An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (3 page)

              I had expected sadness in her eyes -- she was sitting alone and looking pitiful after all -- but a fire still burned there and I had added extra fuel just by showing up.

              ‘Hey Kerry,’ I said unsurely, trying to avert my gaze from her eyes in case she turned me into stone.

              She didn’t reply, but I was sure I heard a small growl.

              I plastered on my best smile and stared at her forehead, trying to feign sincerity whilst keeping my gaze away from hers. ‘I was just wondering if you… I don’t know… maybe wanted to come outside and play?’

              Again there was no reply. She still stared.

              ‘It’s a nice day, well, it’s not raining. I mean… you can borrow my coat if you want? You can warm up pretty fast playing football, if you
want
to come and join me and my friends for a game that is. I mean I know you don’t have any friends anymore and I--’

              ‘I don’t like you Kieran McCall,’ she spoke slowly.

              ‘You’d like my friends. And I’m sure you’d like me if you got to know me.’ I wasn’t giving up.

              ‘Go away,’ she growled.

              ‘Look, I’m sorry about throwing up on you, but you tried to kiss me, what do you expect?’ I paused; she looked like she was ready to pounce. ‘Not that I have a problem with you, you’re very pretty an’ all that, but I don’t like kissing in general. I don’t even like to kiss my grandma, and she’s
family
. Although she smells God awful. My dad says it’s just old age, but I’m pretty sure it’s piss.’

              ‘Go away McCall,’ Kerry said again, her voice deeper and more gravelly, the anger was building and it had a great deal of frustration for company.

              I still didn’t want to give in, falsely believing I was on a roll. ‘If I let you kiss me again will that help? You don’t have to give me any sweets or anything; I’ll do it out of the goodness of my own heart. What do you say?’

              ‘Go away.’

              ‘What if I let you throw up on me?’

              ‘What?’ a twinge of surprise tickled the corner of her face and then disappeared.

              ‘It’s disgusting I know, but hear me out.’ I edged closer, ‘I threw up on you and I got treated like the hero whilst everyone hates you.’

              ‘Everyone
hates me
?’ she looked hurt by this.

              I lowered my eyebrows and looked into eyes that seemed genuinely hurt. ‘I thought you knew? Why else did you think they were ignoring you?’

              ‘I just thought--’

              ‘It’s not important,’ I quickly interrupted. ‘What I’m saying is, if you throw up on me then you’ll be the hero and I’ll get just enough hate to stop
me
being the hero, but because of the first incident -- when I threw up on you -- it won’t be enough to turn
me
into a complete Billy no-mates like
you,’
I finished with a grin, pleased with myself. ‘What do you say?’

              She punched me.

              It was the first time I had been punched in the face. I was surprised. I was annoyed. I was hurt. After the initial shock I removed a protective hand from my face to tell Kerry these things, and then she punched me again.

              Years later I would laugh along with friends when I told them that my first kiss had been with the first girl to beat me up, but at the time the only thing I could concentrate on was protecting my face as I rolled onto the floor whilst she straddled me like a horse. Her surprisingly powerful fists hammered into every part of my body.

              There were no teachers nearby and no students to cause a commotion and bring attention from an elder, and as I didn’t know how to fight or even if I should hit a girl -- my mother had always told me not to, but a situation where my life may depend on it had never cropped up -- I just lay there and took the punches.

              The fight was one-sided and lasted for a brutal five minutes. I like to think that Kerry stopped out of sympathy for the blubbering wreck beneath her, but the truth was her arms were tired.

              When she finished beating the living shit out of me she crawled off my torso and pulled herself back up onto the bench.

              I watched her through a gap in my arms. She stared at me and I could see that the flame in her eyes had died. Something else lingered there, pity perhaps.

              I slowly pulled myself to my feet and dusted myself down. I wiped the remnants of tears from my eyes and allowed a few drops to trickle down my cheek. Meeting Kerry’s pitied gaze I told her: ‘There was no need for that.’

              She sunk her head into her chest. I heard a muffled groan. ‘Get lost Kieran.’

              She didn’t need to tell me twice. I hobbled out of the cloakroom and onto the playground. My body ached but apart from a few scratches on my cheek and a minor cut on my lip, my face remained intact.

              I expected Kerry to boast, and I was prepared to allow her that honour. She was a girl but she was tough, my friends would mock me for a while but eventually they would agree that, given the chance, she could beat them up as well. But Kerry didn’t tell anyone. She remained an outcast for the rest of the school year.

2

In Lenny’s Footsteps

              After Kerry Newsome had kissed me and then tried to kill me, I became even more wary and unsure of the opposite sex. For most of my youth I thought girls were
“icky”
and weren’t to be touched or befriended, and my friends, being of the same age, mostly agreed.

              There was one exception though. His name was Lenny and he was a lady-killer from the age of eight. At seven years, three-hundred and sixty-four days old, Lenny was just as repulsed by the opposite sex as the rest of us, but after a “word” with his dad on his birthday, all of that changed.

              His dad was drunk and clearly unsure about which birthday it was, as he told his son that he needed to:
Grow up, be a man. Kiss girls, play the field!

              Surprisingly, Lenny’s dad was not insane. Lenny took heed and during his eighth birthday party he put aside his childhood tendencies and turned on the charm in front of a mixed sex crowd which included several unsuspecting females from our class and the local estate.

              Lenny wasn’t a particularly good looking boy, but he was the only one in a class of fifteen boys, and an estate of five, that cared or dared to get a girlfriend. After three weeks he had three on the go.

              I struggled to understand what Lenny saw in these giggling, whispering humans that smelled of fruit scented shampoo and played with dolls, but I tried my best.

              At first Lenny wasn’t popular with boys our age, but after becoming a huge hit with the older boys in school -- walking around the playground with armfuls of girls won him some acclaim -- we decided that we liked him as well.

              ‘I could ask Kerry Newsome out,’ Max said. He looked around unsurely, received a few worrying stares and then slumped his head against his chest. ‘Or not,’ he repealed, disheartened.

              Together with our friends Olly and Peter, Max and I were loitering near the school building. Olly was lying across one of two benches with Peter and Max on the other. I stood watching the playground with my hands stuffed into my pockets.

              ‘You talk about her a lot,’ Olly said, tilting his head over the back of the bench and looking at Max through an inverted world.

              Like Max, Olly and Peter were in the same class as me. I enjoyed their company more than Max’s but they lived further away, so I spent less time with them outside of school.

              ‘I feel sorry for her,’ Max said unconvincingly.

              ‘It’s Kieran’s fault,’ Peter said.

              ‘It was an accident,’ I argued.

              Peter shrugged. ‘That’s what
you
say.’

              I hadn’t told anyone about being beaten up. When I realised Kerry wasn’t going to boast I told everyone that the marks on my face were from running into a door in the cloakroom. It was the first thing that came into my head, at the time I wasn’t sure it was going to pass, but they believed it instantly. I was so annoyed with the laughter and mockery that I almost told them the truth.

              ‘Who’s that with Lenny?’ I asked, seeing him arm in arm with a girl I didn’t recognise. She was taller than him, her left shoulder dipped awkwardly so she could slide her arm through his.

              ‘Penny Collins,’ Peter explained. ‘Year six.’

              ‘Year six?’ I blurted.

              Peter shrugged, ‘The kid’s a player.’

              ‘Of what?’ Max wondered, ever the innocent.

              We all laughed, but the truth was I didn’t know what he was talking about either and Peter had only learned the word the previous week.

              ‘Numpty.’

              ‘Idiot.’

              ‘Why you always gotta pick on me?’ Max wanted to know.

              ‘Because it’s so easy,’ Olly replied, his head still lolling over the final wooden slat on the weather stained bench.

              Max bolted upright, glared at each of us in turn, and stormed away.
‘Pricks,’
he muttered under his breath. A few feet away from us he turned and declared: ‘I’ll go and play with my
real
friends,’ before disappearing amongst a cluster of kids trading football stickers.

              We all watched silently as Max introduced himself, received a distasteful look from each trader, and then skulked away when one of them shouted: ‘Get lost, shit for brains,’ in a voice loud enough to cover the entire playground. He ambled back our way and threw himself down on the bench with his arms grumpily folded over his chest.

              ‘Your friends busy?’ Olly wondered.

              ‘Fuck off,’ Max spat, to a chorus of laughter.

              I joined Max on the bench. ‘So how did Lenny end up with her?’ I asked Peter.

              Peter shrugged again. He was so nonchalant his parents often said that one day his heart would stop out of sheer apathy.

              ‘We need to find girlfriends,’ Max said.

              ‘I hate to admit it, but the muppet is right.’ Olly shifted upright, the blood had rushed to his head and his face was red, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘Everyone is going out with everyone. Just this morning Dipstick Denny asked out Dorothy from Year four.’

              ‘Dorothy?’ Max clenched his face in disgust. ‘She’s ugly.’

              ‘Dipstick ain’t no prize.’

              ‘Who’s left?’ I wondered.

              Olly held up his hands with his fingers spread, pulling down each appendage as he reeled off the names: ‘Laura little-eyes. Cow-shit Lizzie--’ he was a lazy underachiever who was bottom of the class at nearly every subject, but Olly excelled at nicknames and insults. He seemed to spend all of his time thinking them up; when it came to Max he had a never-ending list.

              ‘She doesn’t smell of cow shit anymore,’ Max cut in, ‘not for--’

              ‘Shut up slipper-fucker,’ Olly warned. He continued to count: ‘There’s Little Miss Mental in year four--’

              That was Kerry. I cringed whenever he called her that. I was convinced I was the one to send her that way.

              ‘--Billie Blow-job--’

              A mild-mannered girl with an unfortunate way of eating ice lollies.

              ‘--Sock-Tits Tabby--’

              We thought Tabatha Williams was the first girl in the class to develop breasts, then one of those breasts fell out when playing netball.

              ‘--Piss-stain Pepper--’

              It turned out to be splash-back from a malfunctioning school faucet, but Olly didn’t do take-backs.

             
‘--and Spadeface,’ Olly finished, looking somewhat pleased with himself.

              ‘Spadeface?’ Max enquired.

              ‘The new girl.’

              ‘Lisa I think her name is,’ I said.

              ‘Why Spadeface?’ Max wondered.

              ‘Because she looks like she’s been hit with a fucking spade, why else?’

              ‘I think she’s quite pretty,’ Peter jumped in.

              A chorus of “
oooo”
lifted from the group and Peter turned a light shade of red.

              ‘Well, you said we needed girlfriends, she’s mine,’ he said confidently, ‘or she
will
be.’

              ‘What about you?’ Olly asked me.

              I shrugged, I didn’t know. I wasn’t so sure I cared either way, but I had convinced myself that I needed to hook up with someone.

              ‘Laura little--
Laura
, I guess.’ I liked the way she smelled, but most of all I was sure she liked me. She was my best bet.

              ‘Kermit?’ Olly turned to Max.

              ‘Erm,’ Max pretended to ponder this. ‘I’ll try for Kerry,’ he said, as if he was being forced to. ‘If I
have
to pick one, might as well.’

              ‘Which leaves the rest for me,’ Olly said, buffing out his chest and patting it like a proud gorilla.