by Hayley Long
Goose started laughing again. Even though I could barely see her, I could tell that she was borderline hysterical. ‘He soooo thinks you’ve got a tash!’
‘Shut up,’ I said.
After a gulp of coffee, Goose said, ‘No, I will not shut up! Get over yourself.’
For the second time in the space of minutes, my jaw fell open. ‘Get over myself? What the heck is that supposed to mean?’
And then Goose did an extraordinary thing. She let go of her coffee mug and sent it crashing to the floor. Even in the dark, it looked pretty deliberate to me. I heard the sound of broken crockery smashing on the floor tiles.
‘What did you do that for?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said another voice that had arisen from nowhere and which I knew only too well. ‘What did you do that for?’
It was Ruthie. She was holding a lighted candle in one hand and with her other she was dragging Gareth back into the kitchen by his ear. This wasn’t easy because Gareth is about eight inches taller and three stones heavier than Ruthie. ‘We forgot to feed the electricity meter,’ she said before anyone had even asked. ‘Michel’s gone out to see if he can get some pound coins from the petrol station.’ And then she said, ‘Have you lot been drinking?’
‘No,’ we all said.
Ruthie took my mug from my hand and sniffed it suspiciously. ‘Just coffee?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘So why are you throwing my mugs around? These things cost money, you know.’
‘Sorry,’ said Goose. And then she sighed noisily before adding, ‘I dropped your mug and it smashed because there was nothing to save it – just like there’s nothing out there to save any of us.’
Ruthie held her candle up towards Goose’s face and peered at her. ‘Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?’
Goose nodded. ‘I’m just having an existential crisis, that’s all.’
Ruthie looked confused for a moment and then she said, ‘Well, just be a bit more bloody careful with my cups.’
‘Oh, chill out a bit, Ruthie,’ I said. ‘It was only a scatty old mug. And anyway, what’s a few measly quid to you? You’d only waste it on booze.’
Ruthie glared at me. ‘No I wouldn’t.’
‘Yeah you would,’ I said. ‘Because you’re a student and that’s all students ever spend their money on.’
‘Er . . . excuse me,’ said Ruthie, her face a spooky picture of candlelit outrage. ‘I think you’ll find that students spend their money on a lot of things.’
‘Oh yeah,’ chipped in Gareth, who was rubbing his ear and sounding cheesed off, ‘Like what?’
‘Like books . . .’ said Ruthie.
‘And?’ This time it was Goose who wanted to know about the purchasing habits of the student population.
My sister held her candle up and glared at her. Then she glared at all of us. And then she said, ‘. . . and paper and ink cartridges and food and the electricity meter . . .’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Gareth with a snort. ‘I can really see that you spend heaps of money on that!’
‘Er . . . excuse me, Gareth,’ said my sister, ‘. . . remember whose sofa you’re sleeping on tonight.’
Gareth sighed noisily. And then, because he must have had a death wish, he pointed at the dirty dishes in the minging sink and said, ‘And cleaning products?’
‘Yes . . . and cleaning products!’ Ruthie was blatantly annoyed. She put her candle down and then, counting off each item on her fingers, she added, ‘. . . and library fines and archaeology field trips and tools for an archaeological dig . . . oh, and dwarf hats and mini pretend coal-miners’ lanterns and . . .’
‘Mini coal-miners’ lanterns? Dwarf hats?’ I can’t remember who interrupted her. To be fair, it could have been any one of us.
‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘Because we all went to a fancy-dress party dressed as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Obviously!’ And then she said, ‘. . . and fake beards and glow-sticks and takeaway chips and nightclub entrance fees and Do-it-Yourself mask kits and a 3D projector for our photos and Lego and shoes and funny fridge magnets and plastic cups and string and . . .’
This time it was definitely me who interrupted. ‘Plastic cups and string?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘For making telephones. Obviously.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said.
And then Ruthie said, ‘. . . and tubs of ice cream and board games and Chinese takeaways and kebabs and toasted-sandwich-making contraptions and charity-shop trinkets and second-hand cushion covers and energy drinks and . . . and . . .’ Ruthie paused, and then she shook her head and said, ‘No, I think that’s pretty much everything.’
Goose said, ‘Do you want me to pay for the mug?’
Ruthie muttered, ‘Oh, forget it.’ And then, after taking a box of candles from the cupboard under the sink, she disappeared back into the hallway.
The second she was gone, Gareth started opening cupboard doors. ‘I’m starving. If I don’t eat something soon, I’ll collapse and die. And that’s a fact.’
‘You can’t help yourself to her food,’ I said.
‘I can and I am,’ said Gareth. And then, as if to demonstrate the fact, he waved a large bag of prawn cocktail crisps and a packet of chicken soup at me. ‘It’s not what Coach Jenkins would call a good square meal,’ he said, ‘but it’s a start.’
‘Gaz,’ I said nervously. ‘We really should ask Ruthie first.’
‘But we can’t, can we?’ snapped Gareth. ‘Because she’s just gone and banned us from leaving the kitchen. And anyway, I’m not going near that living room again because there’s a bloke in there wearing make-up, riding a unicycle and juggling fireballs. It’s a wonder I didn’t get my rugby kit scorched. This entire house is a total health and safety hazard.’
Goose was holding up the packet soup against the candle flame and investigating it with interest. She tapped the printed instructions and said, ‘It says here we can add an egg to make it thicker, Gaz. Do you reckon you can find one?’
I watched the pair of them helplessly. They were robbing my sister’s food and getting on like they were suddenly the best ever friends in the whole of best-ever-friend-land. It was getting on my nerves. I might as well have been at home.
Gareth found a solitary egg in another cupboard and handed it to Goose. ‘I don’t know how old this egg is,’ he said. ‘And it hasn’t got a date stamped on it. Do you reckon it’s worth risking? I don’t wanna get the squits.’
And that was when I felt something ping inside my brain. I think it was my patience snapping. I said, ‘Hello? Hello? I’m STILL here. I can’t believe that all you two can talk about is whether or not to put a stupid egg into some stupid soup! My mum is having an affair with Stevie Wonder! Do you have ANY idea how much that freaks me out? Well, I’ll tell you something – You can take your eggs and SPLATTER them for all I care.’
And then Goose did another extraordinary thing. She let go of the egg she’d been holding and sent it crashing to the floor. Even in the candlelight, it looked pretty deliberate to me. Bits of broken egg yolk and slime slithered over the floor tiles.
‘What did you do that for?’ I said.
And not for the first time that evening, Goose said – or rather shouted, ‘I am having an existential crisis!’
And after she’d said this, she started mumbling.
Really fast.
In a manner which was – quite frankly – scary.
And what she mumbled sounded something like this:
‘I’m sorry but I just don’t know what I’m doing here and I don’t even know what the point of my life is any more and I’m trapped in a kitchen inside a house party which I’m not even invited to and I’m getting skin irritations from this hideous polyester uniform and I’ve probably got the sack from my job for not turning up to work today but the most tragic thing of all is that I don’t even care because I hate my job and I only ever see the beginning and end scenes of the films and I spend half my life in
the dark and also I’m sick of picking up other people’s choc ice wrappers and I work with a woman who has developed her own mumble-language and the worse thing of all is that I’m already totally fluent in it myself . . .’
At this point, she stopped mumbling for a second and looked over at me with big alarmed eyes. ‘Oh . . . my . . . God,’ she said. ‘I spend half my life having muttered conversations in the Ponty-Carlo. Does that mean I’m turning into another Pat Mumble?’
I picked up another cork from the work surface, put it between my teeth and bit it. My mum has always told me that honesty is the best policy. Sometimes, though, I reckon that there are certain occasions when it’s better to lie.
‘No way,’ I said.
‘Phew,’ said Goose. And then she started mumbling again. ‘It gets worse though because even though my job is minging I can’t stay away from the place because I’m hopelessly devoted to a boy whose name backwards just happens to be Pure Vomit and it’s totally tragically pointless since I’ve already made a massive mess of everything because yesterday after work I went and told him how I feel and he told me plain and simple that he refuses to consider any serious or frivolous relationship with anyone who isn’t yet in sixth form because he is totally turned off by school uniform . . . and I really don’t know what to do because I am totally in love with Tim Overup!’
And then she threw back her head and made a big scary noise that was part Oooooooffffff and part proper scream.
Me and Gareth stared at her in horrified astonishment. In the room next door, somebody was strumming a guitar to the accompaniment of bongo drums and a drunken choir of singing students. But in our kitchen it felt like you could have heard a pin drop. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think Gareth did either and he’s usually very good in awkward situations. Finally, I took the piece of cork I was biting out from between my teeth and said, ‘I wondered if you’d noticed that Tim Overup’s name backwards is Pure Vomit. It’s unlucky, isn’t it?’
Goose said, ‘I don’t care. I love him. But he doesn’t love me.’ And then she sank down on to the floor and started crying.
Before I could go and comfort her, Gareth made a groaning noise and said, ‘This is the worst party I’ve ever been to.’ Then he walked over to the sink, rinsed out his coffee mug and started to fill it with beer from one of the big plastic bottles on the work surface.
‘Gareth David Lloyd George Stingecombe,’ I said, ‘what the heck do you think you’re doing?’
‘I’m having a beer,’ replied Gareth. ‘You two are driving me to drink.’
‘But you can’t,’ I wailed. ‘Ruthie will go ballistic.’
Gareth laughed loudly. Too loudly. And then he stopped laughing and said, ‘Well, she’ll just have to be patient and wait her turn because right now there’s a whole queue of people wanting to go ballistic at me.’
‘Yeah . . . well . . . alcohol isn’t the answer,’ I said.
Gareth gave me a long hard look. Then he directed his gaze up to the ceiling and gave Britney Biggs a long hard look too. And after that, he said, ‘Ooooooooffffffff,’ and tipped his beer down the sink and sank down on the floor next to Goose.
‘Goosey?’ I said. ‘Gazzy?’
‘I love him, Lottie,’ sobbed Goose. ‘Tim Overup is the most individual and unique person that I’ve ever met. But he’s in sixth form and he isn’t interested in me.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ said Gareth miserably, ‘my rugby career is over.’
Putting both my hands on my head, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I just couldn’t keep up with this conversation.
Gareth sniffed and rubbed his nose on the cuff of his rugby shirt. ‘It’s finished, Lottie! And it never even properly began.’
‘Of course it’s not over,’ I said. ‘You told me just the other day that Coach Jenkins reckons you’ll get called up to play for the Wales youth team.’
Gareth’s head sank into his hands. I looked at him in bewilderment and then, anxiously, I snuck a glance at Goose. She had her arms wrapped around her shins and was all hunched forward so that her face was pressed against the tops of her knees. I think that – ever so slightly – she may have been rocking backwards and forwards. Generally, this isn’t a good sign. She certainly didn’t look happy. Neither did Gareth. Which leads me to conclude that he was bang-on accurate with his earlier assessment: This really was THE WORST PARTY EVER.
‘The thing is . . .’ said Gareth in an oddly strangled voice, ‘I did get that call-up, Lottie.’
‘Well, that’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘So why the face like a half-chewed chip?’
‘Because,’ said Gareth, still in that weird husky voice, ‘. . . because . . . instead of turning up for my first training session at the Millennium Stadium, I bumped into you and ended up at this poxy party!’
I stared at him in horror. My stomach hurt. Just like someone had kicked me. In a voice that sounded even more oddly strangled than Gareth’s, I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I tried to,’ said Gareth.
I couldn’t think of anything good to say so I said, ‘Whoops!’
‘Yeah,’ said Gareth. ‘Whoops. They’re never going to want me now. Coach Jenkins reckons you don’t get anywhere in this world if you’re not reliable.’
‘I didn’t make you come with me, Gaz,’ I said and nervously jiggled the corks in my pocket. I wasn’t deliberately shouting at him but my voice – all by itself – had gone up a few octaves. ‘In actual fact, I didn’t even ask you.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Gareth and breathed out a great big noisy sigh. ‘But it’s not as simple as that, is it? I was so completely panicked about the idea of you and Goose clearing off out of Cardiff without telling anyone that I had to do something! You weren’t even wearing a coat.’ And then he looked me right in the eye. Gareth has got very beautiful green eyes. Even in the dim candlelight, I could see that. Without really knowing why, I held my breath. Gareth bit his lip and then took a deep breath and said, ‘You’re my girlfriend, Lottie – and I love you.’
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Goose through her sobs. ‘That is the sweetest thing I have EVER heard.’
‘I’ve been trying to say that for ages,’ said Gareth, wiping his face on the sleeve of his rugby shirt. ‘But it kept coming out wrong.’ He puffed out his cheeks in what I can only describe as an expression of pure and total frustration. ‘I always thought it would be a totally amazing moment when I first ever said those words to anyone – but actually, it’s just rubbish.’ Then he gave a big sniff, put his hands over his eyes and left them there.
And I’m pretty sure that it was at this point that I started to cry too because suddenly everything had got way too intense and very very confusing.
And even though all I can do is live my life in forward gear, it makes a helluva lot more sense when I think about it now in reverse. Food deprivation and oxygen starvation had nothing to do with why Goose, Gareth and I went so utterly mad on Sunday night. And I can’t even blame Michel. As much as I hate to admit it, I think that my wiser and cleverer sister Ruthie had correctly understood the situation right from the start.
It was my fault.
I’d run away from home and – without any thought for either of them – I’d dragged Goose and Gareth along to support me.
And the eight cups of coffee probably didn’t help much either.
there are BIG shIPs aND smaLL shIPs . . .
It’s just gone three o’clock and I’ve been joined in the library by two girls who have creatively teamed treggings and knuggs26 with their school uniforms. They are huddled together in front of a single computer and every two seconds they collapse with attacks of laughter. To be honest, this is fairly annoying because we’re in a library and anyone with half a head knows that libraries are supposed to be areas of quiet study. It’s making it very difficult for me to concentrate and this is having a detrimental impact on the flow of my stream of consciousness. I was going to write
about how Goose and Gareth and I woke up on Monday morning with frayed nerves and humongous coffee headaches and about how my dad drove all the way down to Aberystwyth from Wrexham to pick me up and take me back to North Wales with him. Oh, and I was also going to write about Ruthie and how she ended up going home for Christmas earlier than she’d ever planned because she insisted on accompanying Goose and Gareth back to Cardiff so that they wouldn’t miss another day of double science with Mr Thomas. I was going to write about these things but now I’m not because the two giggling girls opposite are putting me right off.
So instead I’ll write about them.
Thankfully, they have stopped shrieking with laughter and one of the girls – who has blatantly cut her own fringe – is telling the other girl – who is wearing a candy necklace that she is in the process of eating – about someone called Pot-Wash-Pete. Their conversation is running pretty much along the lines of this:
DIY Fringe:
Yeah, so I was in the middle of my waitressing shift and Pot-Wash-Pete said, ‘Do you wanna come to the cinema with me on Saturday? There’s this really freaky film showing called And They Died Screaming. It’s supposed to be the scariest thing ever.’
Candy Necklace:
Oh my God!!! You’re not seriously contemplating a date with Pot- Wash-Pete, are you? That boy is an environmental hazard. He’s polluting the world with a serious geek leak!
DIY Fringe:
Ahhh ha ha ha behave. He’s a really sweet person!
Candy Necklace:
Oh my God!!! You do, don’t you? You fancy Pot-Wash-Pete?
DIY Fringe:
Get real. This is Pot-Wash-Pete we’re talking about.
Candy Necklace:
So what did you say to him?
DIY Fringe:
I told him to trot off. Look, it’s nearly three fifteen. Let’s go into town. The shops are gonna be shutting soon and I need to buy something.