Skin Deep (9 page)

He grinned encouragingly. ‘That’ll do.’

He followed me into the kitchen and his eyes grew very big. ‘Wow, this is massive.’

As I opened a cupboard to get a bowl, I caught sight of my reflection in the leaded glass – I’d forgotten not to look, and I jerked back.

‘Are you OK?’

He was right behind me. I could see his reflection too. I shut the door quickly and rummaged in a drawer for the Dettol and first-aid kit. When I turned round, he was sitting on a chair watching me.

He touched the right side of his face. ‘What happened?’

Direct again. Like nobody else would. And he was looking straight at me.

‘Don’t answer if you don’t want to.’

Somebody braver than me said the words with my voice. ‘A car accident.’

‘It wasn’t long ago, was it?’

‘Earlier this year.’

I turned away and filled the bowl with water and Dettol. The water clouded up and the smell of disinfectant wafted around the kitchen.

‘My name’s Ryan. What’s yours?’

‘Jenna,’ I said, unrolling gauze.

I borrowed somebody else’s legs to walk over and put the bowl on the kitchen table.

‘I was dead lucky with the name, you know. Mum nearly called me Anarchy.’

I choked. ‘She nearly called you what?’

‘No, you heard right.’ He sounded gloomy, but I could see he was hiding a smile. ‘Anarchy. If I’d been a girl, I would’ve been Liberty. But I wasn’t so she used that on the boat instead.’

‘What changed her mind? About Anarchy.’ I dipped a length of gauze in the water and dabbed the top of his shoulder, intending to work my way down the cuts. He tensed. ‘Did that hurt?’

‘No, it’s not you. I was thinking what a lucky escape I had.’

Liar!

‘She said the runes told her not to.’

‘Er, pardon?’

He sighed. ‘The runes. They’re an ancient Viking alphabet. She does stuff with them, throws them around. She says they tell her things.’

I grabbed a fresh piece of gauze and moved to the next patch of scraped skin. ‘Do they?’

‘No, it’s a load of hippy crap.’ He paused and I wondered if I’d hurt him again. ‘But then they did tell her not to call me Anarchy so they can’t be totally useless.’ He tilted his head back and looked up at me, faking relief, and I saw his eyes were a warm hazel. ‘Don’t you like ice skating? You said the others had gone skating.’

‘Oh, er, it’s OK, but . . . I had homework.’

‘So you’d have gone with them if you hadn’t?’ He hissed a breath in as I cleaned over the bruised shoulder blade.

I had the oddest feeling he knew I wouldn’t so I didn’t answer and concentrated on getting some stubborn grit out of the wound.

‘Don’t you go to college or school?’ I asked after a while.

‘Never did.’

‘What, never?’

‘No. Mum did home tuition with me. She thinks schools brainwash you.’

I changed the water in the bowl at the sink. ‘That’s weird. Oh, not your mum! But never having gone to school. I can’t imagine it. How do you make friends?’

He shrugged, forgetting his cuts, and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t. ‘You make friends with other traveller kids when you stop up for a while. Like when we had to put the boat in dry dock for repairs and we’d go and stay with friends of Mum’s for a bit.’

‘Why only traveller kids? Here, put your elbow in the bowl and let it soak.’

‘Because other kids don’t want to know you.’ His forehead creased into a frown and his voice took on a trace of hostility. Bitter, even. He cocked his head on one side and looked at me. ‘You know when I saw you down by the canal, I thought you were being snotty with me because of that. At first.’

I shook my head vehemently. ‘I didn’t realise you lived on the boat. I thought you were on holiday.’ I knew what he meant. I’d heard people talk about travellers: thieves, live like pigs, violent, not to be trusted. But I couldn’t match any of that up with the boy in front of me. ‘No, it wasn’t that.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ He smiled and I dug my nails into my palms because I knew he knew the real reason I’d snapped at him that day.

‘Have your family always been travellers?’ I asked, to take the attention away from me.

He shook his head. ‘We’re not Gypsies or traditional travellers. Mum got into it after uni. She went on the road at first, then she lived in a teepee for a bit, then she got the narrowboat. She’s into New Age stuff. There were a lot of them travelling back then, and they all hung out together. But most have packed it in now. There’s less of us every year.’

I vaguely knew what New Age travellers were, but not much more. ‘So don’t you mix with the other kinds . . . um, Gypsies and . . . ?’

‘Nah, different culture. They stick with their own and we stick with ours, what’s left of us.’ He didn’t seem to like talking about this much and I got a feeling, when he started looking round the kitchen, that he was trying to find a way to change the subject. ‘This is big. You must get lost in here. Ours is tiny.’

He smiled at me again. Lindz would have said he looked hotter with the brooding face he had a minute ago, but I liked the smile better. He sat placidly as I dabbed cream on his cuts and stole sneaky looks at his profile. He didn’t have a model face like Steven Carlisle. His jaw was too narrow for that and his nose tilted up too much – not a ski jump, but a definite lift. He wasn’t as bulky as Steven either, but whatever – he was gorgeous.

‘You’re really good at this,’ he said.

I wished he’d stop smiling at me because every time he did I felt like a wobbly jelly being smacked with a spoon. It was infectious – made me want to smile back at him, but I was too shy to do that. ‘Charlie, that’s my little brother, is the most accident-prone thing on the planet. He’s always falling out of a tree or something. If Mum’s not home, I have to patch him up. Dad’s useless with blood.’ I taped the last piece of gauze on. ‘All done.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks.’ He pulled a T-shirt out of his rucksack and eased it on.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Better late than never. You could still get attacked by another crazy dog before you get home.’

He shivered, playing along. ‘Yeah, and yours is out there waiting to pounce. I’d better go. Mum’ll be freaking about where I am.’

I opened the back door and scooped Raggs up as he burst in. ‘Thanks for not being mad at me.’

He shook his head. ‘It was an accident. Forget it. Bye, Shortie.’ He patted Raggs on the head, picked up his bike and wheeled it off, waving as he disappeared round the side of the house.

I closed the door and sat down in a daze with Raggs on my knee. ‘OK, he is so not what I expected.’ Raggs licked my chin. ‘He’s . . . he’s just nice. Even after what you did, he still made a fuss of you. And he didn’t stare, you know. He looked at me like there wasn’t anything different about me.’ Only Mum and Dad and Charlie and Beth managed that and it had taken them a while. And yes, he’d talked to me like I would to Charlie, and no more than that, but he’d actually
talked
. Properly.

Stupid, the curl of warmth bubbling inside me. I tried to stop it, but it wouldn’t quite be frozen out.

Bill and I unloaded a delivery of engine oil outside the shed.
He puffed as he bent to pull bottles from the box.

‘I’ll do that,’ I offered. ‘You price them up and I’ll carry them over to the shop.’

‘Thanks, lad.’ He checked his watch. ‘Not long to clocking off now.’ He stretched to relieve his cramped back and then groaned. ‘Oh lord, here’s trouble.’

A girl in school uniform strolled towards us, her white shirt undone at the neck and her tie loosened. Her skirt ended halfway down her thighs. Nice legs! Bit tacky though. She was orange with fake tan and the big gold hoops in her ears nearly brushed her shoulders.

‘Who’s she?’ I hissed.

‘Sadie, Pete’s daughter. Sixteen going on thirty,’ Bill said out of the side of his mouth.

She came over, swaying her hips more now she’d spotted us.

‘Dad around?’ She spoke to Bill, but her eyes were on me.

‘In the shop,’ he grunted.

‘Who’s this?’

‘New lad.’

‘Mmm, I can see that. Doesn’t he have a name?’

‘Ryan,’ I replied.

She looked me over like I was a choc ice she wanted to lick. ‘I expect I’ll see you around, Ryan. I come down here a lot.’ She sauntered off towards the shop, casting a look back to make sure I was watching.

‘Aye, comes here a lot when she wants something,’ Bill growled. ‘Put a bloody T-shirt on, will you? That one’ll eat you for breakfast. And her dad don’t like no one messing around with his little girl so watch yerself.’

What was it with people nagging me about my shirt? I looked down at myself as I pulled the T-shirt on. Nothing wrong there. I looked all right. Not bad, not bad at all.

When I got home that evening, I headed for my usual after-work shower while Mum made dinner in the kitchen. I could see a bit of me in the steamy mirror as I dried off and that looked OK, but it was only the top part of my chest. I headed to the kitchen for a second opinion.

‘Mum, am I too skinny or too fat or all right?’

‘Beautiful,’ she said, chopping peppers and not even looking.

‘Will you look, please?’
I do actually look different to when I was ten, you know
.

She turned. ‘Perfect. Who is she?’

‘Nobody. Just asking generally.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Generally perfect then. Gorgeous. Pass me an onion.’

‘Mum!’

She rinsed her hands under the tap. ‘Come here.’ They were cold and wet when she grabbed my face and turned it from side to side. ‘Yes, perfect covers it.’

‘You’re my mum. You have to say that. Try to be objective. Can I have some weights for my birthday?’

‘What for?’

‘Duh! To build my muscles up.’

‘We’ll see.’ She turned back to chopping the peppers.

They must teach mothers to say that when they’re giving birth. Like it’s the last thing they learn before they push you out into the world. ‘When your kid asks for something you’re not going to let them have, just say “We’ll see” and that’ll shut them up.’

‘What about just a few dumb-bells then?’

‘Ryan, go away and do something constructive. Read a book.’

‘Exercise is constructive.’

‘Pass me the onion. There’s some exercise for you.’

‘Fine! I’ll buy them out of my wages.’ I stomped over to a chair and flopped down. Yes, it was childish, but she never let me do normal stuff. Cole’d had weights. It was OK for him. He didn’t have to be friggin’
sensitive
.

This was kind of a big deal with me. After Cole walked out, Mum got hammered. She didn’t do that often. ‘All men are bastards, Ryan,’ she’d said, sitting on the end of my bed swigging a bottle of wine. ‘But you’re not going to be. That’s why I’ve brought you up to be different. To be in touch with your feminine side. To appreciate women and their power. To be sensitive.’

I was a
boy
though, and I liked it. I’d had my first shave last month. Did she even know that?

She went on and on. ‘Women are the strong ones. That’s why men feel threatened by us. They’re weak so they want to be in control all the time. To take us over. They wage wars. Murder. Abuse. Because deep down they’re jealous of our power to create. All men can do is destroy.’

Thanks for that, Mum.

‘But you’ll be different.’

So why did she always go for men like that? She never picked a man like the kind she said she wanted me to be. If they were such bastards, why did she keep choosing them?

I bet the orange girl wasn’t bothered if I was sensitive. Bet she was just interested in what’s in my pants.

That was the thing with girls. They loved the whole traveller thing. Everyone else hated us, but when I told girls I lived on a boat, they couldn’t get enough of me. I found that out at the first biker festival Cole took us to. He always covered for me with Mum. If she’d known what I was up to, she’d have gone mental and lectured me for eternity about respect and the sacredness of women, babbled about moon goddesses and all that. But Cole just grinned and asked me if I had enough johnnies.

I got up and stood over Mum’s shoulder, frowning. ‘What’re we having for dinner?’

‘Couscous and tofu and red pepper salsa.’

I tutted. Loudly.

‘Ryan, if you’re not going to do anything useful, you can arrange my beads for me. I want to do some more work tonight. I was meditating earlier with the quartz and I felt inspiration flow into me. I want to channel it before it dissipates. And the moon is full tonight. It’s a powerful time.’

For fuck’s sake! Why couldn’t I have a normal mother and a normal life?

The orange girl, Sadie, came to the boatyard again the next day. I knew she would. She arrived just as we’d closed and I was cycling up the lane. She stopped when she saw me coming and stood waiting, hand on hip. She must’ve rolled her skirt up because it barely covered her bum today. Great legs – not too thin, not too fat. Pity about the orangeness, but you couldn’t have everything.