Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 07] (7 page)

‘I don’t care what it
is. You’re not wearing it in my class.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

My next tactic didn’t
go down too well either.

‘And what period are
we studying in history at the moment, Nesta?’ asked Miss Watkms.

‘Tudors, Miss.’

‘Not the Egyptians?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Then perhaps you
could explain why you have a scarf wrapped around your neck and face in the
manner of an Egyptian mummy.’

‘I’m cold, Miss.’

‘So get a thermal
vest, girl. In the meantime, take off the scarf. I like to be able to see the
faces of my pupils when I’m teaching. To make sure that they’re still awake.’

Lucy thought it was
hysterical. ‘You in a thermal vest,’ she said as we made our way out of school
in the afternoon. ‘That I’d like to see.’

‘No
way
. So
uncool,’ I said.

‘Thermal vest, so
uncool. Course they are, that’s why they’re thermal. Oh very good, Nesta,’ said
Lucy laughing her head off. Sometimes I think she takes too many vitamins or
something. It seems that all my friends are mad. Apart from TJ maybe, but give
it time.

‘So what’s with all
the headgear today?’ asked TJ.

‘I’m trying a few
things out before the next acting class,’ I said. ‘To disguise my brace.’ Of
course, I’d filled TJ and Lucy in on meeting Luke as soon as I’d got home last
night. They were very sympathetic, but both of them thought I should go back to
the class and not consider giving it up for a moment.

‘If this guy is worth
bothering about,’ said TJ, ‘he’s not going to be put off by your brace. I think
you should be brave. Be who and what you are and if he doesn’t like it, forget
him.’

‘I guess you’re right
on one level,’ I said. ‘But on another level, boys are highly visual. They go
on what they see and if they like it. The time for being who you are, hairy
legs, strange habits, brace or whatever, comes later. First you have to lure
them in… You know that, TJ.’

TJ sighed and nodded.
At the end of Year Nine, she had a crush on a boy who lived next door to her.
Only problem was that he saw her as one of the lads, a mate, so she had to
seriously reconsider her image and get him to see her as a girl. It worked too
except, once he was interested, she realised that he was
really
boring.

‘Yeah,’ said TJ.‘I
think it’s sad but true. Boys do like girls who look like girls.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. And
then I had my most brilliant idea.

Half an hour later, we
were in the lingerie department of a store at the Mall.

‘And are you going to
explain why having a brace put in has resulted in a strange compulsion to buy
underwear?’ asked Lucy.

‘Distraction,’ I said.
‘Obvious isn’t it?’

‘Yes, shopping is
always a good distraction…’

‘Not for
us
.
For boys,’ I explained. ‘See, it was when TJ said that boys like girls who look
like girls that I realised, that’s what I have to do. Get boys distracted from
my face and the way to do that is…’ I indicated the racks of gorgeous girlie underwear.

‘Show them your
knickers?’ asked Lucy.

‘
No!
’

Lucy laughed. ‘Wear
your knickers on your head? That would cover your brace.’

‘
Noooo
. Don’t
be mad. I mean, show them my chesty bits. Have you ever been with a boy when
you’re showing even the tiniest bit of cleavage?’

‘The
tiniest
bit of cleavage is sadly all I’ve got,’ sighed Lucy as she eyed the rails.

Izzie nodded. ‘Yeah,
it’s like their eyes are pulled towards it by some magnetic force. They can’t
help it. When I wore a low top to band rehearsal one evening, it was
hysterical. The boys were doing their best not to look, but I could see their
cheeks starting to twitch with the effort. Biff didn’t even try not to look. He
just talked to my chest all night.’

‘I hate that,’ said
TJ. ‘It’s like you’re a walking pair of boobs and nothing else.’

Lucy grinned. ‘You
know that song by Frank Sinatra’s daughter Nancy, “These Boots Are Made For
Walking”? We ought to sing, “These Boobs Are Made For Walking”.’

TJ patted her on the
head. ‘Keep taking the tablets, Lucy,’ she said.

‘Boys can’t help it,’
I said. ‘It’s their hormones. I know sometimes it’s horrible being leered at,
but it can be used to your advantage. Like my next meeting with Luke. My plan
is to buy the most uplifting fab-shaped bra there is in this shop then wear it,
so that he will be so busy looking at my marvellous chest that he won’t notice
that my mouth is full of metal.’

‘He’s going to look up
sometime, Nesta,’ said TJ.

‘And when he does,
I’ll shut my mouth. I’ll only talk when he’s looking at my cleavage.’

‘You’re bonkers,’
laughed Izzie.

No, I’m not. It’s
simple, I thought. That is until we started to look for the bra. After fifteen
minutes I was totally confused. There were rails and rails of them. Not just
colours and fabrics but types: bras for total support, egoboosters, minimisers,
bras with no front, no back, balcony bras, wired, plunge, moulded, padded,
seamed, non-padded, five-way, sheer, strapless, halter-neck, crossover,
one-shoulder, bioform, sculptured, push up, multiway, T-shirt, sports, stretch
cup.They even had thermal ones.

‘Arghhhhhh,’ I cried.
‘I’ve seen Hitchcock’s film,
The Birds
. But now showing at a store
near you.
The Bras
. They’re mean, they’re keen, they’re taking over.’

TJ, Izzie and Lucy
cracked up laughing as I swung five bras up in the air and made them fly like
birds.

A shop assistant gave
me a funny look, so I put the bras back on the rails. ‘But how are you supposed
to know which one is best?’ I asked. ‘Do I need a bioform or a five-way push
up?’

‘I would imagine
five-way push ups are for aliens,’ said Lucy. ‘As they are the only beings who
could possibly have five boobs to push up.’

This time it was Izzie
who patted her on the head. ‘Poor dear,’ she said. ‘We really ought not to let
you out again.’

TJ pointed at a notice
on the wall and began to laugh. ‘God. Have you seen this?’

We gathered round to
read the notice. ‘How to calculate your bra size,’ it said.

‘First you need a
degree in maths,’ said TJ. ‘Measure your ribcage, add four for an even number,
five for an odd number. Measure your full bust then subtract the bra size from
the full size to give you your cup size.’

There was a tape
measure on the wall next to the notice.

TJ got out her
calculator. ‘You measure and I’ll calculate,’ she said.

Lucy got out some
paper and wrote as I measured my ribcage then round my bust. ‘Why are bras sold
in inches when the rest of the world has gone metric?’ she asked.

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘But
all I wanted was to buy a bra. Not do an engineering class.’

TJ ignored me.
‘Thirty-two B,’ she said after a few moments. ’Easy.‘

‘Yeah. That’s what my
mum always gets me and her method is very scientific. She guesses it. Easy.’

We picked out a few
bras, but in the end decided that the ‘egobooster’ looked like it might give
the best cleavage effect. I picked one from the rails, took it into the
dressing room and tried it on.

‘Oo, matron!’ the
girls chorused as they stuck their heads round the curtain five minutes later.

‘Too much?’ I asked as
I took in my reflection.

‘You could get a
leading role in
Lethal Weapon 2
,’ said TJ laughing.

‘Only it would be
called
Lethal Weapons, I Have Two’
, said Lucy.

‘Well I think it will
definitely distract him,’ said Izzie, ‘but it might be a bit obvious turning up
to class in that when the majority of the other people are middle-aged and
dressed in baggy tracksuits.’

I sighed. ‘So what
next?’ I asked. ‘I’ve tried headgear. Bras. Scarves.’

‘You could pretend
that you’re dumb,’ said TJ.

‘
Brilliant
idea!’ I said. ‘I could learn sign language.’

TJ looked taken aback.
‘I was joking,’ she said.

‘Anyway, the rest of
the class know you can speak from last week,’ said Izzie.

I felt miserable. All
my good ideas had come to nothing. I would just have to talk with my hand over
my mouth or perfect the art of talking through closed lips.

Nope. Even I knew that
no way was I going to be able to do that in an acting class. No. It was too
sad, but I would have to resort back to option B. Oh cruel world, I thought. I
would have to let Luke go and not go back to the class at all. True love was
not meant to be mine. I would just have to grow old with my memories of how it
could have been. On the other hand, it would make me more beautiful as people
would be able to sense my loss, the sadness behind the smiles, the inner
wistfulness behind the mask of success. Yes, mine would be a high but lonely
destiny.

I sniffed and tried to
look noble. ‘It happens in all the best movies you know? In
Dr Zhivago
,
after many years apart, he sees Lara, the love of his life, at the end. He
jumps off a bus to try and catch her but, too late, he has a heart attack and
dies on the pavement and she never knows how close he was. And in
Wuthering
Heights
, Cathy dies leaving her one true love, Heathcliff, heartbroken
forever. Sometimes it’s not meant to be…’

Izzie raised her eyes
to the ceiling. ‘Oh for Gawd’s sake. Nesta. Luwie. Dwarling. You’ve got a
brace
,
not a noose around your neck. You are not dead. Luke is not dead. Life is not
over.’

‘You don’t understand
the pain of unrequited love,’ I said through closed lips. ‘Or true passion.’

Izzie turned and
grinned at TJ and Lucy. ‘True passion? Oh yes I do. And two words sum it up.
Chocolate fudge.’

‘Yeah, bugger
unrequited love and passion,’ said Lucy. ‘Chocolate never lets you down. And it
doesn’t care what your teeth look like. Come on. Food department. Now.’

‘Best idea you’ve had
all day,’ said TJ and the three of them headed off for the chocolate counters
like homing pigeons. Huh, I thought as I watched them charge off. Am I
misunderstood or what? But what can you do? I thought as I hurried to catch
them up. If you can’t beat them, join them.

C h a p t e r
 
7

Wahey
and Harrahalot

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Life is full of
surprises.

My brother Tony takes
girl chasing seriously.
Very
seriously. Girls are his favourite hobby
and he likes to think of himself as the Casanova of North London. The pro. The
Master. He who knows about girls. Part of me thinks that it’s hysterical as I
live with him. I’ve seen him in the morning when he’s just woken up (not a
pretty sight). I’ve seen him when he’s been ill and wants his mum (also not a
pretty sight). But another part of me has to hand it to him. His dedication to
his art does seem to pay off and there’s always a queue of girls desperate for
his attention. Part of his girl chasing degree has been researching the perfect
place to take a girl for a romantic evening. And he thinks he’s found it.