Drop (25 page)

I say … nothing.

“Bye-bye,” she says and heads out.

Thirty seconds later I’ve got a list of witty remarks filed under “Things I Should Have Said”:

1. You didn’t think things would work out between you and that shade of eyeshadow, did you? Oh, you did.

2. Sorry, I don’t speak Twat. ME ENGLISH.

3. Piss off, you Ritalin-addled whore.

OK, 3 isn’t so witty but I wish I’d said it.

I consider telling Havelock about the Ritalin, but why bother? I’m many things but a snitch isn’t one of them.

Instead, I head to Paluk for a not-so-fun-filled Finn-and-Violet-filled Chemistry class. Someone links my arm and pulls me into the toilets.

“Tell me everything that’s happened,” Georgia says.

“We broke up. End of,” I say.

“Not
end of
. Maybe you’ll get back together.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, checking my make-up in the mirror. I’ve welled up more than once today.

“Well, you have to sort it before Brighton.”

“Brighton?”

“Yeah, results day. Sun, sea and
seriously
loud music. We’ve booked a hostel. Not that I expect we’ll be sleeping much.”

Georgia straightens her top, then reapplies her lipstick.

“Not happening,” I say.

“We’re all going. You wouldn’t have to be with him all the time… It’s not for ages yet. Maybe things will have blown over by then.”

“I doubt those guys would want me there.”

“So what?
I’m
asking you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say, but I’d sooner chew off my own leg than spend time with Finn and Violet.

“It’s your day, too, you know.”

I shrug. Even before the exams, I know results day will definitely not be a
good
day.

School is like sucking lemons. A rain shower drums on the window of A2. Biology textbooks on my left, Emily Dickinson poems on my right, I try to revise. But all I’ve amassed is a page of doodles. I tear it out and screw it up. The next page is full of drawings of ladders swirling higgledy-piggledy across one another. Chequerboards heavily shaded. Crosses. Beams of light. What do they mean?

Under the desk, I take out my phone and search online.
Black is associated with seriousness and a bleak outlook.
No shit, Sherlock.
Anarchic doodles suggest coping issues or mental distress.
On the money.
Emotional people who crave love tend to draw rounded shapes, or symbols of femininity and eternity. Those who like to be in control and crave security tend to draw square shapes.
I want to be in control again. Bingo.

A salmon-pink–shirted Havelock peers down at me. I stare at his brown loafers. He crouches down to my level. I die inside as twenty heads turn my way.

He scans my doodles, then taps my book. “See me after class.”

I nod.

I wait for the room to empty before facing Havelock.

I know what he’s going to say before he says it.

“You all right, Carla?”

I beg the curtains for an answer. I pray to the whiteboard. Should I be honest?

“I’m way behind, Mr Havelock.”

“There’s still time, Carla. You can do this.” I shrug. Havelock continues. “I realize you’ve been having some, er … difficulties, recently… If you need to talk to someone…”

I die again inside. Cringe. I like Havelock, but enough with the pally-pally stuff.

“I know that, but no. Really, I’m fine. What I don’t know is what the Emily Dickinson poems mean, or about gene theory or all the rest, and it’s too late now.”

Havelock can’t think what to say.

“See you later, sir.” I make for the door.

“Don’t give up, Carla,” Havelock calls.

Next day, in the library, I’m in head-down-last-ditch-eggs-in-one-basket-uber-nerdy-revision-freak mode. But I’m so behind that the words on the page make no sense. I may as well be looking at blueprints for the Large Hadron Collider. In Russian. Upside down.

It hits me like a sledgehammer that I’ll probably fail my exams.

I want to hate Finn, blame him for the jam I’m in, but I can’t. I’ve got myself into this mess.

I flip the page. Diagram. Unpronounceable words. My brains, splattered across it…

A shadow falls on the book. I look up.

“How are you?” Isaac asks.

“Bloody wonderful. Can’t you tell?”

“Fancy going into Central London? Could go to the park and laugh at tourists getting chased by pigeons.”

“Better not. Have to revise.”

I admit I’m wary of Isaac’s motives. Does he still like me? Or is he just trying to be a friend? I’m not sure, but I
could
do with a friend right now, one who understands, and Isaac … maybe he does understand, more than Lauren, more than Sienna, perhaps more than I do myself. But I don’t want to give him the wrong idea…

Then it comes to me: revision, schoolwork, something
platonic
. “Actually, there is something you could help me with.” As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it. I don’t mean to, it’s just …
complicated.

“What?” he asks.

“Um…”

Reasons not to meet Isaac:

1. I don’t want to give him hope.

2. More drama is the last thing I want.

3. I need time to, I don’t know, figure stuff out…

4. I’m not ready to welcome the affections of any new guy, let alone a Masterson. Harsh, maybe. True, definitely.

I think about this whole year; how all along, without knowing it, I’ve been trying to patch the cracks in my life. I’m realizing that perhaps I’m the one to fill the gaps, not drugs, not a guy. But do I have to do it alone? Can someone help me? Someone who, maybe, seems to get it? Get
me
?

“There’s this exhibition in town,” I say. “Thought I might go. I’ve still got a critical piece to write for my Art portfolio. You could come.”

“All right.”

“Meet at Adriano’s later. Four?”

“OK. See you there.”

Isaac leans against the wall of Adriano’s, reading J.G. Ballard. I’ve only ever seen him read
Evo
magazine, which I judge from the cover is about fast, sexy cars, so to see him with an actual book is odd. He looks like a private detective, pretending to read while actually scanning the crowd.

“Hey. Is that for English Lit?”

“No.”
Oh, he’s into reading then
.

“You like art?”

“I like that you like art. I mean, I heard you like art.”

“I told you I like art.”

“Yeah.”

Awkward
.

I buy us a couple of coffees for the journey. We walk the short distance from Adriano’s to Bus Stop E in the high street.

We slurp our drinks.

He doesn’t say much, nor do I, but I sense there’s something worth digging for under his quiet, sometimes distant, exterior.

What would Finn think if he saw us?

Whatever. I don’t care. I really don’t… Has Isaac told him he’s meeting me?

I begin to think this is a bad idea, but see the bus in the distance, then it’s here, I’m getting on it, and we’re heading to the top deck. It’s twenty minutes to town, twenty freaking silent minutes, staring at houses, office buildings, skyscrapers, and not a peep from either of us. Nothing said, but so much hanging there between us.

Just as it’s becoming unbearable, Isaac looks at me with a hint of a smile, saying with his eyes what he said before:
You’re amazing, and you don’t even know it.

And I’m thinking,
I don’t need this right now
, but at the same time…

I feel hot, the heat of the sun drumming through the window onto my skin.

I ring the bell for the next stop as the bus approaches Trafalgar Square.

We amble across the square, past the fountains and up the stone steps, where a gazillion tourists have stopped to eat their lunch and snap pictures of the current art installation on the fourth plinth. This year, a giant blue cock has been erected there. Cockerel, that is, with its chest puffed to bursting. A shining ultramarine gem in a dull grey crown among all the grey buildings. I read somewhere it’s supposed to say something about regeneration, awakening and strength, but to me it’s a funny, surreal thing, poking fun at the staid bronze statues of men on pedestals.

I wonder what it would be like to have an installation here, for all the world to see. I think it would be kind of great. I think about my butterfly sculpture. I have so much still to do on it, like, erm, all the painting. But if finished, and made bigger … it could be up there.

“Do you like it?” Isaac asks as we pass the sculpture.

“What?” I ask, grinning.

“I’m not saying it.”

“Well, then, I can’t think what you mean.”

Isaac sighs. “Do you like the … um … bird?”

“Yes, I like the massive bird.”

We turn left past the National Gallery, and down Pall Mall. Grand buildings tower on either side, windows adorned with stonework flowers, garlands and faces, some with vast Corinthian columns that prop buildings up like wedding-cake tiers.

Nestled between two stone buildings is the red-brick gallery, as tall but narrower, with a triangular gable. It reminds me of Amsterdam, and ironically also, the cockerel plinth, standing out against the spectacular but uniform architecture all around it. The gallery itself is a work of art.

Inside, we find an immaculate white curved desk, and sitting behind it, a guy, urban cool personified. Sharp-suited and big-haired, he greets us with a well-rehearsed smile. His wild Afro jiggles as he talks, dancing like those toy sunflowers that react to noise. He talks, it boogies.

“Hello,” says Boogie-Barnet.

“Hi,” Isaac says. “Two for Disjointed Realities, please.”

“That’s twenty-four pounds.” Isaac puts his card in the reader. “Enter your pin.”

“God, that’s loads,” I say. “I’ll buy the next coffees. They’ll be half the size of a Starbucks and twice as expensive.”

“Plan.”

Behind the grand facade, the lobby is cool and clinical, with original features like the cornices painted a stark white, but through a set of double doors, the atmosphere changes. It’s all wooden floorboards and shabby sofas, warm, inviting, but totally ostentatious. Oh-so-arty types mill about, gesturing at piles of burnt paper plates with the vivacity of kittens with a ball of string. On a blood-red chaise longue with lion-paw feet, a girl sits sketching, her vintage brogues on the velvet seat, but no one’s bothered. French jazz pumps from the walls.

It’s a big room, like the hall of a great manor, but roughed up, like squatters have moved in. Sculptures are dotted about like alien objects on sterile white plinths.

We pause in front of a doll with guitar strings emerging from its belly button. The caption reads:
Umbilical Chord
. Another plinth has a coil of severed electrical wire sitting on top of it. A stack of twenty-year-old newspapers sits in a glass box.

I wonder about this kind of art. What does it even mean?

But Isaac’s forked out big time for the tickets and it was
my
idea…

“This is interesting,” Isaac says, pointing to a solitary lipstick-stained wine glass on a white plinth, which could be:

1. a work of art

2. a bad work of art

3. not cleared away after the private view.

“Do you think it’s meant to be here?” I ask.

“Maybe that’s the point of it? What’s real? What’s not?”

“Deep,” I joke. “Maybe I’m going about my project all wrong. I could do
this
, easy,” I say, checking the other side of the plinth to make sure I’m not missing something wildly meaningful, but it’s just a dirty glass on a plinth.

“Is it me? – I mean, no offence, maybe you get all this – or is it … absolute shit?” Isaac asks.

“Perhaps that’s what they should have called the exhibition.
Absolute Shit: A Retrospective.
”

“Probably wouldn’t pull in many punters.”

“Maybe not.”

“So what sort of art do you like?”

“I guess, I’m looking for something beautiful, well-crafted, with technique
and
meaning.”

“What about your art? Does it have both?”

“I hope so. Well, I try. Means something to
me
, at least.”

“Bet it’s got aesthetics to match.”

I shrug. “That’ll be for the exam board to judge.” My stomach rumbles. “Is it coffee time yet?”

“Definitely time for a caffeine boost.”

In the cafe, I pick a corner where the light splices through an enormous window, like a spotlight. You know how seasons can affect health – seasonal affective disorder and all that – well, light can affect your mood too. I read about an experiment where they exposed lab rats to two extra hours of daylight daily, and they became much perkier, running about and searching for food. People must have been
seriously
depressed before electricity was discovered.

I plonk onto a green leather sofa.

Isaac’s filled out lately, not in a chunky way, just toned up a bit… His T-shirt has a cool print of a man with his head drawn in lines and squiggles.

“Nice tee,” I say.

“Limited edition. Got it online.”

“Get you.”
When did he get so cool?