Drop (5 page)

“Since you don’t smoke and all, maybe you could not smoke this one later,” he says.

“Oh, this is Isaac,” Finn says, playfully punching him in the ribs.

“Hey,” Isaac says.

“Hey,” I say. “Seen you around school.”

“Upper sixth,” he mumbles. Wow, he really is the strong, silent type. Finn scowls at him. “Young Finlay’s my baby brother,” Isaac adds.

“Shut up!” Finn thumps him hard in the stomach. “Yeah, we’re brothers. Fortunately, I’m the looker of the pair. Who wouldn’t fall for this cheeky grin?” He flashes a smile. His deep brown eyes hold a kind of wisdom. Though younger and leaner than his rougher-looking brother, Finn seems to call the shots.

He nudges Isaac and whispers something.

“You’ll have to excuse me. Later, tiger,” Finn says. “See you in Art. Maybe you can get me from another angle.”

They disappear before I can get a word out. As they saunter toward the PE block, I can’t help watching Finn. All stride and glide and no problems. I step forwards to where he was standing and lean against the wall. I breathe in deeply, trying to capture some of his easy nature simply by being in the space he occupied.

Miss Tillsman, our Biology teacher, wears colourful, dangly enamelled earrings. She has short, fluffy hair: weightless, anti-gravity wisps just right for sweeping cobwebs. Her chin and long neck are almost seamless, and she smells like a patisserie.

There’s something comforting about her scent. Everyone trusts and respects her. I think it’s part of a cunning plan to win students over, like when supermarkets pump out bakery smells to entice customers.

Biology teaches that smells are important. Butterflies secrete pheromones to send messages to the opposite sex, but it’s more than a scientific
nudge nudge wink wink
. Besides attracting a mate, pheromones warn of danger and mark out territory so that butterflies survive and often thrive in great numbers. Without pheromones, how could they dodge a predator or find a mate? Males would probably fight each other to the death over territory, and where would the butterfly population be then? At big fat zero. That’s where. Pheromones are an evolutionary trick; a secret, secreting ingredient that keeps the world going round and the sky full of flashes of dancing jewels in summer. Basic biology. Miss Tillsman’s in on the smelly secret. She uses Belgian buns to break us. How can you answer back to a sweet feather-haired teacher who smells like pastry?

She’s also a good teacher. She makes things interesting. Lauren says they did an experiment investigating the rate of osmosis in potatoes, and with the spare ones, she made them all chips for lunch. No one forgot that lesson.

I sit between Lauren and Sienna. We spend the lesson modelling the human respiratory system, making lungs from balloons and plastic bottles and discussing what happens to the bronchi during an asthma attack. Greg is blowing up balloons and letting them fly about the room.

A red one soars, squeals and lands on Sienna’s shoulder.

“Juvenile.” She rolls her eyes and flicks the deflated fake lung to the ground. “Don’t know what Georgia sees in him.”

Lauren starts drawing a diagram of an airway blocked by mucus and constricting muscles.

“Oh no, wait, I do,” Sienna continues. “He lets her style his hair and pick his outfits. They spend their lives preening each other like monkeys, and presenting themselves as the hot couple.”

“Style over substance?” I venture.

“Exactly.” Sienna blows hard into a spirometer, then checks the reading on the plastic cylinder. “Well, what do you know? I’m not asthmatic.”

“That’s unfair, Sienna,” Lauren jumps in. “Aside from the fact that he has the attention span of a gnat, he’s excellent at hockey, skateboarding, can play the guitar…”

“Sounds like you fancy him.”

“Not even a little bit. I’m just saying he’s not a total loser delinquent.”

Sienna shrugs.

“What about Finn?” I ask, careful not to look either of them in the eye and let on about my little crush.

“You like him, don’t you?” Lauren asks, pausing mid-bronchi-annotation. Clearly, I’m rubbish at hiding things. First rule, don’t mention your crush by name. Rookie mistake.
How can I save this?

“Just curious about the social workings of Thorncroft. Still getting my bearings.”

“Lauren used to fancy him.” Sienna smirks.

Lauren throws Sienna an evil glance. She taps her biro on her book. Her eyebrows do the trick my dad’s do. Together they could put on the Incredible Anti-Grav Eyebrow Show and make millions! Fleas could ride tiny bikes and do wheelies between the hairy caterpillars.

“You did?” I ask, intrigued by the first juicy bit of gossip since I arrived … but also, and I know this sounds stupid, a little jealous.

Lauren shifts on her chair. “It was a moment of weakness in Year 10. I broke my finger in basketball and he took me to the school nurse. I was crying. He calmed me down. I was probably concussed. He can be quite charming.” She scrunches her hair behind her head.

“You can’t get concussion from a sore finger,” I say, raising an eyebrow really high too. Perhaps I’ll join the face circus and be a millionaire as well.

“Anyway, so what if I
did
like him? He has more to recommend him than Greg, in my opinion. He’s intelligent, funny, sporty … helps damsels in distress. Just never expect him to be on time for anything. He wouldn’t know a watch if it bit him on the ass.”

I’d bite him on the ass.

“And, she said it herself, even Greg’s not
that
bad, so Finn must be practically Gabriel Grayson,” Sienna says.

“I love Gabriel Grayson in that movie
Last Night in Manhattan
,” Lauren adds.

“We all love Gabriel Grayson,” I say. I’m struck by how easy it is to talk to these girls. I’m not at all nervous around them. I feel like I could fit into this puzzle, no problem. “Hey, do you want to do something after school? Go into town?”

“Can do,” Sienna says.

“What about the market?” Lauren suggests. “Loads of food, second-hand books, records. Not exactly Portobello but it’s something to do.”

We agree to meet up later and walk over together. I’m actually looking forward to it. This is where I belong. This is where I fit.

At the end of the lesson, I nervously await the results of yesterday’s impromptu test on the cell cycle. Lauren and Sienna get a
B+
and an
A
, respectively.

Tillsman puts the paper face-down in front of me. I get a lump in my throat, but needlessly. Turning over the test, I see an
A
in red pen with the words, “Well done, Carla.”

Hello, Smugville.

At lunch, in the common room, Finn beckons me over to where he and Greg, Georgia and Violet are sitting.

Sienna raises her eyebrows. “What do they want with us?” she asks.

“Carla, need your opinion on something,” Finn calls from the middle table.

“Ah, let me rephrase, what do they want with
you
?” Sienna says.

“No idea,” I say.

I wander over, trying to saunter the way Violet does, effortlessly, weightlessly. Isaac looks me up and down with curiosity, maybe a little contempt. I probably look like a prize twat. A hint of a scowl creeps on to my face, my brow furrowing of its own accord. I’m never good at hiding emotion. Silent-type Isaac seems good at masking every emotion except disapproval when he sees me. But I can’t let it get to me.

Finn gets up, rising to my eye level, then sits on the table with his feet on the bench and a hand on Georgia’s shoulder.

“Georgia here is turning seventeen in mere months,” he says, “and she’s throwing a huge party to celebrate.” I’m being asked to a party. By Finn Masterson. “Only thing is, she’s struggling with the theme, layout and all the interior decoration and I thought, being completely void of artistic talent myself—”

“Except with hairstyles,” Isaac says, deadpan. Finn ignores him.

“And excuses,” Slinky says. “ ‘Sorry, I’m late Mr Wilkinson’ ” – he mimics Finn’s tone perfectly – “ ‘the queue in Starbucks was ma-
hoo
-ssive.’ ”

“And yesterday, with Martinez,” Violet adds, batting her lashes. “ ‘You mean we have to come to school
every
day?’ ” The band of beautifuls all cracks up.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Georgia says. I don’t know whether to laugh or not. Joining in might be some sort of cool-crowd encroachment. So, I just stand on the periphery like a lemon. Do I risk a giggle?
Stop over-thinking. Just do it.
I let out a burst of laughter… To my utter, dire and crippling embarrassment, it’s
after
they’ve all
stopped laughing
; a lone, stark sound that seems to echo off the walls and slap me in the face. It draws all their beautiful, popular eyes onto me. Self-loathing ensues.

“Awkward,” Violet says, throwing Finn a look that asks,
Why are you talking to this socially inept freak?

My hands start to shake. My face is hot as the sun’s core and probably redder than the surface of Mars. Acne craters add texture.
Fucking hell. What’s wrong with me? Ugh.

Note to self. The following behaviours are socially unacceptable:

1. mentalist stalker drawings

2. laughing when everyone has moved on with their lives

3. drowning kittens

4. wearing double denim.

“So anyway,” Finn continues, picking up where he left off. I can hardly look him in the eye. “I thought perhaps you could turn your exceptionally talented drawing arm to the cause and doodle a few possibilities for a theme in that sketchbook of yours.”

Not an invitation. A commission. I guess it’s better than nothing.

“Yeah, maybe… OK, um, sure,” I say, and turn to Georgia. “Do you want to” – I think about asking Georgia to come over to mine to talk about it, but what if she takes one look at my non-Lotto-funded house and decides I’m sort of, I don’t know, poor and scummy? Not good enough? No, it must be neutral ground – “come to my form room after school and we can look at some options? A2.”

“Great, thanks. You’re a lifesaver,” Georgia says.

Back at the table with Sienna and Lauren, I face the firing squad.

“What about going to the market?” Sienna asks.

“I couldn’t say no, could I?” I say apologetically. “Look, it’ll only take half an hour, probably less. I’ll meet you there.”

“You could have suggested another day,” Sienna says, with a hint of moodiness.

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Brain-melt. Those guys are pretty intimidating.”

“It’s OK, we’ll wait,” Lauren says. “I’ve got Geography to do for Wong anyway, and that abstract for Paluk. We can go to the library.”

Who knew making friends could be so complicated?
Choose a side, and stay there, Carla.

Before meeting Georgia, I run to the toilets. The white tiles shout with graffiti and the mirror is milky where it’s not been cleaned properly. I wipe it with tissue and take a good look at myself.

I’ve never bothered much with my hair. I brush it and scrape it back, but seeing Violet with her wonder-locks cascading like a diamond waterfall over her shoulders, and Georgia with her amazing waves bouncing around her heart-shaped face, I feel suddenly inadequate.

I pull out my hairband and shake my mane free. It’s a sort of nothing brown, except I guess it can look golden in the right light. I have a tousled just-out-of-bed thing going on… It’ll have to do. I hope she won’t notice my split ends. I rummage for some eyeliner and attempt a black flick. Apparently it makes your eyes look bigger. I get one lid just perfect but muck up the other and look lopsided. I try to even them out but the flicks just get larger and larger until I look like a bad Cleopatra impersonator.

I rub it off and try again. Better this time.

I don’t have any blusher so I pinch my cheeks to make them a bit rosier. I suck on my lips to inject a bit of colour.

In the mirror, I see
someone
.

Maybe, like this, I’m not so invisible.

I wait nervously in A2 for Georgia. It’s like a job interview, a Friendiview. Here’s the ad: