By Friday, everything has calmed down. A bit. I’m trying to just … wait out my feelings for Cassie. Just riding it out until it’s all over. Until I’m shipped off to Leeds, and I have to leave her behind. Only six more days until results day and all chances of escape are taken from me. I’ve realized that this is pretty much my default state: waiting. I’m a coward. I’m essentially in a relationship with someone because I’m too scared to properly confront the fact that I’m in love with my best friend. And it’s not like I can just avoid her, or simply push everything to the side and enjoy my time with her. I’m with her every day at Palmer’s Ices, and it’s getting harder and harder to remember how to keep things light when I’ve got so much going on in my head, and the person I most want to talk to about all of it is part of the problem.
At least Mum doesn’t seem too badly knocked by the whole Tony thing. Plus, last night I saw her swiping on an app again which can surely only be good news. Unless there’s another cheating scumbag just around the corner, which I truly pray there is not. Not one I would recognize. Princess is settling in nicely and has become less nervous around us. She also makes a very good selfie companion, especially when you put a ridiculous filter on her.
But I can’t think about any of that now, because Cassie is right next to me on the stand, in another dazzling Cassie creation, being generally lovely and I’m just kind of standing here.
‘What can we get you?’ I perkily ask our latest customer.
The young man at the counter pushes his sunglasses onto his head, showcasing the huge tattoo of a rodeo horse on his forearm. He pensively scratches the stubble on his sharp jawline. ‘Dark chocolate, I reckon.’
Even though I’m serving him, Cassie pipes up beside me, ‘One scoop or two?’ The silver scoop is already in her hand, ready to do his bidding.
He squints down at the change in his hand, then glances at the prices written on the inside of the glass. Back at the change in his hand. ‘One. Thanks.’
But Cassie picks up a two-scoop cup. ‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ she says, getting to work. ‘It’s on me.’
The guy blushes as Cassie passes him the cup with a wink and he says, ‘Cheers!’
As he walks away, he looks back over his shoulder and gives her an appreciative nod. Does she like him?
‘What was that about?’ I ask, trying to keep my tone light but, obviously, failing.
‘I thought his tattoos were cool, and then I felt bad because he clearly didn’t have enough money.’ She shrugs, looking at me in confusion. ‘We never give anything away for free, I figured one little cup wouldn’t hurt.’
‘I guess …’ I say quietly.
‘What?’ Cassie asks, looking me in the eyes, as if daring me to say something more.
‘No, nothing.’
Great. Now I’ve caused weird vibes with Cassie because I can’t just be normal. I can’t even act normal. Half an hour later, after serving another flurry of customers, though fortunately this time without incident, my gaze is caught by Cassie fiddling with something in her hands. I try to catch a glimpse of it but she senses me looking and turns away. Fine. She can be like that if she wants to. I stare fixedly at the sea for a couple of minutes, neither of us saying anything. Finally, she turns to me, palm outstretched, on top of which sits a Palmer’s Ices napkin contorted into the shape of a swan.
‘A gift from me to you,’ she says. ‘I realized I was watching too much pointless shit on YouTube so decided to teach myself something useful for once.’
‘I genuinely love and admire your perception of useful,’ I say, beaming.
‘You think it’s cute? You think I’m talented?’ Cassie asks, hopping from foot to foot.
‘I think you’re cute and talented,’ I reply, before realizing that wasn’t what she said at all. She stops hopping. We look at each other awkwardly, but I don’t attempt to clarify what I meant. It would only make it worse. She adjusts her baseball cap and turns to serve our next customer.
Finally, when some of the knotty awkwardness from earlier has dissipated, we take our lunch in shifts. ‘I made my mum stop the van on the way here this morning,’ Cassie says to me from the nearby bench where she’s eating her peanut butter bagel. Always crunchy, never smooth. ‘I saw another one of those racist posters and had to take it down.’
‘Ugh, I thought they were all gone.’
‘It looked like it had been there a couple of weeks, so fingers crossed that’s the last one.’
‘I hope there aren’t more to come …’ And then I think to myself: you know what would be really out of my comfort zone? Doing something for once in my life rather than sitting back and being a passive observer of everything that’s going on around me. I think of Cassie feeling unsafe in the town she comes to work in every day. I think of those men I heard spitting out bile about my sister and her friends.
It’s like she’s read my mind. Cassie nibbles her lip and looks out to the glittering sea. ‘I want to go one better. I want to make my own.’
‘Your own?’
‘My own posters. Tearing them down used to be good enough, but I’ve been thinking about it and I want to make my own. Let’s call it a … public art project.’ Her face looks focused, determined. I know nothing can stand in the way when Cassie sets her mind on something. And why should it, especially something like this?
‘Do you want a hand?’ I ask, half expecting her to say no.
She looks at me, as if sizing me up. ‘Yeah, why not?’
‘Do you want to come back to mine after work tonight? We can use all my art stuff to get it done. Plus my mum will leave us alone.’
She thinks for a moment. ‘Hey, we spent two years working next to each other in the art room and we never did anything collaboratively. I guess that makes it … a new thing for you.’
‘New thing! New thing! New thing!’ we chant together, glad to have a sense of purpose.
‘I love it when a plan comes together,’ she says.
Almost as soon we step through the front door, I’m struck by a sick jolt of horror: the painting. My portrait of Cassie. So transparently the work of someone looking at their subject overwhelmed with love. And it’s sitting right there on my windowsill.
‘Just a minute!’ I call down over my shoulder, leaving her standing in the hall as I run up the stairs, two at a time – no mean feat.
‘What are you doing?!’ Cassie yells back, bemused.
‘It’s a mess up here, just give me a second to throw some stuff in a cupboard!’
‘This isn’t the first time I’ve seen your room, you know … I know what you’re like.’ I hope not, I think to myself as I shove the painting under my bed.
I go back downstairs where Cassie is lying on her stomach on the floor, nose to nose with tiny Princess. What a good distraction. We go up to my room with the largest mugs of tea I can make and sit down on my bed. I perch the tea on the sill and fish out my biggest sketchbook. I can sense the painting beneath the bed like a beating heart.
It’s decided: I’ll take care of the scenery, and Cassie will take care of the people. I picture the high street of the town where I’ve lived all my life, a street I’ve been looking at and walking down for eighteen years. I start sketching on the thick, heavy paper. This is a vision of the Weston Bay I actually know, not some outdated idea of what it once was, as if the past is some kind of guarantee of quality. Cassie points out things to add, little elements of the town that I’ve forgotten, shop fronts that would stand out. We go back and forth, each thinking of a place, a detail – the old-fashioned sweet shop Daisy and I were allowed to go to once a week when we were little. The blue-haired elderly lady who walks three huge Doberman dogs (almost as big as her) up and down the high street every day. The bus driver who looks like a wizard with his long grey beard and rings on all his fingers.
‘We’re working on something,’ I say, when Mum pops her head in to enquire about dinner.
‘You still need to eat, though,’ she claims. Which I suppose is true. ‘And you can’t starve Cassie either. You can have it in here, I don’t mind. I’ll make you a bacon and egg sandwich, shall I?’
‘Alright, if that’s OK with you.’ She disappears. I’m so lucky to have a mum who doesn’t push me or press me or ask me too many questions. She’ll just let me and Cassie do our thing in peace and provide the sandwiches. I wish things hadn’t played out the way they did with Señor Mango Sorbet. I wish it wasn’t just going to be Mum and Princess in a few weeks’ time, I wish she had, you know, a real person to hang out with. I wish I hadn’t had to get involved. But I would do anything to protect my mum, the way she’s done with Daisy and me for all these years.
Once we feel satisfied with the look and feel of the high street, Cassie takes over and blocks in the people on the street. The real people who live here. People who look like her as much as people who look like me, women who wear headscarves, men who hold hands with men. We transfer the sketch to A3 paper, but this time instead of soft grey pencils, we use pen and ink, creating the same image except more neatly, and in bold, graphic strokes and bright, eye-catching colours. It looks like an old advert from the 1950s for weekend trips to the coast, except the time is now. The people are now. This is our town and the ‘our’ grows and changes with every passing year. We leave space for a banner at the top and the final task is for Cassie to meticulously hand-letter ‘NO PLACE FOR HATE IN WESTON BAY’. All fired up and working away, she looks more beautiful than ever, twitching her nose in concentration and holding her breath like it’s the difference between getting something perfect or messing it up.
Finally, we stand back and look at the work we’ve created together.
‘It’s perfect,’ Cassie says.
‘Yeah … it is.’
‘There’s just one problem, though.’ She turns to me, looking concerned.
‘Which is?’
‘There’s only one of them.’ She’s right. If we’re going to be any match for the hate campaign, we’ll need more than one poster.
‘It would be mad to do all of them by hand, wouldn’t it?’
Cassie looks at her watch, chunky and digital and bright purple and just extremely Cassie. ‘It’s taken us three hours to do one. So yes, it would be mad to do all of them by hand.’
‘And it’s too late to go to a copy shop today,’ I say.
‘And we don’t know if someone in a copy shop would be on board with our project …’ Cassie says, reminding me of all the things I can’t even see because of my privilege.
‘No, totally, you’re right,’ I say, ashamed. ‘We just need to find someone trustworthy with a large format printer-copier thing. Surely there must be someone. Between the two of us.’ I bite my lip and try to think hard, going through my mental Rolodex of people I know even a little bit. This is what happens when you, essentially, have one friend.
My phone vibrates and I see it’s Cal ringing me. I feel my heart rate start to increase but it’s not because of romantic flutterings anymore. I’m nervous at the thought of having to figure out how to act in front of Cassie, what tone of voice to use, how affectionate to be, and what my goal is. I guess I’m trying to figure out what my … game is.
‘Huh, it’s Cal,’ I say, staring at the phone in puzzlement.
‘Oh,’ says Cassie, looking a little anxious, like he’s about to spoil all our fun.
‘Hey …?’ I say, finally answering the phone.
‘Hey! Are you alright? You sound … weird.’
‘I’m fine, just hanging out with Cassie.’
‘Plot twist!’
‘Yeah, I guess that was kind of predictable, huh,’ I say, smiling at Cassie who’s sitting on my bed. We’re a good team.
‘I had a break in my shift and thought I’d ring to say hi, see what you were up to. I just had to clean up a kid’s puke. It was bright blue from the slushy he’d just consumed, which was, naturally, the origin point of the puke itself.’
‘Eurgh, gross … you have my deepest sympathies.’
‘So now I’m hiding out in the back office, hoping no one disturbs me until the end of my legally mandated break.’
‘Your office …’ I say, and if this were a cartoon then my eyes would have widened incredulously. I see Cassie raising her eyebrows at me, stretching out her hand in a ‘go on!’ gesture.
‘Yeah?’ Cal says, understandably perplexed by why I would want to know about the behind-the-scenes administrative workings of my local cinema.
‘Say I’d made something that needed copying a few times … but it was quite big, like A3 –’
‘We have a colour copier in here, you know? It can print and copy large format – we need it for the rotas and stuff like that,’ Cal says, enthusiastically.
‘And you’d let me use it?’
‘Sure. What’s it for, though?’ He finally sounds a little suspicious.
I sigh. ‘You know those horrible posters around town?’
‘I assume you’re not about to tell me they’re your doing?’ Cal jokes.
‘Hilarious! But no. Cassie and I have spent the evening making something to replace them with.’
‘You don’t have to ask me twice to help out on a noble cause. To be honest, I would have said yes to something half as good. My shift finishes in like two hours? Do you want to meet me here with your stuff?’
‘Amazing – you’re the best,’ I say. ‘See you in a bit.’
‘I’m glad I called you!’ Cal says. A little stab of guilt prods at my stomach. ‘I didn’t expect to end up with a side quest tonight. See you later.’
When Cal’s shift ends, we’re loitering in the foyer, our masterwork transported to the cinema in my old A-level art portfolio.
‘Hey,’ he says, kissing me on the cheek. ‘Hey, Cassie.’
‘Thank you so much for this!’ Cassie replies. ‘We really appreciate it.’
‘Yeah, we do,’ I say, and hug him tightly. He looks a little bewildered. But I want him to know that I think he’s great.
‘It’s no problem. You can’t come back there, obviously, because my manager is prowling about, but if you let me know how many copies you want, I’ll bash them out for you,’ he says with a warm smile.
‘Ten?’ Cassie asks, anxiously.
‘I’ll do twenty, why not.’ Cal shrugs. ‘It’s not my photocopier!’ He elegantly swipes the portfolio from Cassie’s outstretched hand. ‘Want some help putting them up? I assume you’re doing it under the cover of darkness.’
‘We would love some help, but we thought about that, and Friday night in Weston Bay is not the time to be sneaking about doing potential vandalism if you don’t want to get detected. We were going to regroup later in the week when it’s a bit quieter,’ I tell him.
‘Maybe Wednesday night?’ Cassie suggests. ‘You know … to take our minds off results day?’