Adorkable (12 page)

‘Turkey and tofu stir-fry,’ Alice said. She shuddered. ‘I never eat the tofu; it’s yuck.’

‘Why don’t you phone your parents and let them know where you are?’

I looked at my mother in horror. She knew me. I was her eldest child. Her only son. She’d raised me and nagged and chivvied me to do my coursework on time and not eat between meals and we even watched subtitled Danish detective TV shows together so she had to know that Jeane was not someone who was my friend and certainly not someone who I wanted to stay for dinner.

At least Jeane and I were in complete agreement for once because she was looking equally horrified, especially when she saw Dad cutting up huge chunks of tofu.

‘No, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to call my parents. I’d
love
to stay for dinner.’

Jesus
wept.

There were so many reasons why I shouldn’t have been having dinner at Michael Lee’s house but his dad had been really nice as he picked bits of grit out of my bloodied flesh with a pair of tweezers
and
he’d given me lollipops, even if they were sugar-free. Besides, it had been
ages
since I had a homecooked meal, probably not since Bethan had gone to the States. But the best reason for staying for dinner was the look of utter panic on Michael Lee’s face, like his entire reality was about to come crashing down.

It was payback for my sprained ankle and my ruined orange tights and it was another lesson for him on how life felt when it wasn’t going your way.

And to start off with it was fun. I totally bonded with Melly and Alice and while the stir-fry was being stirred and fried they took me up to their room, which was rammed full of pink
princess paraphernalia but also a metric arseload of Lego and Beyblades so I didn’t have to lecture them on the evils of gender stereotyping. Not that it would have done any good.

Alice and Melly were sweet and made it clear that they much preferred me to Scarlett and that my approval rating was very high with the under-tens. Melly even offered to lend me her favourite pair of stripy tights but they were too small, which was a pity because Melly’s favourite pair of stripy tights were pink and green and completely awesome.

I could have stayed on Alice’s bunk bed for the rest of the evening being entertained with tales from the primary school frontline but, all too soon, it was time to sit down to eat the infamous turkey and tofu stir-fry, which was actually delicious. I mean, even the tofu was delicious and there were soba noodles, which I absolutely love, and it would all have been great if Michael’s mum had let me just shovel the food into my face in peace.

His mum (she said I could call her Kathy but made it sound like she’d stab me if I tried) is a lawyer and she cross-examined me like I was in the dock on ten counts of assault with a deadly weapon. She wanted to know why I’d thrown off the shackles of parental responsibility at such a young age and what I was doing for A-levels and whether I had a part-time job and why my hair was grey.

I could tell that she didn’t like me. People’s mothers never do and it wasn’t like I cared whether she liked me or not – I was never going to see her again – but when someone gives me attitude, I can’t help but see their attitude and raise it.

So, instead of being polite and simply answering her
questions with monosyllabic replies like any normal seventeenyear-old would, I got really, really defensive. When I wasn’t being all TMI.

‘My mum’s in Peru being touchy-feely with women prisoners. She’s trying to teach them how to meditate,’ I said. ‘And my dad’s moved to Spain to run a bar and get drunk every night for free. Believe me, I’m better off without them and their mid-life crises.’

I didn’t just stop there. Not when I could say, ‘Anyway, friends are the new family and Gustav and Harry who live in the flat next door come round once a month to force me to tidy up and eat some vegetables.’

‘I can’t really see the point of going to university,’ I also said. ‘I’m already my own lifestyle brand and I can just hire a business manager to take care of the number crunching. Anyway, what’s the point of getting a degree
and
tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of debt? Waste of time.’

I was being so objectionable and obnoxious and obstreperous and many other unflattering words that didn’t begin with an o that I wanted to put down my chopsticks and slap myself around the face. From the frigid expression on Michael’s mum’s (sorry,
Kathy’s
) face, I think she did too.

It wasn’t until we were having pudding – a very disappointing fruit salad with Greek yoghurt – that I finally stopped talking, but Kathy wasn’t done. ‘So, how did you sprain your ankle?’ she asked.

‘Well, I had an argument with my bike and the ground,’ I said quickly, but I wasn’t quick enough to get in there before Michael.

‘It
was my fault,’ he said right over me. ‘I kinda threw Jeane off her bike.’

‘Michael! Why would you do something like that?’ Kathy demanded. ‘That’s not how you were raised.’

I shot Michael a reproachful look, because I didn’t like the guy but he had to know there was a code that clearly stated that you didn’t grass your peers up to their parents.

‘It was an accident,’ I insisted. ‘Just a stupid accident. We were having an argument and—’

‘An argument?’ Kathy sounded like Lady Bracknell banging on about her handbag. She also seemed more aghast that her darling boy would get into an argument than push a defenceless girl off her bike. Though after five seconds in my company she’d probably realised that I was far from defenceless. I was entirely defence-y. ‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

‘I do have arguments with people,’ Michael said as he flushed with embarrassment. It was very entertaining to see him trying to pretend that he was controversial.

Despite the fact he had eyes that were the colour of black coffee and shaped like almonds (note to self: now that’s a cake waiting to be baked), he was the Lees’ blue-eyed boy. When Kathy hadn’t been grilling me about my life choices, her and Mr Lee (who’d told me to call him Shen) had asked Michael all about his classes and his homework and if he’d read an article in the
Guardian
about last year’s A-level results. He’d been reticent at first and kept shooting me these wary glances, but soon he realised that he had the advantage of being on his home ground and talked at length about current events like he was taking part in one of the school’s deathly dull debating society
assemblies. Snoozeville, but Michael’s parents actually listened to what he had to say, eyes fixed on his face as they smiled and nodded encouragingly.

Even Melly and Alice gazed at Michael adoringly and pestered him with requests to play
Dance Revolution
and for big brotherly help on a school project about dinosaurs.

Michael Lee was the sun, moon and stars, maybe even the whole bloody solar system, as far as his family were concerned. No wonder he was so arrogant.

Still, I couldn’t remember the last time the Smiths had sat down as a family to eat dinner, or even the last time I’d voiced an opinion that Pat and Roy had wanted to hear. But you couldn’t yearn for what you were never going to get – you had to have your own dreams and inspirations, not live through other people, so I didn’t envy Michael Lee because it seemed to me that if his parents had asked him to jump then he’d not only jump but promise to jump higher next time.

But right there and then they weren’t asking him to jump but to pay for the damage that he’d done to my bike. ‘Really, Michael, it’s the very least you can do. I hope you’ve apologised to Jeane.’

‘He has, countless times, and he’s already offered to pay to get Mary repaired,’ I said calmly, because it wasn’t the awful calamity that Kathy seemed to think it was, even if it was very inconvenient. ‘And I call my bike Mary after a famous woman explorer,’ I added as she opened her mouth to bombard me with yet more questions. ‘It’s all sorted.’

‘You’ll also give Jeane a lift to and from school,’ Mr Lee said mildly, but with an undertone to his voice that was far more
intimidating than his wife’s constant carping. ‘That seems fair, doesn’t it?’

‘Of course I will,’ Michael said, but I could see the panic in his eyes again and I certainly didn’t want to spend quality time with him twice a day.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ I assured him. ‘I live right by a bus stop, which drops me off almost outside school and didn’t you hear what I said before? With my crutches, I’m
so
getting a seat on the bus.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Kathy snapped at me. ‘We’re very big on actions having consequences in this house.’

‘But it was an accident and I was being beyond annoying. Your son doesn’t usually inflict bodily harm on people. It was just a one-off.’

It was like trying to argue with a steel girder. Nothing I said could sway Kathy and Shen Lee and, half an hour later, Michael was driving me home with my crutches bashing him in the face every time he moved his head.

Now that the Barney and Scarlett business was settled, we had nothing to talk about.

‘I’m sorry about my mum,’ Michael finally said, as he turned into my street. ‘It’s very hard to say no to your own mother, isn’t it?’

‘Not really. I find it very easy to say no to mine.’ I pointed at the other side of the street. ‘Just squeeze in behind that white van.’

‘So, what time do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?’ Michael asked me in a resigned voice, as I unclipped my seatbelt.

‘I
don’t,’ I said shortly, as I tried to drag the crutches from the back seat. ‘I can manage by myself perfectly well.’

‘But I promised I would.’ Michael got out of the car and walked round to open my door, like I’d lost the use of my arms as well as one leg. Though I wasn’t the kind of feminist who started quoting from the SCUM Manifesto every time a boy held a door open for me, it bugged me. Like, he only did it to be a stand-up guy, not because he wanted to show me any common courtesy.

‘Well, you can just unpromise.’ I shoved the crutches at him and tutted furiously as he tried to take my arm and help me out of the car.

‘I’m going to give you a lift whether you like it or not,’ he said grimly, as he handed the crutches back to me. ‘So, what time?’

‘I don’t like it at all so I’m not telling you a time and you don’t know what number my flat is so you can’t ring the bell and even if you stood outside and waited for me, you can’t, like, physically put me in your car.’

‘I bet I could,’ Michael mused, eyeing me up and down as I adjusted the crutches and slowly and carefully stepped out on to the road. ‘Look, Jeane, can you just be reasonable for once in your life? I made you fall off your bike and I’ve told my parents that I’ll get you to and from school and that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Look, Michael, I don’t do reasonable. It doesn’t suit me and what you told your parents isn’t my problem. Just leave your house a little bit early and then don’t come to pick me up. It will be our little secret.’

There was no point in arguing with me. Better people than
Michael Lee had tried and failed horribly. ‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘Fine. And I hope you
don’t
get a seat on the bus because it will serve you right for being such a pig-headed, belligerent cow.’

‘What
evs
,’ I drawled and I wished I could flounce off but all I could do was hobble and shuffle away from him with my nose in the air, which really didn’t have the same sort of vibe.

I
could say that life went back to normal after Scarlett and me broke up but if I did then I’d be lying. Life wasn’t normal. It was all wrong.

For starters, everyone knew I’d been dumped – even if they didn’t know the painful and humiliating circumstances of my dumping. And everyone knew that Barney and Scarlett were seeing each other because they held hands at every opportunity. It was no surprise that loud whispers followed me around wherever I went.

I made a point of saying hello to Barney and Scarlett to show that there were no hard feelings and I was fine with it. But my ego was bruised and I spent a large part of each day with a churning in my gut and a feeling like I was something less than I used to be. I was also really irritable.

My extreme crankiness didn’t have much to do with Barney and Scarlett, and a lot to do with Jeane Smith, because she’d got under my skin like a prickly heat rash. I did take some
small comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the only dumpee on the block, but at least I had my mates to whack me on the back and say, ‘Plenty more fish in the sea, mate,’ and, ‘Her loss, Mikey,’ and I had loads of texts from girls, including Heidi, saying that they were there for me if I needed to talk.

But Jeane … Jeane, she had no one, and I felt sorry for her even though she didn’t deserve any sympathy, especially when she’d execute a clumsy one hundred and eighty degrees on her crutches every time she caught sight of me. But I could tell she was troubled. She wasn’t rocking the fluoro-prints for one thing – on Wednesday she was even wearing khaki and plum (it looked like purple to me, but on her blog she insisted it was plum, not that I check her blog every day but I’d just happened to be passing that morning), which had to be like wearing black in Jeane world. She was even keeping it kinda on the downlow on the interwebz. Instead of tweeting about cake, she tweeted about the various injustices being done to girls around the world. I’d never realised that girls had such a hard time, but they were being stoned and having acid thrown in their faces when they tried to access a proper education and pharmacists in small American towns wouldn’t give them the morning-after pill and when Jeane mixed it up and posted photos of her glorious technicolour ankle, it was a welcome relief.