Bezzie’s bedroom wasn’t a whole lot different to our Murphy’s. It was sort of messy and there was a funny smell of feet and Axe body spray and posters on the wall out of
Nuts
magazine of naked women covering their boobs and their mufties with their hands. Bezzie’s mum must have a “no mufty and nipple on the wall” rule too like my mum. There was quite a lot of posters of cars and stuff ripped out of car magazines too and all over the floor there was wires and recording equipment and a microphone set up as if it was a studio as well as a bedroom. Oh and lots of socks and cups and crisp packets. Anyway, I’m forgetting the main thing. Sitting on the bed watching
Time Team
on Bezzie’s portable telly was a lad with brown hair and blue eyes in a hoodie and jeans.
It was Wesley Barrington Bains II!
“Y’all right?” I said to him, then I did my best face which said: Look mate, I’m not bothered ’bout you, I’m just here with Carrie, right?
I wanted him to know that I know that I’m not good-looking or anything and have no boobs and flat nipples and look a bit like a lemon so I didn’t want him to think I had any silly ideas about him just ’cos his mate liked mine.
“Y’all right?” he said. Then he smiled at me and he had a nice smile. My stomach felt funny like I needed the loo or something. It was probably all those Cheesy Starships ’cos they ain’t exactly a complex carbohydrate. Wesley had lovely green eyes and wasn’t at all fat up close. He’s about seventeen and he looks like a proper bloke, he’s got wide shoulders and a bit of hair coming out of his T-shirt top, not that I was looking that much. I sat down on the bed beside him and he smelled a bit of Adidas sports deodorant and we both watched that little bloke off
Time Team
with the specs dig up a plate which proved beyond doubt that people in the olden days had plates.
Anyway, the good thing was that Bezzie and Carrie seemed to hit it off dead well ’cos she started asking him all about EXACTLY how they record their tracks, so Bezzie started showing her the mic and the DAT recorder and how they host their MP3s online. Eventually Wesley said to me, “You at Mayflower, innit?”
And I said, “Yeah.”
And he said, “Are you, like, one of them superchavs innit??”
And I tutted and said, “No mate. You wanna check your mouth tho’, being so prejudicial.”
And he laughed proper loud then and I rolled my eyes at him and folded my arms. Then he said, “Do you live nearby?”
And I said, “What you wanna know that for, bruv? Gonna stalk me?”
And he laughed well loud again and said “No.”
That last bit was meant to sound like a joke, but when I think about it, I sounded like I reckoned I was a rudegirl. A bit like when I told Eric he had brain damage. Me and Carrie stayed for an hour and then we went home.
Bezzie never tried to kiss Carrie or nothing and he never even said he’d send her a text, but on our way home Carrie said that she felt like her life will never be the same again EVER. It is Wednesday night now and Bezzie hasn’t texted or nothing but Carrie says she knows he will as it is DESTINY.
I went to bed on Sunday night and I couldn’t sleep and when I did drop off I dreamed that Wesley Barrington Bains II was coming round and Cava-Sue was trying to put a tiara in my hair and it kept dropping out and smashing on Mum’s new breakfast bar.
I am never eating Cheesy Starships again.
WEDNESDAY 2ND APRIL
EASTER BREAK. IT’S SO BORING ’COS I AM TOTALLY SKINT. I asked Mum for hard cash, she got me a Twix egg instead.
I am also bored ’cos Carrie is TOTALLY IN LOVE with Bezzie Kelleher. Yeah, OK, she’s been in love with him since January, but she says it’s MUCH deeper now that she’s actually spoken to him. Carrie’s been over to Bezzie’s house two times over the last fortnight to listen to some of his new tracks. Carrie doesn’t really want to listen to Bezzie’s tracks, she wants to snog him and stick her hands up his T-shirt and nibble his ears, but Bezzie ain’t exactly all over her like an octopus in return.
It’s all a bit weird. Bezzie keeps texting Carrie and saying come over, then when she gets there covered in lipgloss and glitter makeup with her hair all ironed and her best hoodie on, stinking of Still by J-Lo Eau de Parfum, then Bezzie just sticks on some MP3 of a track he laid down that day at his Sound Engineer NVQ course, then they sit on his IKEA futon and eat toasted sandwiches. Bezzie likes string cheese and baked bean ones.
I asked Carrie if she has even properly snogged with Bezzie yet and she said no, not really, although he did try to give her an Indian burn the other night when they were messing about and there was a “definite electric voltage” running between them. Carrie says she knows that Bezzie is a “man with needs” and she knows he has a “great passion bubbling away beneath his layers, aching to erupt.” I think she means under his tracksuit bottoms. Can’t say I noticed it myself.
(I prefer to think that beneath Bezzie’s tracksuit bottoms he has ANOTHER pair of tracksuit bottoms then welded-on underpants “bubbling away,” ’cos the thought of him naked puts me off my fishfingers.)
Carrie thinks Bezzie is “sex on a stick.” Carrie has never been the same since she finished
The Princess Diaries
on day one of her holidays to Dominican and ended up reading her mother’s Jackie Collins novel which was full of proper filthy bits about people doing it nonstop. Carrie wants to get a grip of herself or Latoya will be calling her a hoochie slut too.
Carrie reckons the problem with Bezzie is he’s a bit shy. I don’t. I reckon he is a bit gay. On the
Nine O’ Clock News
once I saw a film about a gay pride march in central London and not all gays looked like Sean Burton in our class with the streaks who likes Kylie Minogue. Some of them looked like Bezzie too. Carrie didn’t look very happy when I said this and sat with her bottom lip out all through English, looking a lot like a baby pigeon.
I can’t help it if I tell the truth. This is what I was meaning in my careers talk. This is why I’d be dead good on
Big Brother.
I can’t keep stuff in my head, it just blurts out of my mouth. I ain’t changing for nobody. I am too real.
THURSDAY 3RD APRIL
I’ve been thinking. Maybe I do need to stop blurting stuff out. I don’t reckon Bezzie is gay really. He’s probably just a bit scared ’cos Carrie keeps turning up at his house with big streaks of blush down her face and glitter eyeshadow that makes her look like one of them New Zealand tribesmen who wait at the airport with spears to scare Prince Charles. I won’t tell Carrie this. I’ll keep it to myself.
I’ll never make 2.2 million quid like Tabitha Tennant if I keep on being this thoughtful.
SATURDAY 5TH APRIL — EASTER SATURDAY
This morning Carrie rang me and told me to tart myself up as we were meeting Bezzie and Wesley at 2:30
pm.
So I said, “Carrie, I DON’T WANNA meet Wesley.”
And she said, “Well it’s not like a proper date or nuffin’, more like hanging out together in a four.”
So I said, “Well what do I get out of that?!”
And she said, “Oh come on Shizza, be a mate.”
So it turns out that Carrie really wants to see Bezzie and vice versa, but Bezzie has promised Wesley that he’d hang out with him this Saturday ’cos Wesley had the day off at Argos where he works part time in the storeroom when he’s not doing his NVQ2 in Plumbing. So anyway, Bezzie was meeting Wesley and they were going to cruise about in Bezzie’s Vauxhall Nova and show off his new chrome exhaust and Carrie wanted to ride with them too.
So I said again, “Yeah, Carrie, but why do you need me there?” So Carrie said well ’cos I’m her BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD of course, but also ’cos her dad, Barney, was giving her ’nuff grief about seeing Bezzie and he doesn’t want Carrie going around in Bezzie’s car, so Carrie wanted me to come over to Draperville and pretend we’re both going to the Multiplex to see
Hopeless In Love
starring Lindsay Lohan, but we weren’t really, we were meeting Bezzie and Wesley in Fatty Arbuckle’s parking lot and going for a ride.
So I said to Carrie, “So you want me to lie to your father?”
And Carrie said, “Oh get you, goody-two-shoes, what about last week when I had to back up your story to your mother about those Niko trainers getting stolen in PE when you really sold them to the Bean twins’ big sister for a tenner?”
I shut up then and stuck some lipgloss on and my big parka with the fluffy hood and my big hoop earrings and decided to go and meet her.
Barney wasn’t in when I got to Draperville, but Maria, Carrie’s mum, was. Maria was in the lounge area by their big dinner table arranging loads of orchids that she’d bought from Asda into a big glass vase. Carrie’s mum was asking me all about the movie we were going to see and I felt proper terrible about lying to her as Maria is a nice woman. I felt even worse when she gave us a tenner Easter money to spend on popcorn and hot-dogs. Carrie nearly pulled my arm off dragging me to Fatty Arbuckle’s as quick as she could.
When we got there, Bezzie and Wesley were parked up in the disabled space and they beeped their horn and we got in. Wesley turned round in the front seat and smiled at me and said, “All right Shiraz?”
So I said, “Yeah” and looked out of the window and blew a big Bazooka gum bubble while Carrie stuck her head through the seats and gave Bezzie a kiss, which he looked a bit shocked at.
We set off into Ilford and I stuck my seatbelt on and made Carrie fasten hers too, even though there wasn’t much danger as we never went much over twenty-one miles an hour and there were old people my nan’s age passing us on Rascals.
When we got into Ilford town center Bezzie rolled down the windows and flipped on the CD player and stuck on one of the G-Mayes Detonators’ new tracks called “Gun Bumpin’” which Bezzie told me and Carrie was all about how guns are dead bad and are totally destroying society. The chorus went like this:
“Brap-brap-brap boi
Am gun bumpin’.
Brap brap brap —
a got da crowd jumpin —
Brap brap brap — got gun fingers frontin’
Got ma gun in your mouth — now ya no dis boi is sumfin’.”
Bezzie turned up the volume dead loud so it was blasting out of the trunk and the entire car was shaking and my ears were crackling. People in the street were giving us funny looks as we drove along and some people were smirking. They obviously couldn’t work out that the Detonators’ track was AGAINST guns not FOR them. That’s the thing about grown-ups, they just judge you and act prejudicial without even checking the facts out proper. I hope I’m never like that when I grow up. I hope I never just look at some young people and go, “Ugh, chavs!” just ’cos they’re wearing a hoodie or a Burberry scarf or listening to loud music. I’m not going to turn into a boring old fart who stereotypes everyone like grown-ups do. I’m the master of my own destiny after all, as Ms. Bracket said.
For the next hour we drove around the one-way streets in Ilford very slowly, beeping horns at other people that Bezzie and Wesley knew who were driving Citroën Saxos and Ford Orions. We couldn’t talk to each other ’cos the music was so loud, but it was well exciting. Eventually Bezzie said he was hungry and Carrie said she was too and they both said they wanted a Burger King and I said, “Well I’m not hungry,” and so did Wesley ’cos he’d just eaten two Pepperamis and a big packet of Cadbury’s mini-eggs. Then — before I knew what was happening — I’d been dropped off at the far side of Goodmayes with Wesley Barrington Bains II standing beside me on the curb and Carrie shouting that she would text us and pick us up in half an hour as her and Bezzie wanted some “quality time” alone. THEN THEY DROVE OFF!
I looked at Wesley and he looked at me then he burst out laughing. “Your mate is a mentalist,” he said, shaking his head. I didn’t know what to say ’cos I was really angry and dreaming up some sort of bad revenge against Carrie for dropping me, like telling Wesley to tell Bezzie that Carrie got her period last year at Laserquest when she was wearing white jeans and had to walk back with her hoodie wrapped round her mufty area ’cos she looked like something off
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Then I decided to just go home and blank Carrie’s calls.
“Chill out, Shiraz. They’ll be back soon anyway, innit?” said Wesley. I just tutted and folded my arms. I didn’t say a word for about a minute ’cos I was raging. “’Ere, do you wanna watch Channel U at mine for a bit?” he said. “I only live on the next cul-de-sac.”
I looked at him and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, ’spose,” I said.
We walked along the road together at first saying nothing, then Wesley said, “Oi, y’know, I been thinking about that superchav stuff I said about Mayflower when I first met you. Sorry Shiz, I was out of order.”
So I shrugged and I said, “No worries mate.”
And he said, “I was only saying it ’cos that’s what the boys on my plumbing NVQ call Mayflower, y’know, ‘Superchav Academy’?”
I couldn’t help smiling then and I said, “Oh bring it on bruv, I’ve heard it all.” And then I said, “It’s sweet being a superchav really.” Then we both laughed for ages and chatted about the Brunton-Fletchers down my road ’cos they ARE superchavs.
So we went to Wesley’s house and his car was sitting outside in the drive — it’s a Golf and it’s banana-yellow with a big spoiler on the back. We went into his house through the back door into the kitchen. It was proper clean and modern and tidy with no clutter. “Minimalist” as my mum would say. “I want our gaff to be minimalist!” she always says when she sees it on
Sixty Minute Makeover.
My mum could never be minimalist, she’d have to get rid of all that horse brass that Nan gave her and her porcelain Victorian figurine collection that she built up month by month out of the
News of The World
magazine and the millions of copies of
Chat, Pick Me Up,
and
Sky TV
magazine that she always eats her dinner off, and worst of all Murphy, who is not minimalist at all, because he is a giant who smells of farts.
Anyway, Wesley’s house hasn’t got any of this clutter. It’s all cream carpet and white formica and no fuss. I asked him if his mum and dad were home and he said his mum was at work ’cos she works in admin at Romford ice rink, and then he didn’t mention his dad so I reckon he ain’t got one. Then we found a note on the side from his mother saying:
Wes — if you’re home about 5
PM
can you stick the oven on 200 and shove a spud in for me?
and Wesley rolled his eyes and laughed and said, “’Ere Shiraz, make sure you remind me,” and I said I would.