Let's Get Lost (22 page)

“I want you back by ten-thirty at the very latest,” he said in his sternest voice—but he must have been abducted by aliens in the middle of the night because his face softened and he absentmindedly stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Or, just this once, if you wanted to sleep at Dot’s, then I suppose I could allow it, though I don’t want you to take advantage of my good nature.”

I wanted to crawl into his lap like I did when I was little and just the feel of his crisp cotton shirt against my cheek, his hand rubbing circles on my back as he recited Edward Lear poems to make me laugh, made me feel safe.

“Thanks,” I managed to choke out. “I don’t think I want to stay over at Dot’s.”

He was still stroking my hand, and I could feel my whole body straining to lean in so I could have a proper hug. But then he let go of me and sat up straight. “Goodness! Is that the time? I don’t want to miss my program.” He picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV.

“You need to switch it on at the set first, Dad.” I stood up and performed the necessary procedure.

“Does this mean you’re out of your difficult phase, Isabel?” he asked teasingly, and if he stopped being so bloody nice to me then I wouldn’t have to feel quite as shitty as I did.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” was all I said, but he’d already tuned me out and was engrossed in some political intrigue that was more than a match for my teenage psychodramas.

I’d been praying that it would piss down with rain so our little outing to Preston Park could be postponed. But no such luck. It was cold enough that my bright red, Amélie-style winter coat could have its first airing, even though the others were wearing the kind of clothes that owed very little to the elements or the imagination. Which was just as well because the four lads that were aimlessly kicking a ball about in the fading light looked like they were sharing a brain cell.

“Jesus wept,” I announced witheringly. “What’s that flapping around their knees? Oh, it’s their trousers.

Are they too good to wear belts?”

If looks could have killed, I’d have been in a lead-lined coffin. “Shut the hell up, Is,” Nancy spluttered.

“They’ll
hear
you.”

I flicked a glance at the four boys who were now shuffling the ball nearer and looking at us like we were red-hot Mamas shaking our collective booty in a rap video. “I don’t actually think they have the coordination to kick a ball about and listen at the same time. Maybe they’re the missing link between men and monkeys.”

“Aren’t they your type, then?” Dot said quietly, flicking back her hair with a coquettish move that didn’t really suit her. “Got your eye on someone else?”

“Yeah, like that geek you keep getting off with?” Nancy sniped.

I crossed my fingers behind my back. “As if . . .”

“So are we gonna do this or what?” Ella wanted to know, thrusting her boobs in the vicinity of the boys who weren’t even pretending to play football now but had gone into a little huddle—and I
knew
they were divvying us up between them. They should be so lucky.

“Well, go on then, Is. Go and talk to them!” Nancy demanded in a tone of voice that she was going to spend the rest of the week regretting.

“Since when did you become the boss of me?” I inquired icily, putting my hands on my hips and stiffening my spine ’cause I knew it made me look taller and scarier.

“You usually go and do the boy-thing for us,” Dot said plaintively. “But if you don’t want to . . . I mean, if you’re saving yourself for someone else . . .”

“Fine!” I snapped, making a mental note to reduce her to tears with some well-placed invective at a later date. “As you three are incapable of doing anything by yourselves?”

I flounced over to the boys, who were obviously not down with my whole Amélie vibe because they looked over my shoulder to where the Trio of Evil was obviously busting some particularly slutty moves.

Up close, they were even less easy on the eye. Who’d told them that so much hair gel was a good look?

That person should have been executed for crimes against fashion.

They were obviously waiting for me to stop with the filthy looks and say something, so I opened my mouth and said the one bomb-proof sentence that was guaranteed to get pikey boys really hot and bothered. “Hey, me and my friends go to the local grammar school. Do you want to chip in for two bottles of cider?”

An hour later I could still feel the taste of Rob’s cidery tongue swirling around the back of my throat where he’d been trying to play a contact sport with my tonsils. I’d only managed to give him the slip by pretending that I needed to go and throw up behind the Crown Bowling Green because I’d drunk too much cider.

Instead I’d set off at full pelt and didn’t slow down until I’d reached the Duke of York’s cinema. I was sure that if you stuck me under a UV light you’d be able to see Rob’s fingerprints all over me. And he’d

managed to pull one of the buttons off my coat. When Smith kissed me, he cupped the back of my head, his thumbs massaging my scalp as he took his time. Like, the kissing was worth something. As if I was worth something. And once you’ve had that, you can never go back.

I pulled out my phone, kinda surprised that Rob hadn’t lifted it during the make-out session from hell, because all he’d been able to talk about was his successful career nicking car stereos. Seemed like even I could get a break. Or two breaks because there was no one home and I could leave a message.

“Hey, Dad, Felix, it’s me. I thought I’d stay around Dot’s after all. You can call me on the mobile if you need me and I’ll see you tomorrow after school. Bye!”

There was no answer when I called Smith, and I needed time to work on leaving a message that didn’t repeat my pushy performance of Friday night. But five minutes later, when I was buying a metric ass-load of Freshmint gum so I could get the Rob taste out of my mouth, my phone started ringing.

I can’t multitask in high-stress situations and some stroppy cow behind me was already muttering as I counted out the right change. I practically threw a pound coin at the shop assistant and dived for my phone, though it was probably Dad having a change of heart.

“Look, you said it would be okay and . . .”

“What happened to hello?”

“Hey, Smith,” I breathed, grabbing my change and purposely bumping into the moaning bitch who’d dared to tut when my phone rang. “I just called you.”

“I know, I couldn’t get to it in time and you didn’t leave a message.”

“Yeah, hang on . . .” I tucked the phone against my shoulder as I unwrapped three sticks of gum and shoved them in my mouth. “Look, if you have stuff on it’s cool, but if not, can I come around?”

Smith gasped. “But it’s Tuesday evening. Doesn’t that violate your wacky weekends-only rule?”

“Oh, don’t you want me to come over, then?” It shouldn’t have been humanly possible for me to sound that woebegone.

“I can actually hear you pouting, it’s kinda freaky.” Smith chuckled.

“What are you so happy about, anyway?”

“Well, you call and make it obvious you’re desperate to get your hands on me.”

“You were obviously dropped on your head as a baby,” I growled, but I quickened my pace so I’d get to him quicker.

“Where are you?”

“I’m just at the Level, so am I carrying straight on to your place—or am I turning right and going home?”

“You’re turning right,” he said, and I almost dropped the phone in shock at the casual, cruel way he’d totally been toying with me like a cat with a poor little mouse between its paws. “Because I’m in The Great Eastern on Trafalgar Street. Wanna get some chips on the way back to mine?”

“If you’re buying, I just spent my last pound on chewy.”

I swung right and even though I’d be seeing him in two minutes, I couldn’t hang up the phone if my life depended on it. No wonder I was broke. I was spending every last penny on top-up vouchers.

“Only if you give me a kiss for every chip. Might take some time, though, if you’re planning on scheduling in one of your escape bids before the clock hits ten,” he added.

“Oh, I thought I’d stay over if it was all right with you.” I stopped under a street lamp so I could pull out my mirror and check my face for signs of stubble rash because I was the kind of skanky girl who had two boys in one night.

“Of course it is! Gotta get up early though.” He sighed. “So no dragging me back to bed to do all sorts of rude things to me.”

I rolled my eyes as I slicked on a coat of lipstick. “Dream on, saddo. Gotta be up at first light . . . JESUS

CHRIST! Don’t do that!” I screamed as two hands snaked around my waist and someone licked my neck. “Smith! I nearly had a heart attack!”

He stepped out of the shadows with an apologetic smile as I pressed my palm against my wildly beating heart. “You have no sense of fun, Is.”

“I dropped my mirror,” I wailed, sinking to my knees and scrabbling on the pavement. “If it’s broken that’s seven years’ bad luck. Shit.”

“Hey, that’s just a stupid superstition,” Smith said, crouching down and helping me hunt for it. “Look, here it is. It’s fine.”

I snatched it from him and held it up to the light to check for any hairline cracks. It looked okay. I, on the other hand, looked decidedly unokay. Why was it that my hair could never just lay all flat and docile on my head but had to make its tufty presence felt? I also had a slash of lipstick halfway up my nose, thanks to Smith scaring the bejesus out of me.

Maybe that’s why he was frowning at me. Then he raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Okay, I’m sorry that I freaked out about my mirror but I need all the luck I can get,” I muttered, wiping away the excess Lolita lipstick from my face.

“C’mere,” Smith said gruffly, and I went into his arms to let him repair the damage. Or, if we’re going to get technical about it, I let him kiss me until I couldn’t think straight and my entire mouth was lipstick-free.

We ate vinegar-doused chips in Smith’s bed and washed them down with this acidic red wine that made me squinch up my face every time I took a sip.

It was all kinds of romantic, curling up under the covers and feeding each other chips. Though the grease stains on the sheets were kinda gross, and mostly we’d got into bed because the thermostat was broken on the central heating and the flat was like an icebox.

Smith devised this ingenious way of keeping warm, which ironically involved taking off all our clothes, and then I wasn’t worrying about grease stains or the current power struggle with the Trio of Evil. I wasn’t thinking at all.

Afterward, I cuddled up against Smith, brushing his arm with my fingers and watching, engrossed, as an army of goose bumps marched across his skin.

“This is nice,” I said. “Us, y’know, hanging out and stuff.”

“Yeah, I particularly liked the stuff.” Smith smiled, kissing my shoulder.

I rolled on to my back and gave him my best doe-eyed look. “Just the stuff?”

“I like you,” he said gravely. “I like you even more than the stuff.”

I was pretty relieved to hear it. But liking me a lot, well, it seemed a little lackluster when just being near him made me feel like it was the night before Christmas.

“I like you, too,” I said carefully, and he beamed, snuggling against me so he could wrap his arm around my waist. It was all his fault for looking so happy that I liked him. He was practically daring me to say it.

So I did. “In fact, I’m kinda in love with you.”

It sounded so pathetic when I said it out loud. I shut my eyes, but that just made the silence even more unbearable. It wasn’t like I expected him to say it back, except I did and he wasn’t.

Suddenly, I was aware of everything: the sheet wrinkled up underneath me, the faint scent of vinegar and how my skin was going from warm to clammy as I waited and waited for Smith to say something.

“God, it’s not like I want to get married or anything!” Of course I had to open my big, fat mouth and make a horrible situation a million times worse.

Smith tried to kiss my shoulder again, but I wrenched away from him. “Isabel . . .” he said imploringly. I gave him my heart and all he could do was whine my name after, like, half an hour.

“Don’t Isabel me,” I snapped, sitting up and clutching the sheet around me so he couldn’t see the way every single inch of me was blushing. “So, like, is this just a sex thing for you?”

Smith sat up and I noted with some venom that the dim lighting from the lamp made his nose look bigger than normal. He tried to run his fingers through his hair, then remembered he’d cut it all off. “I thought you were cool with it,” he said eventually with trace amounts of anger.

“Cool with what? That I thought we were having a relationship, and all you wanted was a no-muss, no-fuss hookup. And I don’t love you, anyway, just seemed like the right thing to say,” I backtracked and the hole I’d dug was so big now that I couldn’t even see over the top of it.

“If I wanted a no-fuss fling, you’re the last girl I’d have chosen,” Smith snarled, getting out of bed and snatching his jeans up from the floor. “You’re so high-maintenance it’s not even funny.”

“And, like, Molly’s a little ray of low-maintenance sunshine,” I hurled at his back as he started to get dressed. “I don’t bloody think so!”

“What the hell’s Molly got to do with it?”

“Everything,” I burst out. “I know that you’re in love with her. I heard these girls talking, and now you’re just making do with me until she wakes up one morning and realizes that she can’t live without you. Well, it’s never gonna happen!”

Smith didn’t say a word. Which I was getting really bored with. He could at least have denied the trumped up Molly accusation; instead he tugged on his T-shirt. “I hate it when you get angry,” he said dully, striding over to the door. “You start talking a whole lot of shit about stuff you don’t know anything about. Why can’t you just be like other girls and start crying when you’re mad?”

“Because I’m not like other girls,” I reminded him icily.

“Don’t I bloody know it,” he said, slamming the door so hard behind him that I swear the whole building shook.

I sat there sulking for a bit, but there didn’t seem to be much point when there was no one around to see it.