The Worst of Me, Page 2

  ‘Nah, stay,’ Dom said, and the others nodded. A few minutes later my phone blipped. A text from my mum asking me where I was.

  ‘That your boyfriend?’ Steve asked.

  I shook my head, smiling. ‘It’s my mum.’ I tried to keep the smile on my face, but behind it I felt depressed. Would she be angry? Why had she waited so long to text, and why hadn’t she even called? The anger I’d been feeling for her earlier surged up again, taking me back to where I’d been when I walked out of the house. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to make her worry.

  With friends in town, didn’t realise was so late. Coming home now, I texted. Then: ‘Well, I could probably stay for one more drink,’ I said.

  At nine o’ clock I stood at the bus stop with Dom and Jonah. They were getting a different bus, but said they’d wait with me till my bus came. Lewis, the quiet, freckly one, had peeled away hours ago, saying his mum would have his tea ready. Lewis was the type of boy who knows he’s not cool so he doesn’t try. The thing about being like that is, when you’re totally outside of the being cool game it doesn’t seem to matter, it’s not as bad as nearly getting it right. People take the mick, but it’s too obvious, it seems to bounce off them. Or deep down, are they feeling it? Are they embarrassed and hurt?

  Steve had come with us as far as the bus stop but kept going, lighting a cigarette and then raising a non-waving hand as a wave as he walked away. In a way, I was glad because he was the one I was least sure about. I thought the others had wanted me to sit at their table, but maybe not Steve. He didn’t say anything that definitely stood out as not wanting me there, he wasn’t snidey or sarcastic to me, but he was more closed off than his friends. And I guess my default setting is to assume people don’t like me before I know better, rather than the other way around.

  I was jingly with nerves and excitement. I already knew my mum was in a bad mood: the rule was I had to prearrange where I was going with her, and today I’d just walked out. She’d texted, she knew where I was now, and that I was on my way home, but I was due some grief when I got back. And this was the first time in a long time I’d been out and not known what to expect. I was imagining school on Monday – suddenly having this pack of sixth-formers who knew who I was, Malton boys, too. Regardless of Jonah’s jokes, would they speak to me? Their bus came and went, and my skin prickled with embarrassment; I don’t like causing other people hassle.

  ‘You should have got that,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Jonah said. ‘We’re the ones who kept you out late. I should be taking you right to your door but . . .’ He hugged his arms as if he felt the cold.

  But what?

  It wasn’t cold, but there was that strange thinning of the air you get on warm autumn days, like the stickiness of summer has been filtered out. After half a day talking non-stop, suddenly the three of us had nothing to say to each other. We started talking about the film again, unable to find a way back into the easy joking in the café, as if Steve had taken all our funniness with him. Which was strange, because Jonah and Dom had been the ones making all the jokes.

  My bus came. I stepped back to let a little old lady on it first.

  ‘I’ll see you both on Monday,’ I said.

  Jonah started hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Should I . . . do you want me to see you home?’

  ‘I live really close to the stop,’ I said, shaking my head.

  ‘Okay.’ He sucked in his bottom lip as he nodded.

  I got on the bus and found a seat on the bottom deck. The bus pulled away and I waved to them.

  I told my mum I’d been with two boys from school who had seen me home.

  ‘I didn’t see them. I was looking out the window.’

  ‘I said they didn’t have to come right down the street. You know, it’s such a long street, it’s a cul-de-sac, I said I’d be fine. And I am fine.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, they should have come all the way down. Who are these boys? I haven’t heard you mention them. Why was it just boys? Why weren’t you with any girls?’

  ‘Jonah and Dominic. And Lewis and Steve as well, earlier. I haven’t known them long. They’re nice. They were at Malton Road.’

  ‘Oh.’ That seemed to satisfy my mum. Malton Road meant nice middle class boys. ‘Well, you know how I feel about you being out late without telling me where you are.’

  ‘I did tell you.’

  ‘Beforehand.’

  ‘We weren’t sure where we were going.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me anything, though, Cass. Next time, I need to know everything. Have you eaten?’

  She didn’t seem all that angry. She didn’t seem angry at all, even – just ticking the boxes. My muscles were tensed and hard, ready to withstand a blast of shouting. When that didn’t come, I couldn’t relax again, not just like that. I stopped frowning, loosened my shoulders. It felt weak and wrong.

  ‘Where’s Paul?’ I said.

  ‘He went out to meet a friend.’

  I thought: She’s not going nuts at me because she’s been lonely tonight.

  I thought: They had a row. She’s not that interested in me coming in late.

  I thought: I hope he never comes back.

  I said that I’d eaten when I was out, even though I hadn’t had anything since the sandwich after the film. I was happier hungry – I wanted to be thin and sexy on Monday when I saw the Malton boys again.

  Chapter 2

  Josette did not dislike me. Josette hardly knew me. Josette – pay close attention now! – had no negative feelings towards me.

  I’m glad we sorted that out, aren’t you? For some reason, though, my friends thought it needed repeating every time they talked about Josette’s party, which was a lot. I was sick of everyone talking about her party because it was boring, not because I was jealous. The last thing I needed was to be reassured that Josette didn’t hate me, but that didn’t stop them.

  Okay . . . it’s never great to be excluded from something everyone else is going to. But I would have been fine about it without all the understanding and sensitivity and reasons.

  ‘I think she just didn’t think about it because you weren’t there on her birthday,’ Finian said. ‘That was when we all started talking again. I mean, she might not even know who you are, really, you’ve only met her in big groups.’

  ‘I bet if we asked her if you could come too she’d be well up for it,’ Kim said.

  ‘Well, you know she knows Sophie too, Soph’ll be going, maybe she thought there’d be weirdness, not that there would be,’ Isobel said. ‘She doesn’t know it’s not like that with you and Ian.’ Even though she wasn’t saying so, that was the first time I realised that maybe Isobel was weird about me not going out with Ian any more, or thought it changed things, anyway.

  ‘That’s the point!’ Finian said. ‘She doesn’t even know you really.’

  Shut up, everyone, shut up, shut up! Did I even ask? Bloody Josette. She went to a different school – not the one Jonah and Dom had come from – but she’d gone to the same primary school as some of my mates, and they’d all met up again at a gig which just happened to be the best night of everyone’s life ever, only I was out with Ian that night. We’d been arguing, as usual, about how we only did things my mates did and maybe one Saturday he could go out without having to hang out with his little sister. So we’d gone to the pictures and seen one of his stupid superhero-type films while, as luck would have it, everyone else I knew was having a better time with Josette, and I would never, ever, be able to make up for missing this one amazing night. If I sound sarcastic, it’s because I’m trying to, but don’t trust me: I do actually believe this crap. There’d been a lot of web chatting among them all since then, but that was the night our circle of friends had opened up and let someone new walk right into the middle, and then closed again. And somehow I hadn’t made it back in time before the doors were locked.

  So Josette was having a party and I wasn’t invited, because . . . well, what
they said, probably. I just wasn’t on her mailing list because we didn’t know each other. None of my friends was trying to leave me out or make me feel bad – exactly the opposite – but it was still big news and everyone’s main subject of conversation. I did want someone to ask if I could go, but they all seemed to be offering without anyone actually doing it, and I didn’t want to keep saying ‘Did you ask, did you ask? What did she say?’ So eventually I said, ‘Nah, it’s okay, if she wanted me there she’d have said. It’s not really fair to put Josette on the spot.’ I still hoped they would ask her anyway.

  The worst thing about being lonely isn’t even the way you feel, it’s the fear that people will notice. That’s nuts, isn’t it – that loneliness should be more okay when you’re on your own? During lunch break I drifted away from my mates and headed off towards the library to hide out there. It was spotting with rain outside, but I’d left my coat in the classroom and I was shivering without even feeling very cold. It was weird, like I wasn’t quite inside my body. I hadn’t seen the Malton guys at all, except from a distance when I’d been on my way to a French lesson and they hadn’t seen me. They were looking very tall and not very real. The way I remembered talking to them now seemed to me like a story I’d retold a lot, adding more exaggeration every time till it was miles from the truth. My shirt had become untucked, the way it always did with my school skirts, and I felt scruffy and small. I’d been hoping they wouldn’t notice me, but was sad when they didn’t. I didn’t look for them now, I just watched the raindrops making marks on my blazer and moved as quickly as I could without running. Out of the rain, through the echoy corridor, and on to the soft mossy library carpet. Safe.

  And Sam.

  Sam was sitting in the corner with his dark head bent over a sci-fi book, the only person I knew with hair curlier than mine. And he was the only person in there. I watched him for a moment, but that sixth sense people have, where they know they’re being watched, kicked in. He looked up, and his face relaxed.

  ‘Hey, Cass.’ He put his book down.

  ‘Hey.’ I slung my bag over a chair and sat next to it. I tilted my head so I could read the writing on his bag. It said, Resist peer pressure: all the cool kids are doing it.

  I was only friends with Sam for about a month before he came out so there was no way I knew him well enough to have stopped him. And I wouldn’t time-travel back now and tell him not to. It didn’t take the wind out of their sails, those people who always made his life hell, but it didn't make things worse. And you could see the difference it made for him, not having to keep the secret that they were ‘right’ all along, and having good comebacks when they called him names. Still, there were boys he used to talk to, sort of geeky sensitive boys – I don’t mean gay, although they might have been – who you could tell had withdrawn from him a bit because they were scared of getting the same thing. Being called his boyfriend, that stuff. I worried it had made Sam lonelier, but I always think everyone is sad.

  ‘Are you hiding from Ian?’ he said. Sam talked very softly, even when he wasn’t in a library.

  ‘I’m over Ian,’ I said.

  Sam raised his eyebrows.

  ‘No, honestly, I fancy other people now.’

  ‘Which other people?’

  ‘It’s no one. Not someone who would take me seriously, anyway.’

  ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘He’s one of the new Malton boys.’

  ‘Right.’ He narrowed one eye suspiciously. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Ha ha. We’ve spoken. Look, nothing’s going to come of it, I just wanted you to believe me. I’ve moved on.’

  ‘The new Maltesers are all right. There’s one I’m hoping is gay, actually. Oh, but what if it’s the same one?’ He made an ‘O’ with his mouth and clapped his hand over it. I laughed, and wanted to shove him, jokily, but fought the urge. Sam was the least tactile person who ever lived, you could feel him tense up if you leaned against him or touched his arm.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have less of a chance with him if he was,’ I said.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have more of a chance.’

  The door opened and the librarian came in. She said hi to both of us, but looked at me suspiciously. Recognising me – I’d been in there before to talk at Sam for the whole lunch hour. I shuffled my chair back a bit, as if I was there to read.

  ‘So who are you hiding from?’ Sam said, in a whisper.

  ‘I’m not hiding!’ I said. ‘I’m just tired today. Well . . .’ I told him about all the party talk. I had to keep remembering to whisper, even though we were the only people in the library. I kept getting more agitated, doing impressions of my friends’ voices.

  ‘So what, it’s one party!’ Sam said. ‘Will the boy be there?’

  ‘Probably not. I mean, he might, but there’s no reason he would be.’

  ‘It’d be a waste of a new outfit, then.’

  But the closer we got to Friday, the day of Josette’s party, the more that thought of ‘saving’ a new outfit – which, by the way, I didn’t own – didn’t really feel like an upside. And just because it was finally about to happen, that didn’t mean an end of it. There’d be the analysis – which would last at least a week – and then references to it that went on for ever, just like that concert I’d missed.

  When you’re in the middle of something it seems a lot bigger than it is, and although it sounds nothingy and meaningless now, it was getting to me. I wanted to sleep and stay asleep and only wake up when things were nicer: when my mum had broken up with Paul and no one could even remember being that excited about Josette’s party, and some boy was waiting for me to wake up so he could ask me out. Trying to concentrate on homework was tiring me out, and I went to bed early and woke up with only just enough time to get ready and had to go to classes unprepared and feeling thick.

  I was paired up with my friend Dee in English – we were once best friends, when we were really little, but had drifted quite a bit in the last few years. We hadn’t fallen out or anything, just made other friends that we saw more of. It was great getting some time to talk to just her again, on her own. We were supposed to be writing a modern version of a scene from Wuthering Heights as a read-aloud play and halfway through the class, Dee was asking me what I thought about a bit with a grave and I was trying to bluff, and she said, ‘Why do I get the feeling you haven’t read this?’

  ‘Well, the thing about that is . . .’

  ‘Ah, come on, Cass, naugh-tee!’ Her eyes flashed with humour. Dee had this way of telling me off and making me feel better at the same time, I’d forgotten that about her. She always looked like she was trying not to laugh. This time she really was trying not to laugh: she explained the plot to me and the fact that I seemed to have confused it with Jane Eyre, which I also hadn’t read but had seen the film of. We both cracked up.

  ‘What’s up? Have you been having too much fun to stay in and read?’

  I gave a long sigh. ‘I wish!’

  She looked up from her book and studied my face. ‘Oh. You know what, a few of us are going to the pictures Saturday evening – do you fancy coming along?’

  ‘I’d like to, yeah.’ I was happy to be asked. I didn’t think my mum would be mad about the idea after my last unscheduled cinema visit. Even though she hadn’t made a fuss when I came in, there was no way of telling she wouldn’t use it against me when she wanted an excuse to be angry. ‘Listen, I’ll let you know if I can make it, but right now I’m not sure. My mum’s a bit mental at the moment.’

  Dee rolled her eyes. ‘They don’t let you become a mother unless you fail the psychological evaluation. Crap, we’re supposed to have finished! Can I just write it for us?’

  ‘Oh, I’m going to say no to that!’

  She put her head down and scribbled away with a pencil for about a minute, stopping sometimes to cross things out with zig-zagged lines, filling the page. I watched as these perfect sentences came out of her head fully formed. What would I have g
iven for a brain like that? Dee was a bit like my fairy godmother. She turned up just in time to cover for me in class, took the piss so I got over myself a bit, and made me feel like less of a social outcast. When we read out our scene, we were a bit hyper because we’d been laughing, and it stood out in the half-asleep class. Afterwards, the teacher raved about it and I sat and took the praise for someone else’s talent, feeling bad about that, but grateful too.

  We were walking out of class together and I heard a voice behind us – Alison Francis, not my biggest fan, or Dee’s – doing an impression of us reading our scene out, giving us both stupid singy voices and making us self-deluded wannabe actresses. Her friend Mia laughed extra loud to make sure we could hear her. My ears kind of popped as if I’d put my head in water, and I felt hot and sick. Dee and I didn’t turn round or look at each other, but I could sense her whole body stiffening and we stopped talking and didn’t start again. We had different lessons next, and she gave a little sigh and said, ‘See you later, then?’ and I nodded.

  I couldn’t wait for the day to be over, but I wasn’t mad about going home either. Paul was often back early on Thursdays; he worked at the university and had a half-day. He usually started making dinner to get brownie points with my mum. He’d also try to make conversation with me until she got back, for the same reason. I usually said I had homework to do and went straight upstairs to listen to music. But that narked him off, when he was trying to make a good impression and being ignored. He came up sometimes to see if I needed help, or ask if I minded ‘nipping’ to the corner shop for him to get him an onion or whatever.