‘Hey, cutie pie!’ Cassie calls to me as she steps off the bus. I envy her, that she can be so easily affectionate. There were so many moments during our shift today where I felt so awkward just being near her. Urgh.
I smile back. ‘Hey!’
‘How’s it going?’ she asks as she drapes her arm over my shoulder and we start walking towards the centre of town. Has she got more touchy-feely recently or am I just hyper aware of it? Maybe this is her way of overcompensating for the tension that’s been bubbling away.
‘You mean since I saw you like four hours ago?’ I ask.
‘Yeah!’ She takes the roll of posters from me and rests them on her other shoulder, gallantly.
‘Weirdly … not much. Daisy actually asked me how work was today, though!’
‘That’s progress, right?’
‘Yeah … I feel bad. I feel like we’re cutting it pretty fine to sort stuff out. I literally can’t believe this stupid fight has hung around for so long.’ Results day is TOMORROW which means uni isn’t far behind. I don’t want to be without my sister for much longer – things are too polite and careful. I need to fix it.
‘You two will sort it out – there’s no way this is going to last forever. It just won’t,’ Cassie says, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
‘God I hope not,’ I say, wondering if maybe it’s time for me to swallow my pride and talk to Daisy properly.
We walk in silence for a few seconds. ‘Cool that Cal’s going to help us. Always useful to have a charming white man to deflect any suspicion. And to take the heat, if necessary,’ says Cassie.
‘I really hope it’s not necessary!’
‘Same, especially since we’re very obviously doing a good deed here.’
‘But yeah, it’s good of him. I haven’t actually seen him in a while, you know …’ I say, realizing as I speak how much I’ve been avoiding seeing him in person. I feel horrible. I spend a lot of my time feeling horrible at the moment for one reason or another. At least the anxiety around everything else seems to be fighting for attention over my anxiety around results day.
‘No?’ Cassie looks at me, surprised. I shake my head. She doesn’t ask anything more.
When the time comes to do our work, it’s quiet, as we predicted. The three of us roam around, trying to remember all the places the fascist posters had been, and taping ours up in their place. It’s only a small gesture, but it feels good to be turning something we’re naturally good at – making things – into one little way to resist the tide of hate in this town. To say this is our town too, and you don’t get to define it on your terms.
I keep thinking about how incredible it felt to make the posters. Just to create something. And, more than that, to create something useful. It’s such an amazing feeling. And tomorrow I find out whether I’m headed for three years of history and theory of creation rather than just creating things myself. But I can’t focus on that. I need to focus on this. A potential parting gift for my home from me and Cassie.
After we’ve trudged all the way around town, we’re finally out of posters. We collapse on the steps of the war memorial, Cassie and Cal sitting on either side of me. I keep sneaking glances at Cassie, like a compulsion. Cal reaches for my hand.
‘We make a good team,’ I say, smiling at Cassie. Sneaking around after dark for purposes other than going out … that’s a new thing for the day.
‘I’m proud of us.’ She smiles back, a devastating, radiant smile. I look at her and don’t know what to say. I’m looking at her a moment too long, the silence hanging awkwardly between us.
‘You two make a good team, I’m just along for the ride,’ says Cal, mercifully shattering the silence. I wonder if he knows how right he is.
We all leap to our feet and begin our journeys home. I hug Cassie tight when her bus arrives, and she even pulls Cal in for a hug.
‘Right,’ Cassie says, fixing me with a stern look from the door to the bus. ‘Tomorrow. College. We got this.’
I swallow down my nausea. ‘Yep.’ I nod. ‘We got this.’ The doors close behind her and with that she’s gone. The next time I see her, it’ll be the moment of truth. The moment the future gets set in stone.
Cal and I walk on, hand in hand, my guilt coagulating in my chest, Cal mercifully ignoring my damp palm. ‘I was thinking,’ says Cal, just as we’re reaching the point where we need to go our separate ways, ‘maybe I could stick around a bit longer. I know I was planning on going home properly at the end of September, but all that can wait. We could see where things go, with us I mean.’
I feel hot all of a sudden. ‘Oh! Right …’
‘I haven’t done anything about it yet,’ he says quickly, maybe sensing my surprise. ‘It’s just something I was thinking about. No pressure, obviously.’
‘No, no, it’s not that I don’t want you to stay,’ I say. ‘I just hadn’t thought about it. But it’s not up to me. It’s your life, it’s your decision.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he says, looking down at the pavement, tracing a circle with the toe of his trainer. I feel so grateful to him for all the help he’s given me with this covert operation. How he let me use his office equipment when he could have got into big trouble. How he’s come out in the middle of the night to stick the posters up with me. How he’s always just so there and so good and so kind and so cute. I’m not at all surprised that my sister fancied him. But I don’t think I can let this whole thing roll on indefinitely. I can’t keep lying to him and to myself. Besides, Leeds is looming at the end of the summer. So if Cal doesn’t leave Weston Bay, he’ll be another person I need to wrench myself from if and when I do.
He gives me a kiss and leaves. I feel exhausted when I finally make it home. Physically and emotionally. I can barely believe that I have to go through results day tomorrow on top of it all.
And things are still weird with me and Daisy. It’s felt like a weight around my neck for days and days and days. I just want to make things right. Results day I can’t control. Me and Daisy, though? Maybe I can control that. I miss her. I miss our in-jokes and our kitchen dancing and how she gets so excited about soil and how well she knows me.
I knock on her bedroom door, interrupting the quiet in her serene little nest.
‘Daisy,’ I whisper loudly after lurking on the landing too long. ‘Are you awake?’ Too late to chicken out now.
‘Well, I am now, you idiot.’ A good way to begin.
‘Sorry,’ I say, inching around the door and into her room. She flicks on the lamp next to her bed and sits up, disgruntled.
‘What do you want? Why aren’t you in bed? It’s results day tomorrow.’ She rakes her fingers through her long hair and fixes me with a hard stare.
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Huh,’ she says, cocking her head.
‘I’m just so tired of how things are between us. I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you that. I’m sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for?’ Daisy asks.
I breathe in deeply. ‘I’m not sorry about Cal. I just want to start by saying that.’
Daisy plays with the ends of her hair, twisting them around her finger. ‘This isn’t a great apology.’
I sit on the end of her bed and take her hand, the way I used to when we were little and I was scared of being in the playground without her. ‘But what I am sorry for is changing the plan without telling you. Daisy, we’ve been together our whole lives. Nursery, reception, primary school, secondary school,’ I say, counting them off on my fingers. ‘It was always me and you together. Always me and you getting lumped together as if we were just the same person. And then when we had to be separated for sixth form, I thought, OK, this isn’t so bad. Maybe I kind of like a little separation. Some time apart. So I know we talked about going to the same uni and being back together again, but when it came to it, I thought, you know, maybe it would be better if we just kept on down this path. I don’t think I understood it was so important to you. I don’t think I even really understand it now.’
‘Do you want to understand it?’
I nod sincerely.
‘You went to sixth form and you met Cassie.’
I squint at her in confusion. ‘But you have loads of friends – why does it make a difference to you that I met my best friend?’
‘Because you stopped talking to me! It was like you just didn’t need me anymore. I was always your, you know, Default Person, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t and it made me realize how superficial all my friendships were. Not like they’re superficial people, but it just wasn’t anything close to the bond I had with you. I could have fun with them but it wasn’t the same. It made me realize how important you were to me. I’d taken it for granted my whole life because we’re sisters, and you think that bond doesn’t need any maintenance, and it made me understand that it does. I thought we would get it back at uni, that we would regain that closeness that we had before. And then you just decided to do your own thing.’
‘Daisy … changing the plan is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.’
She looks up at me. ‘Serious?’
‘I literally don’t sleep sometimes, thinking about how much I wish I wasn’t going to uni. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m so anxious about leaving here, and you, and Mum, and Cassie. Just leaving everything. Leaving my life. It feels like everyone around me is so hyped to start this new chapter in their lives and I’m just not ready. Maybe being with you would have made a bit of a difference, but I don’t think it would have solved it. I’m just not ready to leave it all behind. It makes me feel like an idiot baby.’
‘You’re not!’ She squeezes my hand. ‘It’s your life and you know what’s best for you. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.’
‘It’s too late for that now, I think,’ I say, breathing in sharply and twitching my nose. I realize that’s Daisy’s symbol of disapproval and it makes me smile a little through the hurt. ‘And I guess tomorrow I’ll know for sure whether I have to leave or not. But honestly, I had no idea you wanted us to stay together. I thought I was the one who couldn’t deal with the world while you were sailing through life.’
She shakes her head. ‘No way.’
‘So why were you always telling me to have friends other than Cassie?’
‘Because I knew how it would feel for you when that’s gone. And I didn’t want that to happen to you.’
I flop sideways onto her bed. ‘I’m sorry I made that decision without talking to you. I thought it was only me that it hurt. I didn’t know it would affect you, too. ’
Daisy seems to be thinking carefully about everything. She strokes my hair and pauses for a moment. ‘I’m sorry about the whole Cal thing. I was a bitch.’
‘Ha!’ I say, grateful for a laugh. ‘You were a bit.’
‘You deserve someone brilliant. I was just jealous. I guess you were right when you said I wasn’t used to you getting something I wanted. I feel like such a shit sister.’
‘While you’re already feeling shit …’ I venture.
‘What?’
‘There’s another reason why I felt like we should be a bit more separate … you say some things that I’m not really comfortable with. You make these little comments …’
‘Like what?’ Daisy looks confused.
‘Um …’ I say, trying to figure out where to start. ‘Well, you’ll talk about how you don’t want to get fat or about how skinny you’re looking, or you’ll make tiny digs about how I look or how inactive I am. I mean, you don’t always actually say it like that, but … it’s what you mean, right?’
Daisy’s face has reddened. ‘No … not like that …’
‘But that’s what it sounds like to me, you know? It makes it difficult to be around you sometimes because I feel like I’m being judged all the time, and I don’t feel that way when I’m with Cassie.’
‘Shit,’ she says, looking at the carpet. ‘I really don’t think of you like that …’
‘Like what?’
‘Like … you know, fat?’
‘But I am! And that’s OK, you know? It’s really an OK thing to be. I’m happy with my body and with who I am. So, I guess I just wanted to tell you, that when you say things like that it reminds me that you think it’s not an OK thing to be. And that makes it harder for us to have a relationship, you know?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that …’
‘I have to think about it all the time,’ I say, forcing myself to smile so she’ll know that I’m not still angry about it. ‘It would be nice not to have to.’
‘I don’t know where those thoughts come from sometimes … they just pop in my head, like I can’t help it? Like talking about the weather, just normal. But I know it shouldn’t be normal. I know that.’ She looks at me, earnestly. ‘I’m going to work on it, I promise.’ Daisy says, looking down at her hands, inelegantly digging some soil out from under her thumbnail with one of the many bobby pins strewn around her room.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘It can be your new thing for the day.’
Daisy looks up. ‘Huh?’
‘Oh … yeah!’ I realize ‘I’ve been deliberately trying to do one new thing every day this summer. Like … to prepare myself for going away. Cassie’s been helping me come up with something weird every day that I’ve never done before so that by the time I leave, I’ll be more adventurous and ready for …’
‘A world of new things,’ Daisy says, gently.
‘Yeah.’
‘I love you. And I hope you don’t get the grades to go to Leeds,’ she says, smiling.
I laugh. ‘I love you, too. I hope you get the grades to go to Bristol and you change the world.’
She beams at me and pulls me into a hug. I’m so relieved that things with Daisy are better, I nearly cry. ‘Do you want to stay here?’she asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say. And that night, squashed up in her single bed, we sleep fitfully, both dreading the morning.