Bits?
Zhooshed?
‘… and then maybe go see a movie, or get something to eat somewhere. An early dinner.’
I looked at her. Seriously, I didn’t even know where to start.
So I started with, ‘Ew.’
I hadn’t meant it to sound so harsh, but it was an instinctive reaction. Of all the things I wanted to do that afternoon, of all the things that constituted Best Idea Ever, having a Brazilian with my mum wasn’t one of them.
It was as if I had created a vacuum, the weather from outside rushing into my room. A coldness settled over Mum’s mouth.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘That’s fine. Perfect. I’ll go on my own. You stay here. I can see that the thought of spending even a moment with me is too much for you to bear.’
‘Bu—’
‘Apparently,’ she cut in, ‘it’s fine to have a girls’ day with your father’s new girlfriend and get your nails done, and Thai takeaway, and help them set up their new house, but not so much when it’s spending time with your own mother.’
Her voice broke on ‘own mother’, and she left my room abruptly.
‘Probably because she wasn’t trying to bond over our vaginas,’ I said through the open doorway. Not loudly enough for her to hear, of course.
She came back into my room.
‘MC,’ she spat, true fury in her voice, ‘I was not trying to bond with you over our vaginas.’ Okay. So apparently I hadn’t said it as quietly as I’d thought. ‘I simply wanted to try to have a nice day with you. None of this is what I wanted for my life. I’m trying to make the best of things, and you spend most of the time looking at me like I’m chopped liver. Well, here’s a newsflash for you – I’ve had enough. I’ve had it up to here with your attitude.’
She chopped at her hairline with the blade of her hand to show exactly what level she’d had it up to.
My mouth dropped open. She’d had enough?
‘You’ve had enough?’ I said. ‘You’ve had enough?’ I yelled. ‘Well, newsflash right back at you – Guess what? He’s my dad too. I lost him as well. He didn’t just leave you; he left me too. And Harley. You think it’s all about you. Well, it’s not. You’re the grown-up here, and your best suggestion is a mother–daughter Brazilian? I mean, seriously, what planet are you on? Just …’
I wavered. I wanted to yell at her to fuck off. I was knife-edge close to unleashing exactly those words. I’d wanted Best Idea Ever. She’d promised me Best Idea Ever, and she’d fallen so far short, she’d probably broken some kind of Olympic record.
‘What?’ she said, her hand at her mouth. As if she regretted, maybe, all the words that had come out. Including her Best Idea Ever.
But I didn’t answer. Instead, I stood up from my desk, kicked my chair away from me, not caring that it skittered across the floor and bashed into the wall, and then pushed my way out of my room, stumbling on all the broken words that lay on the floor between us, and slammed into the bathroom, where I could lock the door and not be busted in on.
Where the sound of my crying could be muffled by the running water of the shower that I stood in for a good half an hour.
By the time I came back out of the bathroom, I could hear the emptiness of the house, as if everything ‘family’ had drained away down the plughole.
Harley came out of his bedroom. He looked across at me.
‘Hey,’ he said.
Not whatcha doing. Not let’s go do something. Just hey.
Then he went downstairs, without saying another word.
Chapter 10
It was, I’d realised after a sleepless Saturday night, like Anouk had stumbled upon the most sophisticated divide-and-conquer plan ever devised.
By having a party and not inviting me, she had turned that sliver of a wedge between Yumi and Liv and me into a gigantic keystone – heavy as a rock and awkward to clamber over. I wasn’t sure she could have planned for it to go as well as it had for her.
On one side of the wedge was Anouk’s party. On the other side was me.
So, I came up with a plan.
Admittedly, it wasn’t a great plan. It sounded good when it spiralled crazily into a fully formed idea inside my head that afternoon. But once I put it out into the universe that Sunday night, it started looking less like a good idea and more like the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
I sent out a rival invite. Opened my computer, went on Facebook, and asked everyone to come to my house the night of Anouk’s party.
‘Mum’s going out,’ I posted. She wasn’t. I’d sort that out later. ‘In three weeks’ time. On the 18th. Party. My house. Who’s in?’
Okay. I get it. Gimpy doesn’t even come close to describing it.
No one replied.
A couple of hours later I took it down.
The next morning at school, it was like all my friends and I had agreed, without anyone saying an actual word, that we’d all pretend no one had seen it. Liv talked about the biology assignment she hadn’t finished over the weekend. Yumi complained about Wilder forcing her to watch some movie she hadn’t liked about some kid on a bicycle. Hattie showed the impressive black eye she’d got from the other team’s elbow, and complained about how basketball was supposed to be a non-contact sport.
The invitation I’d sent out wasn’t mentioned. By anyone.
Actually, that’s not true. One person mentioned it. Anouk.
She walked past me at the lockers after maths and said, ‘Heard you’re having a party on the eighteenth. I won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid, because a bunch of people are coming over to mine. But it sounds like it’s gonna be huge. I so wish I could be there. Anyway. See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya.’
And she waggled her fingers at me in a trilling wave and walked off, a splutter of laughter coming out of her mouth. They were the first words she’d spoken to me in over six weeks, and she’d used them to insult me.
You’ve heard the expression ‘seeing red’? I never fully understood it until that moment. The entire world around me shaded over, as if 3D glasses with red lenses had been fitted over my eyes, shifting the focus of everything a fraction.
Except instead of everything jumping into focus, the opposite effect was true: everything went out of focus. Blurry. Tipping.
I turned away from my locker, didn’t even shut the door, and started walking, then running, down the corridor, away from everyone, away from class, biting on my mouth to keep it closed, as if vomit was about to come out of it and I needed to reach the toilet before it splattered on the floor at my feet.
But it wasn’t vomit that was building up inside my mouth.
I ran down the stairs, across the quadrangle, over to the farthest corner of the oval.
And that was when it came out: a flaming-red – no, technicolour – fiery, furious, punch-a-hole-in-the-wall scream. No words, just pure sound, my body doubled over, my fists clenched, my eyes squeezed almost inside-out, my mouth as wide as it could go. A torrent of noise from deep down inside of me, hurled out.
Warning the world that I was mad as hell.
And there was a fair chance I wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Three weeks later
17th June
My life as a lettuce
Chapter 11
The night before Anouk’s party, Liv and I were over at Yumi’s.
‘Seriously, it’s pretty shit that she’s not inviting you,’ Liv said, her feet up on my lap. ‘I get that she’s annoyed, but hello, let go of the grudge. Plus, obviously we won’t go if you’re not invited but, I mean, there are so many people going, and she’s just making it that we’re all going to have to miss out because she’s having a sook.’
‘Definitely,’ Yumi said from her spot on the floor, her fingers crawling like spiders along the spines of vinyl, searching for the exact right thing to play.
‘We should call the police,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow night. Complain about the noise. Get them to shut it down early. It’d serve her right
.’
Liv flicked a look over at Yumi, and then flicked back to me.
‘I mean, obviously we wouldn’t really call the police,’ I added. ‘I’m just saying it would be kind of funny.’
Of course, I definitely was saying we definitely should call the police. Why not? Anouk deserved it. She was going out of her way to make my life shit. It was only fair that I paid her back. It would give us a little something to look forward to tomorrow night at my house.
Yumi took out the all-white cover of the Beatles’ White Album and slid the record from its sleeve.
Liv scrolled through her newsfeed, the whorl on the top of her freshly shorn head visible as her face tilted down towards her phone.
‘But yeah, I mean, I’m just joking about calling the police,’ I said again.
Feel free, either of you, to say you think it’s actually a good idea.
‘It would be a dog act if we did,’ I added. Clearly it didn’t sound as good an idea outside my head as it sounded inside. I sighed. ‘What’s Emile doing?’ I asked Yumi, watching her gently lift the needle and place it carefully into the black groove. ‘He should come round to mine too. We can still have a good night. I mean, not huge, obviously, but still.’
‘Oh,’ Yumi said, sitting back on her heels and looking at me as ‘Back in the USSR’ fired up. ‘I think … he’s going … to Anouk’s. I mean, yeah, he said he was going. Because, like, quite a few of those other guys will be there, so yeah, I think he thought he might go.’
I looked from Yumi to Liv.
‘But I’m not,’ Yumi added. ‘I mean, Emile can go. I don’t care. But I’ve already told him I’m going to hang with you.’
‘Party at yours,’ Liv said, but it seemed like there was maybe a tinge of sarcasm to it.
‘Yeah, well, personally,’ I said, ‘I think it’s ridiculous. And totally low. The only reason she’s probably having a party is so that she can specifically not invite me. I would never do that to her. I wouldn’t do it to anyone. And the annoying thing is, it means you guys miss out too, because obviously she knows you wouldn’t go if I don’t go. So it’s kind of like she hasn’t invited the three of us. Like you said before, Liv.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ Liv said abruptly, putting her phone down and looking me bang in the eye. ‘I’ve just had the best idea. You should come. Come with us. We’ll all go. What’s she going to do? Kick you out? She won’t kick you out if you’re with us. She’s being a douche. Just crash with us. It’ll be fine.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ Yumi added. ‘Even just for a couple of hours. And as soon as you want to leave, we’ll come too.’
‘I … There’s no way,’ I said, slowly shaking my head. ‘God, imagine how she’d be if I rocked up. She went psycho that day in English. She’d go completely nuts.’
‘There are going to be so many people – she wouldn’t even know you were there,’ Yumi said.
‘Exactly,’ Liv said, as if it was settled. ‘It’s the perfect plan.’
I looked at Liv. She picked at her fingernails.
I slid my eyes over to Yumi. She started running her fingers along the spines of her vinyl again.
‘I think she’d know if I was there,’ I said to them. And as I said it, I realised: There was a massive party. And they wanted to go.
I felt my mouth fill with tears, a precursor to them washing out my eyes. I looked down at Liv’s feet plonked on my knees, her toes pointing towards the ceiling.
‘You know what?’ I said, swallowing the tears back down my throat. ‘I mean, if Emile’s going, and everyone’s gonna be there, you guys should go.’
I lifted Liv’s feet off my lap, slowly, so she wouldn’t think I was upset – it seemed important that neither of them picked that I was upset – and stood up.
‘No,’ Yumi said, her smudged freckle making her look even more tearful than normal. ‘There’s no way I’m going. I mean, it’s definitely pretty bad that she isn’t inviting you. But we’ll stay with you.’
‘I just have to go to the toilet,’ I said and walked out of Yumi’s bedroom into the bathroom. Shut the door. Locked it. Looked at my face in the mirror, my chin crumpling, my eyes welling, my forehead shattering into tiny pieces.
They wanted to go to Anouk’s party. Of course they wanted to go.
But I wanted them to stay with me. They were my best friends. They were supposed to stay with me. I was going to have the worst night of my life, and they should be there for it.
That was what friends did for each other.
I turned on the tap and splashed my face, trying to staunch the tears coming from inside me by flooding my eyes with water from the outside.
It wasn’t fair. And now, I realised, I couldn’t even vent to Yumi and Liv about it. Meaning the wedge of Anouk’s party had now fully separated us. We weren’t us, the three of us, anymore. Instead, we were me, and them.
Fook Anouk.
I wanted to get out of there, away from them, but I couldn’t just leave, because then it would seem like I was upset. Now that we were on opposite sides of the wedge, I definitely didn’t want them to see me crying.
I texted Mum. ‘Can you come get me from Yumi’s?’
‘Everything okay?’ popped back almost immediately on her side of text screen.
‘Just don’t feel well. Text when you’re out front.’
‘Lucky timing. I’m coming back from the supermarket. I’ll be there in 5.’
I went back into Yumi’s bedroom. ‘I just got a text from my mum,’ I said, holding up my phone as if proof were required. ‘She said she’s got some things she needs to do with me, so she’s gonna swing by and pick me up. Like, now.’
‘Oh,’ Yumi said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. For sure.’
‘We’re not going to Anouk’s party unless you come,’ Liv said.
‘It won’t be any fun without you,’ Yumi said.
I shook my head. ‘It’s fine. You should go. I really don’t want to. Anyway, I think I’m getting a cold,’ I said, putting my hands up to my throat.
‘Oh,’ Yumi said. ‘Right. I think a few people have been sick lately.’
‘Even if we did go,’ Liv said, sounding exactly like a person who was planning on going, ‘we’d only go for a little while. It won’t be that good. You won’t be missing out on anything.’
I nodded.
‘MC, do you really think we should go?’ Yumi said, slathering on the insincerity.
‘If you want us not to go,’ Liv said, slapping on more insincerity, ‘we definitely won’t. But I totally get that if you’re not feeling good, you probably want to stay home. And if you’re going to do that, I guess then we might as well go. It’s not like you’ll want us hanging over at yours, if you’re not feeling good.’
I looked from Liv to Yumi, then back to Liv. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get any words past the lump that was damming up my throat.
‘Oh, for sure,’ I said. ‘You definitely should go. Uh … I think my mum’s here.’ I looked down at my phone, then walked out of Yumi’s bedroom.
No hugs goodbye. No kisses. Just me, my mouth a grim line, my arms folded across my chest, alone on my side of the wedge.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs I saw that Mum actually was standing at the front door, talking to Yumi’s dad.
What parent came inside the house for a pick-up? I needed to get to the car. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to keep it together much longer.
‘See ya, Mr Yumi,’ I said.
Not Mr Martin. I hadn’t been able to stay mad at him. Of course I hadn’t. How could you stay mad with Mr Yumi?
‘I was just telling your mum,’ Mr Yumi said, stopping me mid-stride with a gentle arm barricading my way, ‘that I feel like things have been a bit unsettled for you lately. At school.’
‘Well,’ Mum said to Mr Yumi, ‘you know Dennis and I have split up. And now he’s moved into a new place, and he’s got a new girlfriend.’
‘I
t’s nothing to do with Dad,’ I said, my voice shaky. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’
‘I’ve noticed some tension between you and Anouk,’ said Mr Yumi, Master of the Understatement.
‘It certainly has been a difficult time for the family. For all of us. I’m not surprised she’s feeling unsettled,’ Mum said.
I narrowed my eyes at her. Slit my mouth. Mr Yumi didn’t need to know any of this. ‘Let’s go,’ I said, grabbing her arm.
‘Well, yes, I understand it’s a tough time for all of you,’ Mr Yumi said. ‘But it’s the friendship thing that has me worried. For example, the girls mentioned a party at Anouk’s tomorrow night, and I wanted to check if …’ Then he looked at me; looked over at Mum.
The girls had mentioned a party? That meant Yumi had already checked with him that she could go, even though she’d been telling me all this time that she was totally going to hang out with me the night of the party. It hadn’t been long ago that I would have trusted Yumi and Liv with every single thing in my life. And now … well, now I had to hear what was actually going on from Mr Yumi.
I tuned back in. ‘… and without Dennis to back me up,’ Mum was saying, ‘it’s just impossible for me to get her to listen. That’s why I think you’re so wonderful with Yumi and Wilder. You’ve been doing the single-parent business for a while now. Maybe I need to sit down with you and get a few pointers. You know, a glass of wine? You could come for dinner one night?’
I felt my throat thickening. Was she flirting with Mr Yumi?
Mr Yumi smiled at her, then at me. ‘That’s very kind of you, Julie,’ he said, ‘but I’m usually pretty busy, with work. And the kids.’
‘Oh, of course,’ she said, shaking her head as if he’d got it all wrong – as if there was no way Mrs Tinder here would ever hit on Mr Yumi. ‘I just meant a barbecue and salad or something. With the kids. Simple, easy. That’s all.’
I couldn’t believe she was actually flirting with him. She’d known Yumi’s mum. They’d been friends.
If my friendship with Yumi wasn’t completely dead and buried, it would be if Mum made any serious moves on Mr Yumi.
My Life as a Hashtag Page 9