Double Dare

by Cathy Hopkins

  The day that my cartoons came back in the post, I opened them and dashed off to school, leaving them on the dresser in the kitchen. When I got home that night Mum had obviously been looking at them. So had Gran. In fact she’d Blu-tacked the one I’d done of her, Mum and Jade as the witches onto the fridge.

  ‘Oh, God!’ I gasped when I saw it there. ‘I . . . I didn’t mean for you to see that . . .’

  Gran laughed. ‘Why ever not? It’s great. I love it. I’m going to have it framed and put in the dining room.’

  ‘No Gran . . . Jade will kill me.’

  ‘She should be flattered that such a talented artist chooses her as a subject.’

  ‘No . . . Please put it away.’

  ‘OK. For now. But I’m going to ask her permission when she gets back.’

  Just what I need, I thought. Another girl on the list of those who hate me. And we’d been getting on marginally better since Dad’s visit as well.

  Mum hadn’t said anything. But I knew she would sooner or later.

  ‘Er . . . sorry, Mum,’ I said and attempted a sheepish grin as soon as Gran had left the room. ‘I don’t really think you’re an old witch.’

  To my surprise, she smiled.

  ‘I guess I am sometimes,’ she said. ‘But how come you never showed me these drawings before?’

  ‘No point showing them to anyone after what’s happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When Roz stormed off that day, she told me to forget the cartooning job. Don’t forget it’s her dad who’s editor. And she got me in.’

  Mum rolled her eyes. ‘And you’re going to let that stop you?’

  ‘Duh. Yeah. Don’t think I fancy another encounter with her if I can help it and I don’t think that she’ll be in a hurry to see or speak to me again.’

  It was over a week since the Sunday she’d stormed off and I hadn’t heard a peep out of her although I had texted her to say sorry because in the days after she’d gone, I began to feel rotten about what had happened when she was down here. OK so I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend but I didn’t want our strange friendship to end like that either.

  Mum sifted through my drawings and sighed.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes you’re just like your father.’

  ‘Well I am his son,’ I said. ‘I’m bound to have some of his characteristics.’

  ‘No need to be sarcastic, Mac. No, what I mean is using an excuse not to send your work off.’

  ‘It’s not an excuse.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Your dad was the same and I knew what was behind it. Fear. Fear of rejection. He couldn’t stand anyone to say anything bad about his work so he’d deliberate about sending it off, making up excuses. That was his trouble. He did some brilliant work but no one ever got to see it.’

  ‘This is different. Roz told me to forget the whole deal. Plus those drawings aren’t exactly flattering, particularly the one of Alistair. They’ll hate them. Sometimes you have to play the game when trying to get ahead. You have to be liked.’

  Mum looked through them again. ‘So you’d have sent off the other ones you did. I saw them. The ones that were more flattering but not as good as these?’

  ‘Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. What’s the point of even having this conversation?’

  ‘Because I think these drawings are great, Mac. Really good. And you know as well as I that in everything creative, it has to come from the heart, not from fear. Fear of whether people like you or not. If you act like a people-pleaser, everything you do will come across as mediocre. You have to express your true feelings and that comes across in these.’ She smiled. ‘Especially in the witchy one. See, it’s not exactly kind to me but I can recognise that it’s a good drawing and I know you don’t feel like that all the time. Don’t be afraid to express what’s in you, Mac. Good and bad, light and dark.’

  ‘OK. OK. Then I’ll tell you what I feel. You might say I’m acting like Dad used to. Well you’re acting towards me like you used to with him. Telling me what to do just like you used to tell him. Taking over. It’s you who’s got the problem, not me. Always trying to control people and tell them how to live their life.’

  For a moment I thought Mum was going to blow her top but she took a deep breath.

  ‘Sorry, Mac . . . you’re right. I know I can get carried away sometimes but it’s only because I want the best for you. But you’re right . . . you have to make your own decisions.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and picked up my drawings. ‘And my decision is that these stay where they are. In my portfolio.’

  As I got up to put the drawings back in their envelope, I noticed some writing on the back of Dad’s note that I hadn’t seen earlier.

  P.S.: Just to let you know, Peter Morrisey was round last night. Remember him? He’s Head of Foundation, now at Chelsea Arts. He saw your drawings and was very impressed. Said that if your other work is up to that standard, he’d like to see you when the time comes and you’re applying to colleges. So keep him in mind. His college is one of the best and he thinks you’ve got a great future in front of you. So maybe something came out of going for the cartooning job after all. Not what you expected but in life, when does it ever turn out that way?

  Love

  Dad

  P.P.S.: I still think you should send your caricatures off. What have you got to lose?

  I thought back to what Mum had said about me being like Dad and how he’d done some brilliant stuff but been afraid of rejection. I knew that it was partly true in my case. I didn’t want anyone looking at my work and declaring it crap. But Mum was right and so was Dad. What did I have to lose? In art, you couldn’t please all the people all the time. I knew that. There were bound to be people who didn’t like my style. I shouldn’t let it stop me. And I did feel more confident after reading what Dad said about Peter Morrisey’s comments.

  Maybe I was in with a chance. It was worth finding out at least. So what that Roz said to forget sending off my drawings, I thought. She doesn’t control me and she doesn’t control her dad’s decisions for the magazine. I picked out my caricatures. I’d photocopy them tomorrow (I remembered what Mr Williams had said about not sending in originals) and I’d send them off.

  Mr Williams could only say no. If I got rejected, so be it. No one could say I hadn’t tried.

  AT HALF-TERM, Jade and I got the train up to London and went to stay with Dad for a few days as arranged. Although I had to spend some of the time studying for my GCSEs, we still had a totally brilliant break and Dad made a real effort. He took us to the movies, bowling, out for lunch and I was able to tell him that I was OK about him remarrying. He seemed genuinely relieved and promised that in the future, he would make more of an effort to be involved in our lives.

  One evening over pizza in a local café, he asked if I still wanted to live up in London.

  I shrugged. ‘Not thinking about it any more. I know it’s not on the cards.’

  ‘Well, don’t write the idea off completely,’ he said. ‘Sonia and I have been talking and when we get married, we want to make a fresh start altogether. There’s not much space in my flat and both of us feel that we’d like to find a new place. A place that’s neither mine, nor hers but ours. So . . . we’re going to look around. Ideally I’d like to find somewhere with more bedrooms. One for you and Jade so that you can come and go as you please and think of it as a second home. Nothing definite, as we haven’t started looking yet and we don’t quite know what we can afford yet, but that’s what I’d like.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said. For a moment, I felt my hopes rise but then I asked myself, is this just another of Dad’s dreams? It could well be. I knew he didn’t earn a fortune as a freelancer and Sonia was an actress. It was feast or famine for her too as jobs came in or didn’t. However, I appreciated the gesture. It meant a lot even it was one of Dad’s pie-in-the-sky fantasies. And if it came to fruition, it would be brilliant to know that I had a room when I want
ed to visit London.

  In between times with Dad, I was able to go over to Islington and hang out with my old mates, Max and Andy It was great to see them again and catch up and both of them urged me to apply to the sixth-form colleges that they’d applied to. The idea was beginning to have less and less appeal, though. Something had changed in me since the day that Dad came down to Cornwall. Until then, all I’d been thinking about was myself and I’d blamed Mum for uprooting us. Now I could see what she’d sacrificed for us and I didn’t want to abandon her. Especially now that Dad was getting remarried. I didn’t want her to feel that everyone was deserting her to move on with their lives leaving her unable to go anywhere. There would be a time to leave home later, when I went to uni.

  I checked my mobile every day in the hope that Emily might have called. She’d have got my letter ages ago and I’d even e-mailed her a message that I’d be up in London but there was no reply and I knew better than to keep on at her like a sad stalker.

  I also checked it in the hope that there might be a message from the magazine but all was quiet on that front too.

  At least I was still sleeping well at night. There was nothing more I could have done on either score.

  On our last day, Jade had gone off to Camden Lock with some of her old school friends and Andy and Max were busy, so I mooched around the flat.

  ‘Want to do something?’ asked Dad.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Movie?’

  ‘What’s on?’

  ‘I’ll go and look,’ said Dad.

  As he was looking through the local paper, my phone rang. I picked up and walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Mac?’

  ‘Emily?’

  ‘Are you still in London?’

  ‘Yeah. Leaving on the four o’clock train this afternoon.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Highgate. Where are you?’

  ‘Crouch End. Fancy coming over?’

  Do I fancy coming over? I thought after I’d put the phone down. Understatement of the year.

  ‘Good news?’ asked Dad as I went back into join him.

  ‘Could be.’ I grinned. ‘Can we do a movie next time? It looks like my luck may be about to change.’

  Emily lived in a ground-floor flat on one of the streets off the Broadway. It had an old fashioned feel to it and was just the kind of place I’d imagined her living in, walls lined with bookshelves groaning with the weight of hundreds of books. Old rugs scattered about. Battered comfy looking furniture.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’ I asked after she’d let me in and shown me around.

  ‘Oh, some conference or other. She won’t be back until late tonight.’

  Yabadabadoo, another chance, I thought, as she indicated for me to sit down then sat at the other end of the sofa herself.

  ‘I . . . I got your letter,’ she said. ‘And I just got your messages and I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. I couldn’t face spending half-term here with time on my hands to go over the whole Michael thing again, so I got the train up to Edinburgh to see Dad. I’ve been up there and only got back this morning and found the messages that you were in London. I called you straight away as I was afraid that I might have missed you. And to tell the truth, I’d been thinking of phoning you, anyway. I . . . I guess I was a bit hasty. Acted like a real drama queen rushing off like that. I should have known that there was more to the story. So, sorry. Guess my head was a little messed up then.’ She laughed. ‘And by the sound of your letter so was yours. You didn’t half complicate things for yourself by asking Becca to act like your girlfriend to put Roz off. Why didn’t you just tell her the truth? That you didn’t fancy her?’

  ‘Because I am . . . was an almighty coward. I’ve told her since though. Came clean. She didn’t like it one bit.’

  ‘Unrequited love. It’s a bummer.’

  ‘Is that how you feel? About Michael?’

  ‘A bit. Still, you can’t make people be with you if they don’t want to can you? I’m OK about it now. Accepted it was not meant to be.’

  ‘Really?’

  She smiled. ‘Yeah, really. I feel like I’ve let go at last. And it’s OK, I feel good. Free. It did me good to get away up to Scotland. It cleared my head and I got started on a new book up there. And now I feel like I’m coming back to a new chapter.’

  ‘Apt example for a writer.’ I grinned. She did seem different. Not as fragile and more sure of what she wanted. We sat and chatted for ages about relationships and how complicated they could be and I told her all about Dad’s visit to Cornwall and how he was getting remarried. As we talked, she leaned back on the sofa and put her feet on my lap so I massaged her toes.

  At last, I thought, we can start back where we left off when Becca butted in.

  After I’d finished massaging her feet, she moved over to me on the sofa and leaned her head against my chest. All the feelings I’d felt before came flooding back and my insides turned to liquid.

  She turned her face up to meet mine and once again I looked into her eyes.

  ‘Dêja vu,’ I smiled down at her.

  ‘Dêja vu,’ she smiled back.

  Just as our lips were about to touch, the phone rang. She jumped slightly.

  ‘Do you want to get it?’ I asked.

  She shook her head and leaned back into me. ‘Answering machine’s on. It’s probably Mum checking in.’

  There was a beep from the machine and a boy’s voice.

  ‘Emily. Emily. Are you there?’

  Emily stiffened.

  ‘It’s me. Michael. Listen. I know you’re back today as I’ve been calling all week and your mum told me. Look . . . I made the most ginormous mistake. I’ve been such a fool . . . Please if you’re there, pick up. I’ve been going insane thinking that I might have lost you . . .’

  Emily sat up.

  I listened.

  Emily listened.

  ‘Please, please Emily if you’re there. Pick up . . .’

  Emily looked at me apologetically then got up to take the call.

  I knew I was history.

  I didn’t wait until she’d finished her call. I could tell by her voice that she was choked to hear from him. I crept out into the hall, let myself out of the flat and made my way back to Dad’s so that he could take me to the station to meet Jade.

  ‘SO MUCH FOR MY great experience with women,’ I said to Squidge as we sat down at Cawsand Bay after school on the Monday after half-term. The sun was shining, the beach was busy with early holidaymakers and Squidge and I had decided to take a break from revision and had taken our easels down there to do some work. We’d decided to do some watercolours to go in our portfolios because when the time came for interviews for college, the tutors would want to see work in a variety of mediums. As we painted, I told Squidge all about my weekend and afternoon with Emily.

  ‘Go on, laugh. I know you want to. Episode three in the Mac sitcom.’

  Squidge shook his head. ‘No. I’m not going to laugh this time. I know how much you liked Emily.

  ‘Yeah I did. She’s special. Not someone to have a quick fling with and I did want to, you know, play the field a bit before I got into anything serious. Date a few girls. Remember that was the reason I wanted to break up with Becca in the first place?’

  ‘I do remember. So that you could sample the whole fruit bowl etc. etc. and not just one.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah. Suppose every fruit bowl has a mixture of fruit. Melons, bananas, mangoes plus a few lemons.’

  ‘Who was the melon? Oh, of course,’ Squidge put his hands to his chest and indicated large boobs. ‘Shazza. Big melons! Who was the lemon?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  ‘Have you heard from Roz?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nope. I texted her a few times to say sorry about what happened down here but I guess she’s still sore.’

  ‘Or sour if she’s a lemon,’ Squidge said with a grin.

  ‘She wasn’t that bad. Not really. I
can’t say I blame her for how she reacted. It wasn’t all her fault. I could have been more straight with her in the beginning.’

  ‘And it has all been experience,’ said Squidge. ‘Maybe not the kind you were thinking about, but it has been experience.’

  ‘Tell me about it. My mission to understand women is still ongoing. So far, the only two things I’ve learned is that it’s important to say what you feel and the second is that girls are an alien species. They seem to make up their own rules then break them the next day. In fact, I may take a breather from them for a while. They do my head in.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ said Squidge. ‘That is until the next time. Still, the one good thing is that you did those cartoons. You’ll always have those to show for it all.’

  ‘Even if they didn’t make the magazine.’

  ‘Yeah. Still no word?’

  ‘Nope. I thought at least they’d have sent a note saying thanks but no thanks or sent them back. I did send the required stamped addressed envelope. Good job I sent copies and not the originals as they’re probably in a bin somewhere.’

  ‘At least you did it.’

  ‘Yep. All because of a stupid double dare. But at least I won’t get a trillion years’ bad luck as I fulfilled both the requirements. I went up to London, stayed with Roz and I did the cartoons for the magazine. So my luck ought to be changing.’

  ‘Any minute now,’ said Squidge as he nudged me and I looked up to see that two pretty blonde girls in bikinis were coming over to look at our paintings.

  And they were the first of many. As we sat painting, just about every girl that went past, stopped to comment or flirt (plus some boys too but they mainly stopped to throw some insult our way). They didn’t bother me as, without realising it, we’d lucked into a ready-made opener for meeting girls. Later, as we packed up for the evening, I resolved to do more painting in public places where babes in bikinis hung out. I could even offer to do portraits. The summer in Cornwall was looking up.

  When I got home, Mum rushed out into the hall. She had an enormous grin on her face.