A Kiss in the Dark (2 page)

She’d misinterpreted the look on my face. The truth is, I was in awe of her. I wondered what it was like to be the kind of person who’d happily sing in front of a stranger (or in front of anyone, for that matter). I thought it might be nice to be someone like that. But Kate didn’t sing again – not that night anyway.

It was the second time I’d seen Saving Serenity this year and the set-list had barely changed. I was more interested in the girl standing next to me than what was happening onstage. I kept looking at her hands out of the corner of my eye. Her fingernails were nicely manicured, without nail varnish. The only jewellery she wore was a slim silver band on the ring finger of her right hand. They were nice-looking hands.

A couple of times Kate looked over and our eyes met. Neither of us said anything. We didn’t have to, I
suppose. Meeting in person had just confirmed things. She liked me and I liked her. It was simple.

It was anything but simple.

I only really knew the score the day before we met. It had all been fine at first. Kate had posted on the Saving Serenity forum a couple of weeks before, asking if anyone was going to the gig. I’d never seen her on the forum before. I usually just lurked on there, watching other people’s conversations and not bothering to join in, but for some reason I replied to her. I suppose I felt sorry for her – no one had replied to her post after a couple of days and I
was
going to the gig, so I thought I might as well say so. What harm could it do?

Kate replied with a private message and things went on from there. I kept on expecting the conversation to come to a natural stopping point, but it never did. She looked nice in her profile picture – friendly and normal and definitely not a crazy person. She told me she liked my profile picture and put one of those little
blushing face emoticons. I thought that was a bit weird but I shrugged it off.

After a couple of days talking on the forum we exchanged phone numbers (her idea). Kate told me a lot about herself – more than I would have told some random I’d met on the internet. She asked me a lot of questions and I answered them. I only told one lie – when she asked what school I went to – and I’m not even sure why I did that. Maybe it just didn’t seem all that sensible to give out personal information to someone I’d never even met. I said I went to the same school as Jonni – it was the first one that came to mind. It felt like a harmless sort of lie. Maybe not a white lie, but definitely grey at least.

We talked a lot about our favourite Saving Serenity songs and music in general. I introduced her to some other bands I thought she might like and she downloaded the music and listened to it straightaway. She was massively into music, but she confessed (with another red-face emoticon) that she’d only really listened to chart stuff and classical stuff until recently. She played the piano –
only
grade 7, she said.

From the sounds of it, Kate’s mum was pretty full-on – way too involved in her life. Kate had lied about the gig, saying she was going to Astrid’s house and she’d be home by eleven. Astrid was one
of her two ‘best’ friends; I didn’t like the sound of her.

We messaged each other non-stop as soon as we got home from school. It was amazing to me how quickly that connection developed. Because that’s what it was – a genuine connection between two people who had never met before. Mum’s always going on about the dangers of the internet and ‘weirdos whose only friends are on their computer screens’, but she just doesn’t get it. It’s entirely possible to get to know someone without actually seeing them in person. In fact, it’s better like that because none of the superficial stuff gets in the way. You really get to know a person. And it’s easier to express yourself when you’re writing things down. At least it is for me. I like to order my thoughts, and delete them if they don’t make any sense. You can’t do that in real life.

A few days before the gig, Kate asked if I wanted to meet her there. My heart did a little jump. I didn’t want to think about what it meant, my body reacting like that. Things were confusing enough already.

I told her I was going with Jonni and Fitz, but I’d be up for meeting her. She was really happy about that. Then I sat back and tried to picture what it would be like, meeting her in person. Talking to her. Looking at a real person instead of a tiny profile picture. I could
kind of get my head around me looking at her, but as soon as I started thinking about her looking at
me
, well … that’s when it all got a little hazy. Would she be disappointed? Had she built up some false idea of me based on what I’d told her?

We texted each other constantly after I got back from running the night before the gig. We always texted, never called. The thought of a phone call was terrifying to me. I never even called Jonni and he was sort of my best mate (not to say that I was necessarily
his
best mate). Anyway, I was just about to say I was off to bed when Kate texted something that confirmed the suspicion that had been lurking at the back of my brain. I stared at my phone and tried to work out if there was any other way to interpret her words, but I was kidding myself.

I went to reply, to set her straight, but none of the words were right. I kept on typing and deleting them, trying to find a way to say it – a way that would make her still want to see me at the gig. But I couldn’t do it. There was no way out. In the end I turned off my phone without replying.

I couldn’t sleep that night. All I could think about was Kate’s message and what the hell I was going to do about the gig. It was the kind of text Jamie probably gets at least once a week from his various conquests.

You’re really different from other boys
.

In a parallel universe, a different version of me was thrilled to bits.

In this universe, I was mostly devastated. Kate was right: I was different from other boys.

I was a girl. I
am
a girl.

The most embarrassing moment of my entire life was when Mum came up to my room a couple of years ago, acting all suspicious. I was sitting at my desk doing some homework and she hovered next to me. Then she asked me if my bin needed emptying, before perching on the edge of the bed.

‘Yes? Can I help you with something?’ I was busy colouring in a chart for my geography assignment. Any subject that involves colouring in instead of thinking is OK by me.

Mum didn’t reply so I had to turn to look at her. She was fiddling with her wedding ring, a nervous habit of hers. Not that she’s a particularly nervous sort of person. She flashed a smile and asked how I was getting on with my homework.

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Fine …
why
?!’

She sighed and tucked a stray bit of hair behind
her ears. ‘OK, fine. You got me. I’m not here to ask about your homework. Not that it looks particularly arduous!’ I gave her a look which she obviously interpreted correctly because she went on, ‘OK, OK! I’ll say what I’ve got to say and leave you to it.’ More fiddling with the wedding ring – twisting it round and round her finger. ‘There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for a while now, but it never seems like the right time and I know what a private person you are … but I’m still your mother. And it’s my job to be grown-up about this stuff, I suppose. So I’m just going to say it and we’ll go from there, OK?’

I knew, I think. At least, I suspected. There weren’t many subjects that would cause this level of awkwardness in my normally calm, level-headed mother. I said, ‘OK,’ but I didn’t mean it.

A big deep breath and then she launched into it. ‘Alex, you know how much we love you and how proud we are of you, yes? Well … we’ll love you and accept you no matter what. It’s really important that you never forget that. I’m not going to ask you or embarrass you so please stop looking at me like that, but if you’re confused about your sexuality–’ We both winced when she said that word, ‘–or if you’re worried or want to talk about anything at all, I’m here. And your dad is too. Even though he’s not here
right now. Obviously. So. To sum up, we don’t care if you like boys or girls or both or neither or … anyway. You understand what I’m trying to say, don’t you?’

I was horrified. ‘Muuuum! I’m not … why would you think I was …? Can you just leave me to get on with my work?
Please
?’ I wanted her gone. I wanted to forget we’d ever had this conversation, if you could even call it a conversation.

She held up her hands. ‘Fine! I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I had to say it. I’m sure you can understand that.’

I’d already turned back to my homework and was furiously scribbling with a black pencil in a column that was supposed to be red. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

I could hear her stand and move towards the door. There was a few seconds of silence and then, ‘I love you, Alex.’

‘Yeah.’

The door shut quietly and my head met the desk. I felt like she’d broken some sort of unwritten pact we had – Mum and I didn’t talk about that kind of stuff. We just
didn’t
. We talked about TV and took the piss out of Dad. This was … wrong.

I struggled to sleep that night, thinking about my reaction and wondering what Mum made of it. Did she believe my denial, even though I hadn’t said the
actual word I was supposed to be denying? Or did it just confirm what she clearly thought was the case?

I was angry. Mum and Dad had clearly been talking about me behind my back, thinking there was something wrong with me just because I wasn’t the female equivalent of Jamie. He brought girls home all the time. Two years older than me and the kind of good-looking that’s impossible to ignore, Dad’s always saying Jamie’s a chip off the old block (and Mum’s always saying, ‘You
wish
’). Clearly they thought
he
was doing his teenage years properly. Sowing his wild oats or some such bollocks. But it was hard to believe Dad would have been cool with me bringing random boys home. That’s how it works – one rule for boys, another rule for girls. So maybe they just wanted me to have a boyfriend – a boring, responsible one who wore shiny shoes and had a neat parting. Whatever it was they wanted, they obviously thought there was something wrong with me. Never getting in trouble at school, never drinking or taking drugs or missing my curfew … that wasn’t good enough. That wasn’t
normal
enough for them. And according to them, there was only one explanation: I was gay.

How dare they? How fucking
dare
they? I could just picture the two of them sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and listening to Radio 4. They
did it every night – Mum called it ‘us time’, which was kind of sickening. They weren’t supposed to be talking about me though. I’d done everything I could do be the best possible daughter but they still weren’t satisfied.

Gay
. I rolled the word around in my head, testing it. It was a ridiculous idea, plain and simple. I’d had pictures of boybands and actors on my wall a few years ago. I thought the drummer in Saving Serenity was pretty hot. Anyway, Jonni and Fitz were boys, weren’t they? And they’d been round to our flat at least twice. So what the hell was the problem?

There had been a time last year (about two weeks, to be precise) when I’d wondered if I fancied Jonni. There was nothing really wrong with his face, he looked nice when he smiled, and he had reasonably interesting things to say, which was more than could be said for Fitz. Still, I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for the idea and the thought of kissing Jonni kind of turned my stomach. But that wasn’t because he was a
boy
, it was because he was my mate. You don’t go round randomly kissing your mates.

The thing is, there was no way on earth Jonni would have ever kissed me. It couldn’t have been more obvious that he didn’t think about me like that. Sometimes I think he even forgot that I was a girl at
all. He’d be talking about some girl or other (usually the pathetic groupie-types who hung around Bristo Square hoping to bag a skater boyfriend) and he’d say something unbelievably crude and me and Fitz would both laugh but then Jonni would look at me funny and say sorry. As if I cared.

If I’m being brutally honest with myself, I knew that Jonni and Fitz weren’t that keen on me hanging out with them all the time. They didn’t mind at first, when I first turned up at Bristo Square. I was a bit of a novelty, I guess – a girl who could actually skate. And we were into the same kind of music so we had a fair bit in common. But when I started turning up every day after school (and started showing them up in front of the girls), they didn’t seem so happy. I didn’t realize anything was up at first – only when Jonni texted that they weren’t going to be at the Square after school one Friday and I went anyway and found them there, just like always. Jonni tried to cover it up, saying he’d changed his mind at the last minute, but I knew the score. I was hurt but I was never going to let him see that; I just shrugged and said ‘whatever’.

After a couple more incidents like that I knew Jonni was trying to phase me out. The novelty had well and truly worn off for him. This was only a couple of months before I met Kate and I was pretty down about
the whole thing. Maybe not
depressed
, but definitely not happy. I’d thought that meeting Jonni and Fitz might be the start of something good for me – a new life away from school. Skating at Bristo Square was my escape. I felt like I was finally fitting in, like I’d found my place in the world.

Getting the tickets for the Saving Serenity gig was pretty much a last-ditch effort to impress the boys. I said I’d won them in some competition I saw online, but the truth is I used most of my birthday money. Jonni hadn’t seemed all that impressed and wouldn’t even commit to turning up. But then Fitz texted the day before the gig to say they’d meet me outside. Like I should have been honoured by their presence or something. It was a pretty desperate move, I suppose, buying those tickets. And if you look at it in a certain light it might seem like I was trying to buy friends. That wouldn’t be quite fair though. Loads of things can look bad if you look at them in a certain light.