by Beth Garrod
“Just thought you should know that Bella – this is Bella,” he gestured at me, “I think you met her under a table – has spent the whole of this term banging on about an imaginary boy that she allegedly ‘had the best snog of her life with’. And, get this, she tried to make out it was YOU. She even told everyone you were going to be her prom date.” Luke laughed to himself. “How pathetic, huh? She can’t even get herself to prom, let alone get a date to it?!!”
I wanted to purée myself and drain away down the sink. Why did Luke have to humiliate me like this?!
What must Zac think of me?!
I could see in the mirror propped against the wall that I’d gone redder than the paint bottle I was standing next to, which was labelled ‘100% Maximum Red’.
Zac looked disgusted. So much for me making it up to him at prom/ever.
“Is that all, Luke?” Zac sounded pissed off. Luke replied with a cheery ‘uh-huh’, not able to hide how happy he was at making me squirm so hard. A prom ticket AND embarrassing me. He really was having the best day.
“I’ll leave Bella to give you the full deets. Enjoy!”
Luke gave me a final wink and shut the door.
My heart was racing so fast that the glue-blob on my jumper that looked annoyingly like a nipple, was flapping up and down at an alarming rate. Deep breath, Bella. Focus on trying to explain yourself.
But my mouth wouldn’t make words. And I couldn’t make any noise other than small whimpers which wasn’t going to resolve much.
Zac lent back against the counter and pushed himself up on to it. I looked awkwardly at my fingernails, but sadly they didn’t have conversation starters written on them.
Zac broke the silence.
“So . . . I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I started at that new college?”
HA WHATTING HA.
I put my hands over my face, and managed to say a distorted, “Yes, I am aware,” that due to the hand muffling sounded a bit like I said I was a bear.
Not a great start. Deep breath. Take your time.
“To be clear, I am NOT a bear. But I AM sorry. I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been.” I was so panicked everything was splurting out like a yoghurt when you open the lid weirdly. “And that artwork wasn’t about you. It was about Zac. Efron? And I don’t normally throw food. I mean, why throw it when you can eat it? And my name isn’t Bellerina. Although I do think it’s a nice gnome. Name! And I didn’t tell everyone I snogged you. Or semi-snogged you actually. Well I kind of did, but that was before you were here. I swear I haven’t said a word to anyone ever since you asked me not to. Well I’ve said words, obvs, but not ones about you. I promise! How’s Keith the dog? And please tell me you don’t like Lou.”
Zac said nothing.
I said nothing.
We said nothing.
Nothing was said.
What was he thinking?!
But then something unthinkable happened.
Zac smiled. And he put his hand on my arm. And it made me buzz on the inside just like old times.
He noticed me smile, and quickly took it back, remembering that wasn’t what supervisors did.
“Seriously, Bella, have you been bottling up a week’s worth of conversation or what?”
“Oh, that’s only a day’s worth. Really.” It was actually only an hour’s worth. Nipple-blob-glue flapped a little slower. But why was Zac being so nice after what Luke just told him? Wasn’t he raging about me putting his Italy trip in danger?
Zac carried on, unphased.
“I seeee. So, where should I begin? Keith’s good. Missing me, I hope. But good. And I like the name Bellerina too. But I don’t like Lou. Not in that way. She’s terrifying.”
He smiled, his fit, inappropriate-to-fancy smile. Which only made it even fitter. Wow. This was going so much better than I thought. But why?! I had to find out.
“But . . . but what about Luke?”
“What about Luke? Between me and you – I think he’s a grade A idiot. I mean, he sounded like enough of one when you told me about him at Black Bay.”
Oh man. Why hadn’t I had the foresight to predict Zac was going to turn up at my school and change the names of the people in my stories even though I’d only just met him?
“But what about what he just said?”
“Well, there’s only one thing I can say really. . .”
I auto-paused myself, waiting to find out what.
“. . . and that’s thank you. For having my back and making out it wasn’t true.” What the what? “Don’t look so freaked out?! Lou spent her entire morning shouting to anyone in earshot about the convo you had with Luke. It’s hardly a surprise I got to hear about it.”
IN YOUR FACE, LUKE AND LOU, and your lame attempts at causing trouble. Turns out you both did me a favour.
If I wasn’t in a confined space with Zac, I’d totally do a victory dance right now. And then collapse with relief that he wasn’t mad.
“Anyway, I know I said let’s wait till prom to chat, but seeing as we’re in a store cupboard, I guess now is as good a time as any for me to explain myself?”
I shook my head confused. As if he had any explaining to do?!
“So, my mum got temporarily relocated to Sweden with her work. Did I mention she was Swedish?”
He hadn’t, but maybe that would explain why he was so hot. I mean, being Swedish sounded really hot, and I’d only ever met him from Sweden, and he was hot, so therefore they must all be really hot.
“Earth to Bella?” I snapped out of Sweden perving and instead made a mental note to visit there one day. Zac carried on.
“So, I needed to finish my A-levels somewhere, and had arranged to stay with a friend in Birmingham. But then Dad, sorry, Mr Lutas, got involved and at the last minute sorted this placement out instead, so I could stay with him.” Zac looked a bit awkward. “Funny thing is, I’d even checked out the names of the sixth formers here, hoping one of them might be you.”
He didn’t need to say what he was thinking. ‘BUT TURNS OUT YOU HAVEN’T EVEN DONE YOUR GCSES, SO THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME.’
I couldn’t hold in a cringe wince. Zac saw, and shuffled alongside me, so we were now leaning side-by-side. He gave me a full body nudge.
“Oi, don’t be like that. What’s done is done. And . . . and, I need to come clean about something too. You know that Italy course?”
Oh, here comes the bollocking.
“As if I could forget? Helping your chances was the one thing that made telling Luke I was a compulsive liar the tiniest bit bearable?!”
Remember – I tried!
“Ah, yeah. . .” Zac looked more sheepish than an actual sheep. “Well . . . I’ve kind of already won the place on it. I found out the morning I started here.”
NOS. TRIL. FLARE.
HE WHAT??? He’d told me the exact opposite when he’d messaged me.
“Stop judging me, nose! I only found out hours before I saw you in the art room. And Dad had just given me a massive talk saying I could only go if I proved to him ‘I was maturrre enough to make the money worrrth spending.’” He let the info sink a bit.
“That’s why nailing this placement was such a big deal to me. Why I had to get full marks. It wasn’t the uni testing me – it was Dad. But it’s not like when I messaged you, I could have been honest and thrown it all out there – that Mr Lutas was my Dad, and was watching my every move – so I had to think on my feet. Think of another reason I had to keep under the radar.” Zac laughed under his breath. “Kind of funny that it was him who let the dad cat out of the bag.”
It would be funny, if it wasn’t the most dramatic family revelation since any episode of EastEnders.
I was speechless.
But I needed to become speech-full.
As rubbish as it was finding out I’d been lied to, I totally understood why he had. And who was I to judge after what I’d done? It was time for me to say my sorry for doing the same.
“Well, thanks
for letting me know. And congrats. And happy art trip, I guess?!” Zac grinned, clearly relieved to have his secret out in the open too. But I hadn’t finished. “But, I want to say sorry too. I should have just been honest from the start. I guess . . . I guess I was just trying to make you think I was something I wasn’t.”
“You were dressed as an arrow – you should have let me come to my own conclusions.” He was teasing me, but he was right. “People who dress as cardboard road signs are EXACTLY the kind of friends I like. Right up my street.”
Friends. The word punched me in the stomach.
The confirmation that while I’d been working on winning him back, Zac had been working on moving on. I was glad he couldn’t see how crushed I must look. But he was happy chatting away, unaware every cell in my body had just done a little cry.
“I haven’t even told you the best bit.” Well he’d certainly told me the worst bit. “But you CAN’T let Dad know I told you. . .”
“Go on. . .”
“Well, last night over dinner he mentioned that if you guys finished all your props by the end of your last session, they were going to let you all go to prom.”
Zac held up his hand for a high-five and despite being a JUST A FRIEND, I couldn’t help but give it a massive thwack. This was most excellent news! What a rollercoaster the last ten minutes had been. Who knew Mr Lutas had a nice side after all?! I couldn’t WAIT to tell the others. Although I definitely could wait to tell them Zac and Bella – Zella – was no more.
I stood up so fast I bashed into a mannequin and ended up in a hug-mount with it. Zac laughed. His horsey laugh. And for the first time, it didn’t sound as cute as I used to think. Which made me feel all kinds of weird.
Had this week made me feel differently about Zac too? But I’d been too caught up in winning him back to notice? Could him being so clear we were friends actually be a bit of a relief? At least this way I could stop pretending I wasn’t entirely uncool, and practising a fake birthdate, and revising where places like Singapore are.
Zac reached out his hand to help me untangle myself.
“C’mon, we better get going. They’ll be wondering what we’re up to. Although, we might as well play Luke at his own game, so try not to look too happy.”
“Deal.” I shook my face out and concentrated on looking like I’d just been cringed-out by a really fit boy. I was worryingly good at it.
As I pushed the door open, Tegan and Rachel were staring in a way that meant ‘OMG, you’ve just come out of a cupboard encounter with that hotness, are you OK? You have to tell us everything.’ I gave them a look back which they could hopefully interpret as, ‘Of course I will. It was unbelievable. Like, we didn’t snog or anything, in fact I guess the opposite, as we’re officially “friends”, but obvs he’s still totally hot. And we all might get to prom after all. But I have to look moody so Luke thinks he got one up on me.’ I think I managed it.
Like a pro, Zac got straight back to work, with no hint of what went down. This only made Tegan give me even more concerned looks, so when Mr Lutas had his back turned I did a full on hand-on-head phew gesture at her. I noticed Luke eyeing me suspiciously so styled it into the ‘ow, I’ve got a bad headache’ gesture instead.
As soon as Mr Lutas gave us permission to leave, I bundled Rachel and Tegan as far away from Luke as possible and filled them in. They were gutted that our team effort to win Zac back for me had failed, but they almost vibrated with excitement when I told them the prom news. Rachel maintained an impressively long ‘Yeehaaaaaa’ without stopping for breath, and that was while leaping around in circles. It was so loud that Mikey came bursting into the girls loo, thinking there had been a murder. But when we explained the news, he stopped looking for evidence and led a chorus of ‘we’ve got ninety-nine problems, but prom aint one’ instead.
The evening went downhill from there (as in, it got better, as surely going downhill is way better than uphill?). Jo was waiting outside for us, so we scored a free lift home, and chatted at a million miles an hour, making proper plans for prom. But despite my hurried briefing as we got in the car, in all the excitement Rach let slip the ‘d’ word. Detention. I’d tried to extra-loud-whoop-for-no-reason as she said it, but Jo never misses a trick.
As soon as we were alone, Jo called me out on it. With nowhere to escape, and full of adrenalin from the last hour, I came clean about the whole thing, from the art lesson onwards. Well, obviously I’d tried coming half-clean first, but Jo sussed that there was no way I’d choose to spend extra-curricular fun-afternoon time locked in a room with Zac, Luke and ZAC’S DAD. She almost crashed the car when she’d realized I’d snogged Mr Lutas’s son. And then almost crashed it into our house when she couldn’t stop laughing that she’d seen my almost-boyfriend’s dad’s life drawing pictures. I made a mental note to never share that with Zac.
When I went to bed that night, I felt the happiest I had done all term. Yes, I was going to have to work on accepting Zac and I were never going to happen, but prom was going to be back on, and it was going to be an epic night with the others. I’d just have to appreciate Zac as a supervisor, rather than a snogavisor. Plus mounting the mannequin might make a funny story for PSSSST.
But when I opened up the app, in amongst the likes, and comments, and jokes from LilDrummerBoy that always made me snort-laugh, there was something I hadn’t seen before. A direct message.
THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR SECRETS
PRUNEFLAPPER. THEY’RE 10/10.
I clicked delete. Obvs just spam.
But there was another one in the thread.
PF NEVER DOES DISAPPOINT.
Why thank you, mystery fan. Although no one had ever abbreviated PruneFlapper to PF before.
But when I looked again my world stopped.
They hadn’t written PF. They’d written BF.
Someone out there knew it was me.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
I love Saturdays. It’s so nice to wake up and not feel like you have to jump straight out of bed. You can just lie there and wait for it to become the right time to get up. Which might be four p.m. and that’d be totally cool as long as I bang my foot on the floor a couple of times to make Mum think I’m up and I’m doing something constructive in my room, like rearranging my posters.
My phone buzzed loudly. Eurgh. Not like me to set an alarm? But as I fumbled for it, I accidentally answered. It wasn’t an alarm, it was Rachel ringing me.
“Halloohowareyou?” Why is there no way of hiding lying-down voice?
“Hi, lazy poo,” Rachel teased. “Just wanted to see if you still wanted a lift.”
What?
“To go in to town . . . ’member?”
“Errrrrrrr. . .” This was too early for my brain to be functioning.
“To meet up with Tegan?”
Mum put her head round the door and started doing an impression of a teapot. Why did she not understand phone calls were private? I waved her out.
“To go dress shopping for The Prom of the Century. . . You’ve totally forgotten, haven’t you?!”
“No, I totally have not forgotten. . .”
Mum was now making a ‘T’ shape with her hands, whilst helpfully saying ‘tea’ in a loud whisper. I nodded so she’d go away, sticking a finger in my spare ear.
“And I’m totally getting ready as we speak. Sorry, Mum was being weird. Go away, Mum.”
Mum pulled an ‘ooh, so you’re going out’ face. I got out of bed and closed the door, physically pushing her out of the room.
I had sort of forgotten a bit about the whole shopping trip, as I’d been a bit pre-occupied with working out who’d messaged me on PSSSST. Had it been a typo, or the world’s creepiest message? I’d deleted the app and everything on it just in case. Still, I could hardly tell the others what was on my mind, as I’d never actually got round to telling them about it in the first place.
When Rachel’s car pulled up outside thirty minutes later, I still had drip
ping wet hair and no make-up on. I flung myself on to the backseat gibbering apologies, not realizing it wasn’t Rach’s dad driving, it was her River Island catalogue modelling HOB, Dan. I threw him the hottest look I could muster via the rear-view mirror (hard when you only have eyeliner on one eye and are impaled on a seatbelt holder). He smiled back politely in a you’re-my-little-sister’s-friend-and-someone-should-really-tell-you-I-have-a-boyfriend kind of a way. Well, in your face, Dan, someone has told me, but little do you know you’re just one in a long line of boys that I drool over who will never go out with me. It really doesn’t stop me.
Tegan was already waiting when we pulled up at the Elgar Statue. I didn’t bother explaining that it was my fault we were late, cos I knew she’d know. And she knew that I knew that she knew.
Last night we’d group-called Mikey and made exact plans on how we were going to get all the props finished on time. Tegan was even giving up gymnastics for the week to make sure the banners got done. So with props-completion fully planned, and tickets guaranteed, today we were going to concentrate on the fun stuff instead. After a term of ups and downs, it felt amazing to finally look forward to our first prom together. All we needed to do was find some serious YAAAAS outfits. We hit the shops up like a military operation.
Group shopping is political. Rachel naturally drifts towards shops that sell dresses for more than my whole year’s allowance, so Tegan and I politely pretend to look round and fake-browse socks and keyrings. I need them both with me, though, as when I do finally try stuff on, I rely on their faces more than I do mirrors. Mirrors seem to say, ‘Yes, Bella! No one else will be wearing this neon-striped dress!’ while their faces say, ‘Is glittery-traffic-warden a thing?’
But after hours of searching, none of us had found a dress.
“Laaaydeeeez, we’ve been looking for daaaays now, and no one’s got anything.” Rachel was slumped outside Tegan’s changing room and had obvs forgotten the two CDs, one bracelet, new lipstick, stick-on eyelashes and bag of pick’n’mix she’d bought without even noticing.
I held up my little shopping trophy.
“I did buy this nail varnish, but no one’s going to notice my nails if I’m naked everywhere else.”
