All of the Above

by Juno Dawson

  Yeah, I liked her too.

  Oh crap, I was going to cry in public. Tears burned behind my nose. ‘Sorry, will you excuse me?’

  ‘Of course. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’ I got to the bathroom the same second I could hold it back no longer. I gripped the sink and cried.

  I liked the girl with the pink hair.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Polly

  I missed her so much.

  Whenever something funny happened, she was the only person I wanted to text.

  It ached like hunger pains.

  It was hunger pains.

  The worst part of all was that I didn’t know myself any more. All my life I’d assumed I was the little pig who’d built his house out of bricks. Everyone else was shaky, but I was the solid stalwart – the good-in-a-crisis friend. Wrong. I was the dickhead with the straw. One huff and puff, the first whiff of drama and the whole thing had come crashing down.

  I was exposed. Out there on my own and naked.

  Admitting I liked Polly was supposed to make things easier. I’d stopped lying to myself, that was something surely. But then a tsunami of questions hit: AM I GAY? WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? AM I BI? HAVE I CHANGED? WILL MUM HATE ME? WHAT ABOUT BOYS? WHAT ABOUT KIDS? WHAT ABOUT VAGINAS? WHAT ABOUT SEX?

  What about me?

  I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what to do next. But I knew that I liked her. More than that … I needed her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Beach

  It was a lot to take in. Admitting there’s a monster under the bed doesn’t make the monster less terrifying. In fact, it only makes you avoid bed altogether. Now I couldn’t see Polly.

  And so I went for a walk on the beach. As forlorn as Brompton-on-Sea was, I had grown to love the on-sea part. There’s something soothing about being able to look out that far without interruption, to see where the world curves. I loved the spookiness of the wraith-like sea frets that rolled inland on cool days, to be burned off by the mid-morning sun. Honestly, I’d started thinking about Sussex as a university choice so I could stay near the coast.

  I ignored the shell of what would soon be the new diner and walked along the beach towards the cliffs. As I recall it wasn’t a very nice day. The sea and sky were the same heavy, grungy grey, pressing in on me like the pages of a book. It had rained earlier and it was going to rain again, so the beach was pretty deserted except for a couple of dog walkers and a kamikaze surfer dude braving the elements. There’s always one.

  Oh Christ on a bike, what was I supposed to do now? Hi, Polly! Let’s give it a go! I don’t know if I like girls, but you’re literally all I think about. I legitimately bore myself replaying our conversations in my head! If I could I’d talk about you all day long to anyone who’ll listen. I’m a one-girl fandom!

  Another stubborn little troll at the back of my mind didn’t want to prove her right. God, she’d be insufferable. That said, that was some textbook cutting off my nose to spite my vagina.

  A yappy sea wind tugged ribbons of hair around my face and I didn’t see Nico’s mum until she was waving a hand under my nose.

  ‘Toria! You’re a million miles away!’

  ‘Oh hi, Mrs … Sofia. How are you?’

  Further up the beach, their beast of a dog nosed through sand and seaweed. He seemed happy doing his thing while Sofia strolled alongside carrying a leash and poop bag.

  ‘I am very good. How are you, my dear? You seem … so deep in thoughts.’

  I pulled the hair off my face, wishing I’d brought a band. ‘No, no, I’m fine. How’s Nico getting on?’ I asked, none too subtly changing the subject.

  ‘Oh, he’s doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing. He is very happy I think.’

  And that did lift my heart. Whatever I was feeling, Nico was OK. I wanted only good things for that boy. ‘Good. Good, I’m glad.’

  Sofia considered me, her lips tightening. ‘Toria, my sweet, sweet girl. Tell me what’s wrong. Walking all alone on the beach like this is very dramatic. You can’t be happy.’

  Shit, I was gonna cry in public. Again. I could feel it. I could feel it poking the back of my eyes. I blinked the bastards back. ‘Ha! I’m sorry! I must look so emo! I needed some space.’ I swear I left my body and judged myself from on high for saying that sentence aloud.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I shook my head. I found I was unable to say what the issue really was, so I fudged it. ‘It’s just … a lot, you know? Like Daisy. And Nico and me breaking up, then he left and I’ve … fallen out … with Polly. God, and then there’s next year. It’s a lot.’

  Sofia smiled sympathetically. ‘Come here, sweet girl.’ For someone so tiny she gave a surprisingly beary hug. ‘Nothing endures but change.’

  I pulled back and wiped the tear that had escaped away. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s a quote. It means that change is the only constant. Nothing stands still. Would you want it to?’ I’m pretty sure my face must have been looking vacant because she carried on. ‘Pick up a pebble.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just do it! Humour me!’

  I reached down and picked up a smooth silver pebble with almost pearly stripes running through it. I brushed sand off it and went to hand it to Sofia.

  ‘How does it feel?’

  I turned it over in my palm a couple of times. ‘Pebbly.’

  With a smile, she took it from me and hurled it across the beach. Buster went to see what she’d thrown. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to find that same pebble in a day’s time?’

  Was this a riddle or something? ‘No. Probably not.’

  ‘And do you think you can reach out and touch the memory of it?’

  ‘What? No … that’s impossible.’

  ‘Exactly! The past! The future! What is the past and the future? The past is pictures in your head. They are not real: you cannot reach out and touch them, and you should only spend so much time looking at them. And as for the future … who knows! That pebble might still be here tomorrow or it might be washed out to sea.’ Sofia took both my hands in hers. ‘There is only the now, Toria. It’s the only thing that’s real, that is solid. Don’t waste time with the past or with the future. If you spend all your time there you are not living at all. They are nothing. What are you going to do now?’ she asked with a broad smile. One of her front teeth was missing a corner.

  Oh yeah, she was talking some primary-school-assembly philosophical Buddhist mumbo-jumbo, but the really annoying thing was: I saw her point. Daisy was gone, Nico was gone and tomorrow is the day that never arrives.

  Right now what I felt for Polly was that stupid magic pebble. And I had to do something about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Prom

  Obviously I was not attending the prom. I’d bought a ticket to support the mental-health unit Becca and Summer had selected, but I couldn’t be arsed. The whole event had been commandeered by the likes of Summer and it was just another excuse to get a spray tan. As far as I knew Alice and Beasley were going with the music crowd to play crazy golf. There was some sort of alt/anti-prom thing in the charter where students were free to express themselves the way Daisy had always done. In my head that meant the pretty Barbie girls would have even more ammunition to make fun of us.

  I was boycotting and I knew Polly, wherever she was, intended to too. I was building up to seeing her. I was! I was waiting for the right moment.

  I was scared.

  I was hiding from her.

  On the day, I decided I was going to spend prom night in my pyjamas downloading American TV shows and watching them in bed. In years to come when people said, ‘Did you go to your prom?’ I could answer proudly, ‘I wanted nothing to do with that sycophantic circle jerk.’ Not going at all was the ultimate statement.

  I didn’t even hear the knock at the front door. ‘Toria!’ It was Dad, shouting up the stairs. ‘Polly’s here!’ />
  What? Suddenly I wasn’t scared any more. In that moment, I honestly didn’t care in what context she was back – friend or snogfriend, I was just glad she was back. It felt like dawn breaking after a really long Arctic night. She’d come to patch things up. This was perfect; we’d boycott together and watch Beetlejuice or something. I ran onto the landing and started down the stairs. I was only halfway down when I was halted in my tracks.

  I didn’t recognise her. She looked almost supernatural, in the best possible way.

  Her hair was Storm-from-X-Men white, curled into a gentle starlet wave. Her eyebrows were bleached too, making her look even more like the Snow Queen. A sleek ivory Gatsby gown fell like a waterfall over her frame and there was a fur stole over her shoulders. There were pearls at her neck.

  She was almost too beautiful to look directly at, like staring at an eclipse.

  ‘Oh my god,’ I said, mouth slack. ‘You look incredible.’

  It changed her somehow. For the first time she looked dove-feather soft, not hard, like she didn’t want to fight any more. And neither did I. She looked up at me through thick black lashes.

  ‘Thank you. I got the dress from the charity shop. Is it a bit Miss Havisham?’

  ‘No! Not at all. Bit dressed up for coming round mine though.’

  She smiled. ‘I thought I’d make an effort! Can we talk?’

  We went outside. It was a gorgeous evening – balmy but with a kiss of a breeze – even crickets chirruped away, serenading us like a little mariachi band. I’d never noticed them before, but then I hadn’t been listening. There was a low wall at the end of the driveway, far enough away from nosy ears within the house, so I perched on that.

  Polly perched next to me and I worried she might get dirt on her beautiful dress. ‘I think we should go to the prom. You know, for Daisy. It’s rude not to, however we feel about it.’

  She was right.

  ‘And I’m sorry,’ she went on. ‘I was being a ******* ****. Bottom line is life is better with you in it. You know how tea without sugar tastes of piss? Well, that. I don’t care what we are. I just want you around.’

  I would NOT cry. ‘God, me too! I’ve missed you like mad.’

  ‘I know. I was such a bag of dicks.’

  I laughed. ‘I was a dick too.’

  ‘No,’ Polly said forcefully. ‘What I said was really shady. I had no right to tell you what you should feel or what you should think. I’m not the boss of you.’

  I took the biggest breath of my life. ‘Well, I have been thinking … like A LOT. I think I was … scared. I’m still scared. There. I said it.’

  She looked sad for a moment. ‘I don’t want you to be scared of me.’

  ‘I’m not. I … I’m scared of us.’ Thank god for those crickets because a really long silence followed that. It was a silence that demanded to be filled with … something. Should I? Would she? I think I wanted her to. The night held its breath.

  Polly shook it off, breaking the spell. ‘Look, let’s not get all maudlin and philosophical, let’s just go and drink punch, play crazy golf and mock girls who look like drag queens.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t go like this.’

  ‘Well, you can – that whole freedom-of-expression thing!’

  ‘I’m NOT going to prom in my pyjamas!’

  ‘You must have some old **** hanging in your wardrobe.’

  And I had an idea.

  ‘You look stunning.’ Mum stood back to admire her old peacock-blue sari. The one from the photograph in the hall.

  Putting on a sari is a process. I wore a turquoise choli, like a belly-top thing, and a matching petticoat skirt before Mum dutifully wrapped me in the sari while Polly looked on, slightly in awe. With a silent pride, Mum wrapped the sari first around my waist, tucking it into the skirt before wrapping and gathering the metres and metres of gold and blue fabric until the last train hung elegantly over my shoulder.

  ‘I can hardly breathe,’ I whined. My wrists were weighed down with gold bangles and a delicate tikka matha patti lined my hair parting, the jewels tickling my forehead.

  ‘That means I’ve done it right.’ She smiled. ‘Toria, your grandma would be so, so proud to see you like this. I’m proud too. It’s so funny that I never …’ She didn’t finish the sentence, instead stroking my cheek. She smiled, properly smiled. I’d made her happy and that made me happy. Tears clouded my sight and I blinked them back before she could see. ‘Let me get the camera.’

  ‘You look awesome,’ Polly agreed. I admired myself in the mirror. I didn’t look like me, but I looked good. There was no time to do anything fancy with my hair so I straightened it and applied some of Mum’s ruby lipstick. Aishwarya Rai, eat your heart out.

  I can’t do liquid liner by myself because I keep having to draw over mistakes, making the line longer and longer until I end up looking like Cleopatra. But Mum, with a steady hand, drew perfect little flicks in the corner of each eye. I looked so much older than I was.

  Dad, who also teared up when he saw me, dropped us off at school and we entered the sports hall. The party was well under way. It was almost dizzying: the doors opened onto a spinning noisy carousel of bodies. The room was filled with giant papier-mâché daisies. That would explain the stack of withies in the Art room then. They were suspended from the ceiling, twirling like disco balls. The lights were somehow projecting daisies across the floor too, god knew how. It could have been tacky but because people had cared enough to do it, it was kind of beautiful.

  But not as beautiful as Polly. As we slipped into the hall, onlookers had the same reaction I’d had. They froze and gasped. She was literally set-to-stun. Eyes followed her across the room. ‘Everyone’s looking at you,’ I whispered in her ear.

  ‘Us. They’re looking at us.’ That should have scared me, but I was fine with it. I was proud of us. We were here and we were here as ourselves.

  I saw Beasley on the dance floor with Jack. I turned to Polly. ‘Did you know he was bringing Jack?’

  She beamed like a proud mother. ‘No. Good for him.’

  I ran over and threw my arms around him. His mouth fell open. ‘OMG! I didn’t think you were coming!’ Beasley was giddy to see me. ‘You … you look … fabulous!’

  ‘Polly twisted my arm. And thank you!’

  Beasley saw Polly for the first time and swore, well, like Polly. ‘Holy ******* ****, I didn’t even recognise you!’ and then ‘Girl, you really need to leave your hair alone or you are gonna go bald.’

  Polly smiled. ‘Maybe one day.’

  ‘Well, you both look, to use Gay Vocab 101, “fierce”.’ Beasley, whether he realised it or not, had just said he was gay aloud. I decided not to draw attention to it, but I too was so, so proud of him.

  Summer appeared on stage. She adjusted the mic and feedback wailed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, now it’s time for our very special guests … Brompton’s very own Action Station!’

  And now my mouth fell open. Etienne strutted onto the stage with Nico close behind. He saw me and gave an enthusiastic, and deeply uncool, wave. ‘Did you know about this?’

  ‘I did,’ Polly said with a sly smile. ‘It was a surprise. Nico and I cooked it up.’

  ‘What if I’d said no?’

  She shrugged. ‘I might have told you then.’

  I shook my head. Was this some sort of bizarre wish-fulfilment dream? Would Cumberbatch soon appear to ask me to dance? No. If it was, Daisy would have really been here, not just a smiling face in a photograph by the exit. ‘This is … perfect.’

  And it was.

  The band started with the ‘bangers’, as it were, before slowing things down for ‘Papercuts’, which had always been my favourite. It was, of course, the one about Polly. ‘It’s time for the erection section,’ Etienne slurred into his mic. I stood awkwardly, facing the stage.

  Jack wrapped his hands around Beasley’s neck, and although his cheeks went scarlet, he didn’t shrug him off. This was it, Beasley’s coming-out
party. And no one cared. I guess Beasley being gay wasn’t exactly headline news, but still – to him this was a huge step. A few people looked his way and a couple of people whispered but nobody laughed or pointed. It was more polite disinterest than anything else.

  The world carried on turning. Everyone else was far more interested in whomever it was they were clinging to.

  I caught Nico’s eye. He smiled, and it was a face from another life, one of those pictures in my mind. An old friend. We’d come so far, all of us. You don’t always need a road for a road trip.

  I turned to Polly, who stood right behind me, watching the band. ‘Polly? Will you dance with me?’

  A brief moment of confusion before her eyes lit with hope. ‘Yeah. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I’d never slow-danced before and I wasn’t sure how it was meant to go. I linked my arms around her neck and she looped hers around my waist. We tessellated well; we fit together. Etienne’s voice swooped and dipped in melancholy waves and we spun to the lullaby. I rested my head on Polly’s shoulder, taking in her heavy boudoir perfume.

  That feeling was back: the bright pink shapes behind my eyelids, the heat in my tummy. I’d felt it in the toilet, by the campfire, in the police station.

  No one else made me feel this way. It was her.

  I was done. I couldn’t pretend that this didn’t make me happy. This was the correct closeness for Polly and I. It felt so good it made me stronger; it bleached out the voices telling me people were staring, that people were talking. I didn’t want to let go. Together we’d be OK.

  It took no thought at all to kiss her. I simply wasn’t one second and the next I was.

  The room was empty now. The world was empty. It was just Polly and I dancing, a little island in a great big ocean. I rested my head on her shoulder. ‘This is going to be really weird,’ I said.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘But I really want to. I do. But I can’t promise …’

  ‘Tor, it’s fine. We don’t keep score.’