The Worst of Me

  The

  Worst

  of

  Me

  Kate le Vann has already had published four highly acclaimed novels for teenagers: Tessa in Love, Things I Know About Love, Two Friends, One Summer and Rain.

  Praise for Kate’s previous books

  “One of the finest evocations of young love that I have ever read – subtle, delicate and utterly moving.”

  Jan Mark, Books for Keeps, on Tessa in Love

  “Compelling and compassionate . . . The endearing and completely credible relationship with her brother is delightful and the moving and gentle awareness of a real relationship developing gives an added layer to the sensitivity of the whole novel.”

  Carousel, on Things I Know About Love

  “Told with a good deal of light humour and a credible voice, Two Friends, One Summer charts Sam’s journey to a realisation that instant gratification is not all, and that some things are worth waiting for.”

  Books for Keeps, on Two Friends, One Summer

  “Entertaining and accessible . . . heartwarming . . . le Vann’s sensitive, perceptive prose will make it enduring.”

  Daily Telegraph, on Rain

  KATE LE VANN

  PICCADILLY PRESS • LONDON

  Thanks to everyone at Piccadilly Press for their

  incredible patience, helpfulness, wisdom

  and incredible patience.

  First published in Great Britain in 2010

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Kate le Vann, 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Kate le Vann to be identified as Author

  of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 045 7

  eBook ISBN 978 1 84812 141 6

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  Cover illustration by Susan Hellard

  For my dad

  They must think I’m asleep. It’s only half past five, and I would be asleep if it weren’t for the man telling my mum off in the next room.

  I am this close, this close to going in and screaming at him and telling him to get out and leave us alone and never come back. I practise it in my head. I’m ready.

  But my mum seems to want him here.

  So I lie down and pull my quilt around me and try to hear her side of the conversation – his voice is too fuffly and mumbly.

  I argued with him earlier, so I know this might be about me. In a way, I’m quite glad about that because I can see him for what he is and for some reason she can’t. If she realises things are not working she’s going to have to tell him to go. I’m not a kid any more and there’s no way she can be okay with me being unhappy.

  Suddenly my mum’s voice becomes very close – she must have moved to the side of the room where we share a wall. So I can’t tell what Paul says that makes her sigh and sound so sad, but her reply is perfectly clear: ‘Cassidy won’t be living with us forever.’

  Chapter 1

  You know those people who look like they know what they’re doing? Confident people. The ones who don’t hate their bodies, the ones who aren’t afraid to say what they really think. Well, don’t trust them. I know how to fake it and I can pass as one of them. But from the outside you can’t tell the difference between them and me.

  I think it’s because there is no difference: we’re all faking it.

  When I’m most nervous, a kind of steel closes over my skin. I breathe really slowly and look into space with a bit of a smile as if I’m remembering something funny, or I just don’t care. Like I’m maybe even looking down on the world. It’s a good trick – it keeps me safe – but it has its disadvantages. Because when I’m at my most shy and terrified, when my heart’s fluttery and I’ve forgotten how to move, and I’m wishing someone would feel sorry for me and come over and be my friend, they’re probably looking at me and thinking, That bitch is so up herself, I would never talk to her.

  But that day, someone did.

  After I heard my mum saying that I wouldn’t always live with her – which was true, I know, but it’s just not great to find out your mum is counting down the days till you’re gone – I had to get away. I lay still in my bed until I could hear the soft buzzing of his snoring, and figured that my mum would have sulked herself back to sleep, then I silently got ready to go out. I left a note on the kitchen table saying I’d gone into town: I knew they wouldn’t be up before nine, they never were on Saturdays. I was out of the house by seven and the early morning chill blew straight through me because I was so tired.

  I caught a bus into the city centre well before the shops opened. But there were people about, it wasn’t scary, and I wasn’t interested in buying anything. I just walked around, and the shops opened and the streets filled up around me. I killed time going into places I’d never been in before: I touched sleeves to feel the fabric, fanned out dresses to see their shapes, picked up shoes to look at the prices on the bottom, and told the assistants I was just looking, thanks. When I got to the cinema, I’d been walking for absolutely hours and needed to sit down. I knew I could hide there. It’s not the sort of place where people from school usually go because it doesn’t show the loud stupid films that everyone sees. I’d never been in there before, never even been to a cinema on my own before, but hiding is about not doing what you usually do. The film had already started when I went in, and it took my eyes a while to get used to the dark and to find out who I’d sat myself next to. It wasn’t all that scary and I could see loads of people on their own. I drifted in and out of the film – it was a dark comedy with a lot of talking and I didn’t really know which bits were supposed to be funny. My thoughts took over all the time, running off when something in the story reminded me of my life. But I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to stay there. I watched all the credits.

  Afterwards, I went into the cinema café and bought a sandwich and some coffee. It was after five o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything, so I was starving. I ate it properly, taking neat little bites and carefully using my serviette, the way you never do when you’re on your own, but also sneakily brushing crumbs off my T-shirt and lap and on to the floor, worrying that I might get told off for doing that. But I didn’t actually think I was being watched, if you know what I mean.

  ‘Oi, curly!’

  I’m curly – I mean, my hair is . . . but that wasn’t enough to make me look. Then there was a little whistle, the kind of whistle you make through your teeth that isn’t much louder than saying ‘shh’.

  ‘Curlylocks! You go to Samuel Bond’s, don’t you?’

  Samuel Bond School: my school.

  I knew who was talking before I looked. I’d been people-watching in the café, checking everyone out. There were groups of students, the boys wearing T-shirts with band names on them, the girls with pretty, short dresses and clumpy shoes; some tweed-jacketed old people talking and laughing loudly; two mums with toddlers in highchairs eating ice cream. And the four boys at the next table who didn’t really look like students, and I was sure I’d seen at least one of them before. He was very tall and blond, with tanned reddish skin, and blond stubble spark
ling on his chin. Rugby player shaped. Solid.

  I lifted my head, taking my time to bring up my eyes to look at them. This is the kind of thing I do to pretend I’m not shy, acting bored and a bit sulky like that.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ I said, but neutrally, not impatient or anything.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the blond boy. He smiled, as if he thought he was a bit gorgeous. Maybe he really thought that, or maybe he was faking it too. He’d have been gorgeous to a certain type of girl, the ones who like rugby players. I prefer footballers. There was one of them in the group, too – a footballer-shaped one, I mean – as tall as the blond but dark-haired and better looking. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking down and grinning, like he was embarrassed but thought it was funny. ‘You just saw the film, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘We’re having an argument about it now. Can you settle something for us? You know Robert? The guy who got arrested? Were Robert and the artist chick supposed to have had a thing in the past? Were they exes?’

  ‘Sorry about him,’ said the dark-haired one. ‘He finds it hard to keep up with plots.’

  But they all waited for my answer. When I told them what I thought, the three non-blonds did a little quiet cheer, like they’d won, then they went back to their conversation.

  The dark-haired one turned back to me a minute later and said, ‘Thanks, sorry to bother you.’ I smiled and shrugged. Then he said, ‘Is Dom right? Do you go to Samuel Bond’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I looked at him. Something inside me changed . . . as if a switch had turned on. Like the way you can tell a TV is on even when the channel is dead and the picture’s black.

  ‘We haven’t been there long,’ he said. ‘We just joined the sixth form this year. I haven’t seen you around.’

  ‘She’s one of the ones who goes around in little skirts,’ the blond said. The other two sniggered, and I wondered if I should pretend to be offended, but I wasn’t, even though it was a dodgy thing to say. I kept my eyes on the dark-haired one and raised an eyebrow. That makes me sound like I think I’m, you know, but it’s all put on. Inside my heart was beating hard, although I don’t know why, I was just talking to some boys in a café, not jumping out of a plane.

  ‘D’you want to come and sit with us?’ the dark-haired one asked. I froze for a moment. I might have given myself away a bit, behind the eyes.

  ‘Maybe she wants to be alone, Joe,’ one of the others said. He had thick, messy sandy-brown hair and a low, steady voice. That voice, a serious amount of stubble – nearly a beard – and the way he was leaning far back in his chair made him look a lot older than the others. I thought he probably didn’t want me to sit with them.

  ‘Well, then she’ll say no,’ the dark-haired one said, and he pulled over a chair from one of the tables near his. ‘Come and talk to us.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Jonah.’

  And I thought: I already love you. Maybe you can feel it too. Isn’t that stupid? That’s how I remember it happening, as everything and no big deal all at once.

  You think love at first sight only happens in films, but really it doesn’t happen all that much in films . . . not to girls, anyway. For boys, you usually get this thing where a gorgeous girl appears for the first time and there’s hotgirl music and she’s moving in slow motion with her hair blown around by wind machines and everything’s lit too bright and beautiful. But that’s all about looks, she’s always amazing looking, and like I said, just for boys. In a chick flick, usually you’re supposed to argue with the boy for the first hour and a half, only to work out what’s going on ten minutes before the end.

  But this. This was like: you have to be feeling something too. It can’t just be happening to me. You and me are in this together, and no one else can hear what our eyes are telling each other now. It felt brave and mad holding on to his gaze like that, neither of us looking away.

  They were Malton boys. Malton Road School: it’s a posher school than ours but it doesn’t have a sixth form. Most of them go to the sixth-form college in town, but a few choose Samuel Bond’s because they like the fact that we have an old-fashioned sixth that goes back for ever and we were once a grammar school. We get about thirty of their lot a year. It’s a big enough number for them to come down on us like a pack, so they don’t care if they fit in. They have a rep for being snobby, but they’re also a bit rich and glamorous and our girls always try to go out with their boys. That’s why our boys hate them.

  The others told me their names. The blond rugby player one was Dominic. The low-voiced stubbly one was Steve – the one who seemed older. The one I hadn’t really noticed was Lewis. He had dark hair, too, but his face was ghostly white with more freckles than I’ve ever seen on anyone. He laughed loudly at the others’ jokes but when he talked himself his voice was quiet.

  They asked me questions about our school – the cafeteria, lockers, some of the teachers they had. I made them laugh. I wasn’t used to making boys laugh. I wasn’t used to talking to boys on my own. This is going to sound bad, but I was really glad I was alone because I knew I would have been a different person if my friends had been with me. I would have been all little and nice, and embarrassed about whether the girls thought I was trying to be fancied. I can only really do the confidence trick on my own, because I learned it to cope with being alone. That’s weird, though, isn’t it? Most people are better at being confident in big packs. The thing is, as far as Jonah and his friends knew, I was really that girl, the girl who was at the pictures on her own and made strangers laugh as if she didn’t care what they thought of her.

  The thing is, I’m not.

  For a long time, I’ve worried about what I’m faking and what’s really me, without being sure that there is a real me, something concrete underneath it all. Sometimes I feel like I’m different with every single person. I get worried that I’ll make a mistake and get caught out, or find myself with lots of people I’m different with all at the same time.

  When you really like someone you’re torn in two directions. You want them to think you’re worth their time, so you lie, and try and show them the person you’d like to be. But you need them to see the real you, so you can be sure they like you for you, so you also start confessing everything and putting out your worst side, just to test them and make sure they really mean it. Then the most dangerous thing you can do happens: you stop thinking about yourself altogether – you get over yourself – because you’re having a good time. And then who are you?

  When I met Jonah I was still spending most hours of most days asking myself what was so wrong with me that had made Ian dump me. I already knew the answer: he’d found someone prettier and nicer. But I needed to feel it was something actual that I’d done, because that way I could fix myself and make things different next time, or even – I thought – get Ian back. It was hard that Ian wasn’t always around now, but even harder than that was the rejection – knowing I wasn’t good enough. His new girlfriend was Sophie, and I found her annoying. Not because of anything she did or was, just because she wasn’t me. She had beautiful naturally-straight hair and a voice that always made her sound like she was smiling, so I never stood a chance. I had to pretend I was okay with things because Ian’s sister Isobel was a close friend of mine. I couldn’t really talk about it honestly to anyone else because Iso and I had the same friends.

  Ian was my first boyfriend, and we’d been going out for nearly six months. If I’m being honest, that was the part of it I liked best, being a girl with a boyfriend, being part of that club where your friends talk about you as a couple. It’s like your personality’s not all your responsibility any more. When it was just us two alone together, we argued about only ever going to guys’ films, or about hanging out too much with my mates – about a lot of stuff that seemed stupid later but wasn’t much fun at the time. Sometimes we were moody with each other for no reason at all and sometimes both of us said mean things that we couldn’t stop thinking about. But once I’d lost th
at couple status, I forgot all the bad bits and felt sorry for myself and humiliated. I’d been feeling like that for a whole summer, because it was at the end of June, just before school broke up, when Ian dumped me. That same summer, my mum turned silly over a man, so I couldn’t even rely on her man-hating at Dad to make me feel better.

  Then I had to go back to school and Ian was there every day, hanging around being lean and out of my league, and knowing all my secrets. I’d spent weeks imagining what I’d say if he asked me to get back with him. Sometimes I imagined myself as angry, and sometimes happy, and sometimes I just ran away. But it had all been in my head, so he had to do what I wanted. Now he was real again he could do what he liked.

  He was nice. Being nice was Ian’s thing. He smiled at me when he saw me, his little shy smile, where he pressed his lips together until they disappeared. He talked to me every few days. It was worst when Sophie was there, with both of them looking at me. Ian being Ian, he worked this out pretty fast, and soon he only stopped to chat when he was alone, and always about nice boring things. He made it easy to hang out with Isobel at their house. He didn’t snog Sophie in the school walkways. He was just nice. It made me sad he wasn’t mine any more.

  ‘So, are we going to be allowed to talk to you at school now?’ Jonah asked. ‘Or tomorrow are you going to be like, “I don’t know these Malton Road spods!”?’ The question would have been more likely to come from me, them being sixth-formers and me being Year 11.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘We’ll have to pretend this didn’t happen. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.’

  He smiled, a great smile.

  Steve, the low-voiced stubbly one, suddenly lifted his phone and took a picture of me and Jonah. I froze, confused. ‘Well, here’s the proof,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll use it to blackmail you.’ Then everyone laughed.

  When it started to get dark outside, the café seemed to magically turn into a bar. They put the lights on, which reflected all around the windows so the whole place twinkled. They turned the music up. The daytime crowd went away and a new wave of evening people with louder voices and bellowing group laughter came in their place, but we stayed through the changes, just talking, making jokes. I knew my mum would have been expecting me back because I hadn’t told her where I was going. A bit after seven, I told the boys I had to leave.