by Juno Dawson
‘And this seal was Daisy’s favourite thing in the world. They can’t take it away, they can’t. These are our memories. They can’t **** with that.’
I sat alongside her, clearing some dead tribute flowers away with my toe. Of course I knew her more personal reasons for clinging to the course, but said nothing. ‘The memories aren’t going anywhere. You can’t demolish memories.’
‘What about new memories? What about what happens next? What about the legacy?’
Beasley tried again. ‘They’ll arrest you.’
The resolution in her eyes was treading a very fine line between determination and plain Brontë-sister crazy. ‘Let them try.’
Alex doffed his cap. ‘As much as one hates to be the proverbial party pooper, I don’t fancy having this on my Cambridge application form. Je suis désolé, mes amis.’
‘Oh **** off, Alex, you pretentious ****!’ Polly spat.
Someone needed to say it. ‘I second that.’ I made a decision. I saw men in hard hats and high-vis jackets arrive on the scene, looking at us like they were unsure what to do. By herself, Polly looked deranged, but two of us were a movement. ‘Do you have another pair of handcuffs?’
Polly’s smile was radiant, even on such a grey day. ‘Nope, but there’s a bicycle chain. You are a legend.’
This was insane, but quite funny. I was a protester now. Another one to tick off the list. I looped the chain around my waist and the seal’s neck, as tight as was comfortable.
A burly beardy man entered through the main gates. ‘Oi! What do you think you’re playing at?’
‘We shall not, we shall not be moved!’ Polly sang at the top of her voice and I could only join in.
I know that this sounds futile. I knew it was futile. I knew it wasn’t going to work and that wasn’t why I was doing it. Two girls chained to a seal has never changed the course of history, but it was making a point. I knew we weren’t going to find a nest of rare birds or an endangered plant or an ancient volcanic spring under the golf course. Some long-lost millionaire aunt wasn’t going to step in to save the place at the eleventh hour. This isn’t that kind of story.
If nothing else, we cared and people saw us caring. We were ‘those meddling kids’. That was cool.
Workmen (for they were all men) gathered around, a mixture of disbelief, annoyance and amusement on their faces.
‘Get them out of here,’ said the beardy guy, the foreman, I guessed.
‘You can’t touch us, it’s assault!’ I said, fairly confident I’d heard that on TV. To my amazement, he seemed to agree.
He swore. A lot. ‘What the ******* hell are you ***** waiting for? Call the ******* police!’ he shouted at one of his men.
Alex actually surrendered. The weasel. ‘I’m nothing to do with this, sir.’
‘Then get the **** off my site, you little ****.’
‘Well, there’s no need for that language,’ Polly said.
Those of us who were not chained to the seal were frogmarched out of the park. Beasley looked back over his shoulder apologetically. By now Brompton people, who – let’s face it – didn’t have anything better to do on a Sunday morning, were gathering at the fences, peeping through to see who was causing all the commotion. The photographer had arrived but his access was being blocked. Still, he managed to borrow a ladder and take some shots over the fences. Polly and I continued our sad little protest song. I wasn’t used to attracting this kind of attention to myself, but we were together and it felt a lot like Daisy was with us too. She’d have loved this. I just wished Nico would have come down.
About fifteen minutes later, the police rocked up. ‘Uh-oh,’ giggled Polly. ‘Now we’re in trouble …’
I laughed thinly to mask the fact I was bricking it. I don’t think my poetry, knowledge of anime and Tumblr presence would serve me too well in a women’s prison. It was PC Watson, the school liaison officer. She was a matronly black woman with a cute gap in her front teeth. ‘Come on, girls, it’s time to go home.’
‘No way.’ Polly kept her voice level. ‘The residents of Brompton don’t want a diner.’
‘It’s not up to the residents,’ Watson said, her voice equally calm. ‘Planning permission went ahead. Sorry, girls, there’s nothing you can do.’
I spoke up. ‘This is civil resistance. You can’t move us.’
The foreman, hovering at Watson’s side, scowled at me, dragging on a Marlboro Red. ‘You know what your problem is? You’re too ******* clever for your own good.’
I scowled back. ‘I looked it up on Wikipedia, sir. Just now. On my phone.’
Polly grinned. ‘It’s Occupy Brompton-on-Sea and you can’t do ****.’
‘Polly, does your dad know you’re here?’ Watson asked.
‘No. Clearly not.’
PC Watson scratched an immaculate corn row with a pillar-box red fingernail. ‘Girls. I’m all for peaceful protest, but you’re supposed to warn the police and you’re actually breaking and entering. This is private property. If you want you can move it outside the park, but you can’t block the road, that’s wilful obstruction. Am I making myself clear?’
‘I’m not moving.’ Polly matched her gaze. ‘This is our friend’s memorial.’
And there it was in her eyes: pity. She pitied us. ‘No, girls, it isn’t.’
That’s when I saw them. Both of our dads, entering the golf course. Balls, who’d called them? ‘Oh for god’s sake.’
Polly only grinned further. ‘Uh-oh, now we’re really in trouble.’
Mr Wolff was apoplectic – and this is the first time in my life I’ve had an excuse to use that word, so I’m going to. ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Polly! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? This is so, so embarrassing!’
I tried a different tack. ‘It’s a peaceful protest, Dad! Look at me, I’m basically Ghandi!’
That, surprisingly, did nothing to calm Dad down. ‘Get up right now, Victoria!’
‘Er … no.’
My dad had left the house in his grey hole-ridden house sweatpants. I could only pray he’d remembered to put on underwear. ‘Toria, I can’t believe you’re doing this. I … I thought we could trust you.’ Typical. I would get the torture of the ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed’ speech, wouldn’t I?
‘No one listened to the petition – what else were we meant to do?’
‘Nothing. You were meant to do nothing. This is real life, Toria. You can’t bloody stamp your feet and get your own way.’
A further pair of policemen rolled up. They walked casually enough but one carried a pretty serious pair of bolt cutters. ‘What would you like us to do, Mr Wolff?’ Watson asked. ‘I can leave them here for a couple of hours if you want but then we’ll have to move them on.’
‘Oh, get them out of here. I’m so sorry about this, Leila, this is mortifying.’
‘All right, get the chains off.’ She motioned to her colleagues.
The men moved in. I accepted my fate, but Polly went the other way. She kicked and screamed and very much resisted arrest. They tried to reason with her, but she only wrapped her arms around the seal. Two guys trying to pull a skinny seventeen-year-old off a seal didn’t seem very balanced to me so, and I know this was stupid, I tried to prise them off her.
‘Oi! Police brutality!’
The struggle was a blur – a noodle soup of flailing limbs. I don’t know if it was an accident or not, but one of Polly’s long booted legs caught Watson in the face. I knew that wasn’t going to go down well.
They arrested her. They arrested me.
It was blobby and messy and noisy. Hair and hands and fingernails. My knee scraped on the tarmac and I cried out in pain. There were hands pushing and pulling and before I could make sense of what was happening, I was in the back of a police car. The door slammed in my face and on the other side I’d never seen anyone look as disappointed as my dad did at that moment.
We were locked in a cell. This had clearly been cooked up as
a punishment by our fathers. I think they thought that putting us in a cell for an undisclosed amount of time might make us realise the SERIOUSNESS OF OUR ACTIONS. Actually, I’m not condoning crime but it wasn’t that bad. For one thing, we were the only people in the station – a disappointing lack of big-haired sassy hookers in last night’s Lycra or butch lesbians trying to make us their bitches.
It did smell a lot like wee though.
After they’d patched up my bleeding knee with an anti-bacterial wipe and a plaster, we were put in a breeze-block cell ‘to cool off’. Both Polly and I were already calm by the time we got there so it was a pointless exercise. Somewhere, across town, the golf course was being demolished.
‘This is balls.’ I sat next to Polly on a plastic mattress, our shoulders pressed together.
‘They won’t charge us with anything.’
‘I meant about the park.’
Polly sighed. ‘Your dad was right, you know. We were being brats.’
‘I know.’
‘I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.’
‘Me either. It was worth fighting for.’ I pulled my knees up under my chin.
Polly rested her head against the cold brick wall. The magenta dye had faded on top but she’d dyed the tips indigo. ‘Oh well. It’s done now. We tried. We can say we tried.’
That much was true, although I still felt like we’d lost. ‘How long do you think they’ll keep us here?’
‘Until they think we’ve learned our lesson. A couple of hours? Until we’re hungry and crying? Until we beg forgiveness? Until we’re a waste of taxpayers’ money.’ Polly reached for my hand. ‘Tor … thank you for … everything. I know I can be hard work, but you sticking up for me today meant more than the moon.’
I smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the moon.’
‘I really mean it. Thank you.’ Framed by glitter and kohl, her eyes glazed over and I was hypnotised by them, unable to look away. The air turned syrupy with anticipation.
‘What shall we do?’ I said, trying to break the spell.
Polly’s lips curled at the edges. ‘I might go to sleep for a bit. Have a nap. I think that makes a stronger statement – “See how many ***** I give.”’
‘Don’t! How boring would that be?’
‘You can sleep too.’ She gave me a highly suggestive glance. ‘I’ll be big spoon, you be little spoon.’
‘Polly …’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Or you could go on the other bunk, but I think my way would be more fun …’
‘Whatever. Don’t they have CCTV?’
‘In this dump? I doubt it! Anyway, I think they’d probably quite enjoy it. Little girl-on-girl show for the guys on the front desk!’
‘Yeah we can do that porn thing where they lick each other’s tongues in midair!’ I waggled my tongue at her like a frisky lizard.
‘I’m game if you are!’
I pouted. ‘Polly, I’m kidding!’
Polly held her hands apart. ‘I said we could snuggle. Nothing wrong with that. We did it before, remember?’
That was different. We were close again, closer than we should be. My skin was tingly, singing to be touched.
NO.
Cheating is cheating, regardless of gender. I stood and moved to the opposite bunk. ‘I’m going over here where it’s safer.’
Polly laughed. This was amusing her greatly. ‘When did I become unsafe?’
‘You were never safe to begin with.’
She lay back on the bunk, never taking her eyes off me. ‘I’ve got an idea to pass the time.’ Her right hand vanished under the rim of her jeans.
‘Polly!’
But Polly didn’t say anything, just grinned and then bit her bottom lip. Her chest rose and fell as her breathing grew deeper.
Oh what the heck. Was this cheating on Nico in some weird way? I didn’t know anything any more. I didn’t know what I wanted … but I couldn’t look away. I wondered. I wondered what it might be like to … what it would feel like …
That was when the key clanked in the lock. Both of us shot off the beds in a heartbeat, hands where they could be seen. I was horrified – had they been watching us? Had they seen? It was PC Watson. ‘Come on, girls, your dads are waiting to take you home. I mean it though: stay away from Fantasyland, you hear me?’
‘Yes, miss,’ we both said as we shuffled shamefacedly past her. It wasn’t the protest I was guilty about though.
The spell had been broken the second the door had opened, sucked out like a vacuum. In the stark light of the Brompton-on-Sea Police Station everything looked different, everything looked cheap and real. Worst part? If Watson hadn’t come in when she had done, I have no idea what I, what we, would have done.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Pier
Imagine a colossal gothic pendulum swinging inside a bat-filled cathedral and you might have some inkling of how my head was feeling. There were moments, often as I lay in bed with my new bestie Insomnia (she was here on permanent sleepover), where I admitted defeat.
OK I’M GAY NOW.
As I mentioned, that’d be cool. My mum would toss me out on the street, but I was tossing myself out next year anyway so that wasn’t quite as scary as it once might have been. But if only it were that easy. The pendulum kept swinging back the other way.
THE VAGINA HOLDS NO APPEAL.
Yeah, yeah, you’re reading this and screaming the word BISEXUAL, right? But a word, an eight-letter word, isn’t helping me sleep any sounder. Give me your words and I’ll swallow them like pills if they’ll help me find peace of mind. But they won’t.
There was one afternoon where we both cut school to do sex. Nico and I, I stress. He was due to go off to do some recording and gigs the week after so we wanted to make use of what limited time we had together.
After the aforementioned sex, I watched him in the shower. I sat on the toilet seat, wearing one of his slouchy vests, watching the water run off his bum. He’d lost weight. Anxiety, I reckoned. He was still so effing sexy though. I liked his boy body. I really did. But things felt different now.
Nico was gorgeous and kind and funny and I was supposed to want a boyfriend so I went for it. I’d always assumed that those fundamental things would be enough to last forever and ever amen. But when I thought about Polly touching herself in that holding cell … oh god. The FEELS. What I felt for Nico and what I felt for Polly were two distinct entities, like two vast, vivid nebulas in my universe, each entirely different from the other but equally powerful. Both burned bright. All those fairy stories that told me I’d meet a prince and live happily ever after had LIED.
I did it, I got it, I had it all.
I also had this curiosity and it wasn’t going away.
This, this was the Niggly Noo. It always was.
I suppose the question was, if I was happy with Nico, why did I feel this way about Polly? Although wishes are for children and idiots, a theoretical question kept floating through my mind, a fantasy scenario to pass the sleepless hours: if I could somehow distil Essence of Polly into Body of Nico, would I?
In a heartbeat.
Of course, in school the day after our brush with the law Hurricane Polly had acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I didn’t want to look uncool so I didn’t bring it up either. Business as usual.
I so nearly told Beasley in the library workroom. I would have, had it not been for a gay app called Grindr. ‘It’s amazing,’ he told me seconds before I confessed my own ‘gay secret’. ‘It shows you where the nearest gay guys are.’ He mouthed the offending word silently.
I instantly became a gay detective. ‘Where’s the nearest one? Are there any in school?’
‘Not right now, but there was a blank profile earlier. Someone who’s not out.’
‘OMG we should use it as a tracker and find them! My money’s on Mr Greaves!’ I laughed. No heterosexual Maths teacher would have biceps like that.
�
�Shush! Keep your voice down!’
‘Sorry but it’s ridiculous. You’re not going to fall in love with someone based on geography.’ I suspected that was not the developer’s intent either.
Beasley looked a little wounded. ‘No, but I’ve been speaking to a really nice guy who lives a few miles outside town.’ He showed me a picture.
‘Oh, he is cute.’
‘Told you. And at least I know he’s gay.’
Which was more than I did.
Beasley and I were making our way out of the library when a hand grabbed my shoulder. I spun around and found myself face to face with Daisy’s little brother – a chubby Year 10 called Dylan. ‘Oh hi, how are you?’ The librarian shushed us.
‘I’m OK. We’ve, erm, started clearing out Daisy’s stuff. This is for you.’ He handed Beasley a magenta notebook.
‘What is it?’
‘Like, a comic or something. It’s got your name on it.’
‘Thanks,’ Beasley said and Dylan trotted on his way. We pulled up some seats in the main part of the library. ‘I don’t know if I can look,’ Beasley whispered. ‘This is going to ruin me.’
He slid the book over to me and I tentatively opened it to the first page. It read: The GRAND FINALE of the GEOFF SAGA. ‘OMG, it’s the last episode of Geoff. She must have drawn it in case … in case … anything happened.’
No way. She’d known. She’d known her health was failing and kept it to herself. ‘Oh wow,’ was all I could say with my mouth so dry. We read it together. In it, Evil Celine summoned a powerful kraken from Hades with which to run the world. Only Geoff could stop her.
‘So Geoff dies?’ Beasley asked, horrified.
‘Wait, look.’ I turned the page.
‘I guess he’s just a normal squirrel now.’ I saw exactly what Daisy had done … every boring old squirrel in the world was now a potential Geoff. Every time I saw a squirrel from now on it might be our cross-dressing squirrel friend in disguise. A tear pooled in the corner of my eye.
‘He looks happy,’ Beasley agreed.
‘He looks free, doesn’t he?’ I said, my eyes glistening.