by Juno Dawson
The day of the Summer Fayre was gorgeous and the market square was jam-packed with parents, kids, old people … pretty much the whole town. My old town had nothing like this – there was bunting and music and stalls selling jam and scones. It was like stepping into a postcard from a History lesson. It was nice: not ironically nice, properly nice.
Mum and Dad came down to check it out too. It was kinda weird; I didn’t very often see them in daylight, least of all outside the house. They both looked happy, walking from stall to stall arm in arm. I wondered about Mum and SAD, that thing where you’re depressed in winter – I guessed it was hard to be lower-case sad when the weather was so glorious. Mum hadn’t had a drink today either, despite the stalls selling Pimm’s.
We ran into Polly with Mr and Mrs Wolff at a fudge stall, and the moment was pretty much fudge. Clearly my parents think Polly is a ne’er-do-well who saw their pristine little girl wind up in a police station. Being around your friends when their parents are around is the weirdest thing ever. I always feel like I should curtsy or something. ‘Hi there, Derek,’ my dad said. Since when did he call Mr Wolff Derek? Also, ‘Derek and Eric’? Ugh, this was like being in a nightmare. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Not too bad, mate … can’t complain.’ Small talk ensued. Polly and I hovered at our parents’ sides like sullen mascots. Awkward didn’t cover it.
Thankfully, the mayor came on stage and thanked everyone for coming along. She introduced Action Station, describing them as the ‘town’s brightest young things’ while Polly and I broke away and found Alice already at the front of the stage with Alex.
‘God, when did our parents become friends?’
‘Apparently when we were in jail. Man, that was weird.’ I was glad Polly was talking to me at least.
Action Station performed four songs – with all the swearing removed – and Etienne didn’t fellate the microphone or rub it against his crotch once. They’d either been neutered by Sony or they simply had the sense to know there were kids in the audience. Even without the antics, they were brilliant. So, so polished. Watching Nico now, it almost felt like a dream that we’d ever been a couple – high up on that stage he felt as far removed as the pop stars on TV. He was gone. That was OK.
Beasley joined us halfway through the set. ‘Hey, I was with the music lot. There’s a barbeque on the beach after all this. Are you coming?’
‘Sure,’ Polly said, so I jumped in while we were getting along.
‘Yeah. I’ll have to check with my mum and dad, but it should be OK.’
Nico caught my eye and smiled down. It almost floored me.
Maybe one day, in ten years or something, I’d be waiting in an airport departure lounge and I’d get a tap on the shoulder. I’d turn around and there’d be a gorgeous yet strangely familiar man looking at me through hooded eyes. He’d say, ‘Sorry, but are you Toria Grand?’
I’d say, ‘Well, it’s Toria Cumberbatch now, but I’m recently divorced,’ and we’d fall back in love and get married.
But the time wasn’t now. I wasn’t going to be Nico Mancini’s child bride.
The beach was the unofficial after-party. All of Action Station came down, along with the music people from both our school and Nico’s college. Even The Gash called truce and came too. Everyone bought disposable barbeques, although few had the patience to wait the SEVEN YEARS it took them to get sufficiently hot to warm a frozen burger beyond salmonella point.
This, of course, meant everyone was twice as drunk as they should have been. Even I was tipsier than usual. Beasley’s new ‘friend’ Jack from the next town came over and we all got a good look. Jack was cute in a skater-boy-next-door way and he and Beasley sat a little away from the rest of us, their body language coy.
As I hung out with Nico, soaking up his last evening in Brompton, I saw Polly hanging out with Zoë, the latter climbing in and out of Polly’s lap. What was that about? Were they getting back together? I hoped not: a) Zoë was kind of high-maintenance and b) it made me feel decidedly unspecial. At the same time, Polly seemed to be flirting with Etienne. How fickle was she? Moreover, after my big speech on camping night, I knew I didn’t have the right to be bothered. But I was.
We sat in a circle, playing I Have Never. ‘I have never gone skinny-dipping!’ Etienne announced.
Nico took a drink and I screamed. ‘When did you go skinny-dipping?’
‘I’ve lived by the sea my whole life – of course I have!’
The questions became increasingly dirty and I suspected people were lying to look cooler. I very much doubted that Alex had tried crack for example. ‘I have never,’ Alfie from Action Station said, ‘made out with a dude … or a girl if you’re a girl.’
OK, this was my turn to be a little bit edgy. I took a sip of my beer.
‘Spin-the-bottle doesn’t count!’ Nico said.
I took another sip of beer and arched an eyebrow suggestively. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’ I avoided Polly’s gaze on purpose. ‘Have you never kissed a guy?’
‘Just that time at Zoë’s. I would though.’
Next to him, Beasley puckered up. ‘Go on then!’
Nico took a sip of beer and pounced on Beasley’s face, the poor guy not expecting him to call his bluff. His eyes widened and he fell back into the sand. Only I knew what that kiss meant, but I was so pleased Beasley had finally got a snog with Nico. Happy early Birthday, Martin Beasley. The rest of us laughed and cheered. ‘God, get some lube,’ Etienne said with a foxish smile.
I saw Polly watching me from across the circle. She beamed at me and I looked away. I was so confused.
Evening fell and as the beach cleared, we stayed. Some people chased the surf, running in and out and trying to keep their feet dry. I sat further up the sand, a little drunk and a little morose. Sometimes that happens when I drink; I don’t get silly, I get sad. When that happens I quietly take myself home. It’s not a cry for attention. I don’t need anyone else to feel bad for me. It’s enough that I feel bad for myself. Whatever I’d drunk had disagreed with me.
Shoes in hand, Polly came and sat next to me. She was drunk, I could tell; her eyes were kind of googly. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I lied.’
‘What?’ I wasn’t sure I could process a proper conversation at that point.
‘I lie all the time – just little ones – because people believe me and it’s ******* funny. Sometimes I tell people I lived in Japan for a while. I never did. I’m as bad as Beas.’
‘Again … what?’
Her head flopped back like it was too heavy for her neck. ‘I lied, Tor. I don’t just want to mess around with you. I really like you. I don’t get why we can’t be like a thing. Or at least try.’
I was physically winded and I wanted to go home. I wasn’t as drunk as her and it wasn’t attractive. ‘What?’ I said AGAIN. ‘How about because I’m not gay?’
From the look on her face, that was the wrong answer. ‘Yeah, so ******* what? Neither am I.’
‘Polly, don’t.’
‘No,’ Polly argued, sounding more than a little petulant. ‘I’m so bored of pretending. We’d be so ******* good together. When we kiss it’s like … wow. And not just the fun stuff! I know this sounds bat****, but I feel like there’s something between us – like a chain keeping us together. I want to fall asleep next to you and wake up with you and hold you during the bit in between.’
Something about the cosiness appealed … but … no! ‘That’s not the point. I want you to be my friend.’
‘Well, I want us to be more than friends. Tor, saying this was really hard for me.’
Stand-off. I stood up. ‘You’re drunk and we’re going around in circles. I’m gonna go. Let’s just … let’s just see how you feel when you’re sober.’
Polly stood too and followed me down the beach. ‘Oh **** off. I know what I’m saying, the beer made me braver. This is me saying what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Like since you arrived. Since you flashed your tits.’
> I dismissed her with a flourish of my hand. ‘Look, this isn’t happening, OK?’
‘You like me too, admit it.’
‘Of course I like you!’
‘But more than just friends.’
We were friends, although admittedly I’d never felt so strongly about one before. Polly is all about extreme and I don’t know if I’d felt such extremes about anyone. ‘OK, best friends!’
Polly threw her hands up, exasperated. ‘Best ******* friends? What are you? Eleven?’ We were on the front now, near the building site that used to be the golf course. ‘Isn’t that what you’re looking for? A best friend? Isn’t that what a boyfriend or girlfriend is? A naked best friend!’
I was aghast. ‘Polly, it’s the naked bit that’s the issue.’
Polly stopped, her face now serious. She searched for the right words. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you’d let a soulmate pass you by because of biology?’ She spat the last word like it was poison.
‘God! Yes! It’s kind of a big thing!’
She shook her head. ‘It really isn’t.’ I swore I saw tears glisten in her eyes. ‘There’s only how you feel and how I feel, and everything else is packaging. I want you so much, Tor. I can’t just be friends.’
I was having a lot of feelings, but the one that won out was anger. ‘So it’s your way or the highway? It’s always about you getting your own way! I’m sorry, but I can’t change who I am because it’s what you want! It’s not fair! What about what I want? Does that even come into it?’
Polly was crying now: big fat tears running off her nose. ‘I thought it was what you wanted. Like I could feel something between us!’
What did I want? It sounds like an easy question, doesn’t it? It was ten times harder than any exam I’d ever sat and it was a question I couldn’t answer. Long run, I didn’t know what I wanted. At that moment in time, I wanted nothing except to go home. ‘Polly, I’m going home. I’m sorry, but I really can’t handle all this. It’s too much.’
‘Just admit it!’ she cried. ‘Just admit that you feel it too!’
‘I don’t! Not like that.’ I was full to the brim with rage. This was all about her, what she wanted. She hadn’t stopped to think about what this was doing to me for a second. I walked away.
‘You’re lying, Toria, I know you.’
Well, I didn’t know anything and it made me nuclear. I whipped back to face her, snarling, hair in my mouth. ‘You don’t know me!’ And then: ‘I don’t fucking know me.’ And then: ‘There’s nothing to know.’
With tears stinging my eyes, I marched up the hill and this time I didn’t look back. I didn’t hear footsteps following me and I was glad. I wanted to be far, far away from Polly Wolff and I didn’t care if I never saw her again. Whatever spell she’d worked on me over this year was done. I was out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Art
It was actually a relief to be done with them. I wasn’t talking to Polly, and Beasley was always attending some gay youth group thing with Jack so I had a chance to reconnect with my friends online. I’d missed them and they’d missed me – I’d been a crappy friend. There were whole threads in forums about where I’d vanished to and whether or not I’d died.
It wasn’t a bad thing to press pause on life for a couple of weeks. Time slowed to its normal pace. Daisy and then Nico and then Polly – going at warp speed was grinding me down. And so I took a little vacation from life.
When I got home from school, I went online and didn’t come off until bedtime. I caught up on all my vlogs. I watched anime in bed on my laptop. I took long hot baths instead of showers until I was shrivelled like a prune. I exfoliated, toned and moisturised. I resumed my annual Potter reread from Goblet of Fire. It was bliss.
I had also neglected Mum and Dad. I remembered what Mum had said at Christmas and I hadn’t done a thing to make her feel any better – I’d been so fixated on my own bullshit dramas. Peering out from my cave, she seemed to be doing better. She went to spinning twice a week, which, it transpired, was just an exercise-bike class – and she’d made some friends, Jill and Chennai. That was good. In September she would be working three days a week at the school library too. That was even better.
I helped to cook dinner and allowed myself to become drawn into some Swedish crime thing that Mum and Dad were working their way through. It was stupidly addictive, and soon I was mainlining back-to-back episodes with them in the lounge (as well as developing a passable grasp of Swedish). It was pretty alien even being in the lounge – a room I’d barely set foot in since we’d moved to Brompton. Who knew the big Ikea couch was so comfy?
One evening I helped Mum to make risotto. I was chopping up some asparagus when she hovered at my side. It was a weeknight and, true to her word, the wine stayed corked.
‘Are you OK, love?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Have you had a falling out with your friends?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Oh come on, Vic. We haven’t seen you all year and now you haven’t left the house in a fortnight. Something must be wrong … is someone giving you grief at school?’
‘God no, nothing like that.’ I moved on to shelling some peas. ‘Everyone’s just really busy.’
Mum wasn’t having any of it. ‘When I was your age I had this friend called Laura. You and Polly remind me of how we used to be.’
For the sake of my sanity and a lifetime of therapy I really, really hoped not. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Yep, we were every bit as intense. I mean we were best, best friends. Totally inseparable. It wasn’t healthy really. Your granddad hated her so much, and blamed her for leading me off the straight and narrow.’
I knew that feeling. I’d never heard of this Laura though, and Mum hardly ever mentioned her father. ‘What happened?’
‘We used to go out down the high street. We were only fifteen but they’d let us into Porky’s. We were a pair of nightmares – I swear that’s how your gran ended up with grey hair. But then boys got involved and we fell out. I met this guy called Gavin and she didn’t like it one little bit.’
I threw the peas into the pan. ‘Well, that’s not what happened with me and Polly.’
‘Sometimes I think when things burn that bright they fizzle out faster, do you know what I mean? It’s the same with boyfriends. Some people are candles, some people are fireworks.’
I said nothing, but she was right. I couldn’t do it. Polly was a firework, make no mistake – bright, loud, explosive. I was a candle. It had been fun while it lasted, but after that long on a roller coaster I was starting to feel sick. It was sad it was ending, and I wasn’t going to forget this year in a hurry. One day, I had no doubt I’d wax lyrical about this year to my daughter while we made risotto.
I had to go to school and avoid her. She was avoiding me too – eating her lunch off-campus. I was hanging out mainly with Alice or working on my portfolio in the Art studio. One lunchtime, I went to the common room looking for Beasley or Alice – I’d seen Polly heading off site so I knew the coast was clear. They weren’t there when I arrived, but Freya was reading a book in the corner so I went to sit with her and wait for the others.
‘Hey, Freya,’ I said. She didn’t look up from her book. ‘What are you reading?’ I saw it was The Fault in Our Stars. ‘Oh I read that last year. Mega sad, right? Which bit are you up to?’
And then Freya spoke. Her voice was quiet and monotone. ‘Will you please go away?’
‘What?’
Her grey-blue eyes peered at me. ‘Just fuck off.’
‘What? Sorry I …’
‘I just want to read my book.’
‘OK. There’s no need to be rude. I thought we were mates.’
‘We are not mates. I hang out with you to get my parents off my back.’
‘Oh, OK.’
She looked at me, dark circles like bruises around her eyes. ‘You’re all really annoying.’
‘Erm, thanks for that.�
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‘You talk about yourselves all the time. I. Just. Want. To. Read.’
‘OK, I’ll leave you to it.’ I backed away very slowly in case she bit me. She probably had a point. I considered myself schooled.
It was safer to stay in the Art room. No Polly, no scary book girls. Plus, my portfolio was due for submission so it needed polishing up. This was the future. I could spend all my breaks next year in here. Some of the other Art students were really cool, I could effortlessly slot in with them. Mia was lovely and always shared her Popchips with me. Rory was as hipster as they came but had a soft sarcasm I liked a lot.
See? I didn’t need Polly.
Mrs Ford wafted over to me with a rattle of plastic bangles. ‘How’s it coming along, Toria?’
‘It’s OK. I think I’m going to leave all of these out –’ I gestured to some pop-arty, Lichtenstein-looking numbers – ‘and just go with the collages. I’m not sure they hang well together.’
Mrs Ford hmmmed.
‘The collages are certainly more your style, but don’t be afraid to be diverse too. You can group them in sets. Can I see the moving collages?’
‘Sure.’ I opened up my laptop and found the files.
‘Oh, these are very good. I love that – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – they’re so … tacky and shallow.’
That was exactly what I’d been going for. I wanted everything to feel mass-produced, almost cheap and nasty. ‘It’s intentional! Honestly!’
‘Don’t worry, I can tell. I love the use of mock logos … MacWrongald’s, Starfucks … clever. And who’s the pink-haired girl?’ Mrs Ford pointed at a big-eyed manga kawaii girl. ‘She pops up a lot.’
I looked at my portfolio. I hadn’t realised I’d used that motif as often as I had to be honest. She was ever-present, either in portraits, holding a fish skeleton to her cheek like a rose or in duplicate like a chain of paper dolls. ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. There she was, time and time again, stuck on repeat.
‘Well, I like her!’