How Hard Can Love Be?

by Holly Bourne

  It’s weird when emotions take over, with no rhyme or reason at all. But that’s what happened as I watched Melody twirl Kyle under her arm before nestling into him. Everything slowed, like the world really wanted to rub this in my face as much as possible. I blinked a lot… They just looked so…good together, as they danced. He was grinning, all not-taking-it-seriously, but when she smiled back at him a tiny something of intimacy crossed their faces. I watched his tanned arms stroke up her body, jokingly, but still with the confidence of a guy that had stroked girls before. She wiggled back, jokingly, but with the confidence of a girl who had wiggled against a guy’s crotch before.

  I’d never been to an American high school. But now I felt like all those kids in the movies – the ones who stand watching from the bleachers as Prom Kings and cheerleaders have the time of their lives.

  I’d never even kissed anyone. Seventeen – and no one’s lips had ever pressed against mine. I was five foot eleven, ginger, and every boy at school only seemed interested in midget, wannabe pole dancers. I kept hoping they’d grow out of it, or grow into me, or maybe it was just a British boys’ thing… Yet the rules of life were exactly the same, no matter what side of the Atlantic Ocean you were on. All the good feeling from our Monty Python skit evaporated.

  I couldn’t look any more so I budged up closer to Whinnie on the log and whispered to her.

  “I’ve thought of another thing that makes America worse at feminism than the UK.” She looked up at me expectantly through her big bottle glasses. “… Cheerleaders.”

  Whinnie nodded. “Cheerleaders were the curse of my life for a long time.” She pointed to her Winnie the Pooh T-shirt, her glasses, her ponytail. “You think someone like me had an okay time at high school?”

  I pointed to my freckles, my ginger hair, and stretched out my long legs in front of me.

  “You think I did?”

  We both giggled and Russ shushed us, before craning forward again.

  It was the final chorus and Melody now stood bent over against Kyle, pushing her bottom into him.

  I turned away once more.

  “What is it with you and Winnie the Pooh then?” I asked, looking closer at her red Disney T-shirt. “Is it just your name?”

  Whinnie’s face looked so lovely lit from the campfire, all warm and open. “Winnie the Pooh is the answer to happiness,” she answered simply.

  “And, can I say, ‘huh’?”

  “He is the living embodiment of Taoism.”

  “Whatism?” I asked.

  “Taoism. It’s this philosophy thing,” Whinnie said, stroking the Pooh on her jumper. “Taoists believe human beings overcomplicate life by over-thinking everything all the time, and this makes us unhappy. If you read the Winnie the Pooh books, you’ll see that Pooh is always happy, because he sees things in a simple way. He’s actually on a higher philosophical plane than most of us.”

  “So this is far more interesting than Melody proving to an entire campfire of people that she’s sexually attractive,” I whispered. “Tell me more.”

  Whinnie’s lips twitched with laughter. “Well, look at the other characters in Winnie the Pooh. They all actually demonstrate that Pooh is the most mentally balanced. There’s Tigger, I mean, that tiger just can’t stay in the moment and enjoy it. He’s too much of a hedonist; he always wants the next adventure. That’s not healthy, he’ll burn out.”

  I started properly laughing. “And what about Eeyore?”

  “Well he’s a depressive, isn’t he? If Eeyore walked into my doctor’s office he’d be prescribed with a lifetime supply of antidepressants. And not just because US doctors dole them out like candy canes at Christmas.”

  The music stopped and I found myself clapping without even looking.

  “But Pooh?”

  “Pooh lives in the moment. He doesn’t fret about the past, or freak about the future. He’s an expert at mindfulness.”

  Kyle walked back to us, smiling, all breathless.

  Russ high-fived him. “You lucky bastard.” Kyle sat next to me on the log. I could feel the heat from his body, but it didn’t bother me any more. I was thinking how much Lottie and Evie would love Whinnie.

  “Mindfulness is supposed to be the secret to happiness, isn’t it?” I asked her. “One of my friends back home, she has, like, umm, OCD stuff, and they’re sending her away on a mindfulness weekend to help her with her anxiety.”

  Whinnie looked triumphant. “You see! And think how long Pooh has been around. He knew the secret to happiness before we did.”

  “What you guys talking about?” Kyle asked.

  Russ replied. “Don’t ask, man, don’t ask. They were laughing about freakin’ Eeyore all the way through the best part of the night.”

  I spun round to face them, my hair flicking into my face. “If you call ‘that’” – I gave Kyle a dirty look – “the best part of the night, then I feel very sorry for you.”

  Russ threw up his arms. “What can I say? I’m an obvious guy.”

  Whinnie whispered in my ear. “And Melody was making it abundantly clear she was obviously a girl.”

  I giggled. “I almost forgot she had boobs, I’m so glad she stroked them to remind me.”

  Whinnie wiggled her eyebrows madly. “And I almost forgot she had such a tight ass. It really was very kind of her to rub it up against men so it didn’t fade into obscurity.”

  “That would’ve been such a shame.” I nodded. “Nobody with an arse like that wants to have only a cult following. Arses like Melody’s deserve to be mainstream…” I trailed off and pretended to look into the distance. “If only Melody knew that.”

  We both dissolved into snorts of bitchy laughter. I knew it probably wasn’t strictly feminist, to bond with one girl by bitching about another… I’m sure Lottie would have some kind of academic term for it. But seeing Melody dance with Kyle had made me feel oddly weak.

  Pathetic? Of course. But feelings always are.

  The applause died down and Bumface Kevin picked his way to the front. He cleared his throat loudly and we all fell quiet. Kyle, who’d heard our whole bitchy interchange, gave me a quick look. There was no smile in his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was angry at me, or embarrassed at himself.

  “Guys, that was incredible,” Kevin said. “You are ALL INCREDIBLE. We are going to have such an awesome time together. I can’t wait for the kids to arrive tomorrow so we can get this summer started.” Everyone cheered and whooped. Whinnie and I rolled our eyes at each other.

  “And now…” Kevin picked up a small wooden drum by his feet. “As is camp tradition, we will welcome in the summer with a drum circle.”

  I turned to Kyle. “What the heck is a drum circle?”

  He gave a small smile back. “It’s the best bit, come on.”

  Kevin started hitting the drum and Kyle pulled me back into the middle of the circle, next to the fire. Drums appeared everywhere and people started bashing them, forming an infectious beat. I crossed my arms, feeling exposed.

  “What do we do?” I asked, though my feet were already step-tapping to the beat.

  “We dance,” he said simply. He gently took my hand.

  The people who weren’t hitting the drums poured into the circle, joining us, their feet also instantly sacrificing themselves to the rhythm. Whinnie and Russ grabbed some maracas and wiggled their way into the circle, shaking in time with the others.

  I tensed up. “I umm… Girls as tall as me…we don’t tend to dance. It looks like I’m the maypole on May Day.”

  Kyle was already waving my hands over my head.

  “Don’t be stupid. And what’s a maypole?”

  The combination of his touch, the thud of the drums, and the flicker of the fire, just kind of filled me up. I grabbed his hands tighter and spun with him, my body surrendering to the music.

  Everything sort of faded away as Kyle and I moved. He never let go of my fingers, and whenever I looked at him he looked straight back, the corners of his ey
es crinkling. It wasn’t dancing like the way he danced with Melody – and I’m sure that’s because just one of my butt cheeks is the size of both of hers. But we were still proper dancing, our bodies in tune, all this heat building in me, rising from my chest. I looked over at Mum and she was staring right at me, hitting a drum. She nodded her head towards Kyle and raised one eyebrow…

  … Reminding me…

  “Every girl thinks they have some kind of connection with Kyle.” I.e. don’t be a statistic, Amber. A Kyle-support-group statistic.

  I froze up.

  “Umm,” I stumbled, not sure what on earth I was feeling. “Umm…” Our dancing ground to a halt.

  “You okay?” he asked, his face sweaty.

  “Umm,” I mumbled again.

  And I was saved by Whinnie. She jumped between us and grabbed me aggressively before bending over and wiggling her giant jiggly bottom against my crotch in a perfect imitation of Melody. Russ bounced up too, doing this weird sort of shimmy, and I laughed and joined in. Kyle stood out for a second, his tanned arms crossed under his sleeveless T-shirt, then he jumped in and we all danced together like maniacs.

  I was giddy with laughter. We formed a circle and took it in turns to dance around each other. Bodies swayed and moved around me. The beat always evolving. The firelight never waning. Mum tapped me on the shoulder, taking me by surprise, and gestured to join in. I nodded, and pulled her into our circle. She took both my hands and spun us as everyone else spun around outside of us – like we were the nucleus of a cell, if nucleus is the right word; I don’t know, I can’t remember GCSE science. We spun so fast that everything else became a blur, apart from her face. Her face that looked so much like my face, especially now her skin wasn’t sallow and yellowish any more, and her eyes weren’t red and watery like they used to be. Her sparkly eyes and her wild toothy grin were all I could see as we spun and spun and spun…and just a sliver of sadness found me, as I wished we were spinning back in time, back to before that day when she found Kevin and left me.

  SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:

  Me

  +

  American children

  +

  Discipline

  Ten

  It was arrival day.

  The kids ran towards us like greased pigs shooting out the barrel of a cannon.

  “I’m scared,” I whispered to Russ. “Why are they screaming?”

  “Brace yourself for impact,” he replied as the wall of children got closer. I stood in my branded camp T-shirt and denim shorts, my hair bundled back into an already-frizzy ponytail. The instructions were simple enough. Get their names, check them off on the register, and then stand them in the appropriate zone until they’d all arrived.

  So why did I feel like I was going into war?

  The kids got closer. They ran with such energy, such a fighting look on their face, that it looked like one of those epic battle scenes in films – the slow motion ones where they all put their swords forward to charge, and the music gets all classical and they nobly run to their deaths. Except in those films, the soldiers aren’t followed by enthusiastic parents cradling video cameras, yelling, “Gideon, Mommy’s gonna miss you soooooooooooo much.”

  I turned to Kyle.

  “Why do I feel we’re about to fight to the death?” I asked. “That this is our precious home, and we have to protect it from the invasion?”

  The corners of his wide mouth twitched up but he stared straight ahead.

  “Just be careful of your genital area,” he replied. “They tend to run straight into it.”

  Just as he finished his sentence, the first kid ran bang into Kyle’s crotch. He bent over almost in two.

  “KKKYYYYYYLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEE,” the kid screamed, unaware of the agony he’d caused. “D’ya remember me? D’ya? D’ya?”

  Kyle straightened himself up but still clutched his groin.

  “Hey, Elias,” he said, in the most Disney voice I’d ever heard. “How could I forget you?”

  More kids piled into him, like he was an electromagnet. Russ, on my other side, also had about eight children growing off him like benign tumours.

  That’s good, I thought. They were here last year, that’s why they’re being hugged. Nobody will hug me thankfully…

  … Then I looked up and I saw hordes more children come through the forest from the car park – straight for me. I pushed aside panic, took one deep breath and bent my knees, ready to take the impact.

  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM

  I had a million kids hanging off me.

  “Who are you?” they demanded. “Why are you so tall?” “Why is your hair red?” “Where’s my mom?” “Can I go on a jet ski? Can I? Can I?”

  Why do American children sound infinitely more American than any other type of American thing?

  “Woooooah, everyone,” I said, in the most fake cheery voice I could muster. “I’m Amber. And we have to get you all registered first.”

  Kyle already had a kid over his shoulder.

  “Amber’s come all the way from England to look after you this summer,” he said.

  “Wow, England?”

  And eight million kids detached themselves from Russ and Kyle and electromagnetized themselves to me instead.

  “OUCH,” I yelled. A tiny child had run right into my vagina, their skull knocking into bits of it that should never be knocked into.

  “I told you,” I heard Kyle say. I looked up, trying to hold my injured bits without looking like a sex-offender, which is hard when your injured bit is your genital section and you have eight million children hanging off you. “Protect the nether-regions.”

  He smiled in a way that almost hurt my heart as much as my bruised vag.

  “Okay, put down the scissors. No, I said ‘put them down’, not wave them near the eyeballs of your new friends.”

  Charlie Brown was already my new nemesis. He’d been at camp for a total of three hours and I wanted to throttle him.

  He chucked the scissors onto the floor. “When can we go to the lake? When? When? Can I go on the jet ski? Can I? Can I?”

  Considering I’d already answered his questions three times, I tried ignoring him. I bent down to the dusty floor of the rec hall and picked up his abandoned scissors.

  They were making their name necklaces. As the Art Person, I’d been given the responsibility for getting them made. It was hard though. Energy vibrated off them. It hadn’t helped that the first activity of the day had been giving them a tour of camp, i.e. showing them all the exciting things they weren’t allowed to do yet.

  I handed the scissors to a little girl called Rayanne, who still couldn’t believe I was from England.

  “Here, Rayanne,” I said, copying Kyle’s best Disney voice. “You still need to cut yours out.”

  She took the scissors in exchange for a bombardment of questions. “Where is England? Do you live in a castle? Do you eat little sandwiches? Mom says you all eat tiny sandwiches. Do you have a crown? Charlie Brown says you have a crown. Can I wear it?”

  Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths.

  “Are we all almost done, guys?” I shouted. None of them listened. They were either preoccupied with their colouring, or laughing at Charlie Brown who was running up and down the hall with his T-shirt over his head.

  Kyle came bursting through the doors, armed with two giant coolers.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, rescuing me. “Who wants juice?” he called.

  “JUUUUUUUUUUUUIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCEEEEEE.” And they all abandoned their projects and ran at him to collect their pouches of orange squash. I noticed Kyle carefully cover his crotch and smile. He looked over, saw where my eyes were, smiled, and then went red.

  “Gotta protect the boys,” he said, sheepishly.

  The boys? Did he mean his bollocks? Oh God, he did. I went deep red. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about his bollocks. Which put me off him a bit. I mean, I’d never seen any, but from what Lottie had told m
e, I’d not missed much. “You know when obese people lose lots of weight and they have all that excess skin?” she’d told us. “Well imagine all that skin wrapped around two plums that smell slightly of cheese.”

  I turned my face so he wouldn’t see my blushes and focused on tidying up the pencil pots.

  “All right, guys,” Kyle said in his Disney voice. “Take ten minutes, then we’ll get your necklaces finished. But you’re not to go outside yet, okay? We still haven’t creamed you up.”

  The juice was glugged down in ten seconds, then the kids started running about like madmen. I took the brief respite to put my head on the table and close my eyes.

  “Where’s your mom?” Kyle sat on the tiny stool next to me. “Isn’t she supposed to be helping you?”

  I kept my eyes closed, wanting sleep, needing sleep. Yet it was only 3 p.m.

  “She’s having one of her lie-downs,” I answered.

  “Huh?”

  I reluctantly sat back up again. “She gets these…umm…she needed to lie down, she said.”

  Kyle reached into his baggy pockets and pulled out two rescued juice pouches. He offered me one and I took it gratefully.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to be left with the kids by yourself?”

  I pierced my straw into the little hole and sucked so hard the juice pouch was empty within three seconds.

  “Man that is so good. And, no, I’m not. I’m only seventeen. She said it was only for an hour though…”

  Kyle tried to keep his face neutral as he drained his drink. He eyed me curiously over the top of his straw.

  “Well,” he said, crumpling up the empty pouch with his hand. “For someone who’s got no experience of working with kids, you’re doing pretty well.”

  I looked round the carnage of the hall – the kids running around madly, bouncing and colliding like fireworks. “Are you kidding? They’re behaving like savages.”