His hair’s dark chocolate and his cheeks glow like the inside of
Topshop
. Although the field through the classroom wall looks all chilly with mist, Kai is a poppy of warmth. In its bright red nylon football shirt, his chest looks like Christmas, ready to burst. I want to hug him to stop it; let that warmth cloak me.
But Courtney gets there first, making a scorching sound as she prods his bicep, then shakes her fingers like they’re burnt.
Kai looks bewildered and laughs.
“Don’t touch what you can’t afford,” he drops over his shoulder as he and Felix cruise down the hall, nearly running Mrs Debono over as she fumbles for keys.
“
Guys ...
sorry,
sorry
, I’m here ...”
We file into the form room but Josh hangs back, watching Kai and Felix jump and smack the archway over the entrance to Fairmere, then jog to the year 11 block. “Oi!” I hiss. “Romeo!”
And he follows me but his eyes don’t.
* * *
We’re doing
Twelfth Night
and it’s too confusing.
Why would anyone want to be somebody else?
Though I wouldn’t mind being Miss Mint, to be honest. She stands, waiting for quiet, holding a wrist with the other hand so her bangles are covered. I love her bangles; they’re so her: delicate, gold, exotic. She’s perfect, from her hair to her sheepskin-lined boots. I know girls in year 11 who keep notes on what she wears — but she’s ten years and millions of copies of
Elle
ahead of us, and clothes look
so
much better on her. Her body’s uh. May. Zing. Today, her nails are sapphire.
“Settle,” she says decisively. And we do, though Olly Goddard and Joe Brannigan still kick the backs of each other’s chairs as she’s taking the register.
“Boys.” She looks up, surprised. Phoebe Mint zaps their teenage scowls and they stop, open their books, and find a pen. Mrs Debono, watch and weep.
I know it’s Phoebe ‘cos I saw a letter addressed to her once, just inside a coursework folder. I’m not surprised. She’d never be called anything like Debbie or Claire (that’s Debono) or even Elizabeth (me). Phoebe. Phoebe and Taff, sounds well posh, doesn’t it? Taff’s her boyfriend. Sorry, fiancé. The diamond on her left hand shivers as she pulls up the lesson objectives. Josh leans over to whisper something but I ignore him as I’m drawing a big ‘P’ on the inside of my book.
“Prick?” Olly leers over and gobs on the cover. By accident, I think, though that doesn’t help. I wipe it off with my sleeve and flick his spotty forehead.
“Lisi?” Miss Mint turns angel’s eyes from the board.
I’m stuck. I heard the question; something about what would Olivia do if she had to choose between Orsino and Sir Andrew. It ought to ring a bell because of the work we did last night but to be honest I was staring at her necklace with the three tiny crescents on it, trying to work out if I could make one like it from beads, at the time. I wish I was better at English.
“Dunno, Miss.”
A shadow crosses Miss Mint’s face. “Were you listening?”
“Yes,” I lie.
Her mouth twitches. “I’ll come back.” She moves on through the next couple of points, and then sets us to work finding quotes.
Oh my god, school’s depressing. Miss Mint’s room’s on the ground floor where they haven’t got around to modernising yet and there’s flaky paint and scabs of stapled mounting paper all over the walls. I’m near the radiator, which is belting out heat, making my swamp hair go dry and frizzier than Debono’s. I can feel the damp of the windowsill seeping through my sleeve. I’m so not in the mood to work but Josh’s scribbling away, plucking A* quotes out like pick ‘n’ mix.
I don’t know where to start.
“What have you got?” I whisper, trying to sound nonchalant but Josh’s not fooled and slides me his exercise book to copy while he thumbs through the text. The maverick. But I’m bored so I write notes to him instead.
Miss Mint’s timer goes off and pens go down. There’s not even a highlighter lid on the floor: it’s like she has some sort of spell over us. Like Mr Morlis, she can get us all doing what she wants no problem, and I’ve no idea how. No one else can do it like they can: although there are some ok teachers at Fairmere, they’re definitely the best in the school. I think Miss Mint’s top’s from
Oasis
and I want it. I’m not sure, though; it might be
Warehouse
. I scribble in Josh’s book asking him if he knows.
After some pointless group work on character, the bell goes. We sit. You don’t move until Miss Mint says so.
“Right, I need volunteers. Thank you Josh Meadows, Erin Wiltshire, Courtney Rowan, Rachel Dewar and Lisi Reynolds. The rest of you may go.”
Scraping chairs get quieter and I can hardly stop myself from grinning: more time with Miss Mint, then drama - last thing on a Friday: mental. Then home, for the WEEKEND. Oh yes.
“You’re going to help with the trip next week.”
We eye-roll collectively, but anything for Miss Mint.
“School gates, eight sharp, Monday morning. School uniform. No sweets. The coach leaves at eight forty and I need to brief you before the rest arrive at quarter past.”
We move to her desk and she shows us a list, each of our names in bold at the top of five or six others in our class. I’m with Olly; great.
“Miss, we’re not together!” Courtney wails.
“Nope,” Miss Mint says simply. “Happy birthday for tomorrow Courtney. Being fifteen has its responsibilities, I’m afraid. I’ll see all group leaders bright and early on Monday. Have a lovely weekend.” She smiles and we shove off.
* * *
After school, I’m waiting near the school entrance for Josh to fetch my coat from the lockers in the lobby when there she is. Alicia Payne, the moron of the school and head year 11 bully. Sorry if that’s bitchy, but so’s she.
She’s alone, of course, buying hot chocolate from the machine. Her tights look like a cat’s run up and down them and she gives me a terrible grin with banana teeth. She’s wearing that idiot Alicia band she once told me was ‘iyonic’.
“Aw, fleecy. You cold?” and she creeps forward with luminous eyes and, before I can react, tips the froth from the plastic beaker just enough so it splashes onto my sock and burns. That machine would produce thousand degree hot drinks even after nuclear war.
“Hope it’s not
boiling
,” she slimes, heads away, then turns back towards me in her stupid black patent ballet slippers, fat feet falling out as they slap off.
Alicia and I go way back. James Payne’s left school now but he was my mentor when I was in year 7 and we really got on. He’s quite famous now and I miss our chats but his sister’s poison.
The main reason she hates me is Tao. And I gulp and stop thinking because that’s the thing guaranteed to make me lose it.
Josh appears and here we are again: heading home together through the dusk but it’s different ‘cos it’s Friday. At last. Five days at school is enough to drive anyone mad and five days in December when you can’t even sit outside having a laugh on the field is child cruelty.
We head back to his.
At the Meadows’, the lights are all on, there’s cartoons blaring and Josh’s little brother Dominic is making a meal out of not having one.
“I don’t like beans.” He kicks Josh viciously; his twelve year old face a wizened prune. His mouth reminds me of Tao’s bum.
“You do when they’re shaped like
X Factor
,” Josh orders.
And they are. A big, saucy ‘X’ across Dominic’s toast. He sits at the table and forks up the food Josh’s made in about thirty seconds flat. I’m in awe. I can make beans on toast; even eggs sometimes but not like Josh. He’s always been into cooking. Two years ago his mum had a fit after school when she realised she’d invited people round and had no food. And I mean
none
. Not even cereal bars.
Anyway, Josh put his homework away and went to Tesco with a big holdall and came back and locked us all out of the kitchen. There were a few bangs and crashes — one of them was his head on the oven hood — and an hour later he’d made bruschetta, lasagne and tiramisu. From scratch. I’d never even heard those words: the closest Mum and I get to Italian’s Domino’s.
And where Dominic’s a little turd, Josh’s youngest brother Edward’s a kitten. He sits on my lap, head like a dandelion and an eight-year-old smile that could’ve come straight from a washing powder advert. As he rests his head against my neck after his tea and purrs contentedly, I think I wouldn’t mind a little brother.
Looking round the kitchen as Josh clears away, I spy a new photo on the fridge.
“Who’s that?” I ask, though I know most of them. It’s a picture of all seven Meadows, plus a deeply tanned couple with two boys about our age. They’re sitting round a table in some courtyard somewhere hot. The writing on the umbrella’s Spanish.
“Hosts,” Josh says shortly. “Our villa was owned by a family. Wouldn’t leave us alone.”
As usual, Greg Meadows jetted back from Hongkers this summer and forked out for three weeks in a luxury villa. Josh got to drive a quad bike: I should hate him. That’s one thing about having a father, whether he’s around or not: more money. Mine may be abroad too but he’s a) not in our lives any more and b) has no money anyway. And boy, could Mum and I use some of that.
“Sweet,” I say. “Wouldn’t mind spending a summer with those two.” I mean the boys, who on closer inspection do look
very
cute.
“They were ok,” he says and then flips out. “Right,
guys,”
he says, imitating Mrs Debono immaculately, “who’s for ice-cream? Strawberry
and
chocolate.”
“I’m allergic,” I say automatically.
“You
aren’t
,” Josh’s brow wrinkles. “Stop saying that.”
And he’s right. I got so used to telling people I couldn’t have ice-cream after I got my teeth whitened that Mum said she’d never known vanity like it. I didn’t know what else to say to though — couldn’t tell the truth, could I? That my mum got them discount and I couldn’t eat cold or hot things for a while? So when Erin said my teeth looked like some WAG’s I just smiled and nodded knowingly. Who’s to say eating cereal bars your whole life wouldn’t make them pure white? I told Josh the truth in the end, but only ‘cos he saw the trays next to my bed. Laughed his head off like I knew he would.
The door crashes and Mrs Meadows sashays in, carrying a bundle of blankets with one hand and a supermarket bag with the other. “Staying for supper, Lisi?”
She says ‘supper’, not ‘tea’ like it’s normal, not posh.
The baby starts crying, then so does Dominic.
“No thanks, I should go.”
“Date?”
Yeah, right. Unless you count a facemask and manicure set. I might have the most boring Friday night in the world planned but my nails’ll rival Miss Mint’s tomorrow even if my clothes don’t.
* * *
After Josh’s, I detour past Kai’s. His street’s three up from mine and though there’s no reason in the world to walk down it, I can make up some excuse if I have to ...
“Oi, Reynolds.”
It’s Kai and Felix, bouncing a basketball in the drive and lit up like aliens in the streetlights by Kai’s house. I’d have thought they’d be hanging out in town but apparently not; they have to be right in my path — shame it’s just as I’m picking my nose.
“Nice, Reynolds, nice,” Kai rumbles as he slows his dribbling and pirouettes slowly over. Felix looks at me funny and there’s a flicker, like he knows me but can’t be bothered. He knocks into Kai, and then shuffles off to the low wall to retrieve his phone.
“Alright?” two syllables, delivered with a grin that could end a world war and pupils the colour of storm clouds.
“Just passing,” I breeze. My hands feel clammy and it’s not the dankness in the air.
It’s love.
I know it’s love because this is how it felt when I saw a picture of the fake leather skirt on Kate Moss in Erin’s
Glamour
at break. It’s how I felt when Edward leant into me earlier and I smelt the top of his head.
“Party tomorrow?”
I nod. He moves right up and touches my hair.
“Wear something special. You’d look well fit in a black dress. Tight.” Then he does something amazing: he actually touches my hair. You might even call it a stroke. “And short ... maybe ...”
The ball hits his shoulder blade and he lunges at Felix, then he’s gone, spinning back off to battle.
I stand there, not sure where to go or what to say. What a chauvinist! But
how
sexy is his back?! Two words. That’s all, but it’s two more than I’ve ever said to him ever before.
And
he knows my name. I walk home hugging myself and nudging bits of rubbish down drains with my shoe to tidy the world up. There’s no room for mess. Everything needs to be perfect. Like Kai’s smile. I need to be perfect. I need a new dress. Black. And short.
* * *
When I get home, Mum’s flying round the kitchen, making bread like her life depended on it. The oven hums like a well-trained tiger and the air smells just like a proper bakery.