‘I don’t have your dad’s credit card,’ Lana says, ‘so I don’t think that’s an option. Unless you want to bring a pair back for me next time you hop over to Hong Kong?’
‘Unlikely.’ Chanel gives Lana a look as she slips into the seat next to her. ‘My dad’s neck went purple last time he got the bill from my linked card. Anyway, I’m going back in a month — I want to buy my formal dress there.’
Now that Chanel is in her seat, that’s left the two spots next to me for Ally and Maddy. I can feel the underarms of my shirt getting damp from stress sweat. A trickle slips down the inside of my arm, falling from my elbow to the floor. You’re so weak, I tell myself. You drip sweat in front of them? I press my arms into my side, awkwardly hiding the dark patches on my shirt.
‘I wish I could go.’ Ally makes a sad face as she slips into the seat next to mine. She doesn’t look my way and my limbs relax a little. ‘I need something out of this world for the blog.’
‘The blog, the blog, the blog.’ Lana rolls her eyes.
‘Hey, who’s getting free clothes all the time? You just wish you’d thought of it.’
I have no idea what they’re talking about, but at least they’re fully engrossed in their conversation and not interested in me. Even when Ms Collins starts the lesson, they don’t care. Today we’re painting abstract landscapes, and although the Tens are putting paint to canvas, their conversation is as rapid as their haphazard strokes of paint.
‘I’m thinking I might want Matt to take me to the formal,’ Chanel says.
‘Matt is an idiot,’ Lana says. ‘Before you started, he was encouraging Luke to go after that stupid blonde girl at the tennis club. Not that Luke would have done anything, but Matt was always going on about her breasts jiggling around when she played. Remember how Tatiana threw a sports bra at her when she was on court one day?’
They all burst out laughing. I remember Tatiana throwing my lunch out of the school bus window in Year Four and feel sick.
‘Anyway, Matt’s a player. Don’t waste your time making eyes at him,’ Lana tells Chanel.
Maddy giggles. ‘I don’t think he’s interested in her eyes. He’s obsessed with that Instagram feed — he checks it every half-hour.’
‘I’ve told you guys, the account isn’t mine,’ Chanel says, adding crimson streaks to her painting.
‘Mmm-hmm.’ Lana raises her eyebrows at Maddy and Ally. ‘You know you’re going to have to come clean sometime, Ms I Heart Squats. We know that’s your ass lighting up Instagram. You have the same yellow bikini and the same denim cut-offs.’
Chanel has an Instagram account for her bum? I’m trying not to smile, because if they see me I’m dead meat.
‘The bikini is from Victoria’s Secret and the shorts are from Glue,’ Chanel says. ‘How many people shop there, Lana?’
‘Hey, I get that you don’t want all those skeazy guys knowing who you are and where you live, but why can’t you tell your squad? We’re not judging. If I had a butt like yours, I’d be ‘gramming belfies too.’
‘You’re too busy with the duck-faces, you don’t have time to belfie it up,’ Chanel says.
‘Can I help that this is my best feature?’ Lana gestures to her face and flutters her eyelashes.
If Emily was here right now, she’d be sticking her fingers down her throat.
She’d also be giving me some idea of what to paint. Sixty minutes into a ninety-minute lesson, I’ve only got an abstract tree-like splodge on my page. I’m hopeless when it comes to non-realistic stuff. I like to draw what’s in front of me, not what’s inside my head. Because let’s face it — what’s in my head is one big mess and I want to keep that private.
Thankfully Ms Collins is busy giving back test results from last term. Sometimes she pops them on people’s desks, other times she asks them to come up to collect them so she can have a quiet word.
‘Chanel,’ she calls.
Chanel puts down her paintbrush. ‘That stupid test. Who cares about the difference between Monet and Manet anyway?’
Lana is texting on her phone and doesn’t notice when Chanel stands up.
Maddy and Ally are over by the paint bottles, refilling their palettes and flirting with David and Jake, so I have a clear view of her. I can see why the girls were going on about the Instagram page — her butt is ridiculously high and round. But that’s not what’s drawn my attention. There’s a bright red spot the size of my palm on the back of her white skirt. Even though it matches the crimson on her painting and has obviously come from dropping paint on her seat, it looks like blood.
If Chanel walks down that aisle, all the boys will scream, ‘Period!’
I don’t know her — she could be as nasty as Tatiana. But if my skirt looked like that, I’d want someone to tell me.
‘Chanel?’
My call must be more of a murmur because she doesn’t look over. I’m not going to shout as it will only draw attention to her. I get up and my knees are shaky, but somehow I make it over to her in seconds.
‘Chanel, stop.’
Lana looks up with a ‘what the hell?’ expression on her face. Obviously the Tens don’t mind me sitting nearby, but they don’t want me talking to them.
‘Your skirt has a stain on it,’ I whisper. ‘I wanted to tell you before you walk up there.’
Chanel looks around at her skirt and her eyes go huge.
‘Chanel?’ Ms Collins is shouting now.
Chanel grabs Lana’s leather jacket off the back of her chair.
‘Hey!’
‘I’ll buy you another one,’ Chanel snaps and gives Lana a death stare. Then she ties the jacket round her waist and walks to Ms Collins’s desk.
Lana is staring at me again. The ‘what the hell?’ look has become something else. I can’t read it, but I’m not going to stick around so she can say something mean to me. I walk back to my desk and sit down. It’s only when I pick up my paintbrush again that I realise my hands are shaking like anything.
When the bell rings, I dash over to the sink and wash my palette. I don’t want to hang around in the room once Ms Collins leaves. I’m tossing my pencil case into my backpack when Chanel stops at my desk, the jacket still round her waist. The Tens are standing behind her with a ‘hurry up’ look on their faces.
‘Thanks for that,’ she says.
‘No problem.’ I don’t want to look like it’s a big deal.
‘See you next class.’ And she smiles at me, before heading down the aisle with the girls.
Ally and Maddy, who didn’t witness the skirt thing, look back at me curiously. I hear the muffled sound of my own name as Chanel says something to Lana. Lana shrugs, and whatever she replies is lost as they disappear out the door.
I wonder how Chanel knows my name. Probably someone’s filled her in on Adriana Puke-a-rama. If there’s one rule with the Tens, it’s that they’re going to talk about you whether you matter or not.
‘What’s the deal with Chanel?’ I ask Emily when we’re alone at our spot at lunchtime.
‘When she got here at the start of the year, all the guys went crazy over her.’ Emily shrugs. ‘She’s got that hot Asian thing going on. Plus, her bum is the equivalent of Tatiana’s breasts.’
‘Do you know anything about an Instagram page?’
Emily laughs. ‘It’s apparently called I Heart Squats. Nobody knows whose page it is because the girl’s head’s cropped out in all the pics, but the rumour is it’s her.’
‘So it’s a whole bunch of pictures of her bum? But not naked, right?’
I’d rather climb in a vat of huntsman spiders than have the whole of Jefferson — never mind the whole of Instagram — see my bare bum.
‘Not naked, but close. Some of the girls in English class were showing me. You see her bum in a high-cut leotard, or in cut-off shorts, or sitting on the edge of a pool wearing Brazilian bikini bottoms. There’s a bunch of shots of her bum squatting at the gym, which I guess is how her followers know she’s suppo
sedly earned it, and it’s not an implant thing like some of the other pages. She has something like thirty-eight thousand followers, it’s crazy.’ Em shakes her head. ‘They’re all obsessed with Instagram. Ally’s got a fashion blog, and she posts Instagram shots of herself wearing perfectly styled outfits all round the city. She’s got ten thousand followers so far. Maddy’s been trying to do the same thing with makeup looks, but she only has about two thousand followers so her Insta game ain’t that strong. See, there they go with the usual lunchtime photo shoot.’
Em nods towards the Tens’ usual lunch table under the pines. Maddy, Chanel and Lana are standing on top of the table and posing in a big girl hug, while Ally plays photographer.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t stare,’ I say. I just want to fly under the radar after art class.
Emily laughs. ‘Seriously? They want everyone to stare — that’s why they take the pictures. Their egos are as big as elephants and their skins are as thick. I’m pretty sure there’s next to nothing that could embarrass them.’
I think of Chanel and the paint and wonder if Emily’s right. I don’t say anything to her about the incident. She won’t get it. I don’t get it. If anyone else who’d been through what I’ve been through had noticed it, they would probably have kept their mouth shut and gleefully waited for a Ten to take a fall. Besides, I don’t even know Chanel, so why would I care about her?
I realise it’s the same reason I never find those YouTube videos about ‘epic fails’, where people fall off roofs or slip and land on their tailbone, funny. It always feels like a cheap laugh.
I poke her in the shoulder, changing the subject. ‘Hey, Em — you had art again today too! How come you haven’t said anything about your cute guy?’
Emily looks mortified, then completely confused. She opens her mouth and closes it again.
‘You’re lost for words?’ I tease. ‘This is a historic moment! You must seriously like him!’
I’m super-happy for her. After years of only crushing on guys from books or historical movies, she likes an actual real-life boy.
But Em looks like she’s at the counter in Ben and Jerry’s, trying to make up her mind what to go with while a line of people impatiently tap their feet behind her. She stares at me, then down at her lap, then at me again, before this look of determination appears in her eyes.
‘No, Ade, listen, yesterday was stupid.’ Her face goes red. ‘You know how you were saying I’m the leap-before-I-look type? Well, yesterday I made a leap that was completely wrong. Like stupidly, stupidly wrong.’
I feel horrible. Why did I dump my negativity on her yesterday? Just because I made a bad move in my crush selection doesn’t mean she will too.
‘Em, no … I know nothing about this stuff. You were so excited yesterday —’
‘First impressions,’ she says, and shakes her head. ‘You know how you get an idea about someone and you build an entire world around them? I guess because the whole meeting-him scenario matched so perfectly with what I’ve imagined, I assumed he’d be exactly as I imagined as well.’
‘And he’s not?’
‘He’s …’ Her gaze is set straight ahead instead of looking at me. ‘He’s not the guy I should be crushing on.’
I don’t get why she’s holding back on me. ‘Because he’s …?’
‘He’s too … I don’t know … it’s complicated. He’s too good-looking for me.’
‘It’s not all about looks.’
I know it’s a clichéd thing to say, but it’s true. Emily is amazing. Why wouldn’t this guy see that?
Emily finally looks right at me. ‘Ade, there’s a difference between leaping into stupid for a minute and letting yourself drown in it. I know how this is going to play out. Anyway, he’s keen on another girl, so end of story.’ She shrugs. ‘Do me a favour and don’t tell anyone else about my crazy 24-hour crush? I want to forget the whole thing.’
‘Of course not.’
I’m amazed she asks. Any time I tell her anything, I know it lives and dies a secret between us.
‘Let’s pretend it’s like Men in Black and I have this clicker thing and I face it towards us like I’m going to take a selfie.’ Em makes a face. ‘And flash — as far as either of us knows, there was never a cute guy in my art class.’
I play along, pretending the clicker thing is able to wipe all memory of Dylan too.
Emily’s Diary
I once read an article that said a person will lie two or three times in a ten-minute conversation. At first I figured that was crazy, but when I thought about it some more, two or three times seemed like a low figure. It’s not like people want to tell lies — unless they’re complete sociopaths, that is. But pay close attention to any interaction and you quickly realise that white lies spring up all through a conversation.
Sorry I missed your call (I didn’t want to talk to you).
I’m out the door (I haven’t got in the shower yet).
The study said if everyone told the truth all the time, the glue that keeps our social networks together would dissolve and we’d descend into chaos.
I never want to keep things from Adriana, but sometimes I have to. Whenever kindness and honesty come up against each other in my conscience, I always let kindness knock honesty flat.
At primary school, if there was a sleepover and she wasn’t invited, I’d pretend I wasn’t either so the rejection didn’t hurt too much.
If she gives a presentation with her usual trembling voice and blazing cheeks, and asks me afterwards if the whole room could tell she was nervous, I’ll shake my head and say, ‘No, of course not’, because what’s the point in making her more self-conscious?
It’s weird to think that something that reduces the trust between you and another person can actually help your friendship. How saying ‘I swear’, even if you don’t, feels like the best way forward. Sometimes lying means you’re a great friend, not a good one.
So as much as I wanted to tell Ade the truth at lunch today, I couldn’t.
Sure, telling her might have felt like I was getting something off my chest, but how would it help the situation?
She’d probably kill her own crush so I could have Theo — not that that’s the tiniest of possibilities but being my best friend she’d think it is. And even if I talked her out of that and encouraged her to go after Theo, it would always be weird between us. If we all hung out together, she’d forever be wondering Does she still find him cute? Is she looking over and wishing she was me?
I don’t want that for her. I don’t want her crush to be clouded by guilt or weird feelings. Keeping quiet spares all of us — me, her, Theo — because there would be no way he wouldn’t pick up on the awkwardness, even though guys aren’t usually terrific at reading subtleties.
So I kept quiet, even though lying about this seems nothing like a white lie. White lies float off you pretty easily, but this — this feels like someone’s handed me a massive backpack of guilt, as big as the ones explorers wear. And if I don’t balance it right, I’m going to topple over.
This is the first big thing I’ve ever kept from Ade. And now I’ve strapped this pack onto my shoulders, I’d better be able to handle it for the entire trek ahead.
13
EMILY
It’s stupid how bummed out Adriana and I are about her and Daniel moving to their new place. After all, it’s only a ten-minute drive compared to the thousands of miles away they were only a week ago. But having them here feels right. It’s been so easy the last few days to pretend Ade is my sister, and Daniel is my dad, and sitting at the table every night talking about our days is what we do, instead of a 1950s TV show titled This Is Not My Life.
As Daniel loads the suitcases into his car, Ade’s slipping back into the mood from Saturday night.
‘Dad, can’t Emily come and stay with us tonight?’
‘Sweetie, we have to settle into the new place sometime.’
‘Just because you wanted to sell —’
&
nbsp; ‘Adriana!’ Daniel shuts the boot. ‘Isobel has been generous allowing us to stay, but it’s time to leave.’
With his words, I’m transported back eighteen months and am standing in the departures terminal of the international airport, Ade clinging to me like I’m a tree in a hurricane.
‘Ade, I can come over tomorrow afternoon,’ I say.
‘If that’s alright with Daniel,’ Mum adds.
‘Em can get the bus home with you,’ Daniel says to Ade, then he turns to Mum. ‘Isobel, thanks again.’
There’s this awkward pause, then Mum puts out her hand and Daniel leans in to give her a hug, and Mum’s hand knocks into his stomach.
Daniel laughs. ‘Whoa! I might be beating you in the kitchen, but obviously you’re out to remove me from the competition!’
Mum laughs too, but I can tell she’s still feeling self-conscious about the tango thing.
‘Let me repay the favour and have you over for a meal sometime,’ Daniel says as he opens the driver’s door. ‘I’ll give you a call.’
As he reverses out of the driveway, Ade and I exchange a look. Maybe this could happen. Maybe one day they’ll be pulling back into the driveway and we’ll be carrying their things into the house, not out of it.
Even though I’m stupidly tired from not sleeping properly last night, I can’t wind down once I get into bed. I text Ade: You still up?
Her reply lights up the dark bedroom within ten seconds: This place feels weird.
Give it a chance, I say.
My phone rings. Ade of course.
‘I’m trying.’ She sighs. ‘But the whole house is so big and empty. I don’t know why Dad chose something this size for two people.’
‘Because of the pool,’ I remind her. ‘And they say teenagers are supposed to be the spontaneous ones. Still, a pool is pretty awesome. If we were popular, we could have pool parties and invite cute guys over.’
‘Theo in my pool!’ Ade starts giggling. ‘Can you imagine?’
Suddenly I’m picturing Theo swimming laps, trickles of silvery water running off his shoulders and chest.
My Best Friend Is a Goddess Page 14
