Chapter Seventeen
Luna didn’t fail.
That’s what she reminded herself as she moved around the cottage, a tray of prawn cocktail lettuce boats held aloft in front of her. They’d already started to wilt.
Luna’s mum had described her grades as ‘perfectly respectable exam results’, which was probably somewhere between a compliment and a comment.
But perfectly respectable was entirely fine by Luna.
Especially since she thought she’d failed.
Her dad had texted her ‘B good’ because most of her grades were Bs.
‘I’ll take one of them off your hands, Luna.’ Ahmed, leaning back against the kitchen worktop, peeled a prawn cocktail boat off the tray her mum had arranged them on.
All around the cottage, little groups of people were gathered.
It was like two different styles of art meeting on canvas, and it being all wrong.
For instance, there was Earl, paint-splattered and wearing his feather top hat, an artist to his very core, chatting politely to Eyebrow Clive, the most literal man on the planet.
Zadie, who, Luna was sure if she were an artist, would be a cubist, was talking to her mum, who would paint vases of flowers and nothing else.
It was a mish-mash of friends her mum had in the village, and people Luna knew from The Edge.
‘Were you happy with your results?’ she asked Ahmed.
He shrugged. ‘I have more important things to be worrying about than grades, Luna.’
He folded down a page in his book, One Hundred Poems to Fall in Love By, and looked over at Zadie. ‘Emmett said that you got a special recognition certificate for Art?’
Luna flushed red, sure that even her stomach was the colour of beetroot. Art was the only subject that she had got the top grade, alongside a certificate to say that she was in the top 3 per cent of candidates.
Luna looked around for Emmett. She wondered if she was ever not looking for him.
‘He went into the garden, I think,’ Ahmed said, smiling at her.
‘I’m not looking for anyone in particular.’
‘Sure, Luna. I believe you.’
It seemed that everyone knew how hopelessly in love with Emmett Luna was.
‘You know, there might be a way for us to both get what we want,’ Ahmed carried on. It was stuffy, Luna needed water. She put down the tray of soggy prawns.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Come on, Luna. We aren’t little anymore. You’re sixteen now, time to start playing with the big kids.’ He was peering down at her, completely grossing her out.
‘Can you just spit it out, Ahmed? What are you talking about?’ Luna’s head was starting to ache, a consequence of not sleeping the night before. Or the night before that.
‘Try this. You want to get with Emmett.’ She neither confirmed nor denied. ‘I want to get with Zadie. So how about we get with each other, to make them jealous.’
It was the most ridiculous thing Luna had ever heard.
She started to laugh.
‘That would never work.’
‘It’s actually a classic trope. Works every time.’
Somehow, Luna doubted that this was true. But if there was a chance…
‘I don’t know. Do you even want to kiss me?’ she asked.
‘You’re not hot, but you’re beautiful. Interesting. And I appreciate those qualities.’ It wasn’t quite the compliment Ahmed seemed to think that it was.
Luna didn’t want to kiss Ahmed any more than he probably wanted to kiss her, but she was stubbornly stuck in the friend zone with Emmett.
‘Emmett probably just doesn’t fancy me,’ she told Ahmed.
‘Emmett is obsessed with you,’ he answered simply. ‘You forget, I’m here when you’re not.’
Luna wanted to push for more info, but she didn’t. Still, his words were a balm for her frayed heart.
‘Why hasn’t he made a move then?’
‘Because he’s terrified. And this summer especially, he’s comfortable. Too comfortable. He has you right where he wants you.’
Luna didn’t like the insinuation that Emmett was using her in some way. She went to defend him, but Ahmed held up his hands.
‘I’m not saying that he’s doing it on purpose, or for any reason other than fear. I think we just need to jolt him out of it, that’s all.’
The party carried on around them. Luna watched as Emmett came in from the garden. His eyes briefly met hers before he moved to whisper something to Earl. Whatever Emmett told him, it made Earl frown. He continued to frown as he and Emmett huddled in the corner, deep in conversation.
‘Just think about it, Luna.’
‘What here? In my parents’ kitchen?’
‘No, we’d have to wait for it to have maximum impact. Really hit home. When the time is right, come find me. Let’s see if we can put an end to all this longing.’
The time was never right. Or at least, it wasn’t for the next five days. Emmett sunk into a dark mood, his first that summer. He wouldn’t meet Luna’s eye when they talked, but he agreed to let her sketch him. Luna couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t because that way, they wouldn’t have to speak.
‘Do you know what’s wrong with Emmett?’ Luna asked Earl one afternoon in the studio. ‘And also, I can’t get his eye right – what do you think?’
Earl peered over her shoulder. ‘Eyes are difficult, I think. Like a tiny universe on the page. But this is very skilled work, Luna. You’re too hard on yourself.’
‘All this time sketching an eye.’
‘It is very beautiful. You could add more dimension, perhaps, where the eyelid casts a shadow. But still, it is excellent work. You should become an artist.’
It was a thing that Earl kept saying to her. He smirked as he said it.
‘It’s not real art.’
He held up her pencil.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s a pencil.’
‘Okay, but does it know that it is a pencil?’
‘Well, no, it can’t think for itself. I know what you’re doing.’
‘Then you will know that so much of the world is subjective. This is a pencil because we all believe that it is a pencil.’
‘You can make your point now.’ Luna smirked, and Earl laughed.
‘Art is what we say it is, that is all. Oh, and Emmett has had word that Tanya will be out this September. I think that he has mixed feelings, as you say.’
Luna thought about the party. About how Ahmed had said that Emmett was too comfortable.
‘He’s down again,’ she said to Earl.
Earl had paused in front of his own work in progress. He frowned. ‘He is. I hate to see it.’
‘I do too.’
‘It will not last.’
‘But any sadness is too much, isn’t it?’
‘You cannot make people happy, Luna.’
Luna knew this, she did. But she was still going to try.
Earl sighed. ‘As a young child, Emmett learned that the world is not a good or a safe place to be. That is what he knows. It will take some time for him to see that the world is beautiful too, I think. Until then, we can just be with him, yes? That is enough, I think.’
‘You’re right. I’m glad he has you when I’m not here.’
Earl waved a hand away. ‘He is company to me. I am the lucky one.’
Luna didn’t reply. Instead, she continued to sketch Emmett’s eye, and quietly marvelled at the tiny universe within it.
It was the last night of the summer and they were at the beach.
‘You know, I think I might just wear some shorts,’ Luna told Mae. They’d packed their things, and Luna’s scruffy denim shorts were on the top of the pile. ‘I think I’m done with the Beauty Bible since it’s been such an epic fail.’
‘Yeah, fair play.’ Mae was wearing cycling shorts and a crop top. ‘It was rubbish advice anyway. I feel like my eyebrows will never grow back.’
‘Same.’
‘You should go for it with Ahmed tonight. Because if something doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to walk into the sea. There’s too much tension.’
Mae was a big fan of Ahmed’s idea. She was annoyed, actually, that she hadn’t come up with it herself. ‘This sort of thing never fails,’ she told Luna.
Her mum, dad, and Eyebrow Clive were in the back garden together.
Ever since Dad had come to pick them up a couple of days ago, things had been super polite between them all.
Like they were all walking around on eggshells the whole time.
It half freaked Luna out. But also, it made a nice change from all the yelling.
Their mum made the girls promise that they wouldn’t be back later than ten, and recounted for posterity the story of their being missing persons for eighteen minutes to people who were all there for that eighteen minutes. After this, they were free to go to the beach.
Everyone was there. Earl, Zadie, Emmett, Ahmed. Ahmed. He gave Luna a look that said it’s now or never, and whatever she thought about the merits of the plan, if they were going to do it, it had to be tonight.
She shuffled over to where Ahmed was sat reading.
‘Okay, I’m in,’ she told him. He put his book, War and Peace, in the sand and sat up straighter.
‘Excellent. We need to lay some groundwork. Put your head on my shoulder. Then we can strategise.’
Luna did as she was told. It was quite nice, actually, having someone tell her how to behave. Except, almost immediately, she got a neckache from resting her head on his bony shoulder.
Mae urged Luna on from across the fire. Emmet either hadn’t seen them or purposely wasn’t looking.
Ahmed picked up Luna’s hand and laced her fingers with his as the others talked and laughed. He dropped his voice to a whisper.
‘We need to make this count, Luna,’ he told her. She swallowed. She had virtually no experience at kissing, which was tragic, she knew. ‘We need them to see us as sexual beings.’
‘But, I mean, we aren’t, are we?’ Ahmed was a bookworm through and through, and Luna had no experience at all, bar what she’d imagined.
‘Speak for yourself. I’ve been reading the complete works of Jilly Cooper.’
Luna’s mum loved Jilly Cooper’s novels.
‘It’s confidence, that’s what women like.’
Luna wanted to answer that she thought that women looked for a lot more than just confidence, but she was distracted by the way Ahmed was running his fingers up and down her arm. It felt nice. How much nicer would it feel if it was Emmett doing that? she wondered.
‘Take a walk with me.’ Ahmed stood up and pulled Luna up too. ‘We’re going to the water,’ he told the others.
‘I’ll come,’ Emmett said.
‘Sorry, Emmett man, we want some alone time, don’t we, Luna?’