Lobsters

by Lucy Ivison

  When Robin is excited about something it’s nearly impossible to get him to focus on anything else. That’s one of the things I like best about him, I suppose. However, as we were bombing down the M4 at 90 mph and he was tapping his right foot (the one on the accelerator) along to the music, it became a bit tiresome.

  Three hours later, we pulled into the shoe-sucking mud of the Woodland campsite. Ben – newly refreshed after his long sleep and now enthusiastically back on spliff-smoking duties – asked me if I wanted to ‘toss a Frisbee about’, but I told him I’d rather just get on with setting up our tents. The clouds were already starting to gather. A few little ones directly above our field were openly scowling at us.

  I was starting to regret telling my mum – who’d urged me to bring a stout pair of rubber boots – that wellies were ‘for children and farmers’. I only had my old, battered skateboarding trainers with me. If it rained, I was screwed.

  By 7 p.m., it was raining. Actually, ‘raining’ sounds too tame. By 7 p.m., it was raining really fucking hard. Instead of just falling out of the sky like normal, these drops felt like they were being deliberately and angrily hurled at us. As if the clouds were irate neighbours trying to get us all to turn the music down.

  But the music carried on despite the monsoon. So we decided to carry on too. I prepared to leave the tent by strapping two Sainsbury’s carrier bags around my already-sodden trainers. Ben had his dad’s knee-length mackintosh as well as a waterproof fisherman’s hat to protect his spliffs, so he was fine. Robin had three cotton hoodies on, under the illogical assumption that, because there were three of them, he somehow wouldn’t get wet. Chris was wearing a bin bag like a dress. He had punched a hole in the top for his head to go through.

  ‘I should dress like this all the time,’ he said, as he examined himself. ‘It’s cheap and practical.’

  I noted to Robin as we were all leaving the tent that Chris still looked annoyingly good, even when wearing a bin bag.

  Robin laughed. ‘If Chris pulls looking like that, I’ll give you a tenner.’

  I nodded and we shook hands. I’ve known Chris longer than Robin. Chris could get laid wearing Robin’s Female Body Inspector T-shirt. And that’s ten times more off-putting than a bin bag.

  We headed straight out to the dance tent. Robin – who, as previously mentioned, had just five hours of festival experience under his belt – loudly proclaimed that the main stage was just for ‘idiots who’ve never been to a festival before’.

  Within thirty seconds of leaving our tents we were all soaked through. Getting to the dance tent was a nice break from the rain. We leapt about to the music like twats just to get dry. Even Robin broke off from just nodding his head near the DJ booth. It was proper, stupid fun – the kind we hadn’t had together for ages. Since way before exams, anyway.

  That was until Robin spied a group of fit girls doing the same thing about fifteen yards away from us. He danced closer and closer and they danced closer and closer until eventually we were all dancing together.

  This probably sounds weird, but I always get a bit annoyed when it comes to that part of the evening when we start trying to get with girls. The introduction of attractive females into a fun night makes everything immediately less enjoyable, because you’re suddenly not allowed to act like a complete dick. You’ve got to adopt this cool, unflustered persona. You’ve got to pretend to be someone you’re not.

  I suppose girls like Hannah are the exception to that – girls that you can just relax and be stupid with. And not worry about acting like a dick and talking about hot Ribena, because they’re up for doing the same thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that ten minutes with her in the bathroom was a pretty unique experience.

  These girls were definitely not like Hannah. Ben and Robin instantly went from laughing and joking and attempting purposely terrible break-dancing moves to smiling smugly, raising their eyebrows and shuffling about like they were in a fucking Justin Timberlake video.

  Chris was still messing about and taking the piss, doing rubbish windmills on the floor, but he’s such a handsome bastard he can get away with things like that and not scare girls off. I went for somewhere between the two – smiling smugly and raising my eyebrows while attempting purposely terrible break-dancing moves – and probably ended up looking like even more of a weirdo as a result.

  As usual, the fittest girls in the group started talking to Chris and Robin. Ben saw his opportunity and offered the third girl a drag on his spliff. Which left me with no choice but to spark up conversation with the fourth girl in their group.

  She was wearing little yellow hot pants, large hoop earrings and had masses of strawberry blonde hair yanked up into a topknot. She was pretty fit, but quite clearly aware of this fact. She told me her name was Miranda, but she called herself Panda because it rhymed with Miranda and she really liked pandas. She liked pandas so much that she had a cartoon one stitched on to her rucksack. She took off her sweater to reveal a T-shirt of the band Pixies.

  ‘I love Pixies,’ I shouted over the thudding music. ‘What’s your favourite song of theirs?’

  She looked confused. ‘Oh, it’s a band? I bought it because I thought it was something to do with the Geldof sisters. They’re so awesome, right?’

  I turned around to tell Robin, Chris and Ben that we needed to leave immediately but every single one of them was pulling their respective girl. The good news was that – since Chris was still wearing his bin bag gown – Robin owed me a tenner. The bad news was that we were clearly going nowhere. I turned back round to Panda.

  ‘So, we should probably pull, right?’ she said vaguely. ‘If that’s what they’re all doing?’

  ‘Er … yeah,’ I offered.

  So that’s what we did.

  Hannah

  My dad had been a bit hesitant about the whole idea of us going to a festival. Not because he thought I would take pills or get naked on TV, but more due to the camping aspect. He didn’t seem to have a lot of faith in my Bear Grylls-style survival skills, which he obviously thought would be put to the test.

  My mum had rushed out and bought a Cath Kidston tent and said, ‘Make sure you bring it all back so it can be used again.’

  It took us three hours to put it up and by the end every inch was covered in mud, as were we.

  ‘There’s no way I’m taking it down,’ Stella said as she chucked her sleeping bag into it.

  A bloke in the tent next to ours asked me which bands I was here to see. I didn’t know what to say. I’m not one of those girls who is into music. It’s one of the questions I dread boys asking. It’s like a litmus test for how cool you are. I usually respond with ‘I like all different types of music’ and try to change the subject as quickly as possible. I miss the times when it was acceptable to like the music in the charts.

  I didn’t even look at the line-up on the internet. Going to a festival was never about watching live music for any of us. It was just about wearing denim cut-offs with wellies and a hippie head band and being really tanned. I was still as white as anything. Kavos had made no impact whatsoever on my skin.

  Despite the driving rain, Stella was on good form. She flirted with random blokes to get them to help us with the tent and stomped around the field in her limited edition Hunter wellies, jumping in puddles. Things were OK between us. We were friends just like always, but there was this detachment. We spoke every day but I didn’t tell her about the massive argument I had with Mum about uni accommodation or how I was getting nervous about leaving home.

  Toilet Boy hadn’t been mentioned either. He was not even a random I had pulled. Not even someone to add to our Year 9 snog book. He was just some bloke at a party. Just another name on the Lobster Door. He was no one. At least, that’s what Grace, Tilly and Stella thought. To me, he was still a secret daydream.

  Kavos and everything that had happened there would keep us in sleepover stories until something else massive happened. If we were still havin
g sleepovers. Which we weren’t really.

  By the time we got to the main stage, it was dark, pissing down with rain and freezing. I was wearing my emergency hoodie and my dad’s camping socks pulled right up to my shorts. So much for glamping. I’d already found an earwig in my hair and had to wee standing up behind a screen.

  The main stage was heaving. I was squashed next to Grace, being shoved forward into a man whose face I never saw but who was wearing a cow costume.

  Grace tapped Cow Costume on the shoulder and asked him to lift her up on to his shoulders. He did. Up there, above the crowd, she was screaming in that faux ‘I’m a cute girl’ way and waving her arms in case the big screen caught her. I could hear Stella and Tilly behind me, but it was too tight to even turn around to speak to them.

  Suddenly, I thought Grace was hurt because she started screaming. At first I couldn’t hear what was actually coming out of her mouth, it was just a kind of guttural wail. And then she started making words.

  ‘Toilet Boy! Toooooilet Boooooooooy!’

  He was here. Somewhere among all these mad, dancing bodies, he was here. Grace was waving wildly. I saw her look down. Her eyes were searching for me. I was frozen with panic. Stella grabbed my arm and screamed up at Grace.

  ‘What? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes! It’s definitely him! He’s over by the speakers!’

  Stella jabbed Cow Costume on the chest.

  ‘Cow Man! Put her down! We need to get to Toilet Boy!’

  He looked confused. ‘You what?’

  Grace dug her heels into his ribs.

  ‘Just put me down!’ She was using her Head Girl voice.

  Cow Man kneeled down, and Grace scrambled off his shoulders and plunged into the crowd. ‘Follow me!’ she yelled at us. ‘He’s this way!’

  Stella grabbed my hand and Tilly’s, and we surged after her. I felt seasick. Like I wasn’t moving myself but being carried along with the current against my wishes.

  ‘Toilet Boy!’ Grace was screaming, as if that was his actual real name, and he might respond to it. ‘TOILET BOY!’

  Finally the crowd parted and he was right there in front of us. Only, he wasn’t alone.

  ‘Toilet Bo—’ Grace’s face dropped. ‘Oh …’

  There was Sam, covered in mud but looking fitter than ever, pulling a red-headed girl in bright yellow hot pants.

  Grace turned to me, her eyes bulging. ‘I’m sorry, Han – he wasn’t … doing that a minute ago.’

  Before I could say anything, Stella rolled her eyes and stepped forward. ‘Grace, you idiot – that’s not Toilet Boy. That’s just Sam. Hey Sam.’ She said it loudly, in a slightly bored-by-it-all-now voice

  Hearing his name, Sam removed his tongue from Miss Yellow Hot Pants’ mouth and turned round. His eyes flicked from me to Stella and back to me again. Grace pinched Stella’s waist and whispered, ‘Stella, seriously, that’s Toilet Boy.’

  ‘Wait! Hang on,’ said Tilly. ‘That’s the boy who was smoking weed in your cupboard.’

  Grace and Stella stared at her.

  There was no way out. It was going to happen. No lie I could tell would cover it up. I looked round for an escape route but there were people squeezing me in on all sides.

  Stella turned to me. ‘What the fuck is going on, Han?’ she demanded.

  I could feel myself shaking. Everybody was staring right at me now: Stella, Grace, Tilly, Yellow Hot Pants. And Sam.

  Sam

  I should have know it would happen at some point – me bumping into Hannah again, that is. I guess I should have hoped that if it did, I wouldn’t be drunk, stoned and being groped by a girl called Panda, and she wouldn’t be surrounded by a load of mates who were all referring to me as ‘Toilet Boy’.

  Why ‘Toilet Boy’ anyway? That makes me sound awful. Surely ‘Bathroom Boy’ works better? It has alliteration going for it and everything.

  I knew it was a mistake to go to the main stage. But, once Panda and her mates suggested it, Robin, Ben and Chris were hardly going to say no.

  Thankfully, that horrible moment where we were just stood staring at each other in front of everybody was interrupted almost immediately by a conga line that was making its way through the crowd. Chris, Robin and Ben, who weren’t yet aware of the monumentally awkward situation unfolding next to them, latched on to the back, and we – me, Hannah, Hannah’s mates and Panda’s lot – all got dragged along too. As more people joined, the line became increasingly chaotic. Within a minute, I had lost sight of everyone I knew.

  When I was finally spat out of the heaving crowd, I saw Hannah, on her own, brushing herself down after having been spat out nearby too. There was a split second where she hadn’t seen me and I knew I could have walked away, but I really wanted to talk her again. I didn’t care if it was awkward.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, approaching her. ‘That was a bit mental, wasn’t it?’

  She flashed me a nervous smile. ‘Yeah. Sorry, we didn’t mean to, erm, interrupt you. Stella just saw you and we thought we’d say hi.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s cool’, I said. ‘I was just…’

  I was just pulling a girl called Miranda who calls herself Panda because she loves pandas so much. A girl who isn’t you.

  ‘I was just … not doing very much, really.’ I couldn’t think of anything better than that. She’d clearly seen me with my tongue down Panda’s throat.

  ‘Cool,’ she said, kicking vacantly at a bit of loose turf on the ground.

  ‘Who else are you here with?’ I asked, feeling my heartbeat quicken just a touch as a follow-up question formed in my head and made its way down on to my tongue. ‘Is your, er, boyfriend here too?’

  She jabbed harder at the loose turf, and it broke apart under her wellies. ‘Erm … No. He couldn’t make it. He’s got stuff on.’

  ‘Oh. Cool.’ What sort of stuff, I wondered? Probably shopping for more waistcoats.

  A little silence fell between us as we both took it in turns to prod a new piece of loose turf with our feet. She unfurled a few strands of hair from her ponytail and started chewing on them. I felt a sudden urge from out of nowhere to grab her and kiss her. I channelled my frustration at having to repress this desire into kicking aimlessly at the damp soil.

  Finally, she said, ‘Look, I should try and find Stella and the rest of them now.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I murmured. ‘I need to get back to my lot too. But I guess I’ll see you around?’

  We had bumped into each other twice already, so there was no way we wouldn’t bump into each other again. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.

  ‘Yeah, definitely. See you, then.’

  She smiled and walked away. I noticed the sun had brought her freckles out even more.

  As I watched her push her way back into the crowd, I stood there cursing her boyfriend, whoever he was, and realizing once again just how much I fancied her.

  Hannah

  I didn’t even bother trying to find them again – I just headed straight back and got into my sleeping bag. The tent was hot and airless. Somewhere, in one of the fields, I knew they were all talking about me. I felt like a freak. A fraud.

  Stella and me hadn’t had it out yet. This whole summer. Maybe now it was coming. I knew they would have to come back eventually. After a while I sort of wanted them to come but they didn’t. They were all out having fun without me. Maybe Stella was getting off with Robin by now. They were probably talking about what an insane compulsive liar I was.

  Lying in a tent listening to everyone around you having fun is probably one of the loneliest things you can do.

  After what seemed like days, I heard the three of them outside, their voices getting louder as they got closer. It took Stella ages to figure out how to unzip the tent. I picked up Vogue and pretended to read. The silence between us felt real. Neither of us had anything to say. Maybe this is it. Maybe friendships actually end when neither of you has anything to say any more.

  ‘I’m really sorry
, Han. This is so awkward. I kind of get why everything has been so weird between us now. It all makes sense. I wish you had told me.’

  It was real. I think. Real in that she thought everything was because of her pulling Sam. Real because she was sorry things had turned to shit between us. Real because she doesn’t think about anything on any deeper level. All she sees is the headline news. Real because she never actually says anything real and this felt like it was.

  ‘I feel like such a dick,’ I said. ‘I should have told you at the cinema.’

  ‘You don’t look like a dick. Promise. Anyway, now we’ve kissed three of the same people, so it’s all good.’

  ‘I haven’t kissed Sam.’

  She smiled at me as she got her make-up bag out of her rucksack.

  ‘Haven’t kissed Sam yet …’

  The tent conversation wasn’t really the whole truth. So much more had happened to cause the rift between us. But I let it be so we could feel like us again. Actually, that’s not true. I let it be because I’m weak. Stella had all the explanation she needed to put the whole thing behind us. To her, it was just something that had happened. But to me, the whole summer felt like way more than that.

  As Stella wriggled down into her sleeping bag beside me, I thought about Sam and how fit he looked. Even wearing Sainsbury’s bags round his feet, he looked hot.

  ‘How will I ever kiss him, Stell?’ I whispered as we were dropping off to sleep, thinking about the yellow hot pants girl. ‘He’s clearly with someone.’

  From the depths of her sleeping bag, I heard Stella murmur, ‘Not for long.’

  Sam

  After nearly an hour of muddy trampling, I finally found Ben and Robin back in the dance arena. They weren’t dancing, of course. They were standing next to the DJ booth, nodding their approval at each new tune. Chris was still AWOL. Maybe he’d conga’d his way back to London.