by Juno Dawson
‘Do you like it?’ Polly said after we were finally finished – three hours later. She looked a little woozy and I thought we should probably get her a cup of very sweet tea. Pablo was smearing some ointment on the tattoo. The skin looked red and sore but the tattoo was beautiful.
‘It’s really, really gorgeous,’ I said, and I meant it.
I couldn’t sleep that night, my head full of the kiss. Well, that and some bloody earworm novelty song I couldn’t purge. I was too hot. I kicked the duvet off and sprawled across my bed like a starfish. Nico hadn’t texted to wish me goodnight either and that made me sad. Busy, busy mind. Niggly Noos.
One thing at a time. The kiss. Thinking about it made … let’s just say there was a physical reaction. I was not gay. I didn’t think being gay was a bad thing … I don’t want to be all like ‘some of my best friends are gay’, but some of my best friends were gay! It didn’t make sense. I loved Nico’s boy chest and big shoulders and good arms and I especially liked his willy.
What? I really did.
Did one urgent toilet-based kiss make me bi? I suddenly understood Polly’s loathing of labels. Putting a name to myself wasn’t making the weirdness go away, so what was the point? I can honestly say I’d never looked at another girl and thought PHWOAR, but I similarly couldn’t deny the kiss had … aroused me. There was no other word for it.
I thought about Scarlet Johansson and Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, actively trying to get myself going. Although I liked the idea of smooth hairless skin and soft curves, it wasn’t the same as the idea of a square, hard boy body. It occurred to me for the first time how much I like to feel smaller and more delicate than the people I get it on with. But wasn’t that true of Polly? Thinking back to the toilet cubicle, to how much further it could have gone … it made me feel wild. Wild in a good way, wild like standing naked in the garden in the middle of a storm.
Wide awake, blinkers off. Sleep was miles away.
Yours Truly
Sandpaper skin
I come on like a fever
And you’re impervious
A laminate Romeo.
Do you know me at all?
When every day I paint a mask on
Pop art with a thought cloud
What a Cool Girl she’d be
Teeth marks on my tongue.
The fault’s undoubtedly mine
Because I dreamt you into being
And you’re so perfect
I want to burn myself down
And start again.
What do you see in me?
Those things are 2-D cardboard cut-outs
Or dialogue characters said.
Situations vacant.
The cat who got the cream
Is lactose intolerant.
You’re too good for me
You’re too good.
Chapter Twenty
Shoreditch
I was scared of London. I had never been without my parents and I felt dwarfed by it. I didn’t like feeling at the mercy of a skyscraper city I didn’t know or understand; I could fall into a crack in the pavement, never to be found. After Easter had come and gone, Nico was now an expert on all things London. Sony had already paid for them to rerecord their demo over the holidays to fit in around school. The new version sounded flawless, like it had been run through a magic filter, which it probably had. Action Station were every bit as good as anything you’d download on iTunes. It was a little uncanny.
We agreed to go and see their first London gig in Shoreditch. Mum and Dad took some convincing to let me go, but I promised to scope out the UCL campus while we were there. The label had invited ‘tastemakers’ along to a special ‘secret’ gig. It was all part of their ‘positioning’. I was starting to understand that a band did as well as a label wanted them to do – they essentially bought press attention and radio play.
Although I was nervous (more Imodium) the train journey up turned out to be pretty good fun. The band had gone in the van with all the instruments so Polly, Beasley and I took the train. We bought loads of teen girl magazines and did all the quizzes. ‘Are you a Girlfriend Goddess?’ (I was not – and none of the questions asked if I sometimes made out with my friends.) ‘Is he a Keeper or a Dumper?’ (A Dumper, according to that – troubling.) ‘BFF or Frenemy?’ (I was a good friend, but then the questions were pretty loaded.) We ate a lot of Haribo. By the time the train pulled into Paddington I was sugar-wired.
Luckily for Beasley and I, Polly either knew her way around London or was extremely good at cultivating an air of knowledge and authority so she seemed to know her way around. In truth, I think she’d simply researched the route. East London was insanely trendy. I realised that here the Pot-Pourri girls would look horribly out of place and we, in our walking jumble sale of second-hand odds and ends, were the norm. Every girl seemed to have a Lego haircut and Twiggy dress while all the guys were either bearded Steampunk heroes or pretenders to the Jim Morrison throne. There were a lot of people wearing capes. I do not know why.
I honestly didn’t know if this was the mother ship calling us home or if it was time to buy some new clothes. Fashion victims aside, imagine living somewhere where you could wear anything you liked and not have people openly mock you? I liked the idea of that.
Before the gig we went to Rough Trade on Brick Lane to browse imported music and get coffee. We got red velvet cupcakes from Spitalfields Market and plundered Beyond Retro. This was it. This was why we had to escape: there were places like this waiting for us.
New plan:
Finish school.
Move to London.
Figure out what I want to be.
Easy.
The gig was at a tiny little basement nightclub – it had to be small because otherwise the band would appear too mainstream, something which the label was keen to avoid. Savvy musos had to feel like they had organically ‘discovered’ Action Station for themselves. We were on the list, which made us feel very special, but were told we weren’t allowed to drink. That blew.
Grimy, buzzing electronica filled the dingy club, which, without a sign over the door, would be your standard crack den. The walls were covered in flaking pasted porn and old gig posters while the floor was sticky. ‘How cool is THIS?’ Beasley exclaimed. I guessed it took shabby chic to a whole new level.
The tastemakers, it turned out, were mainly gay men in their thirties. Nico took a minute to explain who everyone was: music journalists, radio pluggers, promoters, bloggers and, ominously, ‘industry people’. This was a little like seeing that the Wizard of Oz is a crap little man behind a curtain. These men were responsible for brainwashing you into buying my boyfriend. It was all very odd. Among these people, I felt hopelessly juvenile.
Nico introduced me to some hipster east-London-looking girls too. ‘This is the street team,’ he told me. ‘They’re the early adopters.’
‘They’re what?’
‘Like bloggers and stuff. The label sent them our demo.’
They regarded me down their noses. I realised I was competition. Nonetheless, I smiled sweetly and shook their hands. ‘She’s still at school,’ I heard one of them mutter to her friend. I could have felt small, but I was the one who got to shag him (occasionally), not them. Instead of feeling wounded, I felt quite smug. A year ago, that would have been me. Having the real thing, I didn’t feel the need to run an @IloveNico Twitter account. At some point, I’d sprouted a physical life with friends to mourn, golf courses to save and, apparently, girls to kiss.
Should I be jealous of these girls? Was he … doing stuff with them? Is that why they were adopting early? I told my paranoid inner voice to STFU, but a seed had been sown. It would make sense of the passion drought we’d been experiencing. For whatever reason, Nico seemed to be avoiding touching me. At what point had I stopped being sexy?
The week before the gig we’d been in his bedroom while his mum was at yoga. I’d tried to get him going: I’d kissed him and slipped my hand into his bo
xers but he’d brushed me off. He called me a ‘sex pest’. That left an invisible bruise.
I’m going to say something awful now. I sometimes think wanting Nico Mancini might have been better than actually having him. I’d had something these girls were dreaming of. Right now, the dreaming outweighed the real thing. I wondered if that was the Niggly Noo I couldn’t shake.
No. I pushed the thoughts out of my head. They were dangerous thoughts. He was busy with the band, that was all. I was the one kissing people I shouldn’t be kissing. The paranoia morphed into guilt.
When the time came, Action Station took to the stage. The way people watched them was different though. It wasn’t drunk people pogoing at the front of the stage like in The Mash Tun, the band were coolly regarded, scrutinised over five-pound bottled beers. Eyes spun like fruit machines landing on dollar signs.
After the gig, naturally there was an after-party and at this we managed to get DRUNK. The words ‘free bar’ are surely the finest in the English language. Beasley vanished outside with a very cute blogger in his early twenties. He had a ginger beard and a trucker cap and probably didn’t know that Beasley was sixteen. I was pleased for him; he’d finally got some action at an Action Station gig.
While he was off snogging, Polly and I were sprawled across a battered sofa in the corner of the club by the cloakroom. I was drunk, Polly was drunker. She could hardly walk in a straight line and her eyes were glassy.
‘Do you wanna know a secret?’ she slurred.
‘Of course. Secrets give me life.’
‘I broke up with Zoë yesterday.’
I sat up straight, almost knocking Polly off the sofa. ‘What?’
‘Yup.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t say anything until now, you shady bitch! Why?’
Polly shrugged. ‘I dunno. Preferred being mates.’
I scanned her rolling eyes. ‘There’s more to it than that. Is this about …?’
It took her a second to realise what I was talking about. ‘Oh what? That? No! One, she pissed me off after Daisy died. She was all like, “Cheer up, love, give us a smile” – **** off! Then she’s all clingy while at the same time making out with that skank in The Gash. So double **** off.’
‘Oh, fair enough then.’
‘You can relax, Tor. You and me … we’re just you and me.’
‘I know.’
‘Sometimes kissing is just kissing. Nothing means anything, remember? It’s sport.’ She was going to kiss me again. We were close enough – her head resting on the arm of the chair, me leaning over her. Her lips were so ripe, so, so kissable. We could and I knew it would be good. Time slowed down and the music faded to nothing but heartbeats.
‘What’s going on?’ It was Nico. He plopped down next to me on the sofa, throwing his arm around me. ‘Are you about ready to leave? I’ve had enough.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, ready when you are.’ The guilt was back in a big way.
We were all staying at the ‘Sony Flat’ before heading back to Brompton in the morning. We were scattered around the place like caterpillars in sleeping bags, drunken arms hanging off sofas into ashtrays. Nico and I had a double bed in the smaller bedroom and a degree of privacy. Something was troubling Nico, I could tell; he stripped to his pants and perched on the edge of the bed. I wondered if he was going to hurl.
‘Are you OK? Are you going to vom?’
‘No. I’m not too bad.’
I actually might yet vom. I’d drunk way too much, but I kept it to myself. The bed was spinning slightly.
‘What’s up? You were great tonight you know. Everyone loved you.’
‘Etienne’s moving to London. Like now. He thinks it’ll be better for recording and stuff.’
That sobered me up. ‘What? He wants the whole band to move?’
‘No. He hasn’t said that. The rest of us are staying in Brompton. Jason The Drummer still has his job and college too.’
‘But you want to move?’
He looked at me. Even in the gloom of the bedroom and with sirens wailing through the streets of London he was still beautiful. Sometimes you need reminding. But he looked lost.
‘No. God no. I’m panicking a bit, Tor.’
‘What? Why?’
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. ‘It’s all happening a bit fast … I’m, like, aghhhhh!’ He frantically waved his hands around his head. ‘My feet haven’t touched the floor. Everything’s changing.’
I reached across the bed for him. I wrapped myself around him like a shawl and kissed his neck. ‘But this is what you want.’
‘I know. It is. It’s just so fast. Nothing happens for ages and then it all comes at once. I need some time to think about stuff.’ He held out his forearm to show me his tattoo – the wheel. ‘That’s what this is meant to be about. Change. Everything changes, nothing stays the same. It’s the first rule.’
I nodded and thought of Daisy. How much she would have loved today.
‘But it’s too fast.’ He turned around and kissed me hard on the lips. The first proper kiss we’d had in a long time. It felt like he was clinging to me for dear life.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. ‘I’m not changing.’ If he was drowning, I’d be his rubber ring.
I wrote this around this time.
The Killing Jar
Graceful glass
Marilyn curved
Hermetically sealed
Chokes butterflies
To death
With ether
Preserves wings
For display
Forever.
Chapter Twenty-One
Protest
Back in Brompton, I was helping Nico revise for his finals when we got the call. He’d written his notes up into handy cheat sheets from which I was testing him. By that stage, I felt fairly confident I could pass A-level Biology at a pinch.
‘Almost. It says here that osmosis is diffusion where water moves from a solution of higher water potential to a solution of lower water potential through a partially permeable membrane. Yours was pretty much the same though.’
Nico said, ‘Hmmm,’ and jotted down a note on his pad.
My phone vibrated, shuffling across his floorboards. It was Alice. ‘I’ll just get this. Hello?’
‘Hi. It’s Alice. Get your asses down to Fantasyland.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Polly chained herself to the Disapproving Seal.’
I blinked. ‘She did what?’
‘She heard the demolishers were about to move in.’ Alice delivered the news in her usual monotone.
‘Oh. My. God. We’ll be right down.’ I hung up. ‘Polly chained herself to the crazy-golf course.’
‘Of course she did!’ Nico laughed, a relief because he wasn’t smiling a lot these days. Between the band and his exams he was a twitching ball of nerves. ‘God, she’s finally lost her mind. It was bound to happen sooner or later.’
I ran my hands through my hair, exasperated. ‘We have to go down and get her.’
Nico motioned at the pile of textbooks scattered over his bedroom floor. ‘Toria, my exams start in two weeks. I’m not going anywhere, I haven’t even started on Politics yet.’
I wanted to argue but he was already struggling to fit his revision in around band stuff. I didn’t nag. ‘OK, can I go?’
‘Yes! Go! Take pictures!’
I kissed him on the lips. ‘I love you.’ And I think I did. When I was with him I felt quiet and content inside.
‘Love you too.’ We said the words all the time without hesitation. They came almost too easily, like they weighed no more than ‘hello’.
Dirty mechanical dinosaurs surrounded our golf course, jaws hanging open, ready to take chunks out of it. I had no doubt Polly would have seen them moving in from her house. This early on a Sunday morning, there weren’t any people around, but I slipped into Fantasyland through the broken fence all the same.
I saw a group gathered around the Disapproving Seal and cut across the course. I was the last to arrive. I could see Alice and Alex, Beasley and Zoë. Even Freya was lurking on the perimeter. She hadn’t even brought a book. Finally I saw Polly. She was handcuffed around one of the seal’s fins. I didn’t even want to know where she’d got handcuffs from.
‘Come on, Pol,’ Beasley said. ‘It’s not gonna make a difference.’
‘It won’t if we give up, no.’ She saw me. ‘Toria, tell Beasley this’ll work. They can’t demolish the park if we’re attached to it.’
I shrugged. ‘Well, they won’t kill her, will they?’
‘See?’ Polly said triumphantly. ‘I already texted the photographer guy from the paper. He’s on his way.’
Beasley looked to Alex for sanity. ‘You could get arrested for this, Polly. We’re all trespassing.’
‘I don’t give a flying ****.’
‘What if you need the loo?’ Alice added unhelpfully.
‘Then I’ll **** myself, I don’t care. This is Daisy’s memorial. I’m not going to let them level it. Where’s Nico?’ Polly turned to me.
‘He’s revising.’
‘Oh great.’
‘He’s sorry.’
Polly rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t believe you’re all giving up. This is ours and they’re taking it away! Alice, you met Alex here. Remember? You wouldn’t dare speak to him and your face went bright red every time he spoke to you. Tor, this is where you met Nico. This is where we invented Golf Tennis. Zoë, I fingered you on that ship!’
Zoë grimaced. ‘Thanks for sharing, Pol.’