Remix (9 page)

Lee’s the only person here.

“You look rough,” is the first thing he says. I’d stick my tongue out at him, but that feels like effort.

“Where’s everyone else?” I croak.

“Gone showering.”

“
All
of them?” By which I mean
Kaz
?! It’s not like her to shower with relative strangers, although she
is
a bit of a clean freak.

Lee can see I’m struggling with the thinking. “They’ve gone off-site to do it somewhere hot and private. And to pick up McDonald’s.”

This time I really am baffled. I lift my arm and wave at the nearest line of burger vans before I collapse onto the floor next to Lee.

“They probably wanted to escape the smell. You stink, Rubbuteo.”

He might have a point. I close my eyes and enjoy not moving.

“Don’t fall asleep.” Lee prods me in the cheek and I open my eyes to see a wicked smile that promises nothing but pain. “I know something that’ll sort you out.”

The shower is on its hottest setting and my skin’s blotchy from the heat as I stand under the stream and cry.

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve tried to tell myself that I lost my virginity to the boy I love, what I’ve really done is have sex with another girl’s boyfriend.

I should have asked him
.

It’s too late now. The memories of what we did burst across my brain – all the excitement and desire now tempered with shame.

And misery. Because for all I feel appallingly, devastatingly guilty for what I’ve done, I feel sadder still that the boy I have always loved replaced me so quickly. He didn’t even care enough to be honest with me.

“Kaz? Are you in there?” It’s Anna.

“Yes, sorry. Coming!” I lift my face into the stream of scorching water and wash away the evidence of my misery before I switch the shower off and dry myself with the free gym towel. God bless Parvati for her expensive gym membership and willingness to give one of her promotional guest passes to me despite the fact that she doesn’t even know my real name. My pass says
CAROLINE
on it.

The other two are dressed and waiting as I dart into a cubicle. My clothes stick to my still-damp skin as I pull them on, not wanting to delay the girls more than I have to. By the time I emerge, my top lip is coated in perspiration.

“You all right?” Anna asks, looking at me closely, and I catch sight of my mottled reflection.

“I’m fine!” I smile and nod as if moving will make it harder for her to see that I’m lying. “Just a bit hot in here…”

Parvati nods. “It’s always baking in the changing room and I’m still steaming from the booze. Let’s get out of here.”

I wish I could stay.

No doubt inspired by the summer that Ed instigated the Drench Ruby Rule – when I couldn’t set foot in the back garden without someone throwing a bucket of water at me – Lee’s idea is for me to stand by the water point in my bikini whilst he uses a saucepan to chuck water at me.

It has the desired effect.

The second the water hits my skin, my hangover’s forgotten. What starts out as a “shower” soon turns into a full-on water fight, involving everyone within splashing distance of the taps, and by the time the attendant manning the water point comes over to break it up, I can barely breathe for laughing/screaming/shouting.

Mood lifted, skin cleansed, I walk back with Lee.

“Were you planning on telling me what happened last night, or were you just going to pretend everything’s fine?” Lee’s voice is quiet and he steps close enough that I can almost feel the water evaporating from his skin.

“I could ask the same of you.” I glance up, but Lee’s eyes are on the ground. He can poker-face it better than Gaga when he wants to.

“I’m serious, Pubes.” Lee bumps my arm. “Parvati told me that there was a spin-the-bottle incident involving Stu. She told me you were angry that you had to kiss him.”

That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. The easy way.

“I thought it was over,” I say, closing my eyes, permitting myself a heartbeat of remembering.

“And it isn’t?” Lee asks.

“It has to be,” I answer.

Owen and Dongle are waiting outside with hot(ish) McDonald’s. Parvati tells us we’re not allowed to eat it in her mum’s car, so we all end up sitting in a line on the wall around the corner from the exclusive gym. A group of toned and tanned ladies dressed in expensive leggings and branded T-shirts give us looks that range from disapproval to sympathy as they walk past, Pilates mats rolled up under their arms. We aren’t exactly an attractive bunch: Dongle’s sweating through the grey vest he put on; Anna and Parvati are still looking peaky despite the shower, their meal punctuated by the occasional sigh as if eating is tiring. Of the two of us who aren’t hungover, I’m blotchy and miserable and Owen just looks plain miserable.

I don’t know what Owen’s excuse is, but every bite of my hash brown is a battle against the rising sickness I feel at the thought of Tom’s hands on another girl’s skin, him kissing her the way he kissed me last night…

When I look down, the hash brown I’m holding has turned into a potatoey mush between my fingers.

Back at the campsite, I stop off to collect my phone from the charging tent – I’ll have to remind Ruby to do hers later. It’s exactly the sort of thing she’ll leave until it’s too late. There’s a new message from Mum.

Someone’s written FLEAS!!! on the kitchen calendar. Am I supposed to know why? Do I have fleas? Do you? I can’t think it’s your sister
.

I message back telling her that Morag’s flea treatment is under the sink, signing off by reminding her to wash her hands afterwards and telling her that I love her. What I want to do is ring her and cry down the phone, confessing what I’ve done, but I’m not sure that will help. Mum is pretty hard-hearted when it comes to relationships – she was happier when I told her I’d broken up with Tom than when I told her I was in love with him and I envisage words of comfort that can be translated into the English language as “I told you so”.

Then, because I obviously have a masochistic streak a mile wide, I reread Tom’s messages that were waiting for me when I turned my phone back on first thing this morning, before I’d even unzipped my sleeping bag.

Kaz, I want you to know that the only mistake I’ve made was to break up with you in the first place. I want to be with you. Give me the weekend to make things right, OK?

The next message is shorter:
Please don’t hate me
.

The problem is that I don’t hate
him
– I hate myself …

His last message is shorter still:
I love you
.

… because I love him too. Still.

The others get back just as I’m finishing my make-up. Ruffling my fingers through the back of the hair that I hate, I figure I’ll do. As I’ve told Kaz a thousand times, it isn’t what you’ve got that matters, it’s how you work it.

The thought of facing Kaz jabs at my insides like someone’s out there working a Ruby Kalinski voodoo doll. I can’t stop thinking about how we left things last night –
jab
 
– after I took my rage at myself out on the person I love the most –
jab, jab, jab
– how I made my best friend cry because I couldn’t –
carving knife of guilt straight to the heart
.

I have
got
to make this right.

Ruby emerges from the tent dressed in her ubiquitous cut-offs and the string vest she bought last week from the Army & Navy Store, bright purple bra contrasting beneath. She’s wearing a sweep of khaki eyeliner to match the vest, but it looks fresher, cleaner than yesterday’s. When she sees me, she repositions the two kirby grips she’s holding in her lips to look like fangs then gives me a vampire smile as she twists her hair away from her face.

This is the Ruby I’m used to.

“Present for you.” I hold out a crumpled brown bag that she falls on like a starving seagull, ripping the paper in her haste to get to what’s inside. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s a welcome one – my plan for today is to make sure Ruby eats more than she drinks. I’m not making any excuses for her, but I don’t think yesterday’s alcohol consumption helped matters.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, sitting next to her on the grass in front of our tent.

“A bajillionty times better thanks to you.” Ruby looks around, as if checking we’re alone. We’re not, but the others are clustered on the other side of the dead fire. “And I’m sorry. So sorry. I’m sober and using my indoor voice and” – she reaches out to lay her hands on my shoulders, tilting me towards her so I can see how earnest she is – “I get why you tried to protect me from Stu and that’s what I thought
I
was doing with Tom, only I’m sorry, because it’s not very protective to shout such mean stuff at you and a lot of it wasn’t really that true, except about his trousers, and if you want to be with Tom—” She stops as I start to shake, my eyes squeezed shut against the tears that are welling up. “Kaz? Are you all right? What’s wrong? Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head and a fragment of a teardrop flies from the corner of my eye. I don’t say anything, but I don’t need to. Ruby’s there already, her arms around me so that no one else will know I’m crying. Sniffing, dabbing at my nose with one of the napkins that Ruby’s shoved at me, I sit back up and face her.

“You were right. Tom’s seeing someone else.”

Ruby’s face is a battlefield of emotions – despair, triumph, sympathy, sadness – before she settles on the safest, the one she’s always latched on to because it’s the easiest to feel.

Anger.

“What a cockwomble!” Ruby gently punches her fist into her palm. “Want me to hurt him? I know how to make it look like an accident…”

At least she can laugh. That’s got to count for something. We hug again and when Kaz gives me a squeeze, she whispers her own apology.

“Sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

I squeeze her tight. “Don’t worry about it. No harm done, right? Unless you
want
me to cause harm? I was serious about hurting him.”

But Ruby could never cause Tom the kind of pain that he has caused me.

The others had already left camp when we emerged from our tent after sorting out supplies for the day ahead, then I end up losing Ruby in the queue for the arena. It’s easy to do with someone her size, and five years of this happening on a semi-regular basis has made me philosophical – it’s not as if she’ll have gone anywhere other than through the gate.

Crowds of people are pressing in around me and I let myself drift through conversations that sound so much like the ones Ruby and I have been sharing all summer in anticipation of this weekend.

“… never heard of those guys…”

“… gutted I couldn’t catch them last time they toured…”

“… you’ll have to go to that one on your own, no way am I missing Gold’ntone…”

“… passed out when I stage-dived…”

“… watched it on YouTube…”

My phone goes as I’m channelled between gates.

Where are you where you where are you??? This place is UH-MAY-ZING. Meet you in first set of stalls you see. They have MANY trays of silver studs
.

She’s sent a photo, even though I’m about two minutes from seeing all these earrings in person. Ruby has a very specific fascination with stud earrings.

Some of us queue with decorum. I’ll find you in five
, I reply.

When I emerge from under the arch of the entrance, I see why Ruby was so excited. Off to the right, beyond the stalls Ruby’s (presumably) browsing, there’s an enormous yellow-and-blue striped tent, the roof pitched in peaks and curves like a fairy-tale palace. Directly ahead of me there’s a cluster of fairground rides, sun reflecting off the roof of the waltzers and a fresh-white Ferris wheel suspending cable-car clouds against the sky. These rides are no different from the ones on the pier at Clifton, but the festival setting gives them added glamour, although the music coming from them – a cacophany of pop tunes and sound effects – seems at odds with the crowd of people in band T-shirts and festival hats.

I’m turning to look at the ping-pong tables over by the tent marked
ALTERNATIVE
when I catch sight of Tom.

Seeing his profile hurts like a burn and I recoil from the shock. An arena of eighty thousand and
he’s
the first person I see in here? It feels less like coincidence and more like punishment. Still, the sight of him is a scab I can’t resist picking and slowly, carefully, wary of the pain, I let myself look once more.

He’s with Naj, who’s hard to miss in his dayglo singlet. It’s my bad luck that Naj chooses this exact moment to glance my way.

“KAZ!” Naj roars, disproportionately delighted to see me.

Tom looks as horrified as I feel. As he should.

My natural inclination is to smile, wave and walk purposefully in the opposite direction, but that seems weak somehow. Ruby would never be so feeble.

Inspired by the way she marched over to Goz and Travis last night, I plaster a grin on my face and walk over to join them, watching the colour drain from Tom’s face with every step. My forcibly bright question about how they are prompts Naj into a monologue about his and Roly’s “epic” night and the delights of a burger-van breakfast, but when I sneak a glance at Tom, he’s turned ashen, as if he’s incapable of emoting anything other than panic.

“So” – Naj puts an arm round me – “who are you most excited about seeing today, Kaz?”

This is awkward. Naj has never been this friendly before and I don’t really want someone who smells of fried onions breathing this close to me, but it would be impolite to step away when he’s holding out the programme for me to look at.

“Well, Gold’ntone, obviously.” I point at the 9 p.m. slot on the main stage. “Maybe these guys. Ruby insists I should go and watch Grundiiz with her, but I’m not convinced. This girl’s got a really great voice…”

I trail off as I realize that no one’s paying any attention. Naj is looking at Tom, a mischievous slant to his smile, and Tom is looking over my shoulder. Glancing round, expecting to see Roly, I see something entirely different.