This is a story I wrote for a NaNoWriMo many years ago. It had an interesting origin. I knew I wanted to write some teen fiction – I had been vaguely thinking about something steampunk-y. But before I started I did some research. I found myself loving the books of Meg Cabot, and remembering that in my preteens I had developed a bit of a passion for teenage romance books. This is the sort of thing a boy should never admit to, clearly.
I also remembered a book – certainly in the humorous teen romance genre – which my uncle had bought me, a book which I believe had been a bestseller in Singapore (indeed, I think a film was made of it – a film which I would dearly love to see) but was unknown in the UK – ‘The Teenage Textbook’ by Adrian Tan. I was able to find my copy and reread it. And having reread it, I placed in in the ever growing pile of books on my bedside table.

Shortly before NaNoWriMo began, I managed to knock all the books on my bedside tabel flying. When I bent over to pick them up, I noticed that lying on top of ‘The Teenage Textbook’ and ‘All American Girl’ was a copy of ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli. Now, my teen years were not all smiles and laughter. I’m a firm believer that if you were to take all the evil in the hearts of mankind and somehow personify it, it would probably take shape as a thirteen year old boy. And it occurred to me that while the concept of ‘The Teenage Textbook’ (a teenager’s life is changed when they are given a book which humorously guides them through the trials and tribulations of teenhood) was fun, it would be much better to be guided through your teen years with a book that taught you to conquer your enemies through deception and guile – what if a nerdy, needy teenager was given not ‘the Teenage Textbook’ but instead a copy of ‘The Prince’ adapted for the schoolyard. I named the book ‘The Principles’ after the popular self help book ‘The Rules’ which was doing the rounds at the time.
I’m actually reasonably pleased with this. It’s clunky, but not awful for a first draft. Every so often I come back to it, thinking I might be able to whip it into shape. However ti has aged badly. Mobile phones would change how the story works, and I use possessing a MiniDisk player as a sign of being spoiled (whereas now it would be… I don’t know… something modern teens would have to ask their parents to explain. And then laugh at. We’ve come a long way in the last decade)
The Principles
Chapter 1 – The Boston Hot Chocolate Party
I thought I was happy in Boston. I didn’t know I was happy; you never really realise that sort of thing until Bamn! – the happiness is gone and your life is left in a million and one tiny pieces waiting for you to pick them up, or hide them under the carpet. Which is what happened to me last august.
Dad came into the room. This was an event in itself, during the day you normally had to surgically remove Dad from his computer in the study. Dad had a tendency to loose track of time while he was working, to find himself in a kind of daze, unable to notice anything except for the mouse and the keyboard. Sometimes this included lunch, pretty much always this included me. Don’t get me wrong, Dads great when you get him away from the computer, he was the one who got me interested in Medieval history, reneicence fairs, that sort of thing, but once he starts working you normally have to spend real effort to get him to stop. Which is why seeing dad outside of his office during the vacation let me know he wanted to have A Talk. The way dad said “A Talk” you could hear the capital letters. Normally it meant that Dad wanted to explain to me why it was fundamentally important that I don’t get pregnant (as if! The best form of birth control known to man is the invisible field which surrounds me and causes boys to run away screaming in terror) or take drugs. Dad stuff. But today I knew the “A Talk” was going to be a bit more serious, because a minute or two after Dad came into the the room, Mom followed, carrying three big mugs of hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate was moms answer to everything. If you fell over and grazed your knee, hot chocolate would make it better. If your best friend at school decided that by cutting you and talking to miss popular Jennifer Caprelli at recess she would have a better life, then when you got home in the evening, hot chocolate would alleviate the torment. I’m fairly certain that mom’s reaction to hearing that thermonuclear war was imminent would be to start boiling milk. Mom was obsessed. It wasn’t like it was normal hot chocolate – mom got her sister, mad aunt gladys from England, to send parcels of english hot chocolate over. Did I mention that mom was obsessed? With all sorts of things. All sorts of minor, trivial things. Like the hot chocolate. Like making kneelers for the local church. Like reading holiday brochures and planning world spanning jaunts – despite the fact we always ended up going camping with Dad’s brother, Uncle Hugh. But apparently Mom had a new hobby. She was going to wreck my life. Yay mom!
Mom passed me a mug of steaming chocolate. Her hand touched the back of mine as she gave it too me, and lingered just a second too long, tenderly. Which did nothing to ease the tention. I knew there was something important they were going to tell me, why did they have to draw it out with this ritual of caring and concern? Why couldn’t they just get it over with? Dad looked at me, made eye contact, broke eye contact amost immediately and eventually settled at looking somewhere an inch or two above my head. Which as far as dad goes is good people skills. Really. Dad isn’t the best at interacting with others, and I sort of get that from him. I tend to shrink away from stangers and people I don’t know really well by hiding myself in a book. Just like Dad hides himself away with his computer. How dad ever plucked up the courage to talk to Mom I don’t know. It must have been one of those quirks of fate that only happen once every thousand years. Which means it’ll be a millenium before I ever manage to ask a boy out.
“Loren…” Dad said. I should have introduced myself, Hi, I’m Loren Grossman, nice weather we’re having and so forth.
“Loren…” Dad said again. Repeating himself, like he always does we he’s nervous or has something really important to say
“Loren…” Dad was sweating, I watched a bead of perspiration roll down his forehead and nestle in his bushy left eyebrow
“Loren sweety” That was Mon. And it was Mom who was going to have this conversation, because when Mom and dad spoke, what actually happened was Mom spoke and dad murmered consenting noises. “you know your dad’s project was coming to an end? Well he’s finished”
That was a good thing, right? It would mean Dad would be out of his study more, able to spend some of my vaction with me? So why were they looking so serious, so concerned?
“And sweety” I can tell you now, if Mom called me sweety again, I was going to throttle her “you know the computer job market is a bit tight at the moment?”
I did. It was in the newspapers and the trade magazines Dad left lying around the sitting room. I nodded.
“Well, Dad’s been given an opportunity – a really good one”
I nodded and smiled. Mom tried to smile back.
“Its in Cambridge”
I nodded. Across the river. No big deal.
“We’re goign to have to move there. You’ll have to change school”
“Why?” It didn’t make sense. Dad could drive to work, Cambridge isn’t that far. There was no need to upset our life, no need for anything to change.
“Its a good job. Really good. And it’ll be nice to spend more time with Aunty Gladys”
“Aunty Gladys?” Now I was confused. How did she fit into this. She halfway round the world in England. In Cambridge, England. Halfway around the world. We were going to be moving to England.
“No!” I shouhted. “how can you do this to me. I’m finally manageing to make progress at high school. I’m fitting in. Things are going really well. I’ve got friends and the teachers are cool. Why the hell do you think you have the right to uproot me from everything I know and drag me to some godforsaken hole in England?”
Well, actually I didn’t. Thats what I wanted to say, what I should have said. Its how I felt. What I actually said was: “I understand” and nodded. Mum smiled. Dad looked releived, and put his hand on my shoulder. How could they do this to me? Didn’t they realise they were ruining my life?
Chapter 2 – Common Ground
We had two weeks to make arrangements, or as Mom said “A fortnight, thats what you’ll have to start calling it now”. And Morag was at camp, so I couldn’t even say goodbye properly. I had to explain everything by email.She wasn’t best pleased,but what could i do? Mum and Dad were rushing around, trying to find a way to pack up everything I owned into boxes. I couldn’t take much more of it, so I escaped to the common to drink lemonade and watch people doing Tai-Chi. But without Morag it wasn’t fun, it was just relief from the hubub at home.
I tried to sort things out in my mind. Why was this bothering me so much? Firstly, Boston was my home. It was where I grew up. Its what I know. There probably isn’t a backroad I havn’t wandered along in the city centre. Having to learn a new town with a different personality wasn’t something I wanted to bother about. Secondly, Boston is where I went to school. I’m not popular, I’m shy – I prefer to have my head in a book than listen to Jeniffer Caprelli telling me about the latest boy she has conquored, but theres Morag and a few of the others that I’m riendly with. And thats taken time to develop – a year of effort and stress at high school and all my work is for nothing. Even my school work won’t count for much – theres a whole different curriculum to contend with. Mum showed mew one of her old history books – english history had more or less finished by the time the declaration of independence was signed, and I don’t know any of it.Then there’s Aunt Gladys. Mad Aunt Gladys. Shes alright in small doses, but living in the same town as her, seeing her almost every day, thats frightening.
I sipped my lemonade and shivered. Aunt Gladys was so… full on. She was loud and brash. Whenever we went out for a meal, even to a Pizza Hut, she would complain about the tiniest thing, a speck of dirt on a knife or too much ice in a glass of coke. Whenever she was making a fuss, I would try to shrink back into my seat and avoid being noticed, but Gladys would just turn to me and say something like
“You don’t need to be embarrassed, its not you whos being embarassing, its me”.
This, I belive, is proof that, despite my mothers assertions and photographic proof to the contrary, Aunt Gladys had never been a teenage girl. But Gladys wasn’t the thing making me shudder, it was Gladys’s daughter, my cousin, Julia. Princess Julia. Popular Julia. Always dressed immaculatley in the latest fashions while I prefered comfortable jeans and t-shirts. Always on the phone home to boys whenever she came out on Holiday. It was mom who pointed out we would be able to go to school together, that we would be in the same year. She said I’d be at an advantage knowing someone as popular as Julia, but she doesn’t know modern girls like I do – I’ll be in Julia’s shadow, always being compared to her, unable to ever really find people who like me for who I am.
I walked home past the swan boats and looked at the couples canoodling in the afternoon sun. I had always had this romantic dream that one day i would be sitting in the boats, a gorgeous hunk stuck to my lips and tangled in my embrace. It hit me that now that was unlikely to ever happen, even my dreams of the future were being wrested from me. And Mom and dad didn’t even seem to care – or even realise what it was they were doing. How was it possible to start all over again? I slupred the dregs of my lemonade and thew the cup in the bin.
Back home, Mom was harranging dad for not packing according to the sceme she had carfully planned out. Patiently pointing out what would go in the container and what we would take with us on the plane. I checked my email, but Morag hadn’t written. Mum came up behind me and massaged my shoulders.
“It going to be good, Loren, an adventure. Theres so much about your roots, your english roots, that you don’t know. Trust me, you’ll love it there”
Dad wandered past and added
“It’ll be cool, Loren” and grinned that charming grin from behind his beard.
There was no point in complaining, I realised that, Dad seemed to be excited about his new challenge, mom clearly wanted to be back in her home with her family. What right did I have to ask them to put all their plans on hold just because I wanted to stay at my school. Maybe I’d fit in better at Julia’s school. It was a possibility. A fresh start where nobody knew me.I smiled. For a few moments I had almost managed to convince myself that everything might turn out good. I had a hope to cling to, and that was enough to let me cope with the remaining days of insanity.
Chapter 3 – Coming From America
Before I knew it I was in the airport, then on a plane and finally landing at London Heathrow. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so busy, I don’t know why I had sort of expected somethng smaller out in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by green rolling hills. Dad had hired a car to take us there. It was a stick shift – a manual – which caused us some ammusment as he bunnyhopped out of the parking lot, but he got the hang of it after a few minutes. I hadn’t expected to spend the next few hours in a traffic jam, edging slowly towards my new home,staying with aunt Gladys until we found somewhere to live. I did get to see the countryside as the car finally reached escape velocity and broke free from Lonon, but it was flat. Dead flat. Lots of grass fields and not much else as faar as the eye could see. Mum explained that the area had all been under water until the sixteenth century when dutch immigrents drained it, just like they had drained the netherlands. I wondered what sort of influence immigrants like Dad and I would be able to make. Would people look at the results of what we did five huindred years later? Would people care what I did next week?
Gladys had a house on the edge of the town. Well, I call Cambridge a town, but technically its a city – which is odd because its tiny – I could walk across the whole thing given an hour or so. Compared to lots of the other houses packed side by side in the narrow streets, Aunt Gladys’ house was huge, but by the standards of the burbs it was a bit pokey, certainly not up to providing a place for the six of us to live. When we arrived, and pulled into the curb to park, Gladys was out waiting. She screamed with joy at seeing Mom and rushed over to hug her, before mum had even been able to get out of the car. Mum struggled for freedom but eventually gave in and joined the lovein wholeheartedly. I quietly removed myself from the back seat and headed towards the open door. A few minutes lated I noticed dad had followed me. Insude, in the hallway princess Julia looked up from her telephone call to see what the disturbance was, befor falling back into a gabbling conversation. Dad raised his hand and mouthed the word “Hello”, I just smiled a hopeful smile.
After an age of standing around and waiting awkwardly, dad with his hand holding my shoulder, rubbing gentle rubs of encouragement, Gladys and Mum burst into the house laughing and talking a bit too loundlky. Gladys grasped the telephone from Julia’s hand and hung it back on the wall.
“Mum” Julia moaned “That was Davey. You’ve just Hung up on Davey. He won’t talk to me for weeks, how could you do this to me? Now I’ll have to call Chris or someone”
As if Julia could actually differentiate between Davey or Chris or whoever. Gladys just laughed
“You’re beautiful Jules, if Davey can’t cope with being hung up on he really isn’t worth it. And anyway, your auncle and aunt are far more important than any boy”
“But Mum” but clearly Julia knew her mother, she just jumped up and trudged off up the stairs to her bedroom.
“Sorry about Julia” Gladys said
“No, don’t wory about it., girls are all the same. This one’s been moping about the house for weeks, havn’t you?” mum ruffled my hair, and I tried to duck to get out of her reach.
So mum had noticed that I was upset. I thought I’d kept it from them, let them think I was hapy with the whole move, but they had known how I felt about it and gone aheads anyway. So much for the loving parents who care about their daughter’s wellbeing. So much for any hope I had of adjusting. And just when things couldn’t get any worse, with just a few words,
“Loren darling, you’ll be sharing a room with Julia” Aunt Gladys sentenced me to a fate worse than death. Now I knew why Julia had glared at me quite so harshly. As far as she was concerned, I was invading her space, I was making her life as big a hell as my parents were making mine. And I couldn’t do a thing about it. I smiled, said “fine”, and lugged my suitcase up the stairs.
***
When I got into Julia’s room, she was sitting crosslegged on her bed, eyes closed, listening to a discman, a camp bed had been placed in a corner for me. I rested my suitcase against it, an wondered if I should try to get Julia’s attention, but she was blanking me. I unfastened my case and started sorting my things out. Now for Julia, not having an acre of closet space was probably a matter of life and death, but since I preferred jeans and comfortable t-shirts, I was content to sling them over a chair. Then I pulled out some books. Running out of bookcase space, now that was a real problem, but I’d hardly been able to bring any of them with me – they were all being shipped over in a large container and wouldn’t arrived until mom and dad had found their own house. I looked around to see what Julia had, but aside from a few magazines scattered on her dressing table, I didn’t see anything to read at all. Julia just carried on sitting there, bobbing her head ever so slightly in time with the silent music. I sat down on by bed and started to read.
Downstairs Mom and Gladys eventually settled down a bit and stopped screaming at one another. I don’t think I had heard dad say a word since comming inside. I felt a moment of pity for him, Mom and Gladys would gang up against him, like they always did. I was about to wander down and offer some moral support then Julia opened her eyes and noticed me sitting there. She poped her headphones out of her ears and struck up a conversation in the way only Julia can
“Hey”
That was it, just “Hey”. I didn’t know if it was a “Hey I’m glad to see you” sort of a hey or perhaps a “Hey you’re invading my privacy hey”. Maybe it was a “Hey I can see a wrecking ball behind you about to crash through the wall and kill you”, but she didn’t seem to be smiling enough for that to be likely. I opted for saftey
“Hey” I said.
“you never been to England before?”
“once, when I was three. I don’t remember it really”
“oh.”
and then she put her headphones back on, put a new CD in her player, then hesitated and threw the box at me
“You heard of them”
I looked, it was by ‘the classix’. They were a Boston band, independent but people talked about them, they played around the clubs a bit. I’d never seen them, or even heard their music. But I knew who they were, and it was worth making an effort. “The Classix? Yeah, they’re from back home”
“Cool”, Julia flicked me just the slightest of smiles. You could see why men threw themselves at her feet with a smile like that, then she returned to her own world of music while I returned to my book.
Chapter 4 – Mack 1
When I finally came downstairs, I lingered outside the sitting room door before joining my parents. They were talking quietly, a little too quietly, as if the subject of their conversation was a little taboo. Of course I paused rather than revealing myself – there are benefits to being quiet and not very noticable at times. Gladys was speaking:
“he’s been writing to me recently. I told him you were coming to visit”
“You didn’t? You know how I feel about him” that was dad, he sounded tense, angry almost. It wasn’t like Dad, he was one of the most laid back people I knew, normally just taking whatever the world threw at him.
“It’s been sixteen years” Gladys said “and it all worked out for the best after all”
“No thanks to him” dad answered, suprisingly firmly. Mum agreed with him.
“I think Mack just wants to say that hes sorry, to make it up to you”
“Its a bit late for that, isn’t it”
“Oh come on” Gladys urged “You’re making a new start over here, why don’t you give him the same benefit”
“Hmh” – that was a dad noise, it meant something like “I can’t be bothered with this discussion, and secretly I know you’re right, but I’m still objecting”
“Gladys might have a point, love” Mom said
“Hmh”
“He’ll be coming over later on this week. You can be in or out, as you choose.”
“Hmh”
“We’ll be here” Mom told Gladys. “Agaisnt my better judgement, we’ll be here”
“Thanks”
“Does Julia know Mack’s comming?”
“No”
“Good. It’s probably best if Loren doesn’t find out – at least until we know where we stand. What she doesn’t know…” Mum said
“Can’t hurt her. Sure.” Gladys assured her.
So not only was I being forced to live here, being made to look like the enemy to Julia and having my life wrecked in the process, Mom and dad were keeping secrets from me. I opened the door and walked in, all noise ceased, and dad, under his beard, showed signs of acute embarassment. I chose to ignore them and sit myself down.
“Lori” Aunt Galdys said “Lori swetheart, we were thinking of going out for a meal tonight. How do you feel about that?”
I yawned. The jetlag, and the exhaustion of flying all night was getting to me, but I wouldn’t have a chance to sleep without expelling princess Julia from her own private domain – which didn’t seem to be the most sensible of maneavers at this point.
“Too tired, sweetie?”. I grimaced. “Lori” “Sweetheart” “SWEETIE” arrgghh. Now I knew where mom got it from. But Gladys was smiling, she honestly thought this would ingratiate herself with me. Well I’m not her little princess, I’m Loren with an ‘e’ and an ‘n’, I told her. There never has and never will be an ‘i’ at the end of my name. I am nobodies sweet anything, I’m me damn it! And if there are things going on that could potentially affect me, like, I don’t know planning on moving to another country or people called Mack who I’m not meant to know about, well I should be told about them straight out, not have to listen through doors or be bribed with hot chocolate – hot chocolate which, incidentally is porobably soley reposibible for the size of my thighs, and thus indirectly why no boy would ever consider me datable in the slightest.
Actually, I didn’t quite tell her that. What I said was:
“No. Its a nice idea.” and managed a small smile. But the rest was implied. After all, at dinner Mum and Gladys would drink, and something about Mack would be sure to slip out if I directed the questions appropriately. And they wouldn’t have to be embarassed if I made a scene – after all it was be being embarassing, not them.
Chapter 5 – Dinner Nobis Pacem
We walked into town for dinner, the first time I had been to the center. Mum and Gladys pointed out various old builings and told me what colleges they were. I listened, but didn’t take anything in. They tried to explain why “Magdalen” was pronounced Maud-lin, but from a country whhere people pronounce aluminum ‘aloo-min-ee-um’ and chips ‘crisps’, I didn’t think it was much of a surprise, really. Julia wasn’t listening at all, diskman on her side she was just following along. It was probably all stuff she knew anyway. Gladys turned and climbed down som steps into a cellar restraunt. There were places like that in Boston, just off the common. Everything reminded me of home. And of course Gladys hadn’t booked, and there wasn’t any space. Which idn’t stop her from haranging the Maitrede until he found somewhere for us to sit. I could have died from embarassment, but Julia’s face just showed grim resignation. I suppose when you live with Gladys all your life, you just get used to it. Which is just one of the reasons why i want to get out of ths house as soon as is humanly possible - nobody should ever find Gladys’s behaviour even close to tollerable.
We sat at the table, Julia, Dad and I silent while Mom and Gladys continued to yap. I would have tought by now they would have managed to discuss absolutely everything that had happened to them since they last saw one another, but apparently not. Julia had, at least, removed her headphones. Every so so often, Mom or Gladys would ask me a question, ususally precced by calling me sweetie. I remained civil. Civility was the only thing that separated us from the animals… well, civility and using our knife and fork at the same time, in different hands – which Mom and dad ha explained was the correct way to do things over here. I tried my best, but i detected a brief flicker of ammusement on Julias face when I resorted to scooping up my peas at the end of the main course. At no point did they mention anything that sounded like Mack. I gave it a few goes:
“Mom, are you planning on seeing any of your old friends?”
“Some dear, but not until we have our own house so I can entertain them properly”
And then Gladys joined in pointing out that her home was our home and we should treat it as we liked- which was obviously already nowhere like being the case. It was foreign ground on foreign ground. Foriegn ground squared.
Later on I offered up a “Why did you and dad ever leave England”. I knew the answer, Dad was from Boston, they met when he was on holiday over here, and after a while Mom followed him back, but I wondered if there was another story, one that Gladys would offer. There wasn’t. Gladys accepted Mom and Dad’s story and didn’t feel the need to make any comment. Which was suspicious, Gladys normally feels she has to make her comment on almost everything anyone else says.
The sweet finally arrived. I know it sounds childish, but desert is why I like eating out. Mom and Dad never have anything sweet in the house “You’re sweet enough already” was not so much a compliment as a cliche back home, so eating out was my only opportunity to each ice cream or death by chocolate. Julia seemed to have much the same attitude, except I bet she didn’t have to spend the next week or so worrying that the death by chocolate would also mean death to any vague chances of having a love life. This was probably my last chance to find out what they were hiding from me and I suspected Dad might prove a better target for my interrogation
“Dad?”
“Yes Loren”
“Won’t you feel strange no knowing anyone over here?”
“I know a few people”
“But all your firends are back in Boston”
“Loren…”
and then he repeated himself
“Loren…”
“Loren… Yes, but there’ll be the people I’m working with here”. There was something bothering him. I was about to push him further, when gladys rushed to hs rescue
“Are you worried you don’t know anyone, dear? Julia will introduce you to her firends and show you around a bit, won’t you jules?”
I awaited an explosion, or at least an indignent silence, followed by lots fo silence directed at me for the next few days. What I didn’t expect was Julia’s reply
“Yeah, cool, Loren, I was going to hang with the guys at the grafton centre tomorrow, do you want to come by? We could grab a coffee then see a film?”
I was dumbstruck. Everyone was beaming at Julia, and she was looking directly at me. It must have come as a shok to everyone: it was quite possibly the longest sentence Julia had ever managed without speaking into a telephone.
“Loren?” Julia asked, looking at me with a little sweet upset puppy dog wanting attention kind of an expression. Wat choice did I have?
“Yeah. Whats a grafton centre?”
“A shopping centre… a Mall you’d call it”
Oh my god. I had just agreed to become a mall rat. Next thing I knew I would probably be pointing at buff guys from the saftey of a coffee bar and sniggering with the other girls. But despite everything it appeared Julia wanted to be a friend.
Chapter 6
The weather forcast had said it was going to be sunny at first with rain later on, so Julia decided we were going to walk to the mall. She had become a little more talkative, not much, but I had managed to establish that she absolutely loved ‘the cyclix’, thought school was for nerds, but there were some cool people there, especially Mr Andrews the art teacher who as quote dreamy and really easy to talk to unquote. Of course, having been to Boston to visit Mom Julia knew everything about me – or at least enough to let her say “Oh yeah, I remember that” when I told her about some of my old haunts. She told me there were going to be a whole crowd of people there, and reelled off a list of names. I didn’t see much point in remembering them – it might be easier when I had some faces to put to them. Or perhaps not, I’m not good with names at the best of times. As we crossed the river Julia pointed out the rowers and we laughed together. There is something about athletic men flexing their muscles while clad in only skimpy lycra which creates a bond between girls like us.
When we arived at the grafton centre I my first impression is that it wasn’t something we would call a Mall back home, more like something we would think of as a downmarket annex to a Mall. It was just a bunch of shops inside and tiny, you could walk your way through the entire thing in about ten minutes : which is exaactly what we did in order to get to the coffee shop where Julia had arranged to meet ‘the gang’. There were only two of ‘the gang’ there when we arrived, and Julia introduced me to them, Carrie and her twin brother Sam. Carrie was a vision in sweatpants, beclothed in jogging bottoms, sneakers, and a T-shirt that instructed me to “Just do it”. Not that I suspected Carrie had Just Done anything, here hair was neatly sprayed and her clothes far too immaculatly arranged. Sam was keenly averting his eyes from Julia and me, trying to pretend he was suddenly desperatly interested in something across the other side of the concourse, in a shoe store. I looked over there and saw nothing of note – unless you have a fascination with great savings on hush puppies and other major brands. I was introduced and then Julia changed. it was like seeing a butterfly released from a cocoon, no wait it was more like an alien burting out of a chest. Julia was no longer a sweet, silent princess, but a chatty boisterous people’s princess. She was with her people, and quickly began to hold court.
As each of her subjects arrived, they were given the same introduction to me, and offered the chance to say a few things about themselves, or ask me a question before falling back into rapturous worship of their leige. A little unfair, perhaps, it wasn’t quite like that, but julia lead the conversation and it certainly all centered around her. I tired hard to keep up with the names and faces which were being thrust towards me
Harriet, had very pale skin skin, almost translucent like alabaster. She spoke softly and looked at you like she was slightly suprised by every sound you made. Nevertheless she was incredibly pretty – model pretty. Kim was a brunett and slightly chubbier, but in a way which excentuated her body’s curves. She was very straight talking and I got a sense she was a bit of a tomboy, certainly she spent lots of her time talking to Michael. Michael was thin with spikey hair and a freckled face. He was, I was told, Captain of the year’s football team. Which confused me for a moment before I realised they meant soccer. Then came Rachel, who’s long air ran down the length of her back and ended somewhere slightly below her knees. Rachel, I was assured, was a bit of a brainiac, but otherwise totally cool. I suspected there was a possibility I might be able to get on well with her, but I wasn’t happy, these were clearly beautiful people, and here i was, a stranger who hadn’t even made the second tear of the beautiful people from my country and with a brash uncultured american upbringing to contend with.
The film we were planning on seeing I had already seen two months before, but that turned out to be no problem. We were, apparently waiting on Antonio. Noone seemed to have noticed that I didn’t belong amongst the beautiful people, so I decided to ride it out and enjoy their company until I met people more of my own level on the social ladder. As Antonio steadfastly failed to arrive, and frantic phone calls suggested that he had left home to meet us, there was healthy debate as to whether we should go in now, or wait for him to turn up. The argument was finally settled when we noticed that we had lost track of the time and that the film had started four minutes previously – we were too late to get in. Julia, slightly annoyed decided to get more coffee and change the subject of our conversation to boys. This gave sam a chance to escape as the boys settled to discuss whatever it is boys find interesting – cars, computers, whatever. Kim explained that Michael was about to break up with his girlfriend and that she was waiting to jump in to fill the gap. It all seemed a little manipulative to me, especially when I had heard her telling him that she thought he needed “some time to breath, without her around” only moments before. Rachel was attracted to money, she imagined herself with a dot com millionaire – I didn’t want to burst her bubble and let her know they were all scrabbling around for any job opportunity now, just like my Dad. Harriet pointed out a group of boys waiting to get a burger, in particular a tall dark haired guy wearing a leather jacket – biker chiq, despite the fact she would brumble and fracture anywhere near a real bike and Julia- well Julia returned to dreaming about the rowers. I tried to remain out of the conversation, I mean my real answer was “anyone, preferably male with at least one head” but they wouldn’t understand my level of desperation, not when they had boys throwing themselves after them, but as Julia began to extert pressure on me tot alke, I saw him.
The rowers were good, granted, but they were a bit blond-haired, blue eyed identikit arian for me. I wanted a bit of charma bit of mystery, a latin temprament and the swarthy chiseled goog look to match. I wanted a man who would grab me in his finely tones arms, and embrace me so tightly that I couldn’t feel where I ended and he began, so that we were one. And I could see him, on the other side of the mall. I pointed, subtly, so he wouldn’t notice, you understand, but clearly that each and every one of us turned our eyes towards the delicious morsel who was coming towards us. “That is him. That is perfection. He is the man I’m going to Marry – or at least live with”
“Err Loren?” Julia said, trying hard not to laugh. The others broke out into a fit of giggles which made me turn a bright shade of red. “Loren, ” she wvaed her and at the object of my affections. “this is antonio. Antonio” she shouted, “this is your future wife”
And so it was, the first time I saw antonio, my face was the colour of a london bus, and all chance I had of ever speaking to him had vanished into a puff of smoke. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, there was nothing I coulsd say, any sound I made would just make me seem like more of a moron to everyone. I sat in silence for what seemed like hours, as they continued to chat, laugh, joke over me. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any more. “I’m going to the toliet” I said. But I lied, I headed off in that direction, but took the first door out as soon as I could. I rushed home, tears straming dowwn my cheeks. I knew I could always claim I had got lost and couldn’t find them if I was challenged, but they clearly didn’t want a loser like me aorund tem anyway – this way everyone won.
Chapter 7 – Mack 2
There was a strange man standing in my garden. Now for all I knew he might be a perfectly normal man, and to be fair, this wasn’t actually my garden, It was Aunt Gladys’s garden. It was likely that any of Aunt glady’s male friends would be stange. Actually the strange man didn’t look streange at all. He was tall, but well groomed, every hair on his head was perfectly placed, his glasses had a small, but noticable, Armani label, his suit was tailroed to his body and his grin showed perfectl white teeth. Had he been twenty of so years younger I might have fancied him. As it was I was a stupid girl in her mid teens with my hair in a mess and tears pouring out of my bloodshot eyes.
He bent down slightly and looked at me thorough his deep brown eyes. His glasses magnified his pupil’s size, I could have looked into them for hours.
“you must be Loren” Well, I suppose it would be stupid to consider that aunt Gladys might not have talked about me. But still, full marks for managing to pay attention to her for more than a few minutes- its more than I could ever acheive. I didn’t quite know what to say… I assume strangers in the UK are as likely to bundle me into their car with propisies of puppies and candy, just like thet are back in the states. I just stared, unsure of what to do.
“Perhaps I ought to introduce myself”. He smiled his prize winning smile. ” my name is Mack”
He paused, dramatically. So this was the mysterious Mack, well, if it was OK for my parents to conspire to meet him in secret, it would be fine for me to talk to him. I relaxed slightly, perched on the garden wall and wiped some of the tears from my eyes.
“Mack Grossman” he said.
“Grossman?”
“Grossman. Loren, I’m your Dad’s brother, your uncle.”
“but dad doesn’t have any…”
“Brothers? None that he sends christmas cards to, certainly, but I can assure you, Loren, that both he and I have the same parents. There was a bit of a spat befor eyou were born. We havn’t spoken to one another since. I came today with an olive branch, but he still isn’t ready to make up.
“What happened?”
“Not my place to say, Loren, really, you should ask your dad to tell you. He owes it to you. But, hey, that isn’t the thing thats causing you to be all tearful. he was right, my eyes had started to water again.
“The wind” I said. It was a humid, breezeless day. As lies go, this wasn’t my finest moment.
“Yes. Indeed.” He handed me a handkerchief. “If you want to talk about it.”
“Its hard. Thats all. I don’t know anything about where I am or who I am any more. My parents are keeping things secret from me and I’ve got to start at a new school.”
Mack nodded. e was incredibly ewasy to talk to. SOmetimes its easier to tell your innermost secrets to someone you don’t knoe
“And I think I’ve just ruined any chance of ever having any friends.”
“You know, Loren, this could be the luckiest day of your life”
“Hardly. Do you know what I’ve just done. I’ll be an outcast from day one. Even chess club members will spit on me”
“Quite the contrary. By all accounts you are a bright girl. Top of your class, never had a ‘could do better’ on your report card?”
I nodded
“Well, being popular is just a matter of mind games, and you have the advantage of having a mind. Think about it, Your aunt Gladys, she does well because she has the gift of the gab, but put her on the spot and she wouldn’t be able to think her way out. Your dad, now he was always a brigt spark, but never figured out that you can program people just like he can program his computers. I on the other hand applied myself to the situation I found myself in, and came out on top. Thats the real reason why your dad and I couldn’t get on, he was jealous of me. Still is by the look of things.”
“So what do I do”
“Well, normally I would teach you myself, but I think if your dad caught you talking to me, you would be grounded until your eighteenth birthday – which wouldn’t help you at all. But as I said, the stars are shining on you toay, because I happen to have another way of showing you what to do.”
Mack put his briefcase on the wall beside me. and flicked it open. Amongst the papers was a small hardbacked book. He handed it to me
“My book. Everything you need to know. And my card” – he handed me a business card.
Mack Grossman, the card read, Author, Businessman, Teacher. Then it listed his pone number and email address.
” If there is anything else you need to know, just shout. Look, I had better skidaddle. Buck up, you’re going to be a star before you know it”
He vaulted over the wall, snapped his briefcase shut and strode up the road. MAch turned around and blew me a kiss. I looked down at the book. It was smalled tan a paperback and thin, with a hard black cover. On the fonrt in gold lettering were the words
The Principles
A Primer For Young Ladies in Less Civilized Times
By M Grossman.
I rushed inside and up to my, that is the say Julia’s, room and opened it up.
Chapter 8 – The prologue
You have good taste. You may not know it yet, but you do. How do i know this? Well, you’re reading this book, and as far as I am concerned, that shows you’ve a lot more taste in books than the majority of the population. It also shows that you are smart. Being smarter than the rest of the world isn’t hard, it just involved having the ability to tell the difference between soap operas and the real world. If you can do that, all well and good, you’re on your way to world domination already (I can think of certain presidents of the united states of america who would have trouble with that one), if you can’t I’ll show you a simple trick, run up to the next person you see and say
“I’m pregnant with my brothers baby”
If theme music starts playing, or you cut to an advert, your a character in a soap opera. If people just look at you strangely, then you are in control of your own life and noone can stop you from succeeding.
All you have to do is use your smarts. Just like you can learn maths or history from a textbook, social success can also be yours. All you have to do is master a few simple steps, which I call “The Principles” In the next few pages I will show you how you, yes you, can make friends, work your way up social ierachies and stop anyone from pulling you down. How you can set your eyes on one man and beat off all competition, crushing them into the dust. And ponce you have that man, what do you do? If you’re absolutely happy, you can stop their. If not, well trading up is still a possibility. its your choice – everything from now on will be your choice. No longer will you feel constrined by other people’s views, you’ll realise they are just trying to keep their own humdrum lives from becoming as cool and exciting as yourws will be. Why do they do that? For the same reason they watch daytime TV – because smart people like me – and soon you – have got them to lower their expectations to make it even easier for us to rise to the top like the cream we are.
So, you’re thinking, this all sounds a bit greedy, a bit self interested. Well I’ve got news for you. If you don’t take you own interests to heart, aint noone else going to do it for you girlfirend (I confess, I got that phrase off daytime TV, hey, I was tired, there was nothing else on, know they enemy and all that – it was better than the Love boat rerun on the other channel)
You see, when it comes down to it, how you behave is being judged by other people all the time. If you are a sucess socially you are judged as having behaved well (after all, noone would befriend someone who behaved badly), but this doesn’t mean people who behave well are socially successfull – quite the opposite, they are seen as goodie-goodies and trampled upon. What you need is to be perceived as behaving well – quite a different thing. And the good thing about this is noone other than you will be any the wiser. So – what is the solution… well, frankly if i told you tat now, there wouldn’t be any point in writing the rest of the book, and I’m not going to mak emomey by selling a load of blank pages, so you’re not getting it that easily. What you do need to do, however is make everyone believe you are acting in their best interests, or at least everyone that matters.
So, where from here. You have a choice: if you want to carry on, worrying from day to day about what other people think of you, they hey, its a free world, and I’ll thank you for making my life easier when I’m looking for a convenient towel girl to wipe my hands on. If you want to tell others what to think, and make them suffer if they don’t live up to your expectations, then you, girl, should carry on reading. You’ve already got what it takes, and you’ve shown that you can successfully read my writing without too much trouble (which practicly makes you MENSA material in ond of itself), so what ar eyou wainting for? For me to stop talking? You’;re wrong, take your destiny into your own hands and turn over to the next chapter before i tell you its OK. You are now in control.
Hugs
Mack Grossman
P.S. Still reading? Good, you didn’t do what I told you to – way to spt the double bluff, but frankly I can’t write prologues for ever, so hold on, its going to be a wild ride.
Chapter 9 A question of spite
Well, it was differnet, I had to admit that. A textbook for social success. I flicked to the back to see if there was an answer section. There was, of sorts, it read
ANSWERS:
1) No there arn’t any easy answers, but well done for coming here. Its the sort of approach you need.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted a book that encouraged cheating, but then, socialising has always been a game where noone has explained the rules – maybe I have to cheat to get onto an even level with the oh-so-perfect julia and the her hoard of hyenas. I looked at my watch, apparently while I had been reading the book ours had passed – I had been so immersed, reading the text, trying to argue with it, then finding that Mack had preempted my arguments that I had totally lost track of time, just like Julia did when listening to her diskman. In fact she would be coming home soon. I thought me best bet would be to try to laugh off the whole incident. I went across the landing to the bathroom, to wash my face and do my hair. After a few minutes I was presentable, which was lcuky, beacuse on leavig the bathrom I heard Julia’s key turning in the lock of the front door. and ten her footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Oh there you are, we were worried sick”, Julia began laying into me “where did you get to?”
“I… I… I got lost, couldn’t figure out where I was, or how to find you. In the end I just got myself out of the Mall and found my way home. Sorry”
“we looked all over for you. You missed a lot. We ribbed toni so much”
I laughed. It was a false laugh. My drama teacher would have never let me get away with it, but if Julia had fallen for my getting lost story, I could probably have told her that I had been abducted by aliens and not have been sussed.
“well, come on, we;ve got lots to talk about” Julia hurried me into her… our room ans shut the door conspitorially behind us. Sit down, sit down.
I sat on my bed, noticing ‘The Principles’ lying on my pillow, I thought it best if I knocked it onto the floor, where Julia wouldn’t otice it. The one thing worse than being a social outcast was being a geeky social outcast with a book about self improvement.
“So…” Julia said “Antonio, Carrie and Sam are going to be coming over tonight to watch videos”
“Antonio?”
“You’re not still embarassed about that are you? Gawd, Toni know’s he’s a bit of a looker, you don’t want to give him too much of an ego boost, we’ll never hear the end of it. Anyway, I reckon he thought you were cute”
“Never”
“well, he asked who you were”
“I’d just predicted our martial bliss”
“Whatever, he noticed you exist, it took Carrie weeks to get his attention.”
“Are carrie and antonio?”
“An item? Sorta, I s’pose, you never know. Its not like its serious. Not like you and Toni”
She grinned. What I wanted to do was puch that smug, oh so perfect dental work out of existence. What I actually di was give er a vague smile
“Thats the way to go, Loren. Anyway it’ll be a good night, I rented ‘the runaway bride’”
Ah. So that was it. I thought Julia was just self obsessed. turns out shes evil and sadistic. Something had to be done and fast. I waited until she had gone downstairs to clear borrowing the video with aunt Gladys, then I picked up ‘The Principles’ and rushed to the bathroom for some guidance
Chapter 10 First Things First
Principle 1 : Know Thyself (but don’t go blind…)
Self delusion, its a powerful drug. We all delude ourselves aboiut who we are. Well, everyone except me. I know I’m perfect in every way, its a curse sometimes, but on the bright side it means I have great teeth. If you are looking to succeed socially you need to figure out precisely which of the following categories you currently fall in. The way I see it there are several places in the school social rankings
Outsider : You have no friends. I presume this bothers you, otherwise you’ve wasted an awful lot of time reading this book. This might look like a difficult situation to win from, but you actually have a lot of advantaged. Noone knows exactly who you are – the screaming hordes share every little secret, point out every extra pound they’ve gaine, whereas you have an innate mystery about you. Now you’ve got to exploit it. It isn’t goint to be easy, but that’s what mack is here to helpt you with. You also probably don’t like the beautiful people who perade their popularity infront of you. This is your key advantage.
Straggler : You arn’t one of the beautiful people, but you fall in the mainstream. You might not get the respect from the inner core that you think you deserve, but aat least they don’t cut you entirely from their lives. This may be the trickiest situation to be in: outsiders have nothing to lose, stragglers often place a lot of importance on their relatively minor positions : its a lot like how your school secreatry or caretaker can be more of a jobsworth than the teachers or headmaster – they have their domain to protect, and don’t plan on letting nayone get away with it. The good news is, that, by now you sould realise that you don’t have anything to lose – if you let youself stay where you are then you’ve already lost. You have all the tools to get to the top of the ladder, and you have the advantage that the key people will listen to what you have to say (even if they laug at you anyway)
The Inner Circle : You probably think you have already made it, after all everyone wants to be your friend because you are friends with the lyncpin of the school social scene. You go to all the good parties, you have your choice of the boys. So why are you reading this? Are you worried that it won’t last. If you’re not, then your stupid. Your entire social life depends upon the goodwill of one person, and there are hundreds of people who are jelous of you, who would do anything to be you, who might be reading this book. If you stay where you are, your name could be mud within hours – and don’t think all those people who suck up to you will catch you on your fall: they are the people who hate you the most.
The Cool Clique: You’re not one of the mainstream kids, your that group who have found their own way, a more radical and less dull way than listening to bubblegum pop and talking about good looking blond haired himbos called Corey. Your clique is cool. Fine, belive tat, everyone makes fun of you, question wheter you ever wash your hair and belive you and your trechcoat mafia will oneday go on a shooting spree (in fact, if anyone from the mainstream clique does try to befriend you, they’re probably only doing it to ensure they get spared when you do finally turn psycho). There are two paths to success, you can either work your way into the mainstream clique, or you can try to change your clique so that it becomes the mainstream. Both ways are plausible, both will require to realise that you and your friends are the only people wo think you’re cool. Oh, and by the way, you’re wrong.
The Brains: Smart kids flock together. Some people have a gene which makes them prefer chess to football. Its a free world. We should expect smart kids to be our rulers, after all they understand the deeper mysteries of double physics, and probably have a fair idea of why anyone might want to use geometry (I found this out once, apparently its so that you can build pyramids, if you ever happen to be a space alien in ancient egypt… if you’re a space alien in the modern world, you just need a big cornfield and an oversized spirograph), so why is it we use them as a mechanism to get our homework done and extra lunch money? The answer is that there arn’t any textbooks on social smarts. Except for this one. Well done, you’re on your way to success, but you’ve got to convince people to change their minds about you – and that might mean changing your mind about yourself.
So have you identified yourself? No? Well go back and figure out who or what you are. You fit into one of these categories, be truthful about which one. Right. Now we are going to start working to change this. The only way to becoming top of the school party food chain is straight through the middle – you can’t afford to have any personality oter than that exposed in teen magazines. This isn’t hard, think about it, how many people know what you really think, who you really are. Do your parents have even the faintest idea of the real you? If you’re going to lie to people about who who are, it might as well be a lie that makes you life easier. So what you have to do is think about being a new you. Make sure you have some friends in the mainstream clique – it may be some of the stragglers will appreciate any friends, after all, they’re only bottom feeders looking for whatever scraps of friendship they’re offered. They are your entrance ticket to a better life. Do whatever you need.
Chapter 11
I hid ‘the Principles’ under my pillow. What the hell, I thought, it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose – I’m already a freak
there isn’t anything I can do that will lower my chances of getting on at school – I’d give it a go and put principle one into action, to see where it got me. Right, well, it was pretty well obvious I was an outsider, noone knows how I feel about anything, and its not like Julia has even noticed that I’m like the complete opposite of her. What could I do to stop anyone noticing. I picked up one of Julia’s magazines and flicked idly through. I laughed to myself, it was all a bit easy, noone publishes magazines on how to be an individual, but how to be an identikit fashion victim clone, magazines about them were all over the place. “Fifty ways to breath life into your hair”, fifty photos as it turned out, clearly girls don’t get taught to read before they reach ‘sixteen years’, but it was a start: anything would be better than the current limp straggly mess which I kept tied back to avoid having to worry about it. So I started flicking through the pictures, and after a while spotted something I thought I could pull off.
As for clothes, well, I was a bit limited by the size of my suitcase, and I tended towards the comfortable, jeans, t-shirts, things that went with everything. Oh well, there was one skirt (not that i was sure I should show off my legs, but Kim seemed to get away with it) and I had a pink shirt that showed my navel that Mom bought me a month ago, it wasn’t like I could have gotten away without taking that. It seemed Mothers did have their uses, even if their use was limited to buying clothes that only the new me would wear. This would do, I was sure Julia would jump at the chance to go shopping with me later to increase the size of my wardrobe – there would probably nothing that would make mom happier than asking for money to get myself something ‘decent’ to wear. When Julia came back into the rom I was dressed up, as the new me, move over princess Julia, the regin of queen loren was beginning!
“Looooren”, Julia screamed, her voice had risen by an octave. “I love what yooou’ve done to your hair”. She wa spractically clapping her hands and jumping up and down with excitement.
“I fancied a change”
“You fancy antonio”
I laughed. Inside I was screaming and blushing and wanting to run, but the principles said I had to be the perfect little bland mainstream girl.
“Well, look, Julia, tell me something about the people who are coming tonight, so I know who i’m ealing with”
“You’ve met them, toni, carrie and sam”
“Yeah, but I don’t knooow them”. I stressed the ‘o’ sound, and I hated myself for doing it, but I kept the fixed perky smile on my face. Whatever, it did the trick.”
“Right, sit down, the gos…” Julia sat on my bed and motioned for me to join her. She swiveled her body so we faced each other and began to whisper conspiritorially. Which made no sense, seing as how we were alone in our house, and Gladys probably couldn’t be bothered differentiating between Julia’s interchangable friends.
“Well, I’ve told you that Carrie and Toni are on the verge of breaking up? Well, it going to happen and, to be honest, I don’t think Toni’s that bothere. Carrie has been like my friend for years and years, but she’s just not quite as cool to hang around with. And then theres her brother”
“Sam?”
“Yeah. I don’t really know him, you know the sort, hes like there, in classes at school, but hes got other friends. Still he doesn’t cause any major problems, but hes a bit quiet, not really all that much fun.”
“So why’s he coming around then?”
“He’s Carrie’s twin brother, I couldn’t like not invite him, he was right there at the shopping center”
“so… Antonio…”
Julia’s eyes opened wide and she moved her face closer to mine. I mimiked her, it seemed the right thing to do.
“Well, he knows that he’s gorgeous, but is reall thing is his art. I don’t think Carrie gets that, he’s always on at her to go with him to exhibitions, but she likes to hang with us. If you want to get to antonio, tats te way. That and his mama.”
“His mama?”
“Toni comes from a big itallian family, wouldn’t ever do anything that his mama didn’t like”
“So how do I get into her good books?”
“No idea… but carrie might know”. Julia fell into a fit of giggles. I joined her. We laughed for a few minutes
“You said Sam and carrie were twins, they don’t look alike”
“Well, not identical twins. But you look carefully and you’ll see a lot of similarities”
I nodded sagely, letting Julia think she had taght me something about twins. It was quite a shock, being a fatuous ninny was actually quite easy – almost fun.
Chapter 12
Evening came, and so id Julia’s friends. Cari and Sam arrived cluching vast quantities of popcorn and pringles. Julia led them to our room where se ad arranged the video under her television set. Aunt gladys had tried to insist that we use the television in the living room, but Julia had argued that my Mom and Dad would want to use it. In fact julia wanted the privacy of her room. She wasn’t quite as dumb as I had given her credit for.
The next time te doorbell rang, I jumped up. I was just being polite, elpful, but it didn’t come across like that. Carrie scowled, but Julia wistled, which made Carrie turn and scowl at her. At te door stood Antonio, he we tall and silloetted agains t th elow eveining sun. There was just a little growth of hair on is tanned dark skin. I must have stared too long because he looked carefully into my eyes and said
“Loren… it is Loren isn’t it? Are you alright”
alright, I was better than alright, I was looking at antonio. mysterious. artistic, loving and caring antonio, and he was looking at me. And so were Julia and Carrie who, apparently had followed me downstairs. I blushed. Sometimes there isno way to ide it, I mean if there was bluching wouldn’t be as important, as embarassing, would it?
“Hey guys” antonio shouted and threw a large bottle of Coke at Julia, who totally failed to catvch it and let it fall to the ground. We tensed as it fizzed.
“You are going to open that antonio”. Julia pronounced each sylabble of antonio’s name seperatly like a chiding moter.
Antonio smiled, and looked at me in appeal before walking up the stairs. My eyes lingered on his ass. I think Carries eyes lingered on my eyes, but I didn’t care. Antonio was going to be mine, there was nothing carrie could do about it.
Carrie and I followed Julia to her room, Sam tagged behind. I looked at him slightly quizically and Carrie looked me in the eye sligtly dissaprovingly. julia had pulled our beds out to make a makeshift couch, she dimmed her lights and turned on the TV. “Its a Julia Roberts, she announced”
Sam looked down in disappointment, I realised his head had been pointed directly towards julia, as if her were carfully studying her. Antonipo let out a more dramatic groan
“I thought we were going to be watching something good”, but nevertheless he settled down to watch. he didn’t make any move to place his arm around Carrie. I smiled at him, he grinned back.
After about half way through, Julia paused the video. I hadn’t been keeping track of what was going on, I was more interested in studying Antonio’s reactions. He wasn’t hugely impressed, but it certainly was affecting him slightly – he had smilled and laughed at appropriate points. Carrie had been glued to the film, ignoring poor antonio totally, no wonder he was feeling undervalued in his relationship. Sam was always looking slightly in the direction of Julia, I was beginning to get an idea about what was going on with him, and who knows, I might be able to use it to my advantage
“Carrie?” I asked, “Can you help me getting some more drinks”
“Yeah sure.”
we left Julia’s room and walked downstairs. I didn’t wait long before starting the interrogation
“So, Carrie, whats up with Sam?”
“Ah, you noticed too. I thought you were more interested in toni”
“Carrie, no!” I feigned shock. She accused me of bveing interested in antonio? That couldn’t possibly be! “He’s your boyfriend, i would never even consider someting like that.”
She eased up. I suppose when a girl starts professing a desire to marry your boyfriend you tend to be a bit stressed around them.
“So, I urged, tell me whats up”
“Well, I’m his sister, he never tells me anything, but”
I drew closer, like julia had drawn towardss me earlier
“Well, after seeing him at the shopping center, his insistance on comming tonight and the way hes acting, I tink out sam as a bit of a crush.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
It was perfect. Sam was a straggler, sure, but he would be an easy taarget to befriend, and if he had a crush on Julia and a friend in her inner circle, it was a great way of keeping me in the group. Seducing antonio could wait for later (I wondered if their was a chapter entitled “principle seven : getting gorgeous italians eating out of your hand”), right now I had to get my foot in the door. I filled five tall glasses with ice and lemonade and carried two up the stairs, while Carrie managed the oter three. I handed one of my glassed to Sam and sat myself down beside him
“Good film?” I asked
“I didn’t think I would enjoy it,but I keep noticing my mouth laughing, so I suppose I am”
I laughed, and julia started up the video again.
Chapter 13
I had to go shopping if I didn’t want to keep turning up wearing the same t-shirt and skirt. Julia, however, was too busy to join me – apparently she had left all her homework until the last minute, and school was starting up again next week. School, the thought made me shudder. I had to have started my play before then, I couldn’t be around these people for seven hours a day without giving myself away if they hadn’t already fallen for my charade. The charade. Right. Shopping. I’ve never really enjoyed shopping. I know I shouldn’t say that sort of thing, they would probably take away my rigt to call myself a teenage girl if they heard me. But really, whats the point? Clothes always look different under the brigt lights of a shop and just when you have had a good look and come up with some idea of what you want, a shrill assistant jumps out and asks if you need any help. Them? Help me? Like I want to end up with clothing advice from people that arn’t trusted by their own shop’s managment to make fashion decisions. Although the more I think about it, we’re talking shrill girls who work in clothes shops – they probably know exactly what Julia and er cronies would want. Hmmm. I can’t belive I did what I did next
“Can I help you?”
“Yes”
I felt so dirty. You probably don’t want to hear about the process of my choosing a new wardrobe. You might find it mun to imagine a montage of scenes where I hold up clothes to mirrors while te assistant nods and shakes her head, and perhaps a few scenes showing my coming out of the changing rooms in weird and wonderful costumes, while all the while an upbeat piece of poppy music plays in the background. By all means do so, my life isn’t actually like a hollywood film, but it can’t hurt to let you think it is. However my shopping trip went, I left exhausted, somewhat worried about the amount of Mom’s meny I had blown on things that, if all this didn’t work, I wouldn’t be seen dead in and carrying several rather full plastic bags. I stopped for a coffee and planned my next maneuver.
The target was Sam. We seemed to get along well enough last night. He was even funny in an odd sort of a way. Now I needed an excuse to make friends with him properly. Everything I thought of doing seemed so false, so calculated. Now, there was a good reason for that – it was all phoney and calculated but I was sure there must be a good reason to get to know him better. What did I know about him? Surprisingly little. He was Carrie’s brother, he was good at school (which is pretty much social suicide if you’re not someonle like rachel), and of course he had a crush on Julia (I was pretty certain of that one). It was no good, it wasn’t like I could set him up on a date – Julia would never consider spending her time with a lesser moral like Sam, not where there were boys like Antonio for her to pick ad choose from, no it had to involve me. Why would Sam want to spend time with me? It would bring him closer to Julia, especially if it involved comming to my house. That was a good start. But how could I lure him there? Julia, Carrie, School. School! Of cousrse, hear I was, a poor ignorent american with no idea of the school work I should be ready to do. Of course, if i cared, I could look at Julia’s books and start working from there, but if I were to invite Sam over to work with me… He wouldn’t refuse, especially if he thought Julia was going to be around. My deviousnes astounded even me, wo would have thought that sweet little new england girl had it in her?
I gave Sam a ring and, before he had a chance to think about it, convinced him to come over this evening and go through what I would need to know about for history lessons. TO be fair, he didn’t take much convincing, he practically jumpped at te chance to be in the same house as Julia. Who could blame him? he was only attempting the same sort of trick as me, only witout the benefit of a guide. A guide which I turned towards for further inspiration!
Chapter 14
Principle 2 : Befriend the unpopular, undermine the others.
You’ve read the title of this section (or at least I assume you have… its possible you just read random chucnks of tect without applying any context, but just as you should be taking a wholistic approach to your life, keeping eachg and every aspect of it under control, you choul take a wholistic attitude to this book too. Every word is as important as the last, if you miss even one word – even one syllable of one word, you could be dooming yourself to life as the kid that the special ed kids laugh at. The power I wield to fulfil my own sense of self importance). HAving read the title you know what to do. Of course it isn’t sensible to let anyone know what you’re doing. You don’t want to stand on the roof of a building and point out each and every flaw the beautiful people have, you just want to position yourself.
So, were should you stand?
Well, you want to make the unpopular tink they are going to grow in social status through being your friends. These are people used to being used, so you’re going to have to deliver on your promises. When their are parites, make sure they get invites. When you go out – whereever you’re going make sure they get to come along – but also make sure your cooler firends are there too. The one thing you don’t want to do is make you’re sad and loney firends think you are dumping them as you make your grasp for to top of the pile. Bring them some of the way with you, and you’ll have everlaasting grattitude from the people who form the foundations of your popularity.
Now, here is the secret to popularity: Popularity isn’t anything to do with
how cool you are, what you wear or what you listen to. It is one thing and one thing only- how amy people want to be around you. Its a numbers game, by definition. Now, having cool firends makes other pople valuer your friendship more, which in turns makes making more friends easier, but this is only one method, and its one that relies on dangerous grounds: your propularity with eveyone depends upon you being liked by your initial contact. If your cool friend tires of your company, then you’ve lost that cache which made you oh so likeable. You’ll fall to earth with a bump, and there iwll be noone around to catch you. If, on the other hand you base your popularity on having a good number of less cool friends, if one finds a new idol to hand with, well hey, the rest will still be there. Its logic.
So, what about those people who are more popular than you? Again, you have to ask yourself, who is it they are popular with. Damn right! Your new friends. Even better, they don’t realise this, they see themselves as being somehow special and distinct from this hoi-poloi. Yeah right. Now they have nothing that you don’t have, you can begin masterminding their fall from grace. In this I must pass on precisely two rules:
Do not rely on the support of anyone more popular than you. Youve go to do this yourself. On your own merits. With my help.
Give credit where its due: help those who are less popular than you, Bring them into your inner circle. They’ll enjoy the rise in social status and they will be loyal.
Use this wisdom wisely friend. And if you can’t be wise, at least have fun!
Chapter 15
“Mum”
“No”
“Dad?”
“don’t you go asking your dad.”
“Your Mum said no”
“But”
“But me no buts young lady” mum turned her head away from me. Her decision was final. ‘but me no buts?’ What does that mean. It doesn’t even begin to make sense. The mysteries of parents. One day Mom will realise that the television isn’t a radio and she’ll start to watch her favourite programme rather than listening to it. This is the difference between Mon and aunt Gladys. Both are mad and obsessive, but at least Aunt Gladys doesn’t impose herself on you. Sure Aunt Gladys can be overbearing, but she is right that if you ignore her, pay her no notice, she really doesn’t get in the way. Mom on the other hand makes me hot chocolate and stanbds over me while I drink it, or moves me to another continent or insists we spend some family time together. Tonight. Whe Sam was due.
“Sam was going to come and go through my History work with me”
“Sam?” dad asked
“Sam from last night sam”
“I don’t think I met sam from last night sam,. Would this be a femal Sam or a male sam?”
“i don’t see what that has to do with”
“So by history, what you actually mean is biology”
“Dad!” I was shocked. Parents shouldn’t know about that sort of thing… well actually its pretty fundamental that they do know about that sort of thing, I suppose, but they shouldn’t demonstrate it
“i do not fancy Sam” I shouted. Which was precisely the moment Julia chose to come through the front door.
“You were sitting close to him last night” Julia chimed in. Lets play taunt the looser. 20 extra points to whoever can make her walk off in a huff.
“That was because of carrie”
“You didn’t want her to see you looking at antonio”
“So Sam has competition” dad smiled at me and winked. I suppose it was pretty funny, for dad.
“And you were worried about making friends”
“No I wasn’t” I almost shouted, to avoid julia guessing how pathetic I really was
“Well…” Mum looked at dad. Dad nodded… “Oh, OK, we’ll do the family thing another day”
Phew. Making me blow off Sam could have seriously upset my plans. I left the room with Julia, who probably wanted to taunt me further, but as I was leaving I caught a bit of te ushed conversation
“Maybe its for the best” Mum said
“She deserves to know. Its not like we have any choice”
“he said he didn’t tell her”
“He’s said a lot of things. You choose now to start beliving him?2
“good point, well made”
I turned around, Sarah was rummaging in the freezer. She brought out ice cream. I shook my head – do you know how many calories there are in a scoop of ice cream – even the vegetable fat stuff which deserves to be called less cream than corn that tey serve in the UK. She ignored me, scooped out a large ball into a bowl and slid it over the table towards me. I aquiesced.
“So” Julia asked “sam?”
“Just to help with History”
“you can’t con me with that. Te-e-ell me”
“Look, I’m not interested in Sam. And even if I was. Which I’m Not. He isn’t interested in me?”
“Sam fancies someone else then?”
“i think so”
“Who”
“I can’t say”
“rachel? Harriet?”
“No. None of them”
“Oh he doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t what”
“Me?”
I shut my eyes. She had guessed. Was I that obvious?
“Oh my god. not Sam. Urghh. Thats… You mustn’t tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t”
“Noone”
“I promise.”
“What’s wrong with Sam”
“You really havn’t talked to him much have you. He’s a total loon. He keeps saying the weirest things – the other day I heard him telling his friends how he had learned to count in roman numerals where he rplaced every V and I with the word dave”
“What?”
“Dave. dave Dave. Dave Dave Dave. Dave Dave. Dave. dave dave. Dave Dave dave. dave dave dave dave. Dave X. X. X Dave. X Dave Dave.”
“Stop.” I laughed “You’re mad.”
“No. Sam is mad. I was just reporting what he said”
but she knew how to count in roman numerals and Daves. Wich, granted, is not one of those tings I would have guessed Julia knew, just by looking at her.
“Look, whatever you do, just don’t leave me alone wit Dave… I mean Sam… tonight” she pleeded
“I’ll protect you from the nasty Sam and his army of Daves”
Now it was julia’s turn to laugh.
Chapter 16
I had managed to make a bit of the room my own. Cleared a space on Julia’s dresser to use as a desk, put a poster up – a dali print, rather than whatever grunge soo-rebellious-yet-strangely-signed-to-a-major-label band Julia wanted to align herself with (‘Heartache’ apparently – if you look carefully at the pictutre you can see that the lead singer, with his long wild hair and tattered clothes had perfectly manecured fingernails). I had a few moments to flick through Julia’s history text book. “Social and Economic history in the eighteenths and nineteenth century”. It sounded dull. It looked dull. Black and white pen-and-ink cartoons with unintelligable captions leapt out at me, along with words like “The agrarian revolution” and “hore hoeing husbandry”. I thought about back home – we were going to be study renecience history this term, the itallian city states fighting one another. Borgia, Medici. So fascinating and romantic, just like Antonio, nothing at all like “Sir humphrey Davies”, who, I noted invented a safty lamp for miners. Not so much history as a bunch of trivia which happened.
By the time Sam arrived I was feeling both bored and totally stupid. It was a bit of light relief to talk to him rather than think about the work we were meant to be discussing.
“So this is you’re room. It doesn’t look much like the sort of room you would have?”
“You were here last night! I share it with julia. Its her room really”
“That was here? I didn’t notice, I just followed you. I’d switched my mind off to avoid paying attention to julia Roberts”
“You did what?”
“switched my mind off. Tv helps. its so weasy to ignore things you don’t want to see”
“I still don’t get it. What are you on?”
“Well, I spend so much of my time thinking that sometimes I want to stop. Normally I don’t, I isect anything I come across. Its really frightening, have you ever trised aprising the poetry in a birthday card critically?”
“Err no”. There was something about sam that was frightening, but I wanted to hear more. It was like he lkived in a whole different world. calling him mad was wrong, just a bit out of phase with our idea… well Julia’s idea of sanity.
“Someone once told me that what made something high quality wasn’t the fact it was any good, or particularly clever, it was the fact it did the thinking for you – gave you the whole unadulterated picture ready formed without requiring any effort on your part. “
“Sorry, you’vce totally lost me now”
“Well, when you see a julia Roberts film, they’;re like that. You know, you can predict the plot from the outset – two guys one woman who has to choose between them… theres the one she fancies and the one that suits her. In the end she realised the second onbe is best and everyone is happy.”
And then it hit me. Sam noyt only wanted to go out wit Julia, he was convinced he was destined to end up wit her. What had I let myself in for? Helping him was obviously what uncle MAck suggested, but it was going to be a losing battle.
“So anyway,” Sam continued, “we you know what s going to happen, you don’t really need to watch ythe story, you can just let go and drift wherever it takes you. Its like meditation, only with richard gere as the object not the subject.”
“You what?”
“Ricard gere… hes budhist and likes to meditate, but he was in that film last night and so…”
“Ah. Right, sorry, I think I’ve turned my mind off”. WHich was a lie, my mind was elsewhere. I was trying to figure out how to get Sam and Julia together. WIthout either of them noticing i was doing it. And with Antonio falling for me in the process. It was going to be tricky.
“so History,” Sam was gabbling. “the corn laws. Corn prices were kept artificially high which encouraged farming. The reason they were high in the first place was the napolionic wars, of course we’re not allowed to know the wars ever appnened because they were interesting and so cunningly hsaave been cut away from the syllabus”
“Is there anything good?”
“A politician gets run over by a train next term. And they’ll probably throw in some grissly details about medicen. History teachers seem to like that sort of thing”
“So nothing good then?”
“No.”
“We ad a war of independence and the wild west during that period.”
“I think british history stopped at about the end of the seventeenth century. More or less everything after that is just current afairs”
I nodded sagely. I’m sam world what sam was saying probably made sense, and sam world seemed like a very nice place to live, all told. Better than here, anyhow.
“A poletician run over by a train you say?”
“Marmaduke Huskisson. Never did anything interesting except for that. it was the first run of the stockton and darlington railway.”
“And this comes up next term”
“I read ahead.”
“Why”
“Social and Economic history is a better cure for insomnia than nyquil”
I yawned. Sam was right.
Chapter 17
The answer was, of course, Carrie. She was the connection, where Antonio, Sam and Julia all met. But carrrie was also a problem, she didn’t trust me around Toni, despite my protestations – which probably indicated by protestations wern’t as good as I had thought they were. Luckily I had a way towards her throug Sam. Sam who had suggested that I visit his house this afternoon. But there were other concerns: I couldn’t build my empire on Sam alone – there had to be others, and that meanbt more time with Julia and her friends. I could live with that, hang with them and turn my mind off like Sam did during the video. And I still had my parents to contend with: What did they mean by “she deserves to know”? they certainly
didn’t think I derserved to know that much – they didn’t actually tell me what it was I deserved to know, after all.
I picked up the phone. I place the phone down again. Could i really call her? Would Carrie want to talk to me? surely she wouldn’t suspect I had ulterior motives, not if I suggested we did something, someting which didn’t involve Antonio? But it didn’t feel right… I stared at the phone, wondering what to do. it was stupid, the worst she could do was say no, blow me off – she would have to be polite too. It wouldn’t be bad. but I kept running the conversation over in my head. it always went the same way
“Hi, Can I speak to Carrie please”
“Speaking”
“Hi Carrie, its loren.”
“Loren?”
“Julia’s cousin Loren.”
“Oh, julia has a cousin. that must ave been the irriatating distraction that kept me from enjoying the film the other day2
“I was wondering”
“I’m not really that interested in wat you were doing. you’re keeping me from watching MTV, be quick.”
“Do you want to hang out at the Mall?”
“But wouldn’t that involve me being seen in public with the deceiptful hellbitch intent on stealing my boyfriend despite the fact he would never even consider lowing himself to your sub human level?”
“Oh, alrigt, bye then.”
Now, technically, I knew it owuldn’t be that bad. Realisticially. But that didn’t make it harder. I stared at the phone, willing it to become sentinet and make te call for me. i could feel my forehead growing red and hot as I became more and more nervous. Go on phone make that call, make it make it…
The phone rang.
Wich shocked me a little. well, a lot. At least I knew tat jumping to the hight I managed, I would be capable of making the school high jump scene. Then I rubbed my eyes. The phone was still ringing. It was a fluke… it had to be… there was no way it could possibly be… I picked up the receiver
“Hello”
And then I heard the voice
“Hello, Julia”. rich, exotic, itallian. Antonio. Not carrie, but as people go, not a bad second
“Hi antonio, it’s Loren”
“Ah, Loren. Cool. How are you?”
Antonio wanted to know how I was. So manly, yet so considerate
“Cool. you?”. Cool. Too right. Cool as ice. Miss unflappable
“Yeah, yeah. What’s up”
“Not much, I’m, like, making the most of the rest of the vacation”
“You going to the end of freedom party?”
Not that I knew off. Noone ad mentioned a party.
“probably.”
“You want to come with me?”
I dropped te phone. That wasn’t what I expected. “I’m going with carrie”, that might have been reasonable. “Can I speak to Juli?” That was pretty much what I had tought was going to be said next but “You want to come wit me?”. I picked th ehandset up off the floor
“sorry” I babbled, “I tripped and… what did you say?”
“Do you want to come to the Party with me?”
“What about Carrie?”
“Carrie and me are over, almost. And she has to go to her grandmama’s that night”
I had to be strong, confident. I had to take no prisoners.
“OK”
“Cool. It’ll be fun.”
I was going on a date with Antonio. Now how could i face Carrie. I made my excuses and put the phone down. I had to think. Maybe the principles had something to say.
Chapter 18
Principle 3 : betrayal, and other virtues.
Betrayal… it rolls off the toung. A beautiful word which has received so much bad press. It seems almost noone has anything good to say about betrayal, but really, if it wasn’t for betrayal we would all be living in harmony with birds chirping and flowers growing in the sun. It would be dull as hell. Betrayal is the spice which makes life worth living
Now, you probably don’t like being betrayed – so if you want to carry on living in a fun and exciting world, its going to have to be you doing the betraying. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Imagine the situation:
John: Could you look after my lunch money?
Jane: sure
later
John: Can I have my lunch money now?
Jane: Who are you and what is tis lucnh money of which you speak?
You can be pretty sure John isn’t going to be trusting Jane with any more of his hard earned money. Jane has made a profit of ten quid, but has lost any number of opportunities – bnecause Jon will tell other people what she has done.
Now imagine that Jane looks after the money, doesn’t tell anyone John’s guilty bed-wetting secret, covers for John when he is late for History and doesn’t make fun of his choice of a tank-top/sandles combo. John trusts her implicitly. Which is good, because tat means he’ll let her know when he is about his populoar girlfriend’s stange sexual preferences… which is good when you want to embatrass her in front of everyone by drawing attention to her fetish for long toenails, and gain more credibility in the process.
of course, prelonging the exctasy is good, but there is the question of exactly ow you do it Tis is what Mack has come to teach you. There are three steps to any successful betrayal
Step one: gain the trust.
It isn’t betrayal if you arn’t already trusted, it is just what we in the self-improvement publising industry call “being a jerk”. you don’t want to be known for being a jerk – people don’t want to make friends with jerk. Oddly they do want to make friends with self-confident bitches. This is because people are stupid. Luckily they are also stupid enough to trust you without requiring you expend much effort.
Step two: Prepare the fall
This is the key. if you betray someone and they don’t suffer and lose face as a result, you will lose face. That isn’t good. You want to claw people down to below your level. So you need to find a way of making them crumble, in public while you reign in glory. There are several things which make the fall work in everyone elses eyes (and to be clear, that is all that matters; its all appearences, how other people judge you. if everyone judges you as succeeding then you can do whatever you want… if you do the tings you want to do without being judged as a success, people will be limiting you at every turn, shitting on you from above). First, the fall has to be big – don’t worry about personal gain when preparing hte fall, just make sure they are as discredited as possible. Second, the fall has to be public – its not good enough discrediting someone in one persons eyes, unless that person is the key to popularity (and in that case, you’ll be riding on their coattails and just as likely to be te subject of a similar fall in the future, so think of a better plan if you want to get to the top). Third, they mustn’t be able to pick themselves up – they will need other people to help… this is important – if they turn to oter members of the in crowd, who side with you, ten teir fall will be doublly urt. If they rely on the support of the geeks and freaks, then thats what they will look like in your new friends eyes.
Step three : climb up the ruins
Yea sure, people will notice you pulling them down to your level, but what goo is that if you don’t rise up to fill the vacume. This sin’t hard, people will be wanting to make sure they arn’t seen as friends of a loser like the person you have just destroyed. the result – new alliances will be made, the best of the rest will be picked up for the ride, given field promotions so to speak. And, assuming you havn’t disgraced yourself, will be the mostr visible, the cream of the dregs. there is a path to success that you can take, so grab it. Don’t worry about wat it is you’re asked to do. if everyone is planning on sticking their heads in ovens and turning them on then so should you! Peer pressure, succumb to it – its not like you have a life if you don’t!
Chapter 19
I call it my poker face. I would be good at poker if I knew te rules because my face betrayed no emotion when I joined Julia at Carries house that evening. It had been billed as a girls night in. If we were younger we would have called it a sleepover, but we were mature sopisticates and such girlish thoughts were far from our mind. There was one subject of discussion, sex. It seemed that the brits wern’t quite as uptight as I had been led to belive. Damn social stereoitypes and their inability to prepare us for every experience we would ever meet in another country. I blame the media, noone ever did the “you’re so feeble that even english girls will get laid before you do” program, they just made jokes about bad teeth and posh accents. The simpsons wasn’t even close to accurate. I was preparing myslef to learn that austrailans wern’t all corse outback huntsmen, but one thing at a time. At least I knew itallian men wetre exactly as advertised, and judging by Carire’s description, I would be getting to see the merchandise in full. Which was a nice thought.
Julia was waving a hand in front of my face
“I think we’ve lost her”
“I think she’s lost herself with some man”
“So, you’ve found youself a bloke already, Loren?”
So, perhaps, not quite the worlds best poker face, but still pretty damn impressive – and Carrie didn’t seem to realise it was her man – or if she did, she was being remarkably nice about it
“So… ” carrie nudged me “tell us, who is it”
I sook my head
“No. No secrets. Not here. Secrets drive us apart” Harriet said. Her voice had a wobble as if that sort of thing really worried her.
“Well, there’s only one man I know that she’s interested in” julia shared a sideways glance at Carrie who started laughing
“What?” I asked. I couldn’t see Carrie laughing at my impending romance with Antonio
Julia could harld keep her face straight while she blurted out the words
“Sam”, then every cracked up around me
“Sam?” I screeched, trying desperatly to keep my voice level and failing. “hardly”
“Oh come on. Loren and Sam, sitting in a tree” Rachel teased
“F – U – C – K – I – N – G” Kim interjected
“Sounds anatomically impossible”
“not so. Carrie ran upstairs, and brought down a copy of ‘Diana’ magazine and pointed to the position of a month
“I stand corrected” rachel said. “Learn something new every day”
i just sat tere, glad of te distraction, hoping that the world would swallow me up and free me from the torment of being associated with Sam. But Mack was right. It wouldn’t do to tell everyone about Antonio, they had to see me rip her to pieces when I was good and ready. in the mean time, perhaps there was a way of exploiting this. Somehow.
Carrie and har magazines began holding court, wich held everyone’s attention but mine and Harriet. We went out to the kitchen in orer to fetch more pringles. Pringles and girl tak, what more could we ask for
“I said no secrets”
“Everyting about me is a secret Harriet – wat is there you really know”
“I know you don’t fancy Sam”
“How?”
“Most people don’t look, they just go with what seems fun. Noone coul have had the expression you had wile thinking baout Sam.”
“You’re right there, girl”
“Not that sam doesn’t ave an inner beauty”
“You don’t?” I began. iT couldn’t be possible that ariette had a crush on Sam, could it?
“Oh no! I can’t quite see sam on a Triumph”
“Triumph?”
“A bike.”
Ah yes, I nodded. Harriet the hog freak. It would never quite mesh with me. Cognative dissonance prevented me even considering Harriet, that timmid, tiny slyph of a girl, anywhere near a Harley. It didn’t fit.
“But Sam isn’t a total freak. A girl who saw what Sam was like inside might…”
“Fall for him?” I asked
“Precisely.”
“Harriet”
“oh, call me Harry. I hate the way everyone insists on treating me like I’m some precious jewel.”
“Well, arry the, do you think we can make julia see that side of sam?”
“I don’t see why not, but se isn’t, that is to say Julia doesn’t normally look that far into a man’s soul. Why”
“I think Sam has a crush on her”
“Poor boy. I think. In fact yes. lets help her”
we toasted our new plan. I had an allie.
Chapter 20
The evening passed quickly, rumours of Sam and i subsided, Harry deflecting what few remained. We fished a bit – Julia certainly didn’t have her heart set on any boy in particular. She spoke of going to the party with a boy from te year above. This drew a few raised eyebrows, not because of the age difference – that was generally approved of – but because the boy in question had shaved his head a few weeks ago. julia’s heart wasn’t in it though – he was a makeweight, an excuse for a partner for the party, not a major life coice. She had no delusions, she was just leading him on. Carrie scowled troughout – she had been looking forward to the party, and her parents had forced her to go out wit them instead. She was not best pleased, and after an evening of sharing our feelings about everything with each other, boy did we know it. Carrie was like a little ball of pent up anger about her parents. What did she know about parents, this was one party that everyone would have forgotten about in a week or two, I had been uprooted by two maniacs who thought it would be an improving experience of some sort.
I think I may have underestimated Harriet – never judge first appearences. Hiding behind her hesitent, careful choice of words and sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth looks made her subterfuge a work of beauty. For the most part I just sat back and watched in awe as she began to work her special kind of magic. It all started a few moments after we had returned to Carrie’s room, carrying our scavenged supplies with us. I took a seat on the floor, but Harry wanted to make her play straight off. She placed herself directly opposite Julia and offered over a bowl of chocolates. Julia dithered – its nice to know she at least made a token effort to look like she had to worry about her weight. She held a hazelnut in caramel in her hand and looked at it from all sides, as if perhaps she could find a face to climb which was lower in calories.
“So Harriet, who are you going to the party with?”. I noticed a slight flicker of Harry’s eye’s as Julia called her Harriet. Had she really been bearing a grudge about how she was treated
“I don’t think I am”
“Not going with anyone”
“Not going to the party”
There was a general murmer of surprise and dissapointment.
“Why?” Kim asked “Come on Harriet, it won’t be the same without you”
“I just don’t feel I really want to” Harry looked at the floor. If she was acting it was worthy of an oscar – well, at least an emmy,.
“Is it that you don’t have a date?” Rebecca asked “Thats not a problem, I’m going alone”
“Harriet could get a date” Julia jumped to Harrys defence. A reflex to protect her vulnerable friend. Harry just continued to look at the floor in acknoledgment that they had hit upon the root of the problem. I was about to say something, but Harry noticed and coughed. She wanted me to keep out of this, to play her game her way. For a moment or two I wondered if she had read Mack’s book. If she had, she would turn out to be dangerous as I got closer to the end game. Harry shook her head, it was barely noticable, but it had what I could only assume was the desired affect.
“You could go with one of billy’s friends. Darren has a moped” Julia blurted out. Billy was Julia’s choice of neanderthal accompaniment. The thought of Harry being turned by a moped was ammusing, indeed I wondered whether Harry going to manage to to hold her own dismissive laughter behind her mournful expression.
“Darren?” Harry asked “Maybe… its just he’s not…”
“He’s not what?”
“Nothing”
“No secrets remember” Carrie butted in
“No. Maybe Darren is OK”
“Whats wrong. Is there someone else?” Julia put her hand on Harry’s knee. Harry stayed silent.
“There is” Julia began to smile. “Theres someone else”
“No. Not someone who would every consider”
“Who?”
“No. He’s out of my league”
Julia shook Harry by the shoulders “Tell me who”
Harry just shook her head.
“I’m going to find out. By hook or by crook.”
“Its not worth it. I’ll go with Darren. Ask Billy to ask Darren. Is it a good moped”
“50cc”
“Oh”
Chapter 21
As we were on the bus, Julia began to start her investigation
“You were talking to Harriet a lot last night. Did she tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Tell you who it was she wanted to ask her to the party?”
“That?” I exclaimed in a loud screechy voice. I think everyone on the bus must have turned and looked at me, if only to find out who it was that was acting badly “No… she was just telling me about the Triage her dad was doing up”
“Triage?”
“A Motorcycle”
“Oh the Triumph”. Triage, Triumph. How could I be expected to know? It was a bike, a big lump of metal that made loud noises. Not really my thing, but at least it was an interest, something that made Harry a bit unique. “So nothing about who it shes waiting for?”
“No. Not really. I don’t think she was very happy, doesn’t think he would be interested”
“Well, you’re no good.”
“Whoever it is, he must be hot”
“Or have a good bike”
“No, it’s more than that.” I remembered what Harry had told me to say the previous evening. “She said there was a spark inside, something alive, something that all the other boys don’t have burning in his soul”
“Well, we’ll have to find out who it is then.”
I looked out of the window, we were on the top deck, and looking down on the people in the high street. From up here we could see down the hill intot he centre of town, a combination of buildings built before America was discovered and flat featureless modern architecture mingled together in front of us.
“Somewhere down there” Julia said, pointing out towards the sprawl “Somewhere down there is the man that’s making Harriet go all soppy”
“You thinking of taking him for yourself?” I asked, my tounge firmly in my cheek
“I would never do that to Harriet”. I gulped. I had to get her to change her opinion on that, otherwise she wouldn’t be there for me when I finally pulled the rug from under Carrie’s feet.
“but if she doesn’t tell you who it is, and if she isn’t ever going to risk making a move, and if he is as hot as he sounds well perhaps you ought to”. I played my hand a bit too openly, but she fell for it. Completly and utterly.
“You” Julia turned to me and hugged me “you might be right. I never had you down for the devious type, Loren”. She didn’t know the half of it.
“And anyway” I said “I think it might be someone we know… I just got this feeling that she was talking about someone close to home”. Julia became more animated still, she was fidgeting in her seat, excited, like a young child waiting to unwrap their crhistmas presents. She had a mission for the last few days of the Holiday, I could tell.
“So, do you want to help me find out who it is?”
“Sam’s coming over, he’s going to teach me some basic french”
“You don’t know french?”
“No, me habla espanol”
“You what?”
“spanish. Its what they teach us in America”
“well, can’t you carry on doing that here?. We’ve got a spanish teacher at school.”
That was a turn up. Maybe I wasn’t going to be as far behind – I might even be ahead, I was good at spanish and had been learning it for a fair time now.
“Maybe. Oh well, Sam’s coming over anyway, but maybe I can cut things short.”
Chapter 22
But Sam was fun to spend time with, I didn’t rewally want to cut it short. Perhaps, I thought, if Julia could see that she might fall for him without our help. Still, I was in a Cernaro De’ Bergerac mood… well a Steve Martin in Roxanne mood anyway, I hadn’t seen the original. There was a more subtle approach, one that Harry and I had faith might do the trick anyway.
I slapped Sam on the back
“I can’t belive you. You are an incredibly strange person”
“Me? Strange? I’m perfectly normal and well adjusted. Its just noone has noticed”
“You count in roman Dave’s. It isn’t the sign of a sane mind”
“Who told you about that? Anway, I think it’s better if you replace prime numbers with edward”
“Edward?”
“Would he? What would ed do?”
“Chuck wood?”
“Possibly. Do you know why Edward woodwood has four ‘d’s in his name?”
“No”
“Because if he didn’t he would be called ewar woowoo”
I collapsed laughing onto his lap. I think he was embarassed, Sam stood up throwing me onto the floor. I continued to laugh until finally I ran out of breath. Over the next few minutes I regained my composure.
“Are you OK?” Sam asked
“Yeah” I replied, keeping the smirk on my face from errupting into another marathon session of hilarity
“Sam,” I asked “are you going to thr party”
“Party? Nahh”
He dismissed it. But I was not to be discoruaged
“I’m going with Julia” I hinted. It obviously made Sam stop and think
“weeell” he said after a long pause, “perhaps”
“Look, come along, it won’t be as fun without you”
Sam blushed. he was sweet, especially when he was embarassed. He nodded and looked down at me lying on the floor. He playfully kicked towards my head
“Maybe”
“You, Sam, are going” I grabbed his foot and started tugging it. He pulled back “No arguments”
“whatever. anything to get back control over my extermities”
“you what?”
“My” he have an almighty tug freeing himself from my grasp “Foot. There, thats better, I was beginning to think I owuld have to ask your permission to walk anywhere”
He didn’t know he was already under my control
“You’re so sweet” I laughed
“Oh.” Sam said. He sounded dissapointed.
“What’s up” I asked
“You called me sweet. Never call a man sweet, no man wants anyone to think of him as sweet. Basically what you mean is ‘I like you, but under no situation would I ever consider sleeping with you’. Really, I have an ego and every mention of the word sweet dahes it against a metaphorical pile of jagged rocks. Still, it is better than you thinking of me like a brother.”
“Fine. I won’t call you swet again. What would you prefer. Fuckable?”
“That’ll do”
“You’re so fuckable Sam”
he smiled a weak smile. It was the best he could manage. He had asked for it. And he was sweet… I mean fucakable.
Chapter 23
Sam actually made a vague attempt to teach me some French in case Julia had been wrong about my chances of learning Spanish. Not much, but by the time he had finished, I was capable of counting to twenty, tell him my name and age and even ask simple directions (not that I could understand the replies, but that was the least of my worries) He also studiously avoided talking about the things I wanted to talk about, like who he was going to ask to the party. Of course I knew who he would like to ask – he was only going to the party because he had heard Julia was going to be there – but she was out of his reach as far as he was concerned – I laughed to think of Harry’s charade the previous evening – if only he knew Julia had been happily calling him ‘hot’ or at least callng a potential him hot… well, it amused me. I, however, wanted to get away, to join Julia in her manhunt (if only she knew that her quarry was already under her roof, sitting upon her bed) and to get Sam thinking in the right way
“Look, Sam, I Know you’ve got your eyes set on someone”
Sam stopped and cocked his head to one side. He stayed slient for a second or two “Did you hear that?”
“What?” I hadn’t heard a thing
“You stamping on what remains of my ego”
“I called you fuckable. What more can you want?”
Sam didn’t say anything.
“Just give me a name”
“Marge”
“I don’t know anyone called Marge”
“You didn’t know me ’till last week.”
“Marge doesn’t exist, does she?”
“No. But its the best answer you’re going to get”
“What are you afraid of”
“Rejection. Getiing my stillbeating heart torn from my chest and held in front of my face while the surrounding crowd jears and scratches to pick up the scraps fo my dignity”
“So nothing important then”
Sam gave me his best I’m-not-going-to-even-dignify-that-with-a-response face, which was a response in itself, and therfore farily pointless.
“Look Sam, there are lots of people who would want to go on a date with you.”
“None that I’ve noticed”
“I can think of one person”
“Never.”
I smiled a knowing smile
“Who?”
“I shouldn’t say. But keep your mind open to it. Some girls just find you a little… erm”
“Insane?”
“Intimidating”
“Is that a good intimidating?”
“Is there any other sort?”
“Isn’t intimidating meant to be a bad thing?”
“Not as bad as being sweet apparently”
“You said you wouldn’t call be sweet.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Okay”. Sam probably only agreed with me because I was holding him in a headlock
“You are intimidating”
“Right. got you. could you let me go now?”
He was going to be just fine.
Chapter 24
Aside from the time I ran home from the Grafton centre, I hadn’t ventured into Cambridge alone until I went to find Julia. She had told me she was going to be at a Starbucks with a hastily gathered war council. She was intent on finding out who Harry’s beau was. But I wasn’t intimidated – there was no way Cambridge could be any worse than Boston, was there. Apparently, yes. I had a map, but it wasn’t much use. Mom had explained how the streets were constucted not according to Logic and sensible town planning, but medieval streets which were built at the whims of the people that used them. I began to doubt that it was possible the roads connected to one another int he way they did. Every so often I found m yself back at the market square, convinced I had walked away from it, and certainly not walked around in a circle. Eventually I was able to find the coffee shop, hidden away on the quayside beside the river cam. Tourists were balancing themselves picariously on punts as they attempted to make their way zigzagging up and down the river, while men in straw hats were offering to do guided tours for those not quite so brave or dexterous. The sun was doing its best to make me wither up under itas glare, it was certainly an iced coffee sort of a day.
Julia was propped up on one of the tables outside along with Rebecca, they were poring over an exercise book. Rebecca had written out a list of boys names and there were notes jotted beside each one. I scanned it briefly
“Sam – as if!”
It was Rebecca’s writing. There was still hope, despite the dismissal they had considered Sam, and I only knew for sure that Rebeccahad rejected him. There was a possibility that Julia might be persuaded she had a deep yearning for him yet..
“Parlez Vouz France?” Julia asked. I smiled. I didn’t parlez France well enough to give her a decent answer, certainly.
“Oui” I offered. Julia vaguely made the gestures to do a half hearted clap while Rebecca added a few more notes to the book. Aparently Richard was “hardly deep” – it didn’t surprise me: I hadn’t met richard, but I didn’t expect the sort of people Julia would be considering were likely to be deep. I was surprised to see Harry come out of the coffee house carrying several classed of frappe. Was Julia really that transparent thet she would ask someone who they fancied so that she could steel their lover from under their nose? Or had she gone back on her plan – that is to say my plan – to set herself up with Harry’s mysterious hunk?
“Loren!” Julia called “I didn’t know you were here. I’de have got you one too”
“Not a problem – I’ve only just arrived. And I’ve been wanting to try the service in one of your quaint british starbucks.”
Harry place the glasses on the counter and accompanied me back inside.
“so whats going on?”
“Well, Julia isn’t all that good at the whole devious thing. She got us together and more or less bullied us into ranking every male we had ever set eyes on.”
“So why has Sam only got an ‘as if’?”
“Because she has to think I want him for myself.”
I turned to the girl behind the counter who had been waiting patiently for us to finish our conversation – “A frappe with vanilla please”. She handed me a ticket and I walked over tot he collection point
“So what happens now?”
“Well, as far as they’re concerned, we have a secret to discuss – there is no other reason why I would have followed you in here again. And the only boy you’ve had any contact with today”
“Is Sam”
“Precisely” Harry smiled smugly, but I still wasn’t convinced
“But she wouldn’t make a play for Sam on that alone. I mean he’s… Sam” there was no other way to describe him, well there was, sweet and a bit weird – albeit a good kind of a weird. “And he’s Carrie’s brother” that was a point that had to be remembered, it was a very taboo area – at least where I came from.
“You’re right” Harry stuttered again, reverting from her confident expanation back to the timid girl I had first met “but they’ll be thinking about him, I mean they’ll see him as a possibility – in a different light perhaps.”
“And?” I prompted her to continue
“And, when we get them together at the party, if they can be alone, Julia might decide to make some sort of a move.”
“What about Billy.”
“Oh, I think I can handle Billy”
“You?”
“I’m full of surprises when I need to be”
I walked back outside, carrying my coffee. It was obvious that Julia was watching Harry and me carefully. As I sat down, I glanced at the book, Julia had been randomly doodling, but more significantly, she had doodled the excalmation mark next to Sam’s ‘as if’ into a question mark.
Chapter 25
I hadn’t really talked to Rebecca that much, which was odd, I could see a lot of myself in her. Rebecca wasn’t a walking contradiction like Harry, and she wasn’t the darling of the school social circle like JUlia, she shrack back a bit, but I could tell she observed what was going on, digested it and had a good feeling for things others might miss. That was probably why Julia had asked her to come here, an extra set of eyes, and a better brain to help her. Nevertheless, a few iced coffees down the line I was buzzing slightly and glad to get a chance to talk to her alone
“Julia tells me you’re good at school”
Rebecca didn’t deny it, she seemed a little embarassed about the whole thing. It was hardly surprising, to stay in with the in crowd, you really don’t want to boast about your academic acheivements
“Sam’s helping you with French?” she asked. Well, it was a staement, but clearly the subject of Sam had piqued her interest a little.
“He’s making sure I’ve got a rough idea of where to start – the stuff you learn is so different from back home.” I thought I might as well play myself down, if that was how Rebecca wanted to do things.
“Carrie was talking to me about Sam”
“What did she say”
“That he had a crush”
I nodded. It was obvious. Rebeccal loked at me expectantly. Eventually when she realised I had nothing to say she prompted me to continue with a “well”
“Well what”
She looked at me conspitorially “are you going to do anything about it”
“I’m not onehundred percent sure what you mean”
“You’re obviously planning something, cooking some plot up with Harry”
it was the first time I had heard anyone else call Harry by her chosen name. Rebecca had obviously noted that she preferred it
“Don’t worry about it”
“Are you sure its what you want. I can see a lot of problems for you”
“For me?”
“It isn’t going to be easy to convince Julia that its a good idea – she thinks Sam is a bit weird”
So rebecca had figured out exactly what we were planning. Smart girl. A bit too smart. What chance did I have if she was going to second guess my every move. I needed her on my side, that was for certain. My side. A worrying thought. Was drawing battle lines really what I wanted to be doing – or was this train of thought the sort of weakness that could cost me success and victory. Victory? Did I really want to be top of the tree? Did I want to beg for the scraps of success thrown down to me by the beautiful people who got everything else easily. There was no sensible answer that I could even begin to construct.
“A penny for them?”
That didn’t make any sense. Rebecca was staring at me intently, a slightly concerned expression coating her carefully applied makeup.
“A penny for your thoughts?” she explained “What are you thinking about”
“Oh nothing.”
“You know what Harry would say to that”
“She says a lot of things – I’m not quite sure I get her”
“If you think that, you’re probably closer than most.”
“I’m certain I don’t get you”
“I have a certain air of mystery?”
“Something like that”
“Cool. But I like to think I’m straightforward”
“To everyone?”
“To people who understand whats going on around them.”
“Ah. So not to anyone?”
Rebecca laughed. Then she looked around carefully to ensure neither Julia nor Harry were anywhere near.
“You get me. I sit back and watch. I’ve watched you, and I think we are a lot alike.”
I nodded and smiled. She did not return the favour but instead continued to talk. Her change of mood had thrown me.
“I’m not sure that I like the way you’ve been behaving, you already have secrets, you’re sitting there making alliances. Julia has you down as a carbon copy of her, Carrie thinks you’re a freak like Sam, Harry sees you as another chemeleon or whatever the hell she is. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you’ll never hold up all these different personalities. I’ll be watching you like a hawk – these people are my friends, if you so much as consider hurting them, I wil make your life hell”
“Pardon?” I really couldn’t belive my ears. Quiet, reserved, Rebecca was threatenign me. And not in a way I could use against her – she had my actions down to a tee. WHen you hear someone observing imparitually like that it really gives a jolt to the view that you’re in control. Was Rebecca really able to see through me so easily?
“Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it.” she repeated herself. I just sat there in stunned silence, staring at a spot in mid air about a foot above her forehead. Rebecca smiled sweetly, then just as I was considering standing up and going to find where Julia had got to Rebecca began gabbling excitedly:
“You really don’t know much about the town do you. It has so much histry, that chuch, just down the road is norman, built a thousand years ago. and then theres Peterhouse college, that was founded not long after some religious refugees from Oxford decided to set up a university here where the old school of pythagoras used to be” It took me a while to realise what had caused Rebecca to decide an impromptu history less on was appropriate – at first I wondered if it was some sort of multiple personality thing, I don’t know sort of a good side, a bad side and an incredibly boring side, but it was Harry tapping me on the shoulder that cleared everything up. I looked into rebecca’s eyes and she met my gaze firmly, and smiled a confident winning smile. Her makeup was perfect. It was an odd thing to say but it was too perfect, almost clinical. I had visions of her training herself using magazines as guidelines with no real feel for what she was doing, applying makeup like a technical illustrator draws blueprints rather than as an artist carefully highlighting and shading beauty. It was comforting to think she might never quite notice that sort of imperfection even if she could see through the great flaws in othwer people’s behaviors
“I’m off” Harry said
“s’pose I should be too then” Julia replied. It was clear she was a little irritated at not having got any firm idea of who it was that Harry had set her heart and her mind on. I joined for for the walk back home. We didn’t talk much – she was concenred about how she could be missing whoever it was Harry was flipping out over and I, well I was concerned that Rebecca would spoil everything if I wasn’t careful.
Chapter 26
There was a tension as the day of the party approached. Julia was going mad, running around in small circles, making lots of phone calls to more of less everyone she had ever known, met or even vaguely heard of, in the vauge chance they had some form of psychic communion with Harry, and never being satisfied with the answer she was getting from them. I on the other hand had my own worries. Rebecca had the potential to expose me for the fraud I was, and no reason to like me. I had to find some way of ensuring she would side with me as I pulled my way into the good social graces of my new peers, or I had to find some way to destroy her. Getting her to side with me was going to be hard. She had already seen that I was acting underhandedly towards her friends, so unless I was to infiltrate the position and become an equally trusted friend, there was little reason I could even begin to come up with that might find betraying them to me a viable option. The alternative was for her to be dumped, excluded from the social circle. That had a more promising feel to it, Rebecca was quiet, studious, traits that the beautiful people would only at best put up with. She wasn’t a leader, she didn’t have anything to add to the group, she was a hanger on, dependent upon her firendships to keep her in the exaulted position of cool clique member. I didn’t know how I was going to bring her down, but there would have to be an answer somewhere. I flicked though Mack’s book
Principle 4. A cut above the rest
We’ve all seen it, one day they are on top of the world, the next they are being rushed into the betty ford clinic, there career is over and noone wants to hear from them again. How does this sort of fall happen – if you ask any celebrity it happens to they’ll tell you: it wasn’t their fault. Sure, they may have taken the drugs, got involved with the criminals, slept with the prositute and acted in a film starring Chevy Chase, but that isn’t where it all started. It all started because of a conspiracy. Maybe it was the scientologists, perhaps the new york backers had decided that their career was over. Maybe they were typecast and couldn’t reach their fuill potential. Whatever it wasn’t something they did.
Of course, if you havn’t guessed by now, you might as well be using this book as lavetory paper, these people are wrong. Of course its something they did. One very small thing. Something lotas of people, perhaps most people do but never really notice (and even when its to late and their lives are wrecked as a result, they don’t realise what the mistake really was.) What was the mistake? Dependence.
Imagine you have to change a lightbulb, either you can stand on a ladder, or you can suspend yourself from several pieces of string tied to the ceiling, which is more afective. Someone could come along and break the rungs of the ladder one by one. But each time they break a rung you’re not standing on, you’re OK at least until the ladder is sufficiently weakened that it breaks. If, on the other hand you attempt the ariel suspension, each time someone breaks one of the strings, you will find yourself flailing around trying to regain your balance. And int he process of doing this, you’ll be weakening the other strings – which may, in turn break. And when they do break, its a longway down to the floor – and unlike with the ladder, the burke who is doing this to you won’t be there to break your fall (this has downsides of course, blood from the gaping gash on his forehead might ruin your suede shoes…)
Life is a lot like this, if you’re only support in the social structure comes from above, if even on of those people decide to cut you from their lives, then you could well be set for a fall. And you will have no recorse, since people will always side with those more popular and beautiful than them. You will be on your own with nothing left but memories of better days.
But you knew all this. What you want to know (if I have have taught you well, and in my heart I know I have because, frankly, I’m not capable of doing anything other than the best) is how to arrange for someone who is dependent on thse above you to come crashing down. Each situation will be different and will require independent thought on your own part (damn it, I’ve just cut the potential market for this book down to the twenety or thirty human’s alive who are capable of independent thought. Oh well, at least I can be sure that copies of this book will never be exposed to boy band concerts or professional wrestling), however there are some things to watch out for:
It isn’t you doing the cutting. You might be manipulating others to do the cutting, but noone (except you) should realise this. This is imortant, after all, once whoever has been cut has their face well and truely muddied, you might wat to rely on them for support (and to keep your expensive (and hopefully blood stain free) suede shoes out of the mud, when you walk all over them). Its also important that others don’t realise what you’re doing – on the assumption your motives for this are virtuous (you want to enter the power vacum – you’re not just doing this for sport… for sport I recomend genetically engineering foxes who can hunt huntsmen), you don’t want them getting the wrong impression that you are a manipulative bitch who is out to attack anyone within their circlke of friends, no you want them to think that this is all their idea. Its amazing what people will do when they think they have been even slightly ingenious. Consider learning to forge their handwriting then writing “destroy and humiliate victim socially” on the todo list in their diary – after all, I’m assuming thwese people arn’t really that bright!”
So you need someone to do the cutting – your best target is the highest rancking socially. People tell you that days of social ranking and peerages are past, that we live in a society where people are judged on merit. Perhaps. But there is still a very clear social strata, especially in the schoolyard. There will be someone at the top – if they cut their ties with any individual, so too will anyone who supports themselves socially simply by hanging from the queen bee’s popularity. This is advantageous, one snip and they fall to the floor, unable to begin to pick themselves up until you are fully esconsed within their previous position (or at least furthr up the ladder if your sights arn’t set quite so high at this stage.)
Now comes the devious part – you need a mechanism. Forget the diary thing, that was a joke (unless they really are that suggestible, in which case I suggest you start off by putting “Rob a bank and give me all the proceeds” in their diary… in fact if they are _that_ suggestibale, I really hope you would have already thought of that one – I’m not meant to be a substitute for common sense you knopw, just a moral guardian and ideas man). What you need to do is make the victim look bag in the eyes of Miss popularity. You don’t need to worry about any one elses eyes. So find out what it is that little miss populrity hates, and make sure that your taget is doing/saying/wearing/sleeping with just that thing. Repeat until exasperated or bored.
Rubbing it in. This is an underrated, but very important issue. When Miss popularity says anything, agree with her. If she doesn’t say anything, moan about it yourself, just enough to get her to pick up the subject and run with it (and if you do the latter, as long as you’re opinion is not directly questioned, say no more about it, hopefully noone will remember the cause of the discussion, only their resultant outrage. If you’re really good at this part you’ll soon find newspapers aplenty offering you higly paid jounolistic jobs – it isn’t the opinions you present, its the way you convince the public that the opinions are their, not yours!
Fillingt the vacume. I keep saying you should do this, but I don’t say how. There is a reason: if you have been able to do everything I have suggested so far, filling the vacume comes for free. Don’t understand? Think about it, you’re influential enough with the key figures in determining popularity, you have sided with them on a major argument and their friend has been dumped. You will be both well placed, and they already know you are on their side. There isn’t anything to do – you’re in. Just make sure you are willing to do whatever they want, however vacuous (and it will be vacuous… these people don’t do things which require thinking or even vague reasoning skills)
And there you have it. A few grooming skills (you know, just like great apes on the discovery channel – the closest living relatives to your peers – have) and you’ll be away.
Chapter 27.
It was reasonably simple to come up with a plan to strike at Rebecca. I made a few telephone calls to try to arrange for things to happen in precisely the manner I required. Everyone seemed surprisngly willing to play the part of unwitting dupe – it seems noone really noticies when you are suggesting things that seem totally normal without knowledge of the masterplan lurking behind them. Noone could know what it was I was really intending to acheive, there had to be a element of complete and utter surprise for things to work perfectly. Everything was due to occur on the night of the Party. All I had to do about Rebecca was wait.
Carrie was an entirely different kettle of fish. The problem with Carrie wasn’t finding a way to demolish her – seeing me effortlessly win over her boyfriend would do the trick – her reaction to my cool but cruel action owuld be enough to humiliate her in front of everyone – and from what I had seen Toni was as much of a friend as Carrie, they would have to choose between Her or us – and Living with Julia, I was the natural answer. The problem was that we were going to have to go public at the party. Toni had invited me to meet hims there – to be his date – and Carrie wasn’t going to be present. I decided to call on Antonio and see what I could arrange
“Hello”, it was Antonio’s voice on the other end of the phone, as melodious as ever. I quivered slightly at the sound
“Hi, it’s Loren”
“Hey, still on for tonight?”
“You bet I am, but Antonio”
“Call me Toni”
“Okay then, Toni, is it alright for us to meet up in the club, not beforehand”
“Why?”
“Well. I’m just not sure about this. Carrie doesn’t know about us”
“No. But that isn’t a problem is it? She won’t be there”
“Everyone else will though. She’kll here about it.”
Antonio paused, he made a few grunts, which I supposed passed for the sounds of thoughtfulness transmitted over the telephone network. It would have been more affective had we used a videophone and he had chosen to adopt a rodanesque pose, but such is the nature of technology that we have neither videophones nor flying cars. Everything is so distinguishable form magic I can only assume science muyst be insufficeintly advanced.
“Toni” I pressed him.
“You’re right. I should tell her face to face.” I think I detected a tiny simmering glint of malice in his voice. Whatever, it wasn’t directed at me “But you still want to go to the club with me?”
“Of course, yes” thats the way girl, play it cool, don’t let him know just how interested you are.
“Then yes, let’s meet up in the club, noone will pay attention if you desert them for a while to be with me. and the dicing with the danger of our discovery – it will make things a littl emore exciting.”
I wasn’t really sure how anything could make it more exciting. This was me. Plain loren from Boston. Loren who’s idea of a good date was… well… anyone really. Loren going to a nightclub and meeting up with the most gorgeous guy I had ever laid eyes on. Meeting up in secret, hoping that his girlfriend – the girlfriend he was dumping in order to go steady with me – wouldn’t find out about our trist. It was a shame I couldn’t do this openly and honestly. I really wanted to. Noone back home would ever belive that Antonio could fall for me, and here we were, conspiring together so that our love would win out against all odds. Perhaps I was tending too much towards hyperbole, but hyperbole was how I felt, I don’t think my bole had ever been this hyper before.
There was one thing left to do before I started getting ready for our big night out:
“Hi”
“Who is this?”
“Me”
“Ah. Am I meant to know who me is? Or is this oem sort of gussing game?”
“Do you want it to be a guessing game?”
“I’m not very good at them. Whoever I guess it it, it always turns out to be someone else. I think maybe people deliberately phone me up, then switch calls over to entirely unrelated people”
“Sam. its Loren”
“I know. I have caller ID”
“So why the guessing game spiel.”
“The phone companies are out to get us. I assure you, if they thought thwey could ruin my social life by giving me someone elses caller ID, they would. Anyway, you sound just like Julia. You might have been her.”
“Julia? Did she phone you”
“No. But things could have got confusing”
“Sam. I’m american. I don’t sound anything like her.”
“well it would have been really confusing if you were julia then. It would have meant you had switched voices and everything. That sort of thing would be worrying, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t”
“Well good. I’m not worried.”
“Fine.”
“So…”
“What?”
“well, i assumed you were going to interrupt. You called me. Was there anything you wanted to know”
“I just wanted to check you were coming tot he party tonight”
“Yeah. I did say I would.”
“I thought you might chicken out on me.”
“I don’t break my word on purpose.”
“But you say Julia hasn’t phoned you at all?”
“No. Why?”
“Ah. Just something I thought I heard her say.”. You see, depsite everything I am the master of deception. That last sentence was entirwely untrue, but also was in no way proovably untrue – its easy enough to missinterpret almost anything if you are sufficiently stupid (or listening to someone sufficiently stupid, which is closer to the truth in this particualr case), but now sam was thinking that Julia might actually want to talk to him – confidence boosters R us. Or something In any event, all that was needed now was a little of Harry’s fairy dust. I didn’t know quite what it was she was planning to pull, but I was already sufficiently trusting of her skills that I was confident whatever she did was going to be a success. It was a risk, and one I’m sure uncle Mack wouldn’t have approved of, but the way i saw it, I wasn’t relying on Harry for my long term goal, just a minor step in my path, and there was nothing big she could do to betray me - at worst she could tell Julia and Sam what had been planned. No big loss, really, in fact that might be enough to get them together.
I ended the call with sam, and completly satisfgied with my skills as both aphrodite and agent prevacatur, I practically skipped upstairs to my room. Tonight was going to be fantastic. I could see nothing that was going to get in the way of following uncle Mack’s plan. By the beginning of school on Monday, I would be in the popular set. From there on in everythign would be easy – I would have a real social life for the first time in my existence!
Chapter 28
For julia, preparing for an evening out was more than the simple process of washing dressing and applying make-up, it was a meditative psychological process thought which she trancended her normal state of being and became the energised party animal who was intended to make the entire town look at her whe she strutted her ever so carefully arranged stuff on the floor of the club. Observing in the detail I did was a fascinating experience, somewhat like watching a butterfly emerging froma cucoon. It wasn’t that the every day julia wasn’t hyper and enerjectic, it was just that she was restrained – there were inhibitions which she hid behind – restrictions placed on her by polite society which had no place in the excitement of a night on the town. While I made careful arrangements to my hair I watched Julia’s little rituals with the fascination who knew that with understanding of the process it would vbe she who would onday fill her trainer’s shoes.
Julia had begun slowly. She worked on the fine detail first, jobs which required the care of her everyday selfe – things which there would be no place to worry about at a latter stage. She was quiet, wearing her headphones, first paying careful attention as she cliped and filed her nails. Then she placed a pack upon her face and lay back to allow her sink to absorb the natural goodness. This from a girl who would normally complain if you were to push her face first into a pile of mud. Not that I had actually done that – sometimes fantasy is sufficient..
Next she showered. This I summised was the source of her metamorphasis. Washing away the mundane and coming out not only revived and refreshed, but also reborn. Already I could see the flames burning in her eyes as she prepared to burst forth out of her old skin, to rise again as the pheonix rises from the ashes, but we mustent jump thhe gun. Her new self was inside, but there was still an element of patients to be required as makeup was applied – not subtly to hilight her face, but in a more dramatic tone which would reflect the club’s light, draw attention not only to those looking directly at her, but also from otheras simply glancing accross the room.
Next she dried her hair and nails in one drawn out session of teasing and blowing with a hairdryer abnd brush. LArge theatrical strokes, each with more energy, each with more life. It was now that she truely began to change. Julia stepped inside her wardrobe, she forgot all hers carful plans of earlier and wripped one item of clothing after another from her hanger, allowing them to drop to the floor until she had found a perfectly complimenting outfit. It was pink – and were if not for the association our society links pink to women, one might has suspected the fluoescent coulourscheme had come from a workman’s shirt. In any event, it was intended to attact attention, and I suspected even in the complete absence of light it might be successful. He hair was backcombed, tassleded, teased and sprayed into a display which appeared to defy gravity. Her jewelarry was minimal and tastful when compared to her costume, but still exceeded her everyday ware. And she was on the telephjone talking at an even greater speed than before. It was Harry, I think, who had th epleasure of the conversation while I tried to mimic her transformation, but despite having watched a master, my heart wasn’t in it. I had no desire to attract attention, I just wanted to slip into the background with Antonio while Sam and Julia discovered their own attraction to one another.
Never did I build up to her level of excitement, but in part that was because I was buzzing from the beginning. to julia a social activity of this scope was an everyday occurence, but to me this was new. It was more than visiting with friends,. more than talking and laughing, it was a process of going out into the town and a night of victory. Unlike anything I had done before – and Iw as looking better than I had before. Not quite the stunning, sparking Julia, but not the dull drab loren of old. I had reached a new height. Nothing was going to stop me now.
“where do you think you’re going young lady”
Noone except for my mother. Even now I could head Dad pouring milk into a saucepan
“Its a party, tonight. I said”
“Looking like that. Really, do you think thats a good idea”
“This is Cambridge Mom, not new york. I don’t think they actually manage excitement here”
“So, whos house is the party at?”
“Its at a club.” The moment i said that, I regretted it. Mom wasn’t cool – I was too young to get into clubs, too young to drink leagally. There was no way she would let me get away with it.
“Ah. And Aunt Gladys knows this does she?”
“Of course she does” Julia said, I hadn’t notice her following me down the stairs.
“Well…”
Mom was flumoxed. But hey, I was a teenager and if my cooler, madder aunt couldn’t undermine her authority to my benefit, what would the poiunt of my existence be?
“We’re out of Mil dear” dad cried from the kitchen
“So I’m off then Mom”
I walked towards the door.
“You… You… Mom called after me as she hurried towards Dad.
Dad mouthed something to Mom, I didn’t quite catch it, but susepcted he was siding with me – some of his stories suggested he didn’t always say on the strictly legal side of the law when he was my age. Mom finally finished her sentace just before I shut the front door
“You have a good time darling”
“We will, Julia called back.”
Then we ran to gfet out of sight of the door before mom had a change of heart.
Chapter 29
It was still early in the evening when we met at the Cafe. Putting aside all thoughts of school, there was still a buzz between us. Everyone seemed a little surprised to see Sam, especially given Carrie’s absence. But there were fewer of the snide comments which I had heard before. Julia, in particular, was far more willing to talk to hime, or at least acknowledge his existence. Harry, spent a lot of time avoiding looking at him – it was play acting, and not as good as her earlier work as far as I was concerned, but nevertheless it appeared to be effective. Julia certainly appeared to notice it – and she smiled a devious smile I had seen before – on my own face, in the mirror.
We hung out, until everyone arrived, I noticed that Billy wasn’t in evidence. Harry explained, he had been held up by his job – apparently he wouldn’t be around until much later. I knew there was more to it than that, and I pressed her, but Harry insisted that there really had to be some secrets to which I did not know the answer. I smiled and nodded, but the truth would out – Harry couldn’t hid behind her cautious shell with me. I knew it, she knew it – or she would know it soon. School had been put to the back of our minds, we were young, we were hip, we were ready for a night of drinking and dancing, there was noone who was going to hold us back. I downed the rich syrup which had collected at the bottom of my Mocha and led the exodus from the coffee shop and out towards the night club’s long queue.
There really isn;t any good reason for the length of the queues outside of night clubs. If a club cared about the customers coming through the doors, they could easily make them more accessible. You don’t see queues like that at a supermarket – or even at a cinema. The reason the clubs do it is to intimate that they are popular enough to leave a queue of people advertising what they are prepared to stand through in order to enter. And noone in the queue would have it any other way – it’s part of the clubbing experience, the standing out in the cold, a faint fog of spitting rain making it just slightly uncomfortable, but being ingnored in the general excitable atmosphere the line engendered. Through the rain the steetlamps glowed was soft and faintly shimmering. I basqued in the glow, my heart beating ever faster. I could hear a thumping beat of music from inside, only faint but certainly audiable, I tapped my foot in time with it. We moved forwards towards the door as a few people were allowed inside. Why only allow two or three? Julia passed me one end of her long pink artificial feater boa, I hung it around my neck. It clashed with my more sophisticated black slinky number, but it was a spur of the moment thing, and I was happy to embrace it.
Rebecca had hardly said a word to me all evening. I don’t think it was so much that she hated my guts, she had proven to herself that she preferred people to belive we had no problems – it was a sensible manever – she certainly didn’t want to stir up a controvosy, especially when I managed to be fitting in fairly well. Rebecca had been watching a well dressed man, good looking abut significantly older than himself. he had seen her in the coffee shop, locked eyes with her and acknowledged her existence. After we had left (and that was with alittle persuading ond waiting for Rebecca who had wanted to see if he was watching her) and positioned ourselves in the queue, he too had come around, and was posting himself futher down the line. Many people might consider that sort of thing freaky, but Rebecca was, apparently up for it, or at least happy to lead him on. Advising her not to talk to strangers would probably be frowned upon, and she was big enough and ugly enough to take care of herself. Anyway, my motives were not particularly without an element of the self serving in this matter.
We edged closer to the door. Micheal and Kim were being very couply. Its interesting how people can undergo a complete transformation when they are placed with one another. Both Michael and Kim, on their own, were perfeclty respectable, entertaining and moreover fun people to be with. Together, however, they were either strained, because only one was managing to be involved int he conversation or worse, they were both interested in each other, creating the sort of nauseating scene that was before us now. I’ve seen it happen before, in fact to almost every coupe that exists, the potential nausea generation when with single friends is quite astonishing. I made a mental note that no matter what happened I would never allow anotni and me to be like that. Of course tonight we would be totally alone, noone would have to witness the spectical – we would leave the nausea for Carrie when she publically founf out what had occured.
I was woken from my dreaming by a call of
“How old are you” by a bald, burly, neanderthal dressed in a black puffa-jacket and DMs. I responded with the truth: that I was eighteen. It was a truth – technically the untrue type of truth, but thew truth with had served me well enough in the past when we had wanted to see R-rated movies back home. I wasn’t expecting the reply of
“Pull the other one”, especially given that Kim and Michael had just been let inside. Julia tried to weave her magic, but the neandertal probably wasn’t quite up to understanding the reasoning that we just simply had to get inside.
We left. Rejected. Rebecca, who had studiously avoided talking to or associating herself with Julia, Sam or Harry as the argument had progressed, remained in line to chance her luck. Evidently her luck had held out as, while we retired back to the cafe to comisurate, and accept defeat, she never showed her face.
Chapter 29 – Defeat bones connected to the ankle bone
The hot coffee wasn’t as welcoming as the bottles of Reef inside the club would have been, but it was all we had the chance to consume. Julia was distraught, it had been, as far as she was concerned not only an inslut to her, but also to her fashion sense, choice of cloths and indeed everythign to do with arranging tonight’s activities. I could almost feel for her. I had bigger worries – what sort of strategem could get Sam and Julia together now. She was harldy in the mood for romance, as far as I could figure about the only thing which would save her from terminal depression and perhaps suicide was a large tub of Haagen Daaz double chocolate – at least britain was civilised enough to have that sort of over the counter prozac substitute.
We looked at it from all the angles
Did we look to young? Perhaps, but we couldn’t see any reason why Kim or Rebecca should look any older than us. There was no justification. Sure, they guessed we were underage, but hey, they wern’t going to let that sort of thing damage their potential profits if they thought they had a case of plausible deniability. It was the excuse for the rejection, but not the reason.
Was it what we were wearing? To give the bouncer any sort of high level managarial level reponsibility for determinging the fashion sense of prospective customers would be like giving Macdonald’s the responsibility for determining what made a meal full of flavour. I sujjested “giving Jane Austin responsibility for recognisding when a sentence whent on too long” as a better metaphore – I thought the whole mcdonalds one had too many flaws, but my point went over everyone elses head. It would have been nice to have Rebecca here siding with me. As it was, the only person who had any idea of what I meant was Sam and he preferred “Like asking Microsoft to judge what consituted ethical business practices”. He claimed it was biting satire. Personally I think boys like him should be forably kept away from computers until they are old enough that all psychological imprinting is complete.
Was it how we were talking? Well, I wasn’t I was busy hiding my disgust for Michael and Kim’s actions. So it wasn’t my words. I assume the bouncer was a neo-nazi based on… well mainly based on his choice of a fun and fulfilling career, but I had kept any discussion of socialism down tot he level approriate for an american citizen (which is only slightly louder than a modern british labour party. Ha! now that was biting saitre. Even Julia pretended she understood what I was talking about.)
which meant I wasn’t clearly making myself politically unacceptable – and I don’t think Michael and Kim were in any situation to have shown they were of a particularly socially acceptable sort – toungs manage to communicate little when they are jammed down another throut – and what they do communicate is usually passed on to the other participant (expect in the case of particularly good ventrilaquists)
There was no real explantion. We had all the bases covered, and the neanderthal still managed to find a reason to bar us. Perhaps we were just the result of a random firing of his neuron. It was clear the God hated us. I could have told you that months ago when he decided to screw up my life by sending me here in the first case. At least I still had the benefit of the fallen angel backing me from inside his book, and, less usefully at the moment, given our state inside the coffee shop instead of doing what my dad would embarass me by calling “boogying the night away” inside the club.
We had no intention of giving up. Harry and I had too much riding on tonight’s activities to let us give up, while Julia felt humiliated by her rejection – and I was worried she would blame me, or perhaps Sam, and our close association with her on the night when she finally had the chance to analyse what had occured rationally.
“There must be a fire escape” I suggested, another way in
“Alarmed – at least if they have any sense” Julia told me. I had the feeling that perhaps she spoke not from reasoning as she pretended but rather from a position of bitter experience.
“If there was an easy way in, I think, people would know about it, and perhaps they would exploit it. Anyway it would get shut faster than we could say lowered profit margins” Harry said. She was right
Could we perhaps change clothes and try again? Unlikely – Julia had made the mistake of causing the bouncer to think, he would probably resent that and bare a grudge. It didn’t lead to the likelyhood he would forget us that quickly.
Was he on the door all evening? If he had a break, perhaps that would give us another chance. It didn’t seem likely, Julia thought it was worth a go. Harry hesitated, but was generally positive. I was less sure about the whole thing – I wasn’t big on rejection, there was no reason to go through the same sort of humiliation in front of another different crowd, but I was willing to go along with the majority, like Uncle Mack had suggested I should so I looked to Sam. Sam wasn’t there.
Chapter 30
Sam had, in fact crossed to the other side of the Coffee shop and was talking to some people who looked more like Harry’s scene. Tall, long haired men with leather great coars which hung down to their ankles and flapped behind them as they walked. They were waring nail polish and chains – their preperation for the evening must have been as meticulous as Jennys, though I noticed their penchant for pink was somewhat less obvious. Sam noticed that I, and indeed the result of us were looking at him and his new compainions. I couldn’t blame him for dumping us and trying to find people who were not quite as big a group of losers, but his taste was seriously flawed if he thought these were the answer. Sam started to gesture, pointing his head towards them, jerking it vigorously. Whats that boy, you’re trying to tell us something boy? Timmy is stuck in the well? No? What then? You want us to come over boy? Well why didn’t he ask rather than looking like someone with a particularly weird form of nervous twitch.
“Loren, Julia, Harry”, Sam was excited. “I think I may have fallen on the answer”
“It’s strange” Julia commented, ” each and everyone of those words I know, but Sam manages to convert them into some meaningless jumble”
“No. You’re missing his joke”. It wasn’t the fact that it was the talest of the leather clad men speaking, nor the long tatoo spiralling down one of his arms – he was wearing a leatehr tank-great coat, a weird choice of fashin statement for a Cambridge coffee shop. It was his voice. We shared a common heritage, the accent was unmistakably new england. “The name’s Jed, and you’re friend here was responsible for attempting to drown us. luckily his plot was unsuccessful”. Jed pointed to a large puddle of coffee which was pooling under their table.
“Oh, I’m so sorry” I said without thinking and grabbed some napkins. It was only as I was halfway through mopping up the puddle that I realised that there was really nothing to be sorry about – at least nothing for me to be sorry about. This was Sam’s mes, and aside from the worrying man who’s hand was attached to his shoulder, he didn’t seem to be doing too badly.
“So”, Julia continued “What answer have you found, Sam”
“Well” Jed stepped in to avoid having to translate from Samspeak into princessease “Sam mentioned about how he was doing everything wrong today, how he didn’t get let into a club ruining all your nights which given that he has a crus – ow” Jed paused as he looked down at where Sam had kicked him “One of them?” he whisperd sotto voce “Sorry man” then continued “and how he had just spilt coffee over a group of men who were going to give him severe beatings.”
“You’re not? You wouldn’t” Harry stuttered
“No way. And anyway, this kid is cool. We got talking, you see the thing is, that club you got bounced at, me and the boys are playing there later”
And then I knew where it was I recognised them from. The CD Julia showed me – it was obvious why she had got it now, the Classix were playing here. I was talking to the Classix. I think it sunk into Julia and Harry at about the same time
“So you can get us in then” I asked
“Don’t see why not. Hey – is that a Boston accent?”
“Yeah”
“Where you from?” I turned and looked at Harry, she was green with envy – they wern’t bikers, but tI think she would have made an exception in this case. We left the coffee shop and walked back towards the club.
There is a bond between foreigners from the same area when they meet overseas. Jed was a successful… well, successfulish musician who, I learned had graduated from MIT and hung out at just baout every cool destination in Boston, but he seemed perfectly happy, in fact quite glad, to be talking to a schoolgirl who just knew about those places as being where the cool kids snuck into (of course, I didn’t quite tell him that, I may have exagerated my coolness a little). I just wished I was actually reasonably familiar with his music. I heard it, you couldn’t really survive in Boston without being aware of it, but there was nothing I really knew. Julia never discovered that she was a bigger fan than me, she was happy to bask in my reflected coolness. Hear it, MY reflected coolness. I was her Cool friend. I hal0f expected to wake up in a few minutes, but hey, while it lasted I might as well make the most of it!
Jed led us around the back of the club and up a stairway I owuld never had otherwise guessed led into a club. He urged us to be quiet while he checked that therewas noone around who would realise what he was doing. Apparently there was noone because I brought us into the backstage lounge and pointed us towards the door to the dance floor. Julia and harry did their best acts of little greatful girls, and I like to think I was a bit calmer. As the three of them headed out Jed suggested we come back later, but I chose to hang back now
“I know you’ve done a lot for us Jed, and tahnks a lot for that, but I was wondering if you could do one more favour”
“Sure thing”
“Well, that crush you mentioned, I’ve been trying to set Sam up with Julia for a while. I think with your help…”
He nodded and smiled.
I joined Julia and the others on the dance floor. Rebecca was easy to spot on the other side of the floor, talking to the man she had been eying earlier. I smiled to myself, then turned and waved at Jed. Rebecca noticed and glared slightly. We made our way over, her guy began to walk away.
“He is sooo hot,” Rebecca confided to Julia
“I made gagging noises. “you’re sick”
“What?” rebecca didn’t understand
“you’ve been chatting up my uncle”
“That is uncle Dave’s brother” Julia asked. Dave, my dad. Her laughter didn’t susbside for more than five minutes. I don’t know where Rebecca got to, but by the time we had recovered, she had gone, and her reputation was covered in egg.
Chapter 31
Reef. Alchohol and fruit juice. If you only observed young women at clubs you would come to the conclusion that it was all they ever consumed,. a sort of ambrosia of the like-oh-mi-gods. Bottles were purchased. The contents were consumed and the music played on. We danced, we haddled in groups we watched the crowd, we laughed, we sang along to “I’m a believer”.
All the time we moved in time to the music. Everyone together, it was a shared experience. When one laughed we all laughed. But while I played the part, I was not devoting all my attention to it, I kept taking sneeky peaks to see if I could spot Antonio, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was keeping out of Julia’s way, but I had no real chance to dump her. Wherever she went she dragged Harry and I with her, to act as a levelling mecahnism, ensuring that our intuitions matched hers. Interestingly she asked me (when she was sure Harry wasn’t looking) if she thought that Sam had been looking at her when Jed mentioned the crush. I told her that I had no idea, being under the table mopping up the spilled coffee, but that he might well have been – that he hadn’t spoken to me about Harry as much as he had talked about Julia (it wasn’t even a lie – obviously my cousin had come up in conversation more than any other people who I had only just met)
But eventually a girl has to go off on her own (or rather to the toilet, brining harry along with me, to discuss if our game plan had changed) Julia had promised to get more drinks in, and Sam was going to help (he seemed to be swaying a little less than my cousin at this point). It was the case that people like Sam and Julia should not really be left on thier own, and much as I suspected they discovered more trouble. Meer seconds after Harry and I had left them another of the puffa-jacket mafiosa had grabbed Sam firmly by the shoulder and directed him and Julia to a back room, complaining that they were buying drinks underage. It was almost as if it had been planned. In fact, if I had to guess (and I didn’t) it was almost as if one of the Classix’s roadies had doned a black jacket and done precisely what Jed had instructed him!
Harry and I listened to Julia’s protestations and to Sam pointing out that he suspected his civil rights were being infringed upon as they were led away. Then, when the coast was clear of lovebirds who needed to be forced to spend time alone with one another we returned to the bar. Jed beckoned us over tot he stage
“All done, ladies, how long do you want them kept there?”
“Until they the need to be surgicaly detached from one antoher’s faces” Harry suggested
“Until they figure out one way another whether they actually like each other”. Loren. Always the diplomat. Hey it wouldn’t do to let a man who looked like he had escaped for a bad sci-fi film to recognise me as the evil genius I was, he might betreay me to his alien overlords.
To social part of the evening’s activities were over – than tends to happen when you’ve arranged for your uncle to humiliate one of them while your cousin and her date are arrested by security staff with isufficient authority to hold them. Or at least it had tonight – I assume it always does, I was new to this sort of thing – it wasn’t really my family’s way of solving problems, but I didn’t expect clubs would be into the serving of hot chocolate based beverages. Harry had attached herself to one of the bands roadies, so I wandered off to see if I was able to find Antonio.
My first stop was the bar – inconsiderate of Sam and Julia not to leave my drink in an easily accessible place, I thought. Grapefruit flavour vodka based drink, apparently according to the label. I could afford to allow my self to let my guard slip a little, everything I had planned was following through perfectly. Jed was singing and I swayed along with the words
“Now everythings coming up roses,
but the ground’s still covered in shit
in the garden of sin
where the trouble’s begin
before the burning flames of hell are full lit”
A guitar solo rang out,m reverberating off the walls, red lights swpt around the club
“No You’ll never see me now, just a shadow
deception is so easy to do
but you won’t be relived,
when the decptors deceived
and those demons all come back to haunt you”
I flet a tap on my shoulder and spun round. It sillohetted against the bright lights of the stage was the tall, georgeous italian form of Antonio. He whispered to me that he wanted to get me a drink, I showed him a half full bottle of Reef, but I guess he must have just been a pessimist since he turned to the barman
“You know the incubus just isn’t a legend
The succubus more than a creature of night
If you don’t stay alert
you’ll get your just deserts
‘cos their teeth pack a powerful bite
And you’ll never be quite sure what has hit you
Everything can come to an end
Not every phenoix is reborn
When cries of victims are forlorn
and noone remains as your friend
and there’s no way that my heart will ever mend”
Antonio handed me the drink. This was by far the best evening of my life.
Chapter 32
Toni was charming. He was witty. He was swarve. He was sophisticated. None of that got in the way of the important point – that he was incredibly good looking. His shirt hung from his sleek chest and other his immaculaly pressed trousers. His eyes were a deep rich chocolately brown, smooth and creamy and entrancing, dehabilitating. I could have memorised every fleck and slicht change in colour of his iris had I been able to think sensibly as I stared into them. But that was impossible, I was under his power. Enthralled. He led me intot he centre of the dance floor, place his hands on my shoulders. i grasped his waist. I felt each and every of his perfectly honed hip muscles flex and he began his rhythmic dance. I followed as he led, he brought out a different dancing from the giggling group jigging of earlier. There was a passion and an earthy sensuality which he was bringing out of me. Every move we made was in time, as he tilted his head to his right, I tilted mine to my left, I followed each and every step he made, even our breathing and heart rates were in step.
As the music came to an end, Toni raied on arm and lowered another, I followed his movements and fell down into his arms. I looked up and could see the stage, Jed was lookign down straight at me. he smiled and beckoned for us to come over. I returned to my feet and grasped Toni by his hand. I rubbed my fingers against his fingernails and gradually pulled in in Jed’s direction. It was antonio’s turn to follow me now, he was my thrall as much as I was his. Jed was waiting at the side of the Stage, I went to Join him.
“Having a good night?”
I nodded “You bet. Hey, Jed, this is Antonio”
Toni raised his hand to shake Jed’s
” I noticed. And I thought you only had philanthophic motives for getting rid of Julia and Sam”
I laughed “Am I that transparent?”
Antonio laughed “Julia and Sam”. It was adorable the way he placed an accent on Sam as if Toni could hardly finish the sentence without choking
“Maybe you don’t know you’re friends as well as you think you do” Jed said, winking at me “I don’t know whats going on in there” he gestured towards the room where Sam and Julia were being held, “but its all gone awfully quiet – soemthing has happened”
“It if makes them happy”
“if it makes you happy you mean. Look, we’ve got a couple more sets to play, then we’re heading back for a party. You want to join us, just come through”
Antonio seemed stunned that I was standing here having a rock star inviting me to a backstage party while all the while grasping firmly on his arm. I turned to him and mouthed “You wanna go back later?” He just nodded in the afirmative.
We walked to the side of the stage. It was dark and not as crouded as the club’s main concourse, where on the dance floor bodies girated and convulsed in some vague time with the pounding music, here they were stiller, intertwined while lips touch cheeks, necks and other lips. I wound my arms around Toni’s torso and he grasped the small of my back firmly. His heartbeat was deep and resonated though my body, we were one in the darkness, together at last.
There are moments when time seems to stop, where what might be only a few seconds to those observing from the outside seem like an eternity to those involved. That is wat it was like with Toni and I, it was as if the rest of the world was just a distraction that we could remain where we were forever and all would be well in the world. Jed’s deep voice was pounding away another rock ballad but all I was paying attention to were the occasional whispers that toni was practically blowing into my ears. I had no idea of what was going on around us, I didn’t care – there was no arround us as far as I was concerned, there was only Toni and I, forever.
It seemed like it would never end, like it should never end, that we should have been eternally one, but these times pass – I was beginning to get thirsty and the music, I noticed had ceased. I pulled my lips away from Toni’s face, he looked down into my eyes and let go his firm hold, returning to just a light but tender touch upon my elbow. He was smiling a warm, loving smile. I let him go and walked in the direction of the bar, but I only managed to walk a matter of steps before I saw her, sitting there in a booth, nurding a class of coke and looking in horrified disbelief at Antoni and I. It was rebecca and as I looked at her, her horror transferred to my face and she picked up my smile. Rebecca, Carries closest friend had seen everything. Rebecca who I had hurt and who had every desire to hurt me now knew precisely what my secret was. I had no reason to think she would keep this to herself, she would tell Carrie, and then she would tell everybody. There was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. I looked back towards Antonio, tears beginning to well up within my eyes. He still hadn’t seen Rebecca and came up towards me. His shock was more visible than mine, a physical jerk and spinning towards Rebecca
“Rebecca, fuck, I didn’t know you. Did you see… It wasn’t like it…”
“Save it for carrie” Rebecca replied.
Chapter 33
Rebecca was true to her word. She set out to destroy me, and began where she could, by running to make a telephone call.
Carrie. She was telling Carrie about Toni and I, about our passionate embrace in the corner of the club. Carrie knew that Toni and her wouldn’t last – every knew that Toni and Carrie wouldn’t last, but Carrie had shown herself willing to fight from the first time I met her. It wasn’t the sort of thing that a friend should have done. I could have waited for the relationship to end if all I had wanted was Toni – if he was asking others out then it wouldn’t have been much more than a few days – no, the reason I had gone this way was that I wanted to see carrie hurt, and the plan had backfired. There was nobody to blame but myself. So I blamed Toni.
“why did you let her see us like this?”
“I…”
“You didn’t break up with her”
“but I thought…”
“And she saw everything we were doing, she must have watched us all the while we were togethether”
“Look, we were…”
I was being unfair the Antonio. I wasn’t his fault, but I had to stop thinking about what I had done. It was the old week Loren who worried about that sort of thing, we had to rise above it, to know that we would get over whatever lay in our paths, we would succeed – look what I had done in the two weeks, the fortnight, I had been in England. It was a meteoric rise, there was no reason why this setback should stop me now, and I had antonio to give me a leg up.
“Toni, I’m sorry”. his face softened, he stopped holding back as much as he had done. He crouched down to tlook me face to face, eye to eye and he said. In his wonderful smooth voice
“No. I’m Sorry.” And his smile – oh his smile – it was perfection, as if an angel was there showing me paradise on his lips.
“Hey” It was all I had to say. I ruffled his hair and he placed his hand on my back.
More music began and for another unknowable length of time, once more I was lost in Toni until Iwas rudely awaoken
“You bitch!”
“Pardon.” I spun around, halfway across the room Rebecca was standing, looking on a gloating smile tempered with a mock aire of concern for her friend on her face. And standing, looking at us was Harry.
“Harry?”
“Don’t harry me” It appeared Harry had been taught english by the same people who gave my mother her collection of meaningless sentence fragments
“What the hell are you doing” she continued. “I thought you were Carries friend. I thought you didn’t want Antonio”
“no look”, Antonio tried to place himself between Harry and me. It was sweet, he was trying to do the whole action hero bit, defend my honour. “Its not her fault.”
“get ut the way you basterd, I’ll deal with you once I’ve found out how Loren could betray me like this”
“Betray you?” I stammered. I was stammering, Harry was being totally forthright, not a shadow of the little timid harriet at all. I coughed and spluttered. Kim and michael had come over now, along with rebecca, all glaring with the same level of vengence.
“Betray all of us” rebecca backed Harry up. This wasn’t about logic, it was aboutr emotion, some barrier I hadn’t quite managed to overcome. It was too soon, there was no way I could have an argument and belittle Carrie because she wasn’t here. She was the victor of every argument by default.
“Don’t blame her” Antonio tried again. It was good of him to try, but really he wasn’t important. he would have to deal with michael later – but assuming Kim didn’t have a total grip on his mind, there peobably wouldn’t be much to worry about there. Men didn’t have to worry about this torrent of emotion which burrowed deep down into my heart. Should I stand my ground or tunr and run. The former seemed like the new Loren. if I stood and fought maybe, just maybe I would win one of them over. Harry would understand. Someone would understand. Someone.
Harry didn’t seem to understand. I heard about how Carrie looked after her when she had finsihed with a particularly painful breakup. Carrie was, by all accounts a living saint, and I was a foul temptress, a succubus to destroy Carrie. Now rebecca had the smarts to know I was up to something, it was Harry who could keep me from ever regainign any ground. There was no sane defence I could play. Antonio went to put his arm around my shoulder, to show that he still cared, but how would that help me. Everyone knew that Toni was a bastard now, and even though he was fantastic, I couldn’t quite bear his touch against my skin. Not at the moment, not with everything else.
And I was no longer the strong confident Loren. I reverted. I felt Loren’s strength fade from my body, that I was back to being my momie little Loren. The tears that had been building up finally began to flow, the run like torrents. I knew just how I had made rebecca feel. Precisely how she had felt. And my only recourse was to copy her actions.
I turned.
Spun around.
Shrugged Antonio away from me
And sped for the backstage door, headed to the safty of a private room where I could have some time to think about everything that had happened, and perhaps find someone willing to trade lives with me.
Chapter 34 Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll
Sometimes time stands still because you are in a moment of bliss and your body and soul need to experience every subtlty that occurs, you need to record every though, feeling emotion and touch for posterity. there are other times where seconds take enterities to tick by. These times are prolonged because god is a sadist. As I sat there I watched the clock on the wall and followed the second hand as it circled around the face. In each second, universes could have been created and destroyed. After a few minutes I had falled fully into a pile of tears, there was nothing but my melancholoy around. I had sunk down into the warmth of a large comfortable soft sofa. Crying, frustated, not thinking, I don;t know if I just fell asleep or if I vblocked out the pain that followed but my memory of what has happened has faded away.
I was woken from my slough of dispond by a warm hand, caressing my fingertips. Antonio carfully lifted my hand and kissed it gently. I hardly responded, the effort of moving with the weight i was bearing was too much for me. Antoni sat down. His hair was still messed from where I had ruffled it earlier. I tried my hardest to smile, and I like to think he could see the effort, the token gesture because he smiled back. I must have been a mess. The makeup had taken an inordinate ammount of time to apply, now my tears must have washed it away. Toni didn’t seem to mind, he just place his arm around my shoulder -tentatively at first, wondering if I was going to shrug him away again, then more firmly until he was holding me. And then I was being held, it was like no matter how bad everything was, no matter how terrible everyhting was goig to be when Toni finally let me go, at the moment there was someone there who would make sure everyhting was all right.
Jed and the classix came in after the show. I had had time to do some basic maintenence work on my face, thanks to Toni’s handkerchief and the contents of my handbag. Jed hadn’t seen what had happened, and he was stunned to see me in the state I was. He offered to go and get Julia, but that was the last thing I needed, more judging.
“Well guys, It was going to be a party – the show was neat, but now. Well it seems more like I wake in here. I say we try and cheer the girl up. Loren,” he looked at me. I dabbed my right eye, which was still puffy red and glaring out that I had been crying to the world, with toni’s handkerchief again. “You do like champagne”
“Um yeah” I lied. I hadn’t actually ever had champagne before. Still, I accepted the glass – I didn’t want Jed to desert me too. I took a gingerly sip, a waft of yeast blew up my nose and the bubbles burth against my tounge. Maybe it was th efact that shapagne and grapefruit flavoured vodka don’t minx. Maybe champagne and destruction of your entire life don’t mix . Whatever, it wasn’t relally my thing, but Jed was smiling, hoping I was plaeased. I struggled to make a smile back.
“hey, everyone” Jed turned tot he others, who were pretty much ignoring us “Shes back”. A couple of people looked around, they didn’t seem quite as interested as I was. Maybe Jed wasn;t that big a star – he certainly didn’t seem to have any flunkies.
And so while others wandered around the room, talking, and occasionally being brought over to Jed to meet me, all the while music blaring in from the front of the club, I sat with Toni in silence. Not entirely in silence, it was more a hared understanding, a bonding moment of quiet togetherness. Antonio began to massage my shoulders, which realeased some of the tension which was preventing me from getting ymself back together. I had felt his touch before, but he was really good at that too.
“You need to relax more”
“Just carry on – that’ll do the trick.”
“No, really relax. Wait” Tonio obviously had a bright idea, he strode across the room to where Jed was standing and the two had a chat. I didn’t hear quite what they had to say, but Toni was clearly successful as the two returned
“Toni here says you’re in need of a little relaxation” Jed said. I nodded. Jed reacheing into his jacket and pulled out a small celophane bag and shock it. I didn’t quite understand
“Some blow?” Toni asked me
“Northern lights, we got it in amsterdam” Jed added
Grass, Marjuana. Drugs. I knew I had been told something about drugs, something along the lines of don’t do them. That it was wrong to do drugs. That people who did drugs wound up as addicts with their lives ruined. That people who did drugs were immensly cool like popstars and characters in irvin welsh novels. Perhaps my parents didn’t tlell me the last line, I forget. Anyway, my life was already runined, and Jed seemed to think it would help, Toni seemed to think it would help, and I was being treated as a guest, how could I possibly refuse.
“Well?” Jed asked
“Sure.”
Jed pulled a ciggarette paper from his pocket and tipped some of the grass onto it. With a deft flick of his wrist he began to rub the sides of the paper back and forth, rolling the paper into a cylinder. He twisted one end, and attached to other to a pin withing a little golden clip. Toni looked a Jed questioningly
“The american way. We don’t bother cutting with tobacco. Watch out kid, its stronger”
Jed placed the joint to his lips, sucked in and lit the tied end. He inhaled deeply, then stoon there motionless for a few seconds before exhaling. “Good god” he mouthed, then handed it to me.
I examined the joint carefuly, looking it over. The clip was small and intricatly formed, it was shaped like a swan. I thought back at how I had dreamed of the day I would take a romantic ride in a swn boat. How my life had changed int the past month. Jed looked at me expectantly, realising that he was probably wondering what sort of loser I was for being nervous I put the joint to my mouth and sucked in. The smoke burnt the back of my throat on the way down. I tried my hardest not to cough, but failed. Breathing deeply I passed the joint on to Toni.
“You know, you people are cool”
“Us people” I asked
“Yeah, americans.”
“ah”
Antonio, Antonio Giovani Capprelli saw me as a minority. It was funny really, but he was sweet and he tought we were cool. he thought I was cool. And I have to admit as he inhaled the sweet white smoke, he too looked pretty sophisticated. Jed and a couple of the guys ended up sitting in a semi circle on the floor in front of us while Toni and I hogged the couch, we talked and laughed, Jed sang a couple of the new songs he was working on and we passed the joint around, anti-clockwise – deosil according to Jed, he was writing a song about that too: “the deosil dance” or something. We spoke about Boston quite a bit – he knew where I grew up, he had wlaked along lots of the same streets I had – in fact he pointed out that the clip was a lot like the swan boats on the common too. He treated me like an adult, not like Mum and dad who constantly wanted to make sure I was sweetened up before they approached me, here I was allowed to be who I was, people were listening to my opinions and respecting them for their content. When i wrote back to some of my old friendsin Boston they would never belive was was happening here. I giggled, then I had to explain why I was giggleing, and that only made all of us laugh a lot more. It may not sound funny to you, but it was to us at the time, and the present was all that mattered to us then, the things that had happened an hour or so before were forgotten, and the future, grima s it had seemed now didn’t appear to be quite as close – wh were holding it off, creating, as Jed put it “A sacred space where noone and nothing can harm us”
One by one they left, Jed wanted to get an early night (he confided that to me about gales of laughter at about 3am) and a few others wanted to got out and dance. I just wanted to lie on the the couch and look at the bright lights which shon in throught he window from the street outside. Toni was content to watch me, I had this vague impression that he was sitting there considering how lucky he was to have found the sort of exciting girl who could make friends like these so easily – at least, that was what i wanted to think, and I allowed all other thoughts to be blocked out of my mind.
“Hey Lori” Toni said eventually
“Loren” I replied dreamily
“Loren. You know everyone has gone?”
“Yeah”
“We’re alone”
“Mmm. The lights are nice”
He looked at them with me for a moment “Yeah.”
Toni pressed his lips against mine, I responded in kind, and opened my mouth to allow our tounges to explore one another. It was a different experience, I had far less control and all my senses were heightened by what I had smoked. Ocassionally I felt the urge to laugh, but I had enough will power to contoll myself, just in case it would hurt Toni’s feelings. Toni certainly didn’t seem to be hurt – perhaps even now I was an actress extraoridairre, he just hugged me more firmly, lifting my body in his arms, supporting the both of us. Then he relaxed his grip and began to run one hand down my back, softly and tenderly. He pecked my cheek, and then began to trail kisses down by neck and around the base of my throat.
I felt a flick of his fingers, and then a loosenign around my shoulders. At first I wasn’t aware what had happened, just that Toni was changing how I flt about everything. Then I felt the sleeve of my top loosen too. He was unbuttoning my shirt. I wasn’t sure I was in a condition to do anything about it, but I pulled away
“What are you?”
“Loren, chill, its all cool”
“Toni I love you but”
“Then you want to show me how much”
“I want to show you but I don’t want this”
Toni grasped my by the shoulders and began peeling the front of my dress away from my skin. I so wanted to please him, and I knew I would enjoy whatever followed, but it just wasn’t right, I wasn’t clear headed, the drink and the grass were confusing my mind, how could I know what I felt.
“No. Not tonight” I pulled myself away and tried to get the straps of my dress back up over my shoulders
“Don’t be such a teese” Toni twisted around me, placing one leg on either side of mine, straddling me and looking deep into my eyes. I couldn’t move. I tried to push him back, but he seemed better at this game than I was. this wasn’t a game. This was me, he was taking away my right to choose, and who knows what I would have choosen on any other night.
“no” I repeated, but less forcefully. He might hurt me if he didn’t get his own way
“She said no”. jed? No not an american accent. Antonio jumped up and spun around “Hey we were playing, there was nothing…”
“Save it.” My saviour was Sam aided by Julia who was clinging to his arm
“I hoped I might find you here. Do you want to go?”
“Yes.” yes I did. Safe with Sam.. sam the safe man safty. We walked out through the back exit and I was violently and noisily sick.
Chapter 35
I woke up with a headache and a pain in the neck. The headache was caused by the drinking and smoking (what any reporter worth his sort would describe as a cocktail of drugs, probably conveniently forgetting that if alcholhol counts as a drug then any cokctail is a cocktail of druga). The pain in the neck was my mother. Thankfully Mom was unaware of my vomitting, but still she knew I had returned worse for wear far far later in the evening than cerfew allowed. Even before Julia had had a chance to awaken from her own personal drink enduced slumber, I was grounde. As Mom put it:
“You’re not going to see the outside of this house except for school until you’re… middle aged”
But, of course the problem with that sort of hyperbole was that the punishment wasn’t really enforcable – infact it was technically against human rights. Mom would keep me in afor a day or two, but ultimately dad would convince her to give in and I would be free – it would probably be even easier if Julia wasn’t significantly punished. What was a problem was that Mom had a strong desire to lecture mem on precisely what it was i had done wrong. It was my last day before school began and all I wanted was to hide away from the light and nurse myself back to health, perhaps find out just how badly I had faired – if there was anyone who ever wanted to speak to me again.
“You know that dad and I were frantic? We didn’t know where you were, we didn’t have any way of contacting yu and when you didn’t come back we thought anyrthing could have happened. Then Gladys told us that you were going to a club! You know you’re underage, what the hell did you think you were doing, was there any chance you realised how dangerous is is to get drunk in the middle of a city you don’t know. You shouldn’t even be drinking, at your age I would have never even considered…”
As you can guess, she went on a bit. I just nodded and made an attempt to look remorseful. Looking remourseful wasn’t hard. I felt remorse – not that I had betrayed Mom – she was, after all, keeping a secret which she admitted I had a right to know from me and anyway, she didn’t need to worry about me, like Gladys kept saying, if she was worried that was her own problem. No the remorse I felt was that I had drunk so much that I had lost control of the situation – and that with the dry mouth and burning eyes I had this morning I had still not entirely regained a level head.
Upstairs Julia began to move around, and Mom seemed to have bored of repeating herself over and aover again about why not informing her of eveything I did and drink was in someway worse that torturing kittens and was heading towards the the hob and her hot chocolate boiling pan. I could sware mom’s cocoa solids consumption must have gone up my many hundreds of percent since she had got access to an easy supply rather than just the megre offerings Gladys had provided us with while we were in boston. I took this opportunity to escape back to the saftey of our room. When Julia heard me, she rushed back to the bedroom
“Oh my god Loren, are you Okay? You look terrible”
Gee thanks. So nice of you to point that out. You yourself look… just like normal. Bitch.
“Bit of a headache”
“Hungover” there was a note of sympathy in the sickly sweet syrup that was her voice
“Just a bit”
“I don’t get hangovers”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Bitch.
“but you’re Okay?”
“Yeah, I s’pose”
Julia looked me straight in the eye. Her right eyelid flickered somewhat. She was concerned – perhaps she was going to have a go at me about arranging the whole charade which got her together with Sam. Or about my deserting her. Or more likely now that i was more sober she was going to have to have a go at me about Carrie
“Antonio, toni?” she queried, softly.
Great. It was the Carrie thing. I had hoped that she might have forgiven me or something. Apparently not.
“I was stupid and cruel. It was wrong of me, but Toni and Carrie were going to break up, and it wasn’t like i was trying to flaunt it in front of her”
“I don’t care abiout Carrie”
“You don’t”
“Know I care about you. Antonio tried to rape you last night”
“Pardon?”
And then it hit me. I hadn’t really considered it, I had just kept saying no, and he had kept insisting – quite violently, I suppose. It hadn’t felt like rape, more a heated discussion. But Rape was a perfectly reasonable word, it described the situation perfectly, You hear about people using drugs and alcholhol to get women more complient and about things like Date rape, but you never suspect they are really going to happen to you. And now Toni. And I hadn’t even thought.
I cried. And once I had started crying I couldn’t stop. This wasn’t the disparing depressive crying of last night, this was pure rage and relief and confusion – it wasn’t that crying was the right reaction, but rather that I had nthing better that I could do. No way to express what I was feeling.
“You’re not going to tell…”
“Not if you don’t want me to” Julia reassured me. And thatw as the thing about JUlia, say what you like about her (and I do, frequently) but she was nice. Now nice is a pointless word (Sam would probably hate it as much as sweet), but it summed Julia up. When it comes to being the sort of bland, uncomplicated persone who just looks after you as you recover from realising just how bad your life was, what you need around you is nice.
Chapter 36
And then there was school. After everything that happened it wasn’t the old, boring Loren that walked in there, nor was it the confident powerful, totally in control Loren. It was new girl – somewhat lost somewhat confused finding her feet in what seemed like a maze. When there are so many people around you all the time, it is odd to feel so alone. Julia was there to give me words of encouragement, and Sam, Sam came over to me when Carrie wasn’t aorund. It must have been hard for him, but at least he understood. Quite what he understoon I would never know, but in Sam world what I had done hadn’t destroyed our friendship. Sam had a good heart, he was the sort of person I knew I could rely on.
Everyone else – well most of them were strangers, but every so often I saw the face of Carrie or Toni or Rebecca or Kim amongst them, talking or laughing. Sometimes they would look over at me, then quickly turn away when I glanced in their direction. Who knows what stories they were spreading about me. Was I already known to everyone as a manipulative bitch? What else could I expect? All I could do was plod on, and hope for the odd quizical smile from someone who hadn’t heard the full extent of what I had done. No. There was more to it than that. I had to make myself popular again, uncle Mack wouldn’t have let me get away with feeling sorry for myself – he would want me back on my feet, learning exactly who I am, building myself up again after a fall. I was still alive, I wasn’t out yet, and there was still Julia and Sam.
And, little did I know it, but there was also Toni. It was lunchtime when he came over to me. I was stitting alone at the table – I couldn’t expect julia and sam to spend all their time with me, and I needed a bit of breathing space, to work out what move I was going to make next. I had considered flicking through “The Principles” but it was a bit public – if anyone knew the secret of my success. Success – ha! Still, I only had myself to blame.So I sat there, idly stirring a spoon around in my yoghurt, not really thinking about anything. In the distance there were a few boys kicking a bag agound, I watched and wondered if the bad felt as bad as me. Probably not, people were palying attention to the bag, there was probably at least one person who loved the bag and would come looking for it eventually – rescue it.
There was a nervous tap on my shoulder. I must have jumped a foot out of my chair – I certainly let out a small shreik
“Woah Loren”. It was antonio. He wasn’t the same confident person he had been last night, during the holiday – he looked a bit smalled under his school uniform (school uniform – if anyone had pointed that particular British tradition out to me I may well have made a bit more of a fuss before leaving the US, still it avaoided a good number of problems).
“i’m not sure I have anything to say to you”. I tried to brush him off, hoped he would just wander away and offer me an easy life. That was too optimistic even for me.
“I wanted to talk.”
“Talk?” I wasn’t impressed.
“I wanted to say sorry.”
Damn. All the while Toni was a bastard he was easy to dismiss, but now he had said sorry. His eyes were slanted and wide. Deep puppy dog eyes which looked down at me, pleeding for forgiveness. How could I fail to forgive him when he looked like that?
“Sorry?” All I could do was parrot him. What did he mean by ‘sorry’ – was it just an excuse to get me to let him off the hook or was there something constructive he wanted to do?
“Yes Loren. Sorry. You can’t belive how incredibly sorry I am. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I was drunk and confused, I really thought you were giving me the signals, that youw anted it as much as I did”
Toni looked and sounded genuine – and maybe he was confused. I certainly hadn’t been on top of my game that night, and there was a lot going on. Perhaps we do things differently in America, maybe I thought I was pushing him away when really I was leading him on.
“Well…” I was unsure of what to do, but above everything else I needed to have people on my side. Toni was people (well, at least a person). He had a reasonable excuse. But I kept comming back tot hose words Julia said. ‘Rape’. Was it really rape – it sounded so major, not just part of my every day life, and if it was then I was talking to and forgiving a rapist. But looking at him, his hands behind his back, the slight fidget while he waited for me to give an answer.
“Oh, you’re forgiven”. It was all I could think to say. Toni wasn’t going to hurt me, he had made a mistake. I had made a mistake. We all make mistakes. “I’m sorry too” I added.
“So…” toni had relaxed, his hands we moved back to his sides, his shoulders were far less hunched, and the light and sparkle had returned to his eyes. “what about us?”
Us. there was still an us. Toni still wanted to have something to do with me – he wasn’t going to run from the new freak-girl everyone else saw. I felt a tear building up in the corner of one of my eyes, I rubbed it in the hope of avoiding the tear running down my cheek.
“Lets see. Toni – I want to take this slowly. I want to be careful.”
“Yes” Toni replied. “Lets see”
Things suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Chapter 37
The school day passed less badly from then on. But still I wondered if I had done the right thing. Antonio was gorgeous, and he was charming, he was exciting and he knew who it was he was, but I didn’t know if I would ever be comfortable around him. With Sam and Julia I was able to talk and laugh.I didn’t have to worry about who or what they were. Sam’s mind wasn’t on this world, but it was on a world which intersected with mine, and he made me think and wonder. Antonio made me feel special, but sometimes the shivers than ran up my spine wern’t entirely good – it was like being at the top of a rollercoaster – there was an excitement, but it was tempered with fear and dread of whatever was going to come next.
But Sam was Julia’s boyfriend, and you had to admit they suited one another. Everyone had been whispering about them – it had come as a bit of a shock to the school as a whole that Sam could be considered worthy of a woman like Julia – but fromt he way I saw them, it was jUlia who didn’t consider herself worthy of Sam. Julia attaached herself to Sam whenever she could, as if she was holding him from getting away – clearly she had seen through to the Sam i found inside and didn’t want to let that insight escape her. I could understand that – I mean there wasn’t a huge amount that hadf happened to me since I arrived within the UK, but Sam had been there from the beginning and well, if it wasn’t for his interevntion on Saturday night I don’t know what might have happened. Julia deserved him. I kept telling myself, she deserved him. Really.
So I was surprised that when the day had finally ended and my survival for another night looked at least possible she was nowhere to be seen, but that Sam was waiting alone at the gate
“No sign of Julia?”
“No sign. That would be a sign of sorts too. Not even one of them, no.”
“Are you meant to be meeting her?”
“Well, I assumed… I thought we would be walking back together, it doesn’t seem to make much sense otherwise”
“What doesn’t”
“Her telling me to meet her here. She dashed off right out of french”
The reason we didn’t all just leave class being that I was taking additional classes in Spanish while the rest of the school continued with Frech. Mom had apparently made arrangements – it was nice to know the school could cope with someone making their lives a littel more diffciult
“I forgot you were in the last class together” An explantion for my gabbling seemed appropriate. “so what happened to her”
“I’m not sure, we were walking to the lockers when she saw someone and ran towards them, shouting that tshe would meet me here”
“Who”
“No idea.”
“Was she upset? You don’t think it was another man do you. Billy?”
“I didn’t. Now I do. Billy? Harriets friend from the garage?”
Well, that explained a few things – if Harry was able to make arrangements for Billy to have been busy or something it would explain how he had conveniently cancelled the date. In fact it might have explained why Harry had been so keen to help me set Julia up with someone else. The conniviving bitch. Oh well, no matter what her motivations were, Sam was happy. Or sam had been happy, untill I mentioned billy, now he was… less happy. Sam wasn’t really the sort to get angry in a red-faced jumping up and down type of a way, nor was he the tearful type. No Sam tried to rationalise his way back to samity, and that was what he was doing now. Nevertheless there was a quivering at the back of his throat which betrayed his pain.
“Im sure it wasn’t Billy. If theres one thing I’ve learned about JUlia, its that she’s nice” And that, along with everything else was true. Julia was a little princess, supremely confident with her own empire, but ultimately she was nice, warm considerate caring. Hell, I had to convince her that it was OK for her to make a pass at a boy a friend might potntially have been considering. Still, Sam didn’t look confused, he just carried on talking to himself as much as anywone else
“She must have to call things off and make her explanations. That would be the right thing to do, or maybe she was avoiding him, although running off in his direction would be a bad way to do that, so paerhaps not but then again Julia isn’t like me she knows how to deal with people better, perhaps running directly at trouble with a kamakaze scream works better”
I gacve Sam a warm, caring, “I’m there for you” type of a hug. It shut him up. There is little in the world that firghtens me more than steam of conciousness from Sam.
“I’ll go off and see if I can find her, she’s probably around somewhere not too far away. You hold on here in cas she turns up. I’ll be back in ten minutes”
“Fine.” Sam looked like he was about to retrun to his rationalizing, so I turned and fled in search of a better explanation. One from the horses mouth. Not that I would call Julia a horse, I was over that stage of my life. Making sarky digs at Julia, the thought never entered my mind. Oh no. I just headed off, which was a shame, because I never caught the full senece Sam said abotu Antonio… in fact at that point I didn’t think I wanted to. It was Julia I had to find.
In retrospect it should have been Sam who headed off around the school to find Julia. If he was anything like me, he wouldn’t have deared, being scared of who he might find her with. Me – I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. but what I wanted to do became clear – I wanted to stop being lost. The school was still new to me, and I found it tricky to navigate my way around the corridoors of the building, haivng no real idea where Julia might actually be. I returned after a prelongged treck to Find julia wating with Sam. Or on sam – it was hard to find a preposition to drescribe thwe way Sam and JUlia were almost one entity when together. At least Sam didn’t look worried about where his relatinship was going any more.
It was hours before I had a chance to speak to him. As Julia finally finished her prelongged goodbyes, I managed to escape from Mom (who was trying her hardest to enforce the grounding, by making me do my homework all the while Sam was here in an attempt to cruch my social life – not that they would have wanted me around, anyway) Just as sam opened the door, Iwas able to call to him
“So, it wasn’t Billy then.”
“Err, no.”
“diud you see who she was with”
Sam came over to me and whispered “Yes, but don’t let Julia know – she would think I was spying on her.”
“You wern’t?”
“Well, I was – I noticed her aorund the corner from where she was going to meet me. She was talking to… well I’m not quite sure who it was she was talking to, but it was that guy”
“What guy?” i asked. Several people I knew, and a number I didn’t know could easilly fit Sam’s detailed description
“You know, the one from the club. The one Rebecca was with.”
“What” I shouted, then recovered myself. Julia was with Mack. that was unexpected – what did Mack want with Julia?
“I think she might have set Rebecca up”
Well, let her take that fall – it didn’t seem unreasonable, and anyway, she owed me for my role as cupid to the stars.
“So, what were they saying?” I inquired, desperate the find out precisely what was going on. had Julia used Mack’s book to make her way to the top of th epile, was the niceness I had foreseen all a cover for the mind of a cynical genius. Well, perhaps that was pushing it a bit, but neverhteless, it was a possibility.
“I didn’t hear. He looked a bit stresses and flustered. Julia was all grave and concerned. he handed her a letter, or something”
“A letter?”
“Yeah. In a pink envelope”
“Weird.”
“yeah”
And when you agree with sam that someone’s actions are weird, you know that there is little hope left for your mind.
Mom was heading towards us.
“Don’t say anything” sam reminded me
“I wont” I assured him, and showed Sam out of the house. Then before mom could berate me for having a life I rushed upstairs to Julia’s room to see if I could find out what the letter was – without letting on that I knew Mack or that Sam had been spying on them. it was going to be a tough one. At least I thought it was, but as I entered Julia’s room I saw her quickly stuffing a pink envelope back into her school bag, and a look of shock on her face.
“you should have knocked”
“sorry.” I replied. but I wasn’t. I wanted to find out what was in that envelope, so I knew exactly what Julia and Mack had to do with one another.
Chapter 38
Mom had given up on the idea of Grounding me by the end of the week. It had been a valient attempt on her part, one of her most successful goundings ever if truth be told, but still the gods were against her. Perhaps she would find Grounding me easier if I wasn’t trying hard to make friends in a new country that I had been forced to against my will, and if my cousin who did exactly the same as me that evening hadn’t been living in the same house as me, totally free from punishment. I resolved that once Iw aas living on my own I would have to become a better lier if I ever wanted to ejoy myself – its part of the game, i thought, I can lie to Mom, she can feel relaxed in the knowledge that I’m safe. We never need to bother each others with the truth – it would only add to the stress that each of us felt.
Moreover, Antonio had invited me to go to the cinema with him. I was nervous, but all week at school he had been there for me when I had wanted him, and away when I hadn’t. Still, I was being unfair to him in this relationship, we needed a bit of give and take and a cinema was afe – being so close to him in a dark worm still made my spider-sense tingle but it was a public place, no matter how much I tried to worry myself, tell myself it was a bad idea, rationally it wasn;t. And rationally antonio was still stunning looking. No girl in their right mind would say no. I said yes. In fact I made a oohing nice and promised that I would lvoe to go to the cinema with him I hope boys didg that sort of thing, he certainly puffed his chest out and looked all self-important, so i suppose I did something right.
I had arranged for Julia and Sam to come allong with us. A double date, safty in numbers. Toni was a bit put out when he found that out, but he nodded and went along with it. In the dark of the cinema, I pointed out, there was no need to even know they were there. I gave him a sweet smile, and he grinned back towards me. I hadn’t expected the arrival of Carrie, Kim and Michael. Julia had obviously told them what was happenieng iwthout thinking. I tried to Tell Antonio that this wasn’t what I wanted, and I think he believed me, but I couldn’t be sure. Why would I have wanted Carrie here, of all people. I could see the way she glared at TOni and I as we shared a coke and some popcorn (note to self – absolutely no butter popcorn in british cinemas, by importing butter sauce for popcorn I could make millions of pounds). At least, I thought to myself, I wouldn’t see her when we were in the cinema and she wouldn’t see me. there would be some space. Why did Julia think it would be a good idea to inviter her along, did she really think there might be some form of moving reunion, that it would be possible we could ever be friends – ever be anything other than mortal enemies. I had nothing against carrie myslef, but what I had done to her, it wasn’t the sort of thing that being in the same movie theatre as me for an hour or two was going to wash away.
As a sop to those who bravely kept Julia and I company throught the Julia roberts movie, this time we had chosen to experienct the boy’s choice – a combination of guns, fast cars and mobile phone product placement. To sumarrise (and avoid the need to fully explain sam’s long diatribe about why action movies arn’t meant to be realistic, they’re meant to be well paced and drag the viewer along before he has time to notice the blatently obvious plot holes) Boy met girl. Girl turned out to be spy for international conspiracy. Boy defeats international conspiracy with the aid of the new ford mondeo, available from all ford dealers in your local area. Girl, miraculously converted away from the cause she has believed in all her life sleeps with boy. Boy mutters glib one liner. The end. However, that isn’t something I found out through watching the film, that was a guess based on the fact all these films are carbon copy identikit dramas (and the fact the hero had been driving a ford mondeo in early scenes… it could so easily have been a film focusing on a mercedes or BMW helping the hero save mankind, thats the sort of thing that just keeps you guessing in this type of film). About half way through things went awry.
They had begun so well, I was sharing my drink with Antonio, playfully fighting with our individual straws as the trailers played. Every so often after the film began we would reach into the popcorn bucket and our hands would fleetingly touch, sending electricity sparking down my spine. We might look at each other and in the blackness of the cinema be unsure, but hopeful about what the other was thinking. As about the stage where boy had to choose between spending time with girl and his job at the CIA Toni slipped his arm behind my back, just under where my shoulderblades were rested upon the seat. I jiggled to get more comfortable, but I certainly didn’t spurn his advance. It was more comfortable this way, just slowly, gradually getting back to understand ne another.
Apparently Toni didn’t feel the same way. As boy was speeding around on a motorbike, proving that a man on a motorbike is unaffected byt the bullets fired from machine guns by four highly skilled and trained assassins, Toni beant over to kiss me. I pulled my face away – I was nervous – even this seemed a little too fast (and anyway, I was a bit drawn into the subplot as to whether the bad guy had chosen a nokia or erikkson mobile phone). Toni withdrew, but by the time the bike had gone careening into the east river and boy was hanging by one hand from a railing, he returned. As Toni moved in for a kiss, I decided that, it wasn’t waht I wanted, but it was going to be a recurring theme – I didn’t want to make a scene and upset everyone elses enjoyment of the movie. In particualr I didn’t want to increase Carries enjoyment of the movie by adding a romantic comedy subplot. So I rewarded toni with a short, gentle but dismissive peck on the lips. I don’t think he was too happy with that.
Perhaps he thought it was romantic. Toni placed one hand on my shoulder furthest away from him, he leant over my body so that my chest was rubbing against his own. Perhaps he didn’t quite conceive how uncomfortable this was for me – not just physically, though the bulk of his waght pushing me into the arm of the cinema chair was quite painful enough, but also psychologicallty- this man had gone too far a week ago, and now here he was again pressuging me. His lips touched mine, but there was none of the genlte frission which accomapniewd our hands touching in the popcorn, and I experienced none of the passion I had felt when the world stopped in the club. Now it was just his desire to dominate, and my inabillity to refuse. He opened his mouth and began the investigate my lips with his tounge, searching for an opening. I kept my lips and teeth firmly closed. It’s times like this God decides to throw a spanner into the works, to really test us, or perhaps liven up an evenings entertainment when the only alternative would be bad saturday evening television.
I coughed. And spluttered. And any genelteman would have backed off ands asked if I was OK, perhaps pass over the coke we had been sharing. Or perhaps leap on your face like a frezied dog and begin passionatly kissing, as if your cough had been some sort of implicit admission that you wanted your boidiour invaded. It was not what I had expected. I just shouted No, pushed Toni back got up and started to leave the cinema. Not having chosen a seat net to an aisle, that meant I had to get a line of people already pretty ticked off at me for interrupting the scene where girl found out that villain had actually killed her father and wasn’t as nice as she had thought. You’re entire sense of self worth can really be shattered by one room full of people making “tuch” noises and looking at you with a withering you – are – beneath – my – contempt – but – still – have – some – contempt – anyway sort of a look. A cinema official flashed a flashlight at my feel. I think she was trying to be helpful – if not to me, at least to the audience who wanted a better view of their new found figure of hatred.
I rushed to the bathroom. I didn’t look back. Which meant I didn’t see who had followed me.
Bathrooms – or shoudl I say public conveniences or toilets or something? – are all the same in cinemas. They try to look white and sterile, but fail because with the throughput of people they;re just bound to get grimey. And unlike eatisg establishments or shopsm cinemas arn’t concerned with their image, how they are portrayed to the public, all the cinema cares about if getting asses on seats (the phrase getting bums on seats ammuses me – it sounds like the policy of a really proactive homeless shelter… not that asses on seats is much better unless you enjoy a particualrly weird form of animal training), the experience is provided by the film, not the surroundings, so as long as minimal attention is paid to comfort and convenience, so what? The mirror, as a result of this was streaked with soap marks, but nevertheless beyond them my reflection looked awful. I scooped up water from the pressure applied taps and tried to splash it on my face. Other women walked past to and the fom the cubicles and stared at me, like i was afreak. I let them carry on in their belief – there was no way they could know, and any rational attempt to think about what had happened just left me concluding that I had made a mountain out of a mole hill.
After a few minutes I left the bathroom – ready to face the world for long enough to get back home. Carrie was standing there. I turned to go back into the bathroom, lock myself into a cubcal, but then it registered, the look on her face wasn’t one of anger, or of glorious gloating victory. Carrie looked concerned:
“Loren. I’m probably the last person you want right now, but I think we should talk”
What could I say? Carrie had done nothing wrong throughout everything. Even if she wanted to gloat, she deserved the chance – and there wouldn’t be anyone else around to hear. I said nothing, but in silently followed her to the cafe in the foodhall – the cafe where we had first met, what seemed like decades ago.
“So.” I said when she handed me a tall cup of steaming black coffee.
“So.” She replied. Carrie clearly hadn’t thought this one through. “Toni” she said
“Antonio” I replied. It was a very stilted conversation, neither of us wnated to give anyhting away, try not to say anything which would allow each other to gain the advantage
“What did he do” she asked
“Nothing. It was me”
I don;t think Carrie belived me. She rolled up her sleeve and showed me a large brown bruise. It was old, on its way to healing, but it was real and it must have hurt.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. he just tried… he just wanted”
“He pushed his luck?”
“Yeah.” I nodded
“And you walked away”
“Yeah. I know, I’m a tease, I’m frigid”
“You’re a better woman than me”
“Pardon?”
“He always has some excuse. You wind up hating him for pressuring you, but there is something addictive you just want to hold onto, to keep for your own”
“His eyes”
“His Hair”
“His smile”
“When I said no a few weeks ago, he got angry”
“Oh Carrie, I’m so sorry” I reached over towards her
“That must have been when he called you”. I looked down at the table. I couldn’t hold my gaze at Carrie any longer.
“Its alright. You did me a favour really. Got me over him.”
“You don’t look like you’re over him”
“The wounds havn’t quite healed”. She rolled her sleve down. “tahts why I didn’t go to the party, but Sam did. I was worried about TOni and Sam wanted to spend some time with you”
“With me?”
“you know, the crush”
“That was Julia, wasn’t it”
“Sam’s known Julia for years, really, he never followed her around like he did you. I’m as shocked as anyone that those two are together – it really must have taken a miricle”
“I think I may have had some influence”
“Sam said as much. You know, I still think he considers Julia second best – as a way of getting closer to you”
“You know, Carrie, I’m going to be honest here. i don’;t know if I can believe a word of what you say, I dont know whats goign on or how I’m feeling right now. But thanks, I think. Can we ever be friends?”
“Possibly. Just possibly. look after youself – I think I might be able to catch the end”
“Boy kills villain a and saves girl from certain death after a series of minor setbacks” I called after he, but I don;t think she heard me.
Chapter 39
I returned home alone. There was no point in waiting alone in the food hall cafe, and returning inside would only expose me to Antonio, and more of the plot. I didn’ty know where I stood with Carrie, and if what she was saying was true then I was confused. Sam wanting me, when he had the opportunity to go out with Julia. It didn’t make sense, nothing made sense. Brits are weird and confused, it’s the only rational explanation.
There was nobody in, so I let myslef, loren the perennial Latch-key kid, in. The house seemed bigger with nobody about, empty. There was no signs of Life, mom must have been on a tidying kick before she and dad went out because everything was carefully piled up in boxes, or neatly put away. It was less like a house, more like a osundstage trying to look like a house. The TV I notice had been rolled back so that it was parallel to the wall, but not actually in a position where you could casually watch it while sitting on the couch. Master of all things clenliness related mom might be, but she hadn’t mastered ergonomics.
I retreated upstairs to my room in the hope that it had avoided the whirlwind cleanign of Mother, and was thankful to see things strewn across the floor in the hodge – podge fashion in which I had left them. My books were now piled up neatly beside my bed, a few of them carfully bookmarked at the position I had last finsihed reading them. There was a glass of water, still half undrunk from the previous night, not yet rinsed out, and numerous empty mughs, some showing the stains of coffee, others the black sludge from the bottom of hot chocolate. I really hated to think what that was doing to my weight. I resolved that I would have to diet, sometime, when I got araound to it – perhaps after all this settling in had finished and my life returned to normal… maybe after I had finished high school, or perhaps university. nevertheless, one day I would really and honestly start to diet.
Julia, for her part was a little more ordered – her CDs were all tidied away in a rack, her makeup lined up in front of her vanity mirror, her bed made and her schoolbag perched on top of it. Her school bag, the thought hadn’t occured to me until i saw it, and it was a long shot, it had been a week since I last saw the letter, but that was where she had left it, perhaps it would still be inside. There was nobody in the house to find me, and I was sure I would hear any key in the front door, and could have the bag away and tidy before Julia reached this room – there was absolutely no way I could be discovered so I delved inside – after all, its not a crime unless you’re found out, is it?
I dug deep into the bag, worked my way past textbooks, folders and pads of paper. Julia had that irritating square bubbly handwriting, just as prim and perfect as herself – I must admit it looked like she put more thought and effort into constructing eacha nd evey one of her characters than she did in building coherent sentences. if she was taking Uncle Mack’s advice to hide her intlligence she was obviously trying to hide it not only from her friends but also fromt he educational establishment and perhaps the world at large. Thatw as a bit excessive, wasn’t it? Perhaps she wasn’t siding with mack yet, but then why was she talking to him at all. I was dispariring of ever making any sense of what was going through her mind, until I found it, at the bottom, underneath the flap of plastic that formed the bag’s base and kept its shape, hidden from view.
It was still sealed.
Writing on the front, clearly not Julia’s, read
For Julia.
Private.
Not to Be Opened Until november 30th.
november 30th, the day before my birthday. Well, Julia was taking Mack’s instruction’s seriously, she had kept the envelope unopened. I wasn’t sure I could do the same, after all, forwarned is forarmed, and perhaps it would let me know something about Julia – or at least how or why she knew Mack. Was this all something to do with the big secret my pareents were keeping from me? My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the door below. I replaced the letter securly at the bottom of the bag and returned everything as closly to itas previosu position as I could. I had just grabbed the closest book to hand and was reclining noncelently on my bed when Julia entered the room. I think some people have the ability to sense when something is not right, perhaps it was the furtive glance at her I made when she came in, or maybe the way I was reading my book upside down. It is always possible she had head me scamble across the floor, but anyway there was nothing in the room to make her suspect there was anything wrong, and she had bigger things on her mind
“Carrie told me what happened”
I tried not to betray any emotion, who knew what it was Carrie had told her
“She did?” I asked. It was cautious, and rang a little false in my ears, but I coudl think of nothing
“You’re better off without him, you know.”
I nodded. She was right. I was certainly better off without Antonio. I would be better off with Sam. It was all so clear now
Chapter 40
All so very clear. I had a new goal, Loren was back, and this time she would win. Julia had no qualms abotu steelign Sam away from another girl, why shouldn’t I have Sam for my own – if it really is what he wants, then I’ll be doing him a favour, I’l be doing Julia a favour too, there can’t be much worse than having a boyfriend who spends all his time thinking about a close reletive of yours – and I must be about the only person who has ever really got Sam, found myway inside his mind, understood what it is that makes him click. There were times i thought I might even be thinking about him, it was all too perfect – it was the way things were meant to be, that was all there was to it. None could stop me know. heh! Uncle Mack’s letter was probably a card of condolences!
In order for my success, I had to plan ahead. Sam had morals – it was one of the things I liked about him, he really cared about others – and as such, while Toni was still in the picture there was no way on earth Sam would even begin to consider the possibility of dating me. There was also the matter of Julia – I assumed from their lovey – dovey behaviour that Sam had made a commitment towards Julia, I had to find some reason for him to break that. If I wasn’t reason enough, which, to be frank, seemed unlikely. I had no clue as to how I would go about this, but things would turn up, I was confident, they always had in the past. I needed a public situation, where I would be safe from whatever comeback occured. School – it was sensible.
Julia had made it clear to me that everyone was on my side, that Toni was clearly to blame. He had crpet out of the cinema without being able to defend his case, and Carrie had sided with me from the start, even when Kim suggested that I had still behaved unconsionably Carrie had pointed out that Toni was likely to have been the agressor. Who was I to deny that? Little sweet Loren deliberately trying to pull apart a group of friends from the inside? Noone would ever belive that. Never. So I had everything arranged – lunchtime, an audience who were all on my side (or at least far from on Toni’s side, which was what really mattered and most of all, I had the power or moral indignation – it was politically incorrect to side with anyone other than the woman in a case like this. Thank god for the nineteen sixties.
With everything arranged, I pretty much looked forward to Lunch. For the first time I felt I could honestly sit with the others, Sam and Julia kept me company and even Harry was prepared to say a few words to me, letting me know she was sorry that things hadn’t worked out, even if I did deserve the outcome. I nervously fingered my salad, and eyed Julia’s chips enviously as I waited for TOni to come past.
“Toni”, I called out to him, eagerly. He spun around ont he spot then jolted as he realised a noncolant stroll would be better than his mad dash towards me.
“Loren”
“I said I wanted to take it slowly”
“We were.”
“well” I had been saving this line up ever since I began thinking about this moment “We;ll be taking it even more slowly from now on. I don’t think we shoudl see each other any more”
In my imagination it had acheived a round of applause, or even a standing ovation, but noone really seemed to take any notice – it hadn’t had quite the dramatic effect I had been hoping for. All in all it had been a bit of a let down.
“I told you we were through at the cinema” Ah cute, he wanted to make it look like he had been the dumper, not the dumpee
“As if”
“Why would I want to hang out with someone frigid like you. I thought you were meant to be sophisticated and unihibited in America, but you’re worse than Carrie”
“Excuse me?” But I could see more clearly now, Toni’s friends had followed him over – he couldn’t allow himself to be loet down in front of them - but I couldn’t be seen to lose face in front of Julia – and especially not in front of Sam. However I also couldn’t allow this to fall out into a slanging match, no I needed backup, luckily it was sitting there and had just been insulted by Toni.
“Antonio foobar sirname” Carrie tood up and walked purposefully towards him, her eyes were burning with a bright fire, a fire who’s flames had been fanned by Antonion’s comments. Toni’s friends stepped back but Carrie wasn’t interested in them, she was intent only ont he destruction “do you honestly know what your mama would say if she was to hear how you had been treating this poor little girl” Carrie pointed at me “She didn’t know what to expect from you, she didn’t promise anything, you tried to take it”. Well, I would have to speak to her later about the ‘poor little girl’ comment, but I let it pass for the moment, I think I would have forgiven almost anything the way the Toni was backing off from Carrie. i really didn’t deserve this, but I felt she wasn’t fighting my battle, I was just a convenient excuse to continue her own – and in that respect she had gained from me, up until I caused the problem she didn’t see she had a battle to fight. i couldn’t claim I had done it on purpose,
but I couldn’t complain about the results. Carrie had come through for me big time.
Chapter 41
The rest of Monday passed quietly, afternoon kept me seperated from the others with extra spanish so I had arranged to meet up with Julai and Sam by the gate. I was on top of the world, news about Carrie’s defense of me had spread slowly, but I was no longer the social lepper that everyone had previously assumed. Indeed I think there was a wealth of opportunity for company on my walk home had I chosen it, but I wanted to spend time with Sam – in any case a whole load of us were meant to be meeting up for coffee later in the evening. I was a little dissapointed to find that only Julia was waiting for me. As I walked up to her she fell in beside me
“not waiting for Sam”
“No… you wouldn’t belive whats happend”
“What?”
“Mum has fallen ill – I’ve got to rush home. I don’t think I’ll be able to go out this evening.”
“Oh – is there anything I can do?”
“You could let Sam know for me”
“Okay” It was the least I could do. Well, actually the least I could do was somewhat less.
We walked home in a sort of tense silence, every so often Julia’s tension overflowed and she started talking, apparently aunt Gladys had a bowel condition which flared up every once in a while – it usually wasn’t serious but occasionally she had a bad attack, and needed Julia’s support.. It would be easier this time, Julia hoped, with my mom and dad around to take some of the load. Nevertheless, it was tough on her, having to put her social life on a hold.
“So Sam doesn’t know?”
“There was a call tot he school office just before the end of the day – I got called out, and had to rush straight away.”
When we arrived at the house, everything was in uproar. Dad had driven Aunt Gladys to the E.R. Mom was busy panicing about not being able to find the things on the list that Gladys had asked for. Julia underwent another of her transformations, from the panicing girl, she became an efficient serious worker, finding all of Gladys’ requests and collecting them together for mom. Then Julia began the process of attempting to contact a range of people and tellt hem what had happened, her telephone manner suddenly had a practical use. I didn’t know how I could help, what I could do, so I hid in the kitchen, making myself some toast for dinner. And silently swallowing it. I was better off out of here, rather than just getting under people’s feet.
Having made that decision I headed off back into town to meet the others. I was buzzing on the adrenaline the atmosphere at home had engendered, I hardly thought caffine would be much of a pick me up tonight, but it would be good to have a number of people to bounce off, or perhaps to ground me and pull me down towards earth. It was a bit of a shock to find the shop empty – if not empty of people, totally lacking people I knew. Had I been set up? That didn’t make any sense. If there was noone around to see me, what could be the point. i wasn’t early, maybe everyone else had been held up. There wa sno harm in ordering a coffee, I thought, so I approached a barista and ordered a double mocha with cream then sat down at a table and waited.
My wait wasn’t long, first came the coffee along with complimentary bisscotti, which I absentminded dunked in the cream, scooping it up into my mouth. Then Sam arrived.
“I tried to call you”
“Pardon?”
“Noone could make it this evening – we were talking about it after class, we all ahd so much french homework landed on us – well, Iw as about the only person who didn’t feel they had to lock themselves away.”
“Oh” I probably sounded dissapointed, because Sam immediately jumped in again
“but I’m here – if you want to have coffeee with me.” Did I ever? A chance to be alone with Sam, to see what I could do to win him over. perhaps i should make sure he knew how much brighter I was that Julia, how much more sensitive I was than Julia, how much better travelled – how much of a citizen of the world I was, how much more to offer him I had than…
“Julia?”
“Pardon?” I was woken from my thoughts, he couldn’t have been reading my mind. There were many remarkable things about Sam and where his mind took him, but I didn’t expect ESP to be among them.
“I said ‘where is Julia’?”
“Oh”. i could spot a pattern in my responses. I thought I might, perhaps liven the conversation up by saying something other than ‘pardon’ or ‘oh’. It was a long shot, but it might just work.
“Julia” I said, “Julia couldn’t make it” and then it hit me. A plan of so much genius that I could have cried with laughter, or perhaps issued a gargantuan roar of “Bwahahahaha”. “I don’t think she was very keen on coming”
“oh”. It was sam’s turn to play the part of the sileent one, but whereas my ‘ohs’ had been of understanding and resignation, Sam’s was barely audiable, it teetered on the brink of being silent. It caught at the back of his throat. The seeds of doubt were planted
“Did she say why?”
At that point I still had an escape route. I could explain about Aunt Gladys’ illness, about how Julia really had to look after her family at the moment, because it was what she knew how to do – it was something she was good at and needed to do. That would have been the honest route, it would have given Sam a new view of the girl he was with, a family oriented caring sensitve girl, more than just the pretty but vacuous queen of the schoolyard popularity contest (not that I’m sure Sam minded those attributes in his girlfriend – I just thought of him more as the caring type who looked for depth. After all, it was me he had wanted first, and it was me he was going to wind up with, so he had better like depth, in spades). I also had the other route, the way Mack would want me to go. If I had been a character in a cartoon, at this very moment I would have an angelic me and a demonic me sitting on my shoulders arguing about the correct path for me to take, but as it was, I applied simple logic – there was absolutely nothing I could gain through being nice. I took the plunge.
“To be honest, I think she had someone else on her mind”
His face fell. It was over in seconds, but you could pinpoint the moment his heart broke. First his eyes looked down, the ends of his eyebrows fled down towards his cheeks. His bottom lip quivered ever so slightly and he grew just a touch redder, then he lifted his hands up and put them on the table. He raised his eyebrows to catch a glimpse of me over the top the the tablecloth he appeared to be studying so carefully.
“Its all over, isn’t it?” He asked. I remained silent. I hoped he would interpret it as a caring, not quite wanting to dash his heart even though it was a certainty silence, even though if I was challenege I would have to admit it was a more “non-comittal, jump to your own conclusions, I’m not going to stop you boy” type.
“I knew it. That sort of thing couldn’t last.” He was dangerously close to whining. Didn’t sam know that whining was a major turn off to girls you are about to sweep of their feet even if you don’t know it yet?
“If you want to talk about it”. I motioned to a barista to bring over some coffee. Sam just looked into the large mug, hoping he would see some sign of what to do in it. Why coudn’t I have adsked the barista to have spreyed the cream into the words “chat up Loren?”
“Sam stirred the coffee aimlessly. The problem was clear – cases like this required the soothing velvet of hot chocolate, a high caffine mocca just wasn’t the same. There was no way sam was going to be able to move on without a little help
“Hey” I poped my head down level with his, so that I was resting my chip upon my hands. I looked upwards to catch his eyes and I smiled. “This isn’t doing either of us any good. Do you want to go for a walk”
I don’t think he did, but I don’t think he could think of anything better to do. He slowly shuffled his body straight and stood up. iwas getting a little impatient, Sam was milking this just a little too much. I grabbed his hand and led him out of the shop.
Together we walked though the streets of Cambridge, down past John’s and Trinity under the gargoyles of keys and out onto sennet house hill (I say people in britain are confused, but whoever decided to name senate hill ‘Hill’ was clearly on something stronger than Jed’s weed – its totally flat, but then real hills seem to be something of a rare commodity around these parts, perhaps fantasy was all they had going for them). We watched the sun setting behind the excess of architeture known as Kings college chappel, headed past the sweet smell of the fudge shop and into the market square. The traders had finished putting their stalls away and all that remained were the skeletons, waiting for ressurection tomorrow morning when the bones would be bolidy reincarneted with flesh. Now the only stalls in operation were two burger vans, already queues of students were building up. We walked past and headed out towards Parker’s piece.
It was under the setting sun that we sat down on a bench at the side of parker’s piece and watched the world go by. I looked down, and Noticed that though he hadn’t said anything but a vague murmer of consent throughout the whole of our expidition, Sam was still clasping my hand firmly, as if he needed something to grab onto, to keep him from falling. I looked towards him, and blinked, the sun was level with my eyes and blinded me, but as I regained my ability to see, the glare fading, Sam was staring back directly into my eyes. He was the one. He wasn’t Antonio in terms of looks, but he was a mystery – a different sort of mystery, not just a heir of self promoted mystique, but the sort of mind that one needed to unravel in order to firmly get inside, dangling loosly on the edges of sanity and genius. He was someone that made me question not only my sanity but also how I had ever managed to consider him wierd or just a friend, or ever trying to palm him off on my cousin. No she had had her chance, she chose her mother over this wonderful, amazing man who even know was looking deep into my eyes.
“Are you absolutely sure Julia and I are over?” Sam asked. I gulped
“Yes” I whispered and instantly regretted my lie, but the regret lasted only a fraction of a second and when it subsided, Sam was kissing me. Oh god he was kissing me. he was awkward, unpracticed, cautious but gentle and tender. What had I done. he was my cousins boyfriend, she had made such a sacrafice and here I was abusing her trust, her friendship. It wasn’t that Iw as capable of doing that which caused m y heart to skip a beat, it was the fact I didn’t care, because I knew Sam and I shared a destiny. And from the look on his face, a radient glow silhoetted by the Sun which now was perhing on the edge of the horizon, he knew that we were desinted to be together too.
Chapter 42
Life at home became complicated. Not because of Sam – Julia took the week of school, Ill. It was a reasonable reaction, I thought, she would never have been able to concentrate, she certainly didn’t need the added distraction of knowing that I had stolen her boyfriend. Sam was happy to spend time with me, and surprisingly noone seemed to comment. Perhaps it just seemed more natural that Sam be with me rather than julia. But at home, I could hardly look her in the eye. And mom and dad seemed under more stressed than ever, I heard them arguing behind closed doors – Mom and Dad never argue (which might sound hard to believe, but they’re this sort of strunge wonderunit – I think its because Mom is such a obsessive and dad is a perfect doormat for her to walk over), so it was a sure sign that even they had succumbed to the tension that was brewing, so much still left unspoken. I just ducked my head and kept away from everyone. I became a culinary genius “fromage au pan flambeau” a particular speciality.
So much of the time, there was nobdy around, I just sat in my room reading – or on the telephone talking with Sam. I was flicking through one of Julia’s magazines, trying to choose a new outfit to go out and buy when I noticed that I was indeed alone in the house, and that Julia’s bag was unattended in front of me. The schdule was far better established now – everybody had only just gone out. I had hours of time knowing I owuld be uninterrupted. I would be reading her letter, I had been taught that sort of thing was wrong, but just because it was impolite didn’t mean it wasn’t the action I should take. It was impolite for Julia to be keeping secrets from me. There was no question about it, I deved deep, to the bottom of her hand and withdrew the bright pink envelope.
I turned it around in my ands as I walked downstairs, examining the outside of the envelope from every angle. There was a letter inside, nothing else. I picked up the kettle and filled it with water, the slotted it back onto its base and switched it on. I had never actually steamed a letter open before, it was one of those things you know theoretically ought to work, you’ve seen it done hundreds of times on television, it never occurs to you until you try that you’re not really sure what the principles are “steam makes glue temporarilly ineffective?” didn’t seem to be a particularly persuasive argument.
The kettle began to boil away happily bubbling clouds of steam out into the kitchen. I dangled the envelope in the boiling gas and hoped for the best. One thing they never tell you about steaming envelopes open in movies is that these days kettles shut off when they have finished boiling. I must have restarted the kettel twenty times before I noticed the flap on the envelope’s back beginning to curl up. I retrived the envelope and placed it on the counter. The pink had darkened unevenly in the moisture, I hoped Julia wouldn’t notice, or that she would put it down to the excess of time left at the bottom of a school bag. I picked at the folding paper and caefully pulled, stopping whnever I felt any resistance, and then restarting with even greater care and gentleness. Within a matter of minutes, the envelope was open and I had pulled out the letter from within. I quickly glanced to the end
Love
Mack
It was from Mack, there was no reason for me not to finish reading it.
Dear Julia,
You might remember me, you might not. It wasn’t until I saw you on Saturday evening that I realised I had to tell you this, that I had to admit everything. You have a right to know who you are – there is no reason for you to continue to live the lie that you have been forced to endure. My tale began when I was much younger. I had found myself in a relationship with a beautiful women, but I was too young to appreciate what it was I had. I felt stifled, needed to experience more while she wanted to settle down and begin a life of monotonous monogamy.
You have probably guessed that the woman I am speeking of is your mother. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her, and there is a part of me that regrets leaving her – but there is a part of me which knows I would have never acheived my full potential had I remained with her. You may feel that you hate me for abandoning her, you may feel that I had no right. That is your option – I have no right to tell you how to feel, to suggest you choose to favour me over your mother would be absurd. I just wanted you to know who it is I am.
You’r mother requested that I didn’t contact you, but I resolved you had every right to know the truth about who it is you are. Recent events have somewhat pressed the matter, as I am sure you will soon understand I decided I would give you the power to know now, though suggested you wait until your sixteenth birthday before you opened this – at sixteen you are undeniably able to make adult decisions and you have a right to be treated with the respect due to any adult. If you did so, then happy birthday. If you opened it earlier, well, I appluad your interest, and you may be more like me that I would have expected.
When I left your mother, there was something I did not know. She was – I’m sure you have guessed, it would take a fool not to have premepted me – she was pregnant. She didn’t tell me that until much later – you see there were lies and deceipt on all sides. What you probably havn’t known is that she was pregnant with twins. Your sister was adopted by my brother.
I dropped the letter to the floor. If what Mack wrote was true, then everything I knew about myself was wrong. Julia was my sister.
Chapter 43
It seemed like hours before I managed to pick myself up off the floor and begin to sort things out. I didn’t feel like it, there were some many questions, so many things I didn’t know hoe to approach any more. Why had my parents never mentioned it? It would explain why they wouldn’t want to tell me about Mack – if there was a man who’s very existence manged to prove the lie that you had been building into a human over the past fifteen years then then it was natural to want to sweep him under the carpet. A bigger question was why Mack didn’t think he could tell me.
It was only after I had run through the full gamut of emotion, realising I had a sister (which explained why everyone kept saying we looked so similar) and wondering about why my parents lied to me that I realised Julia’s letter was still lying opened on the kitchen floor. I had to do something about that, so I retrieved it and used some glue to seal it back in the envelope. I took the letter up to my room and then hid it back into the bag.
Alone. Deserted. Its really hard to explain this sort of thing. Part of me was still wondering if it was possible that it was someone else, but everythign pointed to me. Nothing had actually changed, and yet I feel so unsettled, as if I was adrift, floating without anything to anchor me. God it was weird. I felt like crying, but that didn’t make any sense. You don’t find books on how to cope when you find out everything you know is a lie by reading your new sister’s personal correspondence. I considered turning to the problem pages and agony aunts that appeared in the back of some of Julia’s magazines, but they never had any useful problems, nothing that was worth even calling a problem half of the time, they could have called then “Tut, thats a bit of a shame” paged. alanis morisette owuld probabyl call the irony pages.
So I returned to the room, just sitting on the floor in the centre of the carpet and looking around for inspiration, hope that someone somewhere would have left a sign as to what it was I ought to do. I had to confront Mom and dad, that was a given, btu was now really the right time? When Moms sister was in hospital ill? It wouldn’t be fair on her, on anyone – but then none of this was fair on me. At some point I must have started crying, because by the time I heard the key in the lock I was positively bawling, the carpet was awash with my tears.
“Mom? Dad?” I called downstairs. I wiped my eyes and made a halfhearted attempt to straighten my heair and sort myself out, but really my actions made no difference. once more I was a mess. My shouts were not answered by the calls of my parents, but by a joyfull springing up the stairs by princess perky herself. “Mom’s getting better – they’re goign to let her home in a few…”
Julia swung open the door with an abandon which probably matched the joy that the news she was delivering deserverd, but she stopped dead seeing me in my bedraggled state
“Oh my god” she said, then she added in a quiet whisper “Is everything OK”
No I wanted to say, how on earth could you possibly think everything was OK. Didn’t you know that we have both been lied to, that there is nothing even close to reality in what our parents have told us. I wanted to cry with her, I wanted to hug her tight to me chest and make Julia promise never to betry me like may parents had done. I wanted to run and jump and fight something to remove the tension which was building up inside of me.
Then it hit me.
Julia didn’t know. Julia – however she knew Mack – didn’t realise he was her father, didn’t know I was his sister .Could I tell her – how Could I explain that I knew. I had read her letter, there was no reasonable explanation which would hold up to any scrutiny. I just shook my head and said
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be alright. Its good to hear about your mom”
“It’ll be good to see Sam again, now all this is over”
I’m not sure how to spell it, but the next word I said was something like ‘gneeerep’. Sam. Fuck.
Chapter 44
I was waiting for Mom and Dad to get back.. They were very cheerful, nowhere near as stressed as they had been. They were laughing and touching each other on the nose and the kneww and other public displays of affection that you would really rather never see your parents take part in. They probably wern’t expecting the inquisition which was about to strike them, but they deserved no time to prepare – they had had fifteen years, and now they were going to pay.
“Mom, Dad, sit down”
”Sit down please” mom corrected me. I wasn’t in the mood to humour her. I passed over two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and smiled
“Whats up darling” Dad asked. I had cleaned my face up and changed, but dad was observent, he could tell I wasn’t my normal sunny self.
“Mack”
“Pardon?”
“Uncle Mack.”
Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at dad. They tried to telepathically communicate between one another some sort of united front they could presnet before me. Perhaps they were trying to figure out if a response like “Uncle Mack who?” would work. Whatever, the laws of physics defeated their valient attempt and an appearence of resignation flooded over their features, their heads nad bodies sank by an inch or two before they looked at me again.
“What about Mack?” dad asked. he wasn’t smiling, he made no attempt to joke. He was deathly serious. Only very occasionally had I seen Dad looking like this, it took a lot to upset him, he was normally so laid back about everything. For something to make dad like this, it must have been really bad. I was more than a little scarred. Was there some taboo I had broken.
”Is he your brother?”
“Yes”
Dad wasn’t making this easy. I was going to have to probe carfully, trying to avoid setting him off. Nitroglycerine handlers must feel quite similar to me, I mused.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him”
“Something happened, a long time ago. I, that is to say we” Dad turned to Mom and clasped her hand. A tear was running down her cheek. “we decided we didn’t want to have someone like that within our family.”
I gulped. I had made Mom cry. Dad was flicking between glaring at me, and trying to hold himself together. I stayed silent. Dad also refused to speak. We stared at each other. I imagined the second hand on the clock turning backwards, time seemed to pass so slowly.
Eventually he cracked. Only about forty seconds had actually passed, but I felt like I had aged decades during the pause in the conversation
“I suppose I had better tell you what happened. We don’t talk about it, and I hope we never have to talk about it again.”
I nodded assent.
“we were going to tell you, really we were, but with everything that happned”
I nodded again. now wasn’t the time for recriminations. They could wait for the time being.
“I was a lot younger then. Mack and your aunt Gladys had been an item for a good time. We all liked Gladys – she was pretty much the same as she is now – full of energy, domineering but very sweet at heart. Of course, I was over in the US, I didn’t see much of them, but it seemed clear to all of us that the two would ultimately get married. We all came over – I was with my partner of the time, a girl by the name of Marie…” Dad trailed off, it wasn’t a misty-eyed pause but more of a hesitent look to see how Mom would react. I think Mom sensed his unease, and decided to fill the gap herself.
“Marie was really pretty – your dad was a bit of a player in his younger days. I think they thought of themselves as being ready to follow his brothers lead.”
Dad concurred
“It wasn’t that there wern’t tensions under the surface, but I certainly thought we were the real deal. When Gladys and Mack announced that they were to be married, we clubbed together and bought ourselves tickets sot hat we coul dbe at the ceromony. I wanted to be with my brother on his big day, and Marie wanted to be by my side, despite never having met him. We treated the whole thing as a bit of a holiday – I had never been abroad, let alone all the way to England. There was so much I wanted to see. MAck and Gladys entertasined us, showed us the sights, took us out for meals. I suppose I should have spotted it then”
Dad always was a god story teller, I remember how he would read fairytales to me as a child, always improvising, winding the story around his finger, pacing it perfectly withholding exactly the right amount of information to create a big bang when it was ultimately revealed. I’m not sure he was quite getting into telling this story in the way he used to – or perhaps I wasn’t quite as in awe of him as I was when I was a kid, but there was still something, a ressonance with his storytelling past. In any event, I was spell bound, there was some family secret which had been withheld from me now being openly revelead.
“On the Day of the service, I was waiting outside the registry office along with gramps. You’re Grandmother, grandfather and your mom were there to support Gladys. We got talking about how differerent things were, what a lovely couple Mack and Gladys made. I was getting a little techy – Marie had gone off shopping earlier in the morning, she was going to meet us here – I think she had been woried that she didn’t have an appropriate hat. Gladys arrived, and looked stunning, but seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes were getting close to being an hour – there was no sign of Mack, no sign of Marie. I think you can see where things were going. Mack had had last minute nerves, or maybe he had been planning it all along. he had no intention of showing up. We were left sitting there. Truth be told I was really cut up, your mother was inconsolable. Gladys was really quite strong about the whole thing – I bet inside she was as torn up as the rest of us, but Gladys was never the sort of person to let that sort of thing show – unless it was dramaticly appropriate. We all just sat around trying to figure out what we were going to do, stunned. Then Gladys dropped the bombshell – she was goign to tell Mack on their honneymoon, make it extra special, but she was pregnant.”
“I suppose it all worked out for the best – your Dad and I would never have met. I think we both needed one another after that.” The smiled at one another, but they were avoiding a key issue. I decided my only course of action was to prompt them.
“You said Aunt Galdys was pregnant”
“Gladys was going to tell Julia, she thought it was important now we were all together, but she held off until I had a chance to think things through. I think it would be best for everyone if we wait a day or two until Gladys is home and able to tell her herself.”
I carried on staring at them straight in the eye. Dad kept trying to brake my stare, moving his eyes around and blinking. I couldn’t belive they werwe still holding back, still not saying anything ot me. Perhaps I had been wrong, perhaps there was nothing remaining for me to be told. Had I really just jumped to conclusions? I had to be sure
“Am i…” Is tuttered, the words were holding back, trying their level best not to escape from my mouth. I perservered “am I addopted”
Together, synchronised, their faces fell. I hadn’t thought there was any further down they could go, but they were practically touching the floor. Dad breathed in and out slowly but jumpilly, as if he was concious of everythign his body was doing. Mum just seemed to retreat inswards, sheltering herself from the outside world behind the thick woolen fleece she was wearing.
“yes” was dads one word reply. It was all I needed to hear. Everrything I had thought to be true was concirmed by three little letters which dad whispered so quietly. I felt for him. It must have been hard for him, those wern’t memories I would be happy to dredge up, just because one of my offspring had a slightly voyeristic nature, but still, the lying, the deceipt, the thinking I wasn’t ready to cope with knowing the truth. It hurt. Deep within my heart there was a gash which I had no way of healing. I couldn’t cope with sitting here. I couldn’t cope with seeing what I had done to mom and dad, with wondering if I could make them feel any better, wrestlign with my concionce and witht he voice inside of me that just wanted to add tot heir pain. I jumped to my feet and ran to my room, my cheeks were raw from the tears, and there was no ceasation, no time for them to heal for several hours.
Chapter 45
Pain. Pain pain. Pain pain pain. Pain pain. Pain. All of my world was constructed of ntohing but pain. None of my memories were real, it was like finding out you were a cyborg with an artificially constructed past, but it was worse, because I knew I had lived through the past which others had built for me. I had been a conspiritor, playing a part in my own deception. And now I was only fit for lying on my bed and punching my pillow. I hit it hard again. This time it was moms face. Last time it had been dads. But to some extent each and every time it had been me, metaphorically hitting my own head against whatever wall it was that was holding me back. Slowly I tired, and after an hour or two Mon came in and hugged me. I was too weak, too confused to resist, and I hugged her back, it was an unspoken rebonding experience. Two women together, supporting one another – I felt her love, her unconditional love.
“Gladys didn’t think she was going to be able to cope. She was talking about having an abortion. Twins are hard enough on any woman, but on someone who had just been treated in the way Mack had treated her it was astounding. I was really worried about her. So was your dad. We both swore we would do anything we could to help – out of love in my case, perhaps out of some sort of misplaced guilt on your dads part. It helped us to bond more closely, the three of us. Every evening we would sit down at firsrt over wine, but when Galdys got further down the road to pregnancy over mugs of hot chocolate. we would talk and talk. Setting the world to rights or discussing the minutia of a terrible TV programme we had just watched. it was the first time we had really done things like that – the first time I had really felt like being part of a family – in the past I had just let Glady go her own way.” Mum stopped, her eyes were welling up and she was beginning to gabble. The words she didn’t say said so much more.
“by the time you were due, your dad and I were a firm Item – married, in fact, in the same registry office. Gladys asked if we could look after one of her children. We both loved Gladys – both of us would do anything for her, to help her through things. We adopted you, but it was because we loved you so much. We wanted you to be a real part of our lives, not to play your biological mother off against us. We decided not to tell you until the time was right, and the time was never right for news like that. How do you tell a child you lied”
And I understood. It was a quiet, tender understanding, not something that did anything useful, it was as if Mom had kissed the gash on my heart – nothing had been repaired, there was no reall magical healing power, and yet somehow with her there for me I knew that I could be a big girl, a brave girl, and not cry. I tightened my hug again, and we held each other.
And mom was there for me. As the day progressed she would just wanded over to me and hold my hand or rub my shoulders. Dad was less comfortable – he had his own demons, demons Mom could not exorcise fully through understanding because they involved betrayal by another woman. he tiptoed around us, but in some ways the tension was less – everything was out in the open – Uncle Mack could walk into the centre of the room and there would be nothing for anyone to hide – except for the anger and resentment, but just like my heart these things never healed, they were just to be lived with, the sort of lessons which we look back on and realise they taught us to be who we are today, but which at the time they occur hurt far more than anything else in the world – and the sort of scars which can be wripped open and have salt ppoured in no matter how much time has allowed us to repress it.
Julia though was a different matter. She could sense there was something wrong, it was the way that we hardly ever said anythign eto each other any more, just looked at one another and shared everything we wanted to say with a knowing glance. Nevertheless, she could also sense that none of us wanted to talk about it, so when we were all together, she joined in with our silence, but it was obvious to all of us that she was outside the communion we were sharing – which was wrong, she should have been a part of it – she was, by rights, a member. But that wasn’t what troubled me the most. What troubled me the most was something Mom came up to me and said an hour or two after our reconcilliation. She just whispered in my ear
“you know, the thing that Mack did which was really terrible – it wasn’t leaving Gladys – if he had wanted to do that the, then their marriage would have never lasted. It wasn’t leaving a pregnant woman, he didn’t know until much later. What Mack did that was really bad was how he hurt his brother – stealing his brother’s girlfriend. Dad likes to make out that it doesn’t hurt him – but he only does that for me. He still hurts – it isn’t because he loves Marie, its because he really wants to love Mack.”
Mom was right. Thats what mothers tend to be about matters like this. I suppose you inherit your morality from them or something. The worst thing you could possibly do was betray your own brother or sister, especially over a matter of the hart. That was made Mack the villian – that was why mack was really resposnible for all the hearthache. That was where all of the pain that had been inflicted upon me had centred.
Spot the irony. Because I didn’t notice it until much later that evening when Julia, keen to get me over whatever was troubling me hassled me to come out. I asked where, and julia hadn’t made up her mind, but she suggested that perhaps we could start at Sam and carrie’s house.
Betraying your own sister over matters of the heart. fuck. Fuck. FUCK!
Chapter 46 – Admission Price
“I don’t think we should go out tonight” I had to say it to Julia. i had to get it off my chest. I had to do something to ease the guilt tht was gnawing at my heart. I wasn’t going to hold it in until circumstances caused Julia to drag it out of me. Open, forthright, honest, appologetic, grovveling. that was the answer. it was everything Mack would have suggested I didn’t do – and if nothing else, that made it right. julia didn’t tey to argue. She knew she had to be cautious, that there was something in the air. I decided to elaborate
“We really need to talk”
“Is it about… whatever’s going on” she asked. She really didn’t have a clue as to what was causing the atmosphere. I couldn’t even tell her, that was down to her mum. I had promised, or at least a promise had been subsumed into my coming to an understanding with my parents. There was no way I could tell her everything, but anyway that wasn’t the point of the conversation I needed to have, it was just the motivation.
“sort of.” how could I asnswer better than that. Julia looked me up and down, it was obvious I had something crushing to say, something important
“You ought to be makign hot chocolate around about now, shouldn’t you” she was trying to lighten the mood, but that wasn’t what I wanted. There was no light side to look at, just the agonising nagging voice in my head.
“Julia” I tried to stamp out her nonsense once and for all. I was was using my serious voice, a sort of flat, monotone with abrupt sharp words. “Its about meand you. I’ve done something terrible, really terrible, and I don’t know if you’re ever going to be able to forgive me – if there is any way to make recompense”.
Julia looked me up and down. She was waiting, waiting for me to tell her what it was I had done, now I knew how Mom and dad had felt earlier, everythign was going to come out and there was going to be pain and suffering as a result. There was no easy way, no explainable way of saying whta it was I wanted to say.
“I’m” that was one word. I showed I was srtill able to speak
“Going” I continued. two words
“out” yes, still speaking, I noticed julia’s eyes lighting up at the chance of juicy gossip, it was only a fraction of a flicker, but everything had gone into slow motion, my mind was working overtime to cope with all the worry and anything that happened I observed in exquisite detail.
“with” perhaps julia preempted me, but the sparkle that had entered her eyes began to fade to a dull grim dread. Maybe she realised that there was only one word that could possibly come next which would require this atmosphere of dread and doom. I took one final deep breath, I was putting of the inevitable but the end was nearing. I braced myself for the reaction, I could defend myself if she struck out towards me. I spat the word out
“Sam”
She just sat there. No recriminations – at least not then – no tears, not even a single gasp of “oh”. Just silence, still unbroken silence. Julia was lookig at my eyes, looking through my eyes, looking inside me for some glimmer of the girl she thought was her frined. I tried to offer it to her. I put out my hand, but she didn’t move to take it – didn’t even look like she noticed it.
“i’m sorry” I whispered, barely audiable, I didn’t like to break the silence which seemed to be all that was holding us together.
There was a pause, the clock on the wall ticked noisily, ‘tick’ ‘tick’ tick’ tick’
“so am I” her quiet reply., but colour was returning to her face, a rich red as fury grew in her belly. She began to rise to her feet, I got to mine, to turn and escape if she was going to be physical. i didn’t want to hurt her – I had done too much of that already, I just wanted to avoid her doing anything that she or I would regret. mainly anything that I would regret – if Julia was to beet me to a bloody pulp she would have been totally justified. But it wasn’t pphysical violence that followed – that wasn’t Julia’s way. She used her voice as a weapon – a voice that could make friendshipos could just as easily seal an end to them
“you ralise I put a lot on the line for you. I sided with you when you attacked carrie and this this to her, I laughed along with you at rebecca. I never even considered you would do this to me. How could you ever… I just don’t understand…”
How do you answer that, she was right, I was a bitch from hell, there was no other justification. What could I possibly do to make things better
“I’ll break up with Sam”
“What? No. You know the way he dotres on you – even when he was going out with me he was always loren this and loren that. You’re not going to hurt him too. You don’t get it? other people have feelings, and all you do is stamp all over them”
“I’m sorry”
“I don;t think you know the emaning of the word sorry”
“Really, i never wanted to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you – I can’t let my sister be like this – anything I can do to make it better, to make it less worse, tell me. Please soemthing” I begged Julia for even the slightest glimmer of forgiveness, but she had stopped dead. Was it something I had said. I tilted my head by way of a question. Julia continued to sit there then clearly confused asked more than I could ever answer in one word
“Sister?”
Damn.
I can’t deny that I said it. I can’t deny I meant what I said when I had agreed to let Gladys tell her about Mack, about me, about everything. I also can’t deny I meant what i said about not allowing my sister to be hurt. The words just slipped out in a torrent of emotion and attempted fence mending. What it did wasn’t so much mending a fence as putting a canyon between us as I sat there not knowing what to say, unwilling to explain any further without Mom Dad and Gladys giving me their permisson, but not willing to lie any more, to claim I had simply made a mistake.
So I nodded.
She nodded.
Her face was returning to a more normal colour. I don’t know whether I was a bigger mess than her or vice versa. We sat there looking at each other. She seemed to be less shocked, more accepting of this than I had been. Perhaps she had some understanding, some knowledge. Maybe Mack had indicated something to her, maybe Gladys had been more open. Was it possible Julia had just sensed something – was that why she had been so keen to make me part of her life?
“I don’t know whats going on” she said “Theres too much for me to take in. Mum said she had some big new to tell me, to shre with all of us when she got out of hospital. I thought it might involve Mack. Mum’s seen a lot of Mack recently. He gave me a letter, she reached into her bag, picked out the pink envelope and wripped in open, discarding the envelope without noticing the water marks I had left on it. One more deception, one more betrayal. One thing I wasn’t going to mention – worrying about that all seemed so petty after everything that had passed in the last few minutes.
She read through the letter carfully, reading every letter of every word, mouthing them to herself. “Oh” she said to herself, “oh god”, “mum”, “poor poor”. I moved over and sat down beside her, grasped her hand tightly and let her know that I was there for her, no matter what. I was her big sister, just, and I had to be there for her. And I was, just, sitting beside her. Everythign else was forgotten now, it was all water under the bridge. Just as I had been prepared to forget about Sam in order to make peace with my sister, now Julia knew it was what she had to do. That isn’t one of the things that romance novels tell you about love – just how transient it can be, how little it matters when it all comes down to it – your family, those people you already have a bond with, they’re permanent whether you like it or not. Gladys could never have survived without Mom, and Dad could never be free from Mack, no matter how much he wanted to be. And now I was stuck with Julia – every time I looked at Sam, every time Julia looked at sam there would be the betrayal hanging as a shadow, unless everything was forgiven. Julia knew that, she just passed it by totally, moved on with me by her side.
“Oh my god. Oh my god” Julia was bouning up and down with excitement, hugging and shaking me “Ive got a father, I’ve got a sister”
It was lovely to see her smile, to hear her shrill excited laugh. There was a strength Julia had which i could never beggin to fathom, something beautiful whichs et her apart – that was why I felt dso different – I walked along slouching, looking at the floor, internalising everything that happened, whereas Loren skipped along kept aloft by her energy, letting the whole world know her joys and sorrows – and she was healthier for that, healthier than me. More resiliant, even if it just looked like she was a silly girl without any depth – she did have depth – it was just all my depth was inside me, julia’s depth was the whole universe.
We had to approach Sam. I told Julia how much it worried me, that I was going to have to tell him how I had lied to him. It seemed unfair that Sam was going to have to choose between us, but there was no other way.
“he probably won’t want either of us” Julia tried her best to comfort me. It might not have seemed comforting, but it would mean Sam would be able to move on, and we wouldn’t have to worry about one another. But I wasn’t convinced
“You havn’t done anything wrong. I’ve been such a total bitch”
“You havn’t” Julia corrected me. I looked at her as if she was mad, noone sane could doubt my bitchiness, but she was sincere. Tabula rasa, that girl. I was astounded
“Sam and you make a lovely couple” I told her. They did. Not as lovely as Sam and I would make, but still pretty much the perfect couple. It was in this mode of defeat tinged with just a little unrealistic figments of hope that we sat in the coffee shop waiting for Sam.
Sam came over to us, sat at the table. He was sweet, he was carrying three steaming mugs of hot chocolate
“It didn’t seem much like a mocca day” he said to me as he passed it over. I stirred the cream into the chocolate and sipped it.
“Theres so much to explain” Sam started, “I’m so sorry”
“You’re sorry?” I said… well, half shouted, half screamed. It was weird, I was confused. Sam wasn’t making any sense – and not in the good way. UJulia however understood perfectly
“He doesn’t know whats happened, just that we both said we needed to talk to him here”
Sam thought he was about to be attacked for his daliances when in fact he was about to break one, or both of our hearts.
“Sam. I’m so sorry. I deceived you” I had chosen my words carefully, prepared this speech. it didn’t sound like me, more like a teacher who was going to lecture the school on why we shouldn’t spit gum out onto the schoolyard. I couldn’t carry on in the vein
“Sam, Julia loves you. I didn’t tell you where she was, I let you think you two were over. I’m so sorry, I just wanted to walk around cambridge with you, like we did that evening, forever” I sat back, to watch them walk off together into the sunset, but Julia had her own part to say
“Sam, I love you, really I do, but you obviously wanted Loren – You’re too nice to do that sort of thing on the rebound or out of vengence – thats far more a harry sort of thing”
“Well. I do like this beautiful cousins thing, but I don’t want to exploit it because then I would just wake up and ow!”
Sam reached down to rub where I had kicked him in the leg, while Julia taunted him some more
“Well, actually its a beautiful twin sister thing… ow!”. This was not to be encouraged, she might me my sister, but her shin was not goign to be free from my vengence if she carried on down that path.
“You don’t have to decide now. Or ever. We’ll understand if you never want to see either of us again.” I said to him
“Yes take your time” julia proably wanted to postpone the pain just as I did
“There isn’t any reason to wait. Julia, I’m sorry, but ever since I first saw her, ever since I first saw you, Loren, its always been you” And his foor touched my shin, but it had left his shoe and was rubbing my leg. I leaned over and kissed sam, then remembered Loren and turned back to her
“Are you sure you’re OK?”
“Yes” she nodded, and wiped away a tear. “I’ll be fine. I’;ve got a sister and a dad, what more do I need… plus Harry said billy has a friend”
“Harry, Billy?”
”What do you think she used as an excuse to stop him coming to the club?”
“She asked him out?”
“And he accepted – Biker chick or little princess like me? What do you think he really wanted?”
“And carrie?”
“She’s over toni, and threatened to tell his mama if he ever so much as goes near another girl at school. And I think she’ll be glad to have you around” sad said.
And, you know, I think everything, finally was goign to work out all right. Sam and I walked down the road, his arm around my shoulders, my hand on his wait. Each footstep was synchronised, apart from when Sam stumbled on a step he hadn’t seen. As we passed McDonalds I broke off from our walk
“Whats up”
“I’ve just got something I have to do” I reached into the duffle bag I was carrying and brought out my copy of “The Principles”. I pulled out page after page and threw them into a litter bin. I was over it – it had only brought me pain. then I returned to sam and we stood there and hugged and kissed as strangers bustled past us on the street. I used to think I was happy in Boston. I didn’t know I was happy. I didn’t think I could ever know I was happy. I was happy now, I knew that I was happy for sure and I knew that it would last.