Six Steps to a Girl (6 page)

My stomach twisted into this tearing, burning knot.

“After another fortnight she’ll be gagging for it,” Ben sneered. “Begging me to do her.”

I put down my burger and looked up at Ryan. He was staring sympathetically at me.

His sympathy was the last thing I wanted.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. I stumbled blindly out of the burger bar. Had I imagined the look that passed between me and Eve? No. And I certainly hadn’t imagined her blushing. But maybe she hadn’t felt it the same way I had. Maybe all I’d done was remind her of how she felt about her stupid thug of a boyfriend.

I fantasised about going back in the burger bar and punching Ben in the face. But I was too scared. He was much bigger than me. And he was with two friends.

Humiliated, I stomped off back to school.

Ryan turned up on the doorstep half an hour after Chloe and I got home that evening. “Hey, Luke, man . . .” He gave me a pitying smile.

“Forget it.” I started shutting the door in his face, hating that he felt sorry for me. “I’m not interested anymore.”

Ryan shoved his foot in the gap and pushed against me. “Don’t be so lame,” he said. “You should be more determined than ever now.”

“Oh yeah? How d’you work that out?”

“Because Ben’s handed you Step Three on a plate, you idiot.”

I opened the door. “What d’you mean?”

“I’m not telling you out here. Let me in.”

Reluctantly, I led Ryan into the kitchen. Mum was out and Chloe was up in her room. I slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and drummed my fingers on the table. “Well?”

Ryan sat down. “You gotta have an Angle. That’s Step Three. Some way of positioning yourself – like a brand in a shop. Some way of standing out from the crowd – a way that’s particularly meaningful for whoever it is you’re after.”

I shook my head. Ryan talked as much rubbish as Ms Patel in the Art Club. “What the hell are you going on about?”

“Don’t you see?” Ryan leaned forwards. “Ben’s pushing Eve to go all the way with him.”

I glared at him. “Thanks for the newsflash. I think I’d worked that out for myself.”

“But she doesn’t want to. Even you must have seen that.”

“But Ben said—”

“What else was he gonna say, man? He was trying to look cool in front of his stupid mates.”

“So how does that help me?” I said.

“Well, that’s your Angle. If you wanna get her away from Ben, you’ve got to be the guy who doesn’t push. The guy who’s respectful. Maybe even a bit aloof.”

I frowned. “So what you’re saying is that the way to get her is to pretend I’m not interested.”

“No.” Ryan put his elbows on the table and lowered his head despairingly into his hands. “Why d’you have to make this such hard work? You make it clear you’re interested, but you don’t push. You let her come to you. It’s perfect. After all, your biggest problem is coming across as this eager little kid. But with this Angle you’re overcoming that
and
blowing Ben out of the water at the same time.”

The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Tones,” Ryan said. “I invited him round for Step Four revision – it’s his weakest point.”

“Great,” I said, sarcastically. “It’s only my house. Invite who you like.”

Ryan grinned. “Well I would have said come to mine, but you and your sister are still grounded, aren’t you?”

The doorbell rang again.

“Are you getting that?” Chloe screeched from upstairs.

Step Four was Humour. Ryan was convinced that making a girl laugh got you halfway to everything else. “Of course,” he said, pacing up and down the kitchen. “Numbers doesn’t bother much with Steps Four onwards, but if you want to get someone hot you’re gonna need something special.”

Tones nodded seriously from the kitchen table. “I bin trying, Ry,” he said. “D’you wanna hear this joke I learned?” Ryan gazed at him fondly – rather like a mother duck might look at a particularly hopeless duckling. “Tones, we talked about this.” He sighed. “Telling jokes is not your strong point. For you, it’s gotta be low key. Like saying Mr Hedges has gotta face like a potato.”

Tones grinned. “That’s a good one. I’ll remember that.”

I shook my head as Ryan sat down beside Tones. A sense of humour wasn’t something you could teach.

“Right, chat me up, Tones,” Ryan said. “And be funny.”

Tones did his best, but privately I thought he would have learned more if Ryan had given him another couple of observations about the teachers. Still, Tones seemed pleased, especially when Ryan told him he was really improving.

After about ten minutes Ryan turned to me. “You take over for a bit,” he said.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you’re already good at this sort of thing.” Ryan smiled. “Anyway, I gotta have a crap, so I may be some time.”

“Nice.” I made a face, then slipped into the chair Ryan had vacated.

As Tones droned on with some interminable story about how he had been amusingly rude to his maths teacher – a story I suspected he had witnessed rather than actively participated in – my mind drifted off to Eve and whether Ryan was right about the Angle thing.

“. . . so d’you think that’ll work, Luke?”

I blinked, taking a second to register Tones was speaking to me.

“Sure,” I said, then, feeling guilty, lied: “Ryan’s right. You’re doing great.”

Tones grinned self-consciously. “I’m gonna ask Kirsty out, this week. Ry thinks I’m ready. I’ve bin chatting to her for a couple of weeks now. I can’t wait any longer.”

“Kirsty?” I said.

“Yeah. She’s the year below us. Short. She’s got curly red hair and freckles.”

I frowned, unable to place her.

Tones’ eyes lit up. “She’s amazing.”

I stared at him, wondering if it was possible that Kirsty was anywhere near as hot as Eve. I decided she couldn’t be. No one was.

After the weekend I was no longer grounded. On Monday I went to the shops after school and bought a bag of wooden buttons, ready for Art Club later in the week. When I came home, Mum and Chloe were in the middle of this massive row about the fact that Chloe was still grounded for another three weeks while I was allowed to go out. They’d been arguing a lot since the party. In fact, Chloe had basically been in one, long, bad mood for weeks. She hadn’t used to be like that. Not that she and Mum didn’t argue. But, before, with Dad, it was different.

I set down my buttons on my bed and closed the door.

Dad used to make them laugh. When Mum and Chloe had their rows and Chloe would storm off to her room, he’d go from one to the other, coaxing them round, making them smile, until they’d calm down and come to the kitchen and . . . and somehow Dad would be there, making it all right.

I looked over at the records, still in the corner.

I could see Dad now, really clearly, peering round my bedroom door and rolling his eyes. “What is it with girls, Luke?” he’d sigh. Then he’d wink at me. “Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them, eh?”

I don’t remember what I said back. Nothing, probably.

I sat, staring at the records, listening to Mum and Chloe shouting. They sounded like they were crying. For a second I felt like crying too. Then a door slammed and the house went quiet and I felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

At last it was Thursday. I arrived five minutes late for Art Club, hoping Eve would be there already and Ms Patel would suggest I joined her table. But Eve wasn’t there. Worse – she didn’t turn up later, either. After half an hour I wandered over to the two girls I’d seen her chatting to the week before.

“I wanted to ask Eve something about my collage project,” I said. “D’you know if she’s coming.”

One of the girls half looked up at me. “She’s gone to watch her boyfriend in a football match.”

I walked back to my table and stared down at the stupid piles of buttons on my piece of paper.

What the hell was I doing?

I felt this tremendous urge to hurl the table over on its side. Eve was totally into Ben. I was wasting my time even thinking about her.

And then she walked in.

Eve’s face was flushed, as if she’d been running. And there was a dusting of raindrops on her hair.

Without taking off her coat she rushed over to Ms Patel. “Is it all right if I stay late?” she said. “I promise I’ll clear up afterwards.”

My stomach flipped over.

Ms Patel pursed her lips.

Say yes, Ms Patel. Say yes and I’ll make you the best wooden-button music collage you’ve ever seen.

“All right, Eve,” she said. “But only for half an hour. The caretaker locks up at six.”

Eve pulled off her coat and raced over to the tray that I knew contained her collage. She pulled the paper out and carried it carefully to the nearest table.

I bent over my buttons. I’d wasted the last hour looking up at the door every ten seconds, but now I had a plan and I worked as if my life depended on it. I arranged the buttons in zigzagging lines across the page, then waited for Ms Patel to walk past.

A few minutes later she arrived at my table. “So how’s your work going, Luke?” she said.

“Good,” I said. “The wavy lines are sort of sound vibrations, but there’s something missing. It needs some sort of background.”

Ms Patel examined my work. “Well, I suppose you could paint a background.” She looked at me doubtfully. I could tell she was remembering last week’s alien-head flowers.

“I was thinking of a collage within a collage,” I said. “Putting torn-up pictures of people playing music under the buttons.”

Ms Patel nodded thoughtfully. “Mmmn, there’s a nice dissonance in that. Well, the old newspapers we use for papier-mâché are by the sink. Or you can ask Eve if she has any spare magazines.”

I nodded, grinning.

At five-thirty everyone else started packing up. I looked up from the pile of newspapers I’d been examining. Ms Patel was picking up her bag. She glanced at me as she walked to the door.

“I’ll just be a couple of minutes,” I said.

She nodded and walked out, leaving me and Eve alone.

Alone. The space between us stretched out like an ocean. Eve was oblivious to me, her head bent over her work, her tongue peeking between her lips as she concentrated on sticking a piece of paper with glue.

My heart pounded as I walked towards her.
Look up at me. Look up.

She looked up and smiled – a warm, genuine, friendly smile. “Hi,” she said. “How’s your collage going?”

“Good, thanks. I wanted to ask you. D’you have any spare magazines I could use?”

She nodded and pointed to a pile by her feet. “Those are ones I’ve finished with – I’ve taken so much out of them there’s no point keeping them. You can have what you like.”

I bent down and picked up the magazines.

“So what’s your coursework about?” I said, looking at the paper spread out on her table. It was divided into four sections. Each section was made up of tiny scraps of paper. In one the papers were all blue, in another different shades of red. The other two were whites and greys/blacks.

“This is just the background,” she said. “It’s going to be a face from the Eighties. Cut-up and stuck-together bits of my mum’s face from when she was a model. I’m really behind. That’s why I came back to work on it tonight.”

I racked my brain for something to say other than:
Is your mum as hot as you?

“Sounds more interesting than a football match,” I said.

Eve laughed. Not a high-pitched giggle like every other girl I knew – but a throaty, grown-up laugh. “You’re not wrong. I got freezing cold watching.”

“Who won?” I said, not liking the way our conversation seemed to be taking a turn Ben-wards.

“Ben.” Eve blushed. “I mean, Ben’s team. They were going out to the pub to celebrate, but I didn’t feel like it.”

She looked up at me. There was just the faintest hint of laughter in her eyes, as if what she was really saying was:
I wanted to come here and see you.

I backed away, holding my magazines. I must be reading her wrong. There was no way she could blush about her boyfriend and flirt with me in the same sentence.

“Thanks for these,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

Eve was still looking at me. “Hey, why don’t we put on some music?” she said. “Maybe it’ll give you a bit of inspiration – you know, for your collage.”

She glided across the room to Ms Patel’s desk and switched on the radio. Her teeth bit lightly into her bottom lip as she twiddled the dial.

White noise, a blast of rap, something classical.

Then a dance record came on. I hadn’t heard it before. A woman was singing, her voice whirling round this steady bass.

“Oh, I love this,” Eve said. She twirled away from the desk into a pool of sunlight flowing in from the low sun outside the window. She swayed from side to side, her hips rippling in small circles in time with the beat.

“What is it?” I croaked, trying hard to keep my eyes on her face.

“It’s a cover of ‘The Passenger’. Here, come and dance.”

She held out her hands towards me.

Somehow I managed to cross the room without falling over. Eve grinned at me as I arrived at the big teacher’s desk. “You might want to put those down,” she said.

I looked down. The pile of magazines was still in my arms. I laid them carefully on the desk, hoping Eve couldn’t see my hands shaking. For a second I stood awkwardly in front of her.

What did she want me to do exactly? Normally I quite like dancing, and I think I’m OK at it too – not brilliant, but not one of those dorks who thinks it’s cool to flail around all over the place either. But right now I was lost. My legs felt like jelly. Eve was twisting and turning in the sunlight in front of me, like some kind of sexy angel. And I was trying to work out whether I should just shuffle about a bit where I was or go right up to her and . . .