The Worst of Me (4 page)

‘I wanted to talk to you before today,’ Jonah said. ‘But you were always on your own.’

‘Isn’t it harder to talk to people when they’re with other people?’ I said, trying to sound as if what he’d just said hadn’t embarrassed me.
Excuse me, I couldn’t help noticing you appear to have VERY FEW FRIENDS.
I thought about him seeing me alone, and how carefully I worked at seeming relaxed and confident when I was alone. Had there been moments when I forgot, when I let my guard down and looked lonely, or didn’t it work at all?

He laughed. ‘It’s just hard to talk to you.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s not hard to
talk
to you. You know I don’t mean
that
. I didn’t know how much you’d want me charging up to you in school.’

‘Quite a lot, it turns out.’

‘Well, that’s good to know. I may try it again. Look, for all I knew, what you said about us having to pretend last Saturday hadn’t happened wasn’t a joke. When you’re on your own, you don’t exactly look like you need rescuing.’

‘I don’t need rescuing,’ I said. ‘What
do
I look like?’ It’s awful how interested I was in talking about myself, but I was desperate to know what he thought of me. My heart stopped beating so all of me could concentrate on his answer.

‘You look . . . like the pretty girl who’s tired of everyone and needs to get away.’ He sipped his coffee and I tried to think of something to say – and was too excited by the word pretty to respond to this – but he hadn’t finished. ‘But, you know, always a little bit sad, too. It’s funny, how you’re so funny when someone’s talking to you but then you can look so sad.’

‘I’m not all that sad, it’s just the way my face looks,’ I said, covering as much of it as I could with my hands and hair. But on the word ‘face’, my voice cracked.

‘I know you don’t need rescuing,’ Jonah said carefully. ‘But how would you feel about joining my gang, anyway? And we’ll do brave and heroic things together.’

‘Your gang?’ I thought about Steve the slightly disapproving slightly beardy one, Lewis the slightly
weird one, and wondered how Jonah’s gang would feel about this invitation.

‘Yeah, very exclusive gang. Membership at the moment is just me, in fact, so if you say no, that would be slightly tragic, actually. You should probably say yes just out of pity for me . . .’ He raised both eyebrows.

I felt hot all over. I took a breath and let it out without speaking, just so I could make the moment last half a second longer. He was beautiful, sitting there in the late, low sunlight, his shiny hair, big arms, clever smile taking away any choice.

He leaned across the café table and kissed me. It was strange to kiss in the daylight when I hardly knew him. His neck smelled like lemon trees and his lips were endlessly soft. I felt as if I were floating. But thoughts of the grimness of the evening ahead piled into my head like bricks falling on me.

‘I have to go,’ I said. I must have said it a bit weirdly.
Don’t be weird. Not yet. Let him like you first. Fool him a bit longer.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.
Really
.’ I looked up at him, trying to smile. ‘I just lost track of the time. I said I’d be back by now.’

‘Hey, don’t look sad again. Is everything okay? I shouldn’t have —’

‘Everything’s lovely,’ I said.
Lovely?
I laughed at
how lame I sounded. ‘It’s all lovely,’ I said even more goofily, trying to sound like I was making fun of myself.

‘You’re . . . kind of mad,’ he said, grinning.

He brushed over the back of my neck, combing my hair through his fingertips. Just a little touch, it seemed to set off tiny fireworks all the way down to my ankles. I wished he was holding me. ‘Okay, I’ll let you go home, Cinderella. Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’

I wanted to throw my arms out and shout it: ‘I’m not doing
anything
tomorrow night.’

On Friday night my best friends were at the party of the year and I was kissing a boy on the other side of town. Have you ever wondered what’s the point of kissing? If you think too hard about it, kissing doesn’t make any sense and it’s quite a disgusting idea. When it’s with someone you don’t really fancy it’s more
weird
than disgusting, because you start thinking too much. With Ian, it had started to get difficult for me because he was older than me and we’d been going out six months and his mates must have been asking him about it because my mates were asking me about it. You know,
it
.

In fact, Ian hadn’t been pressuring me about going all the way. But I had been pressuring myself, worried about whether he was getting fed up of me. I played the conversation in my mind – that’s one of my worst habits, mentally rehearsing my future, but the real thing
usually doesn’t turn out the same way. I tested all the ways of telling him I wanted to wait till I was sixteen until I could do it without sounding uptight or clichéd, but I never said them out loud, to him. We just kissed. We held each other. Sometimes he held me tighter and sighed through his whole body and I was afraid we couldn’t keep doing this for much longer. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, I was just scared it would change us and scared of getting it wrong. I always thought it would happen, but we never had the conversation.

Now I was kissing a different boy, and that conversation was all over my head, interrupting my thoughts like my mum banging on the door of my room. Ian had always been around, I’d known him for years through Isobel. He was Isobel’s brother, he’d been around since I was twelve – so Ian had always been knowable and safe. Jonah was all new territory. I couldn’t be sure of understanding him or of being understood, and it was happening so fast. He was my first stranger: the first boy where the romance came before knowing him.

It made everything incredibly, incredibly exciting.

Well, look, I’m spoiling it for you, and how we got there isn’t
the
most romantic thing you ever heard, or even anything you haven’t heard before. But let me just relive it, because I was there and I can.

We’d arranged to meet near the magazines section of a
big bookshop at six. I got there really early and browsed slowly, hoping I wouldn’t run out of things to look at, hoping he would actually come. Every time I looked at my watch it had moved on a single minute, as if I’d suddenly acquired the talent of being able to guess when exactly one minute had passed. I was there so long I went through the worry barrier, and got genuinely interested in an article in a film magazine about the movie I’d seen with Jonah (but not really
with
Jonah). So after stealing glances at the door for the full half hour of earliness, I didn’t notice Jonah come in bang on time, and I jumped when he spoke to me, with his lips so close to my hair I could have turned around and kissed him. We’d already had that mini-snog in the café, so it would have been allowed, but this was our first real date and it seemed more important to get everything in the right order.

‘How long have I got this time?’ Jonah asked. I frowned at him, not understanding. ‘I’m used to you running off when things get interesting,’ he said. ‘I just want to know in advance when I’m nearly out of time and I have to start cramming in all my best moves.’

I lifted my chin. ‘You’d better start now.’

Jonah slid his flat hand lightly across my lower back. It made me feel like I belonged with him. ‘Do you want to stay here for a coffee or do you fancy walking? It’s still warm outside. I’d quite like to walk.’

‘I’d like to walk too.’

We walked slowly. The sun was dropping low, dazzling us. I had a funny feeling, like I was cheating on Ian, even though it had been a long time since I’d done this kind of thing with him.

‘How’s your day been?’ I asked.

‘Slow. The whole week has been slow. I’m already ready for the next holiday.’

‘We’ve hardly been back.’

‘Well, it’s back for you,’ Jonah said. ‘It’s all new for me.’

‘And what’s the verdict? How’s the new place working out for you?’

‘Your teachers are all insane.’

‘I could have told you that.’

‘Your guys are all chippy.’

‘Yeah, well . . . I think they just take a while to make their minds up about new faces,’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ Jonah said. ‘There’s not much interaction, though, is there, between the, uh, various
gangs
?’

We carried on walking in silence and it wasn’t awkward, but I wondered who was going to break it.

Then I blurted, ‘What about our girls?’

‘Your girls are good fun,’ Jonah said, nodding. ‘Some of them have definitely got potential.’

‘Oh really! Potential for what?’

‘Well, just as an example, you, I mean taking just one example, you understand . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah, I understand, just as an
example
. . .’

‘Well, I could see you as a long-term friend, you’re definitely long-term material.’ He cupped his hand in front of his eyes, shielding them from the sun, and turned towards me. I searched his face for sarcasm, but it wasn’t there. That seemed somehow sweeter than a compliment about fancying me – that he’d be serious about wanting me as a friend. We’d reached the steps of the city hall and climbed up a few and sat down. ‘Are you warm enough?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

He reached for my hand and held it. ‘Your hands are cold.’

‘They always are.’

‘It’s funny, isn’t it? We’ve spent all our lives in this town, walking around the same streets, being alive at the same time, and we’ve never seen each other before. I mean, probably we’ve been in the same building together at the same time, like . . . WH Smith’s or something . . .’

‘I have actually been to WH Smith’s!’ I said.

‘Me too!’

I had this crazy big grin on my face because he was being so silly, but he was funny about it, totally straight-faced as if he might have really meant it, this wonderment that our destinies had had us circling each other around pencil case racks and magazines long
before meeting. I don’t even know now how much he was joking!

‘So I’m going to guess things about you,’ Jonah said. ‘Just on firstish impressions, and you can tell me how right I am.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Everyone likes being told things about themselves.’

Jonah knotted his fingers through mine. ‘You’re very independent.’

‘I can be.’ Had I been holding his hand too loosely? Like I wanted to get rid of it?

‘You’re a bit older – in your head – than your friends. You sometimes find it hard to explain exactly what you’re trying to say to them because they seem to be a few chapters behind you. I don’t mean, like, in school, necessarily, but in . . . things, people, what you want to do.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t . . .’ My head seemed to empty and flood all at the same time.

‘It’s okay, I’ll just keep going.’

‘I’m sure my mates wouldn’t . . .’

‘You’ve got a strict . . . dad, I think.’

I breathed in quickly, then again, slower. ‘It’s . . . true and not true,’ I said. ‘I don’t really see much of my dad any more. He’s got a son, my half-brother – Nathan – and it’s not that I don’t want to know him, but we don’t have a lot in common. He’s just this eleven-year-old
boy I barely know, it’s kind of exactly the wrong age to want to be dragged out to restaurants with your dad’s other family. I’ve been seeing my dad less often anyway . . . I shouldn’t really be talking about this, you’re going to think I’m —’

‘No, it’s me. I shouldn’t be talking about this. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.’

‘You haven’t. It’s all right to talk about it. But I shouldn’t, because I’ll make
you
uncomfortable.’

‘No,’ Jonah said. ‘It sounds really tough. Not that your brother is a stranger or anything, but you won’t be able to talk the same way with your dad that you would have before – and that’s your time together. He lives with his son, he doesn’t need to spend more time with him.’

I nodded, because he understood, which made me sad. The stone steps we were sitting on were starting to grow colder. I stretched my legs, pointing my toes. I could smell the fat from a chip shop and it made me feel sick and hungry at the same time.

‘My mum has this boyfriend now, and he’s always giving me a hard time.’

‘He’s the reason you had to run back home so early?’

‘No, that’s my mum. But he’s the reason I don’t
want
to go back home.’

‘He’s all right, though?’

I guessed he meant, was there anything really bad
happening, and there
wasn’t
. Paul would never hit me or anything, or my mum, but his being there was always a lot of pressure, just his
being there
– like it was pushing me into the walls, taking all the oxygen, making a load of white noise. He was bigger than himself.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s all right. We’re just two people who shouldn’t have met.’ I shivered.

‘You’re cold.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, but he’d already taken off his jacket.

‘You’re cold and I’m not,’ he said. ‘But let’s go somewhere.’

The somewhere we found was a little second-hand record shop. When we walked in, the emo bloke behind the cashdesk said hi to Jonah like he knew him. I was surprised: Jonah was really clean cut and quite preppy, an Abercrombie & Fitch type. I’d never been what I’d call cool. I wondered if we stuck out there. It was more of a uni hang-out, and downstairs it also sold weird vintage stuff – lamps, furniture, toys, a few clothes – and there was a café. The chairs were moulded orange plastic and on the tables there were pages from Japanese comics under perspex. The people at the next table were calmly rolling cigarettes that may have been a bit spliffy, although they weren’t smoking them. We drank cappuccinos and shared a brownie, and I’d asked Jonah
to talk a bit about his own family by then.

‘They think they’re cool and permissive,’ he said, ‘and I used to think they were too, but the older I get, the more I think they’re a bit more traditional than I used to.’

‘Or they just seem like that because there’s more stuff they don’t want you to do than there was before,’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t mean with me, I mean with the world in general. But that’s a problem for you, though? Pointless rules?’