Louder Than Words (3 page)

‘Our mother’s an artist.’

We turned round to see a sleep-ruffled Silas coming down the stairs wearing a pair of boxers and, thankfully, a T-shirt. On Saturdays, my brother didn’t rise from his pit until the sun was well up in the sky, usually because he was messing around online most of Friday night, doing some geeky computer stuff with his geeky internet friends. For that was Silas’s special thing: he wasn’t an artist or a musician or a maths boffin; he did things with computers. What exactly he did was beyond my understanding, but whatever it was I knew he was good at it from the reverential way his friends spoke to him about that kind of thing.

Josie looked flustered. ‘Oh, right.’

‘Want coffee or juice or something?’

Of course. That’s what normal people did – offered their guests a drink. Doh! I sucked in a breath and tried to work out how to operate in some kind of normal girl mode. I could give up and just leave it all to Silas or let Josie go away and not have the stress of working out how I was going to communicate with her. But here she was, standing in my hall, and I had this crazy feeling that I was this close,
this
close, to making a connection. It was terrifying, but at the same time so exciting I thought I might burst.

I jerked my head at her, smiling again, and my face was starting to freeze up from the effort of grinning to replace the useless words that never escaped my throat. I walked through to the kitchen and she followed me, with Silas trailing behind, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I wondered what she thought of my brother in that state. I noticed she avoided looking at him directly, seeming to find her feet more interesting.

My mother gave her a polite but distant nod as she folded up the newspaper. I thought for a moment I detected a flash of curiosity from her, but then she got up to leave. ‘I must get on. I need to get those three pieces finished for the Bartlett commission.’ She drifted out of the room in a suitably ‘arty’ fashion. Josie looked impressed, if a little intimidated. Silas and I rolled our eyes at each other. It was less impressive when you lived with it.

‘Exit stage left,’ muttered Silas and flicked the kettle on.

He was about to ask Josie what she wanted to drink, but that was wrong. She was my guest and I should be doing it. I yanked the fridge door open and held up the juice carton, and simultaneously pointed to the coffee jar on the worktop.

‘Oh, juice would be great, thanks.’

I beamed. It felt as if the grin exploded across my face. Such a stupid little thing that would seem to anyone else, but to me at that moment it was a breakthrough of the highest order. I had done it. Normal communication established. Me! I connected!

I was so happy that I almost forgot to pour the juice for her, but then I pulled myself together. It was a good job she couldn’t see how thrilled I was or she’d think I was a complete loser.

Why did her opinion matter to me? I didn’t know her at all, only met her once and then very briefly. Was it a premonition of friendship or just that a chance seemed – incredibly – to be presenting itself and I so badly didn’t want to blow it? I don’t think I ever worked out the answer. But it didn’t matter: what was to be would be.

I set her juice down on the table and got myself a glass too, as Silas mooched around making coffee and toast and tactfully ignoring us. I could have hugged him for that.

‘So I figured I should come and say thank you for . . . oh, that you stopped to see if I was OK the other day, that you
cared
,’ Josie said, sipping juice. ‘I mean, most people wouldn’t. Even my so-called friends don’t. They all think it’s one great big joke. Easy for them when it’s not them on the receiving end!’

I pulled a puzzled face, which was a bit duplicitous of me, but what was I supposed to do – let her know I knew what she was talking about and the gossip was all over my school too?

‘Oh yeah, sorry, this won’t make any sense to you.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t really want to explain because it hurts to even talk about it, but . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘Well, we can’t be friends if I’m pretending about why I was upset that day, can we?’

I shook my head, dazed. So she really did want to be friends. It wasn’t some silly daydream I was having. She honestly, truly wanted to be friends with me.

Nobody had ever wanted to be friends with me before.

Unless she had other motives.

I looked up at Silas leaning against the kitchen counter and munching toast with peanut butter. Maybe it was Silas that Josie really wanted to be around. Was I just a convenient way to get closer to him?

I frowned. Hmm, maybe my nasty, suspicious mind was just that – nasty and suspicious. But why would a Year 11 girl – who was pretty and, according to Toby, had been popular before her ex trashed her reputation – want to be friends with me?

Josie looked at me with a puzzled expression so I tried to wipe the frown away.

It worked. As my frown disappeared, so did her puzzlement and she took a deep breath in. ‘Look, I don’t normally talk like this to complete strangers I meet in the street, but I think gut reactions are really important and, this is going to sound mental, but I had a really strong one when I met you, like I just knew we’d be friends. Some kind of instant connection. Did you feel anything like that?’

Did I? Yes, perhaps that was what I was feeling, that unexpected sense of wanting to communicate with a girl I didn’t know, a feeling that had come out of nowhere and left me shaken at the strangeness. That kind of need was so foreign to me. Maybe this was how friendships started. I suppose Josie would know that better than me. I nodded slowly.

Josie beamed. She had one of those transformational smiles that turned her into someone you wanted so much to be with. ‘Oh good!’

She glanced at Silas, who had picked up our mother’s newspaper and was sitting on a stool at the furthest end of the long kitchen counter studiously ignoring us. I wasn’t fooled. He ‘wasn’t listening’ with exactly the same face I used when I ‘wasn’t listening’ to his friends. But Josie fell for it.

‘I don’t normally cry in the street,’ she said. ‘I said I’d had a really bad day. Well, it was beyond bad. It’s been like the most completely sucky week of my whole life.’ She paused and added, ‘You’re a really good listener, do you know that? I mean, you don’t nod all the time and obviously you don’t answer, but it’s in your eyes that you’re listening. And there’s something else there too . . . that you won’t
judge
.’ She shook her head slightly as if she’d surprised even herself with that insight and then she went on. ‘Even my friends were horrible about what happened. They won’t even speak to me now and . . . oh, this will be making no sense at all. I’ll have to start at the beginning, but tell me if I’m boring you and I’ll stop, OK?’

Yes, that was OK, but I couldn’t see myself getting bored. I wanted to know her side of it; after all, Toby’s wasn’t likely to be totally accurate.

‘Have you ever been in love? Dumb question I guess because you probably haven’t yet, but I could be wrong. No? You will be one day. I thought I was. It’s the strangest feeling. It’s like it takes over your whole life. Like you’re not even yourself any more. Like you’re whoever the person you love wants you to be even if that’s not who you know you are deep down. You change.’ She checked my face. ‘You look doubtful. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t really change and you just pretend. No? Or do you think that’s not really love at all. Yeah, you could be right about that too. I’m not sure either. Like I said, I thought I was in love. Now I’m not so sure I ever was. All I know is I hate him now.’

That wasn’t unexpected. If someone had betrayed me like that, I’d hate him too.

‘His name’s Lloyd and he’s in the year above me, but he’s not at my school. He goes to college to do engineering. My dad didn’t know I was going out with him or he’d have grounded me for life. Dad’s in the police and Lloyd got in some trouble last year for under-age driving. That’s how I met him – he was driving around the leisure centre car park in his cousin’s car one night after I came out from my swim club meet, but this was after he’d got in trouble the first time. So he was doing it again. I know, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, obviously he is completely stupid, but so must I be too because all I could think when I met him was how cute he was. I didn’t find out about the trouble with the police until later and by then I was so into him that I told myself it didn’t matter. I made so many excuses for him.’

At least she could see that now. That was something.

She got her phone out and showed me a picture. ‘That’s him.’ And yes, it was clear what she’d seen in him. He looked as dodgy as anything and I would have run a mile from a boy like him, but he had that bad-boy grin that some girls find irresistible, and he was easy on the eye, I had to admit.

‘So I was crazy about him; you have to understand that part or none of this makes any sense and you’ll think I’m just some slut who –’

I thought she was going to cry for a moment, but she took a few breaths and managed not to.

‘Sorry. We’d been seeing each other a few months when he invited me to his cousin’s party. Everyone there was wasted and I know I drank too much too, but I wasn’t completely out of it – I can’t use that as an excuse. I did know what I was doing, but . . . I trusted him. That’s how stupid I am. I trusted that pig and . . .’ Her eyes started filling up with tears.

I got up hurriedly and tore off some kitchen roll for her. Silas sat rooted to his stool like a tree, and stared at the paper like he was deaf and invisible. I wondered whether Josie felt more uncomfortable saying this in front of him. Or did she want him to know the truth? If she was interested in him . . .

‘Thanks. I didn’t mean to cry again. It’s so silly. I’m not crying over him. I am so totally over him I can’t understand why I ever liked him now. It’s because I feel such an
idiot
. Everyone’s laughing at me and the more they do, the worse it gets because it encourages him. I begged him to stop, though I hated myself for doing it because I bet it gives him a buzz to make me beg, but he won’t. Just keeps putting worse and worse stuff online about me.’

OK, so I knew he’d posted some pictures, but it was still going on? I shook my head at her to show I didn’t understand.

‘Yeah, I know. I’m being rubbish at explaining.’ She wiped her face with the paper towel. ‘Basically, after that party I went back to his to get changed before going home. My dad’s really strict and I didn’t want him smelling smoke and alcohol on me. While I was getting changed, Lloyd sneaked into the bedroom and took some photos of me. I didn’t have my bra on in some of them. I sort of yelled at him when I realised he was there, bu t he made out like it was a big joke and we’d both had too much to drink so, yes, I was dumb and I started laughing too. Then he talked me into posing for a couple of photos. Just messing around, he said, but he kept kissing me and telling me I was beautiful, and he just wanted something to remind him just how beautiful when I wasn’t there.’

Her face crumpled and she began to cry properly. Not pretty crying as people do when they’re doing it for effect but full-on red-eyed face, streaming and snotty.

As I listened to her, I felt what she did. Felt it through the emotion leaking out of her words. Felt the betrayal, the humiliation and, behind that, the impotent anger that someone she cared about had done – appeared to still be doing – this to her. This is a thing about being silent that I don’t think people realise for they spend so much time talking and so little time really listening. You can hear so much, come to know so much from the way words are spoken, as much as from the words themselves. Sometimes more, actually, because people can hide what they really mean inside their choice of words, but they’re not as good at hiding it in their faces, their voices, their body language.

Josie’s words didn’t say nearly as much as her weeping eyes and the way she shook all over.

It was hard for me, faced with her like that, to know what to do. I’d be better at dealing with it now, but then I was so unsure of myself, so clueless about the basics of friendship. I bit my lip as I watched her and half wished Silas would rescue me.

What a coward. How many times had I sat in my room and dreamed of a moment like this? For friendship to be dangled in front of me, waiting to be grabbed at. And now it was here, my mind was whining for Silas to help me. Then again, wasn’t cowardice a big part of why I didn’t speak?

Josie grabbed the wet paper towel again and rubbed her face. It didn’t do much good – you could still see all too well she’d been crying. ‘I wish you could tell me what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever get frustrated that you can’t say stuff like that to people?’

Yes
. Yes. A thousand times yes.

But never enough to beat the fear. If that’s what it was – fear. Even I didn’t really know.

‘Do you have a phone?’ she asked, tears suddenly forgotten as inspiration flashed over her face. ‘A mobile I mean, not a house phone.’

A mobile?

Ah, that. I shook my head. Not vehemently, though I wanted to. But that would seem strange to her so I managed to shake it normally. Like it was just any old casual question I was answering. I saw Silas’s head come up and he spun round on the stool to face us.

‘Why not? I could text you if you did and you could text back and –’

Yes – and . . .

. . . and we could communicate. I started to feel a bit weird.

‘She’s never had one,’ Silas said, coming over quickly.

Josie grinned at us. ‘Then it’s about time she got one, isn’t it?’

Silas opened his mouth to protest. He did try, I knew that, I recognised that and I loved him for it. But he had just come up against the tornado that was Josie and he was unprepared.

She stood up and pushed her chair back, rummaging in her bag until she found her purse. She pulled out a bank card with satisfaction. ‘Come on!’

Come on where?
my face said.

‘We’re going to buy you a phone!’

CHAPTER 3