Read Me Like a Book (5 page)

I raise an eyebrow. Try to anyway. It’s one of those things I just can’t do, no matter how much I practice. I just know I look more like a rabbit about to sneeze than an assertive young woman who’s totally in control of the situation. “More?” I ask. “Or less? Which?”

He glances at me, then turns back to the windshield. “We talked about splitting up, but . . .”

“But what?”

He stares straight ahead. “Well, we didn’t actually, finally do it. But we have now. Once I met you. After we went to the cinema, well, that was it.”

I can’t stop my face from twitching into a smile. He looks at me again and half smiles back. “I waited for you to get in touch all week after Luke’s party. I didn’t think you were going to. But then you texted me. So I rang Em and we met up today —”

“Today? As in the same day that you snogged me on my doorstep?”

His cheeks are growing redder by the minute, and a frown creases up his forehead. I want to reach out and smooth it over but remember just in time that I’m too cross.

“Look, we went to the park, that’s all, and I told her it was over. She was dead upset.”

Ahh, my heart breaks.

“But we talked. And I think we can still be friends.”

Er, not if I’ve got anything to do with it, dude.

“And then I just wanted to see you straightaway. Tell you I like you. And see if you want to, you know, go out with me.”

He’s biting his nails now and has nearly reached the skin. Then he looks up and gives me a shy smile — and he’s done it. He’s won me over.

“I like you too,” I say with a shrug. “And, yeah, OK, I’ll go out with you.”

For a moment we look at each other and neither of us says anything. Then he leans over, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me again.

When it starts to get uncomfortable leaning over the hand brake, I pull away and straighten myself in my seat. “Where are we anyway?”

“Oh, just around the corner from my house. Do you, er, d’you want to come over?”

It’s getting late. My parents will go mad if they notice I’m out. “I think you’d better take me home.”

I get him to drop me at the end of the street. I don’t want to attract attention to myself. And I want another of those kisses but daren’t do it outside our house.

“See you later,” I say, trying to sound casual as I get out of the car.

He rolls the window down and leans across the seat. “I’ll text you soon.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I call back without turning around. Good thing he can’t see how big my smile is.

I weave my way along the street and up the drive, avoiding the burglar-detector trigger spots like a professional.

The house is quiet. Mum and Dad must have gone to bed. I’m about to head up to my bedroom when I notice something: a sliver of soft lamplight under the living room door. Are they still up? I hover outside the door, then I hear Dad’s voice and for a split second I feel a huge wave of relief. They’ve made up. They’re talking again. Then I realize — he’s not talking to Mum. It sounds like he’s on the phone. I lean into the door and listen.

“No, not yet,” he says in a low voice. “It’s tearing me apart. I don’t know what to do.” Long pause. “Yeah, I know. I’m just glad I’ve got you to talk to or I’d be lost.”

I’m glued to the floor. Who’s he talking to? What’s he talking about? Is he in there sleeping on the sofa bed again? What’s going
on
around here?

I don’t want to dwell on
any
of the questions suddenly filling up my mind and blocking out the whole of the last blissful hour with Dylan. I can’t risk thinking about them, or I might have to think about the answers too.

I creep up to my bedroom, my happy bubble well and truly burst. I try my hardest to think about Dylan’s kisses instead of Dad’s whispers, and finally I drift off into an unsettled sleep.

Next morning, I doze through my alarm, ignore Mum’s wake-up call (“Don’t be late for school!”), and wait till she and Dad have left the house before I get up. I can’t face them. Whatever’s going on between them, I just want them to hurry up and sort it out so we can go back to normal. Whatever passes for normal. Not sure I can even remember.

I don’t
want
to be late for school, for once. We’ve got English first. English has been the only decent thing in school lately. It’s Miss Murray. She’s like an oasis of fun among a wilderness of dinosaurs — if that’s not mixing too many metaphors. Look, see, she’s gotten to me already. When would I ever have used the word
metaphor
before?

She keeps going on about bringing in poems, which a couple of the others have done. I printed out the lyrics to the song I’d mentioned in our first lesson and keep meaning to show them to her. I haven’t managed to get beyond thinking I’ll look like a nerd if I do, so I haven’t bothered up to now. I want to, though, and it’s weird. She’s the only teacher who’s ever made me want to do something like that, in more than a decade of compulsory education.

Everyone seems to feel the same way about her. I’ve noticed the smile rate is a lot higher in her lessons than anywhere else in school. She makes everything into a game. It doesn’t feel like learning. Or it didn’t. It’s changed a bit this week. We’ve started reading
Wuthering Heights
and, to be honest, I can’t get into it.

We were supposed to read the first three chapters before this morning’s lesson, but I could barely get to the end of the first page. It’s all “capital fellow” and “soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure.” By the time I got to the “range of gaunt thorns . . . craving alms of the sun,” I’d pretty much given up.

To be fair, between agonizing over Dylan and trying not to get drawn into my parents’ marriage troubles, it’s fair to say I’ve had other stuff on my mind too.

Thing is, though, once we get talking about it in class, the book doesn’t seem so bad. Miss Murray says it’s one of her favorite novels ever, and you can tell. She walks around the room, holding it in her hand all the time and breathlessly reading bits out loud. She seems to know half the book by heart. She asks questions about every little thing: How does the setting reflect the characters? Did Lockwood have a nightmare or was it real? What is Nelly Dean’s role? What have we learned of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship so far?

If anyone says anything good, it’s as though she’s just unwrapped her perfect Christmas present. “Yes,
exactly,
Tom. Brilliant!” Or “Fantastic, Robyn! That’s just how I see it.”

You can see how her compliments make people feel. It’s like she switches a light on inside their eyes. There are great big smiles whenever someone gets a tiny compliment from her. It almost makes me wish I’d tried harder with the book. I’ve nothing to offer, so there’s no smiley light switch for me.

I think about guessing at an answer or two, but decide not to bother. I’ll only get it wrong and make a fool of myself. I don’t want her to think I’m stupid. Not that it would matter if she did. She might be a good laugh at times, but she is a teacher, after all.

Still, when she tells us to read to page 65, I sneak my pen out and write it on my hand so I’ll remember to do it tonight. Can’t do any harm to give it another go.

At the end of the lesson, I take my time packing up so I’m the last to leave. I’m going to give her the song lyrics.

Miss Murray’s shuffling papers together at her desk; she looks up and smiles as I approach. Does she smile at
everything
?

“Here.” I shove the crumpled piece of paper across the table. “That song I told you about. Sorry I’ve not brought it in before. I kept forgetting.”

She looks blank for a second. Now I feel like an idiot as well as a nerd. I’m about to grab it straight back when she says, “The song lyrics that you said were like a poem? Excellent. Let’s have a look.” She picks the paper up.

I stand in front of her desk, my face burning up while she reads. She’s frowning at the piece of paper, and I suddenly realize what a fool I must look.

I’m miles behind in everything we did last year, I couldn’t be bothered with even the first page of a book everyone else seems to love, and now I’ve given in some stupid song lyrics when she’s expecting a poem. Right, that’s it. I’m dropping English. I’ll see my tutor next week.

“It’s great, Ash,” she says, breaking into my thoughts. “Generally, I think that a song needs all of its component parts in order to work. If you hear the music without the words, there’s an emptiness to it. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And the words never seem to stand up to much scrutiny.” She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say something. “Synergy,” she adds.

I nod slowly. What’s she on about?

She laughs. “It means when the whole of something is greater than the sum of its parts.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know this song, but I agree with you — some of the lyrics have a real sense of poetry in them.” She leans forward so we can both see the words. “Look, I like this verse:

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “It’s like everyone thinks they know what it means to be happy, but they’re not even awake — it’s as if they’re not really alive. But these others, they’re the only ones who really understand how to be happy, and that sets them apart. It sets them free.”

She looks at me as if she’s only just noticed I’m there.

“What?” I ask.

“That’s absolutely it. Brilliant!” She looks back at the song. “Yes. I like it.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” I say, hoping she won’t remember me saying I didn’t know any of the words.

“Who’s it by?”

“Just a small indie band. You won’t have heard of them.”

“Try me.”

“Angel’s Rock.”

She laughs. “You’re right, I haven’t. But I’ll look out for them from now on.” She hands the sheet of paper back to me.

I look at my watch. I’m late for sociology. Maybe I’ll skip it and have another go at
Wuthering Heights
while it’s fresh in my mind.

“Ash,” she says as I reach the door. “Page sixty-five. Don’t forget this time.”

How does she know I hadn’t read it?

“I won’t,” I say and tramp down to the cafeteria, something new and unfamiliar lighting me up inside.

Mum’s acting really weird with me when I get home, but she doesn’t say anything till we sit down for dinner. Doesn’t say anything then either, actually, but I know she wants to. You can always tell when my mum’s in a bad mood. She doesn’t speak, but her actions are like words with a megaphone. Her body gets really tense, and her face is all pinched up. If you ask if anything is wrong, she’ll always deny it, but in a way that lets you know that there definitely is. You can almost feel her hedgehog spikes of anger.

And I don’t know why, but I just haven’t got the patience for it anymore. I’m getting pissed off now. I mean, I am their daughter. It might be nice if perhaps one of them could, at some point, consider me. Whatever’s going on between them, it’s not my fault. At least, I don’t think it is. So keep me out of it. Put on a happy front for the kids and all that. But, no. Neither of them has considered doing that for a second. Which means that at this moment, I have zero inclination to make an effort with them either.

So we’re eating in silence as usual, only this time, instead of doing everything she can to ignore Dad, Mum keeps trying to get his attention. Banging her cutlery on her plate, then looking at him pointedly and coughing. He’s got the
Telegraph
open in front of him and doesn’t notice any of it. I guess I learned most of my switching-off tricks from Dad. He’s the master of deliberately not having a clue what’s going on around him.

Which is how he manages to politely put his knife and fork together, fold up his paper, and say, “Right, that was smashing. I’ll just be off to —”

Except he stops when he sees Mum’s face. Even
he
can tell that this wasn’t what he was meant to say.

“Gordon, we discussed this,” Mum hisses.

He looks blank for a second, then he suddenly nods and says, “OK. Right you are, then.” He turns to me. “Ash. We, ah, well, you didn’t by any chance nip out last night, did you? It’s just that when we got up this morning, the porch light was on, and we noticed a pair of your boots at the bottom of the stairs, and, well, it just seems a little odd, that’s all.”

I weigh up my options. Do I go for the casual approach: a quick “No, course not, Dad” or the emotional “How could you?” with lots of eye contact, an emphatic denial, and a tearful exit to my bedroom? Or the truth?

I can get away with almost anything with Dad, except lying. The one and only time I tried smoking, he caught me at it. He came home from work early and spotted me sitting on the wall around the corner, holding Cat’s cigarette and trying to inhale without coughing.

“All those times you denied it,” he said that evening, shaking his head sadly. “I don’t like lies, Ashleigh. Especially from those I love.” He never mentioned it again. It crushed me more than if he’d screamed and yelled and grounded me for a month. It’s probably why I never bothered smoking again. That and the sore throat I had for a week afterward.