To Be Honest

eBook First Published in 2012 by Autharium Publishing, London

Copyright © Polly Young 2012

The moral right of Polly Young to be asserted as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights reserved, No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

British Library Cataloguing-in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN: 9781780258126

Josh has lost it.

His duffle coat’s stuffed into his bag, it’s raining and he’s shivering: pale, like a blu-tack snail in stonewashed denim and lime green cravat.

And Mr Morlis might carry it off but he’s thirty and cool, whereas Josh’s fifteen and ... Josh.

“Lisi?” he asks when we’ve passed the sodden field of year 11 boys kicking footballs - none of them sparing us even one glance - and shrugged his parka back on.

“What?”

“
Do
you think Kai’s gay?”

I sigh. No, I do
not
think Kai Swanning’s gay. We’ve been down this road so many times. Normally I say no and we argue, so today I just say, “yes” to my best friend with a death stare. It works: he falls silent, swinging his bag and scuffing his brogues through damp leaves and crisp packets.

We skirt the woods around the dual carriageway in the early December gloom as cars slosh past. I stayed late with Miss Mint catching up on
Twelfth Night
and Josh waited, of course. I don’t know what he did for twenty minutes after he’d changed out of uniform; probably in the toilets re-tying his cravat. Josh’s funny like that.

It’s Thursday, the streets are all black and if I was on my own, I’d be streaking through the orangey mist with rain dripping down my neck, or more likely taking the bus home because to be honest I’d be a bit freaked out. Not that I’d admit it to Josh, of course.

“What you wearing?”

He’s means to Courtney’s party and it’s like the ninth time he’s asked but it gets us off the subject of Kai.

“Red top with the slash neck, pleated Zara skirt, tights, snakeskin platforms.”

“Slut.”

“You?”

His eyes glitter. “White bomber, skinny Hudsons, gel.”

“Slag.”

He shoves me into a puddle so we spend five minutes wrestling. When we reach the main road the traffic’s crawling, so we rest, soaked. On the traffic island, quick as lightning I grab Josh’s cravat and wipe my face. His eyebrows and middle finger lift ... so easy to wind up.

“To mine?” I ask, like I don’t know.

He grunts, pushes his fringe to the side and then I feel bad. His mum’s at the hospital getting the baby its injections, so he’ll have to do tea. Josh’s mum’s always pregnant. He’s got two sisters and three brothers, all with bad teeth. Mum says their dental bill’s mental.

But that’s fine, ‘cos Josh’s dad’s loaded. He’s a banker, managing crises somewhere in Hong Kong. Sometimes, when Josh’s stressed and his mum’s slamming doors, I wish he’d come back and manage his family but he never does; just pops back, waves money and impregnates his wife. All a bit yuck, to be honest.

We say goodbye at the corner and he flicks a ‘V’ and lopes off: a drizzly blur, shimmering over the railway bridge that leads to the posh bit of town.

“Say hi to Miss Mint,” I yell and he waves his bag and disappears. Josh lives next door to my favourite teacher in the world. I have a little bit of a crush on her. Everyone does.

I bang through the hallway and dump my bag by the mirror. The green dye’s faded since Hallowe’en but my hair still hangs round my face like the reeds at the side of the lake behind school. For a while I thought it was cool, especially with tons of black eyeliner, but now I hate it. And it’s here to stay unless I dye it brown which would
not
look good.

“Yoohoo,” yells my mother from upstairs.

I bellow a return greeting, hang on the larder and peer inside but a manky old cereal bar’s as exciting as it gets. A melon festers in the fruit bowl: something rotten in the house of Reynolds, I think. Which is really quite witty for me.

“There’s melon if you want it,” Mum calls. Then down she comes.

My mother’s called Debbie which you don’t get much nowadays but it’s ok if you’re in your forties I s’pose. She’s not bad as far as mums go: works long hours on Thursdays but generally lets me do my own thing while she gets on with hers. Which, at the moment, happens to be home improvement.

“Do you want some cushions for your room? I was thinking something in cream? Maybe patchwork.”

“No thanks.”

“Oh.” She looks upset. “I’ve bought twelve.”

“Mum! Why?”

She brightens. “Your bedroom’s your sanctuary. I got caribou feathers and star jasmine room spray too.”

“Marabou.”

“What?”

“Caribou are reindeer. I don’t need cushions, Mum. New jeans’d be nice though.”

She flops onto the sofa, takes off her slippers and rubs her corns. I wish she wouldn’t; I knew all day as a dental nurse must be knackering but there are such things as privacy and bathrooms. She looks at me like one of those David Attenborough seals.

“Don’t you have quite a lot of jeans?”

“Yeah, but only two pairs of skinnies,” I lie: I have five. “I want some maroon ones. Like Miss Mint’s.”

I plonk myself down at the table with my cereal bar which, to be honest, is so sickly it’s probably making more holes in my teeth than cake.

“Your English teacher wears
jeans
to work?”

Well, they’re technically jeans, but not the way Mum thinks, ‘cos Miss Mint wears them with high boots and silk cardies. But I can’t explain the intricacies of fashion to my mother who lives in cords and tunic when she’s not at work and cords, tunic and a white coat when she is.

“Yeah,” I mutter and leave it at that. Mum sighs and I can tell she’d rather go back upstairs than talk. But she tries.

“How was school?”

“Awful.” It wasn’t but I always say that, like when you’re asked how you are, you say, ‘fine’ automatically. I switch it to her.

“How’s the study?”

“Ooh, I need your help with the pluperfect after tea.”

Brilliant. Mum’s taken it upon herself to do French GCSE next year, at the exact same time as me. In the same
hall
, for gods’ sake. I don’t mind her taking exams ... but the same one? She shows off to anyone who’ll listen that we’re doing the same thing ‘just 27 years apart,’ and then starts doing some really random ‘doo, doo, doo, doo’ sound like it’s mysterious or something. When actually it’s just annoying.

I’m good at French; that’s why I’m taking it in year 10. But I’m not much good at other things. Not sciences, like my mum and my sister Emily, who’s escaped to Bristol to be a proper dentist. Not English like Josh or dance like Rach. Not art like Erin. I wish. But I’m ok at French.

“Well, back to it,” Mum says. “No rest for the thickhead.” She gives me a cheesy grin. “Tea in an hour?”

I give her an odd look. She’s never in this much of a hurry to get back to the books. “You ok, Mum? You’re back early.”

“Of course,” she smiles brightly, then fades. “Are you?”

Apart from having a weird mother and a gay best friend with a crush on the same boy as me? “Fine,” I say, and swing my bag up in a heavy arc. Just fine.

Next day during biology, Courtney and I are in the middle of tracking fingerprints in pig’s blood up our arms when Mr Morlis glides over, making us jump.

“If you’re into branding, try Danepak,” he says gravely.

He doesn’t use his scooter much since the Ofsted inspectors saw it peeping out from under his desk and he got in trouble. Plus the Aerosmith soundtrack kind of drowns out noise.

Mr Morlis is a legend.

He’s bald, but shaved bald not proper bald, and he wears the coolest trainers. Sometimes he does experiments with things that smell and coloured smoke which impresses the boys but I’m more interested in the way he can get the whole class quiet to explain things that can make your head explode, let alone whatever’s on the Bunsen burner. I wish I was better at science. A Levels with Mr Morlis would be wicked. The multicoloured cress moustache he’s done on a massive piece of blotting paper hangs over a poster of someone he says is called Alan Partridge and looks awesome. Other male teachers are doing it too but on their faces, which is unoriginal, desperate, whereas Mr Morlis just gets it.

“Sorry, sir,” I mumble.

“She’s working out what to wear to the party,” Courtney offers. “My fifteenth,” she says, applauding what she thinks is Mr Morlis’ interested expression with mascara-ed lashes.

“Chop up the pig or leave. Your choice.” It’s said and accepted and he scoots away. We move through the rest of the dissection silently: that’s just how it is with Mr Morlis: you don’t mess about.

Later, washing our hands, Courtney squeezes between Josh and me with a hip-bump. Josh is sulking; stuck working with Olly Goddard, a boy with the worst acne you’ve ever seen in your life and great, sack-like arms with pits that smell like the games block. He’s taking ages at the sink, scrubbing under his fingernails like Kate Middleton’s on her way.

“Thirty two hours and counting!” Courtney shakes at the thought of nearly the whole year group at her party. Sometimes her whole body goes into spasm when she’s excited, like when she got tickets to Master Chef. Her brother’s just left Fairmere. He’s captain of the college rugby club and hired the hall out for her. One of his fit friends is DJ-ing ‘for practice’; a lot of year 11s are going including Kai Swanning. It’s going to be carnage.

“Yeah, we’re shopping tomorrow,” I say. Josh raises his eyebrows.

“Are we?”

“I need a jacket.”

“You’ve got one,” he looks pained. Shopping with me can be an all-day event, to be honest.

“Well, you don’t have to come.”

“I’ll give it a miss, then.” Josh gazes out of the window at the playing field where Kai Swanning and his team are leaping about doing drills.

Rachel, Erin and Courtney are my best friends ‘cept Josh. We got together in year 7 when I bashed Erin in assembly. She pulled my bag, Rach hit her and Courtney tripped Rach. We all ended up in Mr Underwood, the Head’s office, giggling our own off.

None of us knew anyone, all coming from different schools, so after that we stuck together: Rachel Dewar, small and wiry, wants to be an Olympic dancer; Erin Wiltshire, who looks like Rihanna, wants to change the planet and Courtney Rowan who’s, let’s be honest, fat, lovely and just wants a shag.

“Primark, ten am. And it’s my birthday so you can bring a present,” Courtney glitters, rinsing the cutting board. “I want Kai Swanning.”

Josh sighs longingly, turns away from the window and packs up.

* * *

Mrs Debono’s always late, silly cow, so we hang around in the corridor while everyone else is being registered. Then she lets us in, spends ages logging on and forgets the notices and we’re always last to period five. Which is fine when it’s maths but today we’ve got English so I am
not
being late.

Just as Debono’s enormous shopper, man arms and frizzy perm appear round the corner, Kai Swanning and Felix Thorpe steam in from the field like carthorses.

“Aargh, shut the door, it’s FREEZING,” yells Rach, then sees who it is and goes pink.

Kai Swanning is the most gorgeous, amazing specimen of a nearly seventeen year old the world has ever seen. It’s generally accepted that one look from Kai means you twitter for days. Not literally, of course: no one puts it online, but he makes your heart go fluttery, like a tiny starling or something.