made such a spectacle of herself, was forgotten as a cluster grew around us on the dance floor. I didn’t know the music, but that didn’t seem to matter. Even Stella fracking Hudson made a regal appearance, slapping Mike on the ass as she passed.
“Don’t wear him out!” she shouted. “He’s playing next week!”
And then she sailed on to the next royal engagement.
The music changed, and the crowd slowed, waiting until they recognised the tune. But I knew what it was straight away.
“Foreigner!” I shouted.
And then Mike smiled, for he recognised it too. A power ballad from 1981 - ‘Waiting For A Girl Like You’. This tune played pretty much every day on Flash 105.5FM.
Mike slipped his arm around my waist and drew me close for the slow dance. Everyone got friendly as the music washed over the room. Boys clung to girls, hands wandering, hips gently rubbing.
Mike brushed his cheek against mine, and I could feel his breath on my ear. I wore no earrings. I never thought of my ears as attractive, which is why I wore that damn woollen hat for a year. But his breath made my ear tingle, and an electric thrill ran through my body.
I hoped he had been waiting for a girl like me.
We both must have made the decision to pull back at the same time, because suddenly we were looking into each other’s eyes. And then our lips touched, and you don’t need me to tell you what that feels like.
As I said – it was a night of firsts.
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