The Fragile Ordinary(33)
“The big deal is that it looked intense between you and Tobias King this morning. Your faces were, like, right here.” Steph placed her palm inward to just short of the tip of her nose. Her features seemed pinched. “He looked really into you.”
I blushed harder and, to my chagrin, squirmed in delight, remembering him calling me cute. “He’s not. He just likes to wind me up about class.” That was half the truth, at least.
Steph looked more than ready to believe that over the idea that he fancied me, and I wondered if she even knew what she really wanted. Tobias to like me, or for him—no correction, every boy—to like her instead.
Vicki did not look convinced. But instead of pursuing it further, she challenged me in another way. “It’s my cousin Sadie’s eighteenth this weekend. We’re all invited. Her parents are on holiday.”
I knew Sadie and liked her. Her parents were extremely successful in buying and selling property and had a lovely Georgian town house in Stockbridge. But a party was still a party after all. And even though I knew this was a test, I couldn’t bring myself to do something just to make Vicki happy with me again.
“I don’t like parties, Vicki. You know that.”
Steph huffed. “You’re seriously the most boring teenager on the planet.”
Hurt, I looked down at my feet. I was wearing black-and-metallic-gold brogues today. At least my clothes weren’t boring.
“Steph,” Vicki reprimanded softly.
“Hey.” Steph wrapped an arm around my shoulders, drawing my gaze to her face. “You are who you are, Com. Doesn’t mean we don’t love you.”
I gave her a tremulous smile instead of scowling at her like I was mentally. Satisfied with my response, she dropped her arm and turned to Vicki. For the rest of break, whether they realized it or not, my friends spoke to one another like I wasn’t there. My chest ached as I watched Vicki laugh with Steph, and I realized that somehow over the last few weeks my best friend and I had grown apart. A wall had slowly risen between us, and I didn’t know how to stop it from becoming too epic to climb.
*
I saw Tobias in maths but didn’t speak to him.
I never saw him for the rest of the day. He and Stevie and their annoying crew weren’t in the cafeteria at lunch. The reprieve might have made me happy, until I realized Steph and Vicki were also nowhere to be seen. When I texted them, Vicki replied: We both had free period b4 lunch. Munchin’ @Nana’s. C U l8er. xx.
More hurt and irritation ripped through me. Nana’s was this great little café off Porty High Street that we all loved. Nice of them to tell me they were eating out of school. I could have joined them. Huffing, I yanked out a battered copy of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. I’d discovered Carter over the weekend when I’d read a review of one of her short story collections, written by a blogger I followed. I’d hit the library, determined to make my way through all her weird and wonderful work.
As amazing as her writing was, however, I couldn’t concentrate.
I hated this distance between my friends and me, and I felt solely to blame. But what could I do? Change who I was to keep them?
Every great book, play or poem in the world told you to be yourself, and I wanted to. I did. But clearly the authors of those works didn’t know what it was like to be a teenage girl in the twenty-first century.
*
My mood hadn’t lifted any by the time dinner rolled around. It was a typical day in our household. Carrie was locked in her studio working on another commissioned piece, and Dad had ordered Chinese food because he was actually making some progress with his book and couldn’t spare the thirty minutes it would take to cook something, apparently. My offer to make something was rejected.
“You know pork chow mein is my brain food,” he’d said.
Weird, weird choice of brain food, in my opinion.
Despite his excuse for not making dinner, he didn’t seem all that keen to get back to his office as he sat down at the kitchen island with me to eat.
“So, I saw you’re reading Hamlet for English,” Dad said, as he finished off his meal.
“Yeah.”
“I know you’ve probably read it a few times already.” No, really? Was it the big painted quote above my bed that gave it away? “But I wanted you to know I did a paper on it at uni. Just...well, if you ever need help.”
It was such a small thing, but the offer, the act of taking some interest in my life, lifted me from my melancholy. I sat up straighter in my stool. “Really?” I said.
My dad frowned at whatever he heard in my tone. “Of course.”
“I know you’re busy but...I have a presentation to write. I worked on it with a classmate and we’re almost finished. Would you...” I suddenly felt vulnerable all over again. Not quite as vulnerable as I’d felt knowing Tobias had read my notebook, but still... I never let my dad read my work. Maybe I’d lowered my guard because I was feeling especially alone in that moment. “Would you read through it for me?”
Dad beamed at me, seeming thrilled that I’d asked. “Of course, Com. Let me just run upstairs with food for your mum and then I’ll be down to read it.”
Just a few weeks ago, I would have resented the idea of Dad sticking his nose into my writing. It was amazing what a bad day could do to a person’s attitude.