‘Hi, there,’ she says, dragging the hoover through the door. ‘How’re things?’
‘OK!’ says David, trying to not to look as if he has been waiting for her. ‘How about you?’
‘I’m good, thanks.’
He tries to summon up the courage there and then, but he can’t. The anticipation has made things worse. He’s not prepared, he’s just mentally exhausted and a little wired. The hoover roars into life and David slumps back on the bed.
Holly finishes and is almost out of the door before David finally, in desperation, gulps and says what’s on his mind.
‘You know how you said if there was ever anything you could do for me?’ he says, the words still a lot harder to get out of his mouth than into his head.
‘Uh-huh?’ says Holly, a little warily, putting the hoover down.
‘Well – I do have something to ask you … It’s a bit embarrassing though.’
Holly raises an eyebrow.
‘I’m not sure how grateful you think I am,’ she says.
David blushes.
‘No – it’s not … No – I wanted to ask … to ask you something. I wanted to ask you about kissing.’
Holly folds her arms.
‘Kissing?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You want me to kiss you?’
Yes. Yes. Yes.
‘What?’ says David. ‘No … I mean … I was more meaning that I wanted to ask you how. You know – how to do it.’
‘You don’t know how to kiss?’
David shrugs. This isn’t going to be easy.
‘You’ve never kissed a girl?’
‘Of course I have!’ says David indignantly.
Holly stares at him.
‘OK – not properly,’ he says.
‘No tongues?’ says Holly with a smirk.
She seems to be enjoying this more than David had expected.
‘Once,’ says David. ‘At school – ages ago. But that doesn’t count.’
David gets a vivid replay of the event in his mind – an older girl he didn’t really like pushing her face into his, her tongue jabbing into his mouth, the breathlessness, the giggles of those around.
‘Doesn’t count?’ says Holly. ‘Why?’
‘Because she kissed me,’ he replies.
‘And that’s wrong because …?’
‘Not wrong exactly,’ says David. ‘Well, not wrong at all. It just doesn’t help me, does it? Because I want to be the kisser – not the kissee. I need to make the moves and I don’t have any.’
Holly nods.
‘I see.’
‘Ellen – that girl you met,’ says David. ‘She kissed me. The other day. On the lips.’
‘And?’
‘And I just stood there like an idiot.’
Holly smiles. It is a kind smile but it makes David feel like a child and he frowns and slaps the bed.
‘Stop beating yourself up about it,’ says Holly. ‘There’ll be a next time.’
‘That’s the point,’ says David. ‘There is going to be a next time. She’s asked me to a party.’
Holly shrugs.
‘OK then. That’s good.’
‘No – that’s what I mean. She’s going to want me to kiss her. Isn’t she?’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘So I want it to be good. Really good. You know? She’s really popular.’
Holly raises her eyebrows again.
‘Popular, huh?’ she says. ‘You’re worried about the competition.’
‘Yes,’ says David, ‘I’m worried I’ll look like an idiot. That she’ll laugh at me.’
‘She won’t laugh at you.’
David groans like he is in real pain and he does feel pain – he feels like he is being pulled apart.
‘Please,’ he says.
Holly smiles at him.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, looking towards the door. ‘It feels a bit weird.’
‘I know. I know. But still. Please.’
She sighs and shakes her head.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say, but I’ll try. If you think it’ll help.’
David sits up, looking her in the eyes.
‘OK, OK. So how would you – you know – want to be kissed?’
Holly puffs out her cheeks and her breath whistles out. Then she chuckles and sits back, studying him.
‘Do you know, no one has ever asked me that,’ she says. ‘So I’ve never really had to think about it.’
‘But you must have been kissed loads of times,’ says David.
‘Because I’m such a whore, you mean?’
‘No!’ says David, wide-eyed. ‘Jesus. I just mean … Fuck – no! I meant because you’re, you know …’
‘No,’ says Holly ‘What? “Popular”?’
‘Hot,’ replies David. ‘You must have been kissed loads of times because you’re really hot.’
She smiles at him. A different smile altogether. His heart leaps about like a frog in a box.
‘And you say you have no moves.’
David blushes. She continues.
‘But yes – I have been kissed a few times, it’s true. I can’t pretend I haven’t.’
‘And what makes a good kiss?’ says David.
‘Hmmm,’ she says. ‘That’s a very good question.’
Holly puts her hand to her jaw and looks up quizzically as though pondering a philosophical conundrum. She taps her chin with her finger, deliberating about what she’ll say next.
‘Sometimes it’s the person – you know, you’ve wanted to kiss them for so long and then you do and there’s a sense of excitement in finally getting there.’
Her face changes after saying this and David senses her falling back into some filed and locked-away memory, her eyes flickering, sparkling. But only for a moment.
‘Sometimes it’s the occasion – it feels extra special because it’s your birthday or Christmas or a lovely sunny day or you’re drunk or whatever …’
‘You’re drunk?’
Holly chuckles.
‘Hey – don’t knock the power of intoxication to make something feel better than it is.’
‘So I should get her drunk, is that what you’re saying?’
Holly sighs.
‘No – I wouldn’t suggest that.’
David is no nearer to understanding what made a kiss memorable or not – what made it the kiss of someone who could kiss rather than someone who couldn’t. He needed facts. Details.
‘Tell me something practical,’ he says.
‘OK then,’ she says. ‘No one wants to kiss someone with rank-smelling breath.’
‘I brush my teeth!’ says David defensively.
But his mother is always saying he doesn’t do it properly or enough. David has an image of himself going in for the kiss with Ellen. He cringes.
‘Look, if you’re going to take everything personally then don’t ask,’ says Holly frowning. ‘Jesus.’
‘OK, OK,’ says David. ‘Sorry. OK. No smelly breath – OK. What else?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, scratching her head. ‘This is a bit weird.’
‘Come on,’ says David, moving closer. ‘Imagine I’m your boyfriend and I’m going to kiss you. What would you want me to do?’
This appears to amuse Holly greatly, but after a moment she claps her hands together, pulls a very serious expression and answers.
‘Well,’ says Holly, ‘I would want you to look at me.’
‘Look at you?’
‘Yes – but not like I was a difficult crossword puzzle. Or like I was some photo you’re drooling over. I mean, really look at me. Me. Just me.’
David remains confused.
‘A kiss can be the sexiest thing in the world, you know,’ says Holly. ‘It mostly isn’t, but it can be. Mouths are sexy. Lips are sexy. Tongues are sexy. We use our mouths to breath and to talk. It’s a big thing, to join mouths. We just piss and screw with the other things.’
�
��What? Oh – right …’
David gulps at the mention of those ‘other things’. The room suddenly seems to shrink.
‘A girl wants to feel like you’re looking at her – just her – and really seeing her. Do you understand? She doesn’t want to feel like you’re just kissing someone – anyone. She wants to feel like you’re kissing her. Just her. Only her.
‘You want to feel like you are the only person that matters in the world to that other person – for that shared moment. Can you understand that? Can you imagine what that might be like – to shut the world out, to stop time and just focus on that kiss?’
David tries to do that – to imagine that he and Holly are indeed the only people in the world – and to his surprise everything else does seem to fall away in his thoughts and a kind of peace sweeps in until they sit in a kind of sparkling bubble adrift in a void. It is surprisingly easy.
‘Good,’ says Holly.
She can see it in his eyes. He can see it in hers too.
‘What then?’ says David, his voice now hushed. ‘What would happen then?’
‘Well,’ she says, her own voice now barely a whisper. ‘I like hands.’
‘Hands …’ says David, mesmerised.
‘Yes. Hands. I’d like him to touch my hair maybe.’
‘Like this?’ says David.
He lifts his hand tentatively to Holly’s hair and runs a few strands between his fingers.’
‘Kind of. But less like you’re my hairdresser,’ she says.
David drops the hair. Holly laughs. The world begins to seep back in. The bubble doesn’t burst but it certainly loses some of its sparkle.
‘Sorry. Don’t give up,’ she says, kindly, quietly. ‘Move inside the hair … put your hand on my neck …’
David does as he is told. Her neck is smooth and warm and he lets his hand glide up towards her ear.
‘That’s good,’ says Holly. ‘You need to get a balance between rubbing and tickling. You’re not giving a massage, but the last thing you want is for her to squirm and pull away giggling. Although that can break the ice. Oh – you know there’s no one rule for all this.’
David nods, still entranced. He is listening and not listening. Something has been set in motion and David does not want it to stop.
‘And now my face,’ says Holly. ‘Again, you’re touching something precious, not stroking a dog. And look into her eyes all the time. That eye contact is sexy. You aren’t embarrassed to look at her. You want to look at her. She’s beautiful.’
David looks at Holly. She is beautiful. She is. She really is. Not just hot – but beautiful. He lets his hand slide round behind her head and he pulls her towards him and leans in. The door clicks. Holly is standing at the window by the time it opens.
‘You’ve been up here a long time, Holly,’ says David’s mother. ‘I wondered what had happened to you.’
‘Oh, David was just telling me about his comics,’ says Holly.
The speed of Holly’s lie and mood change impresses David a lot.
‘I didn’t know you were interested,’ says his mother.
‘I’m not really,’ says Holly. ‘But you know what he’s like.’
David’s mother laughs. David frowns. That almost-kiss is still clinging to his thoughts. He’s be happier if they both just left him alone to savour it if all they’re going to do is take the piss.
‘Seriously though,’ says Holly, ‘I do like the movies – some of them. I like Iron Man – what’s that actor called?’
‘Robert Downey Jnr,’ says David’s mother. ‘He’s great, isn’t he?’
‘God, yes,’ says Holly. ‘So sexy.’
‘Absolutely,’ says David’s mother.
David frowns again.
‘We’re embarrassing him,’ says David’s mother.
‘Aww!’ says Holly. ‘You’re not embarrassed, are you, David?’
‘What? No … I don’t care …’ he says.
Holly laughs.
‘Anyway, I’m finished now, so I’ll be on my way. Bye, David.’
‘Oh – yeah – bye,’ says David, picking up a comic.
Holly follows his mother out of the room and he can hear the diminishing patter of their feet on the stairs, their voices in the distance, the slam of the front door as Holly leaves the house.
David looks down at his hand; at a sparkling strand of Holly’s hair trapped between his fingers.
Chapter 19
Superpowerless
David can’t stop thinking about kissing. He thinks about it when he’s awake and dreams about it when he’s asleep. Sometimes he’ll be kissing Ellen, but mostly – mostly – he is carrying on that almost-kiss with Holly, rerunning it and re-editing it in different ways as though his mother hadn’t come in and they had been left alone.
Would she have kissed him? Would she have let their lips meet. David tells himself that this is just another fantasy but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels inevitable. Maybe that’s just wish-fulfilment on his behalf. He’s almost sure that’s what it is. Almost. Probably.
But in any case, kissing or not kissing Holly is not really the issue and he knows it. It’s the kissing or the not kissing of Ellen that really matters. Isn’t it?
His mind drifts to thoughts of superheroes and their girlfriends. It’s OK for a girl like Pepper Potts because Iron Man is only really a superhero when he wears his suit, or Invisible Girl from the Fantastic Four because she’s a superhero just like Reed Richards is.
But when Superman kisses Lois Lane, does he have to pull back like when he’s Clark Kent and hits someone – does he have to only give a fraction of his super-kiss for fear of crushing Lois’s face?
As the day of the party nears, David can’t decide what he dreads more – the idea that he might make a fool of himself in the kissing or just the very idea of going to a party filled with people he has spent his whole school life avoiding like the plague.
The party would be teaming with the ‘popular’ people. David isn’t popular. He isn’t close to being popular. He is a kind of marker for those who are popular. The popular people know they are popular, in part, because they aren’t people like David.
What the hell will they make of him suddenly turning up at a party after all these years? Will they even notice him? Or will they tell him to get lost? Or worse. Just the thought of it makes him cringe. And yet he can’t stop himself going.
He wishes now that he’d made more of an effort with these people – even if it had been a fake effort. He’s seen that in operation – that fakery – and despised it – but he also knows it works.
David has never made any secret of his contempt for the golden ones at school over the last few years – even if they had been mostly unaware of it. But his refusal to play the game has won him enemies, he knows that. You are expected to know your place and accept it. Then you are deemed to be ‘OK’. Being ‘OK’ was the best people like him could hope for. That’s what Joe did. That’s what David will not – cannot – do.
Or so he has always told himself. But maybe he just needed an incentive. He had never wanted to be friends with any of those people, and even before his father’s death had been content with Joe and his own company.
But now – now everything is different. Or it seems to be. All because of Ellen. Or the thought of Ellen. Her lips, her lips against his or her tongue in his mouth. Her tongue in his mouth. His in hers. Lips. Tongues. Tongues. Lips.
The usual barriers are in place in his mind but they seem not to be able to withstand the flood of images crashing against them like waves over a sandbank. He is helpless; inundated.
So the next time Holly comes cleaning, David is waiting to continue where they left off on their kissing masterclass.
‘I’ve got an idea for your comic-book character. The one with all the light rays coming out of him.’
‘Yeah?’ says David.
‘What about … Lightforce?’ she says, jazz-handing as she does so.
David nods appreciatively.
‘Actually that’s not bad. Lightforce …’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘You see – every superhero has to have a name.’
‘Strictly speaking he’s a supervillain.’
‘Same difference.’
David nods. It’s true. They all had to have names. Villains too. Maybe villains even more so. That’s part of what’s cool about them.
‘I watched Iron Man again after our last conversation,’ says Holly.
‘It’s good,’ says David.
‘It goes on a bit,’ she says. ‘But I do like –’
‘Robert Downey Jnr,’ says David. ‘I know – you said.’
Holly smirks.
‘What can I say – he’s cute. It’s weird though. I hadn’t thought about it before but he’s kind of like a battery-powered toy.’
David laughs.
‘I don’t think he’d appreciate you calling him that.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘But he made himself into this kind of part machine. He seems really powerful, but he’s also really weak, when you think about it. He’s either superpowered or super-weak – weaker even than you or me.’
David nods.
‘A lot of superheroes are like that,’ he says. ‘They have some kind of disaster that changes them and then they are trapped being superheroes.’
‘Trapped?’
‘Yeah – I mean they can’t have a day off. They have to do it whether they like it or not, don’t they? Bruce Banner never wanted to be the Hulk, the Fantastic Four never asked for their powers. Tony Stark makes the best of having to save himself from having shrapnel in his heart. He creates Iron Man because he chooses to have superpowers rather than be … superpowerless.’
Holly nods.
‘Superpowerless?’ she says. ‘Yes. I can see that. Without the suit he’s actually weaker than a normal person; without that thing in his chest that keeps him alive.’
‘Exactly. It’s a curse and a blessing at the same time. Lots of superheroes are like that. A lot of them would swap with a normal human being if they could.’
‘But then what’s normal?’
Superpowerless Page 10
