Remix (6 page)

The look on his face differs from everyone else’s. There’s no surprise there, no growing admiration. He looks proud and sad and hungry, as if Kaz is a feast he helped prepare but hasn’t been invited to join.

I don’t look away when he glances over at me. Instead I think of all the times I listened to Kaz cry, rather than sing, as if I can transfer the memories from my head to his. He knows he should not be here and yet there he is, sitting right in Kaz’s eyeline, collar popped on his shirt, healthy-outdoorsy tan at full peak, a clean-living and clean-shaven tick list of all the things Kaz wants in a boy.

When the song draws to a close, Lee leaps up to give a standing ovation and Parvati and Dongle join him. Anna and Owen slap her on the back and tell her she’s amazing. Even new-girl Stella is clapping like she means it. Only Tom and me remain undisturbed amidst all the movement – me still watching him watching her.

After five songs, my voice starts to go. The sun’s sunk below the line of trees behind me and my audience has grown. Two girls from a couple of camps over (who I can’t tell apart except for the fact that one has a fringe) asked Dongle whether we had any spare firelighters. I watched as he pushed the carrier bag filled with flammable material further back under his camping chair and invited them to share our fire instead. Given that they’ve brought a couple of bottles of tequila that they show no qualms about sharing, no one else objects.

When I finish the song, everyone chants my name. This makes me both happy and uncomfortable, especially as some of the older people from the other camps look over. Now seems like a good time to stop and I hand the guitar to Owen, relieved to be able to adjust my position. My left foot went to sleep during the second chorus of “Time of Your Life” and I stand up to stamp some feeling back into it.

“Encore!” Lee calls out and I shake my head.

“Time for someone else’s fingers to cramp,” I say with a smile.

Lee pulls a face. “Does that person have to be Owen?”

There’s a beat in which I don’t know whether I’m supposed to laugh, because even if it’s a joke, it’s not a funny one.

“What are you saying, Lee?” Anna asks, although I can tell that Owen wishes she hadn’t.

“That this is supposed to be a singalong. Give that one a guitar and I guarantee two songs in and Owen’ll start playing his own stuff.” Lee is grinning, an air of mischief about him as he points a finger at Owen. It’s not a very steady finger and I wonder exactly how many of those cocktails he’s drunk.

Lee pulls this shit on me all the time, winding me up to watch me snap just for the kick of it.

But Owen’s more patient than I am.

“I’m sorry, Lee, I always thought you liked my stuff.”

“I
love
your stuff!” Lee redirects his finger from Owen’s chest to Owen’s crotch, prompting a round of chuckles from the group.

If I could reach, I’d snap that fucking finger. Lee is not playing nice.

“Nice to know you only want me for my body.” Owen’s smile is forced.

I know before he opens his mouth what my brother will say.

“Well, someone’s got to.” Lee would never have resisted a quip like that in front of an audience as big as this one.

Only no one laughs. Not even Parvati, who might be as sharp as my brother, but loves Owen more, nor the Tequila Girls and Stella, who all draw closer together, united by their discomfort.

In the silence that follows, Owen takes the guitar from his lap and hands it to Kaz. Then he stands, stepping over the glowing fire to walk past Lee. When my brother reaches out to catch his wrist, Owen flinches away, and Lee’s fingers comb the empty air.

“O…” he says quietly, then louder as Owen rounds his shoulders and carries on walking through the gap between their tent and Dongle’s.

We all have the same thought at the same time – Anna, Parvati, me – we all move as if we’re going to follow him, but our paths are blocked by Lee who’s standing too, but not to pursue Owen.

“I need a drink,” he murmurs and bends over the cool box as Anna kicks it shut.

There’s a moment of stunned silence before it explodes into noise.

“I
like
Hydro’s songs…” Dongle says to Stella, who doesn’t even know who Hydro are.

“… my gaydar so needs retuning…” from one of the new girls, who’d been giving Lee more than a few surreptitious glances.

“… didn’t expect this kind of drama,” Tom says across the gap that Owen’s left between us. I glance at him, not sure what to say.

“… such a dick. What’s
wrong
with you?” Anna’s shouting at Lee, who’s surrounded: Anna, Parvati and Ruby, each as angry as the other.

Lee ignores them, grabbing a plastic cup and pouring some of the girls’ tequila into it rather than trying to move Anna’s foot from where she’s planted it on the cool box. “Nothing’s wrong with me. Lighten up, Anna. It was a
joke
, for fuck’s sake.”

I’ve never heard Lee swear before.

“Really? You think that was funny? Pissing all over someone you’re supposed to care about.”

“What’s that ‘supposed’ to mean?” Lee’s face is drawn and angry as he downs his drink.

“It means that if this is the way you show you love someone, Lee, then it’s a good job you’re leaving. Owen’s better off without you.”

There’s a horrified hush as Lee crushes his cup in his fist and throws it so hard at the fire that it hits the logs and bounces out on the other side. He turns and walks off – in the opposite direction to Owen. Like a greyhound from a trap, Ruby bounds after him into the dark, leaving the rest of us staring round in confusion, Anna calling someone – presumably Owen – on her phone whilst Parvati tells her to leave him be, Dongle trying to reassure the new girls that things are usually a little less stressful and offering to top up drinks.

When Tom stands up and suggests getting some chips, I’m right there with him, noting everyone’s order on my phone and collecting the money. I want out of here as much as he does. It won’t hurt for us to do it together.

Little food plus much beer equals bad sprinting skills and I nearly faceplant when my foot hits a pothole. By the time a particularly kind couple wearing matching sloth T-shirts have hefted me off the floor, I’ve lost Lee completely.

My brother is such a dickhead.

I reach into my pocket for my phone to text that insightful comment to him, but my phone’s not there. Nor is it in my other pocket, which is stuffed full of Owen’s keys and Kaz’s condoms. I check the ground where I fell, but I can’t see anything. Guess the stupid thing fell out when I was at camp. Again. Tomorrow I’m wearing better shorts. Or possibly fixing the hole in these ones since I’m pretty sure they’re the only ones I brought.

Sans mobile communication, there seems little point in looking for Lee, but whilst I’m here, I may as well head down to the toilets. It’s a destination that seems inconceivably distant to all the boys pissing through the fence rather than walking the
thirty seconds
it takes to reach the facilities at the bottom of the hill. Guess if I could pee standing up, I wouldn’t bother either.

It’s only as I’m heading out of the loos, eyeing up a particularly pretty/pierced boy who’s walking along the path into the woods that I spot a familiar face.

Owen’s standing with his back to a tree, head down, staring at his shoes. He glances up, scanning the path, eyes passing over me because I’m not the person he wishes was looking for him. He does a double take, and I walk over and hug him. It’s a bit Harry-hugging-Hagrid, but that doesn’t matter. I might be tiny, but my love is large.

“I’m sorry,” I say, wishing it was Lee saying this and not me.

Owen squeezes me a little harder, and we stay like that for a few moments more before he lets go and we both sit down on the dusty ground.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Ruby.”

“Lee does.”

“Yes. He does.” Owen’s misery is so intense I can feel it creeping over me, seeping through my skin and into my blood, flowing towards my heart.

“You know it was only a joke, right?”

“Sometimes I think our whole relationship is a joke.”

“Don’t say that! Lee
loves
you.”

But the word “love” has been drained of meaning after what Lee said –
Well, someone’s got to
. I can’t bear to think that the cheap laugh he was aiming for might have cost him his relationship.

“I know he loves me, Ruby, but that’s not much consolation for having the person you worship call you fat.”

“But you’re
perfect
!” And I launch myself at him, my throat burning with outrage and defiance and conviction. I’m squeezing Owen so hard I’m surprised he has the breath left to laugh as he hugs me back, before gently prising himself from my clutches.

“Every word you’ve said is what I want to hear” – his smile is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen – “but you’re not the Kalinski I want to hear saying it.”

Owen sends me back to the camp and tells me not to worry. I tell him he’s an idiot and of course I’m going to worry. I can’t face the thought of those two breaking up. Owen’s like a surrogate brother – a kinder, gentler one than any of the three I’ve already got.

Drawing in a long, deep breath, I concentrate on the smoke and the smells and the sounds of the site around me until I’m filled with something other than the thought of losing those I love. It feels like the night’s half over. The sun went down ages ago, taking my hopes of a first night full of exciting new people and sexy strangers with it.

Or not. As I catch sight of our camp, it looks as if it’s grown, and from the sounds of it, the new additions might just be of the boy kind.

Maybe tonight isn’t a total write-off after all.

One, two, three steps closer and—

That’s when I stop.

I do not know how Stu got here.

“What’s he doing here?” Tom asks me and I frown at him, slightly annoyed that he thinks I’d know – how would I, when I’d been queuing with him for chips all the time?

Stu and his friends (Cellar regulars Travis and Goz) were sitting round our fire when we got back five minutes ago, passing a joint round as if they’d been here all night. When Dongle started to introduce them, Stu waved away any explanations. “Kaz and I know each other from way back.”

The way he said it made it sound as if we’d dated or something and I felt Tom bristle. If I hadn’t been so horrified at the sight of Stu, I might have been pleased about that.

“I’ve got to warn Ruby,” I whisper, firing off a badly typed text.

Two seconds later, I’m looking at that same message flash up on the phone by Stu’s foot. He doesn’t notice it, but he sees me looking his way. Murmuring something to Stella, who’s next to him, Stu gets up to come over and I forget about the phone.

“Don’t even think of sitting down,” I say. He sits down. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay away.”

Stu feigns a shot to the heart, smirking the whole time. “I didn’t know this was where I’d find you. Dongle called Travis, asking him if he had any weed. Travis kindly offered to drop it off … and here we are.” He leans round to look at Tom. “And Tom too. Hello, Tom.”

“Hello, Garside.” Even when they had a reason to get along, Stu and Tom weren’t exactly a good fit.

“All we need is Ruby and it’ll be like old times,” Stu says. Tom doesn’t look happy, and his discomfort only serves to make Stu all the more amused. “How’ve you been, mate?”

“I’ve been fine. On holiday, mostly.”

“Really?” Stu sips his beer. “So it wasn’t you I saw down by the pier the other day?”

Tom goes very still for a moment, then, “Probably not.”

“You’re right. Probably not.” Stu glances at me and smiles, a flash of teeth in the glow of the fire as he stands up to leave us.

An all-over tingle of adrenalin sweeps through me along with the deep and intense desire to try and tear all his clothes off with my teeth.

It takes a second for my brain to remind my body that we hate Stu.

Hate. Him.

As he walks round the outside of the circle, I catch sight of a new tattoo on his right forearm and I wonder what it is. Without wanting to, I think of the times I lay on his bed, tracing the lines of the one that stretches across the whole of his back with my finger…

He’s looking good. His T-shirt’s tight to his body and his hair’s shorter, cropped close to his skull. It suits him.

So not fair that my ex looks hotter and I look crapper. I gave into the cliché and cut my hair off – not, like,
bald
but short enough that I can’t tie it back – and I hate it. And I’ve lost too much weight. A fortnight of living off popcorn and custard creams should have made me fatter, right? It didn’t. I’m a half-stone down that I can’t seem to make up. My boobs are flapping around inside my B-cups and the ribcage underneath is a lot more obvious than I’d like it to be. I don’t need my mother constantly commenting on how healthy my friends look to know I need to get back into eating real food.

The way my throat’s squidged shut at the sight of Stu is hardly likely to help matters.

What the fucking fuckbags is he doing here?

It’s Tom who notices Ruby. He nudges me, but when I look up, the light’s behind her and I can’t make out her expression. I want to spring up and check she’s OK, but Ruby’s armour is powered by other people’s perceptions. The last thing I want to do is expose a chink.

There’s a glance my way that’s part question, part (justified) accusation, then she’s walking straight through the middle of the camp to where Stu’s friends are, which is a very Ruby thing to do. Tell her she can’t do something and Ruby will rush right in:

*  jumping off Clifton’s excuse for a pier because Callum said it was a stupid thing to do

*  staying out late when she’d been told to stay in

*  saying
Bloody Mary
in the mirror because she read about it in a book

*  starting a petition in Year 9 for our year to be included in the Flickers/Dukes mixer disco and persuading everyone across the two schools to sign it before she sent it to the local paper.