‘Well, at least you’re a person,’ I said. ‘So that counts for something.’
‘Yeah, at least I got it half right.’ She fingered the end of one grey pigtail. ‘So, please don’t start paying me any attention while we’re at school. I’d rather you didn’t.’
Another wave of relief threatened to knock me off my feet but I reckoned one more token protest was industry standard. ‘Yeah, but …’
Jeane held up one imperious hand. ‘Honestly, I won’t think any less of you if you ignore me at school. In fact, I’ll think more of you.’
‘So this thing, whatever this thing is, is just between you and me, and it’s simply a kissing thing?’
‘Well, kissing, and we already do quite a lot of touching but we can take the rest as it comes,’ Jeane said. No one in my life was ever this direct. It made everything so much easier.
Anyway, we’d established some ground rules for the kissing and the maybe some touching so there was no good reason not to walk over to Jeane. For once, sitting on the kitchen counter as she was, our faces were level, which meant that I didn’t have to lean down and she didn’t have to crane her neck when I kissed her.
15
Over the next couple of weeks, I got used to kissing Michael Lee. I even moved on from being freaked out about kissing Michael Lee. Instead, I began to treat kissing Michael Lee as a special karmic reward. Instead of finding a fabulous dress at the very bottom of a basket of £1 T-shirts in a charity shop, or splurging on a box of macaroons from Maison Blanc, I treated myself to some serious kissage with Michael Lee on Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes, after school on Thursday, and we currently had a question mark against Sunday afternoons.
Whatever his other faults were, the boy knew how to kiss. And stroke. And touch. And grind just a little bit. Every time I saw his face with those wide-spaced almond-shaped eyes already closed and his pretty lips pursed in a perfect kissshape (and his cheekbones … someone should write a poem about his cheekbones – oh, that’s right, someone already has) coming towards me in pursuit of a kiss, all I could think was that this couldn’t be happening to me. Because I was me and not even my mother (well, especially not my mother) could pretend that I was pretty or loveable or had a winning personality or was in any way the kind of girl who got the kind of boys that looked like Michael Lee. We didn’t match, we weren’t suited, and we didn’t go together.
The rightness and the wrongness of it was all I could think about one Sunday morning about two weeks into our little kissing experiment when I should have been giving my full attention to dyeing my hair. I’d decided that the time had come to get rid of the grey. Now that my mousy roots were coming through, it looked all upside-down. Besides, I’d had grey hair for two months, which was for ever, and it was time for a change.
Ben had warned me that I needed bleach to get the grey out and he’d got me supplies from the hairdressing salon, as his boss had said that she didn’t want me in her shop ever again. He’d also written a detailed list of instructions with lots of shouty caps about how the ‘BLEACH CAN ONLY STAY ON FOR THIRTY MINUTES, JEANE, OTHERWISE YOUR HAIR WILL FALL OUT. ESPECIALLY AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME. SET THE ALARM ON YOUR PHONE, NOW! HAVE YOU SET IT? GO AND DO IT.’ Ben had only been working in a salon for ten weeks but he’d already become very, very dictatorial about haircare.
I tried to follow Ben’s instructions but he wanted me to section off my hair and use tinfoil and in the end it was easier just to slap the bleach on and fashion myself a tinfoil turban after I set my phone alarm. The bleach stung my scalp and made my eyes water so it was very hard to watch a documentary about last summer’s Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. I’d run workshops on making zines and websites, and how to build up rock ’n’ roll star-sized self-esteem. It had been a blast but I winced as I suddenly appeared on screen in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and started blathering on about being … I don’t even know what pearls of wisdom were falling from my mouth because all I could hear was my own drone of a voice. Even when I was really excited and I could tell that I had been really excited because I kept making jabbing motions with my hands, I sounded as if I was about to fall into a boredom coma.
I was saved from having to witness any more of my documentary fail by a bang on the door. I had ten minutes left before I could wash the bleach out, rinse my hair with some special gunk and then apply toner, so I needed to get rid of whoever it was. Though, as it was Sunday morning, it was probably Godbotherers wanting to know if I’d accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and saviour, which I so hadn’t. Mrs Hunter-Down on the ground floor was always letting them in.
‘Well?’ I said as I opened the door, hoping that my scowl and my tinfoil helmet would make any evangelists think twice about giving me the hard sell, but I needn’t have bothered because it was Gustav and Harry from next door and neither of them knew the meaning of the word no.
‘New look for you, Jeane,’ Harry boomed, as he pushed past me. ‘Love it. Really brings out your blue eyes. It’s your lucky day, we’ve got cleaning supplies and we’re not leaving until we can see your carpet again.’
‘It’s not that untidy,’ I protested, which was a shameless lie because even the area by the front door was littered with unopened post and flyers and takeaway menus.
‘We’ve also brought vegetables,’ Gustav said as he stepped through the door with a steely glint in his eyes. ‘I am going to make you eat them and drink a glass of milk. You’re at a crucial stage in your development when you need calcium.’
‘I’m not going to grow any taller than this,’ I cried, even though I knew it was useless. Gustav was Austrian and a personal trainer. Once he’d made his mind up about something, whether it was making me eat steamed broccoli (urgh, hack, hack, hack) or persuading lovely, smiley Harry, his Australian boyfriend, that they needed to come round and force me to throw out half my worldy goods, resistance was futile. ‘Can there be chocolate powder in the glass of milk, Gustav? Can there?’
‘That would be like letting you eat raw sugar,’ Gustav said with a shudder, his muscles rippling in revulsion. ‘We’ll start here.’ He thrust three bin bags at me. ‘Recycling, rubbish and stuff that you absolutely can’t live without.’
I knew from bitter experience that Gustav and I had very different ideas about the definition of stuff I couldn’t live without. ‘I hate you,’ I told them both fiercely. ‘I hate it when you do your gay dads routine.’
‘Oh, secretly you love it,’ Harry said, darting near like he was going to pick me up and swing me round, which he did occasionally, even though I told him it was demeaning and infantilising, which it was, even if it was also secretly thrilling. ‘We’ll put some Lady Gaga on to pass the time.’
‘Yes,’ Gustav added. ‘It will be fun.’
It wasn’t fun. Gustav wouldn’t know fun if it came with a government health warning. And anyway, fun wasn’t the right word to describe Harry trying to put all my Japanese style magazines in the recycling when he thought I wasn’t looking and Gustav giving me a running commentary about mildew and mould and what they’d do to my pink, perfectly formed teenage lungs as he supervised me cleaning the shower stall.
Gustav refused to believe that my colour processing was at a crucial stage and wouldn’t let me get the bleach out of my hair until the bathroom was squeaky clean. Even though I explained, through the medium of yelling, that he was condemning me to baldness the longer the bleach stayed on my head, he remained immoveable – quite literally, as he ripped me away from the showerhead. Gustav works out for a living and I don’t so there was no way I could win. He also reminded me of several other times when I’d come up with similar excuses to get out of scrubbing the grouting. I was totes the girl who cried wolf.
Eventually the bathroom was deemed clean even by Gustav’s ridiculously high standards and he gave me permission to wash the bleach out. By this stage it was rock-hard and it took both of us and the whole bottle of special gunk until my hair felt vaguely hair-like again.
‘It’s m
eant to be that colour, yes?’ Gustav queried as he roughly towel-dried my hair. He probably wasn’t as into the cleaning as he claimed he was, because he was more than happy to dump most of the heavy scouring on Harry while he helped me. ‘It’s very, er … what is the word?’
‘I’m aiming for mid-blonde at this stage.’ I sighed. ‘Then we’ll chuck on some toner and make it platinum.’
‘Yes, well, it’s always good to have goals,’ Gustav agreed and when I tried to straighten up he kept his hand on my shoulder. ‘No, stay there. I’ll put this toner on for you.’
Normally I wouldn’t let anyone boss me around the way that Gustav did but if it got me out of cleaning then it was a win. Especially now I was sure that Harry wasn’t in the lounge and trying to throw out my precious, precious books and magazines and backs of envelopes where I’d written important things, but had moved on to the kitchen where he was bellowing ‘Bad Romance’ at the top of his lungs and there was no way that he would throw out my Haribo stash. Not if he liked living.
Although I was going to have backache from bending over so my head and shoulders were in the shower stall, it was quite nice to have Gustav’s strong, muscly fingers working the toner in while he wittered on about his marathon training. Gustav actually flew to other countries to take part in marathons because he wasn’t right in the head.
‘The toner needs to come off now,’ Gustav announced. ‘This platinum blonde, did you have your heart set on it?’
‘Kind of. Ben said it might take a bit more toner.’
‘Maybe a lot more toner,’ Gustav said, and he didn’t sound very confident in my hair’s abilities to reach the exact same shade as Madonna, Lady Gaga and Courtney Love back when she hadn’t been quite so batshit insane as she was now. ‘Still, is good to have goals.’
‘Why? What colour is my bloody hair?’
‘Back in Austria when I was a boy if I’d spoken to my mother all snappy like that she’d have washed my mouth out with soap.’
‘What fricking colour is my hair, Gustav?’ I demanded, wrenching myself free of his grip, drops of water splattering everywhere but mostly over Gustav, who moaned in protest.
Thanks to my earlier efforts with a damp cloth, the mirror was sparkling and there was nothing to dull the colour of my hair. My bright, fluoro, neon, is-that-the-core-of-a-nuclearreactor-no-it’s-just-Jeane’s-head orange hair. I love orange as much as the next person, probably even more. I have a lot of time for orange. Orange tights. Orange jelly sweets. I have even been known, on occasion, to eat an actual orange, but on my head: no, no, a world of utter NO.
I have attitude in huge quantities but I didn’t have the complexion and strong features necessary to carry off such a blaze of colour. Gustav certainly agreed with me ‘You look like one of those troll dolls,’ he mused. ‘They were very big in Austria.’
‘This is all your fault! If you’d let me wash the bleach off instead of making me clean then this would never have happened.’
‘Oh God, what is that on your head?’ Harry asked from the doorway and then he started laughing so hard that he had to sit down on the floor.
Even Gustav was smirking and there was only one thing I could do, which was grab my iPhone, take a scowling picture of myself and tweet my Twitter followers:
adork_able Jeane Smith
Hair emergency! Already bleached & toned, can I put more dye on or do I have to shave it off?
I’d pretty much reconciled myself to a grade-one as Gustav began to assemble a foul-smelling broccoli bake, but Twitter came to my rescue. The general consensus was that I needed to buy some hair dye that was as close to my natural colour as possible, then set up a shrine to my favourite personal gods and pray for a positive outcome.
I was just on the verge of ordering Harry to leg it to Boots before it shut when I got a text from Michael: Is it OK to come round or are you busy working on your masterplans for total dork domination?
Just this once, I decided to let his snarking go unmentioned. It wasn’t important. What was important was briefing him on the catastrophe that had befallen me and sending him a link to the hair dye he was going to purchase on the way over.
I tried to get rid of Gustav and Harry before Michael arrived but it proved impossible. Harry insisted that I went through all the piles he’d made and put at least half of them in the recycling and Gustav wanted to force-feed me green leafy things that he swore were vegetables but tasted like pond slime. As it was, when Michael knocked on the door, they were still working my very last, most tattered nerve, and sorting out the rest of the garbage sacks to be chucked down the rubbish chute.
‘I’m in the middle of something,’ I said to Michael as I opened the door. ‘And by the middle of something, I mean planning the grisly murder of my two gay dads.’
Michael swallowed hard. ‘If I’ve caught you at a bad time …’
‘We’re just leaving,’ Gustav snapped from somewhere behind me, then he dared to shove me out of the door. ‘After we see Jeane put at least five black bags down the rubbish chute.’
It wasn’t as humiliating as, say, the time I turned up to DJ at a club in Shoreditch, misjudged the clientele and cleared the dancefloor three times by sticking on choons that were deemed far too tuneful to actually dance to. Goddamn hipsters.
Anyways, I could have done without an audience as I lugged seven (seven!) huge black sacks down the rubbish chute. Then I had to introduce Michael to Gustav and Harry. I hadn’t been planning to, but Harry clamped his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘So, Jeane Genie, are you going to introduce us to your little friend?’
I wasn’t sure how to describe Michael to them. Gustav was ridiculously over-protective about gentleman callers. When I’d been seeing a French boy called Cedric (mostly because he was French and called Cedric), Gustav had come round at one in the morning and ordered Cedric off the premises, even though he was about six months too late to prevent the technical loss of my virginity. He’d even subjected Barney to his squintyeyed, lock-jawed disapproval, though Barney had suffered a fit of the vapours just from touching one of my boobs over three layers of clothing.
Now he was staring at Michael with icy blue eyes like he’d recently seen his name on the Sex Offenders Register. ‘This is Michael Lee,’ I said. ‘He’s come round with hair dye so I can salvage the damage that’s all your fault, Gustav. And Michael, this is Gustav and Harry who live next door and are the bane of my existence.’ Attack is always the very best form of defence.
The three of them nodded at each other, then Harry drawled, ‘Michael, what are your intentions towards our Jeane? I hope they’re honourable.’
‘Um, they’re very honourable,’ Michael muttered, holding a paper bag aloft. ‘I really have brought hair dye.’
Gustav sniffed dubiously. ‘It’s a school night, so …’
‘It’s five in the afternoon, Gustav!’
‘ … don’t stay too late,’ he continued. ‘Harry and I are meant to be going out for dinner, though we’re both exhausted. You’re very tiring, Jeane.’
I pulled a face but decided to let that one slide. ‘Thank you for bossing me to within an inch of my life,’ I simpered, but the hug that I gave both of them was heartfelt. Not that I was appreciative of the enforced tidying or the ingestion of vegetables but I was glad that they cared enough to get all up in my domestic business.
Finally Gustav and Harry were in the lift and Michael was standing in my hall and blinking in wonder. ‘You have floor,’ he commented faintly. ‘Actual floor and a sideboard.’ He wandered into the living room. ‘It’s funny but the place looks much bigger now that it’s not totally covered in pizza boxes and crap.’
He was right but the flat being bigger wasn’t necessarily a good thing. ‘So, hair dye?’ I prompted and he threw the bag at me. I dropped it, retrieved it from the floor and pulled out a box of ash-blonde hair dye. It made my heart sink but girls with neon-orange hair couldn’t be choosers.
‘There’s a disgusting veg
etable bake in the kitchen if you want some,’ I told Michael, but he shook his head and squinched up his face.
‘Sounds delicious but I think I’ll pass,’ he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to stick around or if I wanted him to but he gestured at the towel that was wrapped around my hair. ‘Let’s see it then.’
With a put-upon air I whipped off the towel.
‘God! Wow! It’s much brighter than I thought it would be.’
‘Too bright.’
‘You like things that are too bright,’ Michael said, looking at the blue and white polka dot playsuit I was wearing with pink tights. ‘It’s almost the same colour as those tights that got ruined when I … when … you know …’
‘When you accidentally tipped me off my bike?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, those ones.’
‘Tights are one thing. You can take tights off, but I can’t take off my hair and I’m not going to be in the mood to have bright orange hair every day,’ I explained. ‘Anyway, if you’re staying, you can help me.’
Michael wasn’t any help at all. He just sat on the edge of the bathtub and helpfully pointed out when I got splodges of hair dye over the white tiles I’d just scrubbed, but he did go out to get me a coffee while we waited half an hour for the colour to process and helped me wash all the murky brown-coloured dye out of my hair, though he did bitch about getting splashed. He even went to the kitchen to get me some Haribo as I deepconditioned because my energy levels were flagging.
‘Oh God,’ he said when he returned with a bag of Cola Twists. ‘Bloody hell, Jeane. You can’t dye it three times in one afternoon. It will fall out.’
I’d been too busy towel-drying my hair to worry about the colour but now I was seriously worried. I was one worry away from having a complete meltdown.
‘Don’t say that! Don’t look at me like that.’ His eyes were so wide with horror that I thought they might slip out of their sockets. ‘It’s brown, isn’t it? A boring, muddy, drab, blah brown. Brown hair! I don’t deserve brown hair.’