The Worst of Me (7 page)

She yawned for a long time. ‘Cassie?’ she said.

‘Uh-huh?’

‘I love you, sweetheart.’

I stopped throwing stuff in my bag so that she wouldn’t think I was being dismissive or rude, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. We both heard the door bang upstairs as Paul came out of the shower. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I have to go,’ I said, shaking my head. I didn’t lie to my mum very much, and there was really no reason to lie to her that morning. I just had a feeling it’d make things easier.

Jonah had called me from the bus and I actually got to the stop before he did.

‘You’re always early!’ he said. ‘You make me worry that I’m late.’ We held each other’s fingertips and I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘So we’ve got half an hour,’ he said, softly. ‘Let’s go mad with it.’

We walked down the hill to the school entrance, Jonah’s arm curled around my waist and me holding his hand.

‘I think I have to apologise for my dad’s terrible jokes when he gave you a lift home the other night. I . . . think I must have been adopted, it’s the only explanation.’

‘Your dad’s great,’ I said. ‘Both your parents are. You have no idea!’

‘Everyone thinks the worst about their parents.’

I shrugged. ‘Some parents don’t give you much to be positive about.’ I worried I sounded too dark and miserable, so I smiled. ‘Yours are cool, believe me.’

We reached the school gates, and paused.

‘Shall we go in?’ Jonah said.

‘It’s not even ten to eight.’

‘They let you in, though.’

‘Well, not in the building.’

‘Yeah, I think in the building.’

‘But, we’re not allowed in the building. And where would we go anyway?’

Jonah grinned. ‘It’s cold out here. Warm in there.’

‘But . . .’

‘We could lurk inside the sixth-form block? The study library’s open.’

‘Oh noooo. What if I get stuck there when people start coming in? And they see me and think I’m a serial sixth-form groupie?’

Jonah clasped my hand and pulled me forwards.

‘We’ll start at the other end, then,’ he said, and we slipped into the first entrance to the junior high school. It was the oldest school building, made in Victorian times, with lots of long corridors and dark recesses to hide in.

‘This is worse!’ I whispered, as the doors closed behind us and we got used to the warmth and silence. ‘Neither of us has any reason to be here.’

Jonah pushed me against the wall. ‘Shhh.’ He kissed me. Oh wow. And in conclusion, the point of kissing is there is nothing else on earth that feels that good. I know, whatever, there are other feelings that get good reviews. But kissing, great kissing? Accept no imitations.

We heard footsteps and Jonah pushed me again, into the dark shadow behind a wide, curling staircase. He held me there while my heart raced. A couple of Year 7 kids ran up the stairs swearing in that weird aggressive way they have of swearing, as if they think that sticks and stones are one thing but these words really can hurt people. When they’d gone, I made a move out of the stairs, but felt a sharp tug on the front of my shirt, as Jonah pulled me back. And then I was leaning against a wall again . . .

Quite a bit too much later, we emerged again, encountering a swarm of juniors who stared, but not all that suspiciously. The seniors’ classrooms were in the building next door, but Jonah had further to go to the sixth-form block. I gave him a little shove in the chest, and, wordlessly, looking happy and ruffled, he went. I straightened my own shirt, and trying to keep the smile off my face, headed to registration.

Almost every day that week, I had lunch with Jonah and his mates in a greasy-spoon café a couple of streets from the school. Just like the cinema where I’d
first met them, this wasn’t really a school hang out, they seemed to find places that were stranger, with older people. It added to the feeling that I’d moved on to a new chapter of my life. If they minded a girl muscling in, a younger girl, too, they didn’t show it. We always started off quietly and ended up very loud, making each other laugh, talking about serious things. The conversations I was having with my old friends now seemed impossibly stupid, and it sometimes made me angry: soap operas, calories, film stars’ bodies. Just this endless rating of famous women – who was pretty, who was desperate, who was up her own arse. And Jonah’s mates agreed with me about how pointless and destructive it was. The guys in my year would have rated the women we talked about on a different scale: whether or not they’d deign to have sex with them, with real outrage reserved for the imaginary attempts the not-hot-enough ones might make to seduce them. It felt weird talking to guys and not having to brace myself for the inevitable sexist attitudes.

But while they were expanding my horizons, they weren’t making a lot of friends. They told me about the general studies lessons and the follow-up forum discussions, Sam Bond pupils breaking out into capitals, getting riled and threatening, and how weird it was that the school thought that was healthy
discussion. But it didn’t bother them, they thought it was funny. For instance, apparently some vicar’s son had been arguing with them about people’s right to believe in creationism.

‘Except we are right,’ Steve said, laughing. ‘We
have
evidence, honest-to-goodness, hold-it-in-your-hands-and-feel-the-weight-of-it evidence.’

‘Meanwhile they come back with stuff about Noah’s Ark washing away all the proof and . . . uh . . . resetting radio-carbon dating, or something?’ Dom said.

‘They have a book,’ said Steve. ‘Poorly translated and hugely manipulated over several thousand years. Oh, and faith. Bollocks to faith. I'd rather get hit in the head by faith than a dinosaur bone.’

‘A six-thousand-year-old dinosaur bone,’ Lewis said, and they all laughed.

‘This guy doesn’t even believe in creationism,’ Jonah said. ‘He’s just saying it’s a good thing if people believe these fairy tales, because he says they need to believe life has meaning and that’s where it gets really dangerous.’

‘But why is it dangerous?’ I said. I liked to ask questions. I was still weighing everything up. I honestly didn’t have an opinion most of the time, I wasn’t playing dumb. ‘I would like to believe life had meaning.’

Jonah gave me a little smile. ‘Because when people are allowed to use religion to explain history, they’re
allowed to use it to judge behaviour, and to enforce behaviour, and those books, those stories that someone made up, can be reread by any psychopath to say anything from abortion is always wrong, to women shouldn’t be educated, to —’

‘Oh, Sharia law, that’s what they want,’ said a workman at the next table. He had a quite high voice, and it temporarily silenced my friends and seemed to echo for a moment in the café. He seemed to wait for an answer before he tried again. ‘They’d like to make us cut people’s hands off and put women in tablecloths,’ he said. ‘I mean, the cutting people’s hands off is one thing – cheaper than prisons I suppose, but women in tablecloths? Wouldn’t like that much!’ Then he laughed. And we laughed too, sort of pretending it was at whatever he was laughing at, but we all met each other’s eyes and I had to stick my fingernails into my palms so I didn’t just
howl
.

On the way back, Jonah and I fell a little behind the others, walking with our arms around each other, and we reached the school gates at the same time as Ian and Sophie.

‘Oh, hi Cass,’ Ian said.

‘Hi,’ Sophie said. One syllable, and it managed to sound silvery and breathy and feminine. I always thought I sounded like a teenage boy whose voice was just about to break.

‘Hi,’ I croaked.

Jonah squeezed my waist.

‘I can’t remember . . . did Issy say you were coming round to her thing tonight?’ Ian said. ‘I’ll be passing through, obviously, so . . . might see you later?’

‘Um, yeah I might be,’ I said, feeling a bit helpless. Isobel hadn’t asked me round to hers, although we did usually spend Friday nights watching a film there. Josette’s party had been the only recent exception.

‘Girls’ night tonight, then?’ Jonah said, as we walked in. I’d told him that Ian had been my boyfriend before him, and he’d seemed reassuringly uninterested, just a little smirk playing around his mouth when he said he knew him. A good response, I thought.

‘It’s just what we usually . . .’

‘No, no! Only a crazy person would try to muscle in on a girls’ night. I’ll make sure my compadres and I get up to something appropriately manly as a response. Maybe we’ll start a fight in a snooker hall.’

‘Just make sure you don’t get Lewis into trouble. His mum’ll kill you.’

During afternoon registration, Isobel leaned back on two chair legs and sang, ‘Caaass-i-deeee!’

‘Iiiiii-so-belllll!’ I sang back.

‘My place tonight for the usual? Or are you blowing us out for a hot date?’ She grinned around the pencil she was chewing. Good, so I was invited after all. In
spite of the snub of Josette’s party, I’d really been the one neglecting my mates this week, not spending lunch hours with them and never going out in the evening because I was trying to bank good-girl points with my mum in the hope of negotiating longer weekend nights out.

‘Who is this hot date, anyway?’ Dee said, joining me as we headed out of the classroom. ‘Sorry you couldn’t make it last week, by the way, but the film was terrible anyway.’

‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘And I bet the film I ended up seeing was a lot worse. He’s called Jonah. I’ll point him out to you the next time I see him.’

‘Jonah . . . he’s not in our year, then? Sixth-former?’

‘One of the new ones.’

‘Ahh, okay.’ A look of disappointment, somehow, flashed over her face, but it was gone so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it.

‘What have you got next? Physics?’

‘Yeah. Double: over an hour of Mr Hapssen’s armpits. You?’

‘Freeeee period!’

‘They’re called
study
periods?’ she said sarcastically.

I cackled like a Bond villain.

Our form tutor called her over: ‘Diyanah, can I talk to you before you go?’

‘The day just gets better,’ she whispered to me.
‘We’ve got English later, right? I want to catch up with you.’

‘Yeah, last period. And me too. We can come up with something new to make people tut at us.’

She winked.

At first, it wasn’t even weird. It was just me and the girls, doing magazine quizzes, watching telly rather than the movie we’d rented because every time someone tried to put the DVD in, another of us would go, ‘Can I just see what happens in ’
Stenders
?’ or some other programme. And talking, and laughing and screaming sometimes so that Isobel’s mum came in and told us to keep it down.

But then Ian came in and decided to join us. This had happened a few times since Ian and I broke up. Not to begin with, but when it became obvious that Ian and I were going to be cool with each other. Tonight, when he sat down, it was obvious that he was a bit drunk. He was louder even before he started talking: his breathing, bigger, clumsier movements, just a kind of buzz around him. He started off just talking about the programme we
had on, then he suddenly said, ‘Cassidy?’ and everyone jumped.

‘Hey, Ian,’ I said, as if he’d just walked in the door.

‘So what’s the deal with Jonah? How long have you known him?’

‘Well, about as long as you, I guess,’ I said.

‘How come? Where did you meet him? In school?’

‘No, I, er, it was just at a café, I mean, we were both in . . .’ I trailed off, because I could tell the others were finding the conversation as weird as me.

‘I dunno,’ Ian said. ‘I probably shouldn’t say anything. But I’m not sure he’s a nice guy. I know there’s no reason you should listen to me, and that it’s weird me saying that and —’

‘It
is
weird,’ Isobel said. ‘Shut up, Ian.’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Ian said. He ran his hand over his hair. Then he sat with us in silence for another couple of minutes, while I tried to work out how I was going to ask him the right questions to follow this up. But just as I was getting them straight in my head, he’d stood up again and walked out without a word.

‘Has he said something to you?’ I asked Isobel.

‘No,’ she said.

‘So . . . ?’ I frowned. ‘What does he mean? He must have said something.’

‘He would seem to be a bit . . . jealous? Could that be it?’ Finian said.

‘I mean, guys, it
could
be,’ Isobel said. ‘But he’s – no offence, Cass – properly loved up. I mean, they get on
really
well, him and Soph. Honestly, though, he hasn’t said anything to me. I would have said. Well, maybe I wouldn’t, but I would say now. I promise.’

‘You can still be jealous even if you have a new girlfriend, can’t you?’ Finian said. ‘You can still have feelings for someone even if you’ve moved on. I read somewhere that it’s worse for boys than girls, in fact.’

‘What does he know about Jonah, though?’ Kim asked.

I could see on their faces that they were running through the possibilities. It was embarrassing and annoying, and I wanted to run after Ian and yell at him. The only possible explanation
was
jealousy, and I knew all about still having feelings for someone even when you’d fallen for someone else. Like, if they were ever yours, you still own a piece of them. But I would never let feelings like that show. Ian and Sophie had been going out for months now and I would have died rather than walk into a room full of Ian’s friends and say something bitchy about Sophie.

‘Shall we put the film on?’ Isobel said, and everyone agreed.

On Saturday morning I had a shopping date with Sam. He’d agreed to restyle me to ‘match’ Jonah. His theory
was that it was really important that a couple looked like a couple, like they belonged with each other, and not like they’d ‘both received invitations to a party with different dress codes written on them’. But Sam and Jonah hadn’t met, so Sam needed to make sure we were talking about the same person.

‘Otherwise,’ Sam said, ‘I’m going to style you as someone else’s girlfriend, and when you get around to meeting
him
sparks will fly.’