Adorkable (6 page)

When I asked him casually on the Wednesday morning, ‘Were you screening my calls last night?’ Barney stammered and stuttered his way through a torturous denial that involved his Physics class finishing early and having to get a permission slip signed in the school office and the planets realigning in some mysterious way that caused him to leave his phone in his locker. I wasn’t buying it.

And I certainly wasn’t buying the way that Scarlett and Barney tried to ignore each other. He was ‘tutoring’ her so there was no reason for her to pretend that he wasn’t standing right behind her in the lunch queue. Especially when he looked as if he was sniffing her hair at one point.

Biting my tongue and not saying anything was really hard – usually I spoke first, tweeted second and thought last. The evidence was piled high against them, but when I wasn’t at
school or scowling at Barney’s status updates and Scarlett’s inevitable lolz, I started to doubt it. Because really, Barney and Scarlett? It made no sense. They defied all laws of God and man. I’d raised Barney in my own image: he was on my side, on the side of the dorks, on the side of all that was good and pure. Scarlett was strictly darkside all the way.

That was the conclusion I’d come to by lunchtime on Wednesday as I sat in my favourite secluded spot behind the language lab knitting furiously and listening to a podcast about the fair trade coffee industry, rather than doing the reading on the fair trade coffee industry. I was just getting to grips with a tricky bit of moss-stitching on circular needles when a shadow loomed over me.

‘Go away,’ I muttered without looking up, because I could see boy feet in a pair of off-white Converses and the only boy I talked to at school was Barney and he knew better than to wear off-white Converses like every other boy in Years 12 and 13, so it was no one that I wanted to talk to. ‘You’re in my light and this is my special spot so go away.’

‘You’re the rudest person I’ve ever met,’ said a voice that I recognised, even over the heated debate about fair trade farming in Peru. Yes, bloody Peru. With a put-upon sigh I looked up at Michael Lee. ‘Why are you so hostile?’

‘Why are you still in my light?’ I said, putting down my knitting so I could unhook my earbuds because he was still blocking the weak rays from the late-September sun and showing no signs of moving. Obviously we were going to have to chat this out. ‘What do you want?’

I was pretty certain I knew what Michael wanted and part of
me wanted it too. Because thoughts of Barney and Scarlett (or Barnett as they’d be known if they were celebrities) were going round and round in my head and I had nobody I could talk to about it. I had friends. I wasn’t some sad-sack Betty-No-Mates, but I didn’t like to overshare when it came to deep stuff. I had no problem with oversharing about undeep stuff though.

I’d used to talk to Bethan about the deep stuff but it was different over Skype, especially when she was working eighty-hour weeks and always sounded so tired. My frustration at my current lack of a confidante had to be written all over my face, making me even more scowly than usual, because Michael took a hurried step back even as he said, ‘Oh, I was just passing and I thought I’d come over and say hi.’

‘Why the hell would you want to do that?’ I asked very coldly. ‘Did you think that because we had one unpleasant conversation at the jumble sale we’re now on hello terms? We’re not. We have nothing to talk about so just, like, go away.’

Michael narrowed his eyes. He really was ridiculously pretty for a boy. It was another reason why I was harshing him – he was so used to girls going swoony in his presence (I once saw someone from Year 9 walk into a tree rather than tear her eyes away from him) that I didn’t want him to think that I was, too. That was the deal with the really good-looking boys: they automatically assumed you were pining and panting for them and wouldn’t be satisfied until you’d had their babies, no matter how ugly their personalities might be.

Apart from narrowing his eyes, Michael didn’t react in any way to what I’d said. I decided we were done and so I picked up my knitting again and began to retrace my stitches.

‘Look
, I was just trying to be friendly,’ he suddenly said.

‘Is this part of some lame-o student council outreach programme?’

‘It’s funny but I’m starting to figure out what this whole deal with Barney and Scarlett is about,’ Michael remarked casually. Then he had the nerve to sit down next to me on the wall. I tried to ignore him. ‘If I was going out with you, I’d be looking for an exit strategy too.’

‘And if I had the incredible bad luck to be going out with you, my exit strategy would involve running into oncoming traffic,’ I snapped. ‘Now, why don’t you go and share your paranoid little delusions with someone who actually gives a toss?’

Michael jumped up from the wall, knocking into me so I dropped about twenty more stitches, and muttered something under his breath that sounded like the word ‘Bitch’ said ten times, really fast. I kept a cool smile pinned on my face because I knew it would enrage him further, though I didn’t know why the need to take Michael Lee down a peg or fifty had suddenly become my life’s vocation.

I watched him stride across the scrubby patch of grass where the stoners often sat and when he rounded the corner by the bins I got to my feet, stuffed my knitting and iPod into my bag and marched off to English.

Scarlett was sitting at the back with her little posse of friends. They all thought they were perched on the cutting edge because they bought their clothes in American Apparel and went to gigs on school nights. They weren’t evil per se, but they sure had a lot to say for four girls who wore exactly the same clothes, listened to exactly the same music and had the same
opinion about everything. Apart from Scarlett – she wouldn’t know an opinion if it moved in next door and played death metal all night long.

I always sat at the front because I always got to class too late. Besides, it was easier to keep an eye on the teacher and berate them loudly if they were trying to stick us with extra coursework. As I pulled out my chair, I made sure to catch Scarlett’s eye and give her my most blank-faced stare. Always worked better than a glare – it let the recipient know that they weren’t even worth the trouble it would take to scrunch up your facial muscles.

Scarlett went as red as her stupid name and shook her head so her hair fell over her face (a move she could only have learnt from Barney), as Ms Ferguson shut the classroom door, smiled at us all brightly and announced that we were going to have a debate about the two novels we were studying for A-level:
The Great Gatsby
and
The Fountainhead
.

There was a collective groan as I reached into my pocket for my iPhone. The chances of a rigorous literary debate were slim and if I arranged my books just so on my desk, I could probably do some tweeting without anyone noticing. Ms Ferguson was cool, but she wasn’t
that
cool.

I let the chatter buzz around me. It wasn’t a debate, just a rehashing of the plots of both books, though I heard someone say incisively, ‘That Daisy Miller, she was really up herself.’

It was almost worthy of a tweet, but I had an unwritten rule that I would never badmouth anyone I knew in real life on the internet. We also had an unspoken rule in class that everyone’s opinion deserved to be heard, no matter how rubbish and misinformed it was.

‘So
, Scarlett, which book did you prefer?’ Ms Ferguson asked gently. All the staff treated her as if she was made out of spun glass.

There was a reedy whisper from the back of the room, like wind whistling around the chair legs.

‘I’m sorry, Scarlett, I didn’t quite catch that,’ Ms Ferguson said, her jaw moving even after she’d spoken, as if she was grinding her teeth.

‘Well, see, hmm, I didn’t really understand what the guy in
The Great Gatsby
, not Gatsby but the other one, um, what he saw in Daisy.’ I swivelled round in my chair to watch Scarlett look pleadingly at her friends, until one of them, Heidi or Hilda or whatever her name was, whispered something to Scarlett. ‘Yeah, like, well, Daisy: it didn’t even sound like she was that pretty.’

I actually heard Ms Ferguson’s swift intake of breath (another reason why I sat at the front – you really got to sniff out a teacher’s weaknesses) then she caught my eye as I grimaced at Scarlett’s extreme moronitude.

‘Jeane,’ Ms Ferguson said, and she sounded a little desperate. ‘Why do you think Nick Carraway is in love with Daisy?’

‘I wouldn’t say that he’s necessarily in love with Daisy,’ I said slowly, my eyes still fixed on Scarlett, who squirmed unhappily. ‘He idealises her and imagines she’s his perfect woman, even though it’s obvious that she isn’t. I think what Fitzgerald is showing is that nobody ever knows what someone else is like. Not really. They just end up projecting all this crap on to the other person. And, yes, people might say that Daisy didn’t ask for his adoration but she takes advantage of it all the same, you know?’

Scarlett
was staring at me blankly and it was pretty obvious that she didn’t know. She was the Grand Poobah of not knowing. ‘OK,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘OK.’ She sounded a bit gulpy and I wondered if she was going to cry. ‘I don’t really know what you mean.’

‘Have you actually read
The Great Gatsby
, Scarlett,’ I said, ‘because Nick’s unrequited love for Daisy is pretty much the cornerstone of the book?’

There was a deathly hush in the classroom. Even Ms Ferguson seemed to be holding her breath, instead of jumping in and telling me to back off.

‘I know that,’ Scarlett said a little huffily, which was the first time in six years I’d ever seen her exhibit some backbone. ‘I just, well, I get it mixed up with
The Fountainhead
. They are kinda similar.’ There was a murmur of agreement around the room. I felt like banging my head on the desk.

So, in my defence, when I said, ‘
The Great Gatsby
is about the death of the American dream and
The Fountainhead
is about the theory of objectivism and the strength of the individual. They couldn’t be more different unless you’re completely retarded,’ it was directed at the whole class, not just Scarlett.

Scarlett bent over so her face was entirely obscured by her hair and burst into tears hard enough to make her shoulders shake. ‘Oh, Scarlett, I don’t think Jeane’s bad mood is worth crying over,’ Ms Ferguson said dryly, as Heidi/Hilda and another girl rushed to throw their arms around Scarlett and coo at her. My lips curled with contempt as Scarlett got to her feet and ran from the room, ricocheting off desks as she went.

‘See me after class, Jeane,’ Ms Ferguson sighed, then set us
a thirty-minute writing exercise on the themes of loss and longing in
The Great Gatsby
. I could feel twenty-eight pairs of eyes shooting laser beams between my shoulder blades.

‘That was totally uncalled for,’ Ms Ferguson said, once the class, including a still-sniffing Scarlett, had trooped out. ‘It’s hard enough to get Scarlett to contribute, without you eviscerating her when she does.’

‘I was including the entire class in that last comment,’ I pointed out and Ms Ferguson rested her chin in her hands and rolled her eyes.

Usually when she rolled her eyes it was more conspiratorial. I’d roll my eyes too and we’d share a look that said, ‘God, what are we doing here?’

Ms Ferguson, or actually Allison as I call her outside of school, was an almost-friend. I saw her at gigs and art shows in Hoxton and we followed each other on Twitter. That said, what happened outside school stayed outside school. I even knew she was in a band called The Fuck Puppets and it was a secret I’d take to my grave, which must have been why she was finding it so hard to give me the bollocking that I sort of deserved.

‘I shouldn’t have said “retarded”,’ I conceded. ‘Because it’s offensive and, er, disablist, but how can anyone get
The Great Gatsby
muddled up with
The Fountainhead
if they’ve actually read both of them? It’s like muddling up monkeys and daffodils or baked beans and Pez dispensers or—’

‘Yes, I get the idea,’ Ms Ferguson snapped, then she folded her arms and tried to stare me down. I obediently lowered my eyes so I looked a little contrite. ‘I expect much better of you. You let yourself down.’

I
hate it when people give you the whole ‘I’m not angry at you, I’m just disappointed’ speech. It was so predictable and, quite frankly,
I
expected much better from Allison. But that wasn’t the point right now. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, though my usual monotone delivery made it sound as insincere as it did in my head.

‘It’s no use saying sorry to me. You have to say sorry to Scarlett. In front of me, and, Jeane, I want an unambiguous apology that isn’t some clever play on words that could be misinterpreted. OK?’

She knew me so well. ‘OK.’

I shoved my folder and my dog-eared copies of
Gatsby
and
The Fountainhead
in my school tote bag, which I’d made myself and had ‘I Dork, Therefore I Am’ embroidered on it, because I thought we were done, when Allison made an awkward choking sound.

‘Everything’s OK, isn’t it? With the whole living by yourself deal because if there’s anything you need to talk about, you know that I’m he—’

‘No, no,’ I said quickly, standing up. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s better than fine. It’s absolutely dandy.’

Allison actually followed me to the classroom door. ‘We could talk
outside
school,’ she murmured meaningfully. ‘If you like.’