by Alice Oseman
She appeared to be being genuine.
“This is real, this is me,” I said.
She blinked. “Did you just quote Camp Rock at me? That’s not very pop punk.”
“I’ve gotta go my own way.”
“Okay, firstly, that’s High School Musical …”
We drove out of the village. Raine was wearing white platform trainers and stripy ankle socks, a grey T-shirt dress and a Harrington jacket. She always looked effortlessly cool, like an advert from some indie magazine you can only order online.
“You so didn’t want to come, did you,” said Raine, grinning as she spun the steering wheel. She was a surprisingly good driver.
“Haha, what else do I have to do?” I said, not mentioning the fact that I was literally sweating from how nervous I was about going to Spoons again, because there would be so many people from school there and people from the year above who I only knew a little bit and it would be really awkward and there’d be loads of groups of terrifying lads and I definitely should have worn something more boring and the only reason I was doing this, the only reason I’d want to do this all over again, was the chance that I could say sorry to Aled and we could be friends again before he went to university tomorrow and made a load of new friends and forgot about me …
“Exactly,” said Raine.
We’d reached the motorway. With one hand, Raine turned the radio on, brought an iPod out of her pocket and fiddled with it. Music began to play on the car speakers – her iPod had some kind of FM transmitter attached to it.
Electronic drum and bass started to play.
“Who’s this?” I asked
“Madeon,” she said.
“It’s cool,” I said.
“It’s my favourite for skuds.”
“Skuds?”
“Drives. You never go for drives?”
“I can’t drive. Can’t afford it.”
“Get a job, mate. I worked forty hours a week for the entire summer for this lump of trash.” She patted the steering wheel. “My parents are proper poor, there’s no way they’d get me one, and I needed a car, seriously. Needed to get out of my town.”
“Where d’you work?”
“Hollister. They’re judgemental as shit, but they do pay all right.”
“Fair enough.”
Raine turned the music up. “Yeah, this Madeon guy, he’s the same age as me. I think that’s why I like his music so much. Or I just feel like I’ve done nothing with my life.”
“It sounds like you’re in space,” I said. “Or a futuristic city where everything is dark blue and you’re wearing silver and there are space cruisers flying overhead.”
She looked at me. “You’re a proper Universe City fangirl, aren’t you?”
I laughed. “Yep, until I die.”
“I listened to a few episodes earlier. Some of the recent ones that you’re in.”
“Really? What did you think?”
“It’s really cool.” She paused for thought. “It’s … it’s got something. The stories aren’t, like, amazing literature or anything, but like, the characters and the world and the language just sort of hypnotise you. Yeah. Good stuff.”
“So d’you ship Radio and Toulouse?” The shipping of Radio and Toulouse had increased exponentially this month, which I felt a bit awkward about, since it was me and Aled, and lots of people thought that the characters represented people in real life. At least three people at school had asked me whether me and Radio were dating in real life. We hadn’t even been trying to make Radio and Toulouse’s relationship romantic.
She thought about it for a second. “Mmm. I don’t know. It’s not really about that, is it? Like, if they get together it’ll be nice, but if they don’t it won’t ruin anything or change anything. The show’s not really about romance.”
“That’s literally exactly what I think.”
The music suddenly increased in volume. Raine changed gears and moved into the outside lane.
“I really like this,” I said, tapping the radio display.
“What?” said Raine. The music was too loud.
I just laughed and shook my head. Raine shot me a confused grin. God, I barely knew her, but somehow here I was, having a vague hint of a good time. The motorway stretched out before us, dark blue, flashing lights. It looked like a time vortex.
Raine knew literally everyone who’d turned up to Spoons, all the people who’d left the various town schools four months ago and were getting smashed one last time before they left for university and gradually stopped speaking to each other.
It took only three awkward conversations for me to need alcohol, which Raine got for me, since I was still seventeen. She was drinking water because she was driving, but at one point she said to me, “Yeah, I stopped drinking ages ago, I used to do some really stupid stuff,” and I wondered what that was all about. I should have stopped drinking, but the awkward conversations with people I didn’t know would probably have destroyed me emotionally.
Spoons was packed. It was terrifying.
“Yeah, me and my girlfriend were gonna go to Disneyland last month,” said some guy to me while I was waiting for my third drink. “But we decided to save our money for uni, like, neither of us could get any of the maintenance grants so I need money to keep me going while I try and get a job.”
“What? I thought everyone got the maintenance grants,” I said.
“The maintenance loans, yeah. But that doesn’t cover the whole cost of your rent, unless you’re living in a dive. You only get the grants if you’re poor or your parents are divorced or whatever.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, everyone thought the boys’ school head boy was gonna get into Cambridge,” said a girl, half an hour later. I was drinking my fourth at a circular table, Raine talking to four different people at once. The girl was shaking her head. “He’d been the top student in the year since Year 7. But then he just didn’t get in. Like, seven other people got in, but he didn’t. And everyone had been like ‘Oh, he’s obviously going to get in,’ for so long. It was horrible.”
“That’s really sad,” I said.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m doing,” said another guy, who was wearing a denim jacket with a Joy Division T-shirt. He had an awkward posture, like he was embarrassed about something. “I don’t know how I passed first year. I did nothing. And now I’m going into second year and it’s like … I honestly don’t know what I’m doing.” He stared at me and he looked tired. “I wish I could go back and do things differently. I wish I could go back and change everything … I did some stupid things … I did some stupid things …”
Spoons turned into Johnny R’s as it always did, and none of us noticed it happen. I don’t even know how I got in there without any ID, but suddenly there I was, leaning on the far left of the Johnny R’s bar with a drink that looked like water but definitely wasn’t, judging by the taste.
I looked to the left and there was a girl sitting there who appeared to be doing exactly what I was doing – leaning on the bar, a drink in front of her, staring blankly at the crowd. She caught me looking at her and turned, and she was classically pretty – big eyes, wide mouth – and she also had the best hair I’d ever seen. It reached her waist and the parts that weren’t dark purple were a faded grey-lilac colour. It reminded me of Aled.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Er, yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”
“You look a bit dazed.”
“Nah, just bored.”
“Haha, same.”
There was a pause.
“D’you go to the Academy?” I asked.
“No, no, I’m at uni. I went to the grammars.”
She’d gone to the grammars. That’s what people say when they went to my old grammar school that burned down, and then had to change to the boys’ grammar school.
“Oh, right.”
She sipped her drink. “Hate it though. I might leave.”
“Hate
what?”
“Uni. I’m starting second year, but …” She trailed off. I couldn’t stop myself from frowning. Why would anybody hate university?
“I think I might go home,” she said.
“Aren’t your friends here?”
“Yeah, but … I don’t know. I don’t think I’m the sort of … I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I used to like coming here, but I don’t think …” She laughed suddenly.
“What?” I said.
“One of my old friends … she always said that I’d get tired of it eventually. Like, she’d always say no when I tried to bring her in Year 13, when we were both eighteen. She’d always be like, no, I’ll hate it, and then she’d tell me I’d hate it in the end too so she was just getting the jump on me.” She laughed again. “Well, she was right. As usual.”
“Ah, is she here now?”
The girl looked at me. “No …”
“She sounds cool.”
The girl ran a hand through her long hair. The light made the purple so beautiful she looked like a fairy. “She is.” She looked past me. I couldn’t see her eyes through the dark. “I can’t believe she was right this whole time,” she said, I think, but I couldn’t really hear her because the music was too loud, and I was about to ask her “What?” again, but then she raised her eyebrows and forced a smile and said, “I’ll see you later,” even though I never saw her again in my life and she disappeared and I wondered whether I would stop hanging out with Aled once he was gone and one day it would just be me sat in a club with a drink, staring at other friends dancing, blank grey faces I haven’t met yet, all drowning under the sound.
I downed my drink.
SORRY
“Frances, Frances, Frances, Frances, Frances …” Raine ran up to me in the middle of the third floor where they were playing a dubstep remix of ‘White Sky’ by Vampire Weekend.
I was drunk and had mostly no idea what I was doing or why. I was just doing it.
Raine had a plastic cup of clear liquid and for a second I genuinely believed that it was an entire plastic cup of vodka.
She saw me looking at it. “Mate, it’s water!” She laughed. “I’m driving!”
‘Teenage Dirtbag’ started playing above our heads.
Raine raised one hand into the air and pointed at the ceiling. “Maaate! Frances, we have to dance to this.”
I laughed. I kept laughing, I always did that when I was drunk. I followed her into the dancers. It was sweaty, and four guys attempted to grind on me. One guy touched my arse and I was too much of a square to do anything about it, so Raine poured her water on him and he shouted at her. I laughed. Raine laughed. I’m a really rubbish dancer anyway. Raine was a good dancer. She was pretty too. I was drunk, and I wondered if I was in love with her, and that made me laugh a lot. No. I’m not in love with anyone.
Aled kept flashing in and out of my vision, like he was teleporting around. He was magical in so many ways, but I wasn’t in love with him either, even though he always looked so good in shirts and his hair was all messed up and lovely because we were all so sweaty. Later on I was dancing with Maya, to some trippy London Grammar song, and Maya was saying, “Frances, you’re like an entirely different person!” and I saw Aled in the corner, talking to someone – oh, yeah, obviously it was Daniel. I needed to talk to Aled again, but I didn’t want him to hate me, I so desperately wanted this to be okay, but I just didn’t know how to make it okay.
Now that I knew Aled and Daniel were together, I kept noticing all the tiny things I hadn’t noticed before, like the way Daniel would look at Aled while he was talking, the way Daniel would pull Aled along by the arm and Aled would follow without question, the way when they were in conversation they would lean so close together it was as if they were about to kiss. I really was an idiot.
Maya and Jess and these two guys Luke and Jamal were drunk too and they were bitching about Raine while we were dancing, multi-tasking. They said she was a slag, or something, and she made them all feel really awkward. Maya gave me a weird look while they were speaking and I realised that it was because I had frowned at them.
I was still thinking about what that girl with the purple hair had said about wanting to leave university. I was thinking about it because I didn’t understand it at all, I’d never heard anyone suggest anything like that, but then again … obviously not everyone enjoyed university. I knew I would though. So what she’d said didn’t matter. I was study machine Frances Janvier. I was going to Cambridge, and I was going to get a good job and earn lots of money, and I was going to be happy.
Wasn’t I? I was. Uni, job, money, happiness. That’s what you do. That’s the formula. Everyone knows that. I knew that.
Thinking about it was giving me a headache. Or maybe the music was too loud.
I watched Aled and Daniel head towards the stairs so obviously I followed, not even bothering to tell Raine where I was going; she’d be fine, she talks to everyone. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I knew I had to say something, I couldn’t just leave things like this, I didn’t want to be left alone like this. Daniel had always been there before me, I’d been stupid to think Aled could ever consider me his best friend when he’d already had one for so long, even if he’d been the honest-to-God best and most excellent friend I’d ever had in my whole life and I might have to live my whole life without meeting another person so brilliant as him.
I almost lost them in the crowds because everyone was starting to look the same, so many skinny jeans and little dresses and undercuts and platform plimsolls and Wayfarer glasses and velvet scrunchies and denim jackets. I made it outside into the smoking area and couldn’t believe how cold it was – wasn’t it summer? Wait – no, it’s nearly October. How did that happen? It was so quiet outside, so cold and quiet and dark …
“Oh,” said Aled, when I practically collided with him. Neither of us were smoking, obviously, but it had been so hot inside I thought I was going to melt. Not that I would have complained about melting – it would have solved a lot of my problems.
Aled appeared to be on his own, a drink in one hand. He was wearing one of his more boring short-sleeved shirts and very ordinary skinny jeans. And his hair … he didn’t look like himself at all. I wanted to hug him, as if that would turn him back into his normal self.
It was dark and crowded outside and all the benches were taken. A remix of ‘Chocolate’ by The 1975 was escaping out of the doorway into Johnny R’s ground floor and it almost made me roll my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I said immediately, even though it sounded so childish. “Honestly, Aled, I’m just … I can’t tell you how much …”
“It’s fine,” he said, straight-faced and obviously lying. “I was just surprised. It’s fine.”
He didn’t look like he was just surprised.
He looked like he wanted to die.
“It’s not fine. It’s not fine. You didn’t want anyone to know about it and now everyone does. And your mum, I mean … you said she might make you stop doing it, or something …”
He was standing with his legs crossed. He wasn’t wearing his lime green plimsolls – instead he was wearing these very ordinary white ones that I hadn’t seen before.
He shook his head slightly. “I just … I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just lied. I don’t get why you couldn’t have just said no when they asked you whether it was me.”
“I …” I didn’t know why I couldn’t have lied about it either. I lied all the time. My entire personality was a lie every time I stepped inside the school building, wasn’t it? Wait, no … School Frances wasn’t a lie, she was just … I don’t know … “I’m … sorry.”
“Yeah, okay, I know,” Aled snapped. He actually snapped.
I just wanted him to be okay. I just wanted us to be okay.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“No,” I
said.
“What?” he said.
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
“I said I’m fine!” He raised his voice and it almost made me step backwards. “Jesus Christ, it is what it is. We can’t do anything about it, stop making it a bigger deal than it already is!”
“But it is a big deal to you …”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said, and I felt like I was going to break into a million tiny pieces and get blown away. “It’s a pathetic thing to be upset about, so it doesn’t matter.”
“But you are upset about it.”
“Just stop talking about it!” His voice got louder, he sounded almost panicked.
“You’re my most important friend,” I said again.
“Don’t you have your own things to worry about?” he said.
“No.” I laughed again, I could have started crying. “No, my life is fine, completely boring and fine. Nothing ever happens to me. I get good grades, I have a great family, and that’s it. I’ve got literally nothing to complain about. Am I not allowed to care about my friends’ problems?”
“My life is fine,” he said, but his voice sounded hoarse.
“Fine!” I said, or maybe I shouted it, maybe I was drunker than I thought. “Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Everything’s fine. We’re all fine.’’
Aled stepped back a little and he looked hurt, and I knew I’d done something wrong, again, why am I such an idiot?
“What d’you think you’re trying to do?” he said, his voice louder now. “Why are you so obsessed with me?”
That hurt like a stab to the heart.
“I’m just— I’ll listen to you!”
“I don’t need you to listen! I don’t want to talk about anything! Stop pestering me!”
And that was it.
He wouldn’t tell me anything.
He didn’t want to.
“Just— why did you do it?” he said, his hands curling into fists.
“Why did I do what!?”
“Tell everyone I’m the Creator!”
I started shaking my head wildly. “I— I didn’t, I swear I didn’t …”
