Chapter Two
Two
The one where I first saw him
Three days before my fourteenth birthday, just after Christmas, we moved into a detached three-bed in Seaford near to my dad’s new job.
I never did know what he did back then. Something to do with analysis and computers.
Although Dad didn’t like to talk about it much, Mum had muttered a few times about me not making it harder for either of them, since it was bad enough he’d lost his job in the first place.
The last thing he needed, according to her, was for me to be ‘difficult’ about us picking up and moving our entire lives.
No thoughts were given to how an awkward fourteen-year-old girl who wore glasses, had garish braces and hair cruelly akin to Sideshow Bob, would fare at a new school with no friends.
And to make matters worse, we had to attend a New Year’s Eve party at Dad’s new boss’s place, a stoic, red-brick house with bay windows on a much leafier street than ours.
“Now, remember to be polite and try to smile, Hattie. Nobody likes it when you mope,” Mum said as she ran her fingers over her dark bob.
Dad was fiddling with his shirt sleeves, nervous energy practically oozing off him.
He knocked on the front door as I hugged myself against the freezing night air.
Mum had made me wear the pink top and denim skirt she’d bought me for Christmas.
It wasn’t my style at all. I’d been pushing aside all the girly pinks and frilly shoulders she wanted me to wear more recently for darker colours and thick, wonky eyeliner.
I’d also attempted to straighten my reddish-blonde hair, sick of it being so noticeable all the time, but I’d ended up singeing the ends and it had begun frizzing up again on the short, misty-aired walk from the car.
We were ushered into the house in a blur of introductions and offers of food and drink. Mum and Dad were told to make themselves at home while the boss’s wife, who’d introduced herself as Mandy, tucked her arm in mine and showed me to where the ‘other children’ were.
Which – rude – I was practically fourteen.
“Sam, sweetie,” she called, cracking the door open to a small bedroom covered in rock-band posters. “Lovely Hattie is here. The girl I told you about.”
“Oh,” was the less-than-excited response.
Mandy pushed the door open wider, and there sat a scrawny boy who I thought was younger than me, but then I noticed the birthday badge pinned to his t-shirt; he was fourteen today.
A whole day older. To my surprise, the “other children” turned out to be just one and he scowled at his mum as if he’d made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested in hanging out with some girl at a party he didn’t want to be at.
Which I guess is tricky when it’s in your own home.
“Right then,” Mandy said, ignoring her son’s expression. “You two have fun.” Then she turned and fled back to the adults.
“Nice badge,” I said.
Sam looked down and frowned some more. “I forgot that was there.”
“Is it your birthday?”
He blinked. “No. I just like wearing birthday badges.”
I laughed. He was funny. “Same,” I quipped. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, actually.”
“Really?” he asked, perking up slightly. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be fourteen too.”
“Weird.”
“Why’s that weird?” I asked, tilting my head.
“Just weird that we met today and have similar birthdays.”
“Not that weird.”
“It’s a coincidence.”
“A boring one.”
Sam finally snorted, then shook his head. “Why are you called Hat?”
“It’s not Hat. It’s Hattie.”
Sam continued to stare. He had bright-blue eyes that looked a little bloodshot – like he’d been staring at a screen for too long.
He wore a white t-shirt with the AC/DC branding on the front and blue jeans that were scuffed in a way that looked more like they were hand-me-downs than in the fashionable sense.
“Hattie…” he said again, but slower, as if he was testing it out on his tongue. “I prefer Hat.”
“Ok,” I said. “That doesn’t seem fair though as I can’t shorten your name.”
“You could just call me S.”
“But that takes the same time as just saying Sam.”
He raised his eyebrows as if he was considering this too. Then he shrugged. “So your dad is going to work for mine now, right?” he asked. I hoped it wasn’t some weird power trip. I nodded anyway. “And you’re going to the same school as me? Down the road?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what school you go to. But the one I’m going to is down the road, so maybe.”
“Do you like rock music?”
“I like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “You don’t look like you like rock music.”
I peered down at my pink top and sparkly shoes. “Yeah, well, my mum bought this for Christmas, and I didn’t want to upset her by refusing to wear it. My parents have been a bit sad lately.”
Sam turned back to the computer screen and hit save on his game before logging out. “Right. Want to steal a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of pop from downstairs?” he asked.
So, I guess he was done with conversation.
It was like I’d passed a test I didn’t know I was taking. He bounced around a bit. I liked that about him. It felt like he had enough energy for both of us and I could take a back seat.
He strode out the door and I followed, pausing at each corner as if there were people he didn’t want to bump into.
We were in cahoots. If he started to tiptoe, I copied.
If he squatted down below a window, I did too.
We were strangers but already so in sync.
It occurred to me, as he was passing me bottles of Coca-Cola and Fanta through the hatch in the wall, that being forced to attend a party with my parents might actually have been a good thing.
Had I just found my new best friend?
We spent the next few hours on The Sims, creating houses for our characters and making up random back stories for them.
But as the sugar took hold and our friendship settled in, we decided to make it funnier, putting them in pools and snatching the ladders away so we could watch the grim reaper show up as they drowned helplessly.
We set fire to things and giggled as the worlds we created burnt to ashes.
I never did understand why that game let you do that. Disturbing.
“You’re cool,” he announced without looking at me.
“Thanks?”
“You want to walk to school together first day back?”
My eyes went round. He had to know he was offering me a power card of some sort, surely. “You want to walk to school with me?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“Like we’re friends?”
“Yeah. We’re friends.”
“Wow, that was easy.”
Sam shrugged. “No point making it difficult.”
I guess my experience with girls had thwarted my opinion on friends in my old school.
I’d found the social hierarchy difficult to navigate.
But this felt genuine, so I agreed and decided that, even if his offer did turn out to be too good to be true, at least it was more than I’d had a few hours ago.
I’d been having nightmares about walking into school that first day all alone.
Around quarter to midnight, Sam’s mum showed up again, smiling at the sight of us, crumb-lipped and wide eyed. She encouraged us to come out to the garden and watch the fireworks.
We bundled on our coats, hats and gloves and made our way out to the Harrisons’ long, townhouse garden that was sloped so you could stand at the top and watch everything going on further down on the lawn.
I followed Sam to some chairs, and we sat side by side.
My dad appeared, rosy-cheeked and smiling for the first time in forever. He handed us sparklers and we put our embarrassment aside to mess around with them.
When the first fireworks lit up the sky in reds, blues and golds, I caught a glimpse of someone else.
A tall, slightly older boy with tawny hair blowing in the breeze and, although I couldn’t make out the colour in the dark, I could tell he had bright eyes and a wide smile.
He was in a blue shirt, with smart, black jeans and Converse, surrounded by friends who were all laughing at something he’d said.
There was something about him that made me not want to look away. Maybe it was the lines in his cheeks as he smiled. Or the way he dipped his chin when someone else was talking to show he was listening. Either way, I noticed him like I’d notice a rocket exploding against a dark sky.
“Who is that?” I asked Sam.
He stumped out his sparkler in the sand bucket placed by our feet. “Him? That’s my idiot brother. We don’t like him.”
My gaze flicked back to Sam, his long hair covering part of his eyes.
I pulled my beanie lower in a hope of disguising the heat in my face.
“He does look like an idiot,” I agreed. Although he really didn’t, of course.
A warm, exhilarating sensation was brewing inside of me every time I looked his way.
Not that he’d noticed me noticing him. But I was definitely noticing him.
“How old is he?” I asked, working hard to keep my voice somewhat disinterested.
“Seventeen.”
“Cool.”
“He’s not cool. He’s an idiot.”
“Why? What does he do?”
Sam scrunched his face up, glaring in his brother’s direction. “What doesn’t he do? He’s Mum and Dad’s favourite, to start with. He’s on all the sports teams. I have to wear all his shitty clothes when he’s done with them and worst of all, he messes up my room and then tells Mum I did it.”
“That’s rude.”
“Like I said. He’s an idiot.”
“Right,” I nodded. “What’s his name?”
Sam paused to test my expression. “Why?” he asked with narrowed eyes.
I bit my lip guilty.
“I don’t know. If we’re going to be friends, I feel like I should know your brother’s name. That’s all.”
Sam took another look at his brother before sighing. “Freddie. But just pretend he doesn’t exist.”