My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend (4 page)

Seymour, like the well-brought-up gentleman he is, offers to walk me home. I only live ten minutes’ walk away and it’s kind of on his way – but it’s still nice of
him.

‘Do you want to pop in and say hi to Carrie?’ I ask when we’re turning the corner into my road and I can see that the lights are still on in my house.

‘No, thanks – I’d better not.’

‘Are you sure?’ I persist.

Even as I’m saying it, I already know what his answer will be and I kind of wonder why I bother putting myself out there at all.

‘No, I really do have to get home. Sorry,’ he mumbles awkwardly, surprising neither of us.

I try not to take it personally, or get all hung up on things, but sometimes I have the sneaking suspicion that Seymour should be a bit less sensible. He knows that if he comes round to my
house, my mum is much more lax about stuff than his parents are – if he wanted to, we could still have a clear hour alone in my bedroom, while my mum watches telly downstairs and pays us no
attention. Way too often, Seymour is more interested in getting home to play guitar or spend hours chatting to other people on Facebook. I’m not sure if it’s me or him, but I’m
pretty sure this is not normal.

Before we get too close to the house, we stop and kiss goodnight. We both know the drill by now; we’ve done this enough times. No tongues – Seymour takes quite a bit of warming up
before that’s permitted, and he is remarkably prudish when a parent is within approximately a two-mile radius, so it’s not even worth me giving it a go. I’m not risking getting
shot down again so soon.

After five seconds or so he pulls away and starts walking towards my house again, not pausing to wait for me. He always walks me all the way to the front door.

‘Hey, I just remembered,’ he says, ‘did you see that weird comment on your blog? Some guy pretending to be Jackson Griffith. I hope he’s not some nutter that’s
going to start bothering you.’

I laugh it off. ‘I don’t think we need to start worrying quite yet – I’m just pleased that someone other than you and my mum has looked at my blog, though I still think
it’s probably Nish winding me up. Hey, maybe it really
is
Jackson Griffith.’

‘Then I really should be worried. My mum wouldn’t have to stress any more then – I’m sure you’d dump me in a nanosecond and run off to LA, or wherever it is that
he’s rock-’n’-rolling himself to death these days.’

‘Yeah, right. I don’t think you need to lose any sleep over it tonight. Thanks for walking me home – text me when you get in, yeah?’

‘Of course, and I’ll see you at college tomorrow. Night, Chew.’

I stand on the doorstep and wave until he disappears. I’m glad my mum is still awake, because I’m not tired at all.

PJ Hardly

When I was a kid, my mum used to listen to Kate Bush a lot in the car. My earliest memories are of wailing along from my booster seat in the back, along
with the whole of
The Hounds of Love
and
Never for Ever
. I still know all the words now. ‘Running Up That Hill’ would be one of my Desert Island Discs. I spent a lot
of time perfecting my crazy Kate Bush dance moves.

Crazy was the key you see.

I’m sure it was the early influence of Kate that got me into the idea of beautiful, talented and mad women for evermore – from PJ Harvey to Björk to
Florence. It’s a deep lifelong love in me.

Basically I wish I could be beautiful and talented enough to be that barking mad and get away with it. I want staring eyes and cloudy hair like Kate Bush. I want to stand
on a hillside in a thunderstorm quoting the Brontë sisters in shrieking verse. There’s something deeply sexy about being that mental, right? Well, so long as you’re good-looking
enough. Then you’re fascinating and different, and just too divine for this world. Otherwise, you’re just mental and/or a bit silly.

If I tried this, my mum would tell me to brush my hair and my friends would all laugh at me. (They frequently do anyway, obviously – have you met me?) So I’ll
stick to dancing in my room in my old jazz leotard with my charity-shop shawl, thanks.

Comments

Aw, Chew – you are a special little snowflake. Now brush your hair. Love ya!

Nishi_S

nice piece. I only found yr site cuz I was googling myself . . . but I’ve stuck around for the writing! Stay beautiful!

jackson_e_griffith

The canteen at college is so much better than school ever was. It’s massive and there are different stations where you can get pizza or baked potatoes, instead of just
one rubbish shepherd’s pie with grey meat.

Nishi and I are sitting at our usual table. It’s not like it’s a particularly amazing table but we’re creatures of habit.

‘How was your date with Seymour last night?’ Nishi asks me.

‘Date?’ I screw up my face. ‘And how
was
it? You know us so well you might as well have been there. We went to Moshi Munchers; we had miso soup and those really
amazing dumplings, and I ate about a million of those octopus balls that everyone else thinks are really gross. He walked me home, then I watched telly with my mum and stuffed my face with
chocolate biscuits because I am a fat, disgusting piglet with no self-control gene. Standard. It was fine.’

‘Then why do you think I’m asking you a polite and uncharacteristic question like that, Chew? Think.’

She pushes her plate away and looks at me, eagle-eyed, as I absent-mindedly pick up one of her wholemeal sandwich crusts and gnaw on the end of it while I ponder her question.

‘I don’t know. Really. Dunno. You’re going to have to tell me.’

‘Because I want you to ask me about Anna, of course!’ Nishi exclaims, with a look of exasperation. ‘You’re so desperate for everything to be great all the time that you
don’t even ask any more.’

This strikes me as grossly unfair, but I suppose she’s right, in a way. Nishi usually is. I
do
want everything to be great. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.
It’s why I didn’t tell Nish about Seymour’s mum not wanting him to see me any more; I just said my evening with him was ‘fine’ so as not to bore her stupid with all
the less than perfect details. There’s no point.

I suppose that’s why I like writing so much; it gives me some power over my sad little life – you can at least try to be funny, or make a crap party sound so much better than it was
just by concentrating on the little details or making a joke about its very crapness. Those details are always there if you look for them – the tiny sparks of glitter and neon in a doomy,
dark Wednesday. Even if it’s just doing a good job on painting your nails for once, or eating a particularly crispy-skinned baked potato.

So I take a deep breath before I reply. If things aren’t great between Nishi and Anna, then I’m not sure I want to know.

‘OK. How are things with you and Anna?’ I ask, trying to keep the tone of dread out of my voice.

I recognize this feeling. It’s not quite so bad on this occasion, obviously, but it reminds me just a tiny bit of all those times – from my dad onward – when my mum would sit
me down and say she had to talk to me about something. She’d tell me she was breaking up with whoever the guy was, always say it wasn’t my fault, then she’d cry a bit and pretend
not to; then we’d usually get a takeaway and watch a crap film together to cheer ourselves up. That was the drill.

I’m hardly the traumatized child of a broken home, but it would be nice not to go through that again. Ever.

‘How are things with me and Anna? See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Nishi starts to roll her eyes at me, in her usual sarcastic style – but halfway through she fails
miserably and her face crumples. ‘Oh, Chew, I just don’t know . . . I don’t know if she likes me any more. I don’t think she does, at least not as much as she used
to.’

She leans her elbows on the table and clutches her face with both hands. Her sharp bobbed undercut flips over on itself so all I can see is the contour of her shaved head underneath. I instantly
forget about my own self-absorbed worries. Even abandoning Nishi’s leftovers, I drop the crust and rush around to her side of the table, accidentally kicking my plastic canteen chair over in
the process. I bundle in and hug Nishi from behind, as tight as I can.

Nishi’s not really the hugging type, but I want her to know that I’m here for her. She stiffens and brushes me off – although I know she doesn’t mean it nastily –
so I walk back around the table, pick up my chair and sit back down in my own seat. Usually Nishi’s as reluctant to talk about her feelings as I am, if not more so – which means this
must be pretty bad.

‘Oh, Nish . . . That’s not true. It can’t be. You and Anna are perfect together.’

‘What, like you and Seymour are?’ She says it in this slightly snarky voice, and for a second she looks over at me with a cocked eyebrow and a very odd expression. ‘Oh, forget
it.’

‘Come on, Nishi. We’ve got this far. Talk to me. What’s the matter? Has Anna said something?’

‘No, she hasn’t
said
anything – but she’s being off with me, I know it. She’s been weird for a while.’

‘But I saw you guys on Saturday; we spent the whole day together – she was fine. We all had a good time, didn’t we?’

I can’t help feeling personally wounded by this possible state of affairs. The three of us get on so well – or so I always thought – that I might as well be part of this
relationship. I couldn’t stand it if Anna dumped both of us. I’ve had stepfathers I’ve cared about less.

Embarrassed at my own train of thought, I have to give myself a strict reminder that this is not all about me.

‘Yeah, of course we did,’ Nishi agrees, and I inwardly breathe a sigh of self-serving relief. ‘The three of us always have a wicked time, don’t we? It’s when
it’s just the two of us that the problems start.’

‘What do you mean?’

Maybe I really
am
more important to this situation than I thought. Maybe this
is
kind of about me. God, I hope Anna isn’t secretly in love with me or something. Again I
have to remind myself that this is not an appropriate thought process and shut my own stupid brain down before it can really get started. Bad Chew.

‘Well . . .’ Nishi looks uncharacteristically bashful. ‘I mean, I don’t really know how these things are supposed to work. You know I don’t have a lot of experience
in that department. But it’s all a bit . . . awkward. Can I just ask you, what are things like with you and Seymour?’

‘What
do
you mean?’ I blurt out in the voice of a shocked Victorian spinster, forgetting in my surprise that this is probably quite a big deal for Nish and I ought to be
making it easier on her – not make her feel bad the one time she decides to share.

‘You
know
.’ She rolls her eyes and snaps at me rather than admit her own embarrassment. ‘
Sexually
. I’m presuming that you and Seymour, like,
do
it
. We’re eighteen – well over the age of consent, after all – and we’re all in proper relationships. So it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Otherwise I just have
to assume that she doesn’t really fancy me.’

Once she’s finished speaking – a long and personal speech by Nishi’s usual standards – she props her head in her hands again. I suspect this is due only partly to
despair, and as much to avoid looking me directly in the face. With her undercut, pierced nose and her uniform of buttoned-down shirts and skinny black jeans, it can be easy to forget that Nishi is
not always as tough as she looks.

Occasionally I’m forced to admit that she and I are not like normal girlie best friends. Neither one of us is particularly interested in discussing things like crushes or make-up at any
great length – and although this shouldn’t matter, sometimes it feels as though that’s all the other girls at college ever talk about. Plus, much as we love each other, we’d
rather have a laugh than sit about having emotional discussions or crying, or some miserable crap like that.

Over and above all of that, we do not – repeat
do not –
talk about sex. I don’t know why Nishi is so reticent; that’s her business and I don’t really want
to know. Well, maybe I kind of do, secretly, but I would never ask.

For myself, I know the reason why I would rather eat glass than discuss my sex life. The simple fact is that I don’t have one. Everyone assumes I must be doing stuff with Seymour –
we’ve been going out for a while and he is gorgeous, so they assume that of course I would want to. And I do want to, I think. We never really talk about it, but he just seems kind of . . .
uninterested. I mean, isn’t it supposed to be boys who are desperate to have sex and girls who are trying to stop them, not the other way around?

I’ve never had a boyfriend before Seymour, so I don’t know what the norm is; maybe I’ve just watched too many American teen films. It’s great that I don’t ever feel
pressured by him, or like I have to compromise my feminist principles in any way – but it also means I don’t ever feel very, well, sexy. I’m actually glad Seymour isn’t like
that, but occasionally it seems to go a bit too far the other way – sometimes it can feel a bit like going out with Morrissey.

‘Oh yeah, of course,’ I bluster, going back to fiddling with the sandwich remains and not quite looking Nishi in the eye. ‘I mean, yeah. Obviously. We’ve been going out
for ages, so . . . I don’t really like to talk about it. It just seems disrespectful to Seymour. You know what he’s like – he’d be really upset if he thought I was gossiping
about all that . . . you know, stuff.’

This is a stroke of genius on my part, I reckon. Because, if there was actually anything to tell, I’m pretty sure this actually would be Seymour’s attitude. So it’s not really
a lie. Which is fine. Right?

Unfortunately Nishi gets the same weird look on her face that she had when we were talking about Seymour a minute ago.