I did know and then Michael was hugging me again, really hard. ‘When you were up on that stage,’ he said, right in my ear, ‘I was so proud of you I could have burst.’
‘That would have been really messy,’ I said, or I choked out because I had this massive lump in my throat. I didn’t know why Michael being proud of me seemed more important than getting a standing ovation or an editor from The New York Times asking if they could quote from my presentation or John-Paul and Oona checking my availability for a conference in Tokyo. Tokyo! But Michael was proud of me and he couldn’t stop smiling at me and he was still holding my hand and nothing else seemed to matter that much. Except one thing.
‘Look, I’m sorry I was such a witch this morning.’
Michael nodded. ‘So are you going to admit that you were nervous?’
My hard exterior was already shot to pieces what with the extended hand-holding, but it was a point of principle. ‘I wasn’t nervous. I was stressed.’
‘Whatever. It’s the same thing.’
‘It is not. Being stressed has a totally different energy to being nervous,’ I insisted. ‘But anyway, I’m sorry, and I’m also sorry that I’m going to drag you to the post-conference party in one of the bars upstairs. It’ll probably be an ungodly bore but we can duck out after an hour.’
Michael grinned. ‘Free drinks and food in some swank bar with wall-to-wall hipsters that we can laugh at? I’m all over it.’
Three hours later we were sat on a leather bench in a corner of a bar that was really a glass-enclosed garden. It had slate floors, wrought-iron chairs painted black, blue and purple, and was lit with huge red lights dangling down from the ceiling.
I’d kicked off my boots so I could tuck my legs under me and had made the discovery that scallops wrapped in Japanese bacon were my new favourite things to eat. I was washing them down with a cocktail called a Peachy Lychee, which was meant to have vodka in it, not that I could taste it, peach schnapps and lychee juice. They were very moresome.
When I wasn’t stuffing my face or drinking, my head rested on Michael’s shoulder as we took pictures of ourselves on my iPhone. ‘This hardly even looks like you,’ I told Michael as we scrolled through the photos. ‘It’s just your left nostril and your mouth. Pity, though, it’s a great one of me.’
‘Well, in that case, if you want to post it to your Twitter then that’s OK,’ Michael said amiably. He was still in a ridiculously good mood and we hadn’t argued for at least an hour, which was a personal best. He’d wanted to circulate but I’d pointed out that if you stayed in one place then, sooner or later, everyone that you wanted to speak to would drift over. Eventually Adam and Kai, two guys from San Francisco who were doing something with artificial intelligence and hundreds of thousands of dollars in start-up capital, had indeed drifted over. While I guzzled down Peachy Lychees, the three of them had had a conversation about human genomes and DNA and Grand Theft Auto that had slid right over my head so I’d amused myself by taking pictures of Japanese canapés and posting them on Twitter, and then they’d offered Michael an internship in Palo Alto next summer. Ever since then I could do no wrong in Michael’s eyes.
Mind you, he had been knocking back sake, even though it tasted rank. I don’t think either of us were in our right minds because there’d been a lot of tension and then the hyper good mood that comes when the tension goes away and a lot of alcohol and there had also been a lot of snuggling and nuzzling and maybe even a bit of snogging in between visitors to our table. All these things added up to my judgement becoming as cloudy as the sky on a cold, damp November day. I’m just saying.
What I was saying then was, ‘So it’s OK to post this photo on Twitter?’
‘Who cares?’ Michael waved his hand languidly about to show how much he didn’t care. ‘I think most people are on Facebook, not Twitter.’
Soon Twitter would be overrun with the suburban hordes LOLZ-ing and PMSL-ing all over the place but I was pretty sure that no one at school followed me on Twitter and we were just talking about a picture of me looking adorbz and his nostril and mouth. I posted it on Twitter, then Michael, not to be outdone, faffed about on his ancient BlackBerry, and then we could get back to snogging until the waiters brought round more bacon-wrapped scallops.
28
On the six other occasions when we’d slept together, I don’t think Jeane actually slept. She always had her eyes glued to some kind of electronic device as I fell asleep. Then, when I resurfaced hours later, she was already scanning through her blog feed.
But when I woke up at eight on Sunday morning, Jeane was fast asleep. And she was sleeping hard, lying on her side, clutching the quilt tightly to her. She hadn’t taken her makeup off the night before so there was glitter and black smudges all over the pillow and she was snuffling gently. It was the stillest she’d ever been and I didn’t have the heart to wake her.
Though there had been a few incredibly bitchy put-downs in her speech, generally Jeane had rocked it right out of the park and she’d introduced me to the two guys from the artificial intelligence start-up in San Fran and demanded that they gave me an internship. Besides, she’d been knocking back these gross peach-flavoured cocktails all night whose main ingredient was vodka. I’d switched from sake to soft drinks so I could keep an eye on her but it had turned out that Jeane was a happy, sweet drunk and the least I could do was let her sleep off her drunken stupor.
I got up, showered, dressed, and, when she still showed no signs of waking up, I quietly slipped out of the room and walked around the Meatpacking District. All the stores were shut but a roadsweeper was getting rid of the Saturday night debris from the pavement, or sidewalks, whatever. Even though it was freezing cold and I could feel the wind whipping through my T-shirt, shirt and hoodie, tables were being set up outside restaurants and people were already queuing for first service.
I stopped at a coffee shop to get Jeane something sugary and a triple-shot espresso with the last of my dollars, then hurried back to the warmth of our suite. As I shut the door, Jeane’s eyes fluttered open and she slowly sat up. She was still wearing her prom dress because we hadn’t even done more than kiss last night. Or if we had then I’d fallen asleep before it got interesting. Maybe that was why she was scowling.
No, it was just a yawn. ‘What time is it?’ she croaked.
‘Nearly ten,’ I said, and she flopped back on the pillow with a tired groan. ‘I’ve been up for a while but I didn’t want to wake you.’
Jeane grunted something unintelligible but I saw her nose twitch. It was bizarre: one hand groped in the direction of the coffee I was holding as the other one reached for her iPhone.
I didn’t even try to talk to her until she’d gulped down her caffeine and checked her email, by which time she was upright, vaguely alert and maintaining eye contact. ‘Right, so, let’s head to Brooklyn for brunch,’ she said. ‘Shall we cab it?’
‘Couldn’t we have brunch around here? I saw a nice place a couple of blocks away.’ It was too cold to go far and I wasn’t sure what time we needed to be at the airport, but Jeane just snorted.
‘Blocks? Dude, you’re talking American!’ She snorted again. ‘I said last night that it would be really lame to come all this way and only leave Manhattan to go to and from the airport. And you agreed!’
‘I have no memory of that.’
‘Well, you did have a lot of sake and you were falling asleep as I was telling you about how amazing the thrift shops are in Brooklyn. In fact you said, “Shut up, I’m trying to sleep.”’
That wasn’t quite how I remembered it. ‘I only had two sakes.’
‘Er, yeah, and about four bottles of beer,’ Jeane said, as she scrambled out of bed, but she didn’t seem to mind that I’d fallen asleep while she was talking or that I’d been drunk. Allegedly drunk. Because I hadn’t actually been drunk. Anyway, everyone knows that American beer hardly has any alcohol in it.
By now Jeane was walking across the bed but instead of jumping
off the end like she usually did because she couldn’t just get out of bed without acting like a freak, she stopped, her eyes wide.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing her finger at the desk. ‘Did you do a trolley dash or something?’
I followed her gaze to where my many bags from Dylan’s Candy Bar were piled on the desk. ‘No, I just bought candy like a normal person.’
She clutched a hand to her heart. ‘Is it all for me?’
‘Well, they didn’t have any Haribo …’
‘God, what kind of one-horse town is this?’
‘But I managed to find stuff that would appeal to someone with an obsession for chewy jelly sweets.’
I could see that Jeane was trying, unsuccessfully, to quirk one eyebrow. She settled for a smirk in the end. ‘I don’t know why you’re sounding like my obsession is a bad thing. It’s a very, very good thing.’
‘It will rot your teeth.’
‘Not if I brush and floss a couple of times a day.’
Sometimes there was no arguing with Jeane and though she wasn’t a morning person, she was still in a good mood from the triumphs of yesterday so I decided not to push it.
‘Anyway, most of it’s for you and the rest is for Alice and Melly … oh, shit!’
‘Why oh, shit?’ Jeane bounced into a sitting position and patted the spot next to her. ‘What’s up?’
‘I can’t give them sweets I bought in New York, can I?’ I sat down and let Jeane rub my back. Her hand kept going over the same spot again and again like she was trying to wind me but I did appreciate the effort. ‘I’m not meant to be in New York. I’m meant to be in Manchester.’
Jeane was silent for a second. ‘Just say that there was an amazing American sweetshop in Manchester and you got them stuff there. You are so bad at lying, Michael.’
Jeane had a point. ‘Well, you’re good enough at it for the both of us.’
She beamed at me. ‘I really am, and you bought me candy and if I didn’t have morning mouth and coffee mouth and really need a wee, I’d kiss you right now.’
It was past one before we arrived at the Greenpoint diner where Jeane had decided we were going to brunch, because she’d spent over an hour getting ready and had then wasted valuable time begging me to change my outfit.
‘But Michael, nobody wears skinny jeans any more,’ she pleaded. ‘Especially not with a tartan shirt. The grunge revival is over.’
I’d refused to listen and when we arrived at Café Colette in Greenpoint, which apparently was even more achingly hip than Williamsburg, which was way more cooler than New York, practically every guy in the place was wearing skinny jeans and a tartan shirt. They also all had hair that looked like it had been cut with a rusty pair of garden shears, so I was easily ahead on points.
There was a line out of the door and I was all for finding somewhere else to have brunch, but Jeane was insistent that we had to wait in line. She was also insistent that brunch was her treat and she paid the cab fare and even though she was getting all her expenses back, it made me feel weird. Not just weird, but like we weren’t on the same level. OK, there were times when it felt like Jeane wasn’t even on the same planet as me, but back home we went to the same school, walked down the same streets, raided each other’s fridges, but here it felt like Jeane was the one with all the power. I knew I should be more enlightened and cool about her mighty girl power, but I wasn’t. No matter how hard I tried.
‘Hey, you’re holding up the line,’ Jeane suddenly said to me and I realised that we’d actually made it inside the diner and there was only one party in front of us.
Jeane’s phone started beeping as we were finally led across a chequerboard floor to one of the tables for two that were lined up against the back wall. I looked around with interest at the other brunchers and the big old-fashioned counter opposite, but Jeane was glued to her phone.
‘I’ve had, like, fifty emails in the last ten minutes,’ she muttered. ‘And on the day of rest too.’
I picked up a menu, keen to explore the brunch options. Maybe this would be my opportunity to try bacon with maple syrup, but then Jeane suddenly looked up from her phone and yelped like she was in pain.
‘What? What’s the matter?’ I asked, as the two girls on the next table glared at her.
Jeane looked around the café wildly. Then she pointed at a rack of newspapers by the door. ‘The New York Times,’ she rasped like she was a hardened forty-a-day smoker. ‘Have they got The New York Times?’
As she was paying for, well, everything, the least I could do was get up and fetch her the paper.
She snatched it from me without even a thank you and started rifling through it. ‘Boring. Boring. Economic downturn. Universal healthcare. Blah blah bloody blah. Oh my days! I do not believe it. Pinch me.’
I was kind of tempted but I leaned over and tried to look at the newspaper upside-down. It wasn’t difficult because even upside-down the huge photograph of Jeane taken onstage the day before was instantly recognisable.
‘Smells Like Jeane Spirit.’ I read the headline out loud. ‘Meet the English teen who’s turned dorkiness into a lifestyle brand.’
Jeane blinked slowly and put her hands on her cheeks, which were bright red.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Oh. Wow. I emailed them my speech after the conference but I didn’t think they’d run it so soon. Or just run it as, like, a feature in its own right. Jeez Louise.’
‘The New York Times,’ I said slowly. I was pleased for her, really I was, but somehow I couldn’t make my voice sound pleased. ‘So, is that a pretty big deal?’
‘The biggest.’ Jeane stared at the photo of herself with a rapt expression like she’d never seen her own face before. ‘It’s a total game-changer.’
I didn’t even know what that meant. It sounded like the kind of bollocks people spouted on The Apprentice just before their arses got fired, but Jeane wasn’t even waiting for my reply but was tracing her fingers over the page and it was only when someone came over to take our order that she reluctantly tore her gaze away and deigned to look at the menu.
She didn’t say a single word to me for the next half hour. I didn’t even know that Jeane could go that long without talking. She just sat there in her plaid golfing shorts, a Thundercats Tshirt and an orange cardigan, and, instead of eating a proper breakfast, munched her way through a baguette heaped with Nutella and cream cheese held in one hand while she replied to emails with the other.
I had ceased to exist. In fact, I started to wonder if I’d become invisible until my phone started to ring. At least there were still people who wanted to talk to me, even if that person was actually my mother.
To be honest, it was a relief to have an excuse to leave the table. There were too many American accents within earshot for me to take the call anywhere else but outside.
‘Be back in five,’ I told Jeane, who didn’t look up or nod or in any way acknowledge that she knew I was still there.
29
I couldn’t believe it when Michael just got up and, like, left. This was the biggest day of my life. The most amazing thing that had ever happened to me and I’d been lucky enough to have quite a few amazing things happen to me over the last two years, but this was the most amazing thing yet. It was totes AMAZE-ing and Michael couldn’t even be bothered to say, ‘Well done,’ or, ‘Hey, congrats.’
He’d been in a mood ever since we’d arrived in Greenpoint. Probably because he’d wanted to stay in Manhattan and do something naff and touristy like have brunch at, I don’t know, The Four Seasons. But the first evening in New York, I gave him the tourist experience, and yesterday I’d been stressed like I’d never been stressed before and so I wanted half a day to scout round Brooklyn and photograph interesting-looking people and check out the vintage shops, so sue me.
There were times when Michael could be kind and considerate and the head boy of my heart and then there were other times when he could be an absolute dick. He also wasn’t back in five, so
after twenty minutes of having to sit on my own and getting too many coffee refills because there was still a massive queue of people waiting for a table and they were all staring pointedly at me, I paid the bill and went outside to find Michael squatting against a wall and still on his phone.
I stood over him with my hands on my hips until he looked up. ‘My mum,’ he mouthed. ‘She knows I’m in New York.’
Whoop-de-do. So he was in New York and not in Manchester. He’d get grounded and suffer a very boring lecture about responsibility and not telling lies and being a role model to his younger sisters. It was hardly a matter of life and death. Perspective: he really needed to get some.
I didn’t have a chance to tell Michael that because he was still on the phone and furrowing his brow and saying he was sorry again and again and acting like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Which, not even.
Eventually he finished, slowly stood up and hunched his shoulders inside his hoodie. ‘I am in so much trouble,’ he said in a forlorn voice. ‘You put a picture up on Twitter of us last night, didn’t you?’
‘What?’ I snapped. I hadn’t even checked Twitter this morning – I’d been too busy emailing Oona who was anxious to lock me down for the Tokyo conference. ‘As if I’d do anything as stupid as tweet a picture of the two of us together, never mind in New York. Why would I even do that?’
‘I don’t know, why would you?’ Michael snapped back, and then he went into a long convoluted story about how Sanjit, the friend he was meant to be staying with at Manchester University, had a sister the same age as Melly and this stupid little sister had had a sleepover and when Michael’s mum had collected her from said sleepover at some horribly early hour and asked after Sanjit, his mum said he was in Leeds to meet his girlfriend’s parents.