Our first snog was so not romantic. The power in the village hall had gone down due to high winds. Mandy’s candle flickered my way and she told me John asked her to ask me if I wanted to go out with him…and I told her to say yes and he asked her to ask me if I would do a bit more than just snog him and I asked her to tell him I didn’t know if I was ready to do that yet…but he told her to tell me yes anyway and then he came over to me and this is what he said:
“Like they say in the films”—he pronounced it fillems— “this is very romantic.” And I winced ’cause it was a terrible, nausea-inducing line, but I snogged him anyways in the corner of the hall, and his tongue was so dry it shredded bits of mine off—and before I knew it, he was sucking on my neck as if a serial killer was chasing his car and he’d run out of petrol north of Ullapool (or somewhere equally godforsaken), and he’d come across an abandoned truck with a full, unlocked tank of it, and for the life of him he had to suck the petrol out or he’d die, DIE. And then he stopped sucking just in time to save my internal organs from combusting, not-spontaneously, and I know I made that word up, but I made it up ’cause it’s totally what I would have done if he hadn’t stopped, which is what he did when the lights came back on.
And that was that. We were a couple. And for a month, he’d meet me at the beach and say, “So, are you ready yet?” and I’d say no, and he’d insert his huge sandpaper tongue into my mouth then suck my neck like there was no tomorrow, and then try to do more anyways and I’d say, “No!” Which is exactly what I said this time, taking off my shorts and T-shirt and doing the unthinkable and running uncomfortably into the icy water.
Oh dear, something was happening down there. The thing was expanding, probably because it wasn’t all in. I could feel it filling with water and growing.
“When will you know?” John asked, having followed me into the ocean.
We were both shivering. The water had stolen the nerve endings in our lower bodies.
But I could feel something. The thing. It was getting larger and larger. I wondered, would it expand until I exploded, or would my legs end up in the splits-position, an enormous mountain of wet red cotton my inflatable raft?
I couldn’t speak. I wanted him to go away before the climax of this terrible tampon tragedy.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. But no, I wasn’t. It was gigantic and fleeing. Unplugging. Only in about a millimeter, I reckoned.
“It can only lead to one thing,” I explained, trying to press my legs together.
I’d been aware I wasn’t ready for sex for some time. The idea made me feel terrified. Like letting someone read my diary or watch me on the toilet. It conjured the same feelings as bungee jumping and touching huge hairy spiders. If the tampon was anything to go by, I was right to be scared.
“Well then you’re chucked,” John said, turning and walking out of the water.
“What?”
“You’re chucked!” He grabbed his towel and walked away.
Mandy was still snogging Andrew. I could see her tongue going into his cheek and pushing it like he was saying “Dah!”
I was chucked. I had a stray rat-size-plug in my bikini bottoms.
And the skies were opening and cracking and banging and letting loose the wrong amount of rain.
• • •
My mother said, “Where have you been?”
“Just hanging around with Mandy,” I said through juddering teeth.
“You don’t look well,” my mother said.
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t. The perfect recipe for my usual flu-asthma fanfare. Warm weather followed by torrential rain and an immediate drop in temperature of ten degrees.
Since I was nine, I’d had an asthma attack approximately once a year. Always in summer. Always resulting in hospitalization, which I hated, hated, hated.
I raced to the bathroom to unleash my enormous tailed rat, went to bed with a pad, a definite wheeze, a bit of a sore tummy, and a bit of a headache. Within an hour I had a raging headache, a raging temperature, and a raging sore tummy. Two hours later, I couldn’t breathe at all. Perched on the edge of my bed, I made breathing-like noises, but no air was going in and my face was bright red and I couldn’t even yell for my mother, who did not like to have her private times interrupted, who did not like daughters creeping in and maybe seeing something she shouldn’t—like that time when I was nine and I caught my mother having a bath when she shouldn’t have been.
So even if I could stand up and walk into my mother and my father’s bedroom, I wouldn’t. Too risky. Not allowed.
Instead, I crawled over to the window and opened it. The rain had stopped. Outside smelled of mud. I put my head out and tried to scrape in some air, but it was hard. My shoulders were stiff, held high. My hands were clenched. My body was no longer my own. It was out of control. Bleeding one end. Unable to breathe the other. Hot, tight, frantic everywhere in between. I was crying. Scrape, scrape. I slid down the wall under the window. Well, not slid. It was stiffer than slid. I bashed down the wall under the window in stages, like a puppet made of rocks.
Thud.
“Rachel, Rachel!”
My mother was angry with me. I should have asked for help. If I had gone to their room and knocked on the door and asked for help, then I may have gotten to the doctor in time. I wouldn’t need an injection of adrenaline, or need ten days in hospital with a mask over my face, or need to smell of marmite and drink at least one jug of water a day, or need to long for afternoon visits and meat pies with baked beans.
Have I mentioned I hate hospitals? Nurses scare me. Doctors scare me. Patients scare me. I spend the whole time wondering if I’ll ever be allowed out again, waiting for the doctor to do his rounds and say, “Rachel Ross? Ah, yes…”—looking at his notes—“this is the one who will never get out again, who will spend the rest of her life in this bed, with this mask on her face, with a view of an incongruous housing estate overlooking a black wind-swept ocean.”
I’d spend my days dreading the doctor’s words (“No, Rachel, we’d like to keep a wee eye on you for a bit longer”); dreading the nurse’s checks (“You need to drink this entire jug of water or you’ll be on a drip, Rachel!”); dreading the arrival or removal of other patients (“She died last night, Rachel.”—Right there beside me!); and waiting for my mother and my father to visit, which they always did, religiously, like everything else they did.
It was probably this fear that made me decide to be a doctor.
Inside, I felt destined to spend my life in hospital. So, I figured, let me be the one with the coat. Or, if I’m the one in the bed, let me know and understand what’s happening to me. Let me have some control. I liked to be in control.
But I wasn’t this time. I was lying in bed, clueless, powerless.
My mother attempted to hug me and was like, “You’re all elbows, Rachel.” Apparently I wasn’t much of a hugger. All stiff and bony.
“Pray to the lord for common sense,” she said.
To the power of infinity. Amen.
• • •
There was an old lady in my ward. Her name was Joan and she smiled all the time.
“I think you have common sense,” she said after my mother left the ward. “I think you’re a very lovely girl. And you’re going to get better really soon.”
She died the following day. Not in her sleep, like the one who carked it last time, but noisily, behind the curtains, yelling No! No! Please help me! then making noises like someone was strangling her. The curtains opened an hour later. I closed my eyes while they took her away.
There was a young girl called Bronte in the bed opposite mine. She was fourteen and talked nonstop and her mother brought her whatever she wanted, including photographs of her boyfriend and bags and bags of those Italian chocolates with nuts in the middle.
“Have you had sex?” she asked when old lady Joan had finally left the building.
“None of your business.”
She said, “I have. But don’t tell anyone.”
“I never tell secrets,” I said, which was true. I didn’t like it when people a) told me their own secrets or b) told me other people’s. But if they did, I never mentioned it again, because it was personal, private, and would almost always harm someone if passed on.
In fact, I’d had a reputation for secret-keeping on the island since Louisa MacDonald stole a ten pound note from a cheese stall at the monthly farmer’s market and she saw me see her do it. After that, she told me all her secrets. Most of them were pretty lame, like she cheated on a math test and put dog shit in a bag and set it on fire at her ex’s doorstep. Then, one by one, people started trusting me with stuff I wish they hadn’t, accosting me at the playground or after church and whispering into my ear things that I didn’t want to hear, and certainly didn’t want to repeat. Keep quiet was my motto.
“This is Dean.” Bronte showed me a photo of the boy in question. He was at least three years older than her. He was in Speedos, banana hammocks. He made me need my mask.
I sucked the steroid-infused air from my nebulizer.
I had some other visitors during my stay. Mandy and Louisa came by twice with homework, candy, and magazines, and my father came alone one evening and held my hand.
“Are you happy?” he said, tearing up.
Retard.
• • •
When I got out of hospital, my mother made me lie in bed for three days before letting me hang out with Mandy.
The Grogans lived on the farm next to ours. They had more land, and better land. They had sheep, pigs, horses, and cattle. They had four girls. Mrs. Grogan wore designer clothes bought on the biannual shopping sprees in Glasgow as well as shipped up four times a year from a designer friend in London. She asked me to call her Aunty Jen, which I did, even though it felt bizarre ’cause she was no more my aunty than my father was. She baked, every day, and entered her perfectly sized, exceptionally straight carrots into the church fair each year. She always won and always wrote about the fair (her win) in daft newspaper articles that my father always published because Mrs. Grogan was my Aunty Jen. The articles went something like this:
BEST CARROTS ON RECORD!
Mrs. Jennifer Grogan won first prize at the annual island show last Saturday for carrots described by judges as “the best carrots on record!”
“It’s nothing,” Mrs. Jennifer Grogan said. “Just good luck, hard work, and a certain oneness with nature.”
My mother didn’t like Aunty Jen. She’d come over to our farm at least once a day with baking that reminded my mother that she was a crap baker, homegrown tomatoes that reminded my mother she was a crap gardener, and tales about her livestock that reminded my mother she was a crap farmer. Whenever Aunty Jen left, my mother would shut the door behind her, sigh heavily, and stare into space.
I liked her, though. She was a normal parent. When Mandy had sleepovers, which she did at least once a term, her mother would totally leave us alone except to yell at us (“Girls, we are trying to sleep! Turn that music down! Mandy, didn’t I tell you to switch those straighteners off when you’re finished? You’ll burn the house down!”). Unlike my mum, who—during the one sleepover I’d had; I would never host another one—was always popping her head in my room and smiling and asking us in a soft voice if we were all right and if we wanted anything. So embarrassing.
The Grogans were in the process of sending all four of their big-chested, perfectly groomed blondies to Aberfeldy Halls for their final year at school. Don’t know why they bothered, really. The two who’d been already had only just scraped through. One was working in a bar in Aberdeen. One was in beauty school in Inverness (which was tougher than you might imagine, apparently).
• • •
I walked over our paddocks, through the fence I’d fixed just before my asthma attack, and across the Grogans’ fields to their huge white two-story house (all houses on the island were white). The journey from ours to theirs only took about ten minutes cross-country, but it was like being transported from the world of the peasant to the world of the landlord. They had stables with horses and all. I hadn’t been outside for a long time, and there seemed to be too much light and air. Everything was wobbly, especially me.
“You get to go into town on Fridays and do whatever you want,” Mandy told me as she showed off her gorgeous blue and maroon uniform.
We were in her attic bedroom, which had a blue-tiled private bathroom, a double bed with one of those flouncy white things flowing down from the ceiling, a computer, and a telly with satellite. It was so unfair.
“Marg used to meet her boyfriend from Baltyre Academy and they’d go down the river,” she said. Marg was her beauty-therapist older sister.
“You get to smoke on the fire escapes,” she told me, holding up her gold handbag-esque schoolbag. “There’s about a thousand butts at the bottom and the teachers don’t say anything. You get to go to ceilidhs twice a year.” She started showing off her new white duvet cover and weekend clothes. “Marg says Baltyre Academy boys are good looking and can dance.”
I walked back to peasant-ville. My legs were working better now, but everything still felt otherworldly. Our small white house, in particular, seemed to shift and blur in the distance. As usual, a feeling of dread settled in my tummy as I approached home. I would have to go inside. I would have to eat dinner at our quiet table. I would have to sleep in my small room with no flouncy white thing, no computer, no private bathroom, and no satellite.
I had to find a way to go to Aberfeldy Halls.
• • •
“You need straight As to get into Medicine at Oxford,” I said to my parents that night over roast lamb and roast potatoes and broccoli.
My father said, “And why would you want to get into Medicine at Oxford?” He always answered a question with a question, using as many words from the original question as possible.
“So I can be proud of myself,” I said sadly, knowing it was never going to happen.
Why would they understand my ambitions? Neither of them had ambitions anymore, not like in the old days. My father had been a high-flying world affairs journalist for a national newspaper. He’d traveled all over the world to report on big (mostly tragic) events. He used to whistle nonstop. Now he ran the local newspaper and wrote about ferry cancellations and trapped sheep. He never whistled. My mother had been a fund-raiser for a big charity. She used to wear gorgeous designer clothes that made her look like a French movie star. Now she dressed in old jeans and woolen jumpers. Now she stared into space and sighed heavily while her brain crunched like a computer that’s slowed by a virus, and tried to look after some of the sheep my father reported on. They’d been proud of themselves once. It hadn’t gotten them anywhere.
• • •
A week after my release from hospital, my mother and my father dropped me off at the village dance.
“We’ll pick you up at 10 p.m.,” my father said. “Wait with Mrs. Grogan inside the foyer until your mum comes in to collect you.”
I wore my fave outfit: denim mini skirt, silver top, silver shoes. I looked good. But my nose was red and my eyes were slightly intense, and I had three pimples on my chin and no matter how long I blow-dried my thick, wavy, brown hair, it didn’t flatten it the way Mandy’s ceramic straighteners did hers.
Mandy and I were embarrassingly early. We sat on two seats near the DJ, watching as the lights dimmed enough for the town’s Populars to make their entrance.
“Did you meet a girl called Bronte in hospital?” Mandy asked.
“Yeah.”
“She’s a total slut.”
“That’s not nice.”
Mandy was like, “Did you not notice her stomach?”
“No.”
“Eight months. Maybe some boy called Dean, maybe not. Her parents are putting her under house arrest. They’re never letting her out again.”
She was about to volunteer more unwanted info when Jo
hn walked up to us.
“Dance?” he said. He had very bad low-cut jeans that revealed two inches of his gray boxers, and a tight black T-shirt.
“Thought you chucked me.”
“Well, I’m picking you up again, aren’t I?” he said.
We danced then John went and got some Irn-Bru and sat beside me in the corner.
• • •
About an hour later, I found myself sitting on a toilet seat in the bathroom.
“Rachel!”
I opened the door to the toilet cubicle and peered out. It was my mother.
“Come with me.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me from the ladies’ toilets and through the dance floor (everyone stopped and looked) and through the foyer (everyone stopped and looked) and into the car out the front.
Mrs. Grogan had seen me and John. She’d called my mother.
What followed turned out to be the best week of my life.
I was grounded.
No telly. No phone. No pals. No reading.
But it was still the best week of my life because at the end of it, my mother and my father sat me down at the dining table and said, “Darling, you’re going to Aberfeldy Halls.”
CHAPTER
THREE
My mother and my father drove me to Aberfeldy Halls a few weeks after the school dance. I’d been so excited I hadn’t gone out at all since that night. Besides, there was no use risking another asthma attack, no use risking the need to hide out in a toilet. I’d bought books online, read as many of them as I could, and packed and re-packed my suitcase about one hundred times.
Finally, the day came to leave.
My father edged our four-wheel drive up the ramp and onto the ferry. It was an elderly no-nonsense carrier that was mostly for cars, but there was a thin room with graffiti-covered tables and chairs to sit in for the hour it took to sway our way to the other side. The windows were round and tiny: fogged on the inside and obscured by horizontal rain on the out, so you could hardly see anything. This was the beat-up, two-door, no-central-steering, Ford Fiesta of ferries. I’d always hated it, from the day we first drove our car onto it, waving good-bye to the real world. But this time I loved it. It was taking me away. After an hour in water purgatory, we would drive off it and onto the mainland and freedom.
Amelia O’Donohue Is So Not a Virgin Page 2
