Chapter 17
Ember
Kingfitz: i wanna see you again supergirl
Kingfitz: wanna go for a coffee?
Kingfitz: thx for being there today god knows if id have coped without you
Kingfitz: ur the best x
Kingfitz: wish wed made a den in the ice cream shop and just stayed there
Kingfitz: hey lets try out every ice cream place in 5 miles and rank them
Wren’s lack of capital letters and punctuation is doing my head in, but that’s not the only thing making my fingers tremble with rage as I scroll through our series of messages. Suddenly, the words that had meant so much to me feel empty and meaningless.
I can’t believe I made such an idiot of myself.
I spent hours googling grants and loans.
I helped him paint his room so he could feel at home in his new house.
I listened to his worries and spent hours telling him what things were like here after Dad’s accident.
That I used to feel just as desperate, even though I was a little girl with no idea how everything was going to change for us all.
I trusted him with my fears because I thought I’d found someone I could talk to about all the things I can’t tell my sister.
And now?
Now he’s having a housewarming party, and he not only didn’t invite me, he didn’t even mention it to me.
I thought we were friends. I thought he was ready to take what we have to the next level, like I was. But it seems I was wrong.
see you tomorrow?
That was his last message to me. He sent it this afternoon, and I was stupid enough to answer definitely. Now I have no idea how to act. There’s only one thing I’m certain of: I’m not letting my anger eat away at me.
I stare intensively at my glowing phone keyboard and hunt for the right words.
Enjoy your party, you backstabbing bastard.
That just sounds childish. I delete the draft straightaway.
I look up at the TV. Gordon Ramsay is screaming at another chef, which reminds me of the evening Dad and I spent watching a best-of clip show and just creased up at fifteen minutes of nonstop Ramsay shouting.
Maybe I should watch that video again.
“Why the long face, love?” Mum asks suddenly.
I sigh. She doesn’t miss a thing. Wren calls me Supergirl, and I secretly think that about Mum when, yet again, she’s spotted something that nobody else has noticed.
“Did you ever have friends who dumped you out of the blue?”
Mum puts down the Kindle that she’d had under her nose. She eyes me pensively, stroking her hair back behind her ear.
“I had a friend like that at school, yes.”
“How did you deal with it?” I ask.
“Mostly I pretended not to notice. But there was one time when I did say something. That was after she threw a party on my birthday so that nobody turned up to mine.”
“Oh God, Mum, that sounds awful.”
“Are you talking about Samantha Baker?” Dad pipes up suddenly. “What a bitch!”
“Angus!” says Mum.
“Well, it’s true. I loved it when you told her what you thought of her.”
Mum’s cheeks flush slightly. “Thanks, pet.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I told her how the way she acted made me feel. She’d ignore me at school but as soon as it was just the two of us, I was her best friend. I’d had enough of it. So I gave her a chance to change, but she wouldn’t.”
“Then what happened?”
“I broke off the friendship and decided I’d never let anyone treat me that badly again. I learned to always take my own needs and feelings seriously. And that’s the only advice I can give you now, Ember.”
I think about her words for a while. I told her how the way she acted made me feel.
Nobody’s ever pissed me off as much as Wren’s done today. Maybe I should tell him exactly that.
It’s pretty shitty of you to have a housewarming party without me. I thought we were friends.
As I type the words, I feel weirdly vulnerable. It’s like when I post something personal on my blog and talk about the stuff that’s on my heart.
I hesitate, but only for a moment, then I follow Mum’s example and send the message. After that, I lock my phone and put it face down on the couch beside me.
“Thanks, Mum,” I say quietly.
“Want to talk about it, love?”
I shake my head. Then I lean into Dad’s shoulder and shut Wren Fitzgerald out of my mind.
James
“So,” says Alistair, clinking his beer bottle against Wren’s. “I like it here.”
Wren raises his eyebrows and looks around his room, like he’s seeing it himself for the first time.
“Me too,” I say, and I mean it. It might not be as big as Wren’s old room, and the walls might not be papered with eye-wateringly expensive wallpaper, but it’s comfortable, and he’s given it a personal touch.
There are some framed pictures on the walls and the lacrosse cups we’ve won over the years on the bookcase.
Alistair, Kesh, and I gave him a set of whisky glasses as a housewarming present, and they’re now adorning his desk.
There’s some Ikea furniture, and other stuff from Wren’s old house, and an Oriental rug in the middle of the floor.
“It’s such a cute house,” says Ruby beside me. She’s leaning against me, and I’m running my hand up and down her back, lost in thought as I watch Wren.
Something isn’t right with him this evening. He hasn’t put his phone down once, and sometimes he spends whole minutes staring at the screen.
He’s in a miserable mood, and I don’t think he just feels bad about us having to sit on the floor because there’s not enough space for chairs in here.
He seems to have something else on his mind, and I’m wondering if this has to do with the mysterious girl he wouldn’t tell me about last week at the bonfire.
“And you’ve got a massive garden,” Alistair adds. “If you miss the pool in the summer, we can buy an inflatable one.”
He walks across the room, stepping over Kesh’s legs without looking at him. Then he sits cross-legged between Wren and me. Kesh frowns and starts twiddling the fringe of the rug in his fingers. Have they had another fight?
“We had a paddling pool when we were little,” Ruby says with a smile.
“True,” I say. “The proof is in the photos in your hallway.”
Ruby digs an elbow in my ribs. It hurts, but I can’t help grinning.
“Don’t tell me there’s a picture of you in arm floaties,” Alistair says.
“Something like that,” mumbles Ruby. She’s blushing a little, but grinning too as she takes a gulp of Coke. I never thought I’d see her this relaxed in the company of my friends, and it’s making me happy to be able to spend this evening with her here.
“Well, I bet your neighbors would love a little strip show from you, Wren,” Alistair muses. “Maybe they’d take photos and put them up in their hallways too.” He waggles his eyebrows.
“I met three women on my way here, and they all said to enjoy the housewarming,” Kesh adds. “Seems like you’ve made quite the impact on the neighborhood already.”
Wren groans. “Mum tells them too much.”
“It’s part of belonging to a friendly area,” says Ruby.
“They all seemed very nice,” Alistair agrees, but his filthy grin speaks volumes.
“How about you pulling the pool stunt and sweet-talking the neighbors?” Wren suggests. “I don’t think I’d get very far.”
“No wonder, if you’re going around with a face like that the whole time.” Kesh pushes away the bowl of crisps that we’d been passing around, but which had somehow, over the course of the evening, come to a stop by him.
Wren gasps with outrage. “Hey! Excuse me, what’s wrong with my face?”
“It’s about as inviting as a bed of nails that’s gone up in flames.
” Kesh frowns fiercely and glowers around the room.
When he looks at Alistair, the expression slips slightly and he hastily turns away.
There’s an awkward pause while Alistair frowns back at Kesh, then takes a deep breath, and his brow smooths a little.
“You need to turn your mouth down a bit more,” Alistair says after a moment, pulling another sulky face. “Kind of like this.”
For a moment, Kesh seems thrown, but then the grin that spreads over his face seems genuinely from the heart.
He copies Alistair. “Hello, I’m Wren Fitzgerald and I don’t want to talk. Leave me in peace, lovely neighbor, so that I can get on with my grumpy teenage existence, thank you very much.”
Alistair, Ruby, and I burst out laughing, and after a moment, Wren joins in. Kesh leans back on his elbows, smiling to himself with satisfaction.
“Bunch of shitheads. Can anyone kindly remind me why I invited you?” he asks once everyone’s calmed down a little.
“Because we’re your friends and you didn’t want to spend this evening without us?” I ask.
“Or because you need someone to christen the sofa?” says Alistair.
“Or because you wanted someone to spill crumbs all over your carpet?” Kesh pensively removes a few crisp fragments from the patterned rug.
“It’s brand-new, bro.”
At that, Kesh picks up the bowl of crisps and holds it out to Wren with a grin.
Alistair cuts in before Wren gets a chance to speak, although he was clearly about to. “Guys.”
We all look at him. He holds up his phone so we can see a photo of a crowd of people. It’s overexposed from the flash, and you can’t see straightaway who they are.
“Looks like James McCormack’s having a party tonight too.”
“So?” Wren asks indifferently. None of us can stand McCormack. Not because he’s the Eastview lacrosse captain, but because he’s an arrogant bastard who plays dirty and causes trouble in every match.
I lean in and squint. And then I see why Alistair mentioned it. At the edge of the screen, I spot someone being held up by two other guys, looking like he’s about to throw up his guts. Someone who looks suspiciously like…
“Is that Cy?” asks Kesh, his brow furrowed.
“Definitely,” Alistair replies with a nod, as he looks inquiringly at Wren.
“Looks rough,” says Wren.
I mutter in agreement. Cyril’s white as a sheet, his hair hanging down over his forehead. Someone’s phone is in his face as they go to take a photo of him. He looks like he’s trying and failing to fend them off with his hands.
“Didn’t you invite him?”