Chapter 4
Understandably, Mia wants to introduce us girls slowly, like Bisto gravy, bit by bit, so as to not overwhelm her mix by having unwanted clumps. Mia wants us to blend. Smooth. And I am, luckily, in the first batch. As it’s half term we have to be prepared for drop-of-a-hat-parties where parents are at work so you have to be ready to be drunk by 11 a.m. just as your Shreddies are digesting.
None of the popular girls are invited. BOO HOO. SOZ. Good, I think initially, thank God. Closely followed by: what if there isn’t enough incentive to make The Boys stick around? One or two hot friends within the pack is enough to trick the untrained eye into thinking we are an entire unit of Spicy Girls.
And then: you know what? FUCK THOSE GIRLS. They were never nice to Mia at school so why should they get in on the reward? As though The Boys are an inheritance left behind for us to fight over.
And I am glad because us lot are pretty and confident in our own way too, and The Boys will have the space to truffle out our hidden natural beauty without the distraction of the hot girls from school and the way they get away with train track braces and wear their hair in un-messy messy top buns, the way they somehow came out of a five-star womb with a manual on how to overshadow us.
So, rather than make myself hotter, I double down on my insecurities because THAT MAKES SENSE and opt for wearing my little sister Violet’s hoodie, which on me fits tight, flattening my boobs and coming up short on the forearms. I use the puffy bulging front pocket to bundle my stubby hands inside like a Victorian muff so that I can anxiously pick away at my fingers to my heart’s content without being disturbed or judged. I know it’s not a good look because when I see my younger sister, Violet, on the stairs before leaving, she just looks me up and down and says, ‘OK.’ I wear, always, the same pair of washed-out light-blue denim baggy jeans where the bottoms are matted and drenched up to the knees in dried puddle water and city scum. You’d think my friends and I were employed by the council, responsible for mopping the gutters of South London with our strides alone. In case we don’t sound boyfriend-trappable enough, the jeans are also an extra size too big, making me look like I come with a parachute attached, and I always insist on jamming a thousand things into my pockets like one key with 4,000 keyrings, Tamagotchis, squeezy gel pigs, little notebooks, lip balm and, of course, don’t forget, my collection of rape alarms, which for some reason I’m too afraid to test in case they don’t work and then I’ll have anxiety that my rape alarms don’t work all the time which defeats the object of having a rape alarm at all.
It is a chosen few: Aoife, Bianca – our greatest asset in breaking the ice – The Twins, Ronke, Shreya, Zeniyah, Holly, Georgie and me.
‘Well, get on with it then – press it,’ we bicker by the doorbell, batting each other’s hands away, giggling and snorting.
‘Jesus,’ Aoife mutters. She puts her finger out on the bell and presses …
Ding-Dong.
AHHHHHH!
Aoife quickly takes off her glasses and shoves them into her pocket.
‘Is that a good idea? Can you even see?’ I ask.
‘Blind as a bat,’ she whispers. ‘Link my arm, Elbow.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sa—’
Mia opens the door how one would when they have something of particular intrigue hidden inside their house, like a litter of new sleeping puppies. Shhh! She quietens our excitement but gives us a wink to keep the buzz alive. We are like the frothing neighbours in Edward Scissorhands with the bowls of purple coleslaw. Mia’s wearing eyeliner, her eyes – quite rudely – say, don’t mention the eyeliner – as if we would do her like that – I mean it. We respect almighty Mia, for right now, if there is a queen, it is her. We obey, speaking softly, kicking off our try-hard skater shoes that have not once touched the grip paper of a skateboard in their lives.
Already we can’t help but feel disappointed. We had hoped to see size 8 and 9 – maybe EVEN 10 – skate shoes here, boys’ shoes, the scent and heat beating off them, battered, stickered, skateboards mindlessly leaning up against the wall … proof The Boys are real. That they exist.
Where is Mia hiding them?
This better not be a sick joke, Mia.
We’ve come all the way to Wandsworth for this, Mia. Bunked a train for this, Mia. Risked a fine for this, Mia. It was NOT a normal walking distance, Mia; it better not be for nothing.
It’s the middle of the day. The house is cold, empty. Full of dark wood and rugs. Astrology and philosophy books and a smell like boiled vegetables. I notice a telescope. Grown-up marbles. It’s quite clear Mia hasn’t told her parents she was having people over as she’s shoving us outside in October.
Mia, with all the power, sashays us into her back garden. And there they are – The Boys. Shoes on their feet.
How dare she make us all take our shoes off and not them? And now we feel enormously stupid in our cupcake and animal socks. Me, even worse, in my dad’s.
Cheers, thanks a lot, Mia.
Literally on the back foot, we step outside into the turning air, pricking our skin into goosebumps; we really should be wearing jackets.
The first job is to count them. This is The Twins’ idea. ‘Count them,’ one orders through gritted teeth, ‘so we can be sure there are enough boys to go round.’ Like the boys are a tray of biscuits. ‘We don’t want anybody getting, you know, left out.’ This is such a Twin thing to count the boys, to make sure everything is fair.
One, two, three, four …They won’t keep still; I’m trying to tot up the head count but they’re just so … busy … they roll on the ground like cubs, playing, jumping off hedges and spraying beer at each other. But when they are standing, a couple of them are big. Big. Big. Giants. Men. But with rollercoaster voices that go up and down and twang like tuning forks. I see no love of my life here. I can happily sit this one out. My friends are ready, their glances changed, their looks fixed – then again, Aoife can hardly see. The Twins have the nerve to pour Lambrini into picnic cups like we’re sophisticated adults. When we’re really a joke. Bianca’s bright shock of dyed-red hair and wonderful boobs smothered in roll-on glitter are delighted with themselves, plunging buoyantly. She twists her nose stud; it winks with power. Aoife readjusts her sparkly butterfly clips. Ronke is already accepting a spliff from a boy! Ronks?! What the hell? That is very advanced. Meanwhile my fanny origamis in on itself, never to be seen again.
And it’s as if my eyes are lasers, red beams cornering off the Crown Jewels. I score a square in the air and friend-zone myself. Mentally, I see the red lines clearly, like in that film, Entrapment. And, here, in my zone, safe. Immune from romance. Immune from rejection. Untouchable. A chair. A brick. A cabbage.
Bianca confidently passes to the boys a bottle of clear hard cheap booze that smells like nail varnish remover. They take turns to swallow it down in bold mouthfuls, like they do this all the time, dragon breaths burning. They hand out cigarettes like sparklers on Bonfire night. Bianca never shares her cigarettes with amateurs. If you can’t inhale properly, it’s a waste, she says, monitoring under her shaved brows to make sure you don’t spill a drop of her cancer. There are some Monster Munch crisps in a bowl as a gesture, which The Boys tear into, so now they smell of E-number Roast Beef, rip-off alcohol … and—
Wait. Is this what teen spirit smells like? Like Roast Beef Monster Munch?
Mia is cool, casual, umpiring like the Great bloody Gatsby, honoured to be the host. It’s her free house, her territory – her alcohol, her Haribo. With her generosity, her social importance soars to such a dizzy height that she could nominate herself for Prime Minister and she’d have the vote. ‘I’ve made punch!’ she announces, raising her ladle to the sky.
Said punch is a bright orange witch’s brew. With jelly babies at the bottom that have swollen into bloated distorted pregnant goblins. The mixture tastes like Panda Pops and sticks to the back of the throat like cough medicine. ‘EUGH! THAT’S GROSS!’ Someone wretches.
Mia laughs the critique off giddily but I can tell she’s hurt. She plays harder, as if that was the reaction she was after – ‘Yeah! My punch is lethal, man!’ – as if it’s a family recipe that goes back centuries. She pours an old white bottle with a palm tree on it into the bowl, the metal cap crusty, and swirls it together, whilst everyone makes a noise about this: ‘You’re crazy, Mia.’
And Mia glances at me like, I’m not sure I want to be crazy, Ella; is crazy a good thing or a bad thing?
And I nod with reassurance like, don’t overthink it. Crazy’s fine, I think. I dunno.
When this is my brain: FUCK! THEY’RE CALLING HER CRAZY!
I’m completely sober. I have a responsibility, a job – the role of The Goody Goody Parent Pleaser. Every group needs one, especially at gatherings: somebody sober, who, in case of an emergency, can hold the fort, calm The Worried Parent down, reassure them that we’re not as drunk as they think: see, look at me? And we all drank the same amount! Tell them that I’ll be the one to text when we get there, to order the taxi, to make so and so some toast to sober up, to listen to The Worried Parent’s problems whilst the kettle boils. To distract, whilst your friend is throwing up, or crying, or getting fingered in the Treat Cupboard. It really helps.
We listen to music; we talk over each other, parading, showing off. We are loud and boisterous. Aoife is already snogging some guy, and Shreya has disappeared into a bush with someone somewhere (and they both have braces, very weird) but this is what we came here for, right?
And I have a feeling in my belly when I look at Mia, a shove of envy but mostly pride. She’s done it: she’s broken free. She is reinvented as cool.
And suddenly, what feels like just moments later, we are covered in it: thick coral vomit. It pounds down from a height, like gunge from that show Get Your Own Back. Galloping down from the open bathroom window, ploddy sick cascading down like a veil of sweet and sour cake mix. Oh, Mia.
WOAH!The Boys dodge the vomit dramatically; screaming, shouting, laughing, pointing, hopping onto the wall. Complete overreaction. Humiliation.
We turn to run towards the house to get Mia but OH, RIGHT, she’s already here, trembling in the garden, eyeliner streaking down her face like a Batman villain, her face like a Rorschach test in mascara. We rush up to her, put our arms around her, half-giggling, thinking, hoping, praying she’ll see the funny side. She does not. There are no sides to vomit.
But we all want to save her. I really don’t want to have to go home.
I run inside, into the kitchen, scramble for a pint glass, fill it with water and hand it to her. ‘Drink this … ’ I offer, trying not to show I can smell the tang of sick.
‘FUCK YOU!’ Mia dribbles back at me in a demented roar. OK, rude. And she throws the pint glass at our baggy jeans and the water soaks into our socks. Mia orders, ‘GET OUT’ and that she ‘HATES’ us. She razors, ‘JUST GET OUT MY FUCKING HOUSE I SAID, I FUCKING HATE YOU ALL!’
Maybe she does? Maybe she does fucking hate us?
The boys make comments about her, that she’s lost the plot, that she’s a psycho.
Psycho Mia.It doesn’t even have a ring to it.
And – oh shit – suddenly her dad is there, her dad, still in his black real-life-actual-job overcoat and briefcase in hand, shock and panic in terrified graphs all over his blank face, wrestling with his drunken daughter across the kitchen floor, ordering us all to leave, with immediate effect.
And as a group, we are kicked out from this house of horrors, onto the streets. The sky seems to be darkening in that impending doom way that always germinates dread. Like Sunday nights before school. It begins to rain, hard. Typical. The cars rush by.
Mia has peaked too soon; these are her new school friends and this is what she’s done and it’s hard to come back from an act like this. And we can’t pretend we’re just kids and say we ‘didn’t know’ because we know right from wrong. And I feel bad about it, proper guilt, that it’s somehow our fault, that I didn’t spot she wasn’t OK. It almost makes me want to go home.
And then I hear one of the boys ask:
Where to now?