By the Time You Read This (8 page)

I was confused. How would I know if it was the right time? If Greg was the right one? Was I in love? Had I felt it before? My mind rewound to an image of Corey. I pressed erase.

I slammed
The Manual
shut and chucked it onto the bed. I’d been searching for answers about ME and being in love, not Mom. I needed Dad to tell me what I was feeling about Greg. Was it love? Should I lose my virginity to him?

I lay on my bed, just thinking. Counting the cracks in the wall.

At around midnight, Greg called my name softly from behind the door and I asked him in.

“Just wanted to see if you were sleeping,” he said.

I sat up. “Not yet.”

He took my hand and kissed it. A tiny gesture that at that precise moment—miles from home and away from everything familiar—meant so much.

And that night I made love for the very first time.

L
osing my virginity sparked a change that is hard to articulate. I hadn’t felt like a child for years now, so it wasn’t so much that. It was more a sense of well-overdue rebellion, or perhaps it was just not having to live in the shadow of Carla any more. I was
me,
Lois. A little wild. Out of control—well, sort of. A whole year below the legal age of consent in America, I was now regularly drinking cans of beer (even though I hated the taste) and for the first time in my entire life I felt “special.” Everywhere I went, people commented on my accent, the way I walked. As if England was some faraway land full of princes, horses and cucumber sandwiches.

One night, having confiscated a bag of weed from one of the kids, my rebellion was inches away from being elevated to a level I’d never even dreamed of.

“We could tell the director…” offered Greg, as we stared at the tiny bag and its promise of unknown possibilities. Not to mention sickness, addiction, suspension, a disgraced flight back to England…

“Or we could just smoke it, right?” added Erin, which surprised me. Wouldn’t it stain her lovely white teeth?

“When…I mean…what if the director found out…? Isn’t there a smell?” I stuttered, not used to the particulars of such an operation. I’d only ever tried smoking cigarettes with Corey.

“Don’t be a git, Lois. If we smoke it outside—after the s’mores roasting—we’ll be fine,” added Erin using my tutorship of British words way out of context.

That night, after the kids were supposedly tucked up in bunk beds, but more likely engaged in something illicit, Erin and Greg finally lit the joint.

“Try it, it’s good!” said Erin, just before placing the joint to her mouth. She inhaled deeply and I took the “joint” from her, holding it awkwardly and clearly with the wrong fingers. Luckily, both of them were obviously too stoned to notice as I wrapped my drying lips around it and took a long and deep drag, feeling the smoke tickle my nostrils.

“Suck in!” encouraged Erin. I did as told.

“Don’t forget to exhale!” said Greg, and as I did they both fell into hysterics. It wasn’t
that
funny. Neither was the way my throat burned, which led to a fit of coughs, quickly reminding me of my first ever puff of a cigarette. I took another “toke” to make them happy before lying back and allowing them both to get on with the laughter that now racked their bodies.

That night, while everyone slept, I sneaked into the kitchen and devoured half a portion of blueberry pie, left over from dinner.

I hated blueberry pie.

A
week before my return flight, I learned the news of Princess Diana’s death. I’d been in America almost three months, and the moment Erin rushed into my room to tell me was the first time I’d felt this silent pull to go back to a place that had never really felt like home.

“I can’t believe it!” said Erin as we assembled for our usual midnight feast.

“Me neither!” I replied numbly. Although hardly a royal watcher, I knew Mom would be upset. Not to mention Carla, who once modeled her short haircut on Princess Diana’s. I called Carla that night and she confirmed the story was true. Apparently, the television and radio stations were showing nonstop coverage. Programmings were canceled, people were openly crying in the streets, strangers who’d never even met her. I couldn’t quite get to grips with what Carla was saying but could be sure of one thing—two young children were grieving the loss of a parent, and that I knew all about.

“I can’t believe it!” I said on the phone to Mom.

“No one can. When are you coming home?”

“I thought I’d already given you the date?”

“I have it. I just want you home. All this business, it makes you think…”

“I know.”

And I did. But I had a matter of days left of my contract and felt it was important to honor it. I finally got off the phone to mom (who had now convinced herself she was about to lose me to the “wilds” of America) and went to find Greg in the grounds. He was sweeping up dead leaves, an early sign that fall was looming.

“Hey, Greg!” I said, momentarily startled at how American I now sounded.

He dropped the rake. “Lois.”

I enveloped myself into his arms and sniffed his aftershave. You see, I knew. I knew that soon I would never see this man again. The first man I had ever had sex with. Perhaps a man I could have really loved.

“You okay?” he asked, as I came up for air.

“Yes, Greg.” And I was. Because at that moment I had accepted our fate. They always leave you in the end. Corey had. So, moving on from Greg and the farm was something I had probably begun to do the moment I arrived. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“Even though I don’t agree with the royal family as a concept, I think it’s tragic what happened to Diana.”

“I know. And it feels really strange around here. I mean, earlier, some of the kids and even the director offered their condolences to me. It’s all a bit odd,” I said aimlessly.

“Have you spoken to Cody?”

Realization. “You mean Corey. And no, why would I?” I replied, a little too defensively, perhaps.

“He’s in Paris too, right?”

“Right,” I sighed. Greg was deep, yes. In tune with my feelings, yes. But he was still a man with a slight jealous streak and at that moment I regretted being so open with him about Corey.

I looked up at Greg and decided to lie. “I haven’t even thought about Corey since coming here. But hey, thanks for reminding me…!”

T
he last week of my Jump America experience came all too quickly. Erin was first to leave, and as she left for the plane trip to Seattle I listened to her empty promises.

“I’ll write! And do you have email?”

“No, I don’t.” Email was confined to Sixth Form College and no one I knew even owned a computer.

“Then we’ll write. Promise?” she asked, her beautiful face longing for a response.

“Promise,” I said emptily. As we exchanged addresses, I so wanted to believe that we would speak again, but it was hard. In my life, people had a habit of saying one thing and doing another.

A few days later, Greg followed. And as we kissed on the steps, a cab waiting to dispatch him to the airport, deep down I knew this was definitely and without doubt the end of Us.

“I’ll write,” he said.

“Me too.”

“Love you,” he said awkwardly.

A pause followed. I suppose this was my moment to say it back. Solidify the last three months of our bond. But the words did not even float around my tummy, failed to even bubble to the surface of my mouth. Instead, I decided to quote a scene from that lovely movie
Ghost,
which the three of us had watched on video the night before.

“Ditto.”

I felt this flurry of excitement as his taxi moved off into the distance, because soon it would be my turn. I was going
back to England. My home. And I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait for everyone to glimpse the new me and, quite bizarrely, I wanted to clutch onto the collective feeling that currently gripped the nation in regards to Princess Diana’s death. I wanted to be a part of that, of something, however strange that sounded. And the first person I wanted to see was my mom.

I
felt pumped with a strange exhilaration as I stepped off the flight that afternoon. As always, the clouds were gray and a cold breeze gripped me immediately. But I was home. As I walked past WH Smith, many newspapers and magazines emblazoned with images of the princess caught my attention. The gloom was everywhere, in the atmosphere, the gray skies, and in the faces of everyone I saw. In keeping with the new, independent me, I was keen to make my own way home and hoped the last bit of money I had left was enough to use a minicab. I was shattered, wanted a bath and needed my mom.

The motorway was surprisingly clear. Passing through Knightsbridge, in the window of Harrods, a huge picture of the princess and Dodi Fayed decorated with flowers, a sad reminder of the events of the past two weeks.

“Did you hear the news over there?” asked the cabby. He hadn’t asked where I’d traveled from but I suppose that was irrelevant. Not being in England at such a time would always be seen as being “over there.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Terrible. So terrible,” he said, shaking his head.

“I still can’t believe it.”

“You see someone almost every day, on telly, the papers…and then they’re just taken away. Just like that…It’s
like—” the cab turned a corner. “It’s like you think they’re gonna last forever. Know what I mean?”

“More than you think.”

We made it back into Charlton—home—and I hadn’t enough money left to tip him. And then I remembered this wasn’t America.

Turning the key into the lock, I immediately dumped my bags in the hallway and followed the sounds from the kitchen. Mom and the Bingo Caller stopped mid-sentence as I opened the door.

“Hello there, Lois! I could have picked you up!” said the Bingo Caller, to which I nodded my head sincerely. Mom had her back toward me, her hair more curly than usual and, slowly, she turned to greet me.

“Lois! Come over here and give me a big hug!” she enthused, with a big gap-toothed smile. At that point, surprise rushes of emotion made me want to squeeze my mom really tight and let her know just how much I’d missed her. So I moved forward, arms outstretched before I felt all my excitement hitch a ride straight back out of my body.

“What’s going on?” I asked, pointing to my mother’s tummy.

“Oh, that…” she replied with a straight smile.

“Your mother’s seven months pregnant,” added the Bingo Caller.

“Pregnant?”

I wanted to vomit, scream and pull each hair out of my head.

Pregnant?

At her age?

With the Bingo Caller’s child?

I sat down to steady myself.

My mother was pregnant. My mother was pregnant. My mother was pregnant.

“You okay, love?” asked Mom.

Pregnant. I kept repeating this to myself like some weird mantra, thinking if I said it enough the reality of it would disappear. I managed to push myself out of that kitchen and over to the phone, which, thankfully, remained in the same spot near the banisters, but not before muttering some excuse about jetlag.

“Yes, your mom’s up the spout. Now tell me about New York! The blokes. Did you go to Saks? Did you get me some sneakers? Well, actually, I would have preferred make-up, but anything will do.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“About?”

“The pregnancy?”

“Your mom told me not to mention it. She was worried for a start—you know, what with being in her mid-forties.”