by Non Pratt
It’s only once Anna and Owen come back with the drinks that I realize what a time-suck that screen is. Just as I’m about to turn away though, it starts flashing red.
HOT GOSSIP!!!
Megan Mallory from Stays Then Leaves – MEAT me later?
There’s a picture of a girl (presumably Megan Mallory) with a Photoshopped speech bubble coming out of it: I’ve always been a vegetarian. Animals are sentient – y’know? How can you kill them for food?
Kaz and I exchange a glance and there are a few other groups around us looking equally baffled. The screen flashes again and there’s a photo of the same girl, jaw wide as she walks away from the hog-roast van, shovelling in what is quite obviously a bun exploding with pulled pork. A huge red arrow points at the pork. Above it are the words PIGS ARE SENTIENT TOO, MEGAN!!!
There’s a ripple of laughter on the hill, but I don’t get any pleasure from seeing a “vegetarian” I don’t know eating a pork sandwich. It’s not like she hunted the pig down and strangled it with her bare hands whilst filming it for a music video.
“Why do celebrities feel the need to lie about everything?” Kaz tuts like someone three times her age.
“Maybe she wasn’t lying? I don’t know when that quote was taken – do you?” I suddenly feel very protective of Megan Mallory from Stays Then Leaves.
“Last week.” Lee sits up a bit, propped on his elbows. “It was in an interview I read online.”
Owen rolls his eyes. He has never approved of Lee’s gossip habit.
“It’s so pointless,” Kaz says. “If she’d never said anything about being a vegetarian then no one would care if she was caught bathing in a steak-and-ale pie, supping on a bacon milkshake, wearing a lambskin fedora.”
“That’s quite the image.” Dongle closes his eyes and murmurs, “Mmm, meaty Megan…” and receives a thump from Parvati and Anna. He’s lucky I can’t reach.
Lee brings it back round to the vegetarian thing. “It’s a case of make a story and make her name.”
He has a point. Ten minutes ago, I’d never heard of Stays Then Leaves. Now I won’t forget.
“Still.” I struggle to grasp hold of my argument – I don’t know why I care so much, but I wish they could see how pompous they sound. “What’s it called? Schwarzkopf? That thing where you enjoy bad things happening to other people?”
“Schadenfreude,” Lee and Kaz say at the same time because they are equally gifted in the brain department.
“I just don’t think it’s cool to laugh at someone getting caught out.” I can see Kaz is about to point out how the story started. “Even if they’ve asked for it.”
Lee and Kaz exchange a smile that makes me feel stupid and I bite my lips together to stop anything more coming out. They don’t get it. My brother’s a gossip and my best friend thinks anyone entering the fame game is playing with fire and has no right to complain when they get burned. Nothing I say will change their minds about Megan Mallory bringing this on herself.
I so never want to be famous.
KAZ
I leave Ruby to her thirty-second sulk. For someone who likes to argue every point possible, she’s never been very good at accepting she might be wrong. Instead I fall into Anna and Parvati’s conversation about gender politics. Ever since we went to the gym, I’ve felt more comfortable around them and when they laugh at something I say, it feels less like I’m talking to my best friend’s brother’s boyfriend’s friends and more like I’m talking to people who are a lot like me.
Without Ruby in the conversation, I feel as if I’m someone people can be interested in.
I guess there’ll be a lot of that next year…
Banishing the thought, I reach over to give Ruby’s hand a squeeze just as my phone buzzes a text.
Instead of reaching for Ruby, I reach for my phone.
RUBY
“You coming?” I nudge Kaz with the toe of my boot and she looks up from her phone as if confused.
“What?”
“It’s ten to one and time to rock.” I do a lame little dance in an attempt to lighten my own mood. That Festblog thing has dampened my enthusiasm a bit. I don’t like the idea of people roving around, taking unkind pictures of unsuspecting/unconsenting folk and posting them up there for all to see.
Kaz still seems confused by whatever’s on her phone. She stands up and brushes bits of dried grass from the skirt of her dress. It’s not as eye-catchingly stunning as the one she had on yesterday, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t look good, and when a surprise breeze wafts the material above her knees, one of the boys on the rug near by checks out her legs.
Kaz is oblivious. I’m always highlighting guys scoping her out, but she never believes me. The same boy glances up again as we walk past to where Owen’s waiting for us a little further up the hill.
“He was cute,” I say.
“Who was what?”
“That boy back there.” I nod. “The one who ogled you.” I love that word. “Ogle”. It’s ridiculous.
“No one ogles me, Ruby. He was probably looking at you.”
I give up and change the subject. “You know me and Owen are off to see Grundiiz, right?” Because, if I’m honest, I didn’t expect Kaz to come with us. She once described Grundiiz as “tedious double-bass pedalling with vocals less tuneful than Morag hoiking out a furball”.
“Hm? Oh. I’m not doing that.”
Thought not.
“Well, what are you doing, then?”
“Calling my mum.” Kaz waves her phone. “To catch up on the gossip from her date last night. Shall I meet you and Owen by the stalls in about half an hour?”
I’m nodding, but Kaz is already wandering away, dialling her mum. “Tell Afua I say hello!” I call, but Kaz doesn’t even look up.
KAZ
I feel bad about lying to Ruby, but I can’t possibly tell her who I’m really calling.
Taking a deep breath, I dial Tom’s number.
16 • THNKS FR TH MMRS
RUBY
I have more in common with Owen when it comes to music than he does with my brother, whose excuse for missing out on Grundiiz is some plinky-plonky lute-playing drivel over in the Mellow Tent. Owen must despair sometimes. I do and I’m only Lee’s sister – I don’t have to sit in a car/van with him, or hang out in his room beyond my tolerance-for-crap-music threshold.
Stu had awesome taste in bands.
“You know Stu will be in there,” Owen says, as if reading my mind.
It’s the first time Owen’s mentioned him since yesterday’s shit storm.
“Kaz told me you knew he’d be here. Don’t worry about it,” I say, bumping Owen’s arm as we walk across the grass, my boots kicking up dust.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you,” Owen says quietly.
“Doesn’t really bother me.” I shrug.
“It bothers him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, Ruby.” Owen sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I suppose I just mean you don’t get to choose who loves you any more than you get to choose who you love.”
I execute an undignified snort-laugh. “Stu doesn’t love me, O.”
Although that’s not what Stu said that day he looked at me across the kitchen and told me he loved me and I laughed in his face.
“You’re not someone who falls in love,” I’d said, still laughing even though Stu wasn’t.
“No, Ruby, that’s you.” He’d frowned at me a moment longer. “But I don’t care. I still love you.”
“No you don’t.”
But that had been a step too far. We were still mid-fight when he left with a slammed door, shouting “Fuck you!”
Only he didn’t. That night it was some other girl.
KAZ
When Tom asked me to meet him at the first-aid tent, I thought something had happened to him. If I’d known it was Naj, I’m not so sure I’d have turned up at all, something I guess Tom knew. The three of
them (Roly’s still AWOL with the girl he met last night) were in the crowd by the main stage when a crowd-surfer knocked Naj’s shoulder from its socket. He has to go to hospital – something for which he needs company.
“And you want me to go with him?” I’m incredulous. “Because I’m not going to – he’s your friend, not mine!”
I can’t even believe he’s asking this of me—
“That wasn’t what I was going to say!” Tom has the audacity to sound annoyed before he sees my thunderous expression and alters his tone. “Look… God, this is awkward…”
He glances back into the tent, where Lauren is hovering around Naj, who’s turned pale with pain. The first-aid attendant gives us an impatient frown.
“Can Lauren stay here with you?” Tom’s words rush out so fast I’m not sure I interpret them correctly.
“What?”
“You’re the only person she’s met here and—”
“Can’t she go with you?”
“She’s spent a hundred quid on her ticket and she wants to see some bands, not the inside of the nearest A&E.”
“Really?” My voice is loaded with disbelief. “Even if that means spending time with me?” I glare at Tom. “She knows who I am, doesn’t she?”
“She knows you’re my ex-girlfriend.” There’s a subtle emphasis on “ex”. “She wants to get to know you.”
I close my eyes. This is a monumentally bad idea.
“Please, Kaz,” Tom whispers.
I should say no, but Tom has never been someone I can refuse and there’s a part of me that believes a day in Lauren’s company is a fitting punishment for sleeping with her boyfriend.
“OK,” I find myself saying. “Lauren seems lovely. She doesn’t deserve to spend that much time with Naj anyway.”
“You’re a star, Kaz.” Tom reaches out to lay a hand on my arm, but stops before he reaches me, a buffer of air between his skin and mine as if I have somehow switched charge. Last night he couldn’t keep his hands off me – now there’s a force stronger than love that’s keeping him away.
I believe they call it guilt.
RUBY
Halfway through the set and I’m as far into the pit as I can get. Owen went missing two songs ago, lost in a gloriously violent mess of flailing limbs. I’ve already been headbutted twice and caught someone’s fist in the side of my head. If my parents could see me they’d have a fit – they think a crowd like this is fuelled by hate and violence. They couldn’t possibly understand that it’s the opposite – it’s about love for the music, love for the people who get it the way you do – that a mosh pit and a three-minute-thirty song can be the biggest high you’ll ever have.
Poor parents, they miss out on so many of the best things in life.
As the song draws to a close, there’s a surge from the back of the tent and I’m swept off my feet and pressed into the back of the man in front, his sweat smeared over my face.
Gross.
I turn to the side and catch the eye of the person next to me in the crush.
It’s Stu.
For a second it’s like we’re sucked back in time, landing in a memory of all the gigs we’ve been to together. His cheeks are flushed, sweat standing out on his skin and he’s grinning – uncomplicated and happy. His gig grin. As if it’s taking a breath, the crowd eases up and enough space emerges between our bodies for someone to push him towards me.
Reality rushes in and I shove him, hard, using all of my weight to push myself as far away from him as I can and I’m burrowing, squeezing, elbowing my way through the crowd until I’m out of the tent and under the sun once more, as far from Stu as I can get. My chest is tight with something approaching panic and I’m forced to lie flat on the floor, hoping no one has vommed there yet. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on the flashes of colours in the darkness of my eyelids, counting my breaths until they’re normal again. Until I am normal again.
KAZ
Lauren is surprisingly easy to get along with. Even disregarding the fact that she is Tom’s girlfriend and I am the girl with whom he cheated, I’m awkward around new people. Yet the girl next to me has no problem talking to me as if I’m someone she knows.
I wish I’d known her before last night.
Cold shame rinses through me at the thought of what I’ve done, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. Either I can spend the rest of the day serving my penance with bouts of useless regret, or I can let go of the things I can’t change and focus on the things I can. Being a friend to Lauren today might not make up for what I did last night, but it’s better than nothing.
“What do you think?” Lauren turns to me with a fake flower garland resting on her head.
“Beautiful.” I mean it – Lauren is very pretty.
“I meant for you!” She places one on my head and smiles, a single dimple emerging on her left cheek. “Let’s get them.”
And before I can stop her, she’s bought the pair, telling me to stand still as she secures mine with grips from her own hair. Then she pulls me in for a selfie that she wants to send to the Festblog feed.
“Please don’t,” I say, thinking of my photo-unfriendly double chin looming over my friends on the hill like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.
“Why not?” Her thumb pauses over the send button.
“I don’t really like how I look in photos,” I say.
“OK.” She shrugs and closes the photo, but then doesn’t quite look up when she adds, “But you’re a lot prettier than you think you are.”
The only people who ever tell me I’m pretty are my mum and my best friend, neither of whom count because they’re blinded by loyalty. I don’t know what blindness Lauren is afflicted with, but I can’t help feeling flattered.
RUBY
I have spent all summer shutting down my memories of Stu. Last night I fought with everything I had to stop the floodgates from opening, but after that moment in the crowd it’s impossible.
For the next two minutes – let’s say five – I officially give myself permission to hurt/remember/do whatever needs to be done, but after that, I will get up and walk away, leaving the pain here, a chalk outline of misery on the grass, like the scene of a crime.
His eyes.
His touch.
His smell, just there, where his neck meets his shoulder, where my lips would rest on his collarbone and my nose against the softest part of his throat.
The way my skin would turn static when he was close, ready for the spark that came when we touched.
The time we portmanteaued our names into Stuby and couldn’t stop laughing at how lame it sounded.
Talking about music, lying on our sides, noses almost touching, or in his car, the windows down and the stereo up…
Him teaching me how to peel a satsuma so the skin comes off in the shape of a cock and balls.
Showing him my portfolio of line work I’d been developing, copying tattoos I found on Google Images, geometric patterns and tessellations – drawing, drawing until I found a style of my own.
Him handing me a Sharpie marker and asking me to draw him a new tattoo and the anatomical heart I drew on his chest with an arrow through it: Stu hearts Ruby. A week later he’d turned my design into a T-shirt for my birthday. Just the heart and the arrow, positioned over the left of my chest. No words necessary.
The evenings when all I wanted was to be held and told that Lee leaving my house was not Lee leaving my life and it didn’t matter that I’d never be the daughter my parents wanted me to be so long as I was the person I wanted to be.
But none of that added up to enough to keep him faithful and I force myself to relive the memory of Stu sitting astride the wall that borders the dunes, facing me but looking through me, eyes sad, voice deadened. The chill I felt because I knew what he was going to say and the ache it turned into as he found the words to tell me that he’d slept with someone else.
I play it over and over and over and over until my time is up.
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Until the memory of the time after that sneaks in. The time Stu turned up at my door. I tried to slam it in his face, but Stu was too fast and too strong.
“Please. Five minutes.”
I let him in as far as the lounge, where I sat on the armchair and Stu picked the closest corner of the couch.
“What do you want, Stu?” I kept my eyes trained on the patch of carpet where Ed spilled red wine at Christmas. You can only tell if you know to look for it.
“You.”
I made the mistake of looking up. Stu looked rough, dark under the eyes and more than a five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. He played with his labret piercing as he watched me.
“If you really wanted me,” I said, “you wouldn’t have—” I stalled … rebooted. “You wouldn’t have shagged someone else.”
Stu looked down at his fingers then back at me. His gaze was so sharp that it hooked into me, pulling me towards him. “You knew what I was like when we got together. You knew I didn’t do relationships until I met you. Five months, Ruby. I’d barely lasted five days before then. I’d never met someone I wanted to stay faithful to—”
“Why did you stop wanting to?”
“What?” He frowned before catching up. “I didn’t. I was angry – hurt – and I was drunk and it was too easy. She was all over me…”
“Could you stop talking, please?” I said, wishing I could erase the echo of his words in my head. “I don’t need to hear this.”
“But you do. I want you to understand that it meant nothing to me at all. She meant nothing.” He dropped off the sofa so he was kneeling on the floor in front of me, his face level with mine.
“How is that better? That you were happy to throw away everything for someone whose name you can’t even remember?” I’d started crying, wishing desperately, uselessly, that I could stop. I don’t cry.