The Worst of Me (13 page)

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, of course,’ I said.

‘Your mum’s probably gonna be back pretty soon?’ Jonah said, and I realised he wanted an excuse to get dressed, and to get out. I didn’t want to be undressed any more either, but the clothes I’d taken off seemed too much a part of what had happened. They lay baggily all over my bedroom. I thought about my mum and felt sad, as if I’d lost some jewellery she’d given to me. Eugh, that sounds so naff! I don’t mean my virginity was like a jewel, or precious, I mean, it felt as though I’d lost something that mattered to someone
else too. I wasn’t sure I even
had
: I didn’t feel like a virgin any more, but I definitely didn’t feel like I wasn’t, either. I was desperate to talk about it, I wanted Jonah to say everything was fine, but he didn’t.

‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said.

‘Don’t think she’s going to want to find me here.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, avoiding looking at me.

I reached for my bra and put it on; it felt cold on my skin. Jonah threw on his T-shirt, putting both arms in before his head, the way boys do.

‘I’m sorry, I’m really rubbish,’ I said. ‘I was expecting it to —’

‘Really, look, don’t be sorry,’ Jonah said. ‘Stop saying you’re sorry. I should go.’

We kissed a little bit behind my closed front door, and when I opened it to let him out, he hooked my fingertips in his and gave me a sad little smile. I closed the door and watched him walking away, a reverse repeat of the moment when I saw him walking towards the house earlier in the evening, and I’d believed I could do anything.

When he’d gone I ran the bath and cried in it, adding more hot water until my skin turned pink. I’d messed up the most important moment of my life.

I was already out of the bath when my mum finally
came home, carrying a huge pile of papers in a cardboard box. She dumped them on to the kitchen table and looked around.

‘Didn’t you have any soup?’ she asked me.

‘Yeah, I did, it was nice,’ I said.

‘Really, and you washed your bowl and spoon and put them back in the cupboard?’ she said. But she smiled.

‘I just ate some junk while I was on the internet,’ I said. ‘I’ll eat it tomorrow.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not telling you off. I never said I was a good cook. Fortunately, we have Paul.’ My face must have fallen, because she stopped smiling. ‘I know . . .’ She sighed. ‘I know you . . .’ Stopped again. ‘I know you don’t . . .
like
Paul,’ she said. She looked up at me, and her nervousness freaked me out.

‘It’s not about me not liking him . . .’

‘And it kills me. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. If I let myself think about this, though, it is like someone has taken away all my breath and my stomach hurts and my heart hurts and I hate myself for making my little girl sad and I don’t know how I can go on being selfish.’

‘Mum . . .’

‘I think I just keep believing you’ll see him the way I do sooner or later. Because he is a good man, Cass, and he’s so good for me.’

This just got me angry again, because at the heart of it, it was all about her and her feelings, and wanting me to agree with them, rather than her trying to see things my way.

‘Well, it’s not like I’m going to live here for ever, is it?’ I said, trying to make her feel guilty, but also, I think, trying to hurt her. I did believe that she loved me, and that having to think about losing me would make her sad, even if she wanted it sometimes. I felt wild and reckless, mainly because I was mad at myself for being stupid earlier and wanted to take it out on someone else. But also because I’d needed this conversation and imagined having it for so long that I almost had a script to work from, as long as my mum said everything she was supposed to say.

‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ my mum said. ‘But I’m going to have to deal with that, and I’m going to have to be grown up about it.’

I didn’t really know what she meant. There was a strange atmosphere between us, I had a kind of ache through my body because she wasn’t holding me, and I needed her to hold me. I kept imagining the feeling, the softening through my muscles, but I couldn’t go to her and couldn’t trust myself not to push her away if she tried to touch me – I felt prickly and sore-skinned. In a way, it was enough that she was there, and not telling me off. Her timing was so good I worried my face was
giving something away. I had a million questions in my head, all shouting for attention at the same time, until I realised I wasn’t going to ask any of them.

‘It’s not that I don’t like Paul, Mum,’ I said. ‘But I don’t really know him, and he talks to me as if we go all the way back. It’s hard to know how to take it. I don’t think I’m ever going to feel like I can talk to him like that.’ I could hear the way I sounded, cold and bored-sounding, and suddenly realised it wasn’t an affectation.

I
didn’t
really care about Paul.

This wasn’t about Paul being there, it was about my mum
not
being there. It made me so angry. I felt like she’d abandoned me without any warning, she’d just gone. Once, post-Dad, it had been the two of us, and we had been strong and amazing and loving. And all of that had ended almost in a flash, and Mum didn’t even seem to have noticed, or feel like she owed me anything, and maybe she didn’t. But we’d had it, it had been real, and now it was gone. Tiny little things that added up: the way she used to surprise me with little presents when she came back from shopping or baked me brownies. Not the
things
, even, the fact that I was on her mind. The way she used to come in at night and talk to me in my room until I started to drift off, the sound of her voice making me safe – even watching telly together, that almost never happened now. Gone.
And I missed it and I needed it more than ever, especially tonight. I didn’t know if it was fair to resent her, because maybe she did deserve her own life back already, and she probably thought she could have both. I tried to stay angry, but feeling guilty kept getting in the way.

And then she said: ‘You’ve already left me, haven’t you, Cass?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, you’re talking about leaving home, but you’ve checked out already.’ She looked so sad. I hated the way she let me see her sadness. It was frustrating because I knew
I
could be exactly the same way with her and let her know how bad I was feeling, but I kept so much hidden. So many times when I’d been hurt and lonely and hated Paul and even hated her, I went to my room and stayed quiet or poured things out to an anonymous talkboard, somewhere she’d never see it. She had no idea how much I felt. Like now, I so wanted to talk to her about love – and sex – as I knew so many of my friends did with their mums – but there was no way it was going to happen, she would have freaked out. She wanted me to be a grown-up when she talked about her relationships, she always said she thought I’d want to know the truth about what happened between her and my dad – as if by being honest she was doing me
a favour – but there was no way she’d have been able to take me being the same way back.

I didn’t have the energy to contradict what she’d said, but she was wrong. This evening I wasn’t ready to look after myself, I wanted my mum to be my mum, however she wanted to be. I walked around the kitchen table to her and put one arm around her. The whole time I was terrified she’d reject me, and she almost did, staying stiff and cool for a long time, but it was too late, I couldn’t stop now. Then I felt her arms around my shoulders and smelled that Mum smell that no one else smelled like, and I stayed very still, hoping she wouldn’t let me go.

The next morning, I ran into Dee outside the school gates. She seemed to have been waiting for me, and looked stressed out.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘You’re not going to like this,’ she said. ‘Well I
hope
you’re not going to like this.’ Her voice was tight and angry.

‘What?’

‘You know Nash’s friend Saira?’

‘I think so? Sixth-former, kind of big . . .’

‘Kind of big, yes. Very fat, but so what?’ She almost shouted this.

‘I was just checking we were talking about the same person. Come on, Dee, how long have you known me and I’m suddenly a bitchy fat-fascist?’

‘I know, I know,’ she said, over a sigh. ‘I’m just
worried about you.’

‘Why are you worried about me?’

‘Okay, so last week there was more of this stupid contemporary society or whatever it’s called discussion in Nash’s general studies class, and this time apparently Saira was defending the fact that she wears the hijab.’

‘Oh. What did they say?’ I said. I felt a sense of dread.

‘Nothing
there
. But she was seeing a film with some friends on Sunday, ran into your friends, and they were pissed, and Steve was like, “Thank God you’ve covered up your
beauty
or we’d be completely unable to stop ourselves from ravishing you!” and he came up to her and touched her.’

‘What do you mean, “touched her”?’

‘Look, no big deal, I don’t mean touched her up. Just put his arm around her waist. But it was horrible for her. She knows they’re taking the piss because she’s not pretty, and she’s the one who used the word “beauty” in the class, because that’s the line on the hijab, but to have to deal with pissed-up boys in the street – and she’s not great with boys, she was really scared – that kind of talk is frightening and threatening even if you’re not “pretty”, you know!’ She was furious now, talking faster than I’d ever heard her talk.

‘I didn’t say it, Dee!’

‘Saira said there was a girl with them.’

‘Jesus Christ, you think it was me? Saira knows me, doesn’t she?’

‘She wasn’t sure. The girl had curly hair.’

‘IT WASN’T ME!’

‘Well, is there a difference?’

‘What the hell? Is there a difference between all girls with curly hair? What?’

‘NO!’ Dee sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Cass. I just mean, what’s the difference between being the girl with them on Sunday night and being the girl with them tomorrow night?’

‘You can’t think that about me.’

‘No,’ she said, and she was nice, reassuring, pushing me to take her word. But I realised I was trembling.

‘Was Jonah there?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘She said Steve and some mates and some girl. I can find out.’

‘You don’t have to.
I
can find out.’

‘Just find out everything. Be aware of what you’re into, and who you’re involved with, and know that people are talking.’

‘They’re not racists, Dee.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s bullshit, isn’t it! It’s some kind of stupid showing off about how clever they are. They’re just
parroting some books they’ve read.’

‘Well look, Cass,’ Dee said. ‘Ask yourself this: is it nice?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not nice.’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Is Saira going to tell someone at school?’

‘I doubt it. It’s not like she’s not used to hearing crap like that, worse, in the street. She only told Nash last night, and she told him because Nash hates them.’

‘Really, Nash hates them?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Is someone going to complain about them?’ I said.

‘Why do you keep asking that? Are you more worried about them being slapped down by the school than the fact that they’re doing it?’

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘There’s no point us talking about this any more. You know how I feel.’

‘Cassidy, I
don’t
,’ Dee said.

I walked off. Not out of anger, I just couldn’t face her anymore, I was too depressed, I couldn’t make myself talk.

I had to walk past the sixth-form block anyway, and I stopped outside it, looking up at the common-room window to see if I could see Jonah, but the windows were full of ads for the Moth Ball. I’d heard girls in my class discussing their costumes, some were going for those stupid sexy cat or slutty she-devil things, and in happier moments I’d been daydreaming about mine –
something creepy and not so obvious. I’d been waiting for Jonah to ask me to come with him, but I guess I’d been giving him other things to think about. Now, if he asked, there was absolutely no way I would go.

‘Well, Miss O’Neill! Are you checking up on your husband?’ It was Steve, on his way into the block. ‘Would you like me to send him out to you?’ His eyes flicked from my face all the way up and down my body as if he was checking me out. I thought about him grabbing Saira, and how getting attention from the wrong boy can make you feel sick to your stomach.

I was about to bleat something apologetic and run away. I remember avoiding looking at him, feeling small and flimsy. But then I forced myself to face him and saw his broad, not-quite-bearded face with that mocking, yellow, smoker’s grin and I knew I wasn’t scared of him, just
furious
. I had the urge to slap him and keep slapping him, could picture his cheek reddening with repeated slaps from the hardest part of my hand. I couldn’t remember ever being so angry.

‘You’re pathetic,’ I said.

‘I’m pathetic?’ he said. I knew that people repeated things to buy themselves time when they didn’t know what to do, but his loud voice and laugh still made me wobble a bit. The fear was back, edging in on the anger, as I realised I didn’t have a plan.

‘I heard about what you said to Saira,’ I said. ‘Who do you think you are?’

‘You weren’t there, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Steve said. ‘And I’ve seen you laughing well enough when Joe’s made jokes like that.’

‘Never,’ I said, biting my lip hard to stress the word. ‘Was Joe . . . nah there?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Steve asked. His grin broadened, then he frowned in mock concern. ‘It seems to me you have some communication problems.’ Sensing an audience gathering around us – a couple of sixth-formers had stopped to listen – he added a more obvious insult: ‘Seems to me you’ve got problems full stop. I don’t have time for this.’

‘Was he there?’ I asked again, even though I knew it was stupid.

‘Ask him,’ Steve said and the door swung shut behind him.