Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 01] (3 page)

‘Mmphhh, OK, fine,’
came the reply.

‘What have you been
doing?’ he asked, turning to me.

‘Career choices, GCSE
choices,’ said Nesta, butting in. ‘Making decisions.’

And that set them all
off again. Even Lai, Steve, Matthew and Tom joined in.

‘I want to be a record
producer,’ said Lai.

‘I want to play in a
band,’ said Tom, getting up and playing air guitar.

‘I want to be an
inventor,’ said Steve.

It was a repeat of the
morning at school with everyone knowing what they want to be except me. I could
see Mum looking at me as everyone babbled away.

‘What about you,
Lucy?’ she asked.‘What do you want to be?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

Izzie and Nesta burst
in with their brilliant career plans and I could see Mum was watching me with
concern as they enthused away. She doesn’t miss a trick. She winked at me when
no one was looking.

‘The longest journey
starts with the first step,’ she said.

Steve, Lai and I
groaned. We re used to her coming out with her ‘quote for the day’. In her work
as a psychotherapist she spends loads of time with people who are fed up with
their lives in one way or another so she’s always looking for new things to say
to them to cheer them up a bit. She reads all the latest self-help books and
likes to pass on words of wisdom to the rest of us.

‘OK, who wants an
Angel Card?’ she asked.

‘Oh,
Mum
,’ I
said, feeling embarrassed, ‘I’m
sure
no one’s interested.’

‘What’s an Angel
Card?’ asked Izzie enthusiastically.

‘A box of cards I
bought last week to use in my counselling sessions,’ said Mum. ‘I haven’t got
round to taking them into work yet. Each card has a quote written on it.’

She got up and found
her pack.

‘You pick one,’ she
said, shuffling the cards and selecting one, ‘and let it speak to you.’

‘
The darkest hour
is just before dawn’
she read, then handed the cards to Izzie. ’Your turn,
Iz.‘

Izzie loves stuff like
this. Tarot cards, astrology, I Ching. She took a card and read out, ‘
Choice
not chance determines destiny
!

‘Very sensible,’ said
Dad. ‘Better to choose what you want than let it all drift by you and end up
doing something you don’t really want to do.’

I started to feel
panicky again. Was that going to happen to me because I didn’t know what to
choose? I’d just drift along in a haze of confusion?

Suddenly I felt a
cold, wet nose pushing against my hand. Ben’s dopey face gazed up at me from
under the table as if to say he understood. Sometimes I think dogs are psychic.

Izzie handed the pack
to Nesta. ‘You choose one.’

Nesta picked and read,
‘
The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy
lies in having no goal
!

Arggghhhh
. It was getting worse. I have no
goal. It’s a tragedy.

‘That’s OK,’ continued
Nesta. ‘I’ve got a goal. Clothes Show in a few weeks. I get spotted by talent
scout and become a super-duper supermodel.’

Lai’s jaw dropped even
more as he goggled at Nesta. ‘A supermodel? You’ll get picked easy.’ The creep.

Nesta handed the cards
to me and I let my hand hover, then shuffled. Let it be a good one, I prayed,
let it be a good one.

I picked one out. ‘
Don’t
wait for your ship to come in
,’ I read. ‘Swim
out to it
!’

‘Good one,’ said Dad.

Psychic Ben clearly
liked the card as well. He tried to jump up on my knee to lick my face. Seeing
as he’s an enormous thing, he almost knocked me flying, making everyone laugh.

‘Down, Ben,’ I said.
‘You know I love you but you’re too heavy.’

Reluctantly he got
down but sank his head on to my lap and refused to budge it.

I read my card again.
Right, I thought. I’ll be positive. I’ll swim out to the ship. Right. I will.
But how?

Once again Mum clocked
my anxious expression. She squeezed my hand. ‘There’s no hurry, you know. You
don’t have to decide what you want to be this minute.’

I knew she meant well
but I thought the sooner I swam out to my ship the better.

C h a p t e r
 
3

Girls‘
 
Night Out

Contents
-
Prev
/
Next

Saturday night. Girls’
night out.

We’re going to go to
the Hollywood Bowl in Finchley. Dad calls it teen paradise. Everyone from our
school hangs out there. It’s a huge complex with a bowling alley, cafes and a
cinema, all built round a square where you can park if you have a car or stand about
looking cool if you want to be seen. At the weekend, this is most of the
teenage population of North London.

Talking of which, what
am I going to wear? Nesta and Izzie always look fab so I’d better make an
effort.

I rifled through my
wardrobe but all that stared back at me were last year’s oddments, worn out,
boring or babyish. I had a pink phase for a while but it looks too girlie
girlie now. I really need some new clothes.

Suddenly I had an
idea.

‘Mum,’ I called down
the stairs. ‘Where did you put that pile of stuff from Oxfam?’

‘In the hall
cupboard,’ she called from the kitchen. ‘I thought you didn’t want any of it.’

Mum had arrived back
this morning from her weekly shop with the usual carrier bag of Oxfam bargains.
I wouldn’t be seen dead in most of it, too big or too patterned, but there was
one shirt: size twenty. I don’t know who Mum thought was going to wear it and
initially I cast it aside. But it was nice fabric, silver and silky.

I pulled it out of the
bag, got a large pair of scissors and went to the sewing machine in the
sitting-room. I cut off the sleeves and the front panels, leaving me with the
back. I cut it down, hemmed the bottom then set about shaping the top and
sides.

In under an hour, I’d
finished. Posh Spice eat your heart out, I thought as I tried on my new
handkerchief halter top. It didn’t look half bad either. I could wear it with
my black jeans.

‘You’re not going out
in that,’ said Dad as I modelled my top for the family. ‘It’s October, you’ll
freeze to death.’

‘I’ll take a jacket,’
I promised.

‘It’s far too
revealing for someone your age,’ he frowned.

‘I’m not a baby any
more, Dad,’ I said.

‘I think you look
cool,’ said Lai, looking up from “Xena: Warrior Princess‘.

‘What do you think,
Steve?’ I asked.

He gave me a cursory
glance up and down. ‘Not bad.’

That’s praise coming
from him.

‘You’ve done a really
good job,’ said Mum, examining my stitching, ‘that silver brings out your blue
eyes beautifully. Oh, let her wear it, Peter.’

‘Can’t you sew some
sleeves in?’ said Dad, still not convinced.

‘This is the look;
it’s not meant to have sleeves.’

‘Well, all right but
make sure you keep your jacket on. And I’ll pick you up at nine thirty. No
later. I don’t want you staying out late looking like that.’

‘Oh, Dad, please, ten
at least. I’ll be with Nesta and Izzie. They can stay out later. Please.
Pleeease
!

‘Ten o’clock, no
later,’ said Mum. ‘And Dad will be there waiting for you.’

‘And don’t do anything
I wouldn’t,’ smirked Lai.

Permission from a
fifteen-year-old to snog anyone, I thought.

I began to get ready
in plenty of time. First I had a bath but unluckily for me Steve and Lai had
been in after their football practice. The soap was all slimy from where one of
them had left it in a puddle of water in the soap dish and the towels were on
the floor and dripping wet. The joys of elder brothers. Not.

I went into Mum’s room
to get clean towels from the cupboard and that’s when I noticed the jar. Wax
for removing unwanted hair. Just the thing. I had a fuzz of hair growing under
my arms and didn’t want to get caught like that time the press saw Julia
Roberts on her way to a film premier. When she waved at them, they all
photographed her hairy armpits. Not that the paparazzi are going co be at the
Hollywood Bowl tonight but you never know who else might be. One day my prince
will come.

Mum was out visiting
next door so I snuck the jar into my room and read the instructions. Heat up,
apply to the area, then pull off. Sounded simple enough so I went into the
kitchen and warmed the wax up in a pan of water on the stove. I waited until it
began to bubble.

‘What you doing?’ said
Steve, coming in and sticking his nose in the pan. ‘Toffee?’

‘Waxing,’ I said and
showed him my underarms.

‘Erlack,’ he said,
backing away. ‘Girlie scuff.’

Til do your chest if
you like,‘ I offered. His ’chest hair‘ was a family joke. He has just the one.
We all saw it in the garden this summer when he stripped off.We sang ’macho
macho macho man‘ to him. He was dead embarrassed.

‘Won’t it hurt?’ he
asked.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘It’ll
be easy. And so cheap. Izzie went for a leg wax last month and it cost her
twelve quid. This is costing nothing.’

Steve looked doubtful.
Ben and Jerry looked up from their sleeping spot under the table. Even they
looked doubtful.

When the wax had
cooled slightly, Jerry followed me upstairs and watched with interest as I took
the spatula and smoothed it on liberally under both my arms.

Rip it off, in one
firm upward motion
,
the packet directed.

I lifted my left arm,
eased a bit of the now hard wax and began to tug.

Ohmigod. OHMIGOD.
Argggghhhhh!!!
Agony. My eyes began to water and my face flushed red. I tugged again. No way.
Absolutely no way. It wouldn’t come off. What was I going to do?

I took a deep breath
and ripped.
ARGGGHHHHHH
! I fell back on the bed, sweating in agony.
Jerry immediately pounced up and gave my face a great wet lick.

Fending him off, I
gasped, ‘Why does nobody tell you it’s torture? Izzie never said.’

Then I realised; I’d
plastered the horrible stuff under both arms. But I couldn’t go through that
again. I just couldn’t. But it would show if I didn’t get it off. There was no
way out.

I lay on the bed with
my right arm above my head and timidly began to pull at the wax. The pain was
indescribable. Jerry began to bark as I heard Mum come in through the front
door.

‘Mum,’ I called.
‘MuuUUM, I need you!’

I could hear her
running up the stairs. ‘What is it?’ she said, bursting through the door. ‘Has
something happened?’

I nodded and pointed
at my arm. ‘I used your wax to do my underarms.’

Mum sat on the bed and
started shaking with laughter. ‘Serves you right for snooping in my things,’
she said.

‘I didn’t want to do a
Julia Roberts,’ I said.

Mum looked at me as
though I was mad.

‘It’s not too bad when
you use it on your legs,’ she said. ‘But your underarms,’ she started laughing
again, ‘your poor underarms are a bit more sensitive.’

‘Have you got
something that will dissolve it?’ I asked hopefully.

She shook her head.
“Fraid not. Come on, let’s get it over with. Arm up. Come ON. Arm up.‘

Tentatively I lifted
my arm.

‘Eyes closed, deep
breath,’ said Mum.

I took a deep breath
and she ripped.

‘
ARGGGHHH
!’ I
screamed and Jerry howled in sympathy. It was like someone had sliced my skin
off.