The Worst of Me

The
Worst
of
Me

Kate le Vann has already had published four highly acclaimed novels for teenagers:
Tessa in Love, Things I Know About Love, Two Friends, One Summer
and
Rain.

Praise for Kate’s previous books

“One of the finest evocations of young love that I have ever read – subtle, delicate and utterly moving.”

Jan Mark,
Books for Keeps
, on
Tessa in Love

“Compelling and compassionate . . . The endearing and completely credible relationship with her brother is delightful and the moving and gentle awareness of a real relationship developing gives an added layer to the sensitivity of the whole novel.”

Carousel
, on
Things I Know About Love

“Told with a good deal of light humour and a credible voice,
Two Friends, One Summer
charts Sam’s journey to a realisation that instant gratification is not all, and that some things are worth waiting for.”

Books for Keeps
, on
Two Friends, One Summer

“Entertaining and accessible . . . heartwarming . . . le Vann’s sensitive, perceptive prose will make it enduring.”

Daily Telegraph
, on
Rain

PICCADILLY PRESS • LONDON

Thanks to everyone at Piccadilly Press for their
incredible patience, helpfulness, wisdom
and incredible patience.

First published in Great Britain in 2010
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk

Text copyright © Kate le Vann, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the copyright owner.

The right of Kate le Vann to be identified as Author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 84812 045 7
eBook ISBN 978 1 84812 141 6

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD
Cover design by Simon Davis
Cover illustration by Susan Hellard

For my dad

They must think I’m asleep. It’s only half past five, and I would be asleep if it weren’t for the man telling my mum off in the next room.

I am this close,
this close
to going in and screaming at him and telling him to get out and leave us alone and never come back. I practise it in my head. I’m ready.

But my mum seems to want him here.

So I lie down and pull my quilt around me and try to hear her side of the conversation – his voice is too fuffly and mumbly.

I argued with him earlier, so I know this might be about me. In a way, I’m quite glad about that because I can see him for what he is and for some reason she can’t. If she realises things are not working she’s going to have to tell him to go. I’m not a kid any more and there’s no way she can be okay with me being unhappy.

Suddenly my mum’s voice becomes very close – she must have moved to the side of the room where we share a wall. So I can’t tell what Paul says that makes her sigh and sound so sad, but her reply is perfectly clear: ‘Cassidy won’t be living with us forever.’

You know those people who look like they know what they’re doing? Confident people. The ones who don’t hate their bodies, the ones who aren’t afraid to say what they really think. Well, don’t trust them. I know how to fake it and I can pass as one of them. But from the outside you can’t tell the difference between them and me.

I think it’s because there is no difference: we’re all faking it.

When I’m most nervous, a kind of steel closes over my skin. I breathe really slowly and look into space with a bit of a smile as if I’m remembering something funny, or I just don’t care. Like I’m maybe even looking down on the world. It’s a good trick – it keeps me safe – but it has its disadvantages. Because when I’m at my most shy and terrified, when my heart’s fluttery
and I’ve forgotten how to move, and I’m wishing someone would feel sorry for me and come over and be my friend, they’re probably looking at me and thinking,
That bitch is so up herself, I would never talk to her.

But that day, someone did.

After I heard my mum saying that I wouldn’t always live with her – which was true, I know, but it’s just not great to find out your mum is counting down the days till you’re gone – I had to get away. I lay still in my bed until I could hear the soft buzzing of his snoring, and figured that my mum would have sulked herself back to sleep, then I silently got ready to go out. I left a note on the kitchen table saying I’d gone into town: I knew they wouldn’t be up before nine, they never were on Saturdays. I was out of the house by seven and the early morning chill blew straight through me because I was so tired.

I caught a bus into the city centre well before the shops opened. But there were people about, it wasn’t scary, and I wasn’t interested in buying anything. I just walked around, and the shops opened and the streets filled up around me. I killed time going into places I’d never been in before: I touched sleeves to feel the fabric, fanned out dresses to see their shapes, picked up shoes to look at the prices on the bottom, and told the assistants I was just looking, thanks. When I got to the
cinema, I’d been walking for absolutely hours and needed to sit down. I knew I could hide there. It’s not the sort of place where people from school usually go because it doesn’t show the loud stupid films that everyone sees. I’d never been in there before, never even been to a cinema on my own before, but hiding is about not doing what you usually do. The film had already started when I went in, and it took my eyes a while to get used to the dark and to find out who I’d sat myself next to. It wasn’t all that scary and I could see loads of people on their own. I drifted in and out of the film – it was a dark comedy with a lot of talking and I didn’t really know which bits were supposed to be funny. My thoughts took over all the time, running off when something in the story reminded me of my life. But I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to stay there. I watched all the credits.

Afterwards, I went into the cinema café and bought a sandwich and some coffee. It was after five o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything, so I was starving. I ate it properly, taking neat little bites and carefully using my serviette, the way you never do when you’re on your own, but also sneakily brushing crumbs off my T-shirt and lap and on to the floor, worrying that I might get told off for doing that. But I didn’t actually think I was being watched, if you know what I mean.

‘Oi, curly!’

I’m curly – I mean, my hair is . . . but that wasn’t enough to make me look. Then there was a little whistle, the kind of whistle you make through your teeth that isn’t much louder than saying ‘shh’.

‘Curlylocks! You go to Samuel Bond’s, don’t you?’

Samuel Bond School: my school.

I knew who was talking before I looked. I’d been people-watching in the café, checking everyone out. There were groups of students, the boys wearing T-shirts with band names on them, the girls with pretty, short dresses and clumpy shoes; some tweed-jacketed old people talking and laughing loudly; two mums with toddlers in highchairs eating ice cream. And the four boys at the next table who didn’t really look like students, and I was sure I’d seen at least one of them before. He was very tall and blond, with tanned reddish skin, and blond stubble sparkling on his chin. Rugby player shaped. Solid.

I lifted my head, taking my time to bring up my eyes to look at them. This is the kind of thing I do to pretend I’m not shy, acting bored and a bit sulky like that.

‘Are you talking to me?’ I said, but neutrally, not impatient or anything.

‘Yeah,’ said the blond boy. He smiled, as if he thought he was a bit gorgeous. Maybe he really thought that, or maybe he was faking it too. He’d have been gorgeous to a certain type of girl, the ones who like
rugby players. I prefer footballers. There was one of them in the group, too – a footballer-shaped one, I mean – as tall as the blond but dark-haired and better looking. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking down and grinning, like he was embarrassed but thought it was funny. ‘You just saw the film, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘We’re having an argument about it now. Can you settle something for us? You know Robert? The guy who got arrested? Were Robert and the artist chick supposed to have had a thing in the past? Were they exes?’

‘Sorry about him,’ said the dark-haired one. ‘He finds it hard to keep up with plots.’

But they all waited for my answer. When I told them what I thought, the three non-blonds did a little quiet cheer, like they’d won, then they went back to their conversation.

The dark-haired one turned back to me a minute later and said, ‘Thanks, sorry to bother you.’ I smiled and shrugged. Then he said, ‘Is Dom right? Do you go to Samuel Bond’s?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I looked at him. Something inside me changed . . . as if a switch had turned on. Like the way you can tell a TV is on even when the channel is dead and the picture’s black.

‘We haven’t been there long,’ he said. ‘We just joined
the sixth form this year. I haven’t seen you around.’

‘She’s one of the ones who goes around in little skirts,’ the blond said. The other two sniggered, and I wondered if I should pretend to be offended, but I wasn’t, even though it was a dodgy thing to say. I kept my eyes on the dark-haired one and raised an eyebrow. That makes me sound like I think I’m, you know, but it’s all put on. Inside my heart was beating hard, although I don’t know why, I was just talking to some boys in a café, not jumping out of a plane.

‘D’you want to come and sit with us?’ the dark-haired one asked. I froze for a moment. I might have given myself away a bit, behind the eyes.

‘Maybe she wants to be alone, Joe,’ one of the others said. He had thick, messy sandy-brown hair and a low, steady voice. That voice, a serious amount of stubble – nearly a beard – and the way he was leaning far back in his chair made him look a lot older than the others. I thought he probably didn’t want me to sit with them.

‘Well, then she’ll say no,’ the dark-haired one said, and he pulled over a chair from one of the tables near his. ‘Come and talk to us.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Jonah.’

And I thought:
I already love you. Maybe you can feel it too. Isn’t that stupid?
That’s how I remember it happening, as everything and no big deal all at once.

You think love at first sight only happens in films, but really it doesn’t happen all that much in films . . . not to
girls, anyway. For boys, you usually get this thing where a gorgeous girl appears for the first time and there’s hotgirl music and she’s moving in slow motion with her hair blown around by wind machines and everything’s lit too bright and beautiful. But that’s all about looks, she’s always amazing looking, and like I said, just for boys. In a chick flick, usually you’re supposed to argue with the boy for the first hour and a half, only to work out what’s going on ten minutes before the end.