It was actually a relief to be done with them. I wasn’t talking to Polly, and Beasley was always attending some gay youth group thing with Jack so I had a chance to reconnect with my friends online. I’d missed them and they’d missed me – I’d been a crappy friend. There were whole threads in forums about where I’d vanished to and whether or not I’d died.
It wasn’t a bad thing to press pause on life for a couple of weeks. Time slowed to its normal pace. Daisy and then Nico and then Polly – going at warp speed was grinding me down. And so I took a little vacation from life.
When I got home from school, I went online and didn’t come off until bedtime. I caught up on all my vlogs. I watched anime in bed on my laptop. I took long hot baths instead of showers until I was shrivelled like a prune. I exfoliated, toned and moisturised. I resumed my annual Potter reread from Goblet of Fire. It was bliss.
I had also neglected Mum and Dad. I remembered what Mum had said at Christmas and I hadn’t done a thing to make her feel any better – I’d been so fixated on my own bullshit dramas. Peering out from my cave, she seemed to be doing better. She went to spinning twice a week, which, it transpired, was just an exercise-bike class – and she’d made some friends, Jill and Chennai. That was good. In September she would be working three days a week at the school library too. That was even better.
I helped to cook dinner and allowed myself to become drawn into some Swedish crime thing that Mum and Dad were working their way through. It was stupidly addictive, and soon I was mainlining back-to-back episodes with them in the lounge (as well as developing a passable grasp of Swedish). It was pretty alien even being in the lounge – a room I’d barely set foot in since we’d moved to Brompton. Who knew the big Ikea couch was so comfy?
One evening I helped Mum to make risotto. I was chopping up some asparagus when she hovered at my side. It was a weeknight and, true to her word, the wine stayed corked.
‘Are you OK, love?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Have you had a falling out with your friends?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Oh come on, Vic. We haven’t seen you all year and now you haven’t left the house in a fortnight. Something must be wrong … is someone giving you grief at school?’
‘God no, nothing like that.’ I moved on to shelling some peas. ‘Everyone’s just really busy.’
Mum wasn’t having any of it. ‘When I was your age I had this friend called Laura. You and Polly remind me of how we used to be.’
For the sake of my sanity and a lifetime of therapy I really, really hoped not. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Yep, we were every bit as intense. I mean we were best, best friends. Totally inseparable. It wasn’t healthy really. Your granddad hated her so much, and blamed her for leading me off the straight and narrow.’
I knew that feeling. I’d never heard of this Laura though, and Mum hardly ever mentioned her father. ‘What happened?’
‘We used to go out down the high street. We were only fifteen but they’d let us into Porky’s. We were a pair of nightmares – I swear that’s how your gran ended up with grey hair. But then boys got involved and we fell out. I met this guy called Gavin and she didn’t like it one little bit.’
I threw the peas into the pan. ‘Well, that’s not what happened with me and Polly.’
‘Sometimes I think when things burn that bright they fizzle out faster, do you know what I mean? It’s the same with boyfriends. Some people are candles, some people are fireworks.’
I said nothing, but she was right. I couldn’t do it. Polly was a firework, make no mistake – bright, loud, explosive. I was a candle. It had been fun while it lasted, but after that long on a roller coaster I was starting to feel sick. It was sad it was ending, and I wasn’t going to forget this year in a hurry. One day, I had no doubt I’d wax lyrical about this year to my daughter while we made risotto.
I had to go to school and avoid her. She was avoiding me too – eating her lunch off-campus. I was hanging out mainly with Alice or working on my portfolio in the Art studio. One lunchtime, I went to the common room looking for Beasley or Alice – I’d seen Polly heading off site so I knew the coast was clear. They weren’t there when I arrived, but Freya was reading a book in the corner so I went to sit with her and wait for the others.
‘Hey, Freya,’ I said. She didn’t look up from her book. ‘What are you reading?’ I saw it was The Fault in Our Stars. ‘Oh I read that last year. Mega sad, right? Which bit are you up to?’
And then Freya spoke. Her voice was quiet and monotone. ‘Will you please go away?’
‘What?’
Her grey-blue eyes peered at me. ‘Just fuck off.’
‘What? Sorry I …’
‘I just want to read my book.’
‘OK. There’s no need to be rude. I thought we were mates.’
‘We are not mates. I hang out with you to get my parents off my back.’
‘Oh, OK.’
She looked at me, dark circles like bruises around her eyes. ‘You’re all really annoying.’
‘Erm, thanks for that.’
‘You talk about yourselves all the time. I. Just. Want. To. Read.’
‘OK, I’ll leave you to it.’ I backed away very slowly in case she bit me. She probably had a point. I considered myself schooled.
It was safer to stay in the Art room. No Polly, no scary book girls. Plus, my portfolio was due for submission so it needed polishing up. This was the future. I could spend all my breaks next year in here. Some of the other Art students were really cool, I could effortlessly slot in with them. Mia was lovely and always shared her Popchips with me. Rory was as hipster as they came but had a soft sarcasm I liked a lot.
See? I didn’t need Polly.
Mrs Ford wafted over to me with a rattle of plastic bangles. ‘How’s it coming along, Toria?’
‘It’s OK. I think I’m going to leave all of these out –’ I gestured to some pop-arty, Lichtenstein-looking numbers – ‘and just go with the collages. I’m not sure they hang well together.’
Mrs Ford hmmmed.
‘The collages are certainly more your style, but don’t be afraid to be diverse too. You can group them in sets. Can I see the moving collages?’
‘Sure.’ I opened up my laptop and found the files.
‘Oh, these are very good. I love that – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – they’re so … tacky and shallow.’
That was exactly what I’d been going for. I wanted everything to feel mass-produced, almost cheap and nasty. ‘It’s intentional! Honestly!’
‘Don’t worry, I can tell. I love the use of mock logos … MacWrongald’s, Starfucks … clever. And who’s the pink-haired girl?’ Mrs Ford pointed at a big-eyed manga kawaii girl. ‘She pops up a lot.’
I looked at my portfolio. I hadn’t realised I’d used that motif as often as I had to be honest. She was ever-present, either in portraits, holding a fish skeleton to her cheek like a rose or in duplicate like a chain of paper dolls. ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. There she was, time and time again, stuck on repeat.
‘Well, I like her!’
Yeah, I liked her too.
Oh crap, I was going to cry in public. Tears burned behind my nose. ‘Sorry, will you excuse me?’
‘Of course. Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’ I got to the bathroom the same second I could hold it back no longer. I gripped the sink and cried.
I liked the girl with the pink hair.