Let's Get Lost

by Sarra Manning

  “I got thirty quid a week for cleaning and doing the laundry and picking Felix up after school and—” I narrowed my eyes to see if he’d buy it and then continued— “and a hundred quid a month clothing and sundry allowance.”

  “A hundred pounds seems a little excessive,” he murmured, switching on the kettle. “Define sundries.”

  “Tampons, sanitary napkins,” I began, and smirked when I saw his pained expression. “Shoe repairs, books for school if there aren’t enough to go around, stuff for my face so I don’t break out . . .”

  He nodded his head. Sucker! “That seems reasonable, if you give me your bank details, I’ll set up the direct debit. I haven’t had a chance to do anything more than close the accounts.”

  He pressed his hand over his forehead as if he could rub out the frown lines, which seemed to be a permanent fixture—and it was so strange that we could be having this conversation and not mention her by name.

  “Cool,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “And please don’t keep stealing money from my wallet,” he added softly.

  I didn’t bother to deny it. I was too busy concentrating on the chilly feel of the goose bumps rising up on my arms, but I tilted my chin so I could look him in the eye.

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.” He sighed heavily. “This coldness between us . . . I don’t like it, Isabel, I don’t like it at all.”

  “I know.” My voice was this tiny squeak.

  And just like that, in a split second, in the blink of an eye, in the time it takes to draw breath and not even have a chance to let it out again, he straightened up and went from soft to hard.

  “I promised Felix that I’d spend some time with him this evening watching DVDs and ordering some takeout.” He curled his lip like Felix was going to force him to eat dirt. “If you think you can be pleasant company, you’re welcome to join us.”

  I could tell that he thought he was offering me, like, this huge olive branch. Maybe even a whole bloody olive tree. But an evening spent watching Shrek (Felix always wants to watch Shrek) and pretending that I wasn’t gritting my teeth and digging my nails into my palms hard enough to draw blood because it was all bullshit and lies, wasn’t worth a hundred quid a month for clothing and sundries.

  “I have stuff to do.”

  “Very well.”

  I was just settling down for an evening of hardcore skulking in my room, which involved lying like a starfish in the middle of the floor and listening to Smith’s Mope Rock Playlist Number Five when Felix barged in and threw the cordless phone at me.

  “For you,” he said. “And we’re ordering Chinese, do you want some?”

  “You’re such a little suckass.” I suddenly remembered that we needed to have a conversation about presenting a united front. “But thanks for the whole allowance thing.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my idea to give you money!” Felix protested, put out by the very thought that he might have done me a good turn. “I told Dad that you didn’t deserve any.”

  “Whatever, monkey boy. Get me some fortune cookies and a . . . oh, egg rolls and some Kung Pao chicken,” I told him, picking up the phone. “Okay, you can piss off now!”

  He slammed the door with great force as I said a cautious hello.

  “Isabel. You still have my iPod.”

  I closed my eyes and sank back down on the floor. He sounded like the dictionary definition of “I hate your guts.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I waited for him to tell me how to get it back to him, but apparently I wasn’t going to get anything from him but a frosty shoulder. “Well, I can’t tonight because I have a thing.”

  “Oh yeah, you and your things,” he drawled. “You and your little brother—it was your little brother, wasn’t it?—and some Chinese. Sounds enthralling.”

  “How much did you hear?” I demanded, scrolling back to my slanging match with Felix to see if I’d said anything which might indicate that I was a sixteen-year-old compulsive liar.

  “Fortune cookies. Egg rolls. Kung Pao chicken. Something about an allowance and that even being a blood relation is little protection against your infamous nastiness. Do you snub him publicly, too?”

  I decided to ignore his last dig. “No one asked you to eavesdrop. ”

  “I kinda couldn’t help it.” He exhaled heavily. “Look, I need to get my iPod back. I can’t do tonight, anyway, so shall I come around and pick it up tomorrow?”

  Come around where? “No!” I hissed. “I’ll meet you somewhere. ”

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “You’re not coming around here,” I repeated furiously, already seeing the horrific scene unfolding in front of my eyes.

  Dad acting as if Smith was some grubby-pawed potential rapist and then letting slip my real age within, like, ten seconds.

  “Isabel, look, the hissy fit is a nice change of pace, but I was just trying to find out if you live near me,” he said with teeth-gritted exasperation, which made me feel like a complete drama queen. “Like, do you live out in Hove or something?”

  “I live near Seven Dials. Montpelier Villas,” I admitted somewhat unwillingly. Our nabe was pretty posh. In fact, we lived on the swankiest street in Brighton. “And you?”

  “Kemp Town, George Street, behind Safeway. So do you want to come around here tomorrow afternoon? Just to swap iPods ...”

  “Well, why else would I come around?”

  He made an impatient “pffffting” sound. “It’s number seventy-three. Come around about two-thirtyish.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said, like I didn’t care one way or another.

  “Fine. Maybe you’ll be in a better mood,” he snapped.

  “Don’t count on it,” I said, but he’d already hung up and I was talking to dead air.

  Let'sGetLost

  Let's Get Lost

  10

  It was a beautiful afternoon. There was still a faint hint of summer in the air, even though it was late September, and I decided to walk along the seafront to Kemp Town, dodging day-trippers and strollers with every step I took. I scowled at every single one of them, but I had my sunglasses on so it was all wasted.

  There’s this little stone-walled spit by the pier that I like to stand on and watch the water, but it was knee-deep in fat-faced hordes down from London for the day. Besides, it’s best when there’s rain and wind and the sea comes lashing up at you. I bought a bag of fresh doughnuts from the stall at the pier entrance with the last of the money I stole from Dad and crossed over the road, listening to Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” one last time. I was going to miss Smith’s iPod—there was some really good stuff on it and I hadn’t worked out how to transfer it on to my computer.

  Not like I could ask him to do it because that would really ruin my mean girl rep, I thought as I stood on his doorstep and tried to will my fingers to ring the bell. After a few moments they obliged, and then I had to stand there, quaking in my flip-flops while a pair of feet thundered down the stairs followed by swearing that was so fluent and graphic even I was shocked.

  The door opened and this pretty girl with a MRS. SETH COHEN T-shirt and an aggravated expression gave me a quizzical look.

  “Yeah?”

  I was planning on taking my sunglasses off but thought better of it. She was really cute and I wasn’t having a good hair or a good anything day. “Is Smith in?”

  She nodded and then stepped aside. “Come in and mind the bike. I just banged my hip on it.” She laughed. “Hence the bad language.”

  There was something really familiar about her. Like I knew her from somewhere, but maybe she’d been at the club the other night.

  I followed her up the stairs and into the living room. “Wait here and I’ll see if he’s up,” she said. “I’m Molly, by the way.”

  “Isabel,” I murmured, perching gingerly on the edge of a chair. Molly? So this was the paragon of perfection that Smith was hopelessly crushing on. She flicked her ho
ney-blonde hair (which in no way was natural) back from her elfin face and, yup, she was definitely crush-worthy. Molly seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. I pulled the iPod out of my pocket. “I need to give this back to him. So, like, maybe you could do that and get mine?” I asked hopefully, but she was already out the door.

  “I’ll just go and get him,” she called over her shoulder.

  I looked cautiously around the room. Everything I’d heard about student accommodation was true. It was a complete hovel. There were magazines and newspapers obscuring the carpet. Dirty cups and saucers, most of them doubling up as ashtrays, littered every surface, and I shuffled my buttocks further along the seat to minimize contact. Just sitting there made my skin crawl.

  “Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess in here,” Molly said as she came back into the room. “We keep having people around and they keep making a mess and we keep not clearing it up. It’s a never-ending cycle of untidiness.”

  I smiled weakly and racked my brains for something to say to her. “It’s really not that bad,” I lied. “You could shove most of it into a bin bag and it would look better.”

  Hi, I’m Isabel and housework is my passion.

  “Yeah, we could,” she agreed, nudging a stack of magazines with her socked foot. “Anyway, Smith says you can go up if you like. Do you want some tea or something?”

  There was no way I was drinking out of any mug that lived in this flat. Not without getting dysentery or Legionnaires’ disease or something. “Oh no, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

  I stood up and tried not to look clueless. “So, where am I going?”

  “Up the stairs, last door you come to.” Molly was still poking at the debris on the floor. “He’s in a foul mood. He’s got a bitch of a hangover,” she added cheerfully.

  I was really careful going up the stairs so that I didn’t have to touch the banister or the walls, which were probably coated in years’ worth of dirt. Yeah, they looked freshly painted, but bacteria lurks everywhere.

  There was music leaking out from under Smith’s door as I tapped on it lightly. No reply. It wasn’t until I hammered on it with both fists that I heard a grunt and pushed the door open.

  All I could see was him. Not just because the sun was streamingin through the windows and backlighting him in this golden glow that made his eyes bluer than normal and cast this little halo around him, but because his room was tiny. There was a double bed, a ton of CDs scattered over the floor, and a complicated stereo system perched on a milk crate.

  “It’s you,” he said, in a way that suggested that he wasn’t exactly pleased to see me. But for once, my hackles weren’t rising. I’d never been on my own in a boy’s room (Felix’s didn’t count), especially not one where the bed was the dominant feature. I was so far away from anything approaching a comfort zone.

  In the end I lifted a limp hand in his direction. “Hey.”

  Smith took a step toward me so I could get the full benefit of his bloodshot eyes, stubbly chin, and damp hair; he must have just come out of the shower.

  “You got my iPod, then?” he asked tersely, and I pulled it out of the back pocket of my jeans.

  “It’s fully charged.” I wedged the bag of doughnuts under my arm and prayed that I didn’t get grease stains on my Topshop wrap top. Then I yanked out my headphones and handed him the iPod.

  He held it up to the light and scrutinized it as if he couldn’t quite believe that it was still intact. “I thought about flushing it down the loo but I had a change of heart,” I said, and he showed me all his teeth in something that didn’t even remotely resemble a smile.

  “That’s big of you. Stay here, I’ll get yours.”

  He walked across the room, or took about three steps toward what I thought was just a really big Lost in Translation poster but was actually a door. I peered over his shoulder as he disappearedinto a narrow strip of a room, with a long desk taking up one wall and cupboards along the rest of it.

  Smith was fiddling around with a computer and then turned to me with a frown. “I’m just taking some stuff off yours but it’s not quite finished,” he said. “Do you mind waiting?”

  “I could come back,” I heard myself say when I realized I had to get out of there before the silence killed me. “Like in an hour maybe?”

  “No . . . hang on . . .” he mumbled, fiddling with his keyboard. “You can come in here if you like.”

  Anything was better than being rooted to the spot, so I squeezed through the narrow doorway and crept up behind him so I could watch him, whizzing through my playlists on iTunes.

  “I tried to do that,” I blurted out. “Transfer some stuff across, I mean, but I couldn’t work out how to do it.”

  He stiffened as I leaned closer, like I was about to jump his sorry bones, then said in a much friendlier voice: “You need to download this program off the Internet. I’ll show you. Here, you can sit down and I’ll crouch.”

  We spent the next hour ripping songs off his iPod onto mine and bickering happily about music. I even let him eat the rest of the doughnuts because he hadn’t had any breakfast or lunch.

  “And oh, can I have The Hormones’ songs, too, please?”

  Smith grinned and started uploading them. “Do you like them, then?”

  “They’re okay. Well, they were, they kinda suck now. I liked them better when Mol— Shit! Oh, my God, it’s her.” My hands flew up to cover my flaming cheeks. “I’m so lame.”

  He nudged me with his arm. “You didn’t recognize her? Well, I guess she looks different now.”

  I shook my head. “She seemed familiar, but I thought she was at the club and, anyway, she used to have pink hair.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t been such charmless company, I’d have introduced you,” Smith said, propping his arm on my leg. “Her and Jane are in this new band called Duckie.”

  “Don’t say anything else,” I begged him. “I need time to process this information.”

  He gave me about thirty seconds. “Are you done processing?”

  “Okay, you’re trying to tell me that Molly Montgomery, ex-lead singer of The Hormones, is now living in a grimy student flat in Brighton . . .”

  “That’s because she’s a student, Isabel. It’s what we do, we live in student flats, we go to lectures. And in Molly’s case, get sued by her former record company for walking out on her contract.”

  “Ouch.” I winced.

  He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Really sore point. Never bring up The Hormones, lawyers, or ex-boyfriends called Dean who’ve just landed their first film role.”

  I nodded gravely. “Right, I’ll remember that.” Then I flash-backed to the conversation I’d overheard. “So is she your girlfriend, then?”

  “Hardly.” The look he gave me was pretty intense, and I don’t think it was my imagination that he seemed to be less resting his arm on my leg than stroking my knee. “We’re just friends. C’mon, we should leave this doing its thing—I’m getting a cramp.”

  He got up and stretched, which made all his muscles shift, T-shirt riding up to show a faint trickle of hair on his belly. I looked down at the frayed hem of my jeans because I just knew he was smiling at me. One of those smiles that made me want to touch the corners of his mouth.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  I shook my head and wriggled off the stool.

  “Now, look, you’ve gone all quiet again,” he teased, and laughed when I pouted at him.

  “I haven’t.”

  “Yeah, you have. Come back into the other room.”

  There was nowhere to sit except the bed, but I didn’t mind because Smith flung himself down on the mattress and started telling me about how he went to the first ever Hormones gig at some girl’s sixteenth birthday party after he met Jane and Molly in a garage. I sat cross-legged next to him and listened, not to the story (even though it was pretty engrossing), but to the quiet pride in his voice when he talked about Molly and what she’d been through. She might
not have been his girlfriend but there was something there that was about more than just being mates. Something like a major case of unrequited love.

  “So we kinda became friends during what she calls her blue period, which means she wore a lot of black and stayed in bed most of the time,” he finished, and rolled over onto his side.

  “Well, I guess it must have been tough for her.” I couldn’t stop myself. “So has she got a boyfriend?”

  Smith’s eyes were closed, but they snapped open then. “No. I think there’s some DJ guy she fancies,” he said neutrally, so I couldn’t tell what he thought about that. “So have you?”