Kiss (24 page)

‘I was. I threw up all over the floor of the boys’ bogs.’

‘So you’re really ill?’

‘Paul thinks I am. Sick. A perve. A poof.’

‘Stop it!’

‘He said much worse things. He’s still so angry with me. He thinks I set out to befriend him and turn him gay too.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘He really hates me, Sylvie, it’s so awful.’

‘Well, you’ve got to start hating him back.’

‘How can I do that?’ Carl said helplessly.

‘Easy!’ I said, wanting to shake him. ‘He’s horrible, Carl, crude and stupid and hopelessly prejudiced. He’s not even that bright or witty or interesting. He’s just a boring, cruel idiot. He’s the easiest person in the world to hate.’

‘Look, you’re so sweet, you’re trying to be kind, but truly, you haven’t got a clue. You can’t
just stop loving someone and start hating them instead. I hate
me
more than I hate Paul, for being such a fool and putting him in this situation when he just wanted us to be good mates. He’s scared that everyone will start talking about us, calling us both queer. He said he’s not going to say another word to me ever. He said if I ever tried to so much as touch him he’d ram my head down the toilet. He said I disgust him. That was when I threw up. So of course I disgust him even more now,’ said Carl. ‘Imagine, throwing up right in front of him. I think some of it splashed on his shoes.’

‘Good. Serve him right. Aim at his head next time. Look, even if he was gay he
so
wouldn’t be the right boy for you, Carl. He’s nowhere near good enough. You’re acting like you’re under some stupid spell or something.’

‘That’s what it
feels
like,’ said Carl, smacking the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘I don’t want to feel like this. If you only knew what it was
like
, Sylvie.’

‘What makes you think I don’t?’ I said.

I’d meant to say it in my head, not out loud. Carl focused on me, frowning. We looked at each other. His eyes widened. Then we both looked away, ducking our heads, both of us blushing. He cleared his throat, ready to say something.

‘Here, have a glass of water,’ I said hastily.

I drank myself, so quickly that I gave myself hiccups. ‘Oh God, not again,’ I said.

I made much of the hiccups, holding my
breath, gulping from the wrong side of the glass, all the party tricks, to divert us both from the painful embarrassment of the situation. Carl saw that I didn’t want to discuss it and acted as if he hadn’t understood. But when I stood up to go he whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, Sylvie. If only—’

There was no point in him even finishing the sentence.

I went home and made desultory small talk with Miss Miles in the kitchen. When Mum came home she was in the mood for
big
talk. She was obviously feeling guilty for going out with Gerry at the weekend, so she was now determined to spend quality time with me to compensate. She started all sorts of Sylvie-centred topics, asking about Carl and Miranda and Lucy, about school, about my reading, even about my Glassworld writing.

I didn’t want to talk about anything at all and became increasingly monosyllabic. Mum misinterpreted my attitude, thinking that I was in a sad little sulk because she’d been neglecting me.

‘Oh, Sylvie, darling, you do know you’ll always always come first with me, no matter what,’ she said, trying to hug me.

‘Don’t be daft, Mum,’ I said, wriggling free.

‘But it’s true,’ she said. ‘Gerry or no Gerry.’

‘So I take it he’s now a close second?’

‘Well. Yes. He is so special, Sylvie.
Please
will you meet him next week? You could come out with us or he’ll come over here, whichever you’d
prefer. I just know you’ll get on with him. He’s so funny and yet so gentle. He’s
so
different from your dad.
He
was always so bossy and belligerent, and he’d never listen to me properly. Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that. He’s your father and no matter what’s happened between the two of us you’re still his daughter and he loves you very much.’

‘Mum. Stop it. I’m not a little kid any more. You don’t have to say all this stuff. Dad doesn’t give a toss about me. He hasn’t even
seen
me for years. He’d probably walk straight past if he saw me in the street. Ditto me him. I don’t
care
.’

‘OK, OK,’ Mum said gently, as if she was soothing a silly toddler.

‘I don’t need my dad any more. I don’t need a
new
dad either. I don’t need anyone. I’m perfectly happy as I am,’ I shouted.

Then I burst into tears. I wouldn’t let Mum comfort me. I stamped upstairs, aware that I was behaving ridiculously but unable to stop. I kept hearing
If only if only if only
. I kept seeing the pity in Carl’s eyes. It made me want to curl up and die.

I cried until I gave myself a headache. I ached all over, my chest, my stomach, my back. I wondered if I was really ill. Heart-sick. It had a melodramatic, glamorous ring. I peered at myself in the mirror. I
looked
ill, very pale, with dark circles under my eyes. I hoped they made me look a little older.

My tummy was really sore now. I wondered if
I was going to be sick like Carl. I went to the bathroom and found that I’d started my period. I stared at the stains on my underwear. I’d waited for this moment for so long. I was the last girl in our whole class to start. I’d begun to think I was going to be a freaky new phenomenon, stuck in little-girlhood for ever. Here at least was real proof that I was turning into a woman. I touched my sore chest, wondering if that was suddenly metamorphosing too, but sadly it felt as flat as ever.

I washed myself and then took Mum’s box of tampons and puzzled for ten minutes over the instructions. I put my leg up on the side of the bath. I seized the tampon, trembling, as if I was holding a hand grenade. I tried to insert it but couldn’t work out exactly how to do it. I didn’t want to push too hard in case it was the wrong bit of me. I couldn’t see what I was doing – and didn’t really want to anyway. Maybe I wasn’t formed properly. Maybe I really
was
a freak, a girl doll minus the proper working pieces.

I gave up and used the horrible pad thing from the packet that Mum had put on the top shelf of my wardrobe. They’d been waiting there untouched for a good two years. I felt as if I was wearing a nappy. We had PE tomorrow. How on earth was I going to manage?

I wished I wasn’t a girl. If I was a boy I wouldn’t have to cope with such a sore and messy and embarrassing problem once a month.
If I was a boy Carl might love me back the way I loved him.

I tried hard to imagine what I’d be like as a boy. It would be even worse being so small and skinny. I wondered what my hair would look like chopped short. I’d look like some weird little pixie person. I wouldn’t be able to hide my sticking-out ears. I’d never be good looking like Carl. I wasn’t bright or talented or witty. The other boys would hate me. Carl might hate me too. No, worse, he’d feel sorry for me and hang out with me sometimes, just to be kind.

I would be no use as a gay boy. No one would ever fancy me. I would have even less success with girls. Someone like Miranda would make mincemeat of me. I saw her squashing me into a mincing machine and turning the handle, squeezing me out at the other end as a string of limp little sausages. She’d despise me as a boy. Thank goodness she liked me as a girl, so long as I played along with her.

I liked her too. I thought about the possibility of loving her. I thought she was beautiful in her own dark dramatic way. I loved the glossiness of her red hair, her even white teeth, her wicked dimples. I loved her clothes, especially her exotic underwear and her bold buckled boots. I tried to imagine taking her in my arms and kissing her. I wasn’t sure it would work. Her lips would feel too full, her body too soft, her hair too long. I longed to look like Miranda, even to be Miranda, but I didn’t want to love her.

It was so silly. You couldn’t help the way you felt.

I loved Carl. Carl loved Paul. Paul maybe loved Miranda. I wasn’t sure Miranda loved any of us. She just wanted us all to love her.

I fell asleep long before Mum came upstairs. I woke up when she crept into my room, but I kept my eyes closed. I could sense her standing there, looking at me. She sighed softly, then bent over and kissed my hair. I wanted to reach round and cling to her neck and have a good cry, the way I’d done when I was little. But in those days Mum could always make it all better for me. There was nothing she could do to change Carl. I didn’t even want to tell her I’d started my period because she might gush in an embarrassing way.

She found out anyway.

‘So you’ve started your period, Sylvie!’ she said in the kitchen at breakfast.

She didn’t lower her voice at all. Miss Miles could easily have heard upstairs in her room.

‘There no need to blush, darling. There’s nothing to be ashamed about. We should be celebrating your becoming a woman.’

I squirmed. ‘I don’t want to be a woman,’ I said. ‘Shut up about it, Mum. How do you know, anyway?’

‘The toilet was blocked up with bits of sanitary towel. I knew it wasn’t me and dear Miss Miles is way past that stage in her life.’

‘I wish I was too,’ I said.

I was tired of being a teenager. It was too sad, too complicated, too worrying. I wanted to fast-forward fifty years and be really really old. Then it wouldn’t matter if I was small and scraggy. It would be a positive advantage if I still looked young for my age. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have a boyfriend. I could just shake my head enigmatically when anyone asked about my past love life and say ‘I had my moments’ just like Miss Miles. I wouldn’t have to make friends to prove I was popular. I wouldn’t have to fit in at school. I wouldn’t even be at work any more. I could simply please myself and do what I wanted. I could read for hours. I could write and draw and paint. I could live all day in Glassworld. I could stay eternally young as Queen Sylviana, and King Carlo would love me, only me, and we would live happily ever after.

I went to school with a couple of horrible pad things in a plastic bag. The outline of the one that I was wearing showed horribly through my knickers. I wondered about asking Lucy how she coped. We rarely talked about intimate things but I knew she’d started her period last year. She called it ‘her visitor’.

I leaned over as far as I could during double maths to ask for advice.

‘Hey, Sylvie, are you copying from me?’ she said, shielding her answers.

I was hurt that she should think this, or indeed would mind sharing her solutions with me. I was also irritated. I am bad enough at
maths, but Lucy is worse. Only a total fool would choose to copy down her answers.

‘I just want to ask you something, Lucy,’ I hissed. ‘Look, what do you do when we have PE if you’ve started?’

‘Started what?’ said Lucy.

I sighed. ‘
You
know.’ It was no use. I had to use her twee little phrase. ‘When you’ve got “your visitor”.’

‘Oh!’ Lucy went a little pink. ‘Well, I always wear two pairs of knickers.’

‘Ah.’ I thought about it. It was a reasonably sensible solution, though it sounded hot and uncomfortable. I only had the knickers I was wearing. I couldn’t really ask to borrow an extra pair from Lucy.

‘It stops the pad thing showing?’ I whispered, pink myself.

‘More or less. And it helps if you start flooding.’

‘Oh God.’ So far the blood had been a small trickle. Was it about to start gushing everywhere like a scarlet Niagara? ‘Do
you
flood, Lucy?’

‘Oh yes, it’s terrible. Mum had to take me to the doctor’s. It kept going all over my
bed
.’

I started to feel ill. The classroom spun round. Maybe I was going to faint. Then at least I’d have a reasonable excuse for getting out of PE.

I went flying to the girls’ toilets at break time, not waiting for Lucy or Miranda or anyone. I was starting to imagine great gushing and clutched my plastic bag desperately.

‘Sylvie? Sylvie! Hey, hey, slow down!’

It was
Jake
.

‘I’ve got to dash, Jake,’ I said, trying to dodge past.

‘But I’ve got to tell you something,’ said Jake.

I did stop then, wondering if he had a message from Carl. Maybe he’d decided to stay away from school, pretending he was still sick. If so, perhaps I could risk playing truant again. I had to be with him. He needed me. I was the only one he could talk to.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Wegotagig!’ Jake said.

‘What?’ The words didn’t make sense. It sounded like gobbledegook.

‘We’ve got a
gig
,’ Jake said, grinning proudly. ‘They rang up yesterday evening, after you’d gone. They want me and the boys to play at this birthday party and they’re
paying
– fifty quid, how cool is that!’

‘
Your
band?’ I said. ‘Oh. Well. Good for you.’ I tried to edge round him.

‘Will you come, Sylvie?’ said Jake.

‘Come where?’ said Miranda, materializing behind me.

‘This party. My band’s playing,’ said Jake proudly. ‘You can come too.’

‘I don’t think I can make it, Jake,’ I said, rushing past. There! He could get Miranda to go – that was surely what he wanted.

‘But you don’t know when it
is
!’ Jake called after me.

I pretended not to hear him. He couldn’t very well follow me right into the girls’ toilets. I charged into the cubicle and faced the worst. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but I still had PE to contend with.

‘Sylvie?’ Miranda called, outside my cubicle. ‘Why don’t you want to go to Jake’s party?’

‘It’s a
birthday
party. It’ll probably be some little kid wanting to do a bit of head-banging with all his mates. No one sane would employ Jake for a real party. His band is unbelievably awful.’

‘OK, point taken. I expect I’ll be on some heavy date with Paul anyway,’ said Miranda.

I muttered a very rude sentence.

‘What? Hey, that’s my boyfriend you’re describing so graphically,’ said Miranda. She didn’t sound too perturbed. ‘What’s he done to upset you?’

‘He hasn’t done anything to
me
.’