“Oh right, yeah, I was at Jarrod’s place and his parents were out for the night so – not that we told this part to the cops – we were kicking back with his dad’s slab of beer, and the tequila his mom kept in the top of her closet and Jarrod had a couple of spliffs, too. We were playing Kill or Be Killed on his PS3 and I was beating him for literally the first time ever. And, I dunno, I guess we must have sacked out at some point, I don’t really remember, but the next thing I knew the house was on fire. There was smoke everywhere and, well, it was getting kinda hot.”
I smiled at that. He smiled back, encouraged, and continued. “It was the kitchen that was on fire. Jarrod must have gotten up while I was sleeping to fry some food and that ass hat left the stove on with a panful of oil sitting on top of it. What a douche, right?”
I nodded. “Total douche.”
“Anyway by the time the fire started he was passed out and I couldn’t wake him up so I had to drag his bony ass out of the house by his shirt. Except of course then he woke up all disoriented as I was hauling him down the front steps and thought I was attacking him, that’s how I got the shiner, you see?” He pointed to his eye which was a bit puffy and bruised, but not too badly. I hadn’t even noticed. “So I punched him right back and kind of broke his nose.”
“No way.”
Cam grinned. “He deserved it. I mean, he set the house on fire. Anyway so I got him out of the house and we called the fire department and everything, and then I realized…” he rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the floor, sheepishly. “Well, I didn’t have any proof of my high score, so…”
“You did not go back into a burning building to rescue a stupid PlayStation,” I said. “Did you? Tell me you didn’t.”
“Well…”
“You are such a moron,” I laughed, broke a chunk off my cookie and tossed it at him.
“Hey, I was drunk alright? I didn’t get the PlayStation in the end, anyway. I was about to unplug it when their stupid little Shi-Tzu started yapping at me, yapping at the fire.”
“Oh my God…”
“I guess she couldn’t get out or something. That dog hates me something fierce though, look at what she did to my hand!” He held up his hand which was wrapped in a white bandage. Another thing I hadn’t noticed, what was wrong with me? I saw the whole picture of Cam was okay, and didn’t notice the little ouchies? Cam looked at his bandaged hand too. “I guess you can’t really see what she did to my hand, but there are stitches under there. Stitches. She bit me big time for saving her life. And Jarrod punched me. That was the thanks I got, can you believe it?” He tried not to smile, but it crept onto his face anyway.
We just stood there looking at each other. I didn’t know what to say, and took a bite of my cookie.
“You’re right, they’re good,” I said. I could feel him still looking at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. I just…I couldn’t.
“Well I’m glad you’re okay. I should-”
“So how are things with what’s-his-face?” he said.
I didn’t want to answer, I didn’t want to talk about my boyfriend, didn’t want to say things were good. “They’re…” I shrugged. “You know. How about you, how are things with…what’s her name again?” I gave a sarcastic smile, which he matched.
“That’s funny,” he said.
“Mmm,” I said. Nikki. And being here in his house, and he was going out with her, it was too much. I scrutinized my fingernails, scratching off some navy polish from my thumb. My voice came out small. Tiny, even. I was surprised he even heard it. “I can’t believe you’re going out with her.”
“Poppy,” he sighed. “You broke up with me, remember?” I didn’t answer. “You were all pissy about something and you dumped me. What did you think was going to happen?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean it!” I shouted, surprising even myself. I looked up at him with a huffy sigh. It was true. I didn’t want to admit it, but if he was going to get all finicky about it, technically I had broken up with him. But he wasn’t supposed to move on so fast. He was supposed to know I was being stupid and wait for me to apologize. But for some reason he hadn’t read my mind.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“How could you have seriously thought I meant it? I had the flu and an ear infection, I hadn’t slept in days and was hopped up on cold and flu meds and you were annoying me, what were you thinking?”
“You didn’t mean it?”
“You would have been irrationally grumpy too if you’d been in my slippers.”
“You didn’t want to break up?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. I figured I’d have time to apologize once I got back and everything would be fine,” I said. “But no.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have…” he trailed off, couldn’t finish the sentence, maybe he didn’t know how. Which was frustrating because I really wanted to hear the end of that sentence. But I had heard the start of it, so I guess I knew the rest. If he had known, he wouldn’t have.
“Yeah, well. Now you know,” I said.
“Wow,” he said. “Just…wow. Now I get the song.”
“What do you mean?”
“All that stuff about how we cheated. I thought…how was I supposed to know? We to know, how were we to know?”
I bristled. I didn’t want accusations to start flying. I had been angry when I wrote The Kiss Off. And I had meant it at the time. “Whatever, Cam. Look, I just came to see that you’re alright, and now I have, so I’m gonna go.” I turned and headed for the front door. I heard his bare feet padding softly behind me.
“Wait, don’t go Poppy,” he said. “Stay.”
I stood in front of the front door, the cool metal doorknob in my hand. “Why?”
He shrugged, lost for words. “I don’t know.”
I knew what he meant. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. He was with Nikki, and I was with Ty. I was happy with Ty, even though he wasn’t here and he possibly had a Sasha thing happening and there were loads of screamy excited fan girls wherever he went. I didn’t want to think about it but there might even have been groupies. But Cam and I, we had a past, I’d never wanted to break up, and what he said…did I love Cam? The thought shocked me as it floated to the front of my brain. Only days ago I had been wondering whether or not I loved Ty. But Cam? I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to answer it. I looked from my hand on the doorknob back to Cam, his eyes pleading me not to go. But the decision was made for me as the doorbell rang. We both blinked, brought back to life, so to speak. Brought back to reality. I turned the knob and pulled it open.
“Oh. Hi,” I said guiltily. Nikki stood there, shocked to see me. I didn’t blame her.
“Um…hi,” she said. I took the moment to step outside.
“I was just leaving,” I said and was down the steps and on the driveway without a backward glance. “Glad you’re okay, Cam.”
***
Chapter Fifteen
At school the next day, something totally weird happened. It couldn’t have been more random. I was sitting in History as Mrs. DeMarco was droning on saying “blah blah cowboys and blah blah Indians” or something and the room was really stuffy because the weather had been heating up and Spring was totally coming and we couldn’t open the window because it was still all barred up with a plank of wood and some plastic sheeting. The school hadn’t gotten around to getting it fixed from the time the football team had been trying out new Kickers and this one kid, well, he may have broken the window, but he also made the team.
Anyway, it was stuffy and Mrs. DeMarco was being totally boring and I was sipping from my water bottle, sip, back on the table, sip, back on the table, sip. I wasn’t listening to whatever she was saying (which you could probably tell), and I was just letting my eyes wander around the classroom, checking people out, who was listening, who was scratching obscenities into the desk, who was texting someone on their cell from their la
p, who else was looking as bored as I was. While I had the bottle to my mouth, my eyes wandered two rows across, landed on Cam and we locked eyes. He had been looking at me too and he also had his drink bottle to his mouth.
Next thing I knew, Cam and I were having a chugging contest. I had a full litre of water in my bottle and I was throwing it back like I’d just spent a week in a desert and he was chugging, the water sort of splashing around in his bottle as he sucked it down. He slammed his empty bottle onto his desk with a bang and Mrs. DeMarco shrieked and spun around from the whiteboard, like she thought someone had been shot. I lowered my bottle from my mouth, not before overfilling it, and then coughing as water spurted out my nose. People looked around at Cam, and me, wondering what the hell had just happened, and the room burst out in laughter as I wiped down my face and notebook.
“What is going on?” DeMarco shouted. No one paid attention to her, they were too thankful for the distraction. The cowboys and Indians were completely forgotten. Or maybe it was the French Revolution.
I couldn’t look at anyone, as my nose still felt like it might drip on me some more. The only person I could look at, was Cam. And he was smiling at me big time.
I couldn’t help it, I didn’t mean to, but I smiled back.
When the bell rang twenty minutes later, I dashed to the nearest girls’ room as I hadn’t exactly been anticipating drinking a gazillion ounces of water. And I do mean a gazillion.
When I came out of the stall, feeling all light as a feather the smile dropped from my face as I found Vanya leaning against the sinks, arms crossed, frowning at me.
“What?” I said, turning on the tap.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Uh…” I soaped up my hands and rubbed them together. “What does it look-”
“With Cam, what’s going on with you two?”
“What are you talking about? There’s nothing going on.”
“Just a minute ago, that water thing.”
“It was just a joke, an in-joke or something.” I said.
“And since when do you and Cam have in-jokes again? Are you guys talking?”
“No!” I said. “Yes. Maybe.” I shook my head. “No. We’re just not fighting anymore. Or something. I went to his house to check on him last night, and–”
“You went to his house?”
“Yeah, I…well jeez Van he nearly died in a fire, of course I wanted to check on him.”
“What’s wrong with the phone?”
“What’s wrong with his house?” I said. “Besides, everyone would have been using the phone.”
“And you wanted to be special and stand out?”
“No, I just wanted to see him, alright? He was my boyfriend and pretty much my best friend since before…well since before. God, why are you attacking me?” I turned off the tap and rubbed my hands dry on the back of my jeans.
“I’m not attacking you.” She scuffed her sensible school shoe on the grubby tiled floor. “At least, I’m not meaning to.”
“Well what’s with the interrogation then, detective?”
“It’s just you’ve been all team ‘I hate Cam’ for so long and all of a sudden you’re talking to him and having private jokes? I can see there’s something up, Poppy.”
“I haven’t been team ‘I hate Cam’ for a while now, Van.”
“Well that’s news to me.”
I shrugged.
“Do you like him again?” Vanya said. “That’s all I want to know.”
“No I don’t like him again!”
“Because you have a new boyfriend now, who you like a lot, and who likes you a lot and even though he’s not around at the moment you’d never cheat on him, right?”
“Excuse me?” So that’s what this was about. “I can’t believe you would say that to me.”
“Well Mads says she’s so into Dev but then-”
“I’m not Mads, Vanya.”
She raised her hands in surrender. “You’re right. I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to put it out there. Make sure I’m wrong, since Cam and Nikki are on a break and everything.”
“They are?” I said. Before she could roll her eyes at me or something, I followed it up with, “And that’s not a bad question.”
“Yes, they’re on a break,” Vanya said. “He told me himself.”
“When did it happen?”
“Last night,” she said.
Uh oh.
“The night you went to visit him.”
Uh oh. “It’s a coincidence, I swear,” I said. Lying through my teeth. There was no way this was a coincidence. “And you are wrong. I’m not anything with Cam. Promise.” I ran some water over my fingers and flicked it at her before heading toward the door.
I didn’t even look back, didn’t check that she was following me. At that moment I didn’t care how we left off our little argument. He’d broken up with Nikki for me, I knew it. What had I done? Poor Nikki. What was I supposed to do now? I continued walking down the hall and out the doors and when I hit the chain link school fence I started a long walk around the perimeter of the school. I needed to think and I needed to do it alone.
The next morning, Vanya and I stood in the queue at Coffee Buzz, not speaking. We were cool again, we’d talked it out on IM last night, and we’d been friendly and normal when she’d arrived at the stop this morning.
I didn’t know what was up with her, but for me it was a simple case of sleeping on my feet. I blinked my bleary eyes and rubbed the back of my hand against one of them, scrunching any sleep crusties into dust. I hadn’t slept well last night. Aside from the intense tiredness, anyone could tell from the bird’s nest my hair was in when I woke up. I had a lot on my mind.
“Espresso?” The girl behind the counter said. I slid my take out cup toward me, and picked up a handful of sugar packets, stuffing them in my pocket. I ripped one open, poured it in and stirred. The girl behind the counter narrowed her eyes at me in thought. It weirded me out a bit, the blatant staring. Just as I was going to go wait for Van outside and decide never to get my coffee from the Buzz again, the barista girl’s eyes went normal shaped again, and I could almost see a light bulb flick on above her head.
“Hey, you’re PoppyLongStocking, aren’t you?” she said, beaming at me. She bobbed her head and hummed a couple of bars of The Kiss Off. “I knew I recognized you.”
You mean aside from the fact that I came here every morning? “Yeah,” I mumbled with a grimace-smile. I was doing a lot of grimace-smiling lately.
“That boyfriend of yours? Nice catch,” she said, nodding with approval. Lovely. All I had been waiting for in this life was the approval of the coffee girl to give my relationship with Ty the go ahead. Who cared what had happened in the past – the barista at Coffee Buzz thought I was lucky to have him so I’d better damn well appreciate every minute of it. I took a sip of my espresso, hoping bitchiness wasn’t oozing out through my ears.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
The guy working with her put another take out cup on the counter. “Hot chocolate?” Vanya stepped forward and claimed her drink.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” I said. The coffee girl was just looking at me, and smiling. Looking and smiling. And nodding encouragingly. What was she encouraging me to do?
“Bye Poppy!” she called.
I grimace-smiled at her and left the shop, waiting on the sidewalk outside. A moment later Vanya followed me out, heaving open the glass door with her shoulder.
She looked just as tired as me.
“Why don’t you ever get coffee?” I asked as we walked. We were early, so we strolled leisurely toward the bus stop. Mads wasn’t meeting us. I had received a frantic text at one in the morning, saying that she and Dev had had another fight and that she wanted to die. She was probably hacking up imaginary phlegm and moaning in front of her mother as I thought about it.
“Because I like hot chocolate,” Vanya said.
“Does it wake you up at all? Is there
any caffeine in it?”
“I don’t know,” Van said, taking a sip of her chocolate. “But it does have sugar.” As we passed by the newspaper stand, Vanya paused. I got about twenty feet further when I discovered she had actually stopped, not paused. She was flipping through a magazine.
“What have you got there?” I asked, wandering back to her.
She hesitated, then showed me the cover.
Celebrity magazine had a photo of Ty on the front. A photo of Ty outside a nightclub, and there was a girl wearing what looked like a strip of stretchy hot pink material with her arms draped around him, body all smooshed up against him. He had one hand on her waist, and their faces…they weren’t kissing, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Their faces were so close together that it looked to me that the photographer had simply missed the money shot. My eyes seeing that photo and my mind registering what it was, it felt like I had been hit by a dump truck, my chest, my ribs, my muscles ached for no reason at all.
Vanya was watching my expression. “It might not be what it looks like,” she said. I didn’t reply. I picked up another copy of the mag and flipped through until I found the article. That girl was in several shots, clinging onto Ty. Was he clinging on to her? There was one where it looked like they were leaving a club, and he had his hand on the small of her back. Maybe she was a klutz and fell over a lot so he just had his hand there to steady her, so that he didn’t have to see her tits when she fell over and flopped out of her dress. My stomach churned as I read the headline. “Ty’s new muse”. His new muse. Did that mean we were over?
“Poppy?” I blinked a couple of times and looked around me. Vanya watched me expectantly, even the newsstand guy was watching me. I guess she’d said it a couple of times.
“Don’t even think about it until you get the facts,” Vanya said, putting down her magazine. She gently removed my copy from my hands and placed it back on the pile. “Come on, we better go.”
“You go,” I said. “I don’t know if I can deal with this, with everything today. I have to think.”
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