Super Awkward

by Beth Garrod

  I felt sick. Like that time I had to take two days off school after accidentally eating some potpourri thinking it was Bombay mix. It was obvious now. SO obvious. How stupid could I be?! Silly me for thinking that being a friend meant ‘always offering to share clothes or nail varnish or deodorant (even if it’s roll-on) and being an OK person’, not ‘being a total lying, scheming, ex-boyf-snogging, two-faced betrayal machine’. It made me so cross I actually ‘bleurghed’ out loud, causing a pigeon to throw shade at me. After all the things I’ve done for them over the last fifteen years. The list was endless.

  •I’ve never told a soul that it was Rachel who set off the school fire alarm last year when she was trying to hair-straighten her maths homework.

  •I’ve pretended Tegan’s evil cat, Mr Nibbles, is cute on a daily, even hourly, basis. I hate cats. I hate Mr Nibbles even more. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he is my nemesis and gives me evil looks when the others aren’t looking.

  •I must have watched Hunger Games with them at least one hundred times – with added horror of Mr Nibbles glaring at me from behind a curtain – although SHOCKER I prefer the books.

  •For eight years I’ve kept my promise to Tegan about not saying anything about her hide and seek ‘problem’.

  My swing jolted, almost throwing me off. In my rage I’d almost gone vertical. I didn’t want a broken face to add to my list of woes. Why was everything so rubbish?! How could someone whose initials were BF be so BF-less?

  If only I could snap my fingers and be magically transported to under my duvet with the base of my bed transformed into a giant fridge so I could exist there happily for ever after. But as I can’t teleport, or even click my fingers, I guess I’m stuck here.

  “Bella, thank goodness I found you. I am SO SO SO SO sorry.”

  So Tegan had figured out where I was. And the girl who never showed a chink in her armour was crying so hard she could hardly speak. I swung myself up higher.

  “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I SWEAR.”

  STAY WHERE YOU ARE, TEARS. Don’t you dare let her see how much she’s upset us.

  “It was when I saw that pic. I freaked out. It was just a game – you know?” She gulped in breaths between tears. I concentrated on trying to make hanging on for dear life to some children’s playground equipment look aloof. “I have no idea WHAT was going through my head. As if I ever play snog and nom?!” Classy. “I swear I said I wasn’t playing a zillion times, but something made me cave in. I’m so annoyed with myself.” She kicked at the floor. “SO annoyed!”

  Great. The one time she gives in to peer pressure, and it’s caught on camera. How brilliant for us both.

  Tegan carried on, her normally calm voice bouncing all over the place.

  “Then just as we started, Luke appeared out of nowhere. Seconds later he got snogged and had to nominate. He chose me. You should have seen his smirk. I didn’t know he’d get someone to take a photo. I didn’t even know he was still at the party till it was too late. And I thought if I made a scene and said no it would look like it was a thing. Like you were still into him. I SWEAR I was thinking of you.” She paused. “And now look what’s happened.” She glugged a breath in. “And it’s all my stupid fault.”

  So it was a game snog then? Not a party snog? If that was true surely she could have just ’fessed up on Saturday? I could have dealt with the news, then laughed with her about how furry Luke’s tongue is.

  She let out a loud sob. It felt so awkward. This wasn’t the Tegan I knew, but then maybe I’d never known her all along. In a matter of hours, I’d gone from trusting everything she said to not believing a word.

  “I thought you’d be so mad at me. When I saw that picture I knew how bad it looked. I just couldn’t face it. . . I talked Rachel into going along with it. I just. . .” She paused to blow her nose. She was the kind of person that always had a clean tissue folded away for emergencies. I was the kind of person who used my sleeve. “I just can’t say sorry enough.”

  Understatement.

  The old me would have felt bad at seeing her bawl her eyes out. The new me reckoned she deserved it. Game or not, she’d made the decision not to tell me. Between them they’d chosen to make the three of us become the two of them – and me. Tegan carried on apologizing for the next ten minutes. I carried on pretending I couldn’t hear the apologizing. Hard when you’re in a field that’s totally silent except for some loud apologizing.

  “Bella – please? Are you even listening?” I’d continued my extreme-swinging. “Won’t you say something?!”

  “Something.”

  What did she want me to say? ‘Oh, it’s totally cool that you lied about snogging my ex and schemed behind my back and shall we go make Oreo milkshakes?’ We’d only invited Luke to show him I didn’t care, and instead she’d helped him hit the humiliation jackpot.

  “Are you going to hate me for ever?”

  Good question. My gran always says, “Better an empty house than a bad tenant.” I think it’s something to do with farting, but it probably applies to ditching terrible friends too. I spat my answer back.

  “Probs.”

  A bit of me felt good at sticking to my guns. The rest of me felt horrified at hearing me confirm I officially now had no one to hang out with. LOL – Loser Out Loud. Uh-oh. Major tear prickle. Dangerzone. Time to get of here. This conversation was only heading downwards (although physically I was still going down and up and down and up). I jumped off the swing. Tegan looked panicked.

  “Don’t go! I want to make it up to you.”

  I nose-snorted. Although I don’t know where else you can snort from.

  “What? Instead of just making things up for me?”

  Tegan had known me long enough to know that if there’s one thing I hate as much omelettes, it’s conflict.

  I turned to leave, but had to swallow down the instinctive feeling of guilt, at seeing her so upset. But she should be sad – this was all her fault. I needed a big finish. But I only had three metres of path to figure out what it could be. I strode towards the gate.

  Think of something Bella. Quick. Think of something, anything, to make her realize how much they’ve broken every rule of friend-dom. I breathed deeply and forced out my best adult voice.

  “Tegan. Time can heal but this won’t, so, so . . . if you come in my way just . . . just DON’T.”

  Man. Sadness was obviously good for my dramatic endings. I slammed the gate shut and stomped across the field.

  It was only when I was fishing out the key for my front door that it hit me. I wasn’t a creative genius. I was someone who in crisis accidentally yelled Taylor Swift lyrics thinking they were my own. Shame on me now.

  I opened the door to find Mum in the hallway. She took one look at my face, put down her cup of green tea that smelt of socks, and stretched out her arms. She was ready to absorb me, and all my problems, like a human cushion. Despite technically still being in a mood with her, I let myself be bundled up into her arms.

  “Come on, tell me. How are you feeling? How are your feelings? ” she pecked my hair with kisses. Without waiting for any answer she continued. “Do you want a choc-ice?”

  Her answer to everything. World peace? Have a frozen dairy desert. I grunted a no-word-needed response, wriggled away towards the lounge, and sprawled lengthways on the sofa, ignoring Mumbles as she licked at my face. I also ignored that my sister was curled up by the radiator reading a book that looked bigger than the dictionary. And probably had more words. It was her favourite spot in the house, and so ever since Dad left, it meant I could have a whole sofa to myself. A more than worthwhile swop. Crap dad for cushions.

  Mum plonked herself next to me, trying to wedge herself on the spare bit of seat, but actually sitting very much on me.

  “Come on then, buggerlugs. Tell your mum what’s really up. Remember, I’ve been there, seen it, done it all – many times over.”

  I very much doubted that, unless she too once knocked
over her school’s ‘Pupil of The Year’ trophy and had to glue the handle back on with bits of chewed up Chomp (and are still panicking someone will notice and run DNA tests).

  “It’s nothing. Just friend stuff.”

  She looked positively relieved.

  “Oh well then, that’s fine! I thought you were going to say you were with child.”

  Jo snorted. I didn’t blame her.

  “Pregnant? How?!”

  “Well, Bella, when two people. . .”

  “MUM! My day’s been bad enough already without you being completely gross. And also, I’m not seven.”

  “There’s nothing ‘gross’ –” she did rabbit-ear fingers around it as if it was a novel new word – “about two people loving each other, darling. Or would you rather you’d never been born because conception isn’t to your liking?”

  She had it in one. Jo looked up from her dictionary novel.

  “Mum. Please. Bells is clearly not in a good place right now. Talking about your bedroom habits is not what anyone needs.”

  Wow. Jo on my side for once. She must be feeling guilty.

  “It wasn’t in the bedroom actually. It was right here in this lounge.”

  Jo and I made simultaneous spew noises and shifted in our places, neither of us keen on sitting on a bona fide mum mating spot. Still, at least cushion covers were washable; I couldn’t say the same about the carpet.

  Mum shook her head, as if us not wanting to hear about her boinking with Dad was entirely ludicrous, and returned to her own armchair to get back to enjoying reading the obituaries in the local paper. Jo bum shuffled – buffled – across the floor and lent on the arm of my sofa. Maybe she’d had the same carpet conclusion as me? She lowered her voice and put her hand on my arm.

  “Has it got something to do with the party drama?”

  I nodded – which is hard to do when your chin is resting on something solid.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Furry muff.” She always said that when she meant ‘fair enough’. “Well, if there’s anything I can help with. . .?”

  I kept my voice low.

  “Can you drive me to Wales slash Wolverhampton and try and find that boy from Saturday, apologize for you being a maniac in front of him, and persuade him to come to my prom? And get me some new friends on the way? Oh and also sort out a way to make an entire school forget an entire day?”

  She smiled. Maybe having an older sister wasn’t all bad.

  “Wow. You really have messed up, haven’t you? I mean, that sounds bleak, even by your standards?!”

  Nope. It was all-bad after all.

  I quietly hit my fists together and made my left hand into an ‘L’ shape, which is British Sign Language for ‘G’ and ‘L’. Get lost. We’d been finding ways to annoy each other in silence for years.

  She made an ‘S’ and an ‘up’ and buffled back to her radiator spot, soon lost again in her book.

  I zoned out, letting the soothing sounds of a man stuffing a turkey on TV slow drown my thoughts. As he pulled out something from the turkey that looked like tonsils, but clearly wasn’t, unless you also have them up your bum, I had an idea.

  It wouldn’t help, but it would make me feel better. I got my phone out.

  HIDE AND LEAK

  MY FRIEND TEGAN USED TO GET SO

  HYPED PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK THAT

  WHENEVER SHE HID, SHE GOT SO EXCITED

  SHE WEED HERSELF. TO THIS DAY, HER

  MUM STILL BLAMES MY DOG FOR THE

  SMELL IN THEIR WARDROBE.

  I hovered my finger over the upload button, fighting off a pang of guilt. But sharing a silly story with a bunch of people who don’t even know who I am was nothing on what Tegan had done to me. Still, I went back and changed ‘Tegan’ to ‘Tee’ to make myself feel better, before pressing upload, and watching it fly into the stream. I shouldn’t have worried so much. Seconds later it was already old news. I scrolled through everything else that had been shared since I last looked but didn’t spot anything Zac-ish, so went on a follow spree to widen the net. But just after I turned it off, my screen flashed. Gulp.

  NEW MESSAGE.

  A number I didn’t recognize. My stomach sank. If this was Luke and another one of his games, I didn’t want to be part of it. Maybe I should delete it?

  My phone flashed again, cross at being ignored. Where were you when I wanted messages, hey? Stupid two-faced phone. Phoney phone.

  Cross, I picked it up ready to delete whatever it had to say. But my middle left finger is more nosey than my brain, and before I could stop it, it pressed ‘read’.

  The words on screen made me sit bolt upright. The words on screen made me hold my phone above me like I’d just won the World Cup but then simultaneously developed a metal allergy. The words on screen were so life changing I had to check the room to confirm they hadn’t been accompanied by a low to medium earthquake.

  The words on screen meant my life might not be over after all.

  They meant it was about to get all kinds of awesome.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  I hadn’t stopped staring at it since I got it yesterday. This must be what it’s like for art people who stand and look at the Mona Lisa for hours, hoping to spot a hidden meaning. Except I didn’t have a grinning lady to obsess over, I had tiny little letters. The alphabet was a wondrous invention.

  Once we turned off the road and on to the playing field, I let Mumbles off the lead and looked again.

  Hi Bella, thanks for a great night/black eye.

  Guess you had to take off. Or had second

  thoughts?! Be cool to stay in touch. Z

  Officially the dreamiest one hundred and one characters ever written. And yes, I’d counted (one hundred and twenty-five with spaces). Be cool to stay in touch? Cool?! It would be so cool that J-Law could segway past it and she’d still think ‘Woah, I wish one day I could be that cool’.

  These twenty-nine words (plus one initial) had made today bearable. Who needs friends to sit by at lunch, or someone to reassure you that everyone wasn’t giving you sympathetic looks (they were), or even just point out I’d accidentally biro-ed myself in the face, when you had a message from the boy of your dreams? Except he wasn’t dreams any more – he was living, breathing pixels on my phone. If pixels breathed.

  When it arrived last night, it had made no sense. I remembered every blink Zac had made – how had I forgotten giving him my number?! But before I could prod him for details he’d followed up:

  PS – surprise! Hope it’s OK but my gran talked

  Black Bay into handing over your number.

  JOYBALLS! He’d gone on a covert mission to get my number, which involved an elderly lady AND probably breaking a low-level law. Surely this meant we now had to become life partners?! I was SO happy I’d registered for Black Bay’s stupid text mailing list. Now I literally loved their terribly spelled spam messages!

  I stared at the message for the one hundred and twelfth time. On the one hand, it was the best thing in the world that could ever happen to me, beating my previous dream of being appointed 5SOS tour masseuse. On the other hand, it’s turned me into a nervous wreck. I’m now at risk of sending Zac a crazy message at ANY GIVEN MOMENT. That’s like a 24/7 pressure. For the rest of my life.

  I thought of Mum’s advice and breathed in the evening air to try and stop my brain freaking out. I didn’t need meditation though. I needed normalization, because it is NOT normal to be constantly on the verge of typing OMGILOVEYOUCOMETOPROMPSMARRYME. In fact I’ve thought about it so much that I’m worried my phone knows and wouldn’t even try and autocorrect it into something less insane. I rooted around in my bag and pulled out my woolly winter gloves that I never bothered to clear out. Desperate times called for desperate knitted measures. I tugged the gloves on to my hands. If my mind couldn’t be trusted, at least my fingers now had a physical barrier to prevent out-of-control messaging. Still, I
already looked bad enough in Jo’s running hoodie that I’d pulled on at the last minute when I’d panicked it would rain but didn’t want to get any of my own stuff muddy. It had actual reflective bits on it, like I was some sort of child’s bike.

  I had managed one normalish – emphasis on ‘ish’ – reply though. In the absence of best friends/ any friends for advice, I’d Googled ‘funny replies to messages’. But seeing as I didn’t want to send him a picture of a cat with a beanbag on its head, I’d had to figure it out on my own. In school they should ditch teaching how rivers are made (we don’t need to know, as the whole point is, they make themselves) and teach dealing with blank messages instead. A couple of badly chosen words and I could ruin everything. I shuddered at the memory of when my mum started saying ‘WTF’ to everyone, thinking it meant ‘Way Too Fantastic!’ Anything could happen.

  After practising for over half an hour, this is what I’d managed:

  Hi Zac, I had a great time too. Hope your eye’s

  OK. OOPS. Family emergency meant I left

  first thing. Sorry! Deffo stay in touch. Bx

  I’d removed a smiley face to appear more seventeen-y, but still panicked as soon as I’d pressed send. Did I sound like a loser? Did I sound too casual? Too formal? Too weird? Was the kiss too much?! Would he still like me enough to reply? Would he. . . And then my heart had stopped. Would he notice that I’d accidentally written POOPS in giant capital letters?!