скачать книгу бесплатно
She rubs her eyes, a few drops trickling down, and coughs up again. She clears her throat and turns her chair towards me a little. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘I was just wondering, you know, you…Aiden…?’
‘Sophia, have you met my parents?’ she laughs. The smile suddenly fades from her face as she edges in closer to the table and leans on her tray with an elbow. ‘It’s hard enough for me to get my head around the fact I’m dating a boy outside of my religion, but that…’ She shakes her head.
‘That’s a no, then?’
‘No. Definitely not.’ She slides her tray away from her body and drops her fork down onto the plastic bowl.
‘But you’ve thought about it?’
She shrugs and turns away, looking out beyond our little circular table.
‘You have thought about it, haven’t you?’
She leans in, her mouth close to my ear. ‘Of course. I’m seventeen.’
I smile and sit back in the chair.
‘But thinking about it is much different to actually doing it,’ she adds.
I open my mouth to say something but an arm pulls me backwards. ‘Steve!’ He laughs and drops to his knees beside my chair. Leaning in, his lips meet mine.
‘Still here,’ Ulana loudly states, tapping my arm.
‘Sorry.’ I take his hand in mine and squeeze it gently. ‘Will you call me tonight?’
‘Yep, I will.’ He winks at me then rushes off to catch up with his friends who stand at the back, pointing at us, teasing us. He playfully nudges the tall one in the back, Rhys, as he passes him. I can’t help it; I turn to watch Rhys’ ex-girlfriend’s expression. Lucy McNeil watches him pass then flicks her hair in that Lucy way, before turning back to her friends, her posse. Those who I’ll never sit with, never talk to at a party, never text with. But that’s OK. Because I have Steve and that’s all that matters to me now.
Ulana takes a big gulp of her water bottle and watches him walk away, eyeing his every step. She quickly puts the bottle down, turning into me again. ‘Just make sure you’re not getting pressured into anything, OK? It’s your body. Your choice. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you can’t say no.’
I fiddle with the stem of my apple core, pushing it back and forth until it eventually snaps and breaks free from the fruit. ‘I know,’ I shrug, tossing it into the empty tray. I momentarily shake the idea from my mind, then commence a conversation on tonight’s biology assignment.
But by the time I get home from school, I’m still thinking about it.
IT.
And before I’ve even changed out of my uniform for the evening, I’m upstairs, on my bed, at my laptop. Fingers quickly tapping at the black keys, and suddenly perfectly thin models with big bouncy hair and pouty lips stare back at me, all swathed in lace, chiffon and silk. My temples start to throb as dilemmas between ‘Brazilians’ and ‘cheekies’ and ‘babydolls’ and ‘chemises’ fill and overload my brain. Padded or push-up? Plunge or demi? And what’s a ‘merrywidow’? It sounds like a character from a Marvel movie.
The bedroom swings open and my mum stands in the doorway, cleaning her hands with a mint-green tea towel. ‘I didn’t even hear you come in. Why didn’t you say hi?’
‘I thought you were at Aunt Bridget’s this afternoon?’ My swallow burns my throat.
‘I was but I wanted to get a start on dinner. Your dad’s finishing work early today. Quiet day at the office, I guess. I’m making a roast tonight. That OK?’
‘But it’s not Sunday?’ We like to stick to traditions in our family, although the images in front of me are far from traditional. Is that a thong-filled Christmas tree bauble?
‘Your father and I are going to the golf club this Sunday with his work friends.’
There was a time when Mum and Dad used to go there with Lucy’s parents. It’s funny that our parents were friends but we never were. Not even something like that brought us together. We were completely different people. Always will be. I bet she’d know what a ‘merrywidow’ is. She probably has one in black. Or maybe in red.
‘Not going with the McNeils?’
‘Oh no. We haven’t seen them in a while. I think it’s been about a year.’
‘Really?’
‘I did reach out a few times to invite them, but Julia never got back to me. I don’t even see her in town much anymore.’
‘Oh, weird.’ My fingers slowly reach for the laptop screen and I start to lower it half an inch at a time.
She stands at the door, still rubbing her hands. How can they not be dry by now?
‘What are you up to, honey?’
A crisp silence hangs heavy in the hair. My palms start to get clammy. I feel like I might throw up on my MacBook at any second. ‘Hmm?’
‘Honey?’ she asks again, her eyes burning through to the back of my skull.
I can’t lie. I never could. I tried once or twice, but it was like she knew, like she could smell the deceit and dishonesty on my skin like cheap perfume.
‘Um…a biology project,’ I croak out, my voice a little too high at the end.
‘What on?’
Oh. She wants details.
Think of something.
Think of something.
‘Human anatomy,’ I finally say, nodding my head.
‘Oh, well I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I never did know much about the human body.’ Then she turns and leaves, closing the bedroom door tight behind her.
LUCY (#ulink_660f2659-c865-568d-9cf6-566c999c3025)
I remember the day my dad left.
Branches creaking, slight bounce in the back door that hadn’t been closed properly, it was a windy day. It howled and moaned, and dragged through our town like a rake in weeds, surfacing the weak roots in the soil. That was us that day. A weak root.
I hadn’t always thought that. I’d thought we were a strong unit. That the three of us were a family, unbreakable to the core. We’d been happy. We watched films in the evenings during the week when I wasn’t allowed to go out with my friends or Rhys. The weekends were mostly our own. Mum and Dad went to the golf club with the Greers, while I went to the cinema with Rhys or occasionally drank cheap white wine from a cardboard box and gossiped with Lily, Cara and Mollie about the hideous outfits people wore to high-school parties. Short skirts, tied-up tops, low-cut necklines, bright-coloured tights, sequins that sparkled a little too much, fake leather skirts that were more fake than leather. But during the week, where homework, early bedtimes and nutritionally dense dinners took precedence, my time was our time. Family time. We always ate at the dinner table – TV off, phones on silent. We talked about our day, our weekend plans, things that were bugging us. I talked and they listened. Now I talk and no one hears me. Mum’s in a place that I can’t reach, and never will, and Dad’s ‘busy’. He says that a lot now. ‘Sorry, Luce. I’ve just been busy at work…Sorry, Luce, I can’t this weekend. We’re just so busy with the baby…’ Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Everyone is just so sorry, but nothing changes. Not even my memory of that night changes. I replay it sometimes. It makes me stronger.
I think.
My parents had been up all night – talking, arguing, crying. I don’t know. I wasn’t there in their bedroom. But I heard them. They never made me a part of the discussion or even considered me when making a decision. My dad had been late from work the evening before and his dinner had sat cold on the kitchen table for almost two hours before he walked in, navy coat strewn over his arm. They’d bickered about why he was always late from work, and my mum walked out of the living room. The bedroom door slammed upstairs and my dad had plopped down on the sofa beside me. I’d been texting Rhys so my phone had been in my hand. I remember that because after my dad said what he did, I’d dropped the phone and it’d hit my foot.
He’d wrapped his arm around me, his fingers lightly resting on my upper arm. His voice was different, gravelly like he had a cold. He asked me how my day at school had been, and I told him about our social studies assignment and how I’d practised for the dance society’s next performance at the arts centre on the high street, which of course I’d got the lead for. But when I asked him how his day had been, his face turned pale and he looked like he was going to cry. He didn’t respond to my question, instead he coughed gently and turned his gaze to the yellow shaggy rug that I often lay my belly on while I finished my homework for the evening. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t do a lot of things that I used to.
He didn’t look at me once while he said nine simple words. ‘Everything is about to change. Please don’t be scared.’
Change.
I didn’t want anything to change. Why did it need to? We were doing just fine how we were. But it was no longer about us. There was suddenly someone new in this family. Another voice, one that hid from us in the shadows and slowly poisoned my dad’s thoughts. One day there were three of us. Then the next, there were four. And soon, just two remained. The two left behind. The unwanted two.
That’s why I hate Trina so much. Not because of what she wears, how she acts, what she says. But because all of a sudden she was just there. She became my Amber. And when Rhys ended it with me, saying we’d ‘grown apart’, all I thought about was how my mum must have felt being dumped, being tossed to the side for someone else. And I became angry. Really angry. And I started thinking about what people would say if they knew I’d been rejected by my dad and then by my boyfriend.
Before then I never had to think too much about what people thought of me. I didn’t care. I did well at school, I had best friends, I had a boyfriend who treated me well, I was invested in after-school activities like the dance society and Amnesty UK. I was doing a good job at being me. Then one day Dad left the family and in a way, Mum left too. And I suddenly became aware of other people, and more importantly what they might think of me, be saying about me behind my back. What if they pitied me like the other ‘children of divorces’? ‘Poor Lucy has no dad anymore’… ‘Aww, Lucy’s dad left them…’ Or worse, what if I became the topic of gossip? ‘Did you hear, Lucy’s dad walked out on her and her mum?…Did you know Lucy’s parents are getting a divorce?…Guess what I found out this weekend?…’
I became consumed with what other people thought about me, terrified that they’d find out that my perfect life was all a lie, that my dad chose his new family over us, over me. That despite all the happy meals we shared together at that big oak table, all the movies we curled up on the sofa to watch with frozen banana chunks dipped in dark chocolate, that despite the holidays we went on every year where we took family selfies and posted them on social media, that fundamentally my dad was unhappy. That hurts me more. That he took into consideration all the years, all the memories, all the love, and still came to the conclusion that he’d be much happier with another wife and another child. That. Kills. Me.
So I decided that I wouldn’t be the focus of hushed conversations, the words on scrunched up paper notes passed along in class under tables, the target of people’s pointed fingers. And the only way to ensure that was to always be putting other people in that position. If I pointed the spotlight at others, no one could turn it on me. I’m not proud of who I became after my dad left, after Rhys left. But for now, it works. For now, I’ll keep going and no one will find out my secrets. Never. But I’ll keep finding out theirs.
ULANA (#ulink_d40027d5-38fa-546e-896f-29bb6c9acab0)
My fingers are red raw from rubbing. My nails ache from the pressure of pushing down. I think I chipped the middle nail because something sharp just rubbed against my thumb.
But I don’t stop.
I get another paper towel from the girls’ room dispenser and dampen it under the warm tap. Then I return to the stall door and continue scrubbing.
I know it’s not my name or my reputation, but it could be. And if it was then I would hope that some girl would do me the same favour, show me the same respect.
Trina Davis is a SLUT
I can’t leave it here, not that.
Who would do this?
Girls that have no idea. They trash reputation and then move on to the next victim. What if that said my name?
Ulana Alami is a SLUT
I can’t imagine. What would my parents think? What would my dad say? How would I ever be able to face them again?
My fingers shake and the moist towel drops to the floor. My belly churns, a warm sensation moving upwards through my body, snaking its way up to my throat. I swallow it down, take a deep breath and tell myself: It’s not my name and it’s not happening to me. No one knows about us.
I check my watch. I’m late. He’ll be wondering where I am. I have another go at the door then flush the paper towel down the toilet.
Grabbing my book bag, I rush out and through the back door. Feet on dried brown leaves from the birch trees, hands on the trunks of pines, I reach the spot. It’s the perfect place, sheltered from the wind, and more importantly, from the school.
He stands by the bench – our bench – then starts pacing in front of it. He checks his watch and runs his hand through his hair.
‘Aiden!’
He spins round, a wide smile stretching across his face. That smile. My smile.
I still remember the day I noticed Aiden for the first time. He’d been sitting in chemistry, one row in front of me, on the right. A PowerPoint presentation outlined the major components of atomic bonding and all around me people took frantic notes, our hands not able to keep up with the rapidly changing slides. My right hand was cramping and I rubbed, massaging into the muscle. It was at this time that I came to two realisations. Firstly, that I didn’t need to be taking this many notes because I already knew all this. And secondly, that the boy sitting in the row in front of me, to my right, wouldn’t stop turning around to look at me.
At first, I thought he was just curious. I was in full dress, the fabrics bought with my parents in Morocco, but my Western-bought jeans and grey Converse trainers stuck out from the bottom. He was interested in me. That was it. So I entertained him. I turned my face to him to let him know that I knew that he was watching me. His cheeks reddened and he turned his head back to the projection screen quickly. I remember putting my hand up to my mouth to stifle the smile that suddenly and unexpectedly came. And when I regained my composure, I looked up and saw that he was staring again. But this time he was smiling too. Smiling at me. Tiny dimples in the corners of his smiles, eyes wide and even in the darkened room, they had a sparkle to them. I looked away. And when I looked back – and I told myself not to so many times – the smile had been replaced by a goofy face. Half the class turned to face me as a loud giggle escaped my throat. Sophia had observed the interaction and I couldn’t hide from the questions and playful elbows that followed in the days and weeks after. Every time he passed me in the hallway or smiled at me in class, she’d be there beaming from ear to ear, thrilled that for once in my life, I was doing something that wasn’t on my ‘Life Plan’. Instead I was doing something that should never be mixed with education and future life decisions – I was having fun.
It was innocent at first. Smiles, nods, innocent facial exchanges. Then it moved to verbal interactions where he’d ask me the time even though I saw the watch sticking out from his sleeve. He asked me about Morocco and I asked him about, well, everything – music, films, books. I was interested in every word that came out of his mouth. I was curious about what he liked, what he did with his time, and about those dimples. He made me laugh. He was funny, smart. He stood out from the others. He sought to be different. It wasn’t an embarrassment for him but a requirement. He had an active desire to be so. And for the first time since we’d arrived in this country, he made me feel at home, a part of something outside of my obligations at school and at home.
It had almost ended before it had even started. He’d asked me out at the end of class, just to see a film at the cinema. But for me, that moment made me see that by just talking to him, I was crossing a line that I wouldn’t be able to return to. That I was stepping away from my religion and my beliefs, and possibly abusing the trust of my parents. And that I was leading on a boy that I really, really liked. I knew we could never even be friends, not with how I was feeling towards him, let alone anything more. So I said no. I tried to explain to him why I was saying no, and he understood. And then we didn’t talk for weeks after that. Those were the longest weeks of my life. The worst weeks. Week after week of regret, envy, anger, frustration, and something else, something much bigger.
Desire.
I still feel that now when I see him standing here.
I rush the next couple of steps and stagger into his arms. I hug him like I haven’t seen him for weeks, even though we stood in this spot only two days ago.
‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming?’
‘Sorry, I got held up.’ We sit, hands and fingers locked together as we usually do, and face the school.
‘How was UCAS prep?’
‘Very funny. Even just fifteen minutes of that is torture,’ I laugh.
‘Learning anything in yours? In mine, I learned how to bullet-point my skill set.’ He smiles. ‘But I think that’s more for people who actually have a set of skills as opposed to me.’
I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow then lean my head on his shoulder.
Maybe no one will see us. Maybe we can keep on pretending as if this bubble that surrounds us now will stay just that and nothing can pop it. But I feel eyes on me all the time. I don’t know how much longer I can keep all this up. I search for my father every second of the day, for my mother, for my neighbours, for my teachers, for those who’d use this information against me. People like Lucy McNeil, maybe even Steve who seems to hate me. He thinks I put ‘rubbish’ in Sophia’s ear. I only tell her the truth. One day I hope she’ll listen to me. I hope she’ll trust what I tell her about him. But I also fear him too, and what he might say if I upset him too much. All those people wait for me to screw up, yet I’ve done my best to avoid them so far. But how much longer can I? When will I see them, or them me?
‘Are you OK?’ he finally asks, wrapping his arm around me.
I snuggle in closer, the wind breaking through my thin jacket.
‘I don’t know how much longer we can do this,’ I say quietly.
‘I know. It’s getting colder. We have to find somewhere a little warmer to meet.’
That wasn’t what I meant but I don’t bring it up again. Maybe I’m enjoying living in this bubble too much. I turn to him and find warmth in his lips, in his arms.
Then I lean my head on his chest. I can’t feel his heart through his navy jumper, but I know it’s beating under there. He wriggles underneath me.
‘Are you uncomfortable?’ I shift my weight to one hip, away from him to give him a little space.
‘No, it’s not that. I’m just getting…’ He pulls a small wrapped gift from inside his pocket. It’s box-shaped but the corners are squashed, caving in slightly. He tries to pop out the edges then gives up and drops the box into my hand. ‘Happy six-month anniversary.’
I quickly sit up. ‘Six months? It’s really been that long?’
‘You forgot?’
‘No, I didn’t forget…I just didn’t exactly remember.’ I smile, kissing him on the cheek.
He laughs and gestures towards my flat palm. ‘Open it.’
