Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 07] (4 page)

I nodded, then tried
to swallow again. Not long to go now, surely? Two more minutes. One, two,
three, four…

Finally Mr Saltman
stood back. ‘OK, you can rinse now,’ he said as he pressed a button on the side
of the chair causing it to suddenly jerk up from horizontal to vertical and so
throwing me forward. That’s the other way that dentists get their laughs, I
decided. Playing around with their chairs. Most of them have some way of
lowering you down or pushing you back up. I wonder if they have ejector buttons
for really difficult patients or nasty kids who bite them. They can just press
a secret button and the patient flies out of the chair and back into reception.
I know I’d have one fitted if I were a dentist. But then, I’m not going to be a
dentist. I’m going to be an actress, which is one of the reasons I do actually
turn up regularly for this torture. It’s v. important to have good teeth. Which
reminds me, I ought to be going over my audition piece for
West Side Story
.
I’d decided to do Maria’s song, ‘There’s a Place For Us’. Pah, I thought, I
could have been doing that as a distraction. It would have been a great
visualisation, imagining that I’d got the lead part and I was there, on stage,
singing my heart out as everyone looked on in admiration.

As I rinsed with the
disgusting bright pink liquid in the plastic cup on the stand next to the
chair, Mr Saltman went to look at the X-rays of my teeth that he’d taken
earlier. He started whispering to his assistant, a girl who looked younger than
I do. No way she’s coming anywhere near my mouth, I thought, she’s clearly only
just got her second teeth herself.

‘So do they all have
to come out?’ I asked. I thought I was being very funny, but Mr Saltman wasn’t
laughing.

‘No, none will have to
come out, I don’t think,’ he said. ‘But I
am
concerned about the
slight overcrowding in your mouth. It might cause a crossover on the top two
teeth as you get older and possibly on the bottom ones too. It won’t be evident
for a while but will happen…’

What is he talking
about, I wondered? Crossovers. Overcrowding. ‘Uh?’ I asked.

‘We’ll need to get an
impression of your teeth,’ he said.

‘There you go.’ I
beamed, giving him my widest smile.

Mr Saltman laughed.
‘No, not that kind of impression. I need a moulding to send to Mr Schneider,
the orthodontist.’

‘For what?’

‘You need to have a
brace fitted, Nesta.’

‘A whadttttt!!?’

‘Brace,’ said Mr
Saltman. ‘There’s a chance if we leave them that some of the front teeth will
grow crooked. A brace will soon correct that, then you’ll have picture perfect
peggies for when you’re older.’

‘But I’m fifteen, Mr
Saltman.’

‘I know,’ he smiled.
‘Perfect time for the corrections.’

Perfect time to ruin
my life, I thought. Perfect time to ruin my appearance. My pulling power. My
social life. My snogging skills. My… ohmigod, my
part
in
West Side
Story
. No way can I go for the part of Maria. I’d be the laughing stock as
soon as I opened my mouth to sing. In fact, instead of singing, ‘There’s a
Place For Us’, I’d have to sing, ‘There’s a Brace For Us’.

‘No. I can’t have a
brace,’ I said firmly. ‘No, take all my teeth out and give me false ones. At
least that way, I can still smile.’

Mr Saltman laughed
again. ‘It will only be for a year, Nesta. And so many people your age have
them these days.’

Yes, but I’m not so
many people, I thought.

‘It won’t be so bad,’
continued Mr Saltman, ‘and Mr Schneider will keep a close eye on you. You’ll
need to go for regular check-ups every few weeks.’

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,
I moaned inwardly. I thought I was through with dentists until the next
check-up in six months. As I lay on the chair inwardly going through how my
life was going to change, Mr Saltman’s assistant had been out, then come back
with what looked like a piece of plasticine on a tray. She put it in front of
me.

‘Oh dinner? No
thanks,’ I said holding my hand up. ‘I’ll pass.’

Mr Saltman held the
gloop close to my mouth.

‘Now bite in,’ he
said, ‘and we’ll get a nice imprint of your teeth.’

Dutifully I bit into
the minty flavoured putty.

‘Good girl,’ said Mr
Saltman. ‘Now hold still until I say.’

That’s it, I thought.
My life is over. I shall never go out again. I shall do a Harry Potter and I
don’t mean go to Hogwart’s and become a wizard. No, I shall voluntarily move
into a cupboard under the stairs and not speak to anyone. Never show my face.
Not for a year. Not until I can smile again. So the girls were right, I
thought. I am shallow. I
do
care a lot about my appearance. I can’t
help it. I like boys noticing me. I like looking good. And now what? Who’s
going to give me a second look except to say, oh how awful. Have you SEEN that
girl’s metal teeth? And as for my stage career, this has put an end to all that
for a while. No way I’m putting myself in the spotlight now. Huh. Life stinks.

As I waited for the
impression to take, I glanced up at the poster of Steve Martin. I could swear
he gave me a satisfied smile.

C h a p t e r
 
4

Tragic
Heroine

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Waiting for the date
for the brace to be put in was like waiting for exam results and three very
looooong weeks later, the dreaded deed was done. On Monday afternoon I went,
like a man doomed to the guillotine, resigned to my terrible fate and, though I
tried to be brave, even my snogging fantasy didn’t help. I emerged from the
orthodontist’s looking to the world a normal teenager, but inside I was a
wounded soul, cut down in the prime of my life. I returned home to take refuge
in the only place where I would find solace for the next year. Under my duvet.

As soon as school was
out, the crowds had gathered to mock.

‘Come on, let us in,’
called Izzie through my bedroom door.

‘Yeah, you can’t look
that bad,’ said Lucy.

‘Yeah, come on Nesta,’
said TJ. ‘It’s no big deal, honestly. Loads of people in school have them
nowadays.’

‘Yeah and loads of
people have spots,’ I called back. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to join them.’

Suddenly I heard a
scuffle in the corridor outside my room, then Tony’s voice, some stifled
giggles, then footsteps retreating. Well, it didn’t take them long to give up,
I thought as I lay back on my bed in my best tragic heroine pose. When things
are bad in my life, I sometimes try and pretend that I’m a character in a film
and act through the feelings I’m experiencing. I racked my brains for an
appropriate role. Heroine with a brace? Julia Roberts? Sandra Bullock? J-Lo?
Hhmm? Parts with braces? Parts with braces? No, the only role that kept coming
back was Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in
Silence of the Lambs
,
when he’s in prison and has to wear a metal contraption over his jaw to stop
him eating people.

I got up and went to
the door to listen for clues as to what my mates were up to. Silence. Huh, I
thought. Abandoned in my hour of need. I know I wouldn’t let them in my room,
but they should know well enough by now that I would have done in a few
minutes. I just wanted them to appreciate how upsetting this all was. I’d been
putting on a very brave face for the last few weeks since I heard I had to have
a brace. Laughing it off, saying it was no big deal, I didn’t care, etc. All
lies, so that they wouldn’t think that I was vain or shallow. But now it was
in, on, or whatever, I couldn’t keep up the act. I needed my mates to
commiserate with and tell me that it was all going to be all right. I did care.
It
did
hurt. Not so much when it was fitted, but afterwards. Strange
and sharp in my mouth. Uncomfortable for a few days is what Mr Schneider had
told me it would feel like.
Uncomfortable
! I think he needs to check
his dictionary definitions. This isn’t uncomfortable, it’s agony, my gums ache
like anything. And it didn’t help that the first person I bumped into when I
came out of Mr Scheider’s surgery was Michael Brenman from Year Twelve. We had
a very brief thing once (a snog) and he gave me a big flirty smile when he saw
me. Course, all I saw were his perfect, white, straight teeth. I clamped my
lips together and ran. Oh misery, I thought, is this what it’s going to be like
for the next year? Year.
Year
? That’s three hundred and sixty-five
days. Twelve months, fifty-two weeks of not being able to open my mouth when a
cute boy is around. If ever there was a hell on earth,
this
is it.

I could hear footsteps
returning, so I unlocked my door then leaped back on to the bed. Someone tried
the handle, then on seeing that the door wasn’t locked any more, Izzie stuck
her head round. When she saw me lying there, she opened the door wide. Lucy,
Izzie, TJ and Tony all stood in the frame of the doorway giggling like
five-year-olds. Then they smiled. They all looked like they had no teeth.

I cracked up. Even
though I’d been determined to keep up my tragic heroine act a little longer, I
had to laugh (though I made sure I put my hand over my mouth as I did).

‘All for one and one
for all,’ a toothless Lucy said with a grin.

‘How did you do that?’
I asked from behind my hand.

‘Drinking chocolate,’
said Tony. ‘You put some in your mouth then sort of mush it up a bit, then put
it on your teeth with your tongue.’

‘Just to show that
you’re not alone,’ said TJ.

‘Hey, come on,’ I
said. ‘I still have my teeth! It’s only a brace.’

Izzie rubbed her tongue
along her front teeth, turning them back to white. ‘Exactly,’ she said, then
came over to sit next to me on the bed. ‘So come on, give us a look.’

The others crowded
round and stared at me, like they were waiting for a circus freak to begin his
act. I shook my head.

‘You’re going to have
to open your mouth sometime,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on, put your hand down.’

I shook my head again.
‘It’s horrible.’

‘OK, then we’ll all
have to start talking like you, with our hands over our mouths,’ said Lucy.
‘We’ll start a new craze.’

They all started
messing about, talking with their hands over their mouths. Maybe it’s not so
bad, I thought as I watched them all having a laugh. Maybe I can risk it.

‘OK, I’ll give you a
quick look,’ I said. I moved my hand away from my face, then attempted a smile.

Mistake. Not even
Izzie was fast enough to cover her shocked reaction.‘
Woah!
’
she said.

‘Wow,’ said Lucy
coming closer and staring at my teeth. ‘Did it hurt a
lot
?’

‘More now than when he
put it on. It’s kind of sore,’ I said as I put my hand back over my mouth. ‘My
whole mouth aches. Does it look like… totally awful?’

By now Izzie had
recovered. ‘No, not
totally
awful. Just a shock at first as we’re not
used to it. But it’s OK. And it’s not the end of the world… You still look
fabulous…’