Am I Normal Yet?

by Holly Bourne

  Even I could see my double standards then, without Sarah there to point them out.

  Lottie’s eyes welled up again. “What would I do without you guys?”

  I put my arm around her. “Go batshit crazy, skin a rabbit, drape it over your head and go stand outside his window, singing ‘I Want You Back’ by the Jackson 5?”

  She giggled, her tears subsiding instantly. “That sounds like so much fun.”

  “Revenge is always fun,” Amber said. “Just ask my adopted brother.”

  “AMBER!”

  “I’m not even sorry.”

  And we all laughed like maniacs.

  “You know what’s the best revenge, of course?” Amber said, finishing off her hot chocolate and putting the mug down on my wooden floor…without using the coaster I’d given her. “Moving on with your life, and becoming absolutely fabulous so he can see what he’s missing.”

  I shook my head, biting my tongue about the coaster. “No, I don’t agree. You should become fabulous for you, because you want to be fabulous, not because you want some idiot to kick himself for rejecting you in a year’s time.”

  “Ahh, but this is why it’s the best revenge,” Amber said. “By the time they’re kicking themselves, you’re so fabulous you’ve forgotten all about them.”

  “I like to think I already am fabulous,” Lottie wailed, and we giggled.

  “Of course you are,” I said.

  “So, how do I get revenge then?”

  “By not caring.”

  “That’s what I want, but my heart won’t let me. It’s got Stockholm Syndrome.”

  “Give it some time. It only happened a week ago.”

  We turned back to the movie and Lottie seemed to get lost in it. She turned onto her stomach and put her feet up against my wall. But now my head wasn’t in it. I was still going over this morning with Guy – the way he’d acted like nothing happened, the way he’d tortured me with his silence, the way he’d known I was getting pissed off and then told me to come to Battle of the Bands…the way I kept imagining what would have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted at the party.

  Maybe I should open up? Maybe I should talk it through with my friends. It wasn’t about me, as such. Maybe I could test them with this?

  I sighed. “Something sort of happened between me and Guy.” I surprised myself by blurting it out.

  Immediately Thelma and Louise were forgotten. They both whipped around in unison.

  “No way?” Lottie said, her hand over her mouth.

  “Ergh, why?” Amber asked in disgust.

  So I told them. About our strange walk home, about the way he’d looked after me at the party. I neglected to tell them just how much they’d upset me about Oli. “And, then,” I said, “we were about to kiss but Jane and Joel burst in with Amber…and then, today, well you saw him today, he acted like nothing happened. And I didn’t hear from him at all over half term.”

  Lottie grimaced. “What a jerk.”

  “It’s Guy,” Amber said. “What did you think would happen? He’s good-looking, yeah, but he’s also got trouble written all over him.”

  Lottie gave me a wry grin. “That’s why she likes him.”

  “Hey, that’s not why I like him. I don’t even know if I do like him.”

  “I certainly don’t like him,” Amber said. “Evie, he’s soooo up himself, especially now all those younger girls fancy him after that awful gig. And he’s a filthy stoner. I mean, why?”

  Lottie nodded solemnly. “Amber’s right. I mean, love, he does drugs. How much bigger do the words ‘BAD NEWS’ have to be scrawled on his forehead?”

  “It’s only weed though…” I wasn’t sure why I was defending him. “That’s not like real drugs, is it?”

  “Try telling that to the police,” Lottie replied, picking up her hot chocolate and taking a sip. “Try telling that to the homework he doesn’t do, the activities he’s probably given up, his brain cells that are lying in a brain cell morgue somewhere, dead as dead can be.”

  “I…I…” I didn’t know what to say to that.

  Amber untangled her limbs and sat with me on the bed. “Why do you even like him anyway? Be honest, did you even like him before you realized he might like you?”

  “I…er…”

  “Because it sounds to me like he’s playing you…” she continued, not letting me finish. “There’s nothing more attractive than having someone think you’re attractive. Unless they’re like facially-challenged or whatever. Sounds like he made some poxy move, dangled a carrot, and then when you were about to bite, hid the carrot, and now you want the carrot even more.”

  “Er…I…er…what’s the carrot?”

  “His penis,” Lottie interrupted and she and Amber burst out laughing again.

  I didn’t laugh. I hadn’t thought about Guy’s penis before. It was weird, but I guess he must have one, tucked in his jeans the entire time. That must be strange, having one THERE all day, every day. I’d never really even thought about any penises before, I certainly hadn’t ever seen one. Apart from in diagrams. I assume Jane had seen Joel’s by now. And Lottie had certainly seen a few. Was I supposed to want men’s penises? Wouldn’t I just giggle? For the millionth time I wished I’d had a normal teenagehood so I could’ve encountered penises during drunken parties in people’s garages at the age I was still allowed to giggle at them. Now, I would have to act all mature around one…that is, if I ever got to see one… Would I have seen Guy’s if we hadn’t been interrupted? No, no way I would’ve let him.

  Penises have diseases.

  “Evie, you’re blushing,” Lottie teased, her face red from laughing.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Not.”

  “Are.”

  Amber interrupted. “I can’t keep up with you, Evie. First Ethan, then Oli, now Guy…you have a flaky heart. It’s like puff pastry.”

  “Hey,” I said, hurt. “That’s not fair. Ethan was a sex maniac… Oli, well, you know what happened there, and, well, I don’t know what I feel for Guy yet.” I crossed my arms huffily. I wasn’t trying to be puff pastry, I just sort of wanted to date someone and have a boy think I was half-decent and not mad. That’s normal, right?

  Amber raised a gingery eyebrow. “Calm down, Eves, people might start to think you really like him.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. How are you supposed to know. Why can’t God come down from the sky with a giant foam finger, point at some bloke, and say, “That one, Evie, you’re supposed to fall in love with that one. He’s not a douche, I checked for you.’”

  “God,” Lottie turned around too, her head blocking the film, “…has more important stuff to do.”

  I grinned wryly. “Oh yeah, like what?”

  “Like mending the world.”

  “Not doing a very good job, is he?”

  She grinned too. “True, that’s why we need to help. By fighting inequality with our kick-ass spinster meetings…”

  “True,” I said. I thought about Guy, again. “Do you think it’s all part of inequality’s plan? To mess us about lovewise so we’re too busy waiting for text messages to burn our bras and run for Prime Minister?”

  “If that’s the case,” Amber said, “you two are playing right into inequality’s hands.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Oh you, so noble. Just wait until you almost get kissed at a house party.”

  Amber looked sad. “I should be so lucky.”

  And we accidentally spent the rest of the time we had before mum kicked them out, trying to convince Amber she was pretty instead of fighting the patriarchy…

  Twenty-five

  Rose shuffled past my room as I cleared up afterwards.

  “Why are you using antibacterial spray all over your bed?” she called over the threshold. I stopped spraying and looked up, blushing.

  “I had friends over. They were eating biscuits on my bed.”

  Rose drew a pained smile, the
sort you usually see on grown-ups, not tweenagers. “You know what I’m going to say.”

  “No, what are you going to say?” My voice sounded sulky, like someone Rose’s age.

  “Logical things – like it’s fine to just brush the crumbs off the bed and leave them on the floor. That you won’t get sick from people eating on your bed…that you could probably even leave the crumbs on the sheets and the world wouldn’t stop rotating.”

  “You never know, it might.”

  “No, Evie,” she came in and perched on the end of my bed, “it wouldn’t.”

  I did one last quick spray, on my pillow, for good measure. My room stunk of pine. If I opened the cupboard I wouldn’t be surprised if Robin Hood was squatting in there. I gave Rose a pleading look. “You know how I feel about logic.”

  “The thing about logic is…” Rose curled herself up like a cat. “Is that it really is rather logical.”

  “Screw logic, it’s just not imaginative enough.”

  She giggled.

  I put the spray away in the box under my bed and sat next to her, pulling her in for a free head rub. She groaned and wiggled into my fingers.

  “Did you have a nice time with your friends?” she asked.

  I smiled. “I guess. We were supposed to be talking about feminism but we ended up just whinging about boys not calling us. I wish I was your age again.”

  “No you don’t.” I felt her tense under my fingertips.

  “Everything okay, Rose?”

  “I heard you and the parents talking about you reducing your medication again.”

  “That is called changing the subject. Is everything okay, Rose?”

  She sighed. “It’s fine. So, how do you feel about the medicine?”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about this together. You’re impressionable, remember?”

  “You’re cleaning a bit more than normal.”

  “Well you’re avoiding my questions more than normal.”

  “Touché.” She rolled over and looked at my films. “How about we just watch a movie and stop interrogating each other?”

  I nodded. I could finish after she went to bed. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Or Mum, or Sarah. It was just a bit of spray.

  BAD THOUGHT

  But it’s not just a bit of spray though, is it, Evie? You plan to finish the whole bottle.

  I smiled down at Rose and gave the side of her face one last stroke.

  “A movie sounds fab.”

  I waited until everyone was asleep before I crept out of bed and slowly drew the box out from underneath it.

  A floorboard creaked. I paused.

  Silence again.

  I fished out the spray, and, okay, a bit of bleach and a J-cloth from my hidden stash – I mean, they ate in here! My phone went off. It sounded far too loud in the quiet of the house, vibrating angrily against my bedside table. I grabbed it to shut it up.

  It was a message.

  A message from Guy. Otherwise known as Ignory Norington.

  You are coming to Battle of the Bands, aren’t you?

  A smile started in my teeth and spread out across my face. If anyone walked in, I would be quite the sight – crouching in the dark, grinning like a madman, clutching a bottle of bleach.

  I hid the bleach back under my bed and crawled under the covers.

  I fell asleep smiling.

  Twenty-six

  Autumn had barely put in an appearance before winter arrived, basically overnight. It swept through our town like a late party guest, one who overcompensates for their bad timekeeping by drinking too much too quickly and making an embarrassment of themselves. One day it was all warm and golden, the next all bitter and grey. Within days dresses were pushed to the back of wardrobes, put into hibernation until April. Girls trawled online shopping sites for the perfect pair of ankle boots that didn’t exist. We pulled out our long-forgotten winter coats and found last year’s receipts and used tissues still snug in the pockets.

  I didn’t have any old used tissues in my winter coat. I would never be that disgusting.

  Oli still hadn’t come back to college. I worried about him. I worried about him but I still didn’t message him.

  As abruptly as the change in season, they’d lowered my medication again. To almost nothing.

  “Now, if you start suddenly feeling really low and potentially suicidal, you are to ring me immediately,” Sarah said, as she chatted through the new recovery plan. “It’s a really rare side effect of withdrawal, but it can happen.”

  “Thanks,” I said, dryly. “Give the anxious girl coming off her medication something more to worry about, why don’t ya?”

  “I’m proud of you,” she said. And the way her face looked made me think she really meant it. “Now, I’m going on holiday for a week, so we’ll miss a session. I know this isn’t great timing, but you’ve got the emergency contact number, haven’t you? And you can always go to your GP.”

  I felt my tummy sink… I hated it when Sarah went away. It was weird to think of her having a different life, a normal one, with holidays, and people she could talk to without using medical training.

  “I’ll be grand,” I said, smiling. Thinking, I don’t know if I will, but I like how proud you look right now.

  Mornings took longer, as I had to carefully pour out a liquid form of my medication onto a spoon. Very soon, I would stop completely.

  Rose told Mum about my cleaning box and it was removed from under my bed. I didn’t talk to Rose for two days and spent all my spare time with the girls instead. Amber was enough to bring anyone out of a bad mood.

  “Guys,” she announced, on a windy Wednesday, smashing her bag on the table. We’d relocated to a cosy corner of the cafeteria. “Guess what? I’ve made an agenda for today’s Spinster meeting.”

  Lottie and I looked up from our game of noughts and crosses.

  “An agenda?” Lottie asked.

  Amber nodded, her face as red as her hair. “To give us focus. You two spent most of the last meeting whinging about boys. That is all fair and well, but I think we need an agenda too.”

  I poked my tongue into the side of my mouth in amusement.

  “Item one: History of the Suffragettes – discussion topic: Were they terrorists or heroes?” I said, in a BBC news presenter voice. “Item two: Why won’t Guy reply to my messages?”

  Lottie rolled her eyes. “Has he done it again? Messaged you then not replied to your reply?”

  I nodded. “Yep. He messaged the other night, asking me about the new Wes Anderson film. I know, right? Guy? Wes Anderson? Anyway, I thought he might ask me to go see it. But when I replied – after a good half-hour of waiting time I may add – saying it had good reviews, nothing. Nada. Not a sausage.”

  “You need to stop replying.”

  “I know.”

  “So why do you keep replying?”

  I put my head down on the table. “I don’t know.”

  Amber bashed her bag on the table again, like a judge with a gavel.

  “You see!” she said, her face even redder if possible. “This is why we need an agenda!”

  I looked up and smiled at her. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  As if he knew I’d just made a conscious effort to stop talking about him, Guy barrelled through the double doors of the cafeteria. Why do guys like Guy look so good in duffel coats? It really is terribly unfair. He had Joel and Jane with him – their hands in each other’s coat pockets – just like the saying. They spotted us and headed over.

  Guy sat next to me and I felt outside’s cold air coming off him. He stank of smoke.

  “Smoking in winter is such a mission,” he announced, without even saying hi. “It’s so effing cold outside.”

  I sat up straighter in my seat, realized I should look casual, and slouched again. “So why smoke?” I asked.

  He looked right at me. “Because it’s cool.”

  “I don’t know if lung cancer would agree with you on that one
.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll quit before I’m twenty-five.”

  “Being cool?”

  I watched him struggle not to smile. “No,” he said. “I’ll be cool for ever.”

  Joel and Jane went up to buy some chips to share while Amber handed Lottie and me some paper. “Here’s my agenda.”

  “Jeez,” I said, scanning it. “You’ve actually made an actual agenda.”

  Guy gave her a look. “Is this for your lezzer club again?”

  Amber’s prickles went up. “It’s for the Spinster Club, yes! And that’s a totally offensive word anyway, dickwad. We’re meeting at my house after school.” She gave me a what-the-hell-do-you-see-in-him? look over the top of his head. It involved lots of pointed glaring.

  I scanned the page and it made me love her more. She’d even scheduled in a fifteen-minute break for “cheesy snacks”.

  The topic for tonight’s meeting, I wasn’t expecting though. “We’re going to discuss periods?” I asked.

  Guy almost choked on his Diet Coke.

  Amber nodded while Guy looked at us in horror. “You girls are dedicating an evening to talking about being on the blob?”

  Amber gave him a pointed glare while I went as red as a…well, a period I guess.

  “It’s not our fault we bleed.”

  We all grimaced. “Unnecessary usage of the word ‘bleed’,” Lottie whispered and we both burst out laughing.

  “That is disgusting,” Guy said.

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “I’m not the freak who can bleed for three days without dying.”

  Amber gave him another glare. “I’m not going to continue this with HIM here.”

  Guy looked all faux innocent. “Who me?”

  “Yes you.”

  “Well, quite frankly, Amber, I’m gutted. I really felt like openly discussing menstruation while I ate lunch.” He pulled out an unhealthy looking white bread sandwich and took a satisfied bite.

  Amber waited until he was chewing. “Your mum menstruates you know.”

  Guy almost choked on his mouthful.

  “She might be bleeding right this moment,” Amber added and looked on contentedly as he disintegrated into a proper coughing fit.