Where Love Lies (40 page)

‘And pussy-flavoured,’ said Darren, the wit.

‘Oh, grow up,’ I called at him. ‘You’re never going to know what pussy tastes like, Darren, except in your dreams.’

Roaring
laughter. Darren Raymond’s spotty neck went pink. On the other side of the service hatch, a dinner lady showed up with a single plate of food, looking around, half-smiling, to try to discover what the joke was about. I squeezed up the side of the queue and went to pay for my yoghurt (and just for the record, £1.40 is way too much for a small pot of fruit-flavoured bacteria).

At the table, Avril
was folding her napkin into a little crane. She perched it on my palm when I sat next to her: it was so light it barely weighed anything. Something about the tilt of its head reminded me of her.

‘That’s your best yet,’ I told her.

‘It’s for you. A little gift to celebrate your return.’

‘Why, thank you, darling.’ We traded a complicit look. It’s you and me against all the rest of these idiots.

Darling.

Erin was twisting a plastic straw into a gnarled shape. ‘I have no idea how you eat so much and stay so slim, Lyds.’

‘Witchcraft,’ I said, peeling the top off my yoghurt, though Erin didn’t mean it as a question. It doesn’t take a genius to know that I can eat a lot and stay slim because I run about a million miles every week. She just wanted to make me feel self-conscious, because
that’s the way she’d feel if she ate anything more than a single apple at lunchtime. As if we didn’t all know that she ate her own body weight in Doritos every evening before chucking it all up in the toilet.

Anyway, I was taking the top of my yoghurt off and dipping my plastic spoon into it because they don’t trust us with proper cutlery – Mr Graham is always banging on about ecology, he should
have a word with the school meals service and their plastic everything – when I noticed there was someone standing next to me.

It was that new girl, whatever her name was, something beginning with B. Her tray had a plate with some orange-ish mess on it; her cheeks were still flushed red. Or maybe that was the way she always looked. Her hair was short but it flopped into her eyes, because her
fringe was long.

‘I just – I just wanted to say,’ said the new girl. ‘You know. Thank you.’

All of the other girls at the table were looking at us. I could actually feel them counting the seats, making a calculation: five chairs filled with people, one heaped with books and pencil cases and jumpers. The new girl’s parting was pale against her dark hair. Her jumper was too new and her skirt was
too long, above white folded ankle socks.

I shrugged. ‘The boys were being stupid, and I wanted to get my lunch.’

The new girl nodded and paused for a moment, as if she were considering asking us to move the jumpers so she could sit down. But then she carried on walking. She found an empty table at the far end of the room.

‘What happened?’ Avril asked. ‘Why was she thanking you?’

I told them
about it. Avril laughed, and the other girls giggled and glanced at Darren Raymond and his table, who were all throwing bits of bread roll at each other. Darren is a straight-up geek, Maths and computer nerd, and spotty to boot. The type of person who needs someone to pick on to hide how socially inadequate they really are.

‘God, they are so ignorant,’ said Erin, sighing elaborately. ‘Anyone
can see that she’s not gay.’

‘Really?’ I said, licking yoghurt off my spoon. I couldn’t really taste it. ‘How can you tell?’

‘She doesn’t look anything like Georgie and Whitney.’

‘I’m not really an expert, but I don’t think that all gay girls look exactly like each other,’ said Avril.

‘It’s a weird name, though,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s a boy’s name.’

‘And that haircut,’ said Olivia. ‘She could
do with some make-up.’

‘And losing a couple of stone.’

‘Just because she’s ugly, it doesn’t mean she’s a lesbo,’ said Erin. ‘Georgie and Whitney aren’t ugly. Well, Whitney isn’t.’

‘Ooh, you fancy Whitney,’ tittered Sophie.

‘Shut up.’

‘I would hate to be called a lesbo,’ said Avril. ‘I’m still hungry, Lyds, can I have some of your yoghurt?’

I slid the container over to her. ‘Have the rest
of it. I’m not hungry any more.’ I picked up the paper crane she had made.

The new girl sat alone, eating her gloppy lunch. I didn’t look in her direction but I knew she was there. I could feel her, and I’ve kept on thinking about her, for the rest of today, which is why I’m writing about her now.

It was a stupid thing to do. I’ve forged a connection between us, and now I’m going to notice her
everywhere, when up till now I’ve been blissfully ignorant. I’m going to notice how the new girl doesn’t have any friends; how her white socks look nearly the same colour as her legs; how people whisper and turn their backs. I’m going to notice the sniggers when teachers say her weird boy-name. Which isn’t even that weird, it turns out. Someone told me after; her name is Bailey. Girls have boys’
names all the time. Nobody picks on Tyler, or Billie. If the new girl were cooler, she could totally pull it off.

But she’s not. She lugs that name around with her like she lugs her extra weight, her make-up-free face, her gluten-free lunch. And those little-girl socks.

God, if you could just tell these people. Blend in. Watch, and copy. It’s so much easier. People are looking at you all the
time. They’re making up their minds about you. It’s better to decide yourself what they’re going to see.

But you can’t say that. Not to someone who doesn’t know it instinctively. Not to someone with no sense of self-preservation.

I sat at that lunch table today, twirling the crane in my hand, feeling Avril beside me eating from my spoon, feeling the others surrounding me with their chatter and
security. A bubble, as fragile as a paper crane.

I stroked my finger against the crane’s wings, slowly, one carefully folded wing then the other, watching them bend under my touch.

I still have it. It’s sitting on my desk right now, looking at me.

Does that sound dramatic, or dumb?

‘Go on, Lyds, give us a picture,’ said Harry Carter. He was lounging against the wall as if he were posing for
the cover of a boy-band album.

Lydia would have kept on walking, but the corridor was narrower there and she had to slow down because of the Harry Carter effect on passing traffic. She stopped and struck a pose. ‘Sure, take one now,’ she said.

He pouted. ‘You know that’s not the kind of picture I mean.’

‘Oh hi, Harry,’ said Avril.

‘I know exactly what kind of picture you mean,’ Lydia told
him. ‘Do I look like the stupid kind of girl who would give you a picture to share on the internet with all of your pathetic friends?’

Harry’s smile got wider. He had very white teeth, straight and even like a pop star’s, and a dimple that half of the upper school were desperate to touch. Sophie had written his name at least a thousand times in the back of her notebook.

‘I heard what you said
at lunchtime,’ he said. ‘You told Darren Raymond all about your pussy.’

‘What I said was that he wouldn’t get near mine, or anyone else’s, in a thousand years.’

‘I think you’re hot.’

‘Think all you like, thinking is free.’

Blend in, watch and copy.
Although in this case, Lydia was mostly copying from television, because nobody knocked back Harry Carter in real life.

He leaned forward and
whispered, ‘Take one in the bathroom after school and text it to me. I won’t share it with anyone else, promise.’

‘In your dreams,’ she said, and winked at him, before turning away.

‘Just like Darren Raymond!’ yelled Harry after them, turning to his friends and laughing.

She linked her arm with Avril’s. ‘Come on, or we’ll be late and we won’t get to sit together.’

‘Will you?’ Avril asked as
they reached the English block.

‘Will I what?’

‘Send Harry a picture.’

‘God, why would I do something like that?’

They reached the classroom early enough for there still to be seats together at the back. ‘He’s fit,’ said Avril. ‘And I think he likes you.’

‘Not my type.’

‘He might send you a picture back.’

‘Bleugh.’

‘Do you really not like him? Oh, do you have a pencil?’

Lydia gave Avril
a pencil. ‘Why are you going on about Harry? You don’t like him, do you?’

‘No, I wasn’t saying I
liked
Harry – I was wondering about him for you.’

‘Because I thought you liked Zane.’

Avril shrugged. ‘He’s a little – I don’t know, boring.’

‘How do you know he’s boring? He never says anything.’

Zane was, in fact, way too thick for Avril. He was totally safe.

‘We Facebooked last night,’ said
Avril.

‘Zane can type? That’s a surprise.’

‘He can’t spell.’

Lydia laughed in relief. ‘You need a speller?’

‘I just want someone who has something to say, you know?’

‘Like Harry?’

‘I wasn’t saying that.’

‘How bad was his spelling?’

Avril took her phone out of her bag to show her; Lydia hung over her desk.

‘Miss Toller? Miss Levinson?’ said Miss Drayton, walking into the room, and Lydia
instantly launched herself back into her seat. ‘Is that your phone, Avril? Could I trouble you to turn it off and hand it to me for the duration of the lesson? We only have a few weeks until your exams, and I would like all of your attention, please. Then get out your copy of
Far From the Madding Crowd
and read to us from page 115. Start from the beginning of the chapter.’

Avril shot Lydia a
wry look and gave her phone into Miss Drayton’s hand. She dug out her dog-eared, annotated paperback copy of the novel as Miss Drayton placed her confiscated booty on the top of her desk, a reminder to anyone else who might think of texting or tweeting during English. ‘
The Hollow Amid the Ferns
,’ she began.

Lydia put her finger in her paperback to hold the place and she watched Avril.

When you
spent most of your time with someone, you hardly ever got to really look at them. You were too busy looking at other things together. Even when you were talking to each other, you never actually stared at someone. You only glanced, glanced away, looked at other things.

Looking at her now was like a stolen square of chocolate, melting over Lydia’s tongue in the secrecy of her closed mouth.

Avril
had rich dark hair, almost brown enough to be black, straightened today and spilling over her shoulders. She always tucked it behind her ears. Her fingernails were bitten short. She wore a tiny silver shell ring that Lydia brought back for her from Naxos when she’d gone on holiday there, before Mum and Richard had split up.

Her lashes were long and darker than her hair. There was a mole on her
cheekbone, and freckles that came out with the sunshine. There were two holes in each of her earlobes – Avril’s mother hadn’t discovered the second one yet. They matched the holes in Lydia’s ears. They’d had them done over half-term. The piercing gun got stuck in Avril’s left ear and the hole bled. They went to McDonald’s afterwards and Lydia held a cube of ice from her Coke against Avril’s small
intentional wound. The melting ice ran down her bare arm and Avril wiped it off with her finger.

‘
He had kissed her
,’ read Avril, clearly and not loudly, but in a voice that carried. Avril’s voice always carried. She used to stand in front of their class in Year Seven and read her book reports, back in those days when she wore her hair in plaits and Lydia asked Mum to do her hair the same way,
though Lydia’s always slipped out and got ragged. They used to wear identical Mary Jane shoes. Even then, when Avril would read, Lydia would close her eyes to listen to the sound.

They had made each other who they were. Avril’s hair, Lydia’s laugh; Lydia’s holiday, Avril’s finger. They bought the same clothes at the same time, though the items looked different on each of them. Their histories
were written on each other’s bodies.

That would never change.

‘Lydia Levinson?’

Laughter brought her back to the present. She was at her desk in the back of Miss Drayton’s room and everyone in the room had turned around to stare at her.

‘I know that Avril’s very pretty,’ said Miss Drayton, ‘but it’s your turn to read now, please.’

Avril smiled. She rolled her eyes and twirled her finger around
her ear. Someone sniggered. From the front of the room, Lydia heard the name, ‘Bailey.’

The blush that she hated raced up her neck.

‘The next chapter?
Particulars of a Twilight Walk
?’ suggested Miss Drayton. Lydia flipped pages and, clearing her throat, she began to read.

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