The weekend goes by too quickly and I don’t seem to get a break from the pile of revision and catch-up coursework that I’ve set myself. Being in a new school with different exam syllabuses is tough, especially having to make up for the several months I tried to teach myself from the revision guides while we moved from place to place. Katie grumbles that I haven’t spent time playing with her and Mum tries to pacify her about that, but she doesn’t let up until Dad takes her for a drive and peace descends on the house for a couple of hours. Mum naps in front of the TV and I sit on my bed revising maths and trying not to look out of the window because the view depresses me. By eight o’clock on Monday morning, I’m tired from too much sitting around and concentrating, and grouchy from lack of down time. The only bonus is at least inside the house I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder to check no one is following me.
School’s a drag too, tests and timed coursework assessments all day. I have an important science piece in the afternoon so I grab a sandwich from the canteen, which tastes like margarine on dough with some unidentifiable filling, and sit in the library preparing. When I get home, I’m so tired I crash out on the bed before tea and Mum has to wake me up.
Tuesday isn’t much better, except I do get to have a lunch break and I sit with Gemma and Lucy. The boys are off playing football in some team practice thing. Thankfully Gemma’s got over droning about wedding dresses and she’s in the middle of a bitch-fest about a girl they both know. It’s quite entertaining listening to Gemma tear her to shreds, especially as I don’t know the girl so I don’t have to take sides. Gemma’s vicious when she gets her claws out.
I see a little bit more of Fraser as the week goes on, but I don’t get much chance to speak to him alone. He stops me in the corridor once to check I’m still OK for the party at the weekend and to sort out pick-up times but that’s mostly it. Except he does get my phone number and he texts me later to say he’s looking forward to it. I text to say ‘me too’, but he doesn’t reply and neither do I after that. I’m not sure I am looking forward to it actually. It’s a funny feeling – more like stress than real excitement, and not enjoyable but something to be endured and got through because I might feel better once I’ve done it. If I compare that to the last party I went to, and the buzz before that, getting ready with Tasha . . . it’s just too depressing in a grey, shitty, hugely depressing week.
And to add to the depressing, some idiot running the school had the idea to put a team-building event slap in the middle of this term when we’re getting ready for exams. So on Friday, instead of doing our GCSE work which we’re all getting stressy about, we have an activity afternoon with the army. The whole year group is stuck out on the school field in a force-nine gale and lashing rain with a bunch of really fed-up guys in khaki who look as unenthusiastic as we do. Awesome. We’ve been out there for precisely three minutes and my hair is wrecked already.
They shout numbers at us and then tell us to stand in groups. A few kids try a quick shuffle-round, but the lead army guy notices and yells at them so the rest of us go where we’re told. ‘He looks a bit like a psycho killer,’ I whisper to Gemma who’s in my group.
‘Scary eyes,’ she says with a shudder.
She nudges me as we’re all sent to different locations around the field, and points to the group next to us. It’s mostly Fraser and his friends – and I wonder how they managed to engineer that – but also a quiet girl, who looks utterly miserable, and the Emo. Gemma sniggers. ‘Now this should be funny.’
‘Why?’
She grins. ‘Watch and see.’
So I do. While our army guy prepares something boring with a pile of ropes and nets, I watch the next group. They have some kind of landmine task, where they have to use planks and tyres to get the team to safety on the other side. Fraser’s obviously up for it and so is Stuart. The others look reasonably interested, except for the quiet girl who looks like she’s about to cry. But Emo Boy is more sullen than ever. In fact, he’s glowering at the army guy.
My attention is pulled away while our guy explains what to do. Excellent – crawling under nets on wet ground!
When I look back, Stuart is fronting up to Emo, staring him in the face. ‘It’s bad enough we get landed with you, pussy, but if you think you’re going to mess this up for us, think again.’ Fraser’s laughing and I’m not sure what’s going on.
Emo doesn’t back away though, just curls his lip in that way I know is really annoying when you’re on the receiving end of it.
I blink and look again.
Actually, now I’m not on the receiving end of it, it looks . . . no, I can’t mean that . . . because what I think I just thought is that it looks . . . hot? No, what I mean is it would look hot if someone else other than Emo was doing it. It’s that dark-eyed, glowering thing he’s got going on. On someone with a better personality it would look hot, but not on him obviously.
‘Stu and Fraser are really competitive with stuff like this,’ Gemma says in my ear. ‘They’ll hate being stuck with him.’
‘Why? Is he useless?’
She considers it. ‘Probably not if he doesn’t want to be. He’s OK at PE when he can be bothered. Which is only when we have track stuff. Then he runs like someone strapped a rocket to him and lit it.’
I frown. ‘He doesn’t look like he’d go fast.’
‘You’d be surprised! He could be really good but he won’t join the teams. Which is why Stu is going to lose it with him. He won’t even try in group stuff. Plus Stu can’t stand him.’
And that is pretty obvious now. Stu is getting up in Emo’s face in a way that’s frankly making me uncomfortable. I wish their army guy would intervene because it looks like there might be a fight, but the man’s busy with his planks and tyres and doesn’t seem to care. I look around but there are no teachers on our side of the field.
‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ I say to her, keeping a nervous eye on them.
‘Yeah, since primary.’
Of course they do if they’ve all lived in Daneshill all their lives. I never thought of that.
Their army guy finally looks up and goes over to them. Emo hasn’t said anything back to Stuart. He’s just not moving and glaring straight back at him.
‘Problem?’ the guy says in a bored voice.
‘Just sorting who’s doing what,’ Stuart says, and Fraser and the other boys laugh.
The guy frowns and looks at Emo.
Emo shrugs. ‘He can fuck off. I’m not doing any of this shit.’
I hear myself gasp. ‘Oooh,’ Gemma says and she sounds excited at the prospect of trouble.
Stuart steps forward and would have barged Emo, but the army guy puts a hand out and says, ‘No.’ Stuart backs off. I would too – he sounds like he means it.
‘You don’t want to take part? Are you ill or is there some other problem?’ the guy says to Emo.
‘No, I’m just not doing it.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Now look, son, you’re going to come across a lot of things in life you don’t want to –’
‘Fuck you with your psychological bullshit! I’m not interested and I’m not doing it whatever you say so you can fuck right off. You’re a coward anyway, pissing about doing this stuff while the rest of your regiment are getting the shit blown out of them in Helmand.’
My jaw drops as Emo spins on his heel and starts to walk off. The army guy looks livid and then his face changes . . . to something I don’t quite understand. ‘Start planning your route,’ he says to the group and he jogs after Emo.
‘What the . . .?’ I turn to Gemma who looks equally shocked. Emo Geek just a) spoke more than a sentence and b) totally, totally lost it.
‘Ooh, I forgot about that – Matt! Of course!’
‘Who’s Matt?’
‘His brother. He’s in the army – he’s off in Afghanistan at the moment, I think. He is so hot. I used to have the biggest crush on him.’
‘What happened?’ I ask Gemma when I get back to her.
‘I don’t know.’
I watched Emo’s group. Was it my imagination or was the soldier giving Stuart an extra hard time? Now what was that about?
‘Is he close to his brother?’ I ask Gemma suddenly. So suddenly that she looks confused.
‘Who?’
I can’t exactly say Emo . . . ‘Um, Joe – is that his name?’
‘Oh yes. He always hung out with Matt and his friends more than he did anyone in our year. It’s the farmer thing – they all tend to stick together.’
Now I’m confused. Emo lives down my street, doesn’t he? He’s not a farmer. But I’m not asking Gemma any more questions about him or it’ll look weird.
Our army guy yells at us for not paying attention so I forget about Emo and concentrate on not getting into more trouble.
But on the way home later, I spot Emo shuffling down the street ahead of me, head down and listening to music as usual. I slow down and stay well behind, and instead of turning off down my usual path, I carry on and follow him round the corner and down the street into a cul-de-sac. At the end of it, he turns on to a footpath.
Once he’s out of sight, I sneak up to the top of the path. It snakes down the hill and out into the fields to rise up the next hill, where there’s a large white farmhouse surrounded by metal barns. I decide for some unfathomable reason to wait and watch him. He heads towards the farm and, once he’s turned up the next hill, a black-and-white collie comes flying out of the yard, over fields and down the path to meet him. It greets him in a whirl of jumps and excited yips.
So Emo’s a farm boy. I never would have guessed that. I turn and walk slowly back up to my house. No, that’s totally unexpected.
I haven’t exactly been looking forward to Cam’s party all week and by the middle of Saturday afternoon I’m almost dreading it. I’m in that state where I so wish I hadn’t said yes that part of me wants to text Fraser and say something’s come up. But the other part of me would be frustrated if I did because it might turn out to be good in the end . . . maybe?
Whatever.
I am not happy. Not one bit.
I’m trawling through my wardrobe trying to decide what to wear. I have of course extracted information from Gemma and Lucy on what they’re wearing and apparently Cam thought it’d be good if the girls dress up and the boys dress down. There’s something about that girl that needles me enough to want to needle her. Maybe it’s the way she looked at me at first, or perhaps it’s how the others act around her, as if she’s better than the rest of us.
I finally decide on a slinky black number that shows my hair off to advantage. I try it on and check myself in the mirror. Not bad. Especially now my hair’s back to its proper ash-blonde colour. And I think back to the first time I looked in the mirror after they dyed it brown.
‘It looks hideous,’ I told the hairdresser they’d sent over to do the job.
She sniffed. ‘It looks different. That’s the point.’
Mum doesn’t look impressed. ‘It’s only temporary though, darling. It’ll wash out. Just put up with it for a few weeks until we’ve moved on somewhere safer and then you can let it fade.’
‘I still think it’d be better to cut it,’ the hairdresser told her.
‘Hasn’t she been through enough?’ Mum replied. ‘Let her keep something of herself.’
At least she understands. Her shoulder-length glossy dark bob is now a muddy mouse-coloured crop that I know she hates. And I feel unaccountably guilty every time I look at her, as if all this is my fault.
I hang the black dress back in the wardrobe until later. Deciding what to wear calms me down and that means I can de-stress a bit more now by playing dolls with Katie. It’s awesome having a little sister sometimes because you get to play with the stuff you’re supposed to be too old for now. I find that comforting – like eating egg with toast soldiers to dip, or Mum running me a bath. Now and again, holding on to something from childhood grounds me. Especially since what happened last year. Nobody can make the monsters go away any more, but playing dolls with Katie can help me forget for a while. The world feels simple and safe again.
Fraser’s picking me up at eight so I have tea early and go for a bath before I get ready. I need to look good tonight. It’s not about hooking Fraser, though that’s on my mind. It’s about feeling good about myself again. I’ve begun to recognise how very not good I’ve felt since we came here. But when part of you, the person you are, is taken away, you don’t feel good. You don’t feel confident. You’re diminished.
Fraser picks me up at eight on the dot. His face when I open the front door is everything I’d hoped for. Just as I’m climbing in the back of his sister’s car, I notice Emo walking past on the other side of the road with another boy. It’s the first time I’ve seen him with a friend. He looks at me for a moment and I see surprise on his face, but then he scowls and turns away.
I don’t know why I let that deflate me. Fraser looked awestruck, still does, and he’s what matters, right? Not some stupid, geeky Emo.
But I don’t feel quite so amazing now. The doubt has crept in. I say hi and thanks for the lift to Fraser’s sister, but I don’t say much other than that on the way over to Camilla’s. It doesn’t take long before we get to her place: a gateway with thick stone posts on either side leading to a large cobbled courtyard. It’s an old house and it’s huge, but the hall is crammed full of people. I recognise faces from school but there are lots of others I don’t know. Stuart appears and tosses a can to Fraser, who pops the tab immediately. He takes a swig and then proffers it to me. I shake my head. ‘I’m not wild about beer.’
‘What do you want? There’s a free bar in the kitchen.’
That was inevitable. Cam wouldn’t throw a party where we couldn’t drink – it would totally destroy her image. Whereas my dad would have been hovering by the door practically frisking guests for hidden bottles of vodka.
‘Try the punch.’ Lucy comes towards us carrying a plastic glass of some red stuff that looks lethal. ‘It’s wicked.’
Fraser quirks an eyebrow at me.
I laugh. ‘Yes, punch then.’
He grins and goes off to get me a glass. The bass from the sound system is so loud it’s coming through my feet and the vibration makes my nerves tingle until every part of me feels alive. I can feel a grin spreading over my face that I couldn’t stop if I tried. Through the doorway ahead I can see a crush of bodies dancing and that’s where I want to be – it’s been so long and I need to move.
Fraser comes back with a glass. As he hands it to me, he bends to my ear and whispers, ‘You look so hot.’ His breath shivers across my neck. He looks pretty radically hot himself. He’s also in black, a designer polo shirt showing off his muscles. What he says dispels most of that lingering downer that’s been plaguing me since I got into the car.
I still don’t know why Emo hated me on sight that first day though. If I’m honest, that bugs me. And I don’t know why that is either.
But forget him. I want to dance.
I knock back the glass of punch – it is lethal, I can tell from the first gulp – and grab Fraser’s hand. ‘What?’ He laughs and resists for a second but then lets me drag him to the room that’s been beckoning me for the last five minutes. ‘Oh what, you want to dance?’
I grin and nod as I pull him through the door, because the music’s too loud for anything else. And then I lose myself in the beat and the movement.
I don’t care whether
Fraser can dance or not – I notice as an afterthought that he’s OK at it but nothing to pay special attention to. I don’t care if he’s enjoying it or not. This is my Zen place, where the energy touches my consciousness and recharges it.
I dance.
Nothing comes close to this feeling. Nothing else ever touches me this way. Only music takes me here.
I don’t know how long it is before Fraser presses another drink into my hand and I glug that down gratefully. He retreats to the side of the room and watches me. I can’t stop – it’s been months and months and this feels so good.
Freedom. In every cell.
What stops me in the end is when someone changes the playlist and puts some dumb-ass boy band track on. I head towards the open French doors for air. Fraser follows and we meet on the terrace. He’s holding a bottle of wine and swigging from it. When he passes it to me, I take a drink. It tastes vile, but I drink more anyway just because.
He’s saying something, but my ears are still blocked from the music and I can’t hear him. It doesn’t matter. I can tell from his face that he wants us to go down the steps into the garden. I nod and walk off, leaving him to follow and taking another swig of the wine, which now tastes of ‘to hell with everything sensible’. That’s a good taste, whatever the wine is like.
When we get to the bottom of the steps, he grabs me and pulls me close to him. I stare up into his face, part challenge and part encouragement.
What do I feel now? Not sure . . .
He bends his head. I focus on how good-looking he is. His lips touch mine.
I feel . . . nothing.
Nothing? How come?
Maybe it’s the wine.
His fingertips are stroking up and down my arms. But they could be anybody’s. Not the hottest boy in the year’s. Nothing special. No electric charge across my skin.
Maybe the punch was too lethal.
But I can walk straight. I don’t feel drunk. Just distant from this, from him. What’s wrong? He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?
He kisses me properly and I go through the motions puppet-like. I doubt he can tell. I think I fake it well enough.
By Any Other Name Page 7