The Worst of Me (11 page)

‘Well, why don’t you ask your friends these questions? You shouldn’t just nod dumbly at them saying, “Wowee, I never knew those Muslims were so dangerous.”’

‘How do you know all of this? How do you know you’re not wrong?’

‘Why are you asking me, then?’

‘I’m not doubting you. I just want to know. How do you know this is right?’

Sam got off his swing and gave it an angry shove. ‘It’s just stuff I talk about to my friends. I’m interested because we should be interested, and I’m interested because . . . well partly it’s because I’m in love with one of them. I love Rashad. He’s not even gay, it’s stupid. Nothing is ever going to happen.’

I got off my swing too and fought the urge to hug him. ‘Love is shit, Sam,’ I said.

‘Yeah. Well, it doesn’t have to be for you. Talk to him.’

‘I will,’ I said. I was so sure I would, right then. ‘I just want . . . I want your permission to like him.’

‘You have it.’ He looked at me. He rolled his eyes, as if the serious part was over. ‘You have it, Cassidy.’

‘I want you to like him.’

Sam stared at me, saying nothing for a few seconds. ‘Make him nice, then.’

A couple of days after that I was in a Chemistry class, copper-plating a screw, with Isobel as my lab partner.

‘Do you think it’ll work with my earrings?’ she said. ‘Let’s have a go.’ She snapped one into the crocodile clip and we redunked, until the big teardrop shape had a pretty little coppery bottom. ‘Result! What are you doing for lunch, by the way? Are you meeting, er, Jonah? Or do you fancy coming for a panini with us?’

‘Panini sounds great,’ I said. There was an Italian place a few streets away that made great sandwiches, but they were quite expensive, so we tended to only have them as a treat.

‘Great, I’ll just text Ian and see if he wants to come.’

‘Ian?’ I said. ‘And Sophie?’ I bit my lip.

‘Nah, not Soph,’ Isobel said. ‘Just me and my brother. Still fancy it?’ She looked up – she was already texting.

‘Yeah,’ I shrugged.

So at lunchtime, the three of us met up to sit on a wall, holding our paninis in their waxed-paper wrapping. It was warm enough but there were grey clouds over us and I hoped it wouldn’t start raining before we’d finished. Ian was teasing his little sister, and I was trying to laugh and look natural, but, honestly, I was uncomfortable. I wasn’t part of their gang any more.

‘How many sixth-formers are actually going to be at this Halloween bash, Ian?’ Isobel said at one point. ‘We know you guys are organising it, but are you just going to fleece us with big ticket prices and then leave us dancing to the
CBBC Party Album
with thirteen year olds?’

‘Are you talking about that charity one?’ I said. ‘The Moth Ball? That’s
only
for sixth-formers, isn’t it? It says so on the posters.’

‘There’s a new thing pasted over that, now open to over-sixteens,’ Isobel said. ‘But all of Year 11 is assuming there’s no way of checking that, really.’

‘Yeah, it was just sixth form originally,’ Ian said. ‘And more of an excuse for a party than a charity thing. But then it looked like the tickets wouldn’t pay for any kind of decent entertainment, so they opened it up to your year because they wanted to sell enough tickets to make enough to get away with calling it a charity event, then they could get local firms to sponsor bits of it. And because a lot of sixth-form guys want to perv over you and your friends.’

‘That’s not something my friends are going to complain about,’ Isobel said. ‘It’s legit, then?’

‘I think we’re hoping it’ll even be
actually
good,’ Ian said. ‘I’m not on the committee, but Soph is involved.’

‘Are there still tickets?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, they want to sell loads. They’ve been given permission to open up the whole sixth-form block on the night, so it’s a bit more creepy and house partyish, with the Halloween theme. There’s teams of women at work making spiders out of old tights.’

‘Oh, just women?’ Isobel said, sarcastically. ‘What are the “men” doing, then?’

‘Don’t blame me, I’m not the factory manager! I just saw a bunch of them this morning surrounded by enormous spiders and they happened to be girls. Maybe
they refused to let the blokes get their hands on their tights.’ Ian turned to me. ‘Your lot are going, aren’t they?’

‘My lot?’

‘I know that Steve and Dominic have bought tickets ’cause I was there when they did. Dunno about Jonah, I guess.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’re still going out with him, though?’ Ian said. He stretched with both arms, then let his hands rest on the top of his head.

Yeah, very casual,
I thought,
nothing uncomfortable here.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I sounded defensive. I wished that in loaded conversations like this you could practise the way you said things and choose the ones that sounded the best. I wanted my ‘yeah’ to sound light and innocent.

‘Ian,’ Isobel said, ‘just say it if you’re going to say it.’

‘Just say what?’ I asked.

‘Listen, I’m heading back into school,’ Isobel said. ‘Come and catch me up in a minute, Cass.’

‘Isobel,’ I called after her. ‘Well, this is weird!’ I said to Ian, when she’d gone.

‘It’s not, don’t worry. I just thought we should have a chat, face to face,’ Ian said. ‘You know I’m rubbish in email.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, smiling as I remembered the arguments we’d had when I used to interpret his emails to mean something incredibly important, and spend days being angry about them. ‘But to be honest, you’re just freaking me out a bit. It’s that brother-sister handover, what was that?’

‘I know, sorry,’ Ian said. ‘I just wanted to tell you, the other day when I said Jonah was dodgy, I was really out of order.’ He pressed his lips together in that Ian way. ‘I just wanted you to know that. It’s none of my business. But we’re still friends, aren’t we? So I was a dick, and I think it’s important that you log this one as my dickishness.’

‘Oh, Ian, come on. It’s fine.’

Ian pressed his lips tighter, but he wasn’t smiling.

‘He is nice, too, you know?’ I said. ‘I know all that business with him arguing with everyone earlier was a bad start as new boys, but they’re just used to that kind of debating in their old school, they had debating teams. They went to inter-school debating competitions.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ Ian said. ‘Cass, you don’t have to . . .’ He stopped mid-sentence. I looked where he was looking and saw Steve and Lewis, then Dom and Jonah behind them.

‘Well, hi, Cassidy!’ Steve said, with a smile. I stood up, then stayed there awkwardly without moving
forward as I wondered whether to go and kiss Jonah or something. It was excruciating.

‘No, stay, it’s okay,’ Jonah said. ‘I’ll see you later, Cass.’ He gave me a doubtful little half-smile and they walked on, back into school.

‘Izzy shouldn’t have left us,’ Ian said, when they’d gone. ‘Sorry if —’

‘It’s fine, Ian,’ I said, trying to hide the impatience I felt. ‘I don’t need a chaperone. I’m not a Muslim!’ It was supposed to be a joke about what a racist I was now that I was going out with racists. It seemed to hang there between us, so stupid and heavy and real that I felt I could grab it, but I couldn’t push it away. ‘That was supposed to be funny,’ I said. ‘And not that way. Not the bad way.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Ian said. ‘But there sort of is only a bad way now.’

Jonah stuck with his pack and there was no way I could get him away from them. I wouldn’t normally approach him at school, so I didn’t now. I was used to him coming to find me, or us both flirtily ignoring each other, throwing occasional sly glances and longing looks.

So I stood there, close enough for him to see, my eyes pleading this time.
Come and talk.
I knew he must have known I’d been talking about him with Ian
because guilt shows on your face, and I knew that mine had had that guilt-filled gape when I’d spotted him. But he didn’t come over now. It wasn’t a total snub because we were still a fair way apart, it wasn’t like anyone would have noticed him ignoring me. It was a distance we were used to playing with, though, but this wasn’t playing, which meant it was fighting.

After school I tried to leave quickly and without a fuss, I didn’t want to look for him and be disappointed. But he was waiting for me just outside the gate, leaning with his back to me as I walked towards him, one dark shoulder raised. He turned round to face me when I got close, as if he’d sensed I was there, or maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe he’d seen me from further back and timed it well.

‘Hey,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the story?’

‘What . . . you mean . . . with . . .’

‘You and your ex having lunch together and looking like you’d been caught between the sheets. That story.’

‘Oh, that was mad,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘
Not
my idea. I thought I was having lunch with Isobel and then Ian turned up, and then Isobel went so that Ian could talk to me alone, so I thought it was going to be some big heavy talk, and then it wasn’t anything after all.’

‘So, what was it?’ Jonah asked. My mind went blank. I couldn’t think of a lie, or how to retell what happened and make it sound like nothing, and the more seconds
that ticked by without me saying something, the more my brain closed down. I can think of all kinds of lies now. Here’s one: I could have said that I was having lunch with Isobel and Ian came and joined us because he’s her brother and because Soph was organising the sixth-formers’ Halloween party and she’d got him to try to coordinate with the Year 11s now that we were allowed to buy tickets and then Isobel had had to go back into school before us because she’d left something or had to be early for something. Okay, it’s complicated, but it would have bored him out of following it up.

‘He wanted to say sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘He got drunk a couple of weeks ago. When we were all at Isobel’s. He lurched in and asked me if I knew what I was doing going out with you, or something like that, but he didn’t get very far because Iso threw him out, and even before that happened all he’d said was something like . . . oh, I can’t remember.’

‘You can remember,’ Jonah said. The tone of his voice was light and almost joky, but I knew there was no way he was going to let me get away with leaving it there.

‘He literally didn’t say anything bad! I think he was
going
to tell me about that, you know, like,
situation
you all got into in general studies or whatever it was,
but he didn’t even get around to it because Isobel told him to go away, and then he obviously thought he’d said more and couldn’t remember, and wanted to tell me he shouldn’t have said what he didn’t even say.’

‘This would all be okay if you weren’t obviously trying so hard to protect him.’

I just looked at him. ‘So it’s not okay?’ I finally said. I started walking and he stayed with me.

‘He’s a cock.’

‘He’s a nice guy. Really,’ I said. ‘This is more of a big deal than it needs to be.’ I rubbed my eyes and face with the flat of my hand. ‘Just don’t . . .’

‘Just don’t what?’

‘Just don’t say anything.’

‘I’m going to say something.’

‘Jonah . . .’

‘If he’s got a problem with me, he and I should talk about it.’

‘He hasn’t got a problem with you.’

‘I have a problem with him.’

We’d reached the top of my street. ‘I have to go.’

‘So go.’ He stopped walking with me, but he didn’t walk away, he just stood there watching me walk to my house and go inside, and it felt horrible.

If you’re not talking to someone it can be hard to find out if you’ve broken up. Jonah didn’t phone or email or text. And neither did I. But I’d been the one who walked away, so I had to assume I still had a say in what happened. I wanted to call Ian to tell him there might be a problem, but it was too embarrassing. Maybe Jonah had never intended to talk to Ian. Or, while we were arguing, maybe he thought he would, but then later thought better of it. If I phoned Ian and said, ‘Jonah is mad at you,’ I’d be embarrassing Jonah and sending a message to Ian about the state of my relationship. I’d be doing something worse than that, too: taking sides.

I was late for school the next day, only persuading myself at the last minute that I had to go. I didn’t have
anyone to talk to that I knew for sure would want to talk to me. As soon as I arrived I headed for the loos and waited there till registration – because I lived so close there was only a few minutes to go. I stared at my reflection, glad there was nobody else in there. The strip lighting showed up every flaw, every hair and freckle and spot, the tiny black beetles of flaking mascara under my eyes, my dry, cracking lips. The rough, reddened skin on my cheeks and chin where Jonah’s stubble scratched. I touched my lips with freezing cold fingertips, remembering the kisses and the warmth.

In registration I sat quietly and pretended to be going through my bag, my books, my pencil case, for some kind of important information. I leaned back with my legs crossed, looking like I didn’t care about anything, but really I was just too shy to talk to anyone. When break came I looked for Jonah, but couldn’t see him. He still hadn’t tried to get in touch.

After break, I had double English, sitting next to Dee, and I relaxed – she even made me laugh. She asked if I wanted to join her for lunch, but I said I was fine before I even thought about it. I think my subconscious was too worried about her friends knowing me as that girl who went around with those Muslim-hating weirdos and what the hell did she think was she doing here? Besides, I was desperate to be alone because I had
nothing to say, I wasn’t interesting, and I was in a crappy mood. Also, I suppose, I was hoping Jonah and I would be working things out then.

But I didn’t make it easy for him. I went out and bought a pile of junk food, which I ate walking back from the shop, then I stayed miles away from the sixth-form block. I didn’t want anyone to see me lurking around it, looking for him like some idiot kid with a crush, while sixth-formers laughed and told him his stalker was outside.

It was games in the afternoon and I considered making a run for it, because no one would notice if I was standing in the corner of a football field or not. I could have taken a bus into town, gone to the pictures, found a new messed-up boy to mess me about. I stayed, though, just for the joy of being picked second to last, standing around a lot freezing, and nearly losing all feeling in one ankle when Alison Francis tackled me.