Just My Luck(46)

At least, that’s how it was.

Now money is the new Ridley, I guess. The things we’re buying, and the things we can do now we are rich, excite me. It’s not the same, obviously. I can’t kiss and suck and breathe in money. Money can’t cause me to burn. But somehow, one edged out the other. It’s just the way it is.

I didn’t think I’d have to choose.

I still think spending the money with Ridley would have been the best. The old Ridley. The boy I thought he was.

I hate Jennifer and Fred for messing everything up. For trying to con us and pretend a third of the money was theirs. If they hadn’t done that, Ridley and I would have been fine! We’d have got over his initial reaction and he’d never have done what he did to me in the school toilets. And yeah, they’ve had a fit of conscience now and at least had the decency to do the right thing and come clean finally. But so what? It’s too late. It’s all too late. I wish there was a button though, that I could press and just turn my feelings off completely. I have played Rihanna’s ‘Love the Way you Lie’ basically on loop. Cos #EvenAngelsHaveTheirWickedSchemes.

How could he have stood by and let them hurt me?

And the photos he took!

I can’t forgive him. I switch up my playlist. Now I am all about Ariana Grande: #IwantItIGotIt.

Dad is distracted by admin. He announces he has made an appointment at a private school. They are prepared to see him this afternoon. I think Mum will kill him for going without her, but he doesn’t seem to care when I point this out.

‘Do you want to come?’ he asks me.

‘No, you’re all right. I don’t think this face makes the right first impression.’ I try to wink, to pretend it’s not getting me down, but it backfires because winking hurts like hell.

‘Fair point,’ says Dad. He kisses the top of my head, carefully, to avoid causing any twinges. ‘Will you keep an eye on Logan?’

‘Yeah.’ The minute Dad has gone I beg Logan for his phone. Mine is obviously done for since it was flushed. He is sat at his computer, a blue glow shining on his nerdy little face. I have to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention and get him to take off his headphones. Like any normal teenager, he hates handing over his phone.

‘What will you give me?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. In the past, I’d offer a pound. We stare at each other for a moment and then simultaneously realise that we can no longer bribe one another with cash because we have loads of it. This makes us laugh and Logan gives me his phone.

‘If you post anything on my accounts, I’ll kill you.’

‘Fair.’

I dash to my own room and then set about logging in to all my social media accounts that I can. By flushing my phone, Megan basically pushed me overboard and left me bobbing in the sea without a lifejacket or even a crappy little whistle. Since we rowed on that first day I told them about the win, I have been hopelessly but compulsively checking every form of communication about every three minutes to see if Ridley might contact me privately. Snaps, Insta, WhatsApp, Twitter, basic text messaging and even old-person Facebook. Since she flushed the phone, I can no longer feed this obsession. I guess Megan has done me a favour even though that’s the last thing she intended. She knows – everyone knows – how vital a phone is. She’s basically hacked off a limb. The thing is, I have not told my parents about the photos Ridley took in the loo. I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. They think that the worst he did was stand guard for teachers and they fecking HATE him for that. Especially my mother, I think she would rip him apart with her teeth if Dad and I allowed it. I don’t know why I’m protecting him. Or maybe I do. I have to know what he plans to do with them. Is he going to humiliate me and post them? Has he already done that?! Or is it enough for him to know I know he has them? Does he just want to feel powerful again? I can’t imagine he’s wanking over them.

I keep wondering, and this is bad. Are they a thing now? Ridley and Megan? Just the thought, just the suggestion, makes it difficult for me to breathe. No, surely not. She’s never fancied him. Or has she? I guess she wouldn’t tell me if she did. And he’s gorgeous. Why wouldn’t she fancy him?! Megan always had this big thing about us telling each other everything about everything. Like we talked about period pain, how fat our thighs looked versus how fat they really are, what we’d like to do with our lives, the fact she gets a recurring blackhead in the middle of her back (which I always squeezed for her) and I grow a single persistent hair out of my nipple and even though I pluck it, it comes back. What is that about? Who gets tit pubes? That’s the sort of question we used to put to one another.

There were things I didn’t tell Megan about Ridley.

It became impossible to put into words the things we did to each other. The pleasure we got from one another. I didn’t hold back telling her about that bit of us because I’m ashamed of it – the opposite! I didn’t tell anyone because it’s so brilliant, so amazing and special! I’m protecting us. Other people would ruin it. Even Megan. They’d say we were too young. They’d gasp; shocked, horrified. They’d say once he got what he wanted, he’d leave me.

Maybe they’d be right about that bit.

Ridley wouldn’t go there. Would he? With Megan?

Here’s the truth about Megan: she isn’t super pretty. I mentioned she didn’t get her mum’s looks, well, she’s not even super funny either, which is a shame because her dad can be quite a laugh. She is, however, super clever. Cleverer than I am and she’s all science-y, which is cool, especially for a girl (it should not matter, but it does because we’re not living in the future yet and people really do stereotype). I love – loved – seeing people get blown away when she talked about the space–time continuum or black holes or whatever. When we were eleven or twelve, that was just the best. Some dumb and arrogant boy would be going on about X-Men: Days of Future Past, naming all the mutants’ skills or something tedious, and Megan would casually start talking about the possibility of time travel, for real. Quietly arguing that if it was going to happen, moving forward in time was far more likely than back. Their faces! We’d practically burst, laughing about it.