“I’m sorry about your dad,” Ryan said. “My dad died too, well my stepdad. The first few months are really tough.”
My stomach tightened. Was that true? Ryan hadn’t mentioned a dead stepfather to me. For a second I had this image of Dad standing exactly where Ryan was now, in the middle of the room. Laughing.
I pushed the memory away. Dad wasn’t here. I didn’t have to think about him.
Chloe was looking at Ryan properly now. “Oh,” she said. “Er . . . thanks.” She picked up her bag and walked over to the door.
Ryan jogged round behind her and got there first. He opened the door and pushed it back to let her pass. Now I could see his face, but not Chloe’s. He stared at her as she walked towards him. A deep, flirty, mysterious stare that seemed to shut out everyone else in the room. Chloe stopped. Though I couldn’t see her expression, she was obviously looking back at him. Ryan held her gaze for maybe just a couple of seconds, then smiled and looked away.
My heart pounded. I was sitting here, watching some stupid bloke hit on my sister for a joke. No. Worse. To teach me how to pull someone else. A wave of anger and humiliation flooded through me as Chloe scuttled out of the room. Ryan closed the door and looked round at me triumphantly. “See?” he said.
I was across the room in two strides. I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against the wall.
“Don’t ever mess with my sister again.”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Hey, man, you asked me to show you. But, fine, I won’t go near her ever again. OK?”
I let go of his collar. My hands were shaking.
Ryan took a step away from me and smoothed down his clothes. “Anyway,” he said. “The thing is, did you get how it works? The important part is holding that last second or two. If the look’s too short they won’t see it. Too long and you’ll look creepy.”
“Was any of that true, Ry?” Numbers said. “Bout your stepdad?”
Ryan grinned. “Well, the last one left two years ago and I haven’t seen him since, so he might as well be dead.” He glanced at me. “No offence, man.”
I looked away. It didn’t matter to me what Ryan said.
“ ’S genius,” Tones grunted, mournfully. “Sheer chuffin’ genius.”
They left soon after. Ryan said two Steps was enough for one day.
I told him I thought his whole plan sucked, then I went upstairs and practised the “look” in the mirror for the rest of the night.
6
Collage materials
Picture this, a sky full of thunder.
Picture this, my telephone number.
One and one is what I’m telling you.
Oh yeah.
‘Picture This’
Blondie
“Chloe, where should I get my hair cut?”
We were walking home from school the next day. Chloe looked at me suspiciously. “I thought you always went to that barber’s in the high street. Where Dad used to go.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. But it’s full of old men and kids. I’m ready for something that’ll make me look more . . . er . . . more . . .”
“More like a babe-magnet?” Chloe grinned. “Dream on.”
I stopped. “If you’re going to—”
“Hey, I’m just messing with ya,” Chloe said. “Try Leather Stripes on the high street. Or Felloretti’s.”
“They sound like a strip joint and an ice-cream parlour,” I said suspiciously.
Chloe laughed. “They’re good places for blokes’ hair. Most of Ben’s year get their hair cut there.”
“Right. Thanks.” Good. I love the way Ben comes up as a reference point for absolutely frigging everything.
Chloe teased me a bit more about why I wanted my hair cut. But she promised to cover for me with Mum as I was grounded and therefore supposed to go straight home from school.
I left her at the corner of the high street then went in search of Leather Stripes. It looked promising. Dark leather seats and wooden floors. And plenty of men inside getting their hair cut.
Half an hour later I emerged, transformed. The girl who’d done my hair had cut it quite flat on top with a short, spiky fringe. It looked good. I’d even got up the nerve to practise Ryan’s ‘look’ on the hairstylist, though I’m not sure it worked very well. She offered me a glass of water and asked if I was feeling all right.
Finding out what Eve was interested in had turned out to be much easier than I’d expected. I already knew she was doing Art GCSE from things Chloe had said. And when I checked on the noticeboard her name was listed under the Year Ten and Eleven after-school Art Club, which met between four and five-thirty every Thursday. I signed up straight away.
Wednesday dragged by, then Thursday sped past like a bullet. Before I knew it, I was standing outside the art room at four p.m., pushing open the door, wondering if Eve was already there.
She wasn’t. The room was almost empty: just a couple of girls in the corner going through a pile of drawings and the teacher – Ms Patel – a dumpy woman with long black hair down to her waist.
The art room was large and airy. It covered a quarter of the top floor of the school and had a long window running all the way down one side. There was a big teacher’s desk at one end and four large wooden tables in the middle of the room. My heart leaped. Four tables meant a one-in-four chance Eve and I would sit at the same one.
The walls were covered with artwork. I wandered round, trying to spot Eve’s name in the corner of any of the pictures.
“Hi, Luke, is it?” Ms Patel waddled over. “What’s the project you’re working on?”
My mouth went dry. Stupid stupid stupid. Why hadn’t I realised that if I joined an Art Club I’d have to do some art?
“Er . . . I don’t have a project,” I said. “I just wanted to try some stuff out.”
Ms Patel frowned at me. “Well, most students here use the time to work on their GCSE coursework. But I know you’re not taking Art GCSE. Which medium did you want to work in?”
I’ll do whatever Eve’s doing.
“Maybe I could just start off with some ordinary drawing,” I stammered. “Then see what grabs me.”
Ms Patel pursed her lips. “OK.” She pointed to one corner. “Paper and charcoal over there. Watercolours by the sink. But I suggest you begin with pencil. Why don’t you try sketching the vase of flowers on the window ledge.”
She walked over to the long window, picked up a small white vase filled with some sort of large daisies, and plonked it on a table near the back of the room.
I gathered a sheet of paper and some satisfyingly sharp pencils and sat down. A few more people had come in by now. Only one boy, though, I noticed. Perhaps I should tell Numbers about Art Club. On second thoughts, I didn’t need any more competition for Eve than I already had.
She arrived about ten minutes later. My heartbeat accelerated when I saw her. I looked quickly back down at my drawing. So far it looked more like an eggcup with alien heads growing out of it than a vase of flowers.
Eve sat down at the table at the back next to mine. She started chatting in a low voice to the two girls already sitting there. Out of the corner of my eye I watched a slick of sleek blonde hair fall sexily over her shoulder. It brushed across the edge of the bra strap that was peeking out from under her top. I closed my eyes and imagined rushing over, pushing the hair back and . . .
When I opened my eyes, her hair was tucked behind her ears and she was concentrating on the piece of paper in front of her. I squinted, trying to make out what she was working on, without staring too obviously.
It looked like she was sticking down bits and pieces of paper – a collage of some sort.
“How’s it going, Luke?” Ms Patel’s voice beside me made me jump.
“Er, not so good, Ms Patel,” I said, honestly. “I don’t think drawing’s really my thing.”
“Mmmn,” she said. “Well, is there anything else you’d like to try?”
“I was thinking about doing a c
ollage,” I stammered.
“What of?”
Jesus. Ms Patel should get an award for asking difficult questions.
I stared helplessly round the room. My eyes lit on an old radio on the teacher’s desk. “Music,” I said. “I’d like to find some way of expressing the way music sounds in a picture. That’s why collage is the perfect . . . er . . . er . . . medium.”
“You mean because the sound is non-linear?” Ms Patel said. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded anyway.
“Mmmn.” Ms Patel nodded slowly. “I like it. The expression of the inexpressible. A disjointed refraction of the light within sound.”
“Exactly,” I said.
Ms Patel beamed at me.
“You need to decide on the kind of collage materials you want to use. I’ll ask Eve if she can spare five minutes for a chat with you about the best options. She’s doing a marvellous collage as part of her GCSE coursework.”
I sat frozen to my seat. Eve was going to talk to me. Me. On my own. About collage materials, whatever they were.
There was no time to think. I heard Ms Patel talking, then the sound of a chair being scraped backwards across the floor. I looked up.
Oh God. She was right there. Right beside my table.
“Hi, I’m Eve.” She slid into the seat next to me. My heart thumped. We were so close. If I moved my hand by a few centimetres it would touch hers.
“Luke,” I said.
Eve was staring at my alien-head flowers.
“Just doodling,” I said, scrunching the paper up in my hand.
She smiled at me. It was like someone shining a torch directly in my eyes. I had to look away.
“I remember you,” she said. “You’re Chloe’s brother.”
Yesss! Suddenly brimful with confidence, I looked back at her.
“I . . . er . . . I’m sorry about your dad.” Eve blushed.
“It doesn’t matter.” Shit. “I mean . . . it’s OK. Not him dy . . . I mean . . .” I tailed off.
Eve smiled again. “I like your music collage idea,” she said. “Ms Patel said you wanted to know about the different materials you could use . . .”
“Mmmn,” I said, nodding vaguely. “Mmmn.” My eyes travelled slowly down her jumper, then back up to her mouth. I watched her lips, transfixed by the effortlessly sexy way they pouted and curled as she spoke.
“. . . so paper’s good, but messy. Maybe bottle tops would work – though they’re hard to stick down. Or how about silver foil? That would get across the metallic quality of music, don’t you think?”
It took me a couple of seconds to realise Eve had stopped talking and was now looking at me. I also realised, a heartbeat too late, that I was still staring at her mouth like some sex-crazed lunatic.
“Sorry if that was boring.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said, too quickly. “It was really helpful.”
Crap, crap, crap. She thinks I’m being rude again.
Eve stood up. I stared at the tabletop, praying for inspiration. Something, anything to keep her here a minute longer.
“How about wood?” I said desperately. “Sorry if I went weird on you back there, but something you said made me think. The quality of music thing. I mean, metal’s good – but so’s wood, isn’t it? After all, loads of instruments are made of wood.”
I prayed Ms Patel wasn’t about to appear at my shoulder and ask me which ones. At that point I don’t think I could have named a single musical instrument, let alone worked out which ones were wooden.
Eve nodded. “I like it,” she said. “Hey, why don’t you use wooden buttons. That’ll add to the whole effect by being disc-shaped. You know, like CDs?”
“That’s brilliant,” I said. “Thanks.”
Eve looked pleased with herself. She walked back over to her table.
“OK, time to pack up,” Ms Patel called.
I checked my watch. Where had the last half-hour gone?
My heart was racing as I replaced my pencils in the pencil box. Ms Patel cornered me before I could get back across the room. I explained the wooden-button collage idea as quickly as I could. I wanted to have time to say goodbye to Eve before she left.
“Great, but you’ll have to bring in your own buttons next week,” Ms Patel said. “We don’t have any wooden ones.”
“Fine.” In the distance I could see Eve disappearing out the door. I almost skidded across the art-room floor to grab my bag, then raced onto the corridor. She was on her own, thank God, just at the top of the stairs.
“Eve,” I called.
She looked up and smiled.
“See you next week,” I said. My eyes lingered on her face. I wasn’t even thinking about making her notice me or trying to look at her in any special way.
Then it happened. Without warning, this jolt – like an electric shock – shot between us. It was massive. Overpowering. Like . . . like in that instant we were inside each other’s head and the rest of the world had disappeared. A second later it was gone.
I stared at her, knowing absolutely that she had felt it too.
Her face reddened. She looked away, clutching the stair rail.
“Next week,” she said. Then she scurried off down the stairs.
I leaned against the wall, too turned on – too completely overwhelmed – to move. Then Ms Patel emerged from the art room and I dragged myself downstairs, sending a silent prayer of thanks to whoever, in their utter and total brilliance, had invented the wooden button.
7
Humiliation
And I thought I was mistaken
And I thought I heard you speak
Tell me how do I feel?
Tell me now how should I feel?
Now I stand here waiting.
‘Blue Monday’
New Order
Ryan was impressed when I told him. “Fast work, man,” he said. “You’ve cracked Step Two at the first attempt. Plus, that kind of vibe only happens when something real’s going on.”
We were in the high street, getting a lunchtime burger. It was the day after the after-school Art Club and I was still grinning like an idiot.
“Don’t tell Numbers about it, though.” Ryan leaned back in his chair and smiled. “He’ll pester you for weeks to explain how you did it.”
“I didn’t ‘do’ anything,” I said. “It just happened.”
Ryan took a bite of his burger. “Yeah well, that’s a bit subtle for Numbers. Remember all he wants is to get as far as he can, as quickly as he can, as often as he can. He’s not fussy – he’d snog a lampost if it had tits and moved.”
I laughed.
“Still, you gotta hand it to him – Numbers is brilliant at Step Three,” Ryan said enigmatically. “Almost got a sixth sense about it.”
I opened my mouth to ask what Step Three was, but at that moment the doors of the burger bar flew open and Ben strode in with a couple of his equally beefy, ugly mates. They sprawled across the large booth behind ours and yelled for the waitress. After she’d delivered their menus and they’d refused to move to a smaller table, they began boasting loudly at each other.
With a horrible, sinking sensation, I realised Ben must be talking about Eve.
“. . . Yeah, we did that last night. She was all over me.”
I froze, my burger halfway to my mouth.
“Stupid cow wouldn’t go any further, though. So I told her I’d wait until she was sixteen for the actual shag.” Ben laughed. “I made out I had no idea when that would be, that it didn’t matter if it was months away, but really I knew and – get this – her birthday’s in three weeks.”
“Nice one,” one of the other blokes said in a deep, gruff voice.
“Yeah.” Ben was laughing so much now he was choking. “She was so grateful it was pathetic. All ‘you’re so amazing, Ben’; ‘So sensitive to wait till I’m ready, Ben’.” He said this in a high, silly falsetto as much unlike Eve’s raspy voice as it could be.
My stomach twi
sted into this tearing, burning knot.
“After another fortnight she’ll be gagging for it,” Ben sneered. “Begging me to do her.”
I put down my burger and looked up at Ryan. He was staring sympathetically at me.
His sympathy was the last thing I wanted.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. I stumbled blindly out of the burger bar. Had I imagined the look that passed between me and Eve? No. And I certainly hadn’t imagined her blushing. But maybe she hadn’t felt it the same way I had. Maybe all I’d done was remind her of how she felt about her stupid thug of a boyfriend.
I fantasised about going back in the burger bar and punching Ben in the face. But I was too scared. He was much bigger than me. And he was with two friends.
Humiliated, I stomped off back to school.
Ryan turned up on the doorstep half an hour after Chloe and I got home that evening. “Hey, Luke, man . . .” He gave me a pitying smile.
“Forget it.” I started shutting the door in his face, hating that he felt sorry for me. “I’m not interested anymore.”
Ryan shoved his foot in the gap and pushed against me. “Don’t be so lame,” he said. “You should be more determined than ever now.”
“Oh yeah? How d’you work that out?”
“Because Ben’s handed you Step Three on a plate, you idiot.”
I opened the door. “What d’you mean?”
“I’m not telling you out here. Let me in.”
Reluctantly, I led Ryan into the kitchen. Mum was out and Chloe was up in her room. I slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and drummed my fingers on the table. “Well?”
Ryan sat down. “You gotta have an Angle. That’s Step Three. Some way of positioning yourself – like a brand in a shop. Some way of standing out from the crowd – a way that’s particularly meaningful for whoever it is you’re after.”
I shook my head. Ryan talked as much rubbish as Ms Patel in the Art Club. “What the hell are you going on about?”
“Don’t you see?” Ryan leaned forwards. “Ben’s pushing Eve to go all the way with him.”
I glared at him. “Thanks for the newsflash. I think I’d worked that out for myself.”