Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) (25 page)

‘Yeah. Fit,’ I said airily, recalling his long legs and lush hair, and not exactly feeling what I’d describe as airy. ‘If only he’d have stopped yakking. Couldn’t get a word in.’

Donna laughed. ‘I know. He was weird, no? Marv reckons he’s just shy.’

So Donna had been talking about Dylan with her cousin. Did she like him? I got a sudden flash of the green-eyes, which I just as quickly pushed away.

‘You fancied him though, right?’ Don took a smug sip of tea. She knew me too well.

I shrugged. ‘Out of my league, babes. I might as well fancy Robert Pattinson …’ I paused. ‘Uh, did you? Fancy him?’ We didn’t usually fancy the same type, but you never knew.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Nah. You know my rule about cardigans.’

‘He wasn’t wearing a cardigan!’ I protested, although personally I like a boy in a floppy cardi. In
my experience it’s an item of knitwear that confounds stereotypes when worn by a boy, although obvs it has to be worn with the right amount of irony. Let it be known: cardi wearers are good in bed.

Don sniffed. ‘Yeah, he was. Under the blazer.’ She shook her head. ‘Not my type … But
definitely yours
 …’ She sang the last two words.

I smiled. ‘Like I said: out of my league.’ It was gutting, really. All weekend after the cinema I’d kept thinking about him. I’d be watching telly or on the loo or trying to get to sleep and there he’d be, leaning nonchalantly against the wall of my mind, one skinny-jeaned leg crossed over the other. Well, that wasn’t
all
he did. And lots of times he was naked.

Anyway.

‘Don’t be a pussy,’ said Donna. ‘You can have anyone you want. You’ve had most of the boys in this school, for example.’ She smiled prettily. Bitch.

‘Piss off,’ I said merrily. ‘And, anyway, there’s a whole heap o’ difference between them and … him. He’s beautiful.’

Don put her hand on my knee and cocked her head earnestly. ‘As are you, Ashley. As are you.’

I shoved her hand off. Very funny. ‘Sasha’s the beautiful one,’ I said, draining my tea just as the beeps for next period went.

‘Uh-huh.’

Donna could eye-roll all she wanted but the facts spoke for themselves. My perfect big sister was beautiful to my OK; good to my naughty; kind to my evil.
C’est
, unfortunately,
la vie.

‘Anyway, Marv reckons they’re all coming to Ollie’s party,’ continued Donna as we paused at the door before she turned left to theatre studies and I turned right to media studies. ‘You never know …’

Right. You never know … but you usually do. I put Dylan out of my mind and spent the next couple of hours working on my media studies coursework.

We had to make short documentaries. I was loving it. Like, really loving it. And, without wanting to sound like a complete wanker, there was a chance it could change my life. Unlike most of the others, I hadn’t already started my uni applications. Donna wanted to be an actor; Cass was going for law at Cambridge, among others; Sarah wanted to do history of art; Ollie fancied music; Jack was going to do sports science … which left me and Rich floundering. I don’t think Rich had a scooby what he wanted to do with his life and, until recently, neither did I. So I decided I wasn’t going to go to uni. Not yet, anyway. It seemed kind of ridiculous to spend all that money on doing something I didn’t care about just for the sake of getting a degree. Mum and Sasha were shocked and appalled,
bien sûr
,
but it was my life. And, anyway, it had paid off: I’d found something I could be really passionate about. I’d done my research and I’d decided to apply to do film at Southampton, Bournemouth, Falmouth and East Anglia. As yet, nobody knew, and they never would unless I got a place. And I needed this documentary to complete my applications.

I’d decided to focus on people who’d had near-death experiences. This was a subject close to my thankfully still-beating heart, since I’d almost drowned swimming in the sea in Devon last half term. (Long story.) I thought using it for coursework might stop me having nightmares about it. It was kind of working. And, of course, Dylan had taken over my dreams for the past couple of nights, to
très
pleasing effect.

I’d already come up with a few real-life stories from local papers and crappy magazines, hidden among the stupid ‘I Botoxed my armpits’ and ‘My husband’s cheese fetish’ sort of stories. One or two of them were right on the money. Reading their stories had made me realize just how dull mine was. I’d stopped breathing, then started again. End of. The time from when I got in the sea to when I woke up in hospital is just a blank. It’s as if less than a second passed between the two events. But these people saw lights, watched themselves from above, lost all fear of death, etc. I wish I’d had all that.

I was engrossed in some old lady’s story from the website of our local paper (about her house being bombed when she was a kid in the Second World War), when someone shoved my desk.

‘Hey!’ I said, ready to have a go, but it was just Sam. He didn’t like me, although he used to. We’d once hooked up at a party. Truly, I’d never have gone there if I’d thought for a moment he
really
liked me. And the only reason I laughed when he told me he did was because I genuinely thought he was joking. Anyway, two years on and he still couldn’t look at me without scowling. I tried a friendly smile, but he ignored me and walked to his desk, a book about Dungeons and Dragons under his arm. Mmm, sexy.

Dylan on the other hand …

Sod it. I had nothing to lose except my dignity, and that went long ago. Looking around quickly to check that Matt, our teacher, wasn’t in sight, I logged on to Facebook. It was only a matter of time before school blocked it, but for now we were free to socially network to our hearts’ content. Facebooking in class time, however, was a major no-no. We’re talking withdrawal of Internet privileges. So I was furtive furtive, quickly finding Dylan in Marv’s friend list and sending my own request. If he’d accepted it by the time I got home, I’d message him.

But first I had the rest of the day to get through. I had just enough time before the end of the lesson to fire off a quick email to the editor of the newspaper with a message for the old lady, asking her if she’d let me interview her about her experience, then I went along to the canteen for lunch, as always, and where, as always, Donna, Ollie, Jack and our other friends Sarah, Cass and Rich were sitting at the fourth table from the left, roughly in the middle of the room. Don’t know why or how we’d picked that one – or even when – but on the rare occasions someone else was sitting there it was like walking into your bedroom and finding a stranger in your bed. And not in a good way.

‘Still doing pack-ups?’ asked Cass sympathetically, eyeing my hastily chucked together cheese-and-pickle sandwich, now limp after a morning in my bag. She hadn’t bought lunch from the canteen either, but that was because she’d stopped at a deli on the way to school to pick up her usual £4 chicken-salad flatbread hold-the-mayo. She reckons it’s because she doesn’t like the crappy bread in the school sandwiches, and she has a point. But £4?

I nodded and took a bite of soggy bread and sweaty cheese. It was edible, anyway. And Cass didn’t need to look so sorry for me. Mum still had the shop and the house. We weren’t on benefits quite yet.

‘So I hear you had a good weekend,’ said Sarah,
peering at me saucily from behind her Ribena carton. ‘Dylan was it …?’

I shot daggers at Donna, who shrugged not at all guiltily. ‘What? I didn’t know it was a secret.’

That
what
was a secret? God, you admit to fancying one boy and it’s Agatha Christie time.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said to Sarah. ‘He’s not for me.’

She shook her head. ‘Ash, I have no doubt at all that you could have anyone you wanted … I’ve never yet seen a boy who doesn’t fancy you.’

‘Piss off!’ I spluttered.

‘It’s true,’ said Ollie seriously. ‘I’d have you here and now if it was socially acceptable.’

‘You’d have
anyone
here and now if it was socially acceptable,’ I replied. ‘No offence.’

He nodded amiably. ‘Fair point.’

‘But seriously, Ash,’ said Rich, who was busy examining a spot on his chin using the mirror in Donna’s eyeshadow compact. ‘You really like him?’

I chucked my sandwich down on the table in mock outrage, where it instantly curled up at the edges like some fish corpse (the sandwich, not the outrage). ‘What is this?’ I demanded. ‘You’re never usually this interested in my love life.’

‘That’s cos
usually
you’ve already shagged them,’ said Jack. ‘This is new.’

Cheeky bastard. That’s so not true, for the record. But all I said was: ‘Yeah, well. He doesn’t fancy me. End of.’

Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. If my friends hadn’t made such a thing out of it I might have been able to put him out of my mind. But the bastards made sure he was installed good and proper, so by the time I got home that afternoon I was practically panting to get on the computer to check Facebook.

I slammed the front door and ran to the back room without taking my coat off, where, sitting straight-backed and serene at our computer, was my sister Sasha.

‘What are you doing here?’ I blurted. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ Fair questions. She didn’t live at home any more, after all. And didn’t she have a laptop/iPad/iPhone/other assorted shiny, portable Internet gadgets? The ‘executive home’ she shared with her ‘partner’ (vomit) Toby in Kent, with its mini ‘guest toiletries’ in the ‘guest bedroom en suite’ and its tasteful sofas and tastefully framed ‘art’ on the walls, was chock-full of the stuff. Technology coming out of its bright red-bricked ears. WiFi flowing invisibly from no less than three little blinking boxes attached neatly to the wall in the downstairs study, the loft room and in the garage. The garage FFS!

‘Oh, hey, Ashley,’ said Sasha, turning and smiling sweetly. ‘I’ve got the day off. I’ve finally persuaded Mum to do her food shopping online so I’m signing her up with Ocado as it does Waitrose.’ She turned back to the screen. ‘It’s by far the best, both ethically and in quality.’

Right. How fascinating. Kill me now if I’m going to find myself discussing supermarkets by the time I’m twenty-four. ‘Well, are you going to be long? I need to use the computer.’

‘About quarter of an hour?’ said Sasha without turning round. ‘I’ll come and find you when I’m done.’

I made a face at her back and went into the kitchen to grab a snack. Monday wasn’t one of Mum’s shop’s late-opening nights, but Mum still wouldn’t be home till six, when we’d have pizza for tea. Monday-night ritual. On my way up to my room I stuck my head into the living room, where my little sister Frankie was watching TV. Most twelve-year-olds would be watching crappy American teeny sitcoms on the Disney Channel or something, but she was sat in the lotus position in front of Mum’s yoga DVD.

‘All right, Franks?’

She held up a finger to tell me to wait, then placed the tips of her middle finger and thumb together and brought them in front of her, just like the skinny bird in the leotard was doing on the screen, breathed in
deeply and chanted a long, slow, ‘Ommmmm.’ Then she paused the screen and spun round to face me, her hand-me-down school shirt and navy pleated skirt about as un-yogary as you could get.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Good sesh?’

‘Yeah, brilliant. Apart from all the farting.’ She gave me an unwavering gaze – the only sort she does, my crazy sister – and I laughed.

‘Mum says it happens all the time in her yoga class,’ she said reproachfully.

‘Sure it does, Frankie-pank,’ I said. ‘Good day?’

She turned back to the screen. ‘It was OK. Miss Baines said I had an unusual talent for mimicry.’

‘Who were you mimicking?’

She pulled her legs back into the lotus position. ‘Miss Baines.’

Of course. I turned to go, then stopped and said, ‘Do you know why Sasha’s here? It can’t just be for Mum’s Internet shopping.’

Frankie sucked her teeth impatiently. ‘Dunno. Maybe she’s had a row with Toby.’ She clicked the DVD off pause.

Interesting, although I doubted it was true. Toby and Sasha were disgusting together, all little kisses and ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’. I left Frankie to her ‘omming’ and went up to my room to change.

Ah, my room. Sasha gave it to me when she left
home to go to uni. It was the best present she’d ever given me, by about a million miles. I’d spent a whole half term transforming it. I’d stripped off her Laura Ashley wallpaper and painted the whole room purple, except the dark-wood floorboards which I left as they were. Then I’d covered my bed with a couple of metres of this mental 1960s geometric-print fabric I’d found in Oxfam. I’d bought some slatted wooden blinds from Ikea and put those up in place of Sasha’s gross floral curtains, and finally put my giant Kurt Cobain poster on the wall. There was nothing I could do about the disgusting fake-wood wardrobe – I couldn’t afford a new one – so I’d moved it beside the door where at least you couldn’t see it when you first came in. Who knew I was so creative? It was just how I’d imagined it, and I loved it. It was my space. I’d even put a bolt on the door, right up at the top so you wouldn’t know it was there, although Mum had noticed almost straight away, with her mental mum-radar. I’d promised I’d never lock it at night, no sirree, so she let me keep it. Obviously I
had
locked it, but she’d never realized.

As always, the first thing I did when I got to my room was turn on my CD player, then close the blinds and turn on my bedside light. (I never used the ceiling light. I preferred to keep some things in the shadows. Deep,
non
?) Next, my school clothes were off and leggings and a mahoosive jumper were on.
Relief. I’d just flopped on to my bed for a bout of staring into space when Sasha knocked on my door and poked her head round.

‘Computer’s free, Ashy,’ she cooed. For the record, I hate being called Ashy.

I jumped up from my bed and followed her out of the door. ‘You off, then?’ I asked. She shook her head, her blonde ponytail bobbing perkily.

‘I brought a chicken casserole for supper. Thought Mum deserved a break, you know? Something tells me she doesn’t get an awful lot of help when I’m not around.’