My Invisible Boyfriend (17 page)

I make sure I’m sitting next to Fili, so I won’t catch her eye when we get to mine. Which somehow leaves me bang opposite Eric, eyelashes and all.

OOPS?

We make short work of
My roomie is a phantom farter
(undeniably Jambo, whose roomie is Dunc The Monk and is the guy you don’t stand directly behind in the line for lunch) and
My cat died and they won’t even let me go home, and my sister says they’re going to bury her under the croquet lawn
(Ashe: They’re going to bury your sister under the croquet lawn? Honey: No, they’re going to bury Pom-Pom under the croquet lawn. Us: You fail at being secret. Pom-Pom? Obviously this is deeply sad, but seriously, Pom-Pom?).

Then it’s
I might more-than-like you, too
, and I’m suddenly very aware of my heart, sending all those red blobs spinning round my veins.

Agent Ryder looks casually out of the window, while also
looking very casually at everyone else, as if curious to identify the secret-keeper, while also entirely giving herself away to the one person in the room who’ll understand. Well, in theory. Actual Ryder doesn’t have that many eyes.

Brendan suggests something filthy enough to distract all attention.

I take my chance. I make myself look up.

Eric’s not looking at me.

But is he not looking at me in that effortful concentrated way that actually is kind of the same as looking at me?

Definitely.

Mostly definitely?

The eyelashes flutter for a moment, dusting his cheeks, then he tugs at his coat sleeves and ruffles his bitten-down fingers through his hair. Shuffles his feet around. Half looks up at me, then drops those lashes again. Tugs on his lippiercing.

Definitely
definitely.

Next it’s
I’m frightened to sing
(duh, Yuliya), one censored one that makes Ashe look like she sucked a lemon and stubbed her toe while a rat ran up her skirt, and
I wish I could blame you instead of me
, which is universally slated for being too successfully secretive.

And then?

Girl B is all I can think about.

And there’s more eyelashing and ruffling and shuffling and
definitely definitely
definitely.

OHM.

EYE.

GOD.

to:
[email protected]

from:
[email protected]

Dearest E,

I just wanted to say that unless I’m completely confused and stupid (which I really hope I’m not) then I obviously know who it is you remind me of. But you already know that, right?

If I’d known these would be the rules then I would totally have come up with better ones.

H

to:
[email protected]

from:
[email protected]

Dearest Heidi,

As it happens, I rather like your rules: I’ve always been fond of dancing. But something tells me our respective paths may cross one another quite soon.

In the meantime, it is, as always, a delight to hear from you.

love & affection,

E

Romantic entanglement with non-biscuit people turns out to be very similar to going out with Gingerbread Ed.

I’m still juggling plenty of who-knows-what-about-who-and-why, which means I spend most of my day at the Finch ducking out of sight behind pillars and doorways, trying to remember whether I’m meant to be being sympathetic, or friendly, or not being anything at all. And back at the attic, I still seem to be spending my time making up conversations with someone who isn’t there. Eric might not have a squished eye made of icing or a tendency to lounge around on invisible furniture, but his being A Real Boy isn’t making much difference.

I do see him in real life, of course: The Finch doesn’t make for avoidability. But he’s always on the edges. Lingering at The Logs, chewing his fingers. Smoking outside the music rooms, when Venables just happens to have called an emergency PAG meeting. Keeping the required safe distance from Ludo: hovering attentively enough to let me know he’s there.

I kind of love the way he does that.

But it means by the time we actually end up in the same space as each other, alone, I’ve already had seventeen conversations with him about Gingerbread Ed and how very
loveable and non-weird his existence is, and the importance of coats, and whether season 3 of
Mycroft Christie Investigates
would’ve been better without the Evil Wife (answer: yes). We’ve accidentally brushed fingertips. Held hands. Benchsnuggled. There may even have been kissing rehearsals.

And then there he is. The real thing, at the front steps of the Manor on an already-dark Friday afternoon, brooding against a pillar. Black roots starting to take over from the peroxide, slight stoop to his shoulders as if they’re carrying the weight of a world or two, fingers drumming on the worn grainy stone. He glances up as I walk through the big oak doors and slam to a halt. I stand there like a dork. He stiffens against the pillar, and blinks. Eyelashes.

Eyelashes.

Eyelashes.

Eyelashes.

“So…uh. Hi.”

I just smile back. Words are not forthcoming.

“So…”

He shifts his arms to behind his back, as if he needs to hold the pillar to stand up or something. He’s as awkward as I am. He’s more awkward than I am. I sort of miss the debonair Mycroft Christieness he has when he’s being E—but then I’m not exactly feeling like the glamorous Miss Ryder right now.

“About this…stuff,” he says, waving a hand, then putting it back against the pillar, as if he might lose his balance and
slip off the edge of the world. I wouldn’t blame him: I might, too. “I should…we should talk, maybe?’

I do the smiling thing some more. I think I fit in a nod, somewhere.

“Cool.”

He squints, turning to look down the driveway. The darkness is split by bright lights as the Mothership’s car rolls up to the steps. The engine whirrs: Gravel crunches under the tires. The headlights pick out his silhouette, framing him in darkness. He looks like a photograph, a poster, a still from the movie of
Eric: The Boy Who Was Suddenly Really Inarticulate but Also Sort of Beautiful.

I may be staring.

I should say something.

“That’s my mum.”

Not that.

“She has to take me home now.”

Not that, either.

“I won’t be here all weekend. But, next week, maybe? I stay late on Wednesdays. There’s a musical rehearsal after classes; The Manor common room will probably be quiet. So I might be in there, watching TV, if you wanted to come and find me, maybe?”

He blinks at me few times, as if he’s deciphering it, as if he’s really getting what I’m saying. He catches my hopeful little smile, and for just a moment I catch a miniature glimpse of E.

The Mothership honks her horn.

He shifts against the pillar again, resuming Peroxide Eric mode: solemn yet amused, artfully arranged. Plus eyelashes.

It feels strange to walk into the Little Leaf as just another customer.

It feels even weirder to be in there as Heidi Ryder, soon to be girlfriended by Mysterious E. All the time me and Gingerbread Ed spent on the Sofa of Sex was made up by Betsy, after all. Me and Eric will be needing “Reserved” cards above it, with our names. So long as we don’t dance around each other for too much longer anyway. The place is already starting to change, in preparation for the big closedown: The hat collection’s gone from the top shelf, and the bottom half of the blackboard wall at the back has been wiped clean of all Teddy’s squiggly chalk art.

Most things are the same, though: the Daily Wisdom (T
HE CAKE IS A LIE
!
BUT YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BELIEVE IN THE LEMON SHORTBREAD
); Teddy sticking his curly head out of the kitchen to give me one of his insane, totally unaware smiles; Betsy gently but firmly telling me when she thinks I’m being a loony.

“Are you drunk?” she says, dropping a triple-chocolate brownie onto a plate for me with a puff of cocoa dust.

I shelve my outstandingly clever metaphorical explanation of how Gingerbread Ed is vanilla and Mysterious E is rum, and I try for something a little more straightforward.

(Maybe she’s right, though. Mysterious E
is
rum, and I am tipsy from just thinking about him. Love is so weird.)

She pours us both cups of tea, frowning as she listens.

“So this other guy starts e-mailing you, and he knows all about your Ed? I mean,
all
about Ed?”

“Yep. But it’s OK. He’s not going to tell. In fact…well, we’re kind of…getting together. Going out. Or, you know, planning to.”

I fiddle with the end of my left braid and fidget. Apparently romance makes me act as if I’m about five. My first boyfriend was a gingerbread man: It’s not all that surprising.

Betsy informs me I’m insanely cute, though, which seems more in line with my newfound boyfriend ability.

“Anyone I know?”

“You might have seen him around,” I say, all coy and girly.

Teddy reappears from the kitchen, leans on the counter, and nicks a bit of my brownie. A good bit. A corner bit, crunchy on the outside, squidgy underneath. He even watches me while he’s doing it, grinning, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“I’ll let you off for that on one condition,” I tell him, digging in my bag for the list of costume requirements for Etienne and The Illyrians. “I kind of need four more sketches. Sort of urgently?”

“You think you can just stroll in here and demand I draw stuff now?”

“You’re stealing my job, my supply of peanut butter
brownies, and my Betsy away to another country. Yes, Art School Boy, I can stroll in here and demand stuff.”

He mock-sighs, and takes the list. So far, all I’ve got is four names, and the words EMBARRASSING LYCRA? with a big red circle around them.

“Lo-fi album cover art?”

I poke him with a pencil. “I’m a little short on inspiration, OK?”

He tips his head to one side, chews his lip, then grins, and disappears upstairs. A minute later, he returns with his laptop and a DVD.

“You want embarrassing Lycra? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:
Tron.
”

He’s not kidding. Two hours of lightbikes, Bruce Boxleitner, and the total ignoring of our one and only customer later, I can confirm that I have indeed witnessed the most ‘80s film of all time.

AH.

MAY.

ZING.

“You certainly enjoyed that a whole lot more than Safak did,” says Betsy, clearing away our empty mugs with a meaningful roll of her eyes.

I look to Teddy.

“Apparently it takes a special personality to appreciate CGI that crappy,” he says, with a rueful shrug. “So we, uh, kind of decided to call it a day.”

“You broke up over
Tron
?” I wrap a braid across my mouth, trying to hold in a giggle. “That’s…definitely special.”

He nods, curls bouncing gloomily. If curls can do that sort of thing.

I feel a little sad: Here’s me, skipping about in romantic glee, and Teddy’s doing the opposite. I feel the same every time I see Ludo, with a bonus twinge of guilt. There might be a super-cunning way around that, though: one of those two-birds-with-one-stone kind of plans that Mycroft Christie’s oh so fond of. Ludo’s always liked Teddy, after all. She’s the kind of girl who absurdly lustable guys like Teddy always get, all swingy hair and the scent of peaches wafting from their elbows. She could be his Lovely Ludo. And if she’s got her own new swoonsome lovemonkey, she’s not even going to care what Peroxide Eric’s getting up to.

I vaguely outline my genius idea, neatly sidestepping the part where the whole thing is not quite as noble and selfless as a genius idea might want to be.

Teddy just sort of blinks. A lot.

I suppose not everyone is into Ludo.

“It’s sweet of you, hon,” says Betsy, filling in the long, long silence. “But we’re gone in, what, four weeks? Not really the time to be starting a whole new thing.”

I sigh. She’s right, of course. That’s probably the real reason Teddy broke it off with Safak in the first place. And I definitely don’t want Ludo to be heartbroken all over again.

“Four weeks?” I mumble, the words hitting me at last. “That’s all?”

Betsy grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I know it’s hard, but it’s not all so terrible. We get to go back home, catch up with family. Some of us like to do that once in a while, you know.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

“Exactly!”

It’s not really what I meant, but then she knows that.

“Means you’ll love us even more once we’re gone?”

“We could kidnap her?” says Teddy, finally emerging from his blinky daze. “She’d fit in a suitcase. If we squashed her a bit.”

I nod encouragingly. “I might not look it, but I’m quite bendy.”

Betsy grins. “Sure there’s nothing back here you wouldn’t want to leave behind?”

I look round at the bright colors, the mismatched mugs, the familiar swoop of Teddy’s chalked handwriting on the blackboard menu, the list of teas indelibly in my head (Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Orange Pekoe, Green…).

Once upon a time, back in the Frog Girl days, I might have wanted to parcel myself up and cover myself in stamps at the thought of losing this place. But I’ve got somewhere else to belong to now—and an E to keep me company.

I spend the night before The Big Date getting all my clothes out of the wardrobe, attempting to make my hair do something that isn’t two braids (total failure), and ducking
all efforts by the Mothership to “help.” I feel a bit guilty, doing it all under the watchful eyes of my gingerbread boy. But we broke up ages ago, so it’s not as if I’m cheating. I bet Ed would like Eric: I do, after all. Ed and E should hang out, and talk about imaginary guy things. They could invite Mycroft Christie around for poker. I’ll end up one of those whiny girlfriends who is always sending “where r u?” texts in no time.

I think I might be a bit nervous. I’ve never actually been on a date before that didn’t only happen inside my own brain.

Not that it’s a date, exactly: just an afternoon, drop-by-if-you-feel-like-it path-crossing in the Manor common room. We’re just both happening to feel like doing the dropping-by part at the same time.