Chapter 7
Then
The day after and he’s still there, a dart in my brain. I’m like Peter Parker the morning after he realizes he’s been bitten by a radioactive spider. Infected. And guess what happens to him, guys? He becomes Spider-Man! What is going to happen to me? I find myself doing stupid stuff like blasting Mariah Carey’s ‘Fantasy’ at full volume and saying inside my head, Imagine if Lowe walked into the room right now; what would I do? My pen so badly wants to write down his name in loopy writing, in bubble writing but I’m scared that writing his name down will jinx us. As you can imagine, I’m pretty pissed off about it, but I just can’t help myself: I doodle him from memory, get him down on paper. Capture him in my Groovy Chick notebook; sketch his shoulders, his arms, his eyes. I draw me next to him, us holding hands and—
Ella, did you just draw yourself as a bride?
Every song I listen to I can’t help but see his face, think of his hands, his smile, his voice. I am completely intoxicated and I hate it about myself. I can’t tell anybody about this illness.
OH ME, OH MY, OH HELL.
I should just clear my diary and cancel all plans for the remainder of half term. This calls for total wipeout because I am otherwise engaged in being completely and utterly obsessed with someone to the point I’m almost begging for school to start again for the distraction. I try and recite my calming mantra, ‘Dance as though no one is watching, love as though – err—’ but I can’t remember the rest. See, he owns my thoughts now; he’s wiping out my brain cells. It’s only matter of time before he’s completely reset the entire thing.
The next day we get the scent of a free house, with a party happening inside it. We’re getting ready at Aoife’s. Her dad doesn’t let her have CDs and the few second-hand ones she did own he’s hung up outside in the garden as ‘entertainment’ for the birds. ‘I’ve got so many brilliant vinyls – why don’t you explore those?’ The brilliant vinyls he’s referring to are the experimental bootleg records he picked up at Brixton Market. We listen to the radio and take turns to bathe in her small tub with the rubber hose and the mango scrub that is 100% enough to make us get called ‘spicy’. With blobs of toothpaste on our spots, we talk about our insecurities out loud, complaining and comparing – ‘Why am I so spotty?’; ‘Your boobs are so much bigger than mine’; ‘Why am I so chubby?’ – and then we reassure each other: ‘It’s good to be chubby; at least it means you have hips and boobs.’ And her little brother Sean shouts up, ‘You’re both BUTTERS!’ And we scream down, ‘WE HATE YOU!’
And we brush it off but it does bruise us. Our brains are soft fruits, peaches and plums, and every knock makes a dent of some kind, no matter how small.
After that, in front of the full-length lightweight mirror – the same mirror we unhook from the wall and take turns to lie down underneath wearing just our knickers, so we can get an idea of the realistic view of our bodies that someone will have in the future when they are having sex with us – we do our make-up. I sit on an orange blow-up armchair; Aoife leans over my head. First things first, we pluck our eyebrows accidentally completely bald. Then, we share our shared collection of Barry M’s dazzle dust – little glass screw-top lids full to the brim in every rainbow colour and shade you can imagine. To us, these little eyeshadow tubs are the most precious things in the world. If we were to lose the tiniest sprinkling of dazzle dust, we would be on the ground scooping it up like it was cocaine, sobbing into the carpet as if someone had tipped over our mother’s ashes. No colour is too much, no look too dramatic, no eyelid too small for a cosmic space scene, an underwater theme – blue, pink, green, purple, glitter, glitter, GLITTER! Sparkle and iridescent shimmer, right up to the eyebrows we go. We take turns dabbing from the tubs, blowing our fingers like the end of a snooker cue, ready for the next hit, puffing through the air like a fairy’s fart.
We drown ourselves in Impulse body spray. We tease our limp hair with coconut dry shampoo and an old nit comb because it gets to the roots. Drag purple hair mascara though the layers. Shower ourselves in sparkly talcum powder. We smell like Disney and popcorn, tropical bubblegum and apricot sour sweets, chemicals and period blood. We snake our hot-pink thongs (99p!) up our hips, making sure the straps are hanging out the top. Aoife’s hip bones jut out like shoulder blades, but my thong digs into my side squidge like the candy-cane-striped string on a joint of beef. We slide on our heavy dirty baggy jeans, so crusty they crack, and wear tight tops which suck in our waists and plunge out our misshapen boobs. Then we add as much jewellery as we can find – mostly ‘shag’ bands which we pray will get snapped by someone fit. (But not actually.)
After Aoife and I have convinced each other that we look just about nice enough to get a boyfriend, that it’s everyone else’s fault we’re single, after we take turns to say I fancy you, no I FANCY you, we trundle downstairs to get judged by Aoife’s opinionated hippy parents. Then, and only then, are we ready to go out.
‘Oh no you don’t … ’ says Aoife’s mum, Elaine. That stops us in our tracks and we have to sit at the dining table surrounded by the Moroccan tea sets from their travels and eat half a freezing cold jacket potato each, with a slab of ice-cold butter and a stalk of raw broccoli, washed down with a pint of tap water. But it’s not all bad. We are allowed as much E-number tomato sauce as we want. That’s the thing about hippies: they’re hypocrites.
And it’s then, and only then, that we are allowed to leave.
‘Don’t go the shortcut way.’
‘We won’t, Elaine.’
But we will, Elaine; we will.
We meet the others at the station. (We would never head into a party on our own – we are not clinically insane.) Bianca is wearing her thong over her trousers. Yes, you read that correctly. She’s already smashed, giving a speech about how everybody in Balham is a perve. She stops to light a cigarette. She smells medicinal, of vanilla ice cream and marzipan. She shifts her dyed-red hair over her widow’s peak to try not to look as much of an evil stepmother as she already does. Aoife races into the newsagents to buy a small bottle of gin and a ten pack of Marlboro Lights. All I truly want is a Toffee Crisp. But I buy a watermelon Bacardi Breezer because I probably should and a packet of gum. When I come out the girls are talking.
‘Lowe? He’s cute,’ one of The Twins replies to Bianca. What’s this? I try not to ping my head back and forth. Why are they talking about Lowe?
‘Which one was he again?’ Shrey asks.
‘Cap, hoodie, big eyes?’ one Twin says.
‘Always smiling,’ the other Twin adds.
‘Ooooh myyyyy daysss, his smile is so cute.’ Bianca presses her hands to her chest like she’s the Virgin bloody Mary.
Oh no.I become dry-mouthed and panicked. All boys love Bianca too.
‘You haven’t spoken about him before … ?’ I can’t help but interrupt.
‘Yeah, that’s cos I didn’t know if he was coming tonight but apparently he is.’
Oh, so you like to keep your options open by stealing the man of my dreams but also SHIT – he’s coming tonight?
‘He looks kinda young,’ Ronke intervenes. ‘No?’
‘No, he’s just short,’ Aoife says, her mouth open like a fish, picking glitter gunk out of her eye and squishing it into a ball. ‘And shy, poor bubba.’
BUBBA?
‘Bless,’ a Twin swoons.
‘You don’t have to be loud like that dickhead Jonas to get noticed,’ the other Twin defends.
No idea who Jonas is. I don’t seem to recall any guy that isn’t Lowe.
‘He’s quite mysterious, don’t you think?’ Bianca snatches a pocket mirror straight from one of The Twins’ hands and begins to check her reflection, slapping more lipgloss on top of her already dripping lips. I know she thinks the word ‘mysterious’ counts as a complicated word.
‘Oh very mysterious. He’s chilled and laid back, just like really comfortable in himself?’ Aoife adds dreamily.
‘—and very cool. Effortless actually,’ says Shrey.
‘OH, he’s so cool,’ a Twin pipes up.
‘And he’s got this great big cheeky grin!’ says the other Twin.
‘Adorable,’ Aoife concludes.
Bianca lets a demonic snarl spread across her face like she’s a very powerful womanly person, like, I don’t know … Cher or someone, and announces, ‘I think he’s buff, you know?’
My body shuts down. She’s taken her pick. She’s chosen.
‘Yeah, he’s fucking hot,’ Aoife blurts. You alright there, Aoife?
‘But, Aoife, you like Oli, right?’ Bianca double-checks.
I swallow, but it’s like swallowing a ball of discount socks from Sports Direct.
And then it gets interesting.
‘I think Lowe likes you, Ella,’ a Twin offers, linking my arm sweetly.
I gulp. Panic. Is it that obvious and she’s trying to make me feel better? OK. I have to stop this. I don’t want the attention on me; I don’t want to begin the Ella fancies Lowe campaign only to get publicly rejected.
‘No, he doesn’t. What makes you say that?’ I ask.
‘Errr … it was kind of obvious,’ the other Twin backs her sister up, like they’ve spoken about it in their marshmallow-soft pyjamas at night.
‘I don’t think he does,’ I say. ‘We just have things in common. That’s all. We both like music.’
‘Everyone likes music, Elbie!’ Aoife cackles. (Not everybody classes NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! as being into music, Aoife, but anyway.)
‘Not their kind of music,’ The Twin (it doesn’t matter which one) states, as if Lowe and I are into the friggin’ pan pipes.
‘So do you fancy him, Ella, or not?’ Bianca asks, really needing to know. Everyone zooms in. Shrey and Bianca stand there, blinking.
‘I … dunno. I didn’t really see him like that.’ Could I try lying any harder?
‘The dude looks like he has no pubes,’ Ronke cackles.
‘Truuussstttt me, Ronks, the boy’s got pubes!’ Shrey blurts and everyone laughs.
‘No, really, Ella, for real, so who do you like then?’ Bianca demands.
‘ … Errr … ?’ On the spot, my mind Rolodexes through all the boys I can think of like an emergency game of Guess Who? on fourteen Pro Plus, hoping it will all go away if I just say a name: say someone, Ella, anyone. ‘ … Er … ’ They wait – blink blink blink – but once I’ve said a name, that’s it, Lowe is up for the taking. Bianca looks impatient, Aoife unconvinced. Just say a bloody name. ‘ … Sam?’
‘SAM?’ they chorus like his name has come completely out of the blue because oh yeah it has.
‘Yeah?’ I say, making my face force a blush like a ‘lady’ in a Shakespearian play might when she’s confiding to the chicks about how besotted she is with her new beau. ‘Sam’s alright?’
‘Sam, you say? Oh yeah, Sam’s nice alright.’ Shreya proceeds to dry-hump a lamppost. We all laugh. ‘Sam is FITTTTTT!’
But Bianca’s not done with me yet. ‘So, I can pull Lowe tonight, yeah?’ (Like the guy doesn’t have a choice in the matter.)
I look down at my hands, my stupid ambitious shag bands, my chipped blue varnish and ugly bitten nails.
‘Yeah, course,’ I say, ‘go for it.’ Which is an anagram for SHUT THE FUCK UP!
‘You lot better set me up with Lowe tonight then … ’ Bianca threatens. ‘C’mon, Ella, you’re good at writing love poems. Tell me what you’re gonna say?’ She looks at me, begging to role play.
Why me?
‘Come on … practise.’ But instead she sends herself into some frenzied hysterical squeal: ‘Oh, just tell him I said he’s fit,’ she orders, landing the word ‘fit’ like a swear word. Then she untucks her boobs from a sticky underwire, reapplies more marzipan perfume – which comes in its red little devil bottle that looks exactly like the bloody boar’s heart that the Huntsman gives to the evil stepmother instead of Snow White’s – sucks her cheeks in and says, ‘OK, let’s go.’
The party, sorry, gathering, is at a new house. Mia was invited, apparently, but she’s busy, apparently. I haven’t spoken to her since the exorcist showdown at her house. I tried to call her house phone but her dad said she wasn’t in. I didn’t push because he clearly hates us now. We reckon she’s grounded.
The host’s name is Dean. And Dean has walked fresh out of a Nineties R’n’B music video. He has greased-back hair and wears a fitted ribbed woollen polo-neck jumper and too-tight white jeans. He meets all the girls at the door of his parents’ double-glazed-windowed house, with a plastic stemmed rose with fabric red petals – the petals are adorned with fake droplets made to look like dew, which have clearly been stuck on with a tube of UHU – until he runs out and has to ‘grab back’ the roses he only just handed out. When Dean introduces himself, he holds his hands over his chest in prayer position, asks us our name, repeats our names back at us to sear them into his brain and thanks the heavens, as if we’re fallen angels.
‘Where’d he learn this crap?’ Aoife whispers.
Dean’s house is full of shiny black marble, flecked with shards of silver and mother of pearl, black leather couches and flashy trashy gold ornaments of dolphins and elephants. There is a cream marble fireplace with ceramic statues either side of frosty livid-looking snow leopards with painted gold eyes. On display, a tacky black-and-white pro-studio photograph of Dean and his family, barefooted, arranged in the most awkward position you’ve ever seen, like they were playing Twister and the mat was removed at the last minute. Dean has ice buckets filled with Smirnoff Ice, speakers muffling badly downloaded hip hop, snack bowls filled with salt and vinegar Chipsticks and pastel Love Hearts – ‘sexy’ and ‘be mine’. Dean himself smells of CK One, Febreeze and an impenetrable desperation to lose his virginity on a bed of rose petals ASAP. He’s definitely been carrying a just in case condom in his back pocket since he was twelve.
‘No smoking inside and no going upstairs,’ Dean reminds us.
We head outside so Bianca can smoke. It’s still light, the sky like sherbet. I am extremely grown-up tonight. Maybe it’s my turquoise flicks; they really came out good. Maybe it’s my body? The way it fits into this snug pink top? Maybe it’s because I’m excited to see Lowe again—
‘OH, MY FUCKING DAYS, ELLA – your belly button looks fucking HUGE!’ Bianca screams. ‘You can see it sooo big through that top; it’s absolutely massive!’
I laugh it off. But no, the red rash is there, creeping up my chest and throat. I think of Bianca’s pierced belly button. A perfect noodly twist. A cockle, a piglet’s snout with its Britney Spears diamond underneath her massive boobs. Fuck you, Bianca, for being a bitch about my belly button, for choosing Lowe when you could have anybody you wanted. I’m Dolly Parton, wanting to beg Bianca not to take him just because she can.
I decide to head inside with my wishing well of a belly button and get some water so my rash can calm down. I might be able to get away with secretly slipping my trainers off and letting the soles of my feet cool on the kitchen tiles.
Dean’s glasses are all champagne flutes with gold-leaf rims. I use a Garfield mug, like the fat cat I am.
And it happens so quickly I don’t even have the chance to breathe.
‘Hi!’
It’s him. Lowe. Oh God. He’s wearing the same-but-different blue hoody, jeans and cap, this time, cocked up playfully. And he makes me dizzy. In one move he uses his arms, alone, to launch himself up into the sweet spot next to me on the counter, simmering, so shiny and twinkly.
And I am a magpie.
Once again, I am rushing from the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of my own heart.
I melt down, like one of those thick trickling church candles, the way wax would drip like tears.
‘ … Ella?’
He says my name tentatively, because he’s cool, or in case he’s got it wrong, or is that his way of making out he doesn’t care? Or maybe he truly doesn’t remember my name. His voice is so low, uttered into the neck of his jumper, as smooth and sweet as caramel.
‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ he says.
I tingle. ‘Yeah, those boys from your school invited us,’ I say. I blush again, my cheeks all hot.
‘So where are your lot then?’ he asks. Great, here we go … only moments before he finds Bianca and her great boobs and storybook wicked-witch beauty sucking cigarettes under Dean’s little olive tree.
‘Outside … ’ I look out the window behind the sink, where I can see them smoking on the patio.
‘I didn’t meet any of them properly the other night,’ he adds.
My belly tenses; I’m used to this, this gut-punch. Now I know he wants to meet my friends and not me, it makes things easy, gives me permission to move on. I point through the fake Tudor diamond effect on the double-glazed window.
‘That’s Aoife – my best friend; we’ve been best mates since we were three. That’s Shreya – she’s the funny one. Ronks – she’s basically a genius. The Twins – Louise is the one with the mole – that’s Bianca – she’s the wild one that—’
‘Which one are you then?’
I look at him. ‘Huh?’
I laugh, realizing I was introducing us like characters in a TV show. He dips his head closer to me, and I can smell him now, washing powder, outside air and adventure.
He says, laughing, so throwaway it could be a joke, or even an insult, I can’t tell, it just rolls out, ‘You must be the pretty one, then?’
The pretty one? I don’t think so. All the blood swims to my face. ‘Ha! No, I really don’t – think – I – am, no … ’ I’m obviously not so pretty anything.
He nods, like he’s absolutely certain of it but then bursts out laughing. Is he taking the piss? He’s winding me up, isn’t he? Or is he for real? This is heftily reminding me of the time a boy once said I looked like Cameron Diaz – I don’t, given that she’s blonde and a model – only to later find out later that what he actually said was that I looked like ‘a fat Cameron Diaz’; even then, nope, still don’t see the similarities. But maybe I’m just traumatized from that encounter? Bleugh, this is so AWKWARD and ADDICTIVE in equal measures I can’t cope. I don’t know where to look or how to be; my body is pancake batter and with the heat of him, jeeezzzz, I’m cooking crepes over here. The chemistry is … WHEW.
He nudges me gently with his shoulder, so I laugh back and he laughs more and I laugh more and oh GOSH I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or a joke. Our eyes up and down, and he tries to catch my gaze so we can Velcro lock in, but I just look shyly at my hands. I realize that he probably thinks I’m not taking his compliment seriously, and that it might have taken a lot for him to even say it. But nobody has ever really said I’m pretty before other than my dad, and of course he’d say that because I look exactly like him just with eyeshadow. UGH, it’s such a nice feeling that I wish I could bottle it and micro-dose like some mad vitamin with powerful propellant properties for the rest of my days. The things I could do with that in my system. I’d be unstoppable.
‘You are,’ he says, again.
AHHH! There’s nowhere for me to go. I’ve outgrown this body of mine. I want to burst through the ceiling of myself, and run rings around the planet.
‘You’re cute,’ he says.
Cute? I don’t want to be cute! Cute means friend. Means little sister. Means hamster.
‘Well. OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks?’
Bianca is at the window now, pointing at us, hurrying me along, ushering me to slip her name into the conversation. She doesn’t care how indiscreet it is, so long as the job’s done. I need to be a good friend to Bianca and make a speedy U-Turn, reverse my feelings by focusing on all the things I don’t like about Lowe, of which there are none. He rolls up the sleeves of his hoodie and I catch his arms and wrists, which are strong, square and elegant. Veins bulge, his beauty drip-fed. He’s looking into my face again. My eyes sparkle on demand – bitches, betraying me like this; my eyelashes bat, flap up and down like Betty Boop and I just say, ‘So, you know my friend, Bianca? She really likes you.’
‘Who?’ Lowe says, surprised like why would you say that?
I feel ashamed. He probably thinks I don’t like him back given that he’s just called me pretty and cute and in return I’ve told him that one of my friends likes him.
‘Who’s Bianca?’
He really didn’t know who she was, did he?
‘The tall one standing there, smoking, with the red hair and big boobs.’ Just like all the other times I’ve had to point her out to boys.
Bianca waves on cue to us, like the window is a TV screen and she’s a singer on the Eurovision Song Contest trying to encourage us to vote for her by telephone.
He nods. Waits for me to change my mind, or take it back. He opens his mouth, like he wants to say more, looks puzzled and just says, ‘Cool.’ Nodding. Brows furrowed. Confused. Hurt, even? He lifts himself coolly off the counter and loses himself in the faces of the party.
And that, right there, will be the worst decision I make for a really long time.