Falling Fast (3 page)

‘. . .
But my true love is grown to such excess
. . .’

And then I realised why he must be looking puzzled.

My voice had shrunk to a whisper.

In the same instant I knew why. Juliet was basically saying this incredibly intimate, powerful thing about how her love for Romeo was so huge that she couldn’t get her head round the half
of it. And I was saying the lines as if it was just me and him in the room.

I immediately raised my voice. Way too loud.

‘. . .
I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth
.’

Flynn jumped back, startled, presumably, at the sudden rise in volume.

Everyone else in the room laughed.

Oh God.

After that it was hopeless. We tried another scene. I stumbled over the lines, then remembered the stain on my jumper and tried to cover it with my copy of the play.

By the time I finished, Flynn was staring at me as if I was mad and titters of amusement were floating round the room.

Mr Nichols got Daisy Walker to read with Flynn, then we all trooped downstairs and back onto the minibus.

I pretended to be cheerful on the way back to school, but inside I was dying. Emmi kept saying that I’d done fine, but I knew she was just being kind.

I’d made a complete mess of that second reading.

Because of Flynn. Because of the way he’d looked at me with those intense green-gold eyes. Because he was a brilliant actor.

I struggled to put it out of my mind, joining in with Emmi when she teased Grace about Darren, then teasing Emmi myself about how much James Molloy had fancied her.

Neither of them teased me. Which meant, I knew, that I really, really had made a total idiot of myself.

My one comfort was that Emmi clearly thought I’d screwed up because I was nervous about getting the part, not for any other reason.

Two days later the four of us who’d been up for speaking parts got called into Ms Yates’s room. She made a big show of saying how we were representing the school
and how she expected us to maintain the highest standards of behaviour whenever we attended rehearsals.

Blah, blah, blah.

And then she gave out the parts.

Grace was Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother. Daisy was Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother.

I held my breath.

And she said it.

Emmi was Juliet. I was the Nurse.

The Nurse. Short. Dumpy. Nice.

Nice.

My heart sank.

You can’t fall in love with nice.

Rehearsals began the following Monday.

I got ready for school that morning very carefully, then examined myself in the long bathroom mirror.

My grey school sweater didn’t cling snugly like Emmi’s jumpers always managed to. It bulged out unattractively over my boobs, then settled into stiff, ugly folds just below my
waist.

There was no getting away from it.

I looked fat. Bulky at the very least.

God
, I really was the perfect choice to play Juliet’s ex-nanny or Nurse or whatever she called herself.

I sighed and stroked mascara up my eyelashes.

I’d spent a lot of the weekend thinking about Flynn. Wondering about him. He intrigued me – the way he’d made everyone in the room aware of him just by walking across it, the
weird contrast between how bored he’d looked most of the time and then the intense interest in his green-gold eyes when he’d looked at me, like he really wanted to know who I was.

That look, on its own, made him unlike any boy I’d ever met.

I was determined to talk to him later. To find out about him. He must be really into the play to speak his lines as well as he did. I could imagine him sitting in his bedroom, hunched up against
his pillows, reading his way through Romeo and Juliet’s love scenes. Just like I had done.

He probably read all sorts of books. Maybe even poetry. A shiver slithered down my spine. I knew it wasn’t love I was feeling. I didn’t even really fancy him. I was just . . . well .
. . interested.

Then Emmi’s pretty, flirtatious face flashed into my head.

Flynn wasn’t going to notice me. He wasn’t going to see past her – the fake Juliet in front of him.

I put down my mascara and leaned against the long mirror.

‘OY. SWAMPY.’ Stone – my younger brother – was yelling from outside the bathroom.

I sighed. Stone is nearly fourteen and the biggest jerk in the universe. He was full of himself for weeks after he started calling me Swampy. It’s a mickey-take on my name being River, you
see. And because my hair is apparently the colour of mud and my eyes the colour of ditchwater.

‘HOW MUCH LONGER YOU GONNA BE IN THERE?’ Stone thumped the door.

I reluctantly peeled myself away from the bathroom mirror. No way was I letting Stone in until I’d finished – but if I didn’t hurry up, he’d get Mum on my case. And I
really didn’t want a row this morning.

I picked up my mascara again and leaned towards the glass.

There was nothing good about my face. My nose was too blobby, my eyes set too close together, my mouth too small.

‘SWAMPY. DID YOU HEAR ME?’ Stone yelled again.

‘Just a minute,’ I shouted.

Stone swore loudly, then I heard him stomping off towards the stairs.

Up until six months ago, Stone’d been quite nice. This shy, sweet kid who got on with everyone and spent most of his time collecting football stickers. It felt like he changed overnight,
though I suppose it couldn’t really have happened that quickly. Now he seemed to hate everyone and everything and spent all his time locked in his bedroom listening to loud, aggressive
rap.

Mum says he’s a walking teenage cliché and that I should just ignore him.

I moved closer to the mirror and finished applying the mascara. Stone wasn’t wrong about my hair and eyes. I had to admit it. Dull brown and dirty grey.

Mum was waiting for me just inside the front door. She was all dressed up for work in a blue suit, her hair carefully done in a consciously messy, flicked-back style. You’d never guess she
used to wear long, hippy skirts and smoke joints with Dad after Stone and I had gone to bed.

‘I haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘I just wanted a quick word.’

I stared at her. Mum and I look alike. Even I can see it. We’ve got the same dark hair and grey eyes. The same heavy features. Only they suit Mum. Somehow she carries them off.

‘River?’ she said impatiently. ‘This is important.’

‘What is it?’ My mind ran over the possibilities. Maybe Mum was secretly dying of some rare disease? No. She would hardly tell me about that just as she was leaving for work. Maybe
it was Stone. Maybe he’d been nagging her about us swapping bedrooms again. Mine was twice as big as his. No way was he having it.

‘I wanted to talk about tonight,’ Mum said, checking her watch.

I frowned. Tonight? What was happening tonight? God, it wasn’t her birthday again, was it? We’d forgotten it last year. She’d gone mental on us. But no, Mum’s birthday
was in February. And this was late September.

‘It’s the play you’ve got involved with,’ she said. ‘Where it is and everything.’

I shook my head. ‘What . . .?’

Mum sighed. ‘You know I’ve always treated you as an equal, River, so I’m not telling you what to do.’

Right.

‘I’m just saying it’s in a boys’ school. As in a Catholic boys’ school where no girls are normally allowed. And you haven’t . . . well, I’m just saying,
as an older woman with a bit of experience, I know what boys are like. At that age they’re mostly going to be interested in getting as far as they can and . . .’

‘For God’s sake, Mum,’ I snapped, too shocked and embarrassed to sort out all the different things I was feeling. How dare she try and warn me off boys she didn’t even
know? I thought of Flynn and the way he had looked at me. Into me. That wasn’t about sex and stuff.

‘Look, I just wish my mother had talked like this to me.’ Mum sighed, her cheeks reddening slightly. ‘But the truth is they’ll be after whatever they can get.’

I stared at her, feeling my own cheeks burn, as if Mum’s blushes were now flowing into me.

‘Yeah, Swampy.’ Stone slouched up behind Mum, a sneer on his spotty face. ‘And most of them won’t be all that fussy about who they get it with.’

‘Stone, be quiet.’ Mum rolled her eyes, but I could see she wasn’t actually disagreeing with him. In fact, that was her real point, wasn’t it? That boys kept artificially
away from girls most of the time were bound to be so desperate that they’d try and do it with anything that moved – even something as hideous as me.

Tears pricked at my eyes. I didn’t want either Mum or Stone to see how upset I was.

‘Right,’ I snapped.

I stomped outside, slamming the front door shut behind me.

I got more and more nervous as the day went on. By the time Emmi, Grace, Daisy and I got on the bus to go to St Cletus’s that afternoon, my stomach was twisted into a big
knot.

‘No school minibus today, then,’ Emmi said bitterly. ‘You’d think they’d send cars for us, seeing as we’re helping them out by being in their stupid
play.’

For some reason Emmi was pretending to find the whole thing a massive drag. She said she’d even considered turning down the part of Juliet. ‘All those lines,’ she’d
groaned. ‘And I didn’t fancy
any
of the boys we saw the other day.’

My heart leaped at this. If Emmi didn’t intend to get her claws into Flynn, I’d have more chance to talk to him. I was trying to think how to encourage her to pull out of the play
altogether, when Grace peered round at us.

‘There’ll be other boys, Emmi,’ she smiled. ‘Loads in the rest of the cast, then all the ones who help backstage.’

Emmi’s eyes brightened. ‘True,’ she said. ‘And what with you being with Darren and that Daisy Walker . . .’ she lowered her voice ‘. . . looking like
she’s totally up her own backside, there’ll be loads to choose from for me and River.’ She grinned. ‘Hope we don’t both go for the same guy, Riv.’

I gritted my teeth.

We’d been given permission to skip the last – free – period of school in order to get to St Cletus’s by the end of their school day. The bell was
ringing as we walked into the big, stone entry hall and found the bursar’s office on the left. The secretary told us to wait outside while she buzzed the staffroom for Mr Nichols.

We lolled self-consciously against the office door as streams of boys of various ages and sizes stumbled past, wide-eyed and gawping. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and pointing, though
none of them actually came over and talked to us.

‘God, you’d think they’d never seen a girl before,’ Emmi whispered to me.

I swallowed, remembering what Mum had said this morning. Still, none of these boys were Flynn.

After a few minutes the entry hall started to clear. James Molloy came bumbling over, a big grin on his slightly flushed face.

‘Hi,’ he said, to Emmi’s left arm. ‘I’m supposed to take you to the rehearsal room.’

I rolled my eyes at Grace. She smiled back. That was the good thing about the way me and Emmi and Grace were friends. Whenever something was happening to one of us, the other two were always
there to share it.

My heart was pounding by the time we reached the rehearsal room. It was another classroom. Bigger than the one we’d used before, with all the desks pushed back against the walls. It was
distinctly shabby too – with a few posters and bits of coursework pinned up on peeling wallpaper and a large, cracked whiteboard propped next to the door.

I looked swiftly round the room. My heart beat fast. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I knew I was looking for Flynn.

There were at least ten boys lounging against the desks by the walls. Most of them were watching Emmi – who had dragged a blushing Grace into the middle of the room and was chatting to her
ultra-casually, pouting her lips and raking back her hair as she talked.

I looked along the row of boys. Flynn wasn’t here. How could he not be here? He had the main part. I had a sudden and terrifying thought. Suppose something awful had happened to him and
he’d pulled out of the play?

‘You okay?’ James Molloy had sidled up to me, unnoticed.

‘Mmmn,’ I said. ‘Fine.’

‘Er . . . your name’s . . . er . . . River, isn’t it?’ James said.

I stared at him.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing,’ James stammered. ‘I just wondered. You said you were Emmi’s best friend and . . . and I was thinking . . . I was just curious. Well, um, everyone is . .
.’

He stuttered to a stop.

I frowned. ‘Curious about what?’ I said.

James gazed at Emmi. ‘One of the other guys wanted to know . . . er . . . if she . . . if you know . . . there was . . . It’s just, um, you’re like her best friend. You
said.’

I remembered something James had said the first time we’d met.

‘You’re Flynn’s best friend, aren’t you?’ I said.

James shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘Where is he?’ I asked nonchalantly. ‘Shouldn’t he be here for the rehearsal?’

James nodded. ‘He should be. But he told Mr Nichols he had a family emergency. Had to go home straight after school.’

‘Oh.’ I was bitterly disappointed. But at least Flynn was still doing the play. There would be other rehearsals, after all. I glanced sideways at James, hoping he hadn’t
noticed how deflated I’d sounded. He was still staring at Emmi.

‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend,’ I said.

James looked round at me, startled.

I grinned. ‘Well, that was what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?’

The rehearsal lasted just over an hour. Mr Nichols got everyone to read through the first couple of acts. He said Romeo’s lines himself. That must have been a bit weird
for Emmi, but she kept her head down, concentrating hard on what she was reading, so I couldn’t see her expression.

Afterwards some of the boys came over and tried to talk to us. I stood between Emmi and Grace, feeling ugly and awkward. Emmi was in her element, tossing back her hair and flashing dazzling
smiles at them all. Grace looked nervous, but sweet. I could see several of the boys, clearly intimidated by Emmi’s hard, sexy confidence, make a beeline for Grace. She giggled with them,
looking up at them coyly from under her eyelashes.