All the Little Things

by Sarah Lawton

  I’m debating over lip gloss when there’s a knock at the door – I knew it – and I run down and open it to see Alex standing on the step, leaning casually against the frame, his dark hair falling into his eyes. He reaches up and sweeps it back, his eyes flicking over me as he steps into the room, gathering me up and kissing me hard. In between the fluttering in my stomach and the usual sudden smoothing out of anything I had in my brain, a niggling thought manages to remain and wonders why he always turns up after my mother has already left. Obviously I don’t want her to know about him, because she will make a fuss, but does he sit somewhere and watch the house? I feel excited that I’m worth stalking, and that surely he doesn’t want Molly instead of me, and my mood picks up even more when he lifts me easily and carries me into the front room, collapsing us both onto the sofa, laughing in a breathless way that doesn’t leave much room for anything else. I wrap my legs around him and pull him towards me as hard as I can manage, but he wriggles away from me as usual, and sits up, pulling my legs away and tucking them over his own so I’m lying back and he’s looking down at me. I’m not happy.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ I ask him, trying to pout like Molly does.

  ‘Are you feeling all right? You look a bit weird.’

  ‘Alex! Answer the question. Don’t you want to? You know?’

  ‘Want to what?’

  Jesus, he’s as bad as bloody Molly. I could strangle him!

  ‘Stop it. Have sex with me. I want to do it with you.’

  ‘Viv, you’re only fifteen. Aren’t you worried about getting in trouble?’

  ‘No, why would I? I don’t care about that stuff. I’m on the pill, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ My mum took me to the doctor’s about my horrible periods last year and they’d prescribed it. Convenient, now I thought of it. Surprising that my mother didn’t think of this. Unless she didn’t think of this because she thought no one would want to have sex with me, which is rude, but not beyond the realms of possibility. Always thinking I’m still the vulnerable little girl of her imagination.

  ‘I’m not worried about that.’ He leans back, eyeing me sideways. ‘But I think you care about what people think about you, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s a strange thing to say.’ He really is a complete weirdo sometimes.

  ‘Have you been in trouble before? Like, proper trouble?’

  ‘With police and stuff?’ I frown at the even-odder-than-usual turn of conversation.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘I’m just interested. I want to know everything about you.’

  He follows this up with leaning over me and kissing me, nuzzling into my neck and ear. I don’t like it. I want the fierce kisses, not soppy bullshit. I shrug, hunching my shoulders, forcing his face away, pushing him until he’s sitting up again. Why would he think a fifteen-year-old girl would ever have been in trouble with the police? I mean, obviously I have, which makes me unusual. Maybe he knows that. Maybe he is unusual too, which is why he’s asking. He knows we’re the same. I decide to touch on honesty.

  ‘When I was younger, once, but it wasn’t my fault. It was this other girl. Everything that happened was her fault. She ruined my life, but I don’t want to talk about it. I told you before, I was bullied.’

  I don’t think he was very happy with me pushing him away, because suddenly his face seems to fold in on itself, his expression. His lips almost disappear into a white, pinched line and the tendons on his neck stand out. I lie very still and listen to the small sounds he is making as he breathes in slowly. He brings up his palms and scrubs at his face and hair, making it stand up. When he moves them again the expression is gone, although his eyes are still very dark – the glints of gold and blue have disappeared into the deepest green. He’s got such amazing eyes.

  ‘I can’t stay tonight,’ he says, sparking a painful disappointment in me. ‘I have some work I need to do, but I’m free tomorrow. We could go for a picnic or something?’

  I swallow my annoyance that he’s leaving and my confusion about how he reacted to me pushing him off, watching him as he stands up on his long, lean legs in one smooth movement, sweeping mine to the side as if they weigh nothing.

  ‘I know somewhere,’ I tell him, anxious suddenly that he’s going so quickly. ‘I used to go there all the time as a kid, to the woods. I can text you where to meet me?’

  He smiles, tightly, and then he’s gone, leaving me to brood.

  * * *

  I usually hang out with Molly on a Saturday morning, but I haven’t called her today to ask what’s she’s doing because of my Alex plans, which have not one iota of room for her. I ended up telling her that I had to hang out with Mum last night. I hope Molly didn’t see her out. I know she’s getting suspicious about what’s going on with me and Alex, but this is my new secret. I’m sick of all hers.

  I think it will be fun to get him completely lost in the woods today so I can have my way with him. I don’t understand how I’ve gone from being uninterested in sex to completely dying for it in less than a month, but I’m not going to complain – it’s good to be normal, right? I just want him to make me feel good. I know he can. I keep remembering that feeling, the first time we kissed, him pressed against me. I want it again. It will be the longest we have spent together, I will make sure of it. He’s always dropping in and out of my life, teasing me, not letting me know anything about him. He’s a puzzle that I need more time to solve, to break. I will find everything out eventually, he can’t get away from me now.

  I’m meeting him at eleven out by the copse so I while away a bit of time replying to the girls. Our chat has been really quiet again this week, despite Molly’s best efforts, but there are messages on my phone from this morning. Molly wants us all to go to her house later for movies and a sleepover, just the four of us. Tilly hasn’t been at school but she is coming back on Monday. She says it’s horrible at her house with her mum crying all the time and her dad drinking too much. I tell them I will come later but I’m going out first, and Molly immediately texts me privately asking what I’m doing and who am I doing it with, but I just don’t reply. I decide to leave my phone on my bed while I’m out because I don’t want any disruptions, or Molly tracking me down with that app that tracks your GPS location. Why I let her persuade me into that one I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past her to turn up at the worst possible moment and ruin everything.

  I tell Mum that I’m going to Molly’s and I’ll be there all night and she just nods at me without smiling. I practically sprint out of the door and away from the cottage, out the back gate past the studio. It occurs to me maybe I should have gone the other way as this is the opposite direction I should be going in but I don’t think she’s clever enough to notice that. She’ll be painting soon and that always makes her forget everything; she goes into a weird dream state, you could say anything to her and she wouldn’t even notice or remember.

  Alex is waiting for me in the car park next to the woods where we’d arranged to meet. There aren’t any cars here, as usual – it’s not a busy spot really except the odd dog walker. We’re so far away from anywhere else that no one bothers. There’s nothing special here to see. It’s why I like it so much, you can feel like you’re the only person in the world. I can’t wait to take him to the stream, it’s the best spot in the whole woods, and exactly where I want to be with him.

  He kisses me when I get up to him and then grabs my hand. ‘Ready?’ he says, tickling me with his smooth voice. ‘Are you planning on getting us lost in the woods?’

  ‘Only if you annoy me. I might leave you in there. You could be lost for days.’

  ‘Remind me never to annoy you, Vivian.’ He laughs.

  The woods here aren’t big enough to get lost for days unless you are a complete idiot, but there are plenty of private spots to find and I quickly take us off the path toward my favourite one, pointing out the landmarks as we go. Molly and I found it, years ago, when we
were still into playing outside and walking through streams and catching bugs and things. It was our secret place, but we haven’t been here together for ages now. I don’t know if she comes here any more, though I do occasionally when I want to be by myself. If it all gets too loud.

  We walk for about a quarter of an hour, talking easily and stopping now and again to look at things, or just to kiss each other. Alex presses me hard against a tree at one point, and I wrap my legs around him as he holds me up. I want him to have me right there, but he pulls away like he always does and laughs at me. I think he must know exactly what he’s doing to me. I think he’s just winding me up, like I’m a toy he’s playing with. Every time he kisses me or touches me it feels like he’s adding branches to a fire that’s just building up inside me. I can hardly wait to get there.

  ‘Your friend has been texting me,’ he says, suddenly.

  ‘What? Molly?’ My stomach twists viciously. ‘What about?’

  Alex just laughs. ‘You know what. She’s very persistent, isn’t she? I had to run away from her yesterday, in college. She tracked me down and tried to molest me.’

  I was right then, about what she was doing. She’s trying to steal him. The thought of Molly and Alex together hurts my head. It’s a black thundercloud in my perfect day. I put it to one side but I will have to do something about it later. He’s mine. She can’t have him.

  Finally we get to the bank, and I choose to properly forget about Molly, pushing away the simmering anger I’m feeling for later. It’s an open spot, just big enough for me to put down the blanket I brought with me in the dappled sunlight. The wide stream spins and whirls by, and the small sounds of the woods stop while their inhabitants decide if we are a threat or not before starting up again. It’s warm and it’s calm and it’s completely perfect. Alex sits down and asks me if I want a sandwich, pulling his rucksack toward him. I kick it away to the side. I sit down over his lap.

  ‘No, I don’t want a sandwich,’ I tell him, taking off my top just to make things really clear. ‘I want you. Here. Now.’ And I push him down and I kiss him.

  Rachel

  Vivian went to Molly’s for a sleepover on Saturday and I had to stop myself from calling Abi to check that she was there, that she was safe, telling myself that I was being paranoid. I knew that she would go mad if she thought I was checking up on her. I also knew the chances were that Abi wouldn’t even be there, anyway. I paced around the house instead. I started jobs and left them half done, taking everything out of the airing cupboard and then just leaving it all in a pile. I needed to wash it all again. Then I decided to clean the bathroom, properly clean it. I sprayed everything with bleach and I scrubbed and scrubbed, but nothing was clean, and the skin on my hands started to split and to bleed. I didn’t know why they were so dry. I thought I would have a shower, and clean the inside of the glass door at the same time, but the hot steam kicked up the chemical smell and it got in my mouth and in my eyes and it hurt, and I sat down in the hot bleach and I cried and cried. The arguments with Vivian about Tristan had sent me into a tailspin. I had thought everything was fine, that she was fine, but I had seen a flash of the anger that terrified me. There was no one I could speak to about my worries – I’d pushed people away and kept them at distance. I felt abandoned somehow, dragged back into a dark place I thought I had escaped from.

  After I managed to pull myself out of the hissing water, I scrabbled around for my phone and I sent a message to Alex, apologising for the day before. I told him he could come any time he wanted to, later even, if he was free.

  I managed to get dressed, just pulling on some of Vivian’s short-shorts and a vest. Why was it still so fucking hot? I was sick of it. I went out to the studio; I had no idea what time it was or what the hell I’d been doing all day but I hoped that working – I was so behind on my work, I’d been throwing away page after page all week – might calm me down. I took a glass of wine with me. I took the whole bottle.

  I picked up a new sheet of paper and I decided to work on the penultimate plate, the one of the prince and the girl, Arabella – whatever her bloody name was – breaking apart after their first kiss. She’s pushing him away; he’s desperate to control her, to hold her to him. His hands gripped her waist, her long, loose hair whipped at their faces. Dead, grey trees tore at a sickly yellow sky. It was a dark image, desperate love in the heart of it.

  I always gave my drawn girls Vivian’s face. I couldn’t help it, even though it drove her mad. Delicate arching eyebrows, clear cool eyes and a slightly pointed chin. Perfect cupid-bow lips. But I just couldn’t get her right, and was about to scrunch and rip the paper up in a childish, screaming tantrum when I heard a cough behind me and I spun around, heart in my mouth. Alex.

  ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ I screeched at him, voice rusty and breaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, palms lifting. ‘I got your text, so I came. I was worried about you yesterday. I wanted to check on you – it didn’t seem like you were feeling yourself.’

  ‘Not myself?’ I swung round, glass in hand, almost spilling wine everywhere like a drunk. ‘What would you know, Alex? You don’t know me! You have no idea what I’m really like, do you?’ I could feel my pulse pattering under my skin, everywhere; I was going to have a panic attack and, oh, I couldn’t, I couldn’t go through this all again… Then he took my wine away and caught my shoulders. His hands were cool, and it was enough to start to snap me out of the spiral. His thumbs gently stroked up and down on my bare skin.

  ‘Rachel, look at me. Look at me right now. Breathe with me, Rachel, please.’ I looked at him and he was pursing his lips and taking slow, deep, exaggerated breaths which I copied, just to humour him but actually I needed them, and I stopped shaking and I tried not to cry. He held my gaze with his pretty eyes.

  ‘How did you know how to do that?’

  ‘Family issues.’ He didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Thank you. I’m so sorry. I’m fine now, honestly. I’m glad you came over,’ and I realised I meant it. His collected, still presence was far more soothing than the wine or the drawing was. He smelt faintly of salt and I thought of the sea rushing over the shore. I was jittery still, but I wasn’t going to break.

  He used his fingers and thumbs to gently knead the muscles above my collarbones. He ran his fingers over my shoulders and back up to my neck. A thumb came to a stop over my still hammering pulse and pressed gently. His eyes darkened and his lips moved but no words came out.

  Starting to feel more than slightly uncomfortable I pulled away and turned back to my picture. Alex followed my gaze. He dropped his hands.

  I suddenly saw, with a dawning horror and huge embarrassment, that I had drawn the faery prince with his face: slashing eyebrows, ocean eyes, full lips, a shock of dark, silky hair. It was quite clearly him. It was only then that I realised that the reason I was so angry at my inability to draw Vivian’s face on Arabella was because I hadn’t drawn her face at all.

  I’d drawn mine.

  I turned around, and pushed past him out of the studio.

  ‘I think you should go now, Alex. I’m completely fine and I have a lot on today,’ I shouted over my shoulder as I ran into the house, away from him, away from the sudden, shocking, creeping slick of want that swept through my body. He was a teenage boy, what the fuck was wrong with me? I was weak with it.

  I got into the house and I ran up the stairs and I stood in my room, gasping, my hands in my hair. I couldn’t pull any air into my lungs. I was such an idiot! Where had this even come from? I tried to brush it off, scrape it away, but it was like drowning in oil. No desire, or desire suppressed for years, had caused a storm of need in me that was almost impossible to bear. I wanted something for me, just once, for me and not Vivian. I wanted him.

  And then, inevitably, I turned around and I went back down the stairs, back out into the garden where he stood, waiting for me. Cool, clever hands reached out to my shoulders again, fingertips smoothing, and I rea
ched up to him, the nerves in my fingertips rejoicing in the feel of his skin, his hair. I looked up into his perfect face, and his sea-glass eyes, and I pulled his mouth down onto mine and I was lost.

  Vivian

  I get to Molly’s a bit late, and I have a leaf in my hair. She plucks it out and raises one eyebrow at me; which is annoying on so many levels, not limited to the fact I can’t do that.

  ‘What have you been up to, bitchy?’ she asks me, with a twisty smirk on her face. She looks pissed off, but I decide that I don’t care because I am feeling completely awesome after my afternoon with Alex, although I’m starting to wish I’d just gone home so I could relive it over and over. But I guess that, in theory, I should be here – if not with her, then with my other friends who need my ‘support’, or whatever.

  ‘Serena and Tilly aren’t coming,’ says Molly. ‘Tilly didn’t feel up to it, so Serena has gone there instead.’

  Oh.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you were going to come or not. I did call you.’

  ‘I left my phone at home.’ I knew I should have gone back and got it but I hadn’t wanted to ruin my morning by potentially having to speak to my mother. It’s bad enough I’m here with this traitor.

  ‘All day? Have you not been back to get it? Where have you been? What have you been up to, Vivvy? Why are you being so mysterious?’

  Her blue eyes are flickering all over me now, needling, and I feel like she can see right through me. She pulls me into the house. I can smell pizza cooking and my stomach gurgles loudly.

  ‘Been working up an appetite, Viv? I think you should go have a quick shower before we eat. You stink.’

  I don’t stink, but I obey orders, then return to the kitchen where she grabs a tea towel and manoeuvres the pizza out the oven. She slices it with a pizza roller – I wish we had one of those – and she plonks it down on the table. She’s already got out ketchup and mayo, which she proceeds to squirt all over her half.