Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 06] (17 page)

I smiled back at her.
‘We all make mad mistakes, Mum.’

‘I know,’ she said
wistfully. ‘But do you think in the future, we could, well, try and talk about
them a bit more? You know, help each other.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’m
game for that. Want to see my stud?’ ‘If I must,’ she said, then she pulled a
silly face.

‘So, does this mean
you’re back with Ben now?’ asked Nesta later that morning.

Straight after I’d
taken Mum her breakfast, I’d called TJ, Lucy and Nesta and asked them to come
over. Luckily they were all free, and by twelve o’clock we were all in my
bedroom, where I told them about what had happened last night.

I shook my head. ‘No,
I’m not getting back with him, but we are best mates. Like you lot.’

Nesta and TJ looked at
each other, while Lucy stared at the carpet.

‘Because we
are
best mates, aren’t we?’ I asked.

‘Course,’ said Lucy.
‘We have bonded for life over the Almighty Pringle, remember?’

‘Maybe we should have
done the finger pricking thing,’ I said. ‘Done it properly.’

‘Oh
please
,
don’t start that again,’ moaned Nesta.

‘Don’t worry,’ I
reassured her. ‘I won’t. But I did want to see you all today and say I’m sorry.
I guess I’ve been a bit distant lately and acting a bit out of character. But
last night, it made me realise that you guys are the most important people in
my life. Besides Mum and Dad, of course… and… and Angus. It’s weird — like,
remember how I used to hate him and call him The Lodger? Well, he’s been cool
lately and I’m starting to really like him. So yeah, Angus is important too.’

‘Well, we’ve been
worried about you, Iz,’ said Lucy. ‘It was like you didn’t want to be
associated with us any more.You used to phone or e-mail every day, but this
last week, I’ve hardly heard from you. Like you’d moved on and thought we were
too childish for you or something.’

‘No way,’ I said.

‘Last night, you
hardly spent any time with us,’ said Nesta. ‘We all thought you were ashamed of
us or something, because we didn’t want to drink and smoke and be in with your
new crowd.’

‘
Ashamed
of
you? I thought
you
didn’t want to be with me and you didn’t like Josh
or Spider.’

‘Didn’t like Spider.
He’s kind of creepy,’ said Nesta.

‘Maybe that’s why his
nickname is Spider,’ said TJ. ‘Creepy crawly. So what about Josh? Are you going
to see him again?’

‘Doubt it somehow,’ I
said. ‘I think throwing up just as he was getting snuggly was probably a bit of
a turn-off, don’t you think?’

‘Dunno,’ laughed TJ.
‘But you could probably make it work if you wanted. Phone him up and apologise,
and so on.

‘Nah. Think I’ll give
him a break for a while. It’s kind of done my head in this last week. Part of
me felt sorry for him because he’s not happy at home. I thought I could make it
better, I guess. I thought I could change him, but…’

‘As you told me your
mum said once, the only time you can change a man is when he’s a baby,’ said
Lucy.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It
was exciting being with him, but also exhausting. I didn’t feel like I could
totally be myself. I was trying to be something different for him.’

‘So why not go back
with Ben?’

‘Dunno. It’s like,
being with Ben was safe and secure and Josh was the total opposite,
unpredictable and exciting. Maybe there are some boys who are a bit of both. Do
you think?’

‘I think my brother’s
a bit like that,’ said Nesta. ‘Don’t you think, Lucy?’

Lucy blushed. ‘Yeah.
He’s pretty cool. And my brothers are a bit of each. Lai is pretty mad, whereas
Steve is pretty sensible.’

‘Yes, but he’s not
boring sensible,’ said TJ. ‘And he can be mad sometimes.’

I looked around at the
three of them and sighed with relief. It felt good. We were talking again.

‘You know what?’ I
said. ‘I really
really
don’t want to lose you guys as friends. I’m
sorry if I’ve been acting like a prize prat. I don’t know what came over me.’

‘Maybe it’s because
we’ll all be going into Year Ten tomorrow,’ said Lucy. ‘Makes you think about
the next chapter. Like where are we going next.’

‘Yeah. It’s going to
be weird being back at school,’ said TJ. ‘It’s like, in the holidays, all the
days just flow into each other. No Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, weekend and so
on. When we’re at school, the whole week is punctuated. Sunday night, get ready
for school. Monday, go to school. Wait for Friday. Then the weekend.’

‘I know what you
mean,’ I said. ‘Back to the old routine after a mad, mad summer.’

‘How’s things with
your mum?’ asked TJ.

‘Better,’ I said. ‘I
mean, she’ll never be cool like your mum, Lucy. She’ll always be straight, but
that’s who she is. We had a good talk this morning and she’s even OK about me
having my stud now.’

‘Yeah, but you really
started something, Izzie,’ said Lucy. ‘I think it was because of last night
when Mum drove us home. She was a bit concerned about you, then started asking
if I ever smoked or drank. You know, the whole interrogation. This morning at
breakfast, she said she wanted to “have a talk”. It was so embarrassing. One of
those “Let’s talk openly about things” type talks. Steve and Lai looked like
they wanted to die.’

‘Have a talk about
what?’ said TJ.

‘First, drink - how
when you drink, you’re not always in control of your thoughts or actions and
must be carefulvnot to be in the wrong place or somewhere unfamiliar. Then how
smoking wrecks your skin…‘

‘I think it does,’ I
said. ‘I’ve got two aunts - one has smoked all her life, the other never has.
The one who smokes is ten years younger than the other one, yet looks ten years
older. Her skin is sort of crepey and dried out.’

‘Well,’ continued
Lucy, ‘then we got how drinking can wreck your liver. As if we’re going to be
drinking bottles of the stuff…’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘If
I’ve learned anything these holidays, it’s about balance. All things in
moderation and not to go overboard like I did at yours that night, Nesta…’

‘But the main thing
she said about drink and drugs,’ Lucy said, ‘is that both can alter your
perception. She said her anxiety was that one of us would be out of our heads
and not thinking straight and someone would take advantage. A boy or someone,
when we didn’t know what we were doing. She kept saying that your facility to
make proper choices gets impaired, but I think that’s only if you drink too
much.’

I thought back to last
night. That was exactly what Josh wanted,‘ I said. ’Me to get drunk so that he
could have a jolly old grope.‘

Nesta shook her head.
‘Not on,’ she said. ‘Not my romantic fantasy, anyway. If you have to get
totally plastered to get it on with a boy, then it can’t be right, can it? I’d
want to be sure that I wanted to do it sober
or
having had a drink.
It’s like, if you have to get out of your head to do it, maybe you’re trying to
get out of the situation on some level. It can’t be what you really want to
do.’

‘And then Mum started
on about drugs,’ Lucy continued. ‘She said that one of the biggest risks is
that sometimes stuff gets mixed in with them and people don’t know what they’re
actually taking. Unless you know exactly where the drugs have come from, they
could be laced with anything.’

‘Well, at least she
didn’t give you the sex lecture,’ I said. ‘That can be really embarrassing.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I
got that one,’ said TJ. ‘Sometimes it’s hard having doctors as parents, as they
see the down-side of everything and think they have to pass it all on. I got a
lecture about sexually transmitted diseases and the number of teenage
pregnancies my mum sees. She said everyone thinks it can’t happen to them and
some of the girls she sees are our age and got pregnant the very first time
they had sex.’

I remembered what Ben
had said last night, about never going along with a boy for fear of hurting his
feelings. I wondered if some of the girls who got pregnant simply got into a
situation and didn’t know how to get out of it - didn’t have the courage to say
that they weren’t ready. Or got so drunk, they didn’t realise how far they were
going until it was too late, or so drunk that they didn’t even care about the
risks.

‘You know what,
girls?’ I said. ‘Back to school tomorrow, and as TJ said, it’s a new start. We
don’t know what we’re going to encounter, and what boys are on the horizon for
the next year. Or what any of us are going to go through. I reckon we need to
make some ground rules to mark our Pringle bonding. It wasn’t enough to eat a
bite of it and think we’d be bonded for life…’

‘Oh no…“ said Nesta. ’What
are you going to make us do now?‘

‘Nothing bad. It’s
just, there are times when maybe we need to watch out for each other. I think
we should think about what we really need from each other when there are boys
around or drink or drugs, or whatever. How about we all write down a ground
rule? Fold it up and put in a hat. I’ll do a printout of them on my computer
for us all to keep.’

‘Good idea,’ said
Nesta. ‘Rule One: no having to prick your thumb in order to be mates.’

I punched her arm.
‘Yeah, that and a few others.’

C h a p t e r
 
1 6

Police

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Later in the
afternoon, we went up to Muswell Hill to buy some special card for printing our
ground rules on to. Halfway down the Broadway, who should we see standing
outside Marks and Spencer, but Josh.

Nesta nudged me. ‘Eyes
right,’ she said. ‘Trouble ahead.’

Josh hadn’t seen me,
and for a moment, I felt like turning around and running. But no, I told
myself, be grown-up about this. I can’t spend my life running away from boys
I’ve had a bad time with.

‘Do you want us to
come with you?’ asked TJ. I shook my head. ‘Nah, just give me a minute.’ The
girls headed into a nick-nack shop next to Marks and Spencer and I took a deep
breath and walked over to Josh. He looked very surprised to see me, like a
rabbit caught in the headlights. I smiled. ‘Hey, Josh.’

He looked up and down
the road as though he wanted to make a getaway.

‘I wasn’t
that
bad, was I?’ I said, trying to make a joke of last night.

‘Nah, course not,’ he
said, nervously glancing into Marks and Spencer as though looking for someone.

‘Are you all right?’ I
asked.

Just at that moment, I
saw a policeman come out of the shop. He took one look at Josh and headed
straight for him. Now Josh really did look uncomfortable. He stared at the
pavement, like he was hoping it would open up and swallow him whole. I glanced
over at the policeman. No doubt about it, he was definitely coming for Josh.
Hell’s bells, I thought, as my mind began to run riot. Josh is in trouble.
Maybe he’s been caught smoking dope in the park. Oh God, he’s going to be
arrested. I started to panic inside. Oh no, what if it gets back to Mum just
when I’ve made it up with her. It will ruin everything.

The policeman stopped,
turned to look at me and smiled a really friendly smile. Uh? I thought. What’s
going on?

‘Well, come on, then,
Josh,’ said the policeman. ‘Introduce us.’

Josh sighed heavily.
‘Um, this is Izzie,’ he muttered. ‘Izzie, this is… this is… my dad.’

Josh’s
dad!
I
thought. His dad is a
policeman
?

Josh’s dad beamed at
me. ‘So you’re Izzie? You’re the one Josh went to see sing last night. Good to
meet you.’

My brain went into
overdrive. A policeman? Of course. Oh poo. I’ve been so
stupid. ‘Dad
spends a lot of time down at the police station, ’Josh had said. ‘Never know
where he is…’ I’d just assumed that his dad was a criminal and he’d let me
believe it. I could kick myself. Stupid, stupid, I thought. It was all coming
back to me. Josh saying how easy it was to feed girls a line, then they just
run with it, hear what they want to hear. Exactly what I’d done, and when he’d
seen I’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker, he hadn’t done anything to
disillusion me. Of
course
, a boy like Josh
would
say that he
didn’t want to end up like his dad. And he never actually said the word
‘criminal’.