Remix (3 page)

“How long’s that one been
cum-
ing?” I shoot back and this time he’s the one laughing. Again with the quite cute.

“I’m
glans
you asked?” He’s screwing up his face in anticipation of my scorn. To be fair, he deserves it for that one.

“I’m all out of penis puns, I’m afraid,” I say, ignoring the buzz my phone makes with Ed’s reply. I’m just getting into my groove here.

My best friend and I are very different when it comes to boys. Ruby adopts a scattergun approach of flirting with anyone she sees regardless of sensible limiting factors such as (in the stallholder’s case) age. Whereas I can only flirt with someone I actually fancy, which is unfortunate since there is only one person I know who meets that criteria.

When we booked the Remix tickets, Ruby made it clear that hot boys were part of the plan – and not just for her. It was only a month after things had ended with Tom and even though I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the idea of looking for someone new, Ruby assumed I’d be over him by now and ready for action.

Only I’m not. It hasn’t been as easy for me to recover from Tom as it has been for Ruby and Stu. Tom wasn’t just my first boyfriend, he was the first boy I ever fancied – when I was ten and saw him in cricket whites. Tom was my first crush, my first kiss, my first love… He was supposed to be my
first
. It’s hard to look at other boys and see someone I might Do It with when I’ve always assumed that person was going to be Tom.

I really need to tell Ruby about him being here.

Kaz does not seem especially interested in my assessment of Cute Stallholder Guy.

“Does he have a name?” Kaz cuts through what I was saying.

“I assume so.” I glance back at the stall thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll find out later…”

It’s meant to be a joke – the guy was good for a warm-up flirt, not actual gameplay – but Kaz is giving me the same look she’s been giving me all summer, the one that screams, “I think you’re a depraved sexpot.”

I’m not so much a depraved sexpot as a deprived one. I’ve not had any since Stu, which is kind of like having champagne on tap one minute and going cold turkey the next. Well, not
cold
cold turkey. Lukewarm turkey. I’ve still got my right hand and an overactive imagination – although there’s only so far that a certain expertise and an Adam Wexler fantasy can take me. It doesn’t matter if those fantasies have gone all the way and then some, I’m someone who likes the feel of another body on mine, skin on skin, lips and tongues and teeth. The warmth, the smell, the taste.

“Can we go and sit somewhere for a bit?” Kaz says out of the blue, which I’m grateful for. I don’t actually want Stu in my head when I’ve left Clifton to get away from him.

Kaz is fiddling with her pendant, so I figure there’s something she wants to talk about. Something I won’t like… We find a shady spot under some trees since the sun is trying to BURN THE FLESH FROM MY BONES and I clamber to sit on the fence so I’m eye level with the necklace-twiddling nutter in front of me.

“What’s up?” I ask.

Best to treat this like a plaster and rip it off in three … two … one…

“Tom’s here.”

“You what?” Ruby actually glances over her shoulder as if he’s materialized behind her. “Tom’s where?”

“Here. At Remix.”

“O…K…” Ruby looks entirely nonplussed. “And this is the first I’m hearing of it because?”

But I don’t have to say anything for her to know the answer.

I am such a wimp sometimes.

Brilliant.

Thomas sodding Selkirk.

Kaz is gabbling about how she only found out the other day and she wasn’t sure whether to even mention it because we’re probably not going to bump into him anyway when there are so many people here.

It’s all just noise to cover up what she really wants to happen: she wants to see Tom. All summer – ever since they split – by so many twists of fate that it’s been a cat’s cradle of coincidence, Tom and Kaz have failed to bump into each other. She was on choir tour, he went away with his family to France, Kaz got shipped off to Wales. In the week and a half in which they’ve both been within sight of the sea, they’ve not been within sight of each other.

There’s no point fighting it. Much as I want Kaz to get on with her life and into someone else’s pants, it’s not going to happen if she’s on red alert for her ex.

So much for leaving all that shit behind.

Ruby stops me with a resigned wave of her hand. “I think we should just go find him. Get it over with.”

My response to this is to throw my arms around her waist and lift her from the fence, my cheeks hurting from grinning a wide and incredulous grin.

“Are you sure?” I drop her unceremoniously on the floor.

“I suppose.” She squints against the sun behind me. “But don’t pull that shit again, you hear? This is you and me – we don’t do secrets.” There’s a moment in which she watches me before her expression relaxes. “Now. Fire your special flare gun that forms an image of a man wearing slightly too-short trousers, light a candle and sing ‘Jerusalem’ backwards or whatever. Summon the Selkirk.”

I hold up my phone with Tom’s number on the screen. “Or I could just use this, like a normal person.”

He answers on the second ring.

“Hey, Tom,” I say, doing an excellent impression of Mickey Mouse.

“You called, m’dear?” The friendliness of his voice – the familiarity – renders me mute for a moment. “Hello, Kaz…?”

“Sorry, yes, hi. Umm… I heard you’d be here as well. From Naomi. Or Dad. No – Naomi!” Either way it sounds like I’ve been keeping tabs on him. “Dad’s taking Naomi to London.”
Stop talking now, mouth
. “For the weekend. Naomi said that your dad said—”

Ruby actually leaps forward and puts both hands over my mouth, whispering,
“Shut. Up.”

Tom doesn’t seem to mind that I ended my last sentence with a “whumph”, but I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “If by ‘here’ you mean Remix, then yes. We just got here. Me and Naj and Roly.”

Now what?

Ruby, whose eyeballs have been rolling around so much I’m surprised they’re still in the sockets, mutters, “For fuck’s sake” and takes my phone. “Hey, Tom, how’s it going? We’re in the middle of exploring the campsite and wondered whether we should come and explore your part of it, wherever that may be. Possibly explore whatever food you’ve got. And whatever drinks.”

There’s a pause. “Totally like scavengers. Think of us as a particularly sexy pair of racoons.”

I can hear him laughing from here, no more immune to the Ruby Effect than anyone else. She concentrates as he explains where they are.

“Got it. See you in five.” Handing me the phone back, Ruby looks at me for a long moment. “Are you
sure
about this, Kaz?”

All the way from South Slope to where Tom’s camped in Three-Tree Field I tell myself the same thing.

I am sure. I am sure. I am sure
.

Once I’ve seen Tom we can get on with our weekend. It won’t change anything. I just want to say hi, to show how fine I am being friends. Just to prove it to myself – to Tom – to Ruby. Just to double-check that’s all we are. It’s been a long time and maybe Tom’s missed me the way I have him…

Tom told Ruby that they’re camped next to someone flying a fluorescent pink Jolly Roger. Ruby spots the flag first. I spot the boy.

Tom looks the way I always imagine him. Body broad enough to hold me, tall enough to make me safe – big but gentle, like a bear from a fairy tale or a picture book. His haircut is the same one he’s always had (apart from the winter of the unwise buzzcut) and the smile he’s wearing as he talks to the person next to him is the smile I’ve missed every second of the last sixty-nine days, twenty-two hours and … twenty-three minutes.

Maybe I am not so sure about this after all.

How can Kaz fancy someone with such appalling trousers?

Oblivious to the awkward, Tom gives Kaz a hug before turning to me as I take a quick step back and nearly stack it on a guy rope. I can fake friendly on a phone call, but Tom is not a person I am prepared to hug. Which definitely puts him in the minority, because I am usually all about the hugs.

“Hello, Tom,” I say.

There’s a moment in which Tom and I communicate our feelings without having to say a word. He knows that I would quite happily strangle him with the rogue guy rope I’ve just dislodged and I know that he doesn’t think he deserves it.

Tom Selkirk buys into his own reputation as a nice guy. One who helps little old ladies with their shopping and gives up his seat on the bus to pregnant women. A reputation that isn’t a reality.

Tom has known Kaz longer than I have – they spent summers together, shared hiding places and secrets and sweets and a healthy resentment of Naomi. They have the kind of history that should have been worth more than an evening’s conversation and the eternally shit sentence “I just don’t see you like that any more.”

When I am wizened and old and have forgotten how to use a hairbrush, I’ll still remember the look on my best mate’s face as I sat on the sofa with her that same night, and the tears she couldn’t stop as she endlessly,
endlessly
asked me what was wrong with her. The answer is nothing. She is Kaz. She is
perfect
– and this boy, this normal, “nice” boy, who was meant to be as much friend as boyfriend, made her feel worthless.

Tell me how I’m ever supposed to forgive that.

Tom introduces me to the three girls from the camp next to theirs (the one with the Jolly Roger) and the girls make polite noises, whilst looking not entirely happy to have Ruby bowl up and sit down between Roly and Naj and take a handful of crisps from the bag Naj has just opened. Tom and his friends might be the year above us at Canterbury College, but Ruby’s as comfortable in their company as if she was sitting with girls she sees every day at Flickers.

“So how’ve you been?” Tom passes me a coffee brewed on their gas stove. I like that it’s exactly the way I take it without me having to ask.

“Fine.” I smile at the surface of my drink, thinking how peculiar it is to be seeing him for the first time in a field a hundred miles from the town where we both live. “How was France?” Every year Tom and his cousins stay with his grandparents in Brittany. This year I was supposed to go too.

“Bof,”
Tom says, before changing the subject. “Speaking of French, Dad said you got a set of insanely good results?”

“I did better than I expected.”

“Some of us always knew you were a genius,” he says. I elbow him in the side and he bumps me back. It feels nice. “What about Ruby?”

I look over to where Ruby is sitting, trying (failing) to hide how much she wants to leave.

It would feel wrong to talk about it to anyone else. But this is Tom. “Not brilliantly. Not well enough.”

He knows what I mean, and I can feel him looking at me as I look at Ruby. She’s been my best friend since I started at Flickers in Year 7 – even if she’s there to resit, she won’t be in any of my classes, she won’t be sitting in the common room in the sixth-form block, wearing her own clothes, but back in the school, forced into a uniform that she couldn’t wait to get out of.

Or there’s the other option that neither of us have talked about – that Ruby won’t be at Flickers at all.

I can be Kaz without Tom if I have to. I don’t know whether I can be Kaz without Ruby.

I message Lee.

Oh my God, I’m so bored
.

His reply:
Ungrateful much? I buy you a ticket, sort out your ride, buy your booze…

I’m paying you back for all those things. Anyway, that was supposed to be a HINT FOR YOU TO RING ME. I need an excuse here
.

Turning the volume up, I put my phone down and wait.

The girl next to Roly titters and twirls a strand of her hair round like a little helicopter – I’m sure she thinks she looks cute. She looks like an idiot. Not that Roly seems to mind.

I’m still waiting…

Naj shakes a fresh bag of crisps at me – an act that irritates one of the other girls next to him, who I think must fancy him, judging by the death glares she’s been giving me.

Waiting…

I don’t want to commit to more crisps and that girl is welcome to—

Finally my phone blares out Lee’s signature
Game of Thrones
theme tune and I stand up to answer it.

“THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME,” Lee bellows into my ear. “Get your ass back here, Ruby Slipper.” And then he hangs up.

“OK.” I smile, pretending he’s still there. “Will do.” Then I look up at my audience. “That was my brother. I’ve got to go.”

Kaz hasn’t even noticed I’ve stood up, and when I call out her name, she looks dazed and confused, as if she’s surprised to find I’m here at all.

“You coming?” I ask, watching the panic of indecision in her eyes: piss me off or deny herself some bonus Tom time?

“Five minutes?” Kaz looks hopeful, but when she says minutes she means hours, and there’s no way I can manage that long with only Tom’s friends and the girls who want to pull them for company. I don’t want to leave Kaz here either, but if I make a fuss, I’ll be acting all ogre-ish, which is apparently something I do and I am
not
prepared to be the bad guy here.

“Lee wants me for something” – which is the lamest of all the lies – “so I’ll head off now. See you when you’re done?”

Ruby waves goodbye with one hand, but I see her curl the index finger of the other into a hook against her thigh. It’s a signal I’m more used to giving than receiving –
you have half an hour before I try to find you
. Back when we went to The Cellar, before Ruby declared it a no-fly zone after she broke up with Stu, I’d find him and Ruby half an hour before the last bus home to Mum’s and give the sign before I rejoined everyone else on the dancefloor. It feels strange for Ruby to be using it on me and Tom.

Tom is sitting so close that his elbow brushes my side as he reaches to catch a bag of crisps. When he leans back to open them, I catch a faint hint of the Tom-smell I’ve been yearning for all summer. Suddenly half an hour doesn’t seem very long at all, but Ruby’s too far away now for me to call her back.