Rebecca is Always Right (12 page)

‘Do you know Sam’s friends from school well?’ I asked. She and Sam have been good friends since they were little, but they go to different schools now – he goes to St Anthony’s with Richard (and John) and she goes to St Mary’s.

‘Oh yeah, his good friends,’ she said. ‘Daire’s pretty cool. He’s my friend too, I suppose. The three of us went to the Gaeltacht last summer, though this year Daire went back by himself ’cause we were at the camp.’

And I don’t know why, but, without thinking, I found myself saying, ‘Does Gemma get on with them? Sam’s friends?’

Lucy looked very confused.

‘Gemma?’ said Lucy. ‘Um, she’s never met them, as far as I know. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I just thought what with her and Sam being …’ I said. ‘You know.’

‘Sam and Gemma?’ said Lucy. Then realisation seemed to dawn on her. ‘Oh, you thought they were … but there’s
nothing going on there!’

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

‘But I thought …’ I said. ‘After the camp party … and I met you together in town a few weeks ago. I assumed they were together.’

‘Oh no, nothing really happened,’ said Lucy. ‘I mean, they were  with each other once at the end of the camp, but that was basically it. Sam thinks she’s cool but he doesn’t really fancy her. To be honest, I think he was a bit surprised when she kissed him.’

And that was it: the moment I realised I liked Sam. Because when she said that Sam didn’t really fancy Gemma I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me and I couldn’t really ignore it anymore.

‘Really?’ I said, trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible. I think I succeeded because Lucy didn’t seem to notice anything strange.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘In fairness to Sam, he doesn’t usually mess girls around. If he’d known at the time that she really liked him, he wouldn’t have kept kissing her back. I think he thought it was just, you know, the party mood – they were all just having fun.’ As soon as she said this, Lucy looked horrified. ‘Oh God, I shouldn’t have told you she liked him.
It’s not fair to her. Pretend I didn’t say anything.’

‘I actually did know already,’ I admitted. ‘Someone else told me.’

‘Oh, okay.’ Lucy looked relieved. ‘So yeah. Basically, she told him that she really liked him and he says he turned her down gently, so I hope he did. He felt really bad, I do know that.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘He got worried he’d given her the impression he was into her earlier in the camp. She’d asked him whether something was going on between him and me, and of course he said there wasn’t and there never had been. So then, when she declared her love, he got all worried that he’d somehow given her the wrong impression when he told her he was single. I’m pretty sure he didn’t, though. I mean, I doubt he said, “Me and Lucy are just friends, but I’m actually looking for a girl who looks just like you”, or something like that.’

I don’t blame Gemma for thinking there might be something between Sam and Lucy. During the camp I actually wondered myself whether Lucy and Sam were really just good friends, and she had told me that people always thought this and that it was always very annoying when either of them ever liked somebody else.

‘So how did you end up in town together, that time I met you?’ I said. ‘You and Sam and Gemma, I mean.’

‘Oh, we just bumped into her when we were coming out of a bookshop,’ said Lucy. ‘It was a bit weird at first because Sam hadn’t seen her since that night, but she seemed genuinely cool about everything and we ended up going for a coffee together. I don’t think she’s, like, pining away for him or anything.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. And then I didn’t want to say anything else in case Lucy could tell what I was thinking about Sam. I didn’t want to go on about him and his love life too much. Also, you know when you like someone and you feel really self-conscious mentioning their name? I was starting to feel like that – I was worried that I’d sound a bit funny when I said it and then Lucy would guess that I liked him. Because I definitely don’t want her to know. In fact, I don’t think I want anyone to know. So I asked some stupid random question about Maria Hanff and luckily by then we’d reached my bus stop, so we said goodbye.

But anyway. There it is. I like Sam. I really like him. And I’m not sure what I can do about it because I have no idea whether he likes me. I mean, I’m pretty sure he likes me as a friend because we get on well together and he lends me books and things. But that doesn’t mean anything special, because
he is someone who is used to being friends with girls as well as boys. For all I know he doesn’t even fancy girls at all. Which I suppose would be better than him fancying another girl but not me. But still, I’d rather he liked girls. And by girls I just mean me.

Oh why is everything so complicated? Why did I have to start fancying Sam instead of just being friends with him? It would have been much easier. It’s not like I was even looking for someone to fancy. But I can’t help it. He’s so nice and funny and he’s very good at art. And he’s cute. The more I see him, the cuter he looks. And he wears cool t-shirts. And I like the battered old boots he wears (even though they’re a bit like John Kowalski’s, but, in fairness, I liked John’s boots too). And his new haircut is pretty cool. Oh I just like him. I really, really like him. And I’m so, so glad there’s nothing going on between him and Gemma.

Though maybe I’m better off not even thinking about boys. If Rachel is anything to go by at the moment, no romance is worth it in the end. She is still feeling rotten. Jenny has just gone home after spending the entire day (as far as I can tell – she came over just when I was leaving the house to go to my practice) listening to Rachel being miserable. I need to think of something new to cheer her up tomorrow. I’ve been
neglecting my plan to help her get over Tom. And, on a selfish note, it might stop me thinking about Sam.

I keep thinking about all the conversations I’ve had with Sam. He’s always been really friendly and nice, but, as far as I can tell, he’s always been friendly and nice to everyone he knows, male and female. He is the sort of person who just gets on with people. The only time I’ve ever seen him be a bit off was when he thought he was going to have to play Mr Banks in our production of
Mary Poppins
, and that’s only because he gets a bit nervous on stage.

In fact, he was only expecting to be in the chorus when he joined up for the musical, but there were so few boys they had to give him the part of Uncle Albert. That made him nervous enough, which is why he was quite quiet during the rehearsals, but once he was actually performing he was pretty good. We only talked properly for the first time after the first triumphant night of the musical, when he was a lot more relaxed, and that was when I realised how nice he was. Though I didn’t fancy him. And now I do. How did that happen?

Anyway, I haven’t just been thinking about myself and my romantic problems (if you can count fancying someone you’re friends with and who may not fancy you at all as an actual romantic problem). I’ve been thinking about Rachel too. I have been looking up ways to help someone get over a break-up online, but unfortunately it hasn’t been very useful so far. One website suggested that I get Rachel to join me on a 5K run. I suppose running might do her some good, but I’m not willing to run 5K myself. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to put myself out for Rachel, but I don’t think it’s actually possible for me to run five whole kilometres. I’m not even very good at just running around all the bases when we play rounders in PE.

The same website also suggested I get Rachel to help ‘remodel my sitting room’ which I presume means redecorate it. Actually, I wouldn’t mind redecorating our sitting room – I keep telling Mum we should get rid of the boring cream paint on the walls and paint them a nice bright turquoise or something. And I wish we had a new couch. Ours is about a million years old and one of the arms has never been the same since me and Rachel played gymnastics on it too enthusiastically when I was nine. But sadly Mum and Dad refuse to listen to me, so I don’t think they’d let me do up the room,
even if it was in the good cause of helping Rachel.

The last tip suggested that we go on a ‘girlfriends road trip’, which isn’t much use to me. I am fairly sure a walk around the teacher-training college doesn’t count as a road trip, but in fairness I’m not sure what else I can do, given that we are both in school and can’t drive. At least I managed to get her out of the house for an hour.

Anyway, all these tips seem to be designed for a sporty grown-up with lots of money and her own house and a car. In other words, the opposite of me. But surely there must be more useful tips out there. I will keep looking for inspiration.

I had no intention of persuading Rachel to join me on a run, but just out of interest while I was helping Mum empty the dishwasher this evening I asked her about doing 5K. She goes for runs sometimes, but it’s mostly when I’m at school, so I sort of forget that she ever does them.

‘I’d never be able to do that, would I?’ I said. ‘I mean, that’s for serious runners.’

‘I can run 5K!’ said Mum. ‘That’s what I do pretty much
every time I go for a run!’

‘What?’ I said in astonishment. I’d sort of assumed she just went for a short trot around the block, not miles and miles and miles.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It’s only about half an hour!’

That puts a different light on things. If my ancient mother can run that far, surely I could do it too? Well, Rachel could anyway. I’m not sure I actually want to try. Besides, I don’t have any proper running runners. I just have three different pairs of Converse and, even though I’m not a running expert, I know they are a lot less sturdy than the ones my Mum wears.

Spot is still glowing, by the way. When will my face go back to normal? When?

I haven’t told either Cass or Alice about how I feel about Sam.
I’m not sure why. When I liked Paperboy, I certainly went on about it enough. And Cass kept telling me she knew I fancied John Kowalski long before I actually did fancy him (though, in that case, it took me a while to accept I liked him because I was still pining for Paperboy). Now I come to think about it, Sam is the second boy whose charms just kind of grew on me. Maybe I am just not very good at figuring out exactly what, or indeed who, I want?

Anyway, I don’t want to say anything about it right now. I really have no idea whether he fancies me back or not, and there is a good chance he doesn’t. But if my friends know I fancy him, I’ll feel like there is more pressure – well, not quite pressure, but they’ll want to know what’s happening and the answer will probably be ‘nothing at all’ and then I’ll feel a bit stupid, even though they would never want me to feel like that.

But I think the main reason I don’t really want to tell anyone is that then, if nothing ever happens or, which would be much worse, if he actually just tells me he doesn’t fancy me, no one will feel sorry for me. Which I would hate. If no one knows and nothing ever happens then I will still be sad, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed. And I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed about this, and I know my friends really wouldn’t think differently about me if they knew I liked someone who didn’t
like me, but I think I would still feel crap. So I will keep it to myself for now.

Of course, a part of me is dying to tell them. Mostly because I keep wanting to talk about him, and I don’t really have a good excuse at the moment. We were sitting out on the playing fields during lunch today, partly because the weather was surprisingly warm and sunny and partly because we were avoiding Vanessa and Karen. Karen and Bernard’s drama group actually does sometimes provide actors for films and plays and, yes, ads, so Karen seems to think she will be the next Kookie. What a terrible thought. Though to be honest, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I’d rather she became famous than Vanessa. I mean, Karen has shown she actually has a soul and some humanity buried deep down inside her. Vanessa hasn’t. And Bernard the Fairytale Prince is quite decent really.

Anyway, when Karen first mentioned her intention to look for auditions the other week, I thought Vanessa would be more bothered by her and Bernard’s dreams of fame, but now she clearly thinks that she is already so successful and famous that there’s no chance of Karen stealing her thunder, so when Karen told us all about how she and Bernard had asked their drama teacher Sarah about auditions, Vanessa started patronising her instead.

‘I’ll be happy to give you and Bernard some tips on the craft,’ she said today. ‘Consider me your mentor.’

‘You’re an inspiration, Vanessa!’ said Karen.

Sometimes, I don’t know which of them’s worse, I really don’t. Oh, okay, I do. It’s Vanessa.

Anyway, after a few minutes of listening to this, Cass, Alice, Ellie, Emma and I couldn’t bear it anymore, so we escaped from the classroom and went out to lie on the grass with our sandwiches.

Ellie started talking about the art studio and how she loves having all that space to draw.

‘The only downside,’ she said, ‘is that it makes the crappy little desk in my bedroom seem even smaller.’

‘Can’t you use that big table in your kitchen?’ said Alice. Ellie’s house is an average-sized, three-bedroom redbrick on Home Farm Road, but it has a great kitchen extension and in it there is a lovely big old table that looks like something from a country farm house.

Ellie sighed.

‘My mum’s always using it for her own projects,’ she said. ‘And besides, I can’t leave stuff on it because we still have to use it as, like, an eating table. So it’s just easier to draw in my room and not have to think about tidying away my stuff every
two minutes because dinner’s ready or Mum wants to make another goddess head-dress.’

And even though there was no need to mention him, I found myself saying, ‘Sam said it made him want his own studio too.’

As soon as I said his name, I could feel my face getting a bit hot and I was sure I must have been bright red, but no one seemed to notice anything. And, believe me, if there was anything to notice, one of them would have said something. I haven’t forgotten the way Cass carried on when she was sure I fancied John Kowalski (and, in fairness to her, she was right about that). But, in this case, I must have just sounded and looked totally normal, because Ellie just said, ‘Yeah, we were talking about it on Saturday. He said he was working at the kitchen table last week and his sister plonked down a big glass of orange juice and nearly wrecked the comic he was working on. This is why we need proper studio space!’

‘I love our practice space,’ said Alice. ‘And it’s good to have an excuse to go into town.’

‘I like not having to go all the way from the garage to your house in the rain whenever I need to go to the loo,’ said Cass. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful, Alice. Hey Dollface would not exist without your garage.’

‘True,’ said Alice. ‘But I do prefer the Knitting Factory. And we’ll get to see Kitty there on Saturday!’

‘She’ll be able to tell us the best way to end “Pistachio”,’ I said. ‘Which is, of course, my and Alice’s way.’

I really am excited about working with Kitty again. I can’t wait until Saturday, and not just because I’ll see Sam again. Now I come to think of it, I’ve started taking it for granted I’ll see him there. Maybe he won’t come every week. I mightn’t see him for ages. I know I went for weeks on end without seeing him after the summer camp, but it’s so weird, everything feels different now.

I suppose I could tell Rachel about the Sam stuff. She is surprisingly good at listening to my woes and giving advice in these situations – in fact, when John and I first kissed I told her about it before I told either Cass or Alice. But maybe she won’t want to talk about love and romance now that her heart has been broken by evil Tom? It might be a bit insensitive. I don’t remember any of the ‘cheer up someone who’s been dumped’ articles telling me to go on about my own love problems.

I just did go to Rachel for advice, but it has nothing to do with my romance problems (unless it makes me so hideous no one can bear to look at me). My stupid spot is showing no signs of disappearing. It’s still lurking under my skin, but it seems to be getting bigger and my chin actually feels sore. I stared at it for so long in the mirror, I started to worry it was actually swelling up before my very eyes, so I went in to Rachel to see what she thought.

‘Is this spot getting bigger before your very eyes?’ I asked.

Rachel stared at my chin for a minute.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just a lurker. Everyone gets them. Just be glad it’s not on your nose.’

Some comfort she is. I did weirdly feel a bit better though.

‘So it’s normal?’ I said.

‘As normal as anything about you could be,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s normal. It’ll go eventually. Here, use this on it.’

And she took out her little tube of expensive spot gel and handed it to me.

‘This should calm it down a bit,’ she said. She is not too bad, really. Maybe I will tell her about the Sam stuff soon.

I feel ashamed of myself. Clearly I have no principles. Today at lunchtime Vanessa produced a big bag full of boxes of Bluebird Bakery Yummy Scrummy Cookies.

‘Share these among yourselves,’ she commanded, handing around packets emblazoned with the Bluebird Bakery logo. Her loyal chums joined in.

‘They’re really good!’ said Caroline, handing me an open packet of cookies.

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, and took it. It felt rude not to accept. But once I had the packet, it felt hypocritical to eat the cookies after all the time I’ve spent giving out about Vanessa and the ad. My friends felt the same way.

‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ said Alice quietly. ‘I mean, we hate the ad …’

‘And we don’t like Vanessa much either,’ said Emma.

On the other side of the room, Vanessa was saying something about being a ‘Bluebird Brand Ambassador’.

‘They do look like nice cookies, though,’ said Ellie. We looked into the box. They did look nice, all big and fresh and crunchy. ‘Aw, I don’t care, I’m going to try one.’ She got out a
cookie and took a big bite.

‘Well?’ said Cass.

‘Whoah,’ said Ellie. ‘That is one delicious cookie. Seriously, it’s really good. I’m going to have another one. Sorry.’

Cass sighed.

‘Oh go on then, pass one over,’ she said.

A few moments later, we were all eating them. And Ellie was right, they were totally delicious. Much nicer than any of the chocolate chip cookies my parents usually buy. Not that our house is ever full of biscuits. My parents are very stingy when it comes to buying delicious treats. No wonder I have to make my own fudge.

Of course, Vanessa soon marched over to see what we thought.

‘Well, aren’t they the best cookies you’ve ever tasted?’ she said.

And much as it pained me to agree with her, I had to say, ‘Yeah, they’re really good.’

‘They’re gorgeous,’ said Alice. Everyone agreed.

Vanessa, unsurprisingly, looked very smug.

‘I knew you’d all like them,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be handing them out at special public appearances soon – in character as Kookie, of course. She’s really taking off. People are even
dressing up as her now.’

We all stared at her. Had she finally gone mad? Surely no one loved the ads so much they were actually trying to be Kookie? But I’m afraid it’s true. I have now seen it with my own eyes. It turns out that the Bluebird Bakery asked people to send in videos and pictures of themselves being ‘a little bit kooky’ and lots of people have obeyed this irritating request.

There is now a whole page full of videos and photos of people prancing around with small dogs and musical instruments, wearing frilly frocks and drinking tea out of old-fashioned cups. One girl sent a photo of herself knitting some rainbow-striped socks next to a Yorkshire Terrier which was wearing a little bonnet. This looks like animal cruelty to me (the bonnet part, not the knitting socks part). At least Handsome Dan performed naked, as nature intended him to be.