By Any Other Name (14 page)

‘I thought girls didn’t eat that stuff, always on diets.’

I shrug. ‘I don’t need to be that careful.’

He grins . . . actually, no, it’s more a leer. ‘Yeah, well, whatever you’re doing, you look good on it.’

I shrug again, and sip my coffee. If it was Dan here, I’d be tempted to break off a piece of my muffin and feed it to him with my fingers. As it’s Fraser, I cut it in quarters and
push one piece in his direction.

‘Thanks.’ He eats like a typical boy – it’s gone in two bites. He’s picked a seat in a quiet corner overlooking the rink. We’re on a squashy sofa and he moves
closer, letting his knee rest against mine. ‘You know most of our year think you’re the hottest girl in the school.’

‘No, I didn’t know.’ Can’t say I’ve seen any signs either. They’ve not been falling over themselves to talk to me.

‘Well, they do. And you know what I think?’

‘No.’ He’s started rubbing his knee against mine.

‘I think they’re right.’

‘Oh.’ I think that was supposed to have some kind of profound effect on me. I wish it did. I wish I could get enthusiastic about him. It would solve all my fitting in problems, but I
don’t think it’s going to happen.

But I should check with Mum – as she’s the only one I’ve got to talk to – before I decide so, for now, I’ll go along with him.

‘That’s good.’ I make the effort. I give him my best ‘come and get me’ smile.

It works and he pounces, lips locked on mine.

It’s not slobbery. He doesn’t kiss like a washing machine in fast spin or anything gross like that. It just isn’t
anything
. But I sigh and make a little moan like
I’m enjoying it. And his hands get more enthusiastic about roaming over me. It’s OK – they haven’t hit anywhere out of bounds yet, so I let him get on with it. I wind my
fingers into the back of his hair and run them over his neck a few times.

Then, when I really can’t think of anything more inventive and convincing, I pull away. ‘Want to skate more?’ I smile brightly, and check his eyes to see if he’s noticed
it’s not working for me.

If he has, he’s not letting on.

It’s when we’re skating round the rink again that I realise we never know what to say to each other. We don’t talk. I’m amazed it took me so long to notice.

When I get home, Mum’s baking. She does that from time to time, calls these her domestic goddess moments where she likes to dress up in a chef
 
’s apron and cook complicated recipes
with at least twenty ingredients. And if it takes less than two hours to prepare and cook, she’s not satisfied. Most days she won’t spend more than twenty minutes on a meal, but on a
goddess day, she goes mad.

Dad’s taken Katie out for a walk so I have Mum to myself. I make us a cup of tea each and then sit at the table while she chops some ingredient I don’t recognise into tiny
pieces.

‘Can I ask you something?’

She looks up at me and pauses. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s OK, you don’t have to stop. I just . . . well, I wanted some advice. Not about something specific, just general.’

‘Fire away.’

‘I was reading this magazine someone at school lent me and on the problem page was a letter from a girl who’s going out with this boy –’

Mum turns and looks at me. ‘Oh, come on, Holly, I wasn’t born yesterday!’

I sigh. ‘Oh, all right then. I’m sort of going out with someone at the moment and it’s kind of weird.’

She brings her tea over and sits at the table with me. ‘How so?’

‘He’s really good-looking. And popular. And I should find him attractive. I thought I would.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘It’s strange. When he . . . er . . . um . . .’

Mum rolls her eyes.

‘OK, when he kisses me, I don’t . . . feel anything, I guess. Is that not weird?’

‘Not at all.’ Mum sips her tea, trying and failing to hide a smile.

‘But I don’t get it. He’s hot. Why don’t I fancy him? This has never happened to me before. I thought he was cute before he kissed me. He has an uber-gorgeous smile, so
why?’

‘There’s no chemistry between you. That’s the way it is sometimes.’

‘What do you mean?’

She does laugh at me now and I wince. ‘You’ve heard people say they’ve met someone and just clicked with them, yes? Well, it happens the other way too. When it comes to the
crunch, there’s nothing there. No attraction. If you listen to the scientists, they’ll talk about pheromones and the scent of attraction acting on you without you even knowing, or
acting to put you off someone you aren’t genetically compatible with. But whatever the reason, the result is the same. You can meet an attractive guy and he does nothing for you at
all.’

‘So it’s not weird?’

She reaches over and strokes my cheek. ‘No, baby, it’s not weird at all. So who is he and why haven’t I met him?’

‘A boy at school. He’s the one I went skating with today, and he took me to the party last week.’

Mum eyeballs me. ‘You said you were going with some girls from school.’

‘Yeah, I know. Sorry. The girls were at the party.’ I screw my face up, thinking, and she gives me a questioning look. ‘I don’t get these people, Mum. I mean,
Fraser’s taken me out a couple of times, but they all hang out together after school and they obviously don’t want me around then. He doesn’t either. What’s with
that?’

Mum sips her tea thoughtfully. ‘Villages can be strange places. I’ve noticed that too. They want to know everything about you so they’re friendly to the point of annoying at
first. Then, when they’ve found out what they want, they back off and exclude you as if they don’t want an outsider to get too close. Some of the women in the avenue have been like that
with me. They see me outside tidying up the garden or with Katie, and they come straight over to talk. It’s like they avoid me when they think they know everything about us.’

At least it’s not just me, I guess. Though I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever make real friends here, or if it will always be this way – having to have boyfriend-talk
with my mum because I don’t have anyone else.

F
raser didn’t text on Sunday and I was starting to wonder if he really had noticed my lack of enthusiasm, but there he was hanging around the
lockers on Monday morning. His smile broke out as soon as he saw me, leaving me even more confused about his take on ‘us’.

But it’s April, and as I sit there in registration filling in my planner, I realise that I’ve got more to worry about than Fraser and friends/not-friends. The exams start in one
month . . . ONE month . . .

It’s Head Down Time. Maybe it should have been Head Down Time all along. How could I be so stupid? I had a plan. Stay under the radar, work hard, pass exams, get that
other
date . .
. the trial always hanging over my head . . . over and done with, and then maybe I could have my life back just a little bit. What’s left of it.

I was not supposed to go off on some crazy tangent and start trying to be Little Miss Prom Queen.

I groan and let my head fall on to the desk, not caring what the people around me think. I used to have a plan for my life; I knew exactly where I was going, and the kind of people who’d
be around me on the journey. But it’s like living in Hampton Court maze now. I can’t find my way; I can’t see where I’m going. The whole thing is just a mess.

I’ve been off wandering down a route I should never have taken, like I threw down my map to the maze and decided to walk in quite the opposite direction. Yes, I was upset about the
Facebook stuff, but where has this path got me? Hanging out with a bunch of people I don’t really like and no happier than I was before.

How do I get out of this? How do I get back to where I should’ve been?

The bell goes and I make my way into the corridor to push through the crush to my English lesson.

Who is Holly? I wish someone would tell me because I certainly don’t know any more.

Mr Jenkins tells us not to sit down when we get into the classroom. We’re working in groups of four, so we’re to get together and sit at a table – he’s arranged them in
blocks already.

I look around. There’s nobody in English I talk to that much. A few vague hangers-on of Fraser’s crowd who I don’t really know. Then there’s Nicole of course, who I
haven’t spoken to since the first few days. Who should really tell me to go to hell since I dropped her for the popular crew without a second thought.

Who is Holly?

Crunch time.

And I don’t know.

Who do I want her to be?

And I still don’t know.

Mr Jenkins makes the decision for me. Tired of waiting for us to stop dithering and get into fours, he quickly numbers us and groups us. I find myself on a table at the front with Nicole,
another quiet girl called Maria and – oh, joy – Emo Freak, who looks as pleased about it as I am.

The task is waiting for us on a piece of paper, along with a sheet of flipchart and a marker pen: How does Wilfred Owen’s
Dulce et Decorum Est
affect us and how does his use of
language control our response to the poem?

We have to brainstorm and include the full range of opinions in the group. First, we have to elect a chair. Nobody volunteers. I can see Nicole looking at me, expecting me to step up, but
I’m not volunteering for anything.

We sit in silence. Emo reads the poem and doesn’t make eye contact, and soon we’re all copying him. Mr Jenkins comes round to check. ‘Have you picked a chair yet?’ No one
answers him. He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know! Maria, how about having a go?’

Maria looks like a rabbit facing the headlights of a jeep doing 70 mph towards her, but she nods. Emo’s scribbling away in a tatty notebook, oblivious. I make my face deliberately blank
and Nicole sighs in relief that it’s not her who’s been put in charge.

Maria clears her throat. ‘Um, so overall impressions first? Is that all right? Nicole?’

‘Oh, er, me? Um, well, it’s quite obvious that we’re supposed to be repelled by the soldier’s death and feel that war . . . is . . . er . . . wrong. Um, I know that
sounds a bit lame, but . . . oh . . . um . . . maybe someone else can say it better.’ Nicole colours up.

Maria bites her lip. ‘It
is
quite hard to explain it. Um, Joe, what do you think?’

He glances up. ‘Still working it out.’ And he ducks his head down again.

I can’t help myself. He just bugs me so much. ‘This is supposed to be a group effort.’

He raises his head again and looks at me. If I thought he’d looked hostile before, it’s nothing compared to how he’s looking at me now. ‘And when I’ve finished
thinking about it, I’ll say.’

I now understand the term ‘withering glance’. I do actually feel withered.

‘What do you think?’ Maria says to me, casting anxious glances between me and the freak.

Here’s something I can get my teeth into. ‘I think the poet wants us to feel like we’re there with him seeing it, so he tries to make us feel how exhausted and drained and sore
they are. Then he breaks it up with the suddenness of the attack, and the language goes all staccato, and contrasts with a few lines later where they’ve got their masks on and it slows down,
like you’re watching the dying soldier in slow motion, and that’s linked to the dream-like state . . . because he’s remembering this so it’s like he’s put it into
slo-mo himself –’

Emo cuts in suddenly. ‘He pulls every tool of language he has out of his kit to make you feel how sickening, how despicable, how
wrong
it is for the soldier to die like that. And to
make the men who were selling those deaths with the label of glorious as haunted as he is by the results of what they’re doing . . .’ He stops, mid-rant, and he looks so shocked that I
wonder if he knew until this moment that he’s spoken aloud.

Nicole and Maria stare at us.

‘If he can make them see then maybe he can make it stop,’ he finishes shakily.

I’m not so sure. ‘No, because that would mean the war stopped and that would be in the hands of the politicians, and he’s not addressing the politics of it here. I think he
wants them to stop going into war innocently and blindly, to know what they’re doing and not be misled.’

Emo curls his lip. ‘He’s in the trenches getting the shit blown out of him and his men. He just wants it to stop.’

‘Do you have to be so aggressive?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

We glare at each other – stand-off.

‘Um, wow,’ says Maria, ‘can you just wait while I get some of that written down?’

‘If nobody will fight then there can be no war,’ Emo growls at me. Those eyes of his are so dark it’s hard to read them exactly right but there’s no mistaking the
animosity in his voice.

‘Oh, I’m sure that would have stopped Hitler. If men hadn’t fought in the Second World War then the Nazis would have been able to exterminate whole races and
minorities.’

‘Don’t you know anything about history? If there’d been no First World War, there’d have been no Second! Hitler was glorified as a war hero from the First –
that’s how come he was so popular and the Germans were still pissed off from losing –’

‘And that’s not at all a simplistic analysis –’