The Boy I Loved Before

by Jenny Colgan

  It wasn’t going to be accountancy, that was for effing sure.

  Miss Syzlack smiled sympathetically when I walked in. Honestly, when did the diktat come down that teachers were allowed – nay, expected – to dress like they’d had to run out of Oxfam when it was on fire and everything melted to their skin? Then I realised that perhaps looking sharp and sexy wasn’t the kind of thing you necessarily wanted to encourage standing in front of a roomful of fifteen-year-old boys.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Flora Jane,’ she smiled, sympathetically but a bit warily.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I really, really could not remember school etiquette.

  ‘It’s about my A levels,’ I said. ‘I think I’m doing the wrong ones.’

  She consulted the register sheet. ‘Maths, English, chemistry. You could do anything with those, surely?’

  ‘That’s the point, erm, miss. You can do anything with anything, unless I wanted to be a research chemist. And I can assure you, I’m not going to be one of those.’

  ‘Yes, your chemistry teacher agrees with you.’

  ‘See! Really?’

  We both leaned back at the same time, eyeing each other up. She cracked first.

  ‘Well, what were you thinking of taking?’

  ‘I’m going to swap maths for history, and chemistry for art,’ I announced grandly, based on a decision I’d made fourteen minutes before.

  ‘That’s quite a big change. What do your parents say?’

  ‘Erm … I haven’t mentioned it to them yet. But I’m sure they’ll be fine.’

  ‘Hmm. Flora, you don’t even have GCSE art. In fact, if the doodles in your English textbook are anything to go by, I’d say it’s really not the right direction to be heading in.’

  ‘I want to do history of art at university,’ I blurted. ‘I don’t want to end up doing … business studies in Birmingham, or something like that. I want to go to art school, or the London Film School. Or Notre Dame. Or Harvard. Or St Martin’s College of Art and Design.’ I said it with all the purpose of a successful professional, but as it came out I knew I sounded like a caricature of an over-hormonal teenager.

  Miss Syzlack laughed. ‘OK, OK, calm down. We are going through a bit of a phase, aren’t we?’

  ‘It’s not a phase.’

  God, I could go on a murder rampage right now and still be ‘going through a phase’.

  ‘That’s exactly what someone going through a phase always says.’

  ‘Can I just change my subjects? I’m going to be late for my next class,’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ said Miss Syzlack. ‘Changing your A levels is a big deal. It’s a really big decision.’

  ‘It’s not!’ I said. ‘What A levels did you do? I bet you can hardly remember. I bet once you were in university you never ever remembered them ever again.’

  ‘We’re not talking about me, Flora.’ She came and perched on the front of the desk again.

  ‘Look, I know at the moment, growing up seems scary. It all looks very confusing. There are so many choices and options out there.’

  Yuh-huh.

  ‘People your age – I mean, there’s so much pressure on you: to look right, to choose the right things, the right courses, the coolest friends … but it won’t be as hard as you think, I promise.’

  ‘I know that!’ I said. ‘That’s why I want to make sure I do something I like.’

  ‘You know, a lot of people want to go and do creative things,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be a photographer.’ She smiled, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘But life doesn’t always work out like that.’

  ‘Well, it certainly won’t work out if I take chemistry,’ I said. ‘Look, miss, you know I’m right on this. If it all goes tits up, then I can go join the civil service or something. In the end, it won’t matter. It’s never too late to sit your accountancy exams. But it will mean a lot to me now. At least I won’t regret having a shot.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘I’m sixteen years old. I have years and years and years to fill in with mistakes of all kinds. There are loads of stupid things I have absolutely no doubt I am going to do. But putting myself through two years of maths and chemistry hell isn’t one of them.’ (And neither is sleeping with one of my lecturers again I harshly repeated to myself.)

  Miss Syzlack shook her head. ‘You’ll have to catch up.’ ‘Trust me, I can.’

  She rummaged among the folders on her desk. ‘Well, here’s the form. Your parents have to sign it.’

  ‘My parents get to decide what I have to spend two years doing?’

  ‘Take it to the European Court of Human Rights, Flora,’ she said wryly. Then she gave me a close look. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. Please stop asking.’

  ‘You definitely don’t want to see the educational psychologist?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m fine. I’ve just realised that I don’t have to do three years of a business degree and join a city firm. How could I not be fine?’

  She looked at me, and shook her head. ‘Off you go.’

  I glanced out the window. Stanzi was there, waiting for me. Fallon was standing near by, obviously talking about her. Stanzi was trying to look as if she didn’t care.

  ‘You know, I think getting through secondary school may well prove to be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do,’ I said.

  ‘Imagine what it’s like if you never leave,’ said Miss Syzlack. Then she realised what she’d said. ‘Right. Out! I have marking!’

  Stanzi was sitting, doing her best nonchalant act, on the low wall outside.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. I felt bad for confusing this nice person, who hadn’t asked for her girlfriend to have been turned into a thirty-two-year-old overnight. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘If we were boys,’ Stanzi looked speculative, ‘we wouldn’t have to fall out with anyone. If they’re cross, they just have a fight, then the next day they all go and play football together.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Why do you think they grow up to be such emotional retards? They never talk anything through.’

  ‘Or bitch anyone up enough.’

  Fallon walked over.

  ‘Sorry, Stanzi, but I couldn’t help but wonder – are your shoes Prada or Gucci? It’s hard to tell at this distance.’

  Amazing. I turned to Stanzi and, without thinking, said, ‘Oh my God. Is she like this all the time? I mean, really every day?’

  Stanzi looked at me, shocked at the outburst. Her big eyes were a mute plea for me to shut up, not to make the situation any worse than it already was.

  ‘Who the fuck are you talking about?’

  Fallon turned to face me. Her face had that heart-shaped prettiness that does well at school then often grows up rather odd, like Anthea Turner, with the grim set of a jaw not afraid of confrontation.

  She laughed, evilly. ‘I almost forgot. Ethan asked me to tell you to stop sending him poetry. He thinks it’s hilarious, and read it out to all his friends, but he wants you to stop bugging him.’

  ‘Poems!’ said one of Fallon’s equally expensively dressed but not quite so pretty henchgirls. They all started squealing with laughter, and I felt my ears beginning to burn.

  I had no idea what I’d been up to in this version of events. I knew I hadn’t just sent any poetry, but, once, long ago, I had. To a tall, skinny gothman who liked to read Sartre at parties. I had long since repressed what the poems had said, but I could take a bit of a stab in the dark.

  ‘In fact, I have one here.’

  Oh no. No no no no.

  ‘I told him I’d get rid of it for him.’

  This woman was going to end up Prime Minister.

  A couple of other girls, whom I recognised dimly from my registration class, wandered over.

  ‘Hayley! Paris! Come over and listen to this.’

  You know, if I’d been standing there naked, this would have perfectly corresponded
with my worst nightmare of all time.

  The girls gathered round and, as they did, other people followed them. Schoolkids. Unbelievable. Sheep, every last one of them.

  ‘Baaa!’ I said under my breath.

  ‘What was that?’ said Fallon, homing in. ‘You want me to read out your poem?’

  A shocked hush went through the crowd. They knew they were on to something good.

  ‘OK then!’ She turned and cleared her throat. ‘“Be of Me, My Love” by Flora Scurrison.’

  Somebody tittered. My fight-or-flight responses were up to full mast. Inside, I felt like I had heavy menstrual cramps.

  ‘My nights are heavy, like the days

  That settle on your glorious ways.’

  Oh, fucking hell. This was going to be even worse than I’d imagined. Next time I saw Tashy I could tell her I was going back to being thirty-two alright if I got half a chance to influence anything, for sure. Wrinkles, crow’s-feet, missed opportunities – bring ’em on! Anything was better than this.

  Fallon, of course, was using her most dramatic tone, but speaking slowly, so that nobody missed a word. In her head she was probably auditioning for Lady Macbeth with Heath Ledger.

  ‘Your walk, unbidden, golden goes,

  From all the beauty yet unknown.’

  Oh God, teenagers write terrible poetry. Mute with horror, Stanzi was trembling.

  I closed my eyes and muttered, ‘I wish I was … um, twenty-six,’ but, nothing.

  ‘And I, so alone, so different stay

  And yearn, alone, for one fine day.’

  Stab me in the heart already. The cruel laughter from the other girls had stopped being merely complimentary to Fallon and was becoming genuine, twisted embarrassment. No doubt they probably all had something similar under the bed at home. And, let’s face it, if it had been somebody else, I’d probably have been laughing too.

  I suddenly realised why Stanzi was pinching me so hard. Approaching were two boys. One, with that face as strange and familiar as walking past a restaurant and getting a sudden smell of your mother’s cooking, was Justin. Next to him was a tall boy with blond hair, very pretty in a Greek god-ish kind of a way. They were wandering over.

  ‘When we can come, together all …’

  ‘Ooh, they’re going to come together!’ shouted one wag. ‘Didn’t know he was that good in bed.’

  ‘Neither does she!’ shouted somebody else.

  ‘When we both so in love do fall.’

  My worst suspicions were realised when somebody called out his name.

  ‘Ethan!’

  ‘Girls, girls,’ he said, coming over. ‘What’s this, a fan convention?’

  ‘I just thought a certain poem deserved a public reading,’ said Fallon, lowering her head and lifting her eyes in the patented technique of bitches through the ages.

  ‘Oh God, yeah. Did you hear about this?’ he asked Justin.

  Justin looked at me and, from my burning face, instantly realised what was going on. ‘Come on. Don’t fart about with this shit,’ he said to Ethan.

  ‘No, no, I want to hear.’

  I lifted my head – I’d reverted to staring at the ground – in amazement.

  Ethan was handsome, alright, there was no doubt about that, with his blond hair, a long forehead and a lovely patrician nose.

  ‘Oh, Ethan, you’re going to love it,’ said Fallon, her voice instantly softening and her head dipping in that annoying Princess Diana style.

  ‘Tempt me,’ he said.

  Surely not. Well, we were young, after all. But it looked to me as if Fallon, and every other woman in the world, was going to be very disappointed by young Ethan indeed.

  The idiocy of what I was doing – standing, letting myself be completely humiliated – suddenly dawned on me. I grabbed on to the last remnants of my adult brain.

  ‘Come on, Stanz.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you want to stay?’ said Ethan.

  ‘You could ask her out if you like,’ said Fallon.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Ethan.

  I’m a grown-up. This is a child. A very camp child, I reckoned. Whom I have never even met. How can this possibly make me so embarrassed?

  ‘This is fucking lame,’ I said.

  ‘This is fucking lame,’ said Fallon. Ah, imitation: world’s easiest way to be completely annoying.

  I finally de-rooted my feet from the paving stones and walked off.

  ‘I think you’ve broken her heart,’ I heard Fallon crow as I went, cheeks flaming. I was even close to tears.

  ‘It’s hormones,’ I told myself. ‘Just teenage hormones. You are better than this. You are so much bigger than this.’

  But I still had a little sniffle in the toilets by myself.

  It was almost a relief to slip into detention, which wasn’t full of people from my class who knew everything that had happened at break time and were sniggering and pointing throughout the afternoon. It always amazed me, first time round, that teachers wouldn’t be aware of the simmering tensions and ongoing sieges in any class situation. As an adult, of course, all teenagers look the same to me. Until they’re at eye level.

  I took the same seat as last time and started in on today’s hot topic, five hundred words on ‘Why Detention Works’. Justin came in late, and I barely glanced at him. OK, I deliberately made a huge point of not looking up. I didn’t want his interest and, more importantly, I didn’t want his pity. It would remind me a little too much of somebody else who was kinder than Ethan, but probably hadn’t liked the poems much either.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, writing furiously, ‘Detention may only be regarded as superior when compared to the method of repeatedly beating children’s skin with birch.’

  He shrugged. ‘Sorry about … you know, that, today.’

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘That’s a good attitude,’ he said. ‘I know girls can be pretty rough to one another.’

  ‘It works out for the best later,’ I said. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Really? Huh.’

  I bent my head back to my page and wrote, ‘It also starts to look pretty good compared to the whip, and steady and repeated buggering.’ I wondered if Mr Rolf would let me get away with that one. Probably not. I have to say, there was a tiny bit of fun still to be had in a world where one wrote with pencil. I rubbed it out.

  ‘You know, I shouldn’t worry too much about Ethan.’

  I lifted my head again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well … you know, he never really has a girlfriend.’

  ‘Justin, he’s queer as a coot.’

  ‘Miss Scurrison! Quiet, please.’

  The look on Justin’s face was absolutely something to see. I’d forgotten just how unthinkingly bigoted and homophobic teenage boys were. Everything was batty to them, and homosexuality hugely amusing and terrifying at once. I almost felt sorry for them; with their penises bobbing up and down at the slightest provocation, probably male and female, they were panicking at being marked out from the pack. God, poor Ethan. He probably hated being a teenager even more than I did. I wanted to tell him not to worry, he’d be very popular when he grew up.

  ‘He’s not,’ whispered Justin fiercely. ‘He just doesn’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Because he loves the world of men,’ I said, in a mock news announcer’s voice.

  ‘Just because he doesn’t fancy you, he’s a poof?’

  ‘Well, yes, partly that, obviously. Tempered only by the obvious fact that he’s gay. Give your friend a bit of support, won’t you?’

  He stared at me while I wrote, ‘Detention is also to be preferred to the sacrifice of teenagers to Inca gods, widely practised at one time in South America.’

  He was still staring at me, in that gauche way young boys have. I stuck my tongue out at him.

  ‘You,’ he said finally, ‘are not at all what I thought you’d be like.’


  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘Person in not-pathetic-victim shocker.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Clelland! Scurrison! Do you really want to stay another day?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Justin. And he winked at me. And for the first time since I’d arrived, I felt rather pleased.

  As we came out of the building, Justin self-consciously moved over to walk beside me. It was getting dark.

  All of a sudden we heard, ‘Oi! Little Britches.’

  It was a familiar voice and I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake …’ said Justin. ‘It’s my brother. He thinks it’s hilarious to call me that.’

  ‘Your brother’s picking you up? Here?’

  ‘He just got back from Africa and won’t leave me alone. Some bonding bollocks,’ said Justin. ‘Here he comes now,’ as the familiar shape loomed out of the dusk.

  FUCK!

  Clelland stopped about five feet away, stock-still, his face as white as a sheet, just staring at me.

  It would appear that he recognised me, but that he thought he was seeing a ghost.

  ‘Hey, retard!’

  It was Justin. He sauntered up to Clelland and hit him on the arm. I remember how he used to pad after him as a baby and concluded that, underneath it all, Justin still worshipped his brother.

  Clelland continued staring at me. I tried not to meet his eyes.

  ‘Spazmo,’ said Justin, when he couldn’t get a word out of him.

  ‘Sorry, I …’ Clelland blinked and looked at me again. ‘You look like …’

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Bye, Justin.’

  And I ran like the wind, tie and schoolbag flying behind me, all the way home.

  Chapter Eight

  It was the following evening and I was huddled on my single bed; my new, prominent rib bones made me so thin I was cold all the time. I was on the phone, my parents were downstairs having a fight about a frying pan. The frying pan so far hadn’t come into play, but I had a horrible suspicion it was just a matter of time.