by KE Payne
I shifted my position on the sofa and curled my legs up beneath me. How would I answer that question without blushing?
“The atmosphere at Queen Vic’s is different from what it was at the High,” I said, thinking. “Everyone wants to do well, so it kinda pushes you to do well, too.” I looked at him. “So, no. I won’t be skipping classes.”
Of course, I wanted to add that nothing in the world would make me want to be anywhere Eden wasn’t.
“And yet you still think you can cram your homework into a Sunday night and make a good job of it?”
“No,” I said. “Perhaps not.”
I caught his eye and saw that he was smiling. My father hadn’t had any expression other than impatience on his face for a long time—certainly towards me, anyway. This made a pleasant change.
“I always hoped,” he said, “that I’d find you a school which would inspire you to do better. Maybe Queen Victoria’s is it.”
It was Eden that inspired me, not the school. But how could I tell him that?
“Maybe,” I finally said. I looked at my watch: ten past ten. “I’d best get off to bed. I’ll tell Amy I’m not coming to visit.”
“There will be other weekends, Tabitha.” My father looked at me as I got up from the sofa. “And half-terms and holidays. You have your whole life to go back and visit old friends, don’t you? And if they’re true friends, they’ll understand.”
I nodded, wishing him goodnight, then left the room. I went up to my bedroom, changed from my clothes into my PJs, then lay out on my bed. I linked my hands behind my head and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how I was going to tell Amy I wasn’t coming to see her. I wanted to tell her I’d fought and argued and screamed at my father, that I was devastated I wasn’t coming. I wanted to tell her I hated him for keeping us apart, that I’d cried myself to sleep when he’d told me. I wanted to tell her I missed her and I loved her and I’d do anything to see her again.
But that would all be one big fat lie, wouldn’t it?
*
“And when my tyrant of a father says no, he means no.” I pushed the door to the corridor open, hearing it hit the wall with a satisfying crash.
“And you’re gutted because…?” Libby began.
“Because now I have to explain to my girlfriend that I won’t be coming up this weekend,” I said. “Which will make her hate me more than she probably already does.”
“Amy doesn’t hate you,” Libby said kindly. “But she’d be a strange girlfriend if she didn’t care, wouldn’t she?”
“I guess.”
“Tell me the truth,” Libby said. “Would you care if Amy didn’t like you any more?”
I stopped walking and leant against the wall, a little way down from the lab.
“What?”
Libby leant against the wall with me. “Well, don’t you feel like you’re two-timing her as it is?” she asked. “With all these thoughts you’re having about you-know-who?”
“You know I do,” I said miserably.
“So if she didn’t like you any more, then…”
“And what sort of a person would that make me? Dumping a girlfriend on the off chance I might…” I stopped talking as Gabby appeared around the corner. Instead, I pulled my bag open and looked inside for my planner. “What is it we’re doing today?”
“Stem cells.” Gabby’s voice sounded louder as she approached us. “And whose girlfriend’s getting dumped?”
“Have you been listening to our conversation?” Libby spun around and glowered at her. “That was private.”
“If it was private, then you should have kept your voices down,” Gabby said snootily, coming to lean on the wall next to me.
“Like you always do, you mean?” I muttered under my breath.
“So whose girlfriend?” Gabby raised an eyebrow. “Yours?” She waved a cursory hand at Libby. “Or you?” She pointed to me. “I’m thinking you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Butt out, Gabby.” I watched, panicked, as Beth and Eden approached us from further down the corridor. The last thing I wanted right now was a conversation about Amy, especially not in front of Eden.
“This one’s having girlfriend trouble.” Gabby turned and grinned at Beth as she drew nearer. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Who’d have thought what?” Eden’s soft voice drifted down towards me.
“Who’d have thought Tabby was a lesbian?” Gabby looked at me. “I mean, you’d never guess just by looking.”
“Did she say she was gay?” Libby stepped up in front of Gabby, her eyes level with hers.
“She doesn’t need to,” Beth said witheringly.
“She advertises it well enough on her own,” Gabby said. “I figured she was a lesbian the first time I ever met her.”
“And you have a problem with that?” I asked. “Me being gay?”
Gabby and Beth looked at one another. A shared snigger, but no reply to my question.
“Because I don’t have a problem with it,” I said.
“Well, maybe I do,” Gabby said slowly and clearly.
“So we have a lesbian in our midst!” Libby threw up her arms. “Ooh, the crops will be late this year. ’Tis against the will of God and nature.” She looked Gabby slowly up and down, a look of pure disgust on her face. “Puh-lease.”
“You can look at me like that,” Gabby said, fixing Libby with a stare. “I’m not the one who’s weird, am I?”
“Weird?” Libby leant her face in closer to Gabby’s. “You think Tabby’s weird?”
“You think a girl strutting around school with her hands in her pockets the way she does isn’t weird?” Beth chipped in. “It’s not right, that’s for sure.”
“So Tabby’s gay.” Libby rolled her eyes. “Big, fat, hairy deal.” She glared at Gabby. “At least she has character, unlike some around here.”
“She looks like a boy, she walks like a boy,” Gabby drawled. “Maybe she just should have been born a boy, huh?”
“Girls aren’t meant to go with girls,” Beth said piously. “Just like boys were never designed to be with other boys. It’s disgusting and it’s against evolution.”
“Evolution?” Libby’s voice rose, so that it was beginning to echo embarrassingly down the corridor. “You want to talk about evolution? Let me tell you something.”
I stood, my face burning, listening to the pair of them spar. Occasionally I slid my gaze around to see what expression Eden had on her face. She was staring at the ground, giving nothing away.
Libby leant against the wall, placing one hand to the side of Gabby’s face.
“Fascinating fact,” she said. “Did you know that homosexuality was practised by the Romans? No? Thought not. The Romans were cool with being gay. Does that mean our level of intelligence hasn’t progressed, even after two thousand years?” She glared at Gabby. “Imagine that! This could threaten humans’ whole position on the evolutionary scale, couldn’t it? Although looking around me,” she looked from Gabby to Beth and back again, “I’m starting to doubt the whole theory of evolution if you two are the best it can come up with.”
She shoved herself away from the wall and reached over, taking my hand.
“Come on, Tabby,” she said, leading me further down towards the lab, away from them. “Let’s get out of here. Suddenly the air around here stinks.”
*
“Whoa.” I looked back briefly to where Eden, Beth, and Gabby were still standing. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.”
“You see, beneath this demure exterior”—Libby looped her arm in mine—“lies the heart of a tiger. Mess with me or my friends, and hear me roar.”
“Thank you for standing up for me.” I pulled her closer. “I appreciate it.”
“Any time, kid,” Libby said, in the lousiest American accent I’ve ever heard. We walked, arm in arm, into the lab and took up our usual bench at the back of the room. I unpacked my bag and watched, from the corner of my eye, as Gabby, Beth, and
Eden trooped in. They took a bench over on the far side of the lab, despite there being a free one near me and Libby.
Was that deliberate?
“They don’t even look ashamed of themselves.” Libby’s eyes bored into Gabby’s back as she sat down. “The least they could do is look embarrassed for spouting such bile.”
“I’m used to it,” I said.
A whispered comment between Gabby and Beth.
A splinter of laughter, and a look my way.
I tried not to let the hurt show on my face. “I’ve had worse comments than that in the past.” I glanced over to Eden. She was staring down at her books, her face white. Had she laughed, too? I couldn’t be sure. “Shame Eden couldn’t have backed me up, though.” I looked away. The last thing I wanted was Gabby and Beth to see me staring at Eden.
“Why would she?” Libby said flippantly. “She’s part of the witches’ coven. Probably agrees with every word they—” She realized what she was saying.
“Do you think?” I asked, crestfallen. “She seemed unfazed about it when I first told her I was gay.”
“I don’t know,” Libby replied. “All I know about Eden is, whatever Tweedledum and Tweedle-dumber do, Eden just goes along with it. Whether that’s ’cos she wants to, or whether it’s just ’cos she wants an easy life, I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I said, flicking my eyes towards Eden again. “But I wish to God I did.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I woke up the next morning, Friday, to a text from Eden. My heart leapt at seeing her name on my phone. Was she going to tell me she’d been thinking about me since the clash outside the lab the day before?
She wasn’t.
Hey Tabs! Just had email from Rob about fencing. Emergency meeting in the gym first thing. See you later xxx
That was it. I read it again, stupidly searching for the one word that wasn’t there, as if I’d somehow missed it on its first reading.
Sorry.
All I could see, however, was a short, snappy note about bloody fencing. At least it was something. More importantly, it was more than I’d had from Amy after I’d told her what had happened. And Eden’s three kisses were nice, I told myself as I rolled over onto my side and buried my head in my pillow, but they meant nothing, no matter how many times I stared at them.
I lay in bed a while longer, staring blankly at the wall. I knew I needed to get up within the next five minutes if I was to have any hope of catching my train to school. But still I lay there. I picked up my phone again and scrolled down to Amy’s number, opening up a new message to her. Okay, she might not have contacted me, but I still had to tell her I wasn’t coming to visit.
Hey you, I started to write. Asked Dad about this weekend. He said no. I deleted He said no and instead wrote, He says I have to stay home and work… I stared at it for a while, then wrote, sorry, thinking what an insipid word sorry can be at times, but not knowing what else to put. Then I wrote, Love you, will call later, put five kisses after it, and looked at it for a while before deleting it. How could I text her and tell her I wouldn’t be coming? I knew Amy would be gutted that I wasn’t visiting. The least she deserved was me telling her properly, rather than a hasty text sent at half past seven in the morning.
*
“Are you heading to the gym?” Greg’s voice sounded behind me as I entered the school’s main entrance later that same morning. “I’ll escort you.”
He linked his arm in mine and fell into step with me. “Did you get my texts, by the way? You didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t know they warranted an answer.”
“Tetchy.” Greg shot me a look.
“Sorry,” I said. “I started to text Amy this morning to tell her I won’t be coming up this weekend, but I bottled it.” I leant against him. “I don’t think she’s going to be too happy with me.”
“Shame. Why aren’t you going?”
“My father,” I said simply, “thinks I need to knuckle down to work rather than enjoying myself.”
“And that makes you snappy?”
“The thing is, I wasn’t all that bothered,” I said. “I’m trying to be pissed off at him, but I’m failing miserably.”
“What were you not bothered about?” Greg asked. “Him being tough? Or going up to see Amy?”
“Going up to see Amy.” I went through a door and waited for Greg to follow. “Is that a bit shitty of me?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Greg said. “It sounds kinda normal to me.” He stepped to one side to let a group of boys pass, then spoke again. “I think it’s the natural progression of things, to be honest. I’d say it happens to a lot of people.”
“What does?”
“That when someone moves to a new city, they don’t know how they’ll ever cope with being away from home, away from everything they’ve ever known,” Greg said. “And then, over time, they meet new people, see new things, and realize moving away wasn’t so bad, after all.”
“Sounds about right,” I said.
“Then the homesickness they thought they’d never get over eases, and they think about home less often ’cos they’re so busy doing new things, and having this whole new life,” he continued. “And then home gets forgotten—along with the people they left behind.”
“I haven’t forgotten home,” I said. “And if my father had said I could go, then I suppose I would have gone.”
“Even though you weren’t that bothered?” Greg asked.
“Amy’s my girlfriend.” I shrugged. “I made promises to her. I’m not one for breaking them.”
We rounded a corner, and I saw Eden some way in front of us, going in the same direction—to the gym for our meeting, I assumed. My eyes fixed on her as she ambled on ahead of us, unaware we were behind her. I gazed at her back, at the curve of her waist, her hair falling down around her shoulders.
“But now you have someone else to think about, don’t you?” Greg said, following my gaze.
“I’ve tried so hard, you know?” I shook my head. “I’ve tried to ignore her, and avoid her, and not think about her.” I stared at Eden’s back. “For Amy’s sake. I’m not being fair to her, I know.”
“Love’s shit sometimes, isn’t it?” Greg said, putting his arm around me and giving me a squeeze. “But I guess this would explain why you’re not gutted to not be going up North this weekend.”
“I know I think about Amy less these days,” I said truthfully. “Even though I know I shouldn’t.”
Greg pulled a face. “Seems to me, you’re moving on from Amy faster than you realize.”
“I think,” I said, as Eden rounded a corner and disappeared from sight, “despite trying so hard not to…perhaps I’ve already moved on.”
*
The meeting in the gym was brief and to the point. The Queen Victoria Fencing Club had been entered into a national competition in Manchester, and much to my surprise, I was going to participate. I couldn’t believe it. Me in a fencing championship? I could practically see the look of snobbish satisfaction on my father’s face at that one: his daughter actually being good enough at something to be picked for a team.
My mind went into a tailspin. Okay, so it was only the qualifying rounds we’d been entered for, but what on earth made Rob think I was in any way good enough to take part in something like that? However, my brain was more in a muddle at the prospect of a whole day with Eden again, away from the confines of school, than at anything else.
I’d nearly reached my philosophy class after the meeting when I heard running footsteps coming up behind me. I’d been loping down the corridor, hands deep in my pockets, mind foggy with thoughts of fencing.
“Boy, you walk fast, don’t you?” Eden’s breathy voice sounded in my ear. “I’ve been practically chasing you all the way from the gym.”
“I was miles away, sorry.”
“So, what about Manchester, hey?” Eden said.
“I can’t believe A, the organizers want Queen Vic to pa
rticipate, and B, Rob thinks we’re good enough,” I said honestly.
“Have faith,” Eden said as we entered the room. “He must think we’re up to it, or he wouldn’t suggest it, would he?”
She stood next to me at my table. “I’m glad I caught up with you, actually,” she said. A swift look over the shoulder. No Gabby or Beth. “I didn’t just want to talk about the fencing.”
“Oh?” I asked, my heart beginning to thud in the side of my neck.
“I just wanted to say that…” Eden searched for the right words. “I thought what Beth and Gabby were saying yesterday was shitty.”
So she had felt bad about it, after all?
I felt pathetically grateful.
“Understatement of the century.” I stared rigidly down at my books.
“And that I’ve never mentioned to them that I already knew you were, you know, gay,” she said, lowering her voice. “Which, considering the small-minded way they both reacted to it, was a pretty wise move on my behalf, I’d say.”
“Small-minded I can cope with,” I said. “I’m used to it. What I can’t cope with is…” I looked at her.
“What?”
How could I explain to her that she’d hurt me by her silence? How could I tell her that all I’d wanted since I’d left school that day was a sign—anything—from her that showed me she felt bad about it?
“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”
She pulled her bag closer to her. Another brief look behind her.
“You’re coming in to the extra fencing practice tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m gonna need as much preparation as possible if I’m not to look a complete idiot in Manchester.”
“We could go together,” Eden said breezily. “I could come by your house and pick you up, or you could come to me? We can Tube in together. It’ll be fun.”
“Awesome. I mean, yeah, if you want?” I stuttered. “Sure.”
