Apples (3 page)

Now Eve, this boy named Johnny said, and I hugged him slightly. You feeling alright?

I shrugged and I nodded – he got the idea. We whisked each other onto the dancefloor but without much conviction – Johnny was quite cute, but he knew my sister Laura and apparently he fucked loads of girls and forgot all about them. We didn’t say anything for a while so I left him by the DJ box – I felt so crap about my mam, I thought I’d say something stupid to him and wake up with more stuff to worry about. I always wanted to know if he shagged Laura. Swanning round the dirty floor, I tried to find Ben or my friends but I just got stared out by random men and it annoyed the hell out of me. Some advice to boys: don’t sleaze us. I felt arms go round me like spider legs and octopuses, and it was scary. I tried to shrug them off, tried not to break down on the dancefloor, kept my eyes peeled for Rachel’s gold porn top and everything else. Tried not to cry when I spotted Jenni kissing Ben’s head off. I turned away. Back upstairs I searched for Rach or Gracie or any old shoulder to cry on, but my eyes blurred too much. Wow, look how twinkly the lights look. I tried to do more poppers, but instead of making me electric I was a burst fuse – I was devastated. I could see slightly clearer in the dark, and I checked from the balcony it was really Ben and Jenni and it was. I raced back to the ladies’ toilet, stopping on the way to look for the girls or the boy named Johnny at the DJ box.

I had to shut things several times before I felt they were really closed. For example, that afternoon I had to shut the book we were reading,
Romeo and Juliet
, eight times before putting it in my bag, or else the school blows up. Miss Moore clocked me doing it, this mad grimace on her face as I heart-massaged the paperback, and I never went to another library lesson again. But worse than that, she once caught me slamming and reslamming the English door on the way to the toilet, and a little bit of piss did pop out. I saw this programme the other week about obsessive-compulsive disease, but I couldn’t be bothered going to the doctors.

Since Friday I had all those fannies in my head, and I couldn’t stop staring at Eve and Debbie. We had to draw self-portraits in Art after dinner – my page had on it hollow eyes, sunk cheeks and skeleton bones; what a sexy bastard. Mr Gray said it was abstract; I thought it was pretty heartbreaking. I had a sigh. I was always depressed. I pressed really hard into my eye sockets, accentuating the lifelessness and staring. Eve had drawn a cute blonde girl in crayon, slim with curvy lines in all the right places. The Prick scribbled a musclebound hunk with a massive bulge – did I mention he was also a total twat. Burny was a charcoal mess, but in real life everyone liked him – he had a bit of Italiano blood in him, and he was in the football team and all that shite. Donna was his trophy girlfriend but she wasn’t drop-dead amazing – she always wore a red jumper with black tights, and she’d drawn a ladybird in colour pencil. I was positive they’d done all the rude stuff together – the Prick reckoned he shagged someone at Butlin’s a year back, but it was probably his five fingers. He was a knob – as soon as he found out about sex off the Personal Development video he went round name-dropping 69s and creampies as if he did them every breaktime. But I was positive his only sex experience was pulling girls’ pants down when we were young, and even now he was a pervy little cunt with a permanently smarmy fucked-up face.

Saying that, I was trying not to be seedy but something about Eve had my eyes magnified. She was by far the prettiest girl in any of my classes – gold highway hair, eyes like butterflies, and thighs to die for. I often fantasised drilling a wonderwall in the girls’ shower but I didn’t really have the tools for it. In her purple skirt Eve kept crossing her legs over and over, sometimes flashing a bit of skin underneath and I was getting ruffled. Her Lycra shorts reminded me of
Razzle
, but she was miles superior to those daft bitches. Whenever she looked over I pretended to be watching out the window, Marton Road all grey and green and I tried to see the trees slowly dropping all their leaves. When I pop my cherry the world will be a sunburst of petals. I hope it’s me and her.

I imagined us quaffing wine in the finest restaurant; I’d have to swish it round my mouth and spit it in the bucket, and now and again Eve would touch me under the table while we twizzled our spaghetti. We’d suck it up together til we kissed in the middle, all the birds outside tweeting us a lovesong. I’d say all the right things and make her throw her head back with laughter. Then I’d take her to the cinema, holding hands and rubbing legs all through her favourite chick flick thing. We’d come out around ten o’clock, proceed to a club and dance rumbas til the lights come on – I’d buy all her drinks, and we’d kiss and I’d get that feeling in my stomach like a thousand lit candles. She’d introduce me to all her friends, and they’d fall in love with my sharp wit and charm and insist we marry and have lots of kids. I’d phone for a taxi at about 1:30, letting her have my coat as we walked in the cold to the rank. We wouldn’t have to wait long, and I’d offer her a coffee at mine and she’d accept. We’d laugh at the innuendo and keep kissing until Easterside. After tipping the driver we’d watch the taxi soften in the distance, and I’d hug and whisper a sweet nothing in her ear. Bubbling inside I’d take Eve’s hand, quietly unlock the front door, taking care not to rush or make her nervous. We’d kiss in the hallway, and kiss on the landing and all the way into the bedroom. She wouldn’t laugh at all my crap lying around. I’d light incense, the dim light illuminating rose petals strewn across the four-poster bed. Instead of coffee I’d pop open a champagne bottle, sitting Eve down on the scented covers. Pouring a glass, we’d talk for hours about love and life until we both felt comfortable. I’d caress her smooth sumptuous skin like moonlight brought to flesh, and I’d put on two condoms if she wanted. Her bra would ping off without any trouble. And her knickers. I’d ask politely if she wanted me on top, taking care not to slather on her neck or bite her nipples or thrust too hard or not do any foreplay or anything else men always get slated for. I’d put on the Stones’ ‘She’s a Rainbow’ or ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ and she wouldn’t take it the wrong way, a rainbow being where the man gets period in his mouth and the girl gets cum in hers and they kiss. We’d writhe around to the humming guitars, our bodies like Plasticine slowly getting pushed together. As the room fills with flower smell, we’d slowly build momentum and climax completely simultaneously. Naturally, once she reaches orgasm twenty more times we’d stay up talking and cuddling til daybreak. And then the bell went.

My ex-boyfriend crashed at the traffic lights that dinnertime. He didn’t explode like in the movies – Fairhurst accelerated into the back of the 63 Arriva, and the bus driver got slightly angry with him. Me and Jenni had nicked off school to get a sandwich from Greggs and a couple of Panda colas, and we were stood quietly in the frost when Fairhurst pulled up in his reddy Citroën. I still hadn’t forgiven Jenni for stealing Ben at the Empire but I couldn’t be cross for ever – I’d come to realise Jenni was a selfish cow ever since she stole the My Little Ponies from my fifth birthday bash. I yawned and blinked in the rain. It was your typical drizzly afternoon, and there was no point making it worse. Sniffing, I pulled my blue Duffer sleeves over the love-heart watch and bracelet, waiting patiently for the little green man.

Girls! Fairhurst shouted over the trancey sound-system; I didn’t think he’d recognise me and Jenni in the middle of town with his windscreen-wipers working so fast. I wondered if I looked good with two black streaks across me.

How’s it going, I said simply. I picked some cucumber out of my sandwich then popped it in my mouth, munching while I stared at his car, remembering those nights driving round Beechwood and Easterside with him on sex and wacky pills.

We found ecstasy in Year Nine. Me and the girls started getting it on a small scale from Fairhurst every other week, to take round someone’s house and mess around or hang about the street. Everything changed – all at once we weren’t fighting any more, we kissed each other, we said we loved each other and we had the best fun of our lives. The boys were that much sweeter, and depending on what night you did them school was a lot easier to bear. We knew something about being happy that our mams and dads and the other kids at school wouldn’t understand.

It was about a year back when I lost my pill virginity, and I went and lost my other virginity and all. I remember Fairhurst picking me up early from Brackenhoe when I was meant to be in English with Miss Moore, the reddish Citroën bopping away on the side of Marton Road. Fairhurst used to love me in the sexy uniform, but I felt dead young to be going out with him, and I felt bad about missing lessons but I was no star at punctuation anyway. You alright? he asked me. I scampered down the school drive then jumped in the front, and Fairhurst was the kind of boy who gave you whiplash every time he put his foot down. I got pushed back in the racing seat as he spun the Citroën into the other lane. We headed for Belle Vue shops, and while Fairhurst talked to me about dance music and the dole, occasionally he touched my thighs and I smiled. Sometimes he went a bit further up than expected, but so what. I wasn’t sure whether to touch him back – we were zooming round the roundabout at 40 mph, and there was no point doing it just for the sake of it. The music was blistering and we could hardly hear each other. I had to fake laughter at some things he said, and I was pretty blank-faced when he brought up going to Whinney Banks for pills. I guessed he meant drugs but I didn’t want to embarrass myself – all I’d done before was tac at this girl’s house; everyone said I was laughing and then I went white. Fairhurst took us down Keith Road near where my house was, but we carried on past the church and everything and ended up in Acklam and hit a right. Sometimes he liked showing off with wheelspins and stuff when we turned corners, but it got boring after a bit and I had to pretend I was impressed. Screech! I’d say in a dead girly voice, to humour him. Fairhurst brought the Citroën into Whinney Banks, through the bits with the run-down houses, and we stopped on the corner of Sydney Close or somewhere. I loved the name Sydney – if I ever got pregnant, I’d want to call the kid that. Sitting in the front with the heater blowing, Fairhurst left me and went to one of the doors down the close, walking like a daft arrogant monkey. He didn’t look hard at all. There was a big fuss with a lot of shouting at each other from the upstairs flat, and I tried not to stare when the front door unbolted and Fairhurst bolted in. Those days in Middlesbrough they were doing a Dealer-A-Day – you had to put a block of wood between the lock and the stairway to stop policemen coming in. I tried to occupy myself while Fairhurst got his prescription, flicking through his cassettes and pretending I knew the names of DJs he scrawled on the boxes. Me and the girls had seen Judge Jules at Empire before, but who the hell was Laurent Garnier? He sounded like a perfume. A few young lads were prowling around while I stopped in the car – I hoped they didn’t try to steal it with me inside. A few weeks before Fairhurst let me have a drive – we went to the incinerator, and I had a go with the biting-point and the blind-spot and the mirror-signal-manoeuvre thing and it was a good laugh. Supposedly the Citroën had been lowered and it had OZ alloys and a full-bore exhaust, but it wasn’t any easier to drive. At least I didn’t stall in front of my boyfriend, and if I had to I knew how to make a quick getaway from Whinney Banks. I’d be Ayrton Senna by the time I was seventeen, or someone else good at driving who wasn’t dead. Whatever, Fairhurst came back in a minute, and we shot off again. He seemed a little uptight, but he stroked my leg once we were back in the Acklam Road traffic. I wanted to stop for a Twix at the shops, but I didn’t want to take the piss. I shut my mouth and we drove all the way back to Easterside with the stereo blaring that little bit louder. Fairhurst slung a clear teeny bag on the dashboard, and I saw these tiny white pills with the picture of an apple on the sides. He asked if I’d ever done ecstasy before; all I could think of was all those girls it killed on the news. But it was exciting too, and we swallowed one down. Within ten minutes Fairhurst was parked up by Saltersgill field, and I was starting to feel a bit funny. I got him to switch off the blowers, and in a bit I had the dry mouth and the tingles we learnt about in Biology. It was exhilarating – Fairhurst stroked my skin and I shivered him up my spine. He turned down the music, and for once I felt I could really talk to him – we joked about a load of crap, me getting all flustered and dreamy and open-mouthed. It was a beautiful school day – everything started to get more colourfuller, and everything felt like kitten’s fur. Fairhurst looked so gorgeous I wanted to bite his face off, and I wasn’t afraid to. Oh! His hands got quite flirty with me, but he checked I was feeling alright and I started rambling how amazing it was. I think he agreed; he was almost foaming at the mouth, and he popped another like they were Jelly Tots but I think he was showing off. He was beginning to go for my booby, and I knew he wanted to go further and I started saying how much I really cared for him and how we were meant for each other and all that shite. I had a few nerves even though the pill was unreal, but I just slid my legs open. He was grunting loads, and I watched as he unzipped and saw a knob for the first time. My mind was whizzing like a crazy person, but I took a hold of it anyway. When Fairhurst got those fingers in my knicks he didn’t do the stabbing motions like Dan in the star tent; he was much softer, deeper and smooooth. What a star! I decided to take the bull by the horn – which other girls in Brackenhoe had ever lost their virginity on ecstasy? I tried to wank Fairhurst for a bit then we had oral sex, which is where the lady puts her mouth on the gentleman’s rude bits. The end of his willy got a bit drippy, but none of that white gloop came out, thank god. I thought they were like water pistols? Looking back my technique in those days was crap – I thought you had to wank the shaft thing when in fact it was the end they all went mad for. Fairhurst slipped off my pants and said get on top of him. That meant I had to do all the work, and I shit myself for a second because I didn’t want a baby with him. Maybe Fairhurst would’ve nailed me anyway if I hadn’t mentioned it, but he seemed alright rolling on a Durex. It felt like shagging a plastic bag. At first I didn’t want all of him in at once, but Fairhurst was obviously in ecstasy and I couldn’t blame him for wanting to shag the arse off me. I remembered people like Claire taking the piss out of certain girls for just sitting like a corpse on their boyfriend’s dicks, so I made a point of riding him like a cowgirl. My heart was banging. I started grinding my teeth as my skirt hitched up my belly, and my miaow was throbbing. It hurt in a nice way, but I had to stop him after a measly five minutes. Fairhurst seemed alright but I could tell he wanted more – there was no point ragging ourselves to bits though.