Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

‘No, though I think she wouldn’t mind,’ Rose whispered. ‘But she’s not his type, not girly enough.’

  I turned to look at her, freaked out that she’s mind-reading now.

  ‘Seriously, dude, it was written all over your face.’ Rose grinned. ‘But you don’t have to worry, your crush on Miss G is safe for now.’

  ‘I do not have a crush on her!’ I hissed back.

  ‘Settle down, guys,’ Mr Smith says.

  Rose touches the back of her hand to my cheek, snatching it away as if it had been burnt by the heat of my blush. ‘Oh no, you totally don’t. Nope. Uh-uh.’

  ‘Don’t what?’ Leo grinned.

  ‘Have a crush on Miss Greenstreet,’ Rose said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  ‘Oh man, you so have the hots for Miss G,’ Leo laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘Kill me,’ I said burying my face in my hands, trying not to notice Miss G pretending not to have heard.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Leckraj offered me a segment of his tangerine. ‘I have a crush on her, too.’

  ‘Right.’ Lily from the radio station clapped her hands together to get our attention. ‘I’m all set, levels are set, so we’ll record it as live, so just be natural, funny, don’t swear, OK?’

  We all mumbled in agreement, and Lily counted us in.

  ‘I’m here with Mirror, Mirror a band from Thames Comprehensive that are fast gaining an army of fans. Hi, guys!’

  She nodded at us, waggling her eyebrows furiously to try and get us to say something.

  ‘Hi . . .’ we all chorus back.

  ‘So, Red.’ For some reason Lily picked me first, shoving her microphone under my face. I stared at it, all those rock star fantasies of endless media interviews in which I am fascinating, witty and devastatingly attractive coming back to haunt me in an instant. ‘Tell us why you are holding a benefit concert for your band member and classmate Naomi Demir.’

  I stared at the microphone, and then back at Lily, who bobbed her head, encouragingly.

  ‘Um . . .’ Nothing. Seconds pass and I’ve got nothing.

  ‘It means the world to us.’ Rose grabbed the mic and pulled it towards her, giving me some serious side-eye. ‘When we planned it, Naomi was still missing. We wanted to shout out her name as loud as we could, and hoped she’d hear it and come home, because she isn’t just our friend, she’s our family, and when she went it nearly broke us. She’s back now, and whatever it is that has happened to her, she’s going to need a lot of support to get better. And this concert is for all kids like her, like us, out there who sometimes feel like there’s no one to talk to. This concert says if no one is listening, shout until they do. Everyone deserves a voice.’

  ‘Great, thank you, Rose.’ Lily smiled, clearly impressed. ‘And what about you, Leo? Do you agree with Rose?’

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ Leo said and Lily snaps the recorder off.

  ‘Shit, sorry,’ Leo said, as Rose dissolved into giggles.

  ‘No swearing,’ Leckraj reminded him helpfully, before taking a bite of his sandwich.

  ‘Guys,’ Mr Smith tried hard not to laugh, ‘settle down. This is important. For the concert and for you all, this is a big deal. And no swearing on the radio.’

  ‘Fuck, sorry,’ Leo said and Rose lost it again.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rose said, taking a deep breath.

  ‘That’s OK.’ Lily took a deep breath, and lifted the mic. ‘We can cut out the F word, so Leo, pretend I’ve just asked you the same question and answer it again.’ He nods as she presses record.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘A lot of people care about Naomi,’ he said. ‘Probably a lot more than she realised. She’s back now, and she’s gonna need to know that more than ever, and I guess that we wanted to do something big for her, and any other kid out there . . . maybe, I don’t know.’ He drops his head bashfully, and Rose rubbed his shoulder.

  ‘And Leckraj?’ Lily brought the microphone to Leckraj, who paused – his sandwich halfway to his mouth – and blinked.

  ‘What does it feel like to be replacing the beloved band member?’

  Leckraj put his sandwich back in his Tupperware box and resealed the lid.

  ‘I’m not replacing her,’ Leckraj said, thoughtfully. ‘I’m honouring her. She’s the best bassist I’ve ever met in real life, and when she’s out of that coma, I’m going to ask her on a date. She will turn down me down, probably, because she is way out of my league, but why live your life in fear, right?’

  Leo, Rose and I all turned to look at Leckraj, and finally I figured out what to say. ‘Dude,’ I said. ‘You are so in the band.’

  Leo

  That girl be crazy

  Red

  What do we do, do we go down there?

  Leo

  No . . . she’s fine her dad’s a lawyer, Red

  Red

  We shouldn’t have let them take her

  Leo

  No way I was going down there, I wouldn’t have got out again, Rose was cool, she knew what she was doing, even off her face

  Red

  What was she doing?

  Leo

  Thinking about what a cool story she’d have to tell at school tomorrow. Check out her Insta

  Click here to view

  ‘Everything’s beautiful, even jail when you are falling in love!’ 87 reactions Nineteen comments

  Red

  How the fuck did she take a selfie at the police station?

  Leo

  I dunno, but she’s lovin’ it. Chill. Rose can handle herself

  Red

  She says the same about you

  Leo

  She’s right. I’m fucked though, head bangin. Gotta close my eyes. Don’t freak out, K

  Red

  KK

  Red

  Falling in love with who?

  Leo

  Leo is offline

  12

  Who is Rose falling in love with?

  I sit on my bed, hiding my phone under the pillow. My body is wiped out, strong and healthy as it is now, the fat years and the thin years still hang around like ghosts, like I permanently used up 10 per cent of me while I was trying to shape my body to mask my hurt, or show it, I’m not sure which. But sometimes as fit as I am, it just crashes and burns, and today is one of those days.

  My brain keeps fizzing away; the tattoo, Ash and her mission that somehow I’m now part of . . . and something else. There’s something else just out of reach that seems to hides every time I try to think about what it is. Like I’ve forgotten something important, but whatever it is I can’t seem to catch hold of it.

  Next door, Mum is passed out fully dressed on the bed, a glass of vodka and tonic tilted in her hand. I thought about moving the glass when I saw her there, but I didn’t. I want her to be woken up some time in the night by the shock of the cold liquid on her thighs, or even the sound of breaking glass. Maybe then she’ll get an idea of what a state she is.

  Dad must be out again, if he was ever in.

  Across the hall, Gracie is asleep beneath her fairy lights. I hope she had a decent tea and a nice afternoon with Mum after school. Usually she does, usually she gets the jolly, tipsy Mum, affectionate and fun. It’s not until later that the anger sets in, after Gracie is in bed. I creep across the landing and check on Gracie, her face is so soft like her soul, and I remember what it was like to be seven years old, at that point in your life when you have no idea that sometimes the world hates you for no good reason at all.

  Now, as tired as I am, I’m fully awake.

  I try messaging Leo again but he’s checked out.

  I keep thinking about the way he looked at Rose before the police turned up. And the way she looked at him and the pain it made me feel. If those two get together then everything will change, first we were four mates, and then we were three, but if those two get together, it will be them and me tagging along. And maybe it makes me a prick, but I just don’t want that. Us four was the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t want
to go back to that skinny ginger nobody that never meant anything to anyone. I don’t want to be invisible again. God, sometimes I make myself sick.

  Reaching for my bag, I pull out Naomi’s notebooks. Stuffed full of random bits of paper, ideas she’s had and scribbled down on anything she can find, a ripped-up sandwich packet, a tissue, the corner of an exercise book. Anyone else would put them in a note on their phone but not Nai. I guess that makes sense when your big sister could take a peek at all your online stuff any time she liked.

  I shake the loose bits out of the notebook, and push them aside. I turn to the finished lyrics written inside, and the more I read, the more I feel like I’m peeping in through a window, watching something that isn’t meant for me. Each one is filled with heat and lust, which is so not like Nai. When we wrote together we wrote about being free, being yourself. Not fitting in, not giving a fuck. Sometimes we wrote about wanting people who would never want us back, but we never wrote stuff like this. These songs are for someone, these songs aren’t about wishing and wanting. They are about doing.

  Soft

  Desire

  Kiss

  Stroke

  Touch

  Mouth

  Hard

  Tip

  Parted

  Words leap out at me from the pages, words that tell me something we all should have seen as clear as day, but none of us did.

  Naomi was with someone just before she vanished.

  Naomi was in love, but more than that, she was having a fully charged, maximum-graphic, certificate-18 sexual affair. That’s what these songs are about. She was in love, she was obsessed. Sitting up I scan the songs over and over again, looking for a clue about who they might be addressed to.

  When I think back to those last days of term, yes, it all makes sense.

  Twelve weeks ago . . .

  It was warm, and we were so done with school already.

  Mocks were finished and there didn’t really seem any point to the last few weeks, everyone was tired and slow, drifting along waiting for the final bell that would set us free for the summer.

  We were rehearsing some new songs in the music room that had we had kind of taken over, so that no one else ever really tried to use it. At least that was the plan. Rose, Leo and I were already there, but Nai was late, so I started taking Rose through the lyrics, Leo picking out the tunes I’d written out for him on a chord chart.

  As Nai came into the rehearsal she took off the fire-red manga wig she’d been wearing that day and shook out her long brown hair, which fell in honey coloured ripples.

  ‘Too hot to look hot?’ Rose asked her and she shrugged, sitting on the floor. Naomi was smiling, I remember that she wasn’t smiling at us, she was smiling to herself. Like she wasn’t really in the room, but somewhere else in another moment that meant something just to her. I’ll ask her later, I thought. But I never did.

  As we talked through our set list for the next gig, the year-twelve prom, she took out this massive packet of baby wipes, and began to take off her make-up. I looked at Rose who raised an eyebrow, and Leo who was so focused on the music that he didn’t even really notice at first.

  The thing was, I’d got so used to it, the dead-white foundation that wiped out any trace of her own features, turning her face into a canvas. The big anime eyes, drawn on with pencils, accentuated with huge false lashes. The sweeping eyebrows that had nothing to do with the shape of her own. The tiny rosebud mouth painted on top of her real lips. It was so much a part of Naomi, that I’d stopped looking for her own face underneath. I suppose that girl had become invisible.

  We kept on talking about the set list, which songs should go on it, and which should go where, and she kept on cleaning stuff off her face, finishing the whole pack of wipes. By the time we were ready to play, her face was clear and plain, her coffee-coloured skin glowing and fresh, cheeks a little pink, lips a deeper shade. And yes, she looked really pretty. For a second I even felt shy of her.

  ‘Shit,’ Leo said, appreciatively. ‘You look good, girl.’

  ‘You do!’ Rose said. ‘Let me put make-up on you!’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Nai laughed. ‘I just took it all off. I’m over that now, you know. I’m more into just being natural, I think.’

  ‘Since when?’ Rose asked her.

  ‘Since just now.’ Nai grinned.

  She took a pair of scissors from her pencil case and cut off the laces that held on this kind of corset thing she always wore, unzipped her funny frilly skirt, so that she was wearing just a black vest and leggings, and you could see the shape of her, soft and rounded, gentle and vulnerable.

  ‘Right,’ I said. It had taken me a moment to remember this girl was my best friend, one I’d hung out with a million times and never thought about that way, and what a shallow prick I was. I shook the thought right out of my head. Nai was Nai, she was more than a girl, she was my mate.

  When we played, we were good but Nai was better than ever. Instead of standing at the back, head down, she made eye contact with us all, laughing and moving around. Like the sun had just come out over her head or something.

  ‘So I’m cutting school for the afternoon,’ she told us as we packed up.

  ‘What? You bunking off?’ Rose gasped. ‘You never do that! Why?’

  ‘Because it’s a bullshit waste of my time,’ Naomi said. ‘I’ve got some cash so I’m going to go and find some stuff for my new look.’

  ‘Wait, I’ll come with . . .’ But Naomi had left before Rose could tell her she’d come too.

  ‘She looks good like that,’ Leo said, after she’d gone. ‘She’s going to get some attention.’

  ‘Prettier than me?’ Sometimes Rose is like that, she asks questions that no one over the age of five should ask. But in particular Rose shouldn’t have asked Leo in the way she does, drawing him in, breaking him down and then pushing him away again. He fell for it every time though, and I couldn’t exactly blame him, because so did I.

  ‘You’re not pretty,’ Leo said, making Rose gasp and her eyes widen. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  She preened for a moment, as Leo slung his guitar on his back, just before adding, ‘For a crazy girl.’

  ‘Arsehole!’ Rose called after him as he left.

  ‘He’s a fucking arsehole, right?’ She cocked her head to look at me. ‘Wanna cut school and come and lay in the sun with me?’

  And with the thought of long grass, and Rose with her hair full of daisies, and her eyes full of laughter, I’d forgotten everything Nai had said and done even before I said yes.

  This is Where Life Happens By Naomi and Red

  Walking like a zombie,

  Sitting like a fool,

  Wanting like a lost boy

  Trying to be cool.

  When you smile that’s where Life happens

  When you touch me that’s where . . .

  When you kiss me that’s here . . .

  When I’m with you I’m there.

  When I’m with you I know,

  This is where Life happens.

  Eating like a robot,

  Sleeping like a lion,

  Drooling like a hungry dog,

  Wish you were mine.

  When you smile that’s where Life happens,

  When you touch me that’s where . . .

  When you kiss me that’s here . . .

  When I’m with you I’m there.

  When I’m with you I know,

  This is where Life happens.

  This is where Life Happens.

  Repeat to fade.

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  13

  We are waiting for her at the school gate, when Rose makes her appearance, climbing out of Amanda’s Audi looking like a fucking movie star. Floor-length leopard print fake-fur coat, hair crazy, shades on, lips intense pink.

  Leo and me stand there watching her, and I just know that my expression is the same as his, jaw dropped, eyes wide, head slowly shaking side to side in a perfect
mixture of what-the-fuck and God-I-love-her. Her dad doesn’t get out, doesn’t even shout goodbye; he pulls away as Rose slams the car door. She doesn’t bother looking over her shoulder as she marches towards us arms outstretched.

  ‘My people, my people!’ she cries, flinging her arms around us both, kissing us in turn, first Leo and then me. I feel the sticky imprint of her hot-pink lipstick on my cheek.

  ‘What the hell?’ Leo says, laughing and grimacing at the same time.

  ‘You get taken to jail and you’re back at school the next day like nothing happened?’ I ask her as she hooks her arms through ours and marches us through the year-eleven entrance, head held high like she’s had the best time.

  ‘Who knows?’ she asks, beaming at everyone we pass. ‘Does everyone know?’

  ‘We didn’t tell anyone,’ I say. ‘We didn’t have to, it was all over your profiles.’

  ‘Cool, right?’ Rose chuckles. ‘Redster? This is amazing! This is the most rock ’n’ roll thing we’ve ever done. What we have to do next is write a song about jail.’

  ‘Mate, an hour at a police station, ain’t real jail.’ Leo crosses his arms, determined to be unimpressed. After all, he’s seen the inside of a police cell once or twice.

  ‘Whatever.’ Rose shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter how long it was, it matters what it looks like, right? It was a piece of cake actually. I cried, the nice woman talked the fat one down.’

  ‘Did your dad go mad?’ I ask her and she laughs.

  ‘Dad doesn’t even know it happened.’

  ‘But how? You need an adult to get you out. Was it Amanda?’

  Rose just laughs at me.

  ‘I have my ways.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, what ways, Rose?’ Leo shakes his head.

  ‘I’m not saying.’ She grins and I want to kill her. ‘Let’s just say older men have their uses.’

  Leo turns his face away from her, hiding whatever it is she has made him feel.

  ‘Fuck, Rose, you could have messaged!’ I say. After reading Nai’s lyrics I could really have done with talking to her, even if I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone else about them. But the first thing she’d done was put a fuck-load of selfies on Instagram and call who, Maz Harrison?