by Sarah Lawton
‘Speaking of Molly…’ Tilly points her out as she walks in. She’s also spotted Newboy and she’s doing her thing, walking slowly past him shaking her mane as she does, but he doesn’t pay her any attention at all, much to Molly’s disgust, as she walks over.
‘He’ll notice soon enough,’ she says, supremely confident in her ability to snare any boys in the vicinity. We fall about laughing.
‘Maybe he doesn’t go for year ten girls, like us,’ I tell her, with a comforting pat to her shoulder. ‘I wonder why he’s started at the sixth-form college at the end of the year.’
‘Because he’s a creepy old freak?’ suggests Serena, who has also sauntered in half-late, uncaring as always. ‘My sister says he’s a right weirdo who just sits at the back of the class and stares at everyone. Apparently he lives on his own in some scuzzy bedsit miles away. He’s here for some random mature-student course one of those crusty tutors in there offers, because he missed his A levels. He’s nearly nineteen already.’
‘I wish I lived on my own,’ I say, wondering how Serena always seems to know so much about everyone. ‘And anyway, I’m sure he’ll warm up once Molly gets her hands on him!’
‘I’m not going to some scuzzy bedsit, though,’ she replies, running her hands through her long hair before picking up her bag. ‘I don’t want fleas.’ This inspires more hysterical giggling and we walk into our class, arm in arm, a unit.
* * *
It takes me a long time to forget about Newboy and his disconcerting vampire-like eyelashes as we settle in to the day. We’ve got science to start with and, interestingly for once, we’re getting to watch a dissection. The lab tech has brought in a shallow dish covered with a blue paper towel. A couple of the girls refuse to watch.
Chloe sneers at our teacher. ‘I’m a vegan, sir.’
‘I’m not asking you to eat it, Chloe,’ he quips back, quick as always. ‘Just understand how its systems fit together. No one has to stay who doesn’t want to watch – that’s absolutely fine. You can sit in the corridor and read chapter seventeen of your textbooks quietly.’
Chloe flounces out with Becky, who is unable to do anything independently, reliant as she is on the other girl for any sort of social life.
Mr Forsyth whips off the blue paper with a flourish. There is a fat rat in the dish, splayed out, crucified. Its fur is stained yellow with what I think is formaldehyde, and it doesn’t look like it’s ever been alive. Matthew Grey takes one look at it and walks out of the classroom, grabbing a textbook as he goes.
‘Anyone else want to leave?’ asks Mr F, picking up a delightfully shiny scalpel. Molly and I are sitting directly in front of the operation but we can handle it. Scientific minds. He uses the scalpel to make a bloodless slit in the rat’s stomach and then picks up what looks like a pair of miniature scissors on long handles and uses them to cut through the small creature’s rib cage with a crunchy little snick sound that makes me shiver. Another one of the boys walks out looking a bit pale, but Molly and I are fascinated, leaning forward and watching intently as the rat’s skin and muscle is peeled away and its tiny bones bent back, revealing the lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach. It’s all so small. It’s all so dead. I’m aware of the buzzing bluebottle voice of Mr Forsyth as he talks through the pieces he’s exposing with deft thrusts of the scalpel, but all I see are the colours of the rat’s insides, like bruises but shiny and slippery. My skin feels tight. I think that I can smell the guts, meaty and thick. Raw.
‘Would you like to see the eye socket?’ he says suddenly, and before anyone can answer he slides the scalpel into the rat’s cheek and twists it. The perfectly round casing of the rat’s eyeball pops right out of its head and, next to me, Molly vomits.
* * *
‘I can’t believe I threw up,’ Molly says, as she makes me hold her mass of hair back so she can rinse her mouth in the bathroom. It feels heavy and hot in my hands, almost alive. I don’t know how she can bear it all over her in this weather. It’s revolting.
‘Have you got any chewing gum, Vivi?’
I let go of her hair with relief and scrabble around in my bag and find that I do have some – a scuffed and folded packet with one left in the bottom, the foil twisted and soft like the skin on an old lady’s fingers.
‘It might have gone off a bit,’ I say apologetically as I hand it over, but I doubt Molly cares beyond getting the taste of sick out of her mouth.
‘I can’t believe he just sat there and did that,’ she moans, resting her head against the cool mirror and staring into her own blue eyes. ‘Its eye socket just popped out. It looked like one of those chocolate bits you get in a corner yogurt.’
Now I feel sick, too.
Molly recovers quickly enough and is more embarrassed than anything – it goes around our small school in a matter of minutes, passed gleefully from mouth to ear with a giggle and a ‘No way!’ People veer away from her good-naturedly and call her ‘vom breath’, but she is too well-liked for it to last for long and she takes it well, brushing it off and shrieking with laughter when people run up behind her squeaking like rodents. It’s probably only the lab tech who had to clean up after Molly, as well as incinerate the cut-up rat, who is bothered. I briefly picture it burning, its little body curling and twisting and going black and grey and white, crumbling to ash and nothing.
The bell rings and we all bustle out of our chairs, buzzing with anticipation as we grab our bags and push our way through to the corridor, and then outside. I wait for the girls at our usual spot under the oak that spreads itself into the sky at the boundary of where our school field meets common ground, and a copse.
I’m always first on a Friday afternoon because Molly and Serena and Tilly all have pretentious drama, which is on the other side of the school from the art rooms. Their teacher is a failed actress turned teacher who faffs around and usually keeps the class over time because she wants them to watch her perform something they are supposed to be learning, so they are always late out. I don’t mind, though; it’s good to have a moment to unwind and the sounds of everyone leaving are already fading away as I lie back against the knotty trunk of the tree and close my eyes.
I’m almost dozing off when I hear a scraping noise above me and I open my eyes and look up into the tree to see that there is a boy – Newboy, actually – sitting in the bloody tree and just staring at me. I don’t move; I look back, challenging him to speak first. He doesn’t, he just laughs and then I’m cross, temper suddenly bubbling up in me, which makes me even more angry because I don’t like to get angry; it doesn’t agree with me.
‘Pervert!’ I shout up at him. ‘Do you get off staring at girls when they don’t know you’re there? Why are you up there anyway, you weirdo? Aren’t you a bit too old to be climbing trees?’
He lets his weight pull him out of the tree, leaning forward and falling feet first, landing so quietly that I briefly wonder if he is even real. He sits down next to me.
‘I was there first,’ he tells me, in an annoyingly sexy voice. ‘I wasn’t staring at you the whole time; anyway, I didn’t realise you were even there until you started snoring.’
‘I was not snoring!’
‘Are those your friends?’ he says, nodding in the direction of the school.
‘Yes,’ I reply, turning to look at them walking towards us through the warm hazy air. Molly is wearing her long socks pulled up over her knees, her skirt shorter now she’s out of school and can hike it up without being told off. She looks curvy and touchable, and I’m suddenly bitter-jealous and all awkward elbows and scrawny hips.
Newboy is silent for a moment and then says: ‘Right, I’m off. Nice to meet you…?’ The word hangs in the air between us, it’s a question for me to take.
‘Vivian,’ I say, willing myself not to blush like a twelve-year-old.
He doesn’t repeat it back to me incredulously or laugh, like most people do at my stupid granny name. He looks pleased with himself instead, and for a heartbeat I get the impressi
on that he’s keeping it in his mouth and tasting it somehow, and I feel a bit light-headed, but then he grins at me, teeth flashing white.
‘I’m Alex.’ He looks at me for a long moment, searching my face like he’s waiting for a reaction, but when I don’t give him one he smiles again and pushes himself off the ground in one fluid movement, and he’s gone.
Time seems to have slowed down while we were talking; I feel as if I were caught up in it, thick and hot, melting like tar, and I have to shake my head as the girls come up to me, to clear it. For a moment I think I see a dark look on Molly’s perfect face but it’s gone so quickly I must have imagined it. She’s got no reason to be jealous of me, anyway. I put my hands out to her and she grabs them and pulls me to my feet. I make sure I don’t wipe my hands off straight afterwards, even though hers were damp and horrid. I wait until she’s not looking.
‘What was that about?’ she asks, casually. ‘Were you getting chatted up by Newboy?’ I can hear the undertone to her question. You? Mousy, skinny, flat-chested Vivian – you, attracting the interest of someone that good-looking?
‘Of course not,’ I say, pretending to laugh off the insult I feel – I know I’m not as pretty as her, she doesn’t need to rub it in. ‘He wanted to know what your name was.’
‘He already knows my name,’ she says, sharply. ‘I told Ben to tell him when he got his number for me. I told you I was going to text him last night.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t sure which one you were,’ I say, back-pedalling. ‘You guys do all look a bit similar from a distance.’
It’s true, they do all look the same at first. All of them are blonde, though Molly is the only one who doesn’t need help from a packet at the chemist, and all of them dress in the same way, with anything that shows off their long and lean legs and tanned arms. They are all taller than me: I seemed to stop growing at a tiny 5’2” while they soared, stretching away from me, leaving me behind in the dirt.
Molly links my arm with hers as we begin to walk away from school. ‘What are we doing tonight, then?’ she says, our routine slotting back into place after the intrusion of Alex. I haven’t shared his name, I realise, as we take the path through the trees; I’m not sure if they know it or just prefer to call him Newboy, but I decide to keep it to myself, anyway. Like it’s mine, and a part of him belongs to me now.
The air feels cooler as we walk through the woods, gossiping about the day and what we are planning on doing later. Serena’s sister turned eighteen last month and will buy us cider if we want it, and we do of course but we need somewhere to drink it and are discussing options when Molly tells us that her parents are going to be away for the night, reviewing some hotel in Devon, and we jump on it immediately.
‘You kept that quiet!’ squeals Serena. ‘I’ll definitely have to get Sasha to get us some booze! Party time!’
‘I didn’t know until they literally just texted me,’ says Molly, looking pissed off. ‘They always do this – they just fuck off whenever they feel like it and leave me on my own. I’m only fifteen. I could get raped and murdered or anything and they probably wouldn’t even notice until my corpse started to go off and stink up their perfect house.’
We laugh at this, but it does have a ring of truth about it. Poor neglected Molly-wolly, all alone. I would give my right leg to be left alone by my mother.
‘You always stay at mine when they go away,’ I tell her, squeezing her arm against me, even though I don’t like the feel of it; like it’s just a lump of hot meat, thrumming arteries. ‘I’m sure your mum called mine all ready and checked. Maybe we can hang out at yours and go back to mine later.’
‘Well, we definitely have to have a party if your house is free,’ says Serena, stubbornly. ‘I have V plates I need to get rid of!’
‘Serena!’ Tilly shouts, before screaming with laughter. ‘Why are you always so obsessed with sex?’
Probably because it’s all we talk about. Chloe-the-vegan has been bragging for weeks about what she’s been doing with her boyfriend Dan, even though she’s only fifteen like the rest of us. I’m not sure if I believe her or not, but I’m not interested in going there just yet, even if anyone was interested in me. I can’t ever stop thinking of the videos we all watched on Molly’s laptop once, of the gross men and the women all shaved and slick and sweaty, screaming and grunting. Massive, thick cocks thrusting into them, every bit of them, while they whined and choked and got jizz in their eyes and all over their hair. It looked awful. I felt sick afterwards. I know all the stupid feminists say sex is nothing like porn, that it’s nothing like that in real life, but that just makes me wonder, what is it like? Why would anyone want to do anything at all like that? It looks disgusting.
‘Well, I’ll have to wait for Mr Right,’ says Tilly, in a huff. ‘I have to work at the shop tonight because Mum and Dad are going to the Lav for their anniversary, and Tris doesn’t have to do shifts now he’s got the job at the chicken factory.’
We laugh at her calling the pub the Lav like we always do, and then ask her what Tristan is doing in the factory. Last week he was on one of the assembly lines shoving dead, plucked chickens onto silver trays and into plastic bags ready to go to supermarkets. He has to wear a hair net over his horrible greasy hair and we take the piss constantly when we see him.
‘He has to stuff them!’ she yells, forgetting her mood. ‘He got moved off the packing line because someone got sacked for filming themselves drop-kicking the chickens and he’s been promoted to shoving stuffing up their arses!’
We all have to stop and find trees to lean on because we are laughing so much.
‘Stop!’ gasps Serena, ‘I’m going to wee myself!’ But this just makes it worse and we are crying now and I can feel my ribs creaking because I cannot stop thinking of Tristan in his hair net sticking fistfuls of stuffing up naked chickens all day long.
Eventually we calm down but we nearly lose it again when Serena cruelly points out that it’s probably the closest he’s ever going to get to fingering something female, and I can feel trails of tears sticky on my face, which reminds me briefly of those horrid videos again and I stop laughing. We are at my house now anyway; the rest of the girls live over past the pub, so I say goodbye and tell them I will text them later about going to Molly’s. I am already wondering what to wear.
Mum isn’t in the house when I get in and call but that’s not surprising. She told me she had a deadline today so she’s probably in the garden studio working, and I sauntered past without noticing. I run upstairs to my room and look out of the window. I can see her at her desk, see the blur of her arm skimming across whatever it is she is working on.
I take off my uniform so I can put it in the wash basket and then I flop on the bed in just my bra and pants. It’s so hot. I will need a shower or seven before I go to Molly’s.
I get my phone out of my bag and see I already have forty-seven notifications from our group chat, even though I’ve only been home for ten minutes. I scan them quickly. Nothing particularly interesting. Serena wants Molly to invite Matthew Grey because she fancies him. Molly has decided she doesn’t fancy Alex any more and that he’s a weirdo but she might get Ben to invite him anyway. They are all just twittering about what to wear and ugh, sometimes it’s just so boring trying to be a normal person.
I throw the phone down on my bed and stand up to look in my wardrobe, hoping vainly that something that will make me look awesome will have appeared in it. There hasn’t, of course. I open the wardrobe door wide so I can look in the mirror on the inside of the door and critique myself for a bit. I realise that looking like an average person can be useful, but I think there might be even more benefits to being really attractive, like Molly. She could get anything or anyone she wanted, just with a look. That’s power.
The wardrobe door shuts with a creak, my reflection banished, and I pull on a vest top and shorts from the drawers before going out to the garden to find Mum. I creep up on her quietly because it’s funny making her jum
p.
‘Hi, Vi,’ she says, before I can even poke her.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘The birds stopped singing,’ she replies, freaking me out, ‘and I saw your reflection in the glass.’ She laughs. ‘What do you think of these ones?’ She puts her arm around my shoulders and I lean in for a second because I know she likes it and I need to keep her sweet, before wriggling away and looking through her pictures.
‘Ooh, moody,’ I say of a boy with bird wings sulking on a beach, ignoring the small poke of jealousy at how amazing she is at drawing. ‘What’s the book like?’
‘I don’t think you’d enjoy it,’ she says, with a light laugh. ‘You’d have to use your imagination – it’s about love and fairies and magic.’
‘Ugh!’
‘You can give it a try, if you like. Though no blabbing about it online – it’s not being published until next year.’
As if I would admit to reading online. I can’t stand those sorts of books. I don’t really like fiction at all: what’s the point? Better to learn proper facts about things that might come in useful, like how to fix the car for when we break down again on the way to bloody Dorset, or anything but fairies. I’m going to have a swing in the hammock instead, try and get some colour on me for once.
* * *
I end up falling asleep in the hammock because it’s so warm and I’m having a really weird dream about Newboy – we’re in London for some reason – when Mum wakes me up on her way to make dinner.
‘C’mon, sleepy,’ she says, with a laugh. ‘I assume you’re all off out later to terrorise the wildlife?’
‘Ha ha,’ I reply, rubbing my eyes, feeling little balls of sweat and dirt pile up under my fingertips because it’s so hot. ‘We’re going to go to Molly’s and sit in her garden, but I need a shower first, yuck.’