S says, “Stop!” but I don’t do it fast enough and when he stops and I don’t, I trip and drag him to the ground with me. We giggle. It’s been a long time since I’ve giggled. My jaw hurts with it. I don’t want him to untie our feet.
We met most afternoons for several weeks after that, never talking about secrets or study or feelings or family, just playing silly games. One Friday, I’d taken the bus into town with the rest of the girls. This was the big weekly event for our school. It had been fun the first time—Louisa, Mandy, and I had eaten McDonald’s and tried on makeup. But after the second time (when Mandy decided to steal a jumper from Asda with Taahnya—not even nice a jumper—and Louisa had asked me to go buy cigarettes from the newsagents ’cause I looked older than her), it stressed and bored me in equal measures. This particular time, Jan the International asked if she could window shop with me. god bless Jan, but she was more boring than fencing, so I told her I had to meet someone and hopped on the local bus back to Balbir’s.
S and I strolled along the river for an hour, sat on the bank, and played “tickle-o.” This involved taking turns to tickle each other’s nostrils with a blade of grass. The first to give in and laugh was the loser. Sammy’s record was one minute. Mine was forty seconds. I was determined to beat him this time. My eyes were watering as he sat opposite me, cross-legged, and carefully tantalized my left nasal passage with his blade. As usual, he tried to catch me unawares mid-game…
“So…why didn’t you go home for the October holidays?” he asked.
“I wanted to study,” I said, glad of the distraction. If I didn’t scratch my nose soon I would explode.
“So…” he said, switching to the right nostril, “what made your parents leave the city?”
“I don’t know. I was nine.” S had managed to get the blade three centimeters up. The stopwatch on his phone had reached 47 seconds. Fourteen to go. But it felt like he was tickling my gray matter. Pain-tears were falling from my eyes. I yelled, flicked his hand away, fell back on the grass, and rubbed my nose with my hand while laughing uncontrollably. Why hadn’t anyone ever told me how wonderful silliness is?
He was dumb as dog poo. No, that’s rude. He just wasn’t academic. Never read books or watched the news. Hated math and science. Wanted to take over the curry shop. End of story. It was much more fun, and much simpler, than it had ever been with Mandy, but it was similar in that we were perfectly incompatible and therefore the best of pals.
• • •
Speaking of Mandy. I’d never thought of her as the bullying type. I’d never thought of me as the victim type. But a few things happened in December that put us both in those unfamiliar categories.
The first was the school dance. Girls would be bussed into town to meet boys who’d also be bussed into town. I hadn’t planned on going, but the dance just happened to be on the same date as my seventeenth birthday. My mother and my father showed up that afternoon to take me out for a treat. They’d visited a few times beforehand, most notably during the October break, when they took me to a chick flick in Perth (my father fell asleep) and then to an Italian restaurant in Crieff (my mother’s forced smile ruined my appetite). I wasn’t ever mean to them, but I refused to let them get to me, as if I’d wrapped layers of insulation around me. Not reading letters and not taking every single call (my mother called every second night) was part of this self-preservation.
As we left for my birthday treat, I noticed that they seemed to be walking on eggshells with me, like different people altogether.
“You seem very tired, Rachel. Are you okay?” my mother said.
“They’re feeding you well!” my father said when he put his arm around me.
We had Devonshire tea in some farm shop in the middle of nowhere. It was yummy, and afterwards my mother handed me a present—a dress—accompanied by an affectionate (out-of-character) plea to “have some fun, my darling, you need to have fun!” The dress was from Quiz. It was sparkly and way shorter than anything I’d ever been allowed to wear before. I approved. I kissed her and my father. And I went to the dance.
It freaked me out. Reminded me of the dreaded island dances, with girls waiting for boys to ask them to dance, kiss, and more. One boy from Baltyre asked me to dance, which I did. Then he asked me again, which I did. And again. Did. It was boring. His name was Bill. When we twirled it stifled and dizzied me. He was reasonably tall and good looking, I suppose, but he had breath so hot it could steam cooked cauliflower. And he kept breathing into my ear as he tried to converse (So, Rachel, where did you learn to dance? So, Rachel, we should meet up in town…). By the end of the fourth dance, his breath had turned to precipitation and was dripping down from my ear. His hands were on my buttocks. I moved out to do a twirl to dislodge them then told him I needed to go to the bathroom. As disgusting as I found Bill, I was glad to have had him to dance with, because the girls all seemed to be avoiding me and the thought of approaching them made me hyperventilate. Nothing in the world—not roller coasters or blinking statues or The Sixth Sense—is as scary as a group of girls who’ve decided you’re a dickhead. Thankfully, when I came out of the bathroom, the bus had arrived to take us home. Couples crammed a final snog before boarding.
On the bus on the way home, Mandy sat in the back with Aimee. For a while, they giggled about the boys they’d danced with (Peter, who had very sweaty hands; Jamie, who pressed up against Aimee and definitely had a boner; Brian, who had dandruff all over his black shirt; Paul, who was just too gorgeous and at the end had put his hand down psss psss psss—Aimee whispered the rest of that bit—and she shouldn’t say this but she really liked it.). As the bus neared the school, the chat decreased in volume, but I could hear Mandy saying to Aimee: “She’s a tease…dances with poor Bill all night, then just says good-bye, leaves him dangling.”
“That’s so not fair,” Aimee said.
“Totally. Typical,” Mandy said.
Then, while I was trying to get to sleep, I realized Mandy and Taahnya were with Amelia O’Donohue and had chosen her cubicle—i.e., the one right next to mine—to backstab me big time. Her many comments included:
Teases the boys. So like cruel.
Screwed up.
Scandal!
Off-the-wall unhappy family. The whole island thinks so.
“Guys, stop being f…ing bitches,” Amelia interrupted. “You know she can hear. Plus, it’s boring. I’m going to watch CSI.”
Amelia’s display of integrity surprised me, but it didn’t stop Mandy and Taahnya from continuing after she left for the telly room…
Completely unable to have fun.
Sent away…
Boring…
Looked daft in that dress. Did you see how short it was? From Quiz! Like the one I got two years ago.
Never tells anyone anything.
Studies like all the time.
Has no friends.
“I can hear you!” I said loudly. “Perhaps you’d like to chat about me elsewhere?”
Silence for a moment, then giggling, then they moved their conversation to another room down the hall, where I could still hear them.
It felt truly awful. I’d never been so betrayed in my life. No one else knew it was my birthday, but Mandy did. How could she be so mean? I cried for ages.
The following evening, just after Miss Rose announced that supper was ready, the loudspeaker crackled, a door banged over the speaker, someone tapped loudly on the microphone, then Mandy’s voice pounded through the dorms, clear as day, and said: “Rachel Ross is a Keener!”
I tried not to cry as I made my way over to the dining hall. Mandy and Amelia and Louisa sat at the table near the window. I sat with Jan and the International girls who chatted away in Cantonese (I think). I ate. No talking. Then went to my bed to cry.
• • •
The incidents continued right up until christmas. They froze into my bones along with the weather: a wet black winter that weighed on my forehead like two bricks, then three, and so
on. Hours of sunlight: none. There was backstabbing, loudspeaker announcements, and, once, I got into bed to find Coco Pops all over my sheets. I’d tried to ignore the bullying till then, but it was now making me feel so hard and sore inside that I wanted to explode. I found myself walking as fast as I could, thinking, “Ignore them, ignore them,” and when I finally stopped walking I realized I was at the curry shop. S saw me and came out.
“Hey! What’s wrong? You look upset.”
“Nothing,” I said, panting from the angry power walk.
He lifted his hand to my hair and I felt the skin on my neck go bumpy. Was he going to hug me? Kiss me?
“What’s this?” he asked, holding a small brown thing in his hand and examining it.
“A Coco Pop.” I sighed and shook my head.
Before I could say, “Don’t ask!” he’d raced into the shop and reemerged with a bowl and some milk.
“Ha ha,” I said, more relaxed already.
Sammy kept me sane. He didn’t have a clue about what was going on at school, and treated me like a normal everyday person. By the end of December I’d gotten sick of his curries, but our friendship, or something anyway, made me feel fresh, happy, and optimistic.
• • •
“This is for you,” he said, the day before I had to leave for the christmas break.
I opened the beautifully wrapped present. Inside was a bottle of ketchup.
“That’s stupid,” I said.
He was like, “Rachel, I know we’re only young, and I know you told me like nothing about yourself, but…”
“Don’t say any more.”
“I really like you…In fact…”
“Shhh.”
“Take the present home. Open it. There’s something inside.”
• • •
I got a bus the next day. Mandy and Louisa sat next to each other and talked about me the whole way. I played cool, refusing to let them see that I was upset. Anyway, I had to concentrate on getting through two weeks of the good lord.
I sat in the damp, depressing corridor-lounge of the ferry and watched the horizontal rain pelt along the windows, the hazy miserableness of the island just visible in the distance. It gave me an instant feeling of depression. When we docked, and I walked out along the ramp, my mother and my father were waiting for me with flowers.
“Welcome home!” they said. They’d never given me flowers before and to be honest I didn’t mind that. Watching living things wilt and die is not my cup of tea.
Mandy and Louisa’s parents were there too. They’d been chatting with my folks before we got off.
“We were just suggesting you and the girls have a sleepover?” my mother said. “I could make cupcakes.”
The silence wasn’t long—probably not long enough for my ignoramus parents to realize that the girls would rather eat each other’s eyeballs than sleep at my house and have the stupid cupcakes I’d said I loved when I was like four—but it was long enough for my heartbeat to flit and flip at the speed of light.
“That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it, Mandy?” her mother said.
“Yeah. We’ll text you.” She looked at Louisa.
Sure they would.
• • •
When we got home, a new fence had been erected along the field between our house and Mandy’s house.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, the Grogan’s always wanted that paddock,” my mother said. “We didn’t use it really.”
So that was how they could afford my school fees. They’d sold half our land to Mandy’s family. The realization made me gulp loudly. Swallow the guilt. There, it’s gone.
That night, my parents took me out to dinner in the only posh restaurant on the island—we’d been once when I was tiny, during a holiday before we moved from Edinburgh. I remember we sang funny songs and played I-Spy for the five hours it took to get there. To my surprise, my mother and my father didn’t say grace, and I’m sure I saw them holding hands under the table when I came back from the loo. Strange. They hadn’t shown any signs of affection for years.
That night, my mother came to my room to say good night. As soon as I heard the door opening, I pounced to the floor to say my prayers.
“…thank you for everything and sorry for my sins and please may I have some humility to the power of infinity. Amen.”
I stood up and got into bed. My mother tucked me in and kissed my forehead and said, “I love you, Rachel. It’s so good to have you home.”
The next morning over salty porridge, my father found something other than evil politicians in The Scotsman. “Look at this, will you, Claire?” he said, using my mother’s actual name.
“Mmm,” she said, reading from the Jobs section. All I saw was the heading: “Broadcast Journalist.”
“That looks perfect.” She patted him on the shoulder and put on the kind of real coffee we used to have in happier times in Edinburgh. I remember my father used to get up before us and put it on every morning. “Ah,” my mother would say back then, waking beside me (I always ended up in bed with them in those days). Inhaling the coffee fumes, she’d carry me from the bedroom to the kitchen and squash me between them as she kissed my father full on the lips.
This slip back to our olden days was very odd indeed, but not as odd as christmas.
• • •
christmas was Sunday, and we started by going to church, just as we always did on Sundays, holding umbrellas, wearing thick coats, heads and shoulders down towards the ground where our lives also were.
We listened to the chant-like hymns, the sermon filled with doom and gloom and not-happy occasions.
The strange thing was that everyone looked at us oddly, like we were freaks, and while I would have agreed that my parents were in that category, I wasn’t, and it felt awful.
John was in the back row, just behind the Grogans. I turned around during the service and nodded at him. His mother elbowed him in the side. He winced, then looked at the floor.
Outside afterwards, Mandy and Louisa were chatting with him. They watched me come out of the church, giving me spectacularly dirty looks.
Even Mrs. Crookston from the corner shop managed a one-eyed dirty look. For some reason, our family was being ostracized.
“I’ve quit the paper,” my father said as we walked home.
“Why?”
“Because it was contributing to my slow and painful demise.”
What?
As we walked home, I spotted Bronte, the girl I’d met in hospital before going to Aberfeldy Halls. She was pushing a stroller along the main street.
“Hi Bronte,” I said, trying to catch her eyes, which were lurking underneath the hood of her huge padded coat.
She looked up, startled, then said hello nervously, before returning her eyes to their previous position and walking on with her wailing baby.
When we got home, my father did something outrageous. He said, “Damn it, Claire, let’s go for a drive and a walk and let’s put the radio on full blast.”
On a Sunday!
We drove to the other end of the island and parked the car on the side of the road. “We’re going on an adventure. To the cave of the winds,” my father said. For two miles, we trekked along the beach. My mother and my father held hands most of the way, except when we stopped to skim stones (I won. Five skips on the bumpy black water) and compete in a long jump competition (My mother won. She used to be a champ at it back when, apparently). There was an uncanny amount of giggling going on. Maybe they’d been doing it while I was away, I thought, before thinking, don’t think about that for god’s sake, stop, oh gross, I’m seeing them, No!
The cave of the winds was just a small dark cave, not even big enough to stand up in. None of us knew why they called it that and going inside didn’t enlighten us. There was no wind, just a few empty cans of Foster’s.
I’d never known them to be such cheery rebels. It was weird as all hell. And while it was weird as all hell in a good
way, I still counted the minutes before I could leave again.
That night, my mother caught me emptying tomato ketchup into the bathroom sink.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Oh, just…I need the bottle for an experiment,” I lied.
She accepted this lame excuse and left me alone to discover a ball of tinfoil. Inside, was a note: Woods. Sunday before first day of term. 7:00 p.m. We need to kiss.
• • •
The week after christmas was quiet and uneventful. I studied, mostly, and got drawn into two endless games of Monopoly. My parents had taken to experimental cooking with the radio on (Current music! Loud! Cooking together!). We’d marked the new recipes out of ten before an evening walk and a movie (When did they get satellite?). The night before Hogmanay, my mother came into my room. “I need to talk to you about the dance tomorrow,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“I think you’re right,” she said.
• • •
Mandy and Louisa continued to ignore me on the long journey back to school. I felt flat and exhausted by the time we arrived. The island had sapped my energy and all I wanted to do was sleep.
But I couldn’t. I had to see Sammy. I’d thought about nothing else. And when 7:00 p.m. came, I dragged myself from my bed and walked down into the woods.
I followed the dirt track from the back of the dorms all the way to the small derelict shack at the other end. Sammy hadn’t told me to go there, but it was the meeting place, and I assumed that’s where he’d be. I opened the wobbly wooden door expecting to find him, and gasped when I saw the girl with the ponytail kissing Mr. Burns, the PE teacher.
My gasp was a quiet one, so they didn’t notice as I walked backwards out of the shack, and shut the door carefully behind me. Blimey, a teacher kissing a student. Imagine the trouble he’d be in if anyone found out.
“Boo!” Sammy jumped out from behind a tree.
“Shh,” I said grabbing his hand and running back up the track.
We stopped in a clearing in the middle of the woods.
Amelia O’Donohue Is So Not a Virgin Page 6
