I haven’t told either Cass or Alice about how I feel about Sam. I’m not sure why. When I liked Paperboy, I certainly went on about it enough. And Cass kept telling me she knew I fancied John Kowalski long before I actually did fancy him (though, in that case, it took me a while to accept I liked him because I was still pining for Paperboy). Now I come to think about it, Sam is the second boy whose charms just kind of grew on me. Maybe I am just not very good at figuring out exactly what, or indeed who, I want?
Anyway, I don’t want to say anything about it right now. I really have no idea whether he fancies me back or not, and there is a good chance he doesn’t. But if my friends know I fancy him, I’ll feel like there is more pressure – well, not quite pressure, but they’ll want to know what’s happening and the answer will probably be ‘nothing at all’ and then I’ll feel a bit stupid, even though they would never want me to feel like that.
But I think the main reason I don’t really want to tell anyone is that then, if nothing ever happens or, which would be much worse, if he actually just tells me he doesn’t fancy me, no one will feel sorry for me. Which I would hate. If no one knows and nothing ever happens then I will still be sad, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed. And I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed about this, and I know my friends really wouldn’t think differently about me if they knew I liked someone who didn’t like me, but I think I would still feel crap. So I will keep it to myself for now.
Of course, a part of me is dying to tell them. Mostly because I keep wanting to talk about him, and I don’t really have a good excuse at the moment. We were sitting out on the playing fields during lunch today, partly because the weather was surprisingly warm and sunny and partly because we were avoiding Vanessa and Karen. Karen and Bernard’s drama group actually does sometimes provide actors for films and plays and, yes, ads, so Karen seems to think she will be the next Kookie. What a terrible thought. Though to be honest, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I’d rather she became famous than Vanessa. I mean, Karen has shown she actually has a soul and some humanity buried deep down inside her. Vanessa hasn’t. And Bernard the Fairytale Prince is quite decent really.
Anyway, when Karen first mentioned her intention to look for auditions the other week, I thought Vanessa would be more bothered by her and Bernard’s dreams of fame, but now she clearly thinks that she is already so successful and famous that there’s no chance of Karen stealing her thunder, so when Karen told us all about how she and Bernard had asked their drama teacher Sarah about auditions, Vanessa started patronising her instead.
‘I’ll be happy to give you and Bernard some tips on the craft,’ she said today. ‘Consider me your mentor.’
‘You’re an inspiration, Vanessa!’ said Karen.
Sometimes, I don’t know which of them’s worse, I really don’t. Oh, okay, I do. It’s Vanessa.
Anyway, after a few minutes of listening to this, Cass, Alice, Ellie, Emma and I couldn’t bear it anymore, so we escaped from the classroom and went out to lie on the grass with our sandwiches.
Ellie started talking about the art studio and how she loves having all that space to draw.
‘The only downside,’ she said, ‘is that it makes the crappy little desk in my bedroom seem even smaller.’
‘Can’t you use that big table in your kitchen?’ said Alice. Ellie’s house is an average-sized, three-bedroom redbrick on Home Farm Road, but it has a great kitchen extension and in it there is a lovely big old table that looks like something from a country farm house.
Ellie sighed.
‘My mum’s always using it for her own projects,’ she said. ‘And besides, I can’t leave stuff on it because we still have to use it as, like, an eating table. So it’s just easier to draw in my room and not have to think about tidying away my stuff every two minutes because dinner’s ready or Mum wants to make another goddess head-dress.’
And even though there was no need to mention him, I found myself saying, ‘Sam said it made him want his own studio too.’
As soon as I said his name, I could feel my face getting a bit hot and I was sure I must have been bright red, but no one seemed to notice anything. And, believe me, if there was anything to notice, one of them would have said something. I haven’t forgotten the way Cass carried on when she was sure I fancied John Kowalski (and, in fairness to her, she was right about that). But, in this case, I must have just sounded and looked totally normal, because Ellie just said, ‘Yeah, we were talking about it on Saturday. He said he was working at the kitchen table last week and his sister plonked down a big glass of orange juice and nearly wrecked the comic he was working on. This is why we need proper studio space!’
‘I love our practice space,’ said Alice. ‘And it’s good to have an excuse to go into town.’
‘I like not having to go all the way from the garage to your house in the rain whenever I need to go to the loo,’ said Cass. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful, Alice. Hey Dollface would not exist without your garage.’
‘True,’ said Alice. ‘But I do prefer the Knitting Factory. And we’ll get to see Kitty there on Saturday!’
‘She’ll be able to tell us the best way to end “Pistachio”,’ I said. ‘Which is, of course, my and Alice’s way.’
I really am excited about working with Kitty again. I can’t wait until Saturday, and not just because I’ll see Sam again. Now I come to think of it, I’ve started taking it for granted I’ll see him there. Maybe he won’t come every week. I mightn’t see him for ages. I know I went for weeks on end without seeing him after the summer camp, but it’s so weird, everything feels different now.
I suppose I could tell Rachel about the Sam stuff. She is surprisingly good at listening to my woes and giving advice in these situations – in fact, when John and I first kissed I told her about it before I told either Cass or Alice. But maybe she won’t want to talk about love and romance now that her heart has been broken by evil Tom? It might be a bit insensitive. I don’t remember any of the ‘cheer up someone who’s been dumped’ articles telling me to go on about my own love problems.
I just did go to Rachel for advice, but it has nothing to do with my romance problems (unless it makes me so hideous no one can bear to look at me). My stupid spot is showing no signs of disappearing. It’s still lurking under my skin, but it seems to be getting bigger and my chin actually feels sore. I stared at it for so long in the mirror, I started to worry it was actually swelling up before my very eyes, so I went in to Rachel to see what she thought.
‘Is this spot getting bigger before your very eyes?’ I asked.
Rachel stared at my chin for a minute.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just a lurker. Everyone gets them. Just be glad it’s not on your nose.’
Some comfort she is. I did weirdly feel a bit better though.
‘So it’s normal?’ I said.
‘As normal as anything about you could be,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s normal. It’ll go eventually. Here, use this on it.’
And she took out her little tube of expensive spot gel and handed it to me.
‘This should calm it down a bit,’ she said. She is not too bad, really. Maybe I will tell her about the Sam stuff soon.
I feel ashamed of myself. Clearly I have no principles. Today at lunchtime Vanessa produced a big bag full of boxes of Bluebird Bakery Yummy Scrummy Cookies.
‘Share these among yourselves,’ she commanded, handing around packets emblazoned with the Bluebird Bakery logo. Her loyal chums joined in.
‘They’re really good!’ said Caroline, handing me an open packet of cookies.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, and took it. It felt rude not to accept. But once I had the packet, it felt hypocritical to eat the cookies after all the time I’ve spent giving out about Vanessa and the ad. My friends felt the same way.
‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ said Alice quietly. ‘I mean, we hate the ad …’
‘And we don’t like Vanessa much either,’ said Emma.
On the other side of the room, Vanessa was saying something about being a ‘Bluebird Brand Ambassador’.
‘They do look like nice cookies, though,’ said Ellie. We looked into the box. They did look nice, all big and fresh and crunchy. ‘Aw, I don’t care, I’m going to try one.’ She got out a cookie and took a big bite.
‘Well?’ said Cass.
‘Whoah,’ said Ellie. ‘That is one delicious cookie. Seriously, it’s really good. I’m going to have another one. Sorry.’
Cass sighed.
‘Oh go on then, pass one over,’ she said.
A few moments later, we were all eating them. And Ellie was right, they were totally delicious. Much nicer than any of the chocolate chip cookies my parents usually buy. Not that our house is ever full of biscuits. My parents are very stingy when it comes to buying delicious treats. No wonder I have to make my own fudge.
Of course, Vanessa soon marched over to see what we thought.
‘Well, aren’t they the best cookies you’ve ever tasted?’ she said.
And much as it pained me to agree with her, I had to say, ‘Yeah, they’re really good.’
‘They’re gorgeous,’ said Alice. Everyone agreed.
Vanessa, unsurprisingly, looked very smug.
‘I knew you’d all like them,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be handing them out at special public appearances soon – in character as Kookie, of course. She’s really taking off. People are even dressing up as her now.’
We all stared at her. Had she finally gone mad? Surely no one loved the ads so much they were actually trying to be Kookie? But I’m afraid it’s true. I have now seen it with my own eyes. It turns out that the Bluebird Bakery asked people to send in videos and pictures of themselves being ‘a little bit kooky’ and lots of people have obeyed this irritating request.
There is now a whole page full of videos and photos of people prancing around with small dogs and musical instruments, wearing frilly frocks and drinking tea out of old-fashioned cups. One girl sent a photo of herself knitting some rainbow-striped socks next to a Yorkshire Terrier which was wearing a little bonnet. This looks like animal cruelty to me (the bonnet part, not the knitting socks part). At least Handsome Dan performed naked, as nature intended him to be.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with all the activities in these photos and videos, apart from dressing up animals in outfits (and, in fairness, the Yorkshire Terrier didn’t seem to mind much – it wasn’t as if the bonnet was hurting him). As I said, I like most of these things. In fact, now I really wish I could knit my own socks because it not only looks fun – you knit the sock as a sort of tube with five pointy needles – but you get a nice cosy pair of socks at the end of it. But when you make a big deal of how kooky these activities (and dogs) supposedly are, then they become extremely annoying. I am not sure why this is. It is quite mysterious.
Anyway, Vanessa thinks the photos and videos are all a tribute to her own brilliance, and I suppose they are, depressingly enough. I mean, people do seem to love that ad. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got to encourage her egomania by eating her hand-outs. If she brings in more biscuits, I must stay strong and tell her I’m not hungry. Maybe I could write some song lyrics about the importance of staying true to your beliefs, no matter how difficult it is? It would encourage not just myself but other people too. We were messing around with a possible new song on Saturday – it sort of has a tune, so I could try and work out some lyrics to fit it.
I have written some lyrics. Every time I’m tempted to be a huge hypocrite and take Vanessa’s cookies, I will sing it (just in my head, obviously – I’m not going to start suddenly singing in public).
I think it has potential. I’d like to incorporate a great word I found in my rhyming dictionary to rhyme with ‘do’ – it is ‘smew’ and it is a sort of diving duck. I’ve got some good bird and animal lyrics from the dictionary before, like when I compared John Kowalski to a ‘tercel’, which is a sort of hawk. Though he does have a bird of prey air about him, and I’m not quite sure how I could fit diving ducks into this song. ‘You’re avoiding problems like a smew’? I will think about it some more.
Just three more days until I see Sam again. It’s a bit sad to be thinking about it, but I can’t help it. I hope I don’t act all weird. Or that he doesn’t march in talking about how he’s just met the love of his life or something. Maybe he’ll suddenly fall for Ellie. Or Cass. Or Alice. Not that he’d have much luck with any of them.
School wasn’t too bad today. Vanessa was no more annoying than usual (which obviously still means she was quite annoying, but we’re used to that), and Miss Kelly was in a surprisingly jovial mood, even though she spent a lot of the class talking about the environmental consequences of urban expansion. And Mrs Harrington was even more cheerful – when we were leaving our English class for lunch, she told me she’s sent her book off to a literary agent. Or at least the first few chapters of it.
‘It’s called The Road Through the Bluebells,’ she said proudly. ‘And it’s about a woman in a small Irish town who decides she wants to be a gardener.’
It doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but then neither do my mum’s books and loads of people love them. So maybe Mrs Harrington will actually be a big success. I don’t think it’s very likely, I’m afraid. Though if this does happen, we might get a new English teacher who isn’t obsessed with my mother, which would be a very good thing. Still, even Mrs Harrington doesn’t annoy me as much as she did a year ago. Maybe I have become a more patient and noble person?
In other news, the lurker has finally burst forth. It looks hideous but is strangely less sore. Now I must just let it take its course (hopefully aided by that posh spot stuff) and make sure I don’t touch it. And I must resist the temptation to squeeze it, because I don’t want to be scarred for life. I’m just hoping it will have passed its peak and started to fade away by Saturday. I don’t want Sam to think I’m covered in boils too.
Oh dear. I was right again. And I sort of wish I wasn’t.
I mean that I was right when I told Rachel I thought Dad was going too far in his attempts to jazz up Henry Higgins. Obviously I am often right about other things too. I’m right about where to end ‘Pistachio’ (sorry, Cass), I was right about Vanessa getting the ad, and then I was right about the ad being the worst thing that has ever been shown on television, and I was right when I dumped John Kowalski. But in all those cases I was glad that I was right. And I am not glad about Dad turning into a sort of deranged show off. It’s one thing seeing him dance around when it’s part of the actual show. It’s quite another watching him add his own bits.
This is how I found out. The hall hasn’t found a new class to fill that spare slot, so the musical society are still having two rehearsals a week. As usual on My Fair Lady nights, I had got my homework done nice and early so I could enjoy the luxury of lying on the couch and watching telly without my parents coming in and insisting on turning over to something boring like the news, or making stupid and unfunny comments about whatever programme I’m trying to enjoy. I had just turned on the TV when my mum rang the landline. Rachel was upstairs on the phone to Jenny (again) so I answered it.
‘Oh Bex, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I need you to do something for me.’
‘What is it?’ I said, suspiciously.
‘I left my dance shoes at home and we’re blocking a scene at the moment so your dad and I really can’t go home and get them. Could you pop down here with them?’
‘Mum!’ I said. ‘It’s miles away!’ Which is only a tiny little bit of an exaggeration.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rebecca,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a ten-minute walk. Fifteen at the very most. Please!’
‘Why can’t Rachel do it?’ I said.
‘Because she’s had a very hard time recently,’ said Mum. ‘And by the time I persuade her to do it the rehearsal will be over. Come on, Rebecca!’
‘Will you give me money so I can get a nice sandwich after band practice on Saturday?’ I said, cunningly exploiting this rare moment of weakness.
‘Oh, you’ve resorted to demanding bribes, have you?’ said Mum. ‘Alright, you win. I will give you sandwich money. Now, get down here with those shoes! They’re in a bag in the hall.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you down there.’
I yelled up the stairs to tell Rachel I was leaving, grabbed the shoes and headed down to the hall where the musical society practise. It actually is just about a kilometre away, but it feels longer when you were planning to spend the evening sitting on a sofa watching telly instead of walking along Gracepark Road.
When I arrived at the hall, the cast were in the middle of a scene so I didn’t want to interrupt. I just slipped in and took a seat at the back of the room. The cast were just starting the scene in which Alfred Dolittle, the dustman and father of the heroine, Eliza, is singing down the pub with all his dustman pals about getting married in the morning. Of course, Henry Higgins is not meant to be in this scene because he is a posh person who is trying to turn Eliza into a fancy lady and he doesn’t hang around in pubs with Edwardian bin men. But as the actor playing Alfred strutted about the stage with his pub pals (including my mother, who was waving around a bunch of paper flowers in a very suggestive manner), suddenly Dad appeared at the side of the stage.
He strolled on casually, holding a notebook, looking intrigued by the dancing Cockneys before him. At first, he just stood there and pretended to take some notes in his notebook. And then slowly he began to sort of dance around in the background. When the main performers in the scene sang a particularly cheerful or funny line, he pretended to laugh. When all the people in the pub were dancing around arm in arm, he gave a few twirls on his own. Every so often, he’d incorporate the note-taking into his moves – he’d sort of wave around his pen in time to the music and then pretend to write in the book.
At one stage, he jumped up on a chair in order to observe the main performers more closely and did a little dance on it. His dancing was pretty skillful and he moved in perfect time to the music, but it was all a bit, well, weird. Very weird. The longer it went on, the more insane it looked. And yet I couldn’t look away.
When Alfred Dolittle had sung his final line and the scene was over at last, a small woman with red hair who was clearly Laura, the director, said, ‘Very good, everyone, especially for a first run-through of a scene! Joe, you really captured Alfred’s cheekiness, but maybe we could have some more energy in the dancing?’
Joe, who looked quite breathless after all his leaping around, nodded and said, ‘Okay, Laura.’
‘Now, chorus,’ said Laura. ‘I think we need to be a bit more expressive. Do you know what I mean?’
I certainly did. I don’t want to boast, but even the director of Mary Poppins acknowledged that I was very good at acting-while-singing when I was a member of the chorus. But some of these chorus members were barely sing-acting at all. They might as well just have been in a choir. Not my mother, I might add. She’s pretty good. In fact, I think she should have got a better part in the show. Maybe the woman playing Henry Higgins’s housekeeper will have a heart attack like the man who was playing the Beadle in the last show and Mum will have to step in and take over her part? Not that I actually want the poor woman to have a heart attack, of course. But if she’s ever going to have one, she might as well have it now.
Anyway, after Laura had given a few more notes to the cast she turned to Dad and I found myself feeling very nervous. It was one thing me thinking he’d gone too far with his dancing, but it was another to hear the director giving out to him. But that didn’t happen.
‘Now, Ed,’ she said. ‘That was … very original. Can you tell me a bit more about your, um, motivation?’
‘Well,’ said Dad. ‘Henry is an observer of society. He’s always on the outside, looking in. And by having him enter this scene we show how he can observe the world that Eliza comes from, but never really join it.’
He looked very pleased. The rest of the cast looked a little less pleased.
‘Oh, okay,’ said Laura. She looked a bit unsure of herself. ‘Well, your dancing was very good.’
And that was it! I remembered what Mum had said about the old director, Dearbhla, being a lot more tough. I bet she’d have told him to calm down. But it looks like Laura is too scared to stand up to him!
‘Right, we’ll take a few minutes’ break,’ said Laura. ‘Then let’s have a run-through of Eliza’s first song, okay?’
Dad immediately went off to what looked like the loo at the far end of the hall before I had a chance to get his attention, but Mum had noticed and waved at me, while Laura was giving her notes, and came straight over to me.
‘Here are your shoes,’ I said, handing over the bag.
‘Thanks, love,’ said Mum. ‘Did you see much of the scene?’
‘Pretty much all of it,’ I said. ‘Um, it was very good.’
There was a pause. I knew we were both thinking of Dad, but neither of us quite knew what to say about him.
Finally, Mum said, ‘Your dad’s really working hard on Henry Higgins, isn’t he?’
‘Um, yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s a bit … well, it’s a bit … isn’t it? I mean, don’t the other actors mind him jumping in? He’s not even meant to be in that scene, at least not in the film.’
‘Well, they’re just workshopping things at the moment,’ said Mum diplomatically. ‘That was the first run-through of the scene. I’m sure there’ll be a few changes before the actual performances.’
Then Laura called, ‘Right, everyone, can I have Eliza and the chorus on stage, please?’ and Mum said, ‘I’d better go! Thanks for the shoes, love. I’ll see you at home.’
I was almost tempted to stay for a while to find out whether Dad had managed to shove himself into this scene too, but I know visitors aren’t meant to sit in on rehearsals (no one was really allowed into the hall when we were rehearsing Mary Poppins), so I slipped out again. But as I walked home, I couldn’t help thinking about what I’d just witnessed. I think Laura needs to stand up to Dad more. Otherwise, she has created a monster. Now Dad has basically been handed official permission to give Henry Higgins a bit more oomph, there will be no stopping him. I saw the gleam in his eye when he leapt up on that chair. He’ll take over the entire show unless she does something!
And if he does, I can’t imagine the rest of the cast will be too pleased. But I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll just hope someone, preferably Dad, sees sense. Though I am not optimistic. There’s no way he’s going to be satisfied playing Henry Higgins in the traditional way. When I got home, I told Rachel what I’d witnessed. As I’d hoped, it distracted her from her moping – I mean, misery.
‘But what was everyone else doing while he was prancing about the place?’ she asked.
‘Just getting on with the song,’ I said. ‘I think they were trying to ignore him.’
‘That’s pretty professional of them,’ said Rachel. ‘For an amateur musical society. I mean, I don’t think I could concentrate on doing a song if Dad was jumping around on chairs in the background.’
‘Well, I don’t think they’ll put up with it forever,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I would. It’ll drive them mad.’
Oh, I wish Dad could be content just playing Henry Higgins normally. This will all end in tears. He’s like Icarus! He’s going to fly too close to the sun and then fall down to earth. Or at least get booted out of his role as Henry Higgins.
The only good thing is that, even though we were both a bit worried about Dad’s transformation into deranged diva (or whatever the male equivalent of a diva is. Maybe there isn’t one? That’s a bit sexist), it definitely took Rachel’s mind off her problems. In fact, she seemed quite like her old self. Which is a good thing.
I knew I shouldn’t have taken Vanessa’s cookies. It definitely encouraged her. Today she turned up with a bag full of Kookie badges. There is a sort of cartoon drawing of her face and the words ‘Have Yourself a Kooky Little Day’ on them. Unsurprisingly, no one in my class, apart from Karen and Caroline, was eager to go around sporting a badge with Vanessa on it, but she was handing them out all over school, and by the time we left at half three I saw loads of girls wearing them. It was as though Vanessa had become the leader of a terrible cult. God knows what she’ll do next. Hand out t-shirts? Force everyone to sing her song? I think I heard her say something at lunch about being on the radio next week, but I’m hoping I imagined it.
And all the teachers were being annoying too. They keep going on about ‘knuckling down’ and studying hard. Even Mrs Harrington got all fired up about it. And Frau O’Hara kept telling us how important it was to have a good German vocabulary ‘because it’s no use knowing the grammar if you don’t know any words’. I am not sure if I know enough grammar OR words. In fact, now I’m starting to feel panicky about the exams already and they’re not for months and months.
But just the thought of studying all the time makes me feel tired. I need to find fun ways to motivate myself. Maybe I will ask Alice to let me practise my German on her. We could always try doing an entire band practice in German! Though as I don’t even know the German for drums, I am not sure it would work very well.
On a more positive note, last night I found another list of things to do for a friend (or sister) who has been dumped, and as they don’t all involve cars or sportiness or vast amounts of money I can actually do some of them. One of the suggested cheering methods was ‘make her something tasty’ and while I am not exactly a master chef, I have definitely mastered the art of making delicious fudge. So after school today, Cass came over and helped me make a batch of the white chocolate variety just for Rachel. I even bought posh white chocolate, which cost all that I had left of my pocket money – that is the sort of sacrifice I am willing to make for my sister’s happiness.
I said this to Cass and she said, ‘Calm down, Bex. It was only €1.50. You’re not donating a kidney.’
No one appreciates my kindness, not even my supposed best friends.
‘Well, it’s €1.50 I could have spent on myself!’ I said. ‘AND I’m making her some special white chocolate fudge!’
‘So am I,’ said Cass, waving the wooden spoon. ‘Can I at least have a few pieces myself?’
‘We both can,’ I said. ‘I mean, there’s only so much fudge Rachel can eat herself.’
‘Where is she, anyway?’ asked Cass, as we started measuring out the ingredients. We are so experienced at this stage we can almost do it without checking the exact amounts in the cookery book (but we do always check, just to be on the safe side).
‘She went to Jenny’s after school,’ I said, getting out the condensed milk. I wonder if condensed milk is used for anything besides making fudge. And how do you condense milk anyway? ‘But she’s not staying late because Jenny’s going to the theatre with her parents tonight. So she’ll be back to eat her fudge while it’s fresh.’
While the fudge was cooling, we went up to my room. I put on some music fairly loud so nobody could hear what we were talking about. I know my mother claims she isn’t spying on us, looking for inspiration for her teen fiction, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. We lolled on my bed and had a good conversation about how much we were looking forward to our workshop with Kitty, and about the future of the band.
‘I know I am biased,’ said Cass. ‘And obviously I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you or Alice because it would just look like mad boasting, but I genuinely think I’d like Hey Dollface if I wasn’t, like, in it. I mean, we’ve got a lot better over the last year.’
She’s right. I, too, would actually like to listen to our songs even if I hadn’t co-written them. I never thought we’d turn out to be good at writing tunes and riffs and lyrics and stuff, but I really think we have, and the summer camp helped a lot.
‘Just think,’ I said, ‘a year ago I could barely play my drums.’
‘Sadly some things haven’t changed,’ said Cass. ‘I’m joking! I’m joking!’
But I threw a pillow at her anyway.
I almost told her about liking Sam, but then I thought it might make me even more self-conscious tomorrow so I didn’t. It was fun just sitting around talking rubbish, though. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that, even though she and Alice are going out with people now, our friendship hasn’t changed. I know I haven’t told them about Sam yet, but I know that if I really needed to talk to them I always could, because we are always there for each other. Not that I would ever say something so cheesy to either of them, of course.
After a while, my mum stuck her head in the door to say she was going into town to give Dad a lift home because someone had blocked his car in the college car park and he couldn’t get it out.
‘Why can’t he get the bus?’ I said.
‘Because he’s got a huge pile of essays to read through this weekend,’ said Mum, ‘and he can’t carry them on the bus.’
I don’t see why not. They can’t be that heavy. I have to lug a giant school bag full of books around every day AND I walk to school so I don’t even get to sit down on a bus for some of my journey. But if it got Mum out of the house for a while I wasn’t going to complain.
After she left, we went down to check on the fudge and if I say so myself, it was our finest yet. The white chocolate is definitely a winner. We put some in a container for Cass to take home and put most of the squares on a big plate to wait for Rachel’s return. Though of course we kept aside a few squares to eat now.
‘I’m not joking,’ said Cass, in between chews. ‘I really think we could sell this. If we had, like, all the legal food-making-and-selling stuff sorted out.’
‘That might take a while,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine we’ll ever get any of our kitchens up to professional standards.’
‘Well, don’t rule it out,’ said Cass. ‘Ooh, is that the door?’
It was, and a moment later Rachel came into the kitchen. She looked a bit tired.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Making fudge,’ I said. ‘For you!’
Rachel stared at me.
‘Seriously?’ she said.
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘It’s all for you!’ I pointed to the plate of fudge squares. Luckily, it wasn’t obvious that we had eaten quite a lot of fudge already.
‘Wow,’ said Rachel. She looked genuinely quite amazed. ‘Um, thanks Bex. And Cass.’ I don’t know why she seemed surprised by my great kindness and generosity. It’s not like I’m normally a total monster (am I?). Anyway, she looked very pleased, as well as surprised, so my mission to cheer her up actually worked. And she looked even more pleased when she tasted her special treat.
‘This is really good!’ she said.
I suppose I should have been modest, but I just said, ‘I know.’ Which was horribly smug of me, as Rachel pointed out. Still, she didn’t seem to mind too much. The three of us ended up sitting around the table talking for a while. Rachel said Mum had shown her the cover of the new Ruthie book this morning.
‘You’d just left to go to school when the publishers sent it over,’ she said.
‘Is it as bad as the last one?’ I said, thinking of the pouty girl on the first Ruthie cover.
‘Hmm, about the same,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s got a picture of Ruthie – at least I presume it’s meant to be Ruthie – standing there with her arms folded and one eyebrow raised, looking all sassy. Like she’s handing out her rules for life.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said miserably. I could imagine this only too well.
‘I know,’ said Rachel. ‘I have to say, I think that ridiculous Vanessa girl in your class would be perfect for the part. If they ever do make it into a film or a TV show, which I hope they don’t. It’d only encourage Mum to write more.’
‘Though wouldn’t it be worth it if it made her really rich?’ said Cass.
Rachel and I thought about it. Would it be worth getting to go on a holiday that didn’t involve sleeping in a tent in France if it meant more Ruthie AND possibly Vanessa becoming famous? We couldn’t decide.
It was actually a pretty cool evening, and for once Rachel didn’t act like we were babies, which is usually how she behaves when my friends are over. It was like we were the same age, sort of. Maybe the older you get, the less age gaps matter? I mean, I’m fifteen now, and Cass will be fifteen next week (which reminds me, I need to get her a present tomorrow). We are practically grown up already.
Oh, what a day. I am a bit confused but in a good way. A very good way. At least, I think it’s good.
We had booked our practice for one o’clock, and to show my parents that the band isn’t interfering with my schoolwork I actually did some homework before I left. I called my parents into my room so they could see that I was doing maths and not just lying on my bed listening to music and reading something for fun, which I must admit is what I’m normally doing on Saturday mornings.
‘Well done,’ said Mum, but she didn’t seem particularly impressed. She seemed to think I should be doing this anyway and that it wasn’t a big deal. Still, I’m glad I did it (and not just because I showed my parents that I can combine music and scholarly life, but because now I actually have most of my homework done and it’s not hanging over me until Sunday evening like it usually is).
Anyway, Alice’s mum was going to a friend’s house in Drumcondra so she dropped Alice off at mine and we got the bus in together. I felt like we hadn’t seen each other on our own for a while. Cass and I go to each other’s houses more often in the evenings because she lives quite near me, but it’s a much bigger deal for Alice to get anywhere, what with her living in the middle of nowhere. So it was kind of nice to just hang out with her for a while, even if we were just sitting on a 16 bus for most of it. I almost told Alice about Sam, but then I thought it would make me very self-conscious if we bumped into him as soon as we arrived at the Knitting Factory. So instead, we talked about school and telly and books we were reading and stuff. And then we got talking about her and Richard and how good it was to go out with someone who she could talk to properly about band stuff.
Then Alice said, ‘Bex … do you still think about Paperboy?’
And when she asked me, I realised that I don’t. I mean, seriously, hardly ever. In fact, I don’t think I’ve thought about him once all week, which might be a record.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I suppose he comes into my head sometimes. But it’s definitely not like it used to be.’
‘It just shows you can get over everything,’ said Alice, but she didn’t say it in a ‘I told you so’ way. It was in a kind way, and it was a very cheering thought. If you’d told me back in January that I wouldn’t be crying over Paperboy all the time, I simply wouldn’t have believed you. I never thought I’d be totally happy again, or at least I never thought I’d stop thinking about Paperboy all the time. But there you go. I have actually moved on. I suppose you can get over pretty much anything.
I was still feeling pleased about this when we arrived at the Knitting Factory and found Cass and Liz talking to Tall Paula from Exquisite Corpse. It was great to see them all.
‘I didn’t realise you’d got a practice space here!’ I said to Liz.
‘Neither did I until this morning!’ she said. ‘We got a cancellation. We’ve been on the waiting list since it started, but all you summer-camp people had first dibs. Which is fair enough.’
‘Hey, look who it is,’ said Cass.
I turned and saw three boys around our age. They were all wearing impressively outlandish garments – one was wearing a fur coat, cycling shorts and a sort of floral bum bag. They looked vaguely familiar, but it took me a few moments to realise who they were. Then it hit me.
‘It’s Puce!’ I said in surprise. The boys glanced over and waved, looking a bit shy. I definitely recognised them now. They had been on the summer camp, and when it started they were all wearing cardigans and played their instruments while staring shyly at their feet. But, by the end, thanks to some lessons in stagecraft from Shane Driscoll, the lead singer of The Invited, they were strutting around the stage in leather trousers and jumpsuits. It was quite a transformation. And it looks like they’ve kept up their commitment to eye-catching ensembles. They came over to say hello properly.
‘We’ve got a workshop with Shane today,’ said Niall, the lead singer. He was wearing a bomber jacket in a sort of Hawaiian pattern. It was very colourful.
‘We’ve got one with Kitty,’ said Alice. ‘Oh look, there she is!’
It was so, so cool to see Kitty again. We hadn’t seen her at all since the camp ended. Puce and Paula knew her from the camp, of course, because she’d taught all of them in the big workshops, but we introduced her to Liz and they all talked about guitar pedals for a minute until Kitty remembered she was meant to be mentoring us, so we told the others we’d see them later in the art space and we took her off to our practice room.
‘This place is VERY cool, guys,’ she said. ‘Now show me what you’ve been doing here.’
We played a couple of our newish songs, including of course ‘Pistachio’.
We finished that one by repeating the chorus a few times (which is, of course, Cass’s favourite approach). Then Alice said, ‘We’ve been having some trouble with the ending …’
‘Alice and I think it should end suddenly, straight after the last chorus,’ I said.
‘But I think we should repeat the chorus a few times,’ said Cass. ‘What do you think?’
‘I can’t tell you what to do with your songs, people!’ laughed Kitty.
‘We really do need outside input, though,’ I said.
‘Hmmm,’ said Kitty. ‘Okay. Well, I see what you’re going for, Cass, but let me hear it the other way. Just run through the last chorus and end there.’
We did. Kitty looked thoughtful. ‘I think that works better, to be honest. It’s tighter. But it’s still up to you.’
Alice and I looked at Cass, who rolled her eyes but conceded defeat in a good-natured fashion.
I knew I was right about that song! Though Kitty did say later that ‘there’s no right or wrong when it comes to music. It’s all subjective. But it’s about finding out what works best for you.’
Anyway, she stayed in the studio with us for a whole hour and it was really great. I’d almost forgotten how good she was at making us feel all enthusiastic and full of energy. And she showed Alice how to do a really cool thing with an effect pedal she’d never used before, which was awesome. But the coolest thing was that she told us she and the other mentors have been talking to Veronica and we can start doing afternoon gigs in the Knitting Factory in a couple of weeks! About three or four bands will be playing at each one, so we won’t be doing really long sets, but it’ll still be the first time we’ll have played more than five songs in public. I can’t wait.
After Kitty left, we had another hour of practice time left, so we tried out her suggestions and they all worked really well. Before we started playing ‘Ever Saw in You’ with added pedal effects, I remembered my great studying idea and suggested that we try talking in German for a bit, but Cass refused.
‘You can’t just spring the idea of talking in another language on me like that with no warning,’ she said. ‘I need to psychologically prepare myself.’
‘Oh, alright,’ I said. ‘Maybe next week, then. What’s the German for drum, anyway, Alice?’
‘Um, Schlagzeug, I think,’ said Alice.
Apparently Schlagzeug literally means ‘hit-thing’, as in a thing for hitting. Good grief. But what can you expect from a language where the word for glove is ‘Handschuh’, which just means ‘hand shoe’? Anyway, eventually Cass reluctantly agreed to do some German speaking next Saturday after I pointed out how useful it would be to know how to talk about music ‘auf Deutsch’ if we ever went on tour in Germany.
‘Or Austria,’ said Alice helpfully. ‘Or bits of Switzerland.’
When our time was up, we went back to the art space to meet the others. As soon as I saw Sam, I felt a strange fluttery butterfly feeling in my tummy. I was really glad he was there, but I also felt weirdly nervous. It felt like everything had changed since I saw him last week, like I wouldn’t know how to talk to him normally now. Luckily, so many people were there – Senan, Liz and her bandmate Katie, Paula and her bandmate Sophie, Ellie and Lucy, the Puce boys – that I didn’t have to say anything to him straight away besides ‘Hi’, which gave me time to collect myself.
In fact, after a while, I started to worry that I wouldn’t get to talk to him at all today. Everyone was sitting around the art room chatting and drinking cans of fizzy drinks or cups of coffee and tea from the tiny studio kitchen. But I was on one side of the room with Cass and Liz, next to Katie and the Puce boys, who were talking very enthusiastically about bass amps. Sam was right on the other side of the room talking to Senan, Ellie and Paula, and I couldn’t figure out a way of getting to talk to him, without it looking totally obvious. At one stage, he caught my eye and raised a hand in a ‘hello!’ sort of mini-wave, but that wasn’t exactly an invitation to march across the room to join him.
So I kept talking to the others, even though I was hyper aware of Sam on the other side of the room with his messy hair and his scruffy old shirt and cords and boots and his nice hands (he has such interesting hands) all covered with ink and charcoal. I was trying so hard not to look at him, I was worried I was making myself even more obvious. And, as time went on and we both stayed on opposite sides of the room, I got more and more depressed. I mean, I’d prepared myself for the possibility that he wouldn’t be there at all, but not for the possibility that we could both be in the same room and not actually talk to each other. Eventually, everyone was sitting around sort of talking together, but that meant I still didn’t get to talk to Sam on his own. All the excitement I’d had that morning seemed to drain away as it got later and later and we still hadn’t said more than a few casual words to each other.
Then everyone started getting ready to leave. Cass and Liz were going to Liz’s house, so they set off with Katie to get the bus on Nassau Street. Alice was meeting Richard, who hadn’t been practising today because the Wicked Ways guitarist has gastric flu and is too sick to play the guitar. And Lucy has been thinking of learning how to sew so she was going home with Ellie, who was going to show her how to use her sewing machine (well, technically it’s her mum’s sewing machine, but Ellie uses it more than her mum does these days).
So basically, when everyone was saying goodbye to each other outside the Knitting Factory, Sam and I ended up being the only ones who didn’t have anything to do straight away. I felt very self-conscious and I thought I should just get away before I said something stupid so I said, ‘Well, I suppose I should …’
And then Sam said, ‘Are you in a hurry to get home?’
And I said, ‘Um, not really.’
‘Do you want to go and get a coffee?’ said Sam. ‘Or whatever hot drink you like? To be honest, I’m not in a huge hurry to get home myself. My parents are repainting the kitchen and they’ll just make me sandpaper skirting boards. And, besides, I haven’t talked to you all afternoon.’
I could feel my tummy fluttering again, only this time it was with excitement. But I tried to sound completely casual.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. ‘Where will we go? What about the Pepperpot?’
So that’s where we went. Thank heaven Mum had given me extra sandwich money for bringing those shoes down to the hall. Imagine if I’d had to say, ‘Sorry, Sam, I can’t go out for a drink because I only have thirty-five cents in the world, apart from the money in my savings account, which my parents won’t let me take out because they think I’ll “waste it”, whatever that means.’
Anyway, when we were sitting down at our table by the railings, I suddenly felt a bit awkward because I realised it was the first time Sam and I have actually gone anywhere together. I mean, we’ve talked loads, but it’s always been in corridors and at bus stops and while walking down the street or sitting around in arts spaces. It’s just been casual. But this all felt rather formal. Until then, I’d never found it difficult to talk to Sam, but now I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Sooo,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t, because I worried I sounded like I was nervous. Which I was. But luckily Sam didn’t seem to notice anything weird. He just looked at the wool shop next to the café and said, ‘Wow, I didn’t realise wool came in so many colours. That display looks really cool. Like an art installation or something.’ And then the waitress arrived and took our orders – hot chocolate (as usual) for me and a coffee for him.
‘I should probably be cutting down on coffee,’ he said. ‘I find myself drinking loads of it at night when I’m working on my comics and then I end up wide awake at four in the morning.’
‘Well, one won’t hurt,’ I said. ‘It’s only four o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘And it’s really good coffee. Right, this is my last one of the day.’
‘Do you find you work better at night?’ I said. ‘I don’t mean homework, I mean, like, art or writing stuff. I think I do. I mean, sometimes I’ll start writing something quite late and it’s like I get a second wind. I just want to keep going even though I was tired earlier.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Sam. He paused. ‘Although I suppose that could be the coffee.’
Our drinks arrived, and then we stayed there for ages talking about loads of things, about art and writing and books and our annoying families. He talked about how people still don’t think comics can be really great art, no matter how beautiful or serious they are. He pulled out a graphic novel from his bag by a writer and artist called Jaime Hernandez. The pictures were really brilliant.
‘Ooh, is there a band in it?’ I said, when I opened a page and saw a really cool picture of a girl holding a bass.
‘There is. The stories are amazing,’ said Sam. ‘But will we ever study something like this in school? No, because not enough people realise that comics are proper art!’
I told him that I wanted to write funny books and they weren’t given enough credit either.
‘Let’s drink a toast,’ said Sam. ‘To books that don’t get the credit they deserve.’ He raised his coffee cup and clinked it off my mug of hot chocolate. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘In thirty years maybe you’ll be a really famous writer and I’ll be a famous artist …’
‘And writer,’ I said. ‘Of comics.’
‘And writer of comics,’ said Sam. ‘And you’ll have won, I dunno. The Nobel Prize or the Booker or something. And I’ll have won whatever you get for doing great comics.’
‘And we’ll both be, like, in your face, everyone who sneers at funny books and comics!’ I said happily. Then I thought of something. ‘Of course, I might also be an international rock star too. With Hey Dollface.’
‘Meh, you can do that as well as the writing,’ said Sam with a shrug. ‘You could write on the tour bus. Or the private jet.’
He is so easy to talk to, about big ideas and little silly stuff. I’ve never really talked like that with a boy before. With Paperboy I never really had a chance because we were still kind of getting to know each other when he went away, and with John I spent most of the time just listening to his own grand plans and theories about life. But when I talk to Sam, it’s like we’re both into what the other person is saying. He actually makes me feel like I could become a famous writer. Or rock star. Or both.
We talked a bit about our families too. I told him about Rachel being dumped and how I was trying to cheer her up, and he said when his sister found out her boyfriend had left her for someone else she threw black paint all over a painting she’d been doing of him.
‘And then she left it on his doorstep and never talked to him again,’ said Sam. ‘It was a bit over the top, to be honest. She’s mortified about it now.’
‘Rachel hasn’t done anything like that,’ I said. ‘At least, I don’t think so. Did your sister get over it eventually, then?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sam. ‘I mean, she seems okay now. In her head-wrecking way.’
We ended up staying there talking for over an hour. I was scared to look at my phone to check the time, in case Sam realised how late it was and decided he had to escape, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Eventually, though, my phone rang, and, unsurprisingly, it was my mother wondering where I was. I should have just texted her earlier to say I was hanging around town for a while.
‘If you’re not going to be home for dinner, I need to know!’ said Mum crossly. ‘Now, get home as soon as you can. And it was your turn to help do some hoovering today, too.’
If I had been with Alice or Cass or Jane, or someone else I’d been friends with for ages, I would have just argued back to her, but I didn’t want to do that the first time Sam and I went somewhere on our own together, so I just said, ‘Okay, I’ll be home soon.’ I turned to Sam. ‘Yikes. I’d better be off.’
‘Me too, I suppose,’ said Sam. ‘I hope they’ve done most of the sandpapering.’
So we paid and strolled off to our bus stops. We reached mine first, and as soon as we got there a bus turned up so we just said bye quickly and I jumped on it. And that was that.
Of course, now I keep going back over the conversation and worrying if I said something stupid or if I made it really obvious that I liked him. I don’t think I did, though you never know. But even though I am worrying a bit, I mostly just feel very happy about it. I mean, I know asking someone to go for a coffee and talking to them for hours doesn’t mean they definitely fancy you. I have done the same with Jane and, much as I like her, I don’t want to go out with her. But asking someone for coffee does mean they definitely like you and want to talk to you properly. Which has to be a good thing.
The thing is, though, if he doesn’t fancy me (which is perfectly possible, I know), I really, really don’t want him to know that I fancy him. It would spoil everything, and I like him so much as a friend (as well as a boy I fancy) that losing his friendship would just make the nothing-romantic-ever-happening thing even worse. So I am trying to make it clear that I like him as a friend without making it obvious that I sometimes sit there imagining what it would be like if he just leaned across the table and kissed me. It is surprisingly tricky. But the thought of him knowing that I liked him and feeling guilty for leading me on – the way he felt about Gemma – is much worse.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should just stop thinking about all the bad things that might happen. Maybe I should just let myself be happy for now. Even if nothing ever happens, he is a cool person and I like talking to him. And that might be enough, mightn’t it?
I told Cass about fancying Sam. She called in to my house this morning because she’d left her maths book here on Friday (she realised she’d taken it out of her bag when looking for her phone and then forgot to put it back in again), and she needed it to do her homework. Last night I realised it was kind of stupid to worry about my friends being sorry for me, so as soon as we were up in my room, away from my nosy parents, I told her all. It was actually really good to talk about it at last. Though of course, Cass claims she already had her suspicions.
‘I can always tell with you,’ she said. ‘I was right about John too, remember?’
‘Yeah, you went on about it all the time,’ I said. ‘It was really annoying.’
‘You’re just annoyed because I know you better than you know yourself,’ said Cass, annoyingly.
Still, she really was very sympathetic towards my lovelorn state. In fact, she was shocked to hear I had thought she might pity me or wouldn’t understand what I was going through.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘it’s not as if I don’t know what it’s like to fancy a friend and have no idea whether they like you back, is it? And in my case, I didn’t even know if Liz liked girls!’
I felt a bit ashamed that I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Though of course, I don’t know if Sam likes girls either.’
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure he does,’ said Cass. ‘He went out with someone in the Gaeltacht last year and he was really into her.’
I stared at her.
‘How on earth do you know that?’ I said.
‘I have my ways,’ said Cass.
‘What ways?’ I said. A terrible thought struck me. ‘You haven’t been, like, asking him questions on my behalf, have you?’
Cass looked insulted.
‘As if I’d do anything so crude,’ she said. ‘No, remember the other week when Lucy was going to her cousins’ in Rathmines and I was going to Liz’s house? We all got the bus together.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said.
‘Well, Liz said something about her time in Irish college this year, and then she and Lucy started comparing Gaeltacht stories. And somehow they got on to the topic of all the romantic scandal that goes on in Irish college.’
‘Scandal?’ I said. I didn’t like the sound of that.
‘Oh, Sam wasn’t doing anything scandalous,’ said Cass. ‘I just mean they were talking about how in Irish college there are always loads of people getting together and lots of who-likes-who and “ooh, is she going out with him?” gossip.’
‘Ah, okay,’ I said.
‘Anyway,’ said Cass. ‘Lucy said that Sam got together with this girl from Cork called Louisa and he was totally smitten. And so was she. Louisa was smitten with him, I mean. Apparently she was yet another person who assumed Sam and Lucy were an item and Lucy had to basically tell her that Sam liked her, and then they got together at a céilí and it was all very romantic. So yeah, they tried to keep it going when they got home but, after a few months, they realised the long-distance thing was too tough, so it all kind of fizzled out.’
‘Whoah,’ I said. ‘Like me and Paperboy. Sort of.’
‘See, you’re made for each other!’ said Cass. ‘You both know what it’s like to move on because someone is millions of miles away. Or just in Cork. Anyway, Lucy said he did get over her after a few months, but he was pretty sad for a while. So he is definitely not averse to going out with girls. You have a chance.’
This was very good to hear. Of course, it wouldn’t have been good if Lucy had told Cass that Sam was still pining for this Louisa girl, but he clearly isn’t. So that’s something. And Cass said that she thought it was a very good sign that Sam had asked me to go for coffee with him, so maybe I’m not being ridiculously optimistic about that. She couldn’t stay for too long because she told her parents she’d be back nice and early to do lots of studying because they too have been going on about exams. Her parents aren’t too bad, though. They’re getting her a cool new keyboard stand for her birthday.
Oh God, her birthday! I was so taken up by having hot chocolate with Sam I totally forgot about having to get her a birthday present! I’ll have to go into town now. I just hope Mum and Dad will give me some money. I feel so guilty – how could I have put meeting Sam above getting a present for one of my two best friends in the entire world?
Although, actually, I didn’t sort out getting extra money yesterday before I went into the Knitting Factory, so technically I forgot about it before I’d even seen Sam. Still, I do feel bad. I will get her something really nice to make up for it (as long as it costs under a tenner – I can’t imagine I’ll get more than that from my parents. They’re not made of money, as they never tire of telling me).
Oh my God. Something bad has happened. Not to me. But … well, I’ll just write it down. I managed to borrow present money off Dad, who gave in to my demands surprisingly quickly. I don’t think he was paying too much attention to me because he was lost in the world of Henry Higgins – he was singing ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face’ when I found him in the kitchen. Anyway, before he could come to his senses and realise he’d just handed me €15 (which was more than I was expecting), I ran off and got the bus into town. I went to the Gutter Bookshop and got Cass a book she’s wanted to read for a while, and then I went to get her some gorgeous-smelling shower gel. I think this was a good balance of presents.
Once I’d got Cass’s booty, I set off for the bus stop, but as I was approaching a café on Wicklow Street a familiar figure sitting inside it at a table near the window caught my eye. It was Tom! Of course I hadn’t seen him since before he dumped Rachel and broke her heart into a million pieces. Over the last few weeks he’s become such a villain in our house it was quite a shock to see him just sitting there looking perfectly normal. I didn’t want him to see me because it would be weird and awkward, so I crossed to the other side of the road.
And that was when I noticed he was sitting at the table with a girl. At first, all I could see was her fair hair, but when I walked on a little bit and looked back cautiously I could see her face. And I almost gasped aloud. Because it wasn’t just any girl – though any girl would have been bad enough.
It was Jenny.
As soon as I saw it was her I just froze. What was Jenny doing huddled in a café with the boy who broke her best friend’s heart? I stepped back into a shop doorway so I could look at the two of them for a moment longer without being totally obvious. They were talking very intensely and at one stage Jenny reached across and gave Tom something and touched his arm. They did not look like two friends having a casual chat. They looked like conspirators. Or people who were having a secret affair behind their best friend and ex-girlfriend’s back.
Anyway, I realised I was starting to look suspicious standing there in a shop doorway so I went on to the bus stop, but I was in a sort of daze until I got home. And now I don’t know what to do. I had got used to feeling angry with Tom, but Jenny? She has been Rachel’s best mate since they were in primary school and I can’t imagine Rachel without her. She’s like a member of our family. Maybe this is why I feel almost personally betrayed. I think I might be more upset about this than about Tom dumping Rachel. How could Jenny do this? And how can I look her in the face now I know what she’s done? How can I look Rachel in the face, for that matter? I don’t know if I should tell her or not. Should I? I feel so guilty knowing about it when she has no idea. Imagine if she knew that, say, John had been cheating on me and never told me. I’d hate it. I need to tell her.
Oh, I can’t, it would just kill her. And besides, why should I do Jenny’s dirty work for her? She’s the one who has stabbed her best friend in the back. Ugh, I feel sick. Luckily, when I came home from town Rachel was doing her homework and then after dinner I did some of my homework and then we all watched TV for a while. So I wasn’t actually on my own with Rachel all evening. But I will have to decide whether to say something eventually.
Oh, how could Jenny do it? How could she?!