Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) (11 page)

I snapped my head up, but he was concentrating
on spinning his pen. I laughed nervously. ‘Ol, you’re the king of love ’em and leave ’em.’

He smiled. ‘Yeah well, I just haven’t met the right girl, have I?’ He looked at me, his expression open. I relaxed. Last thing I needed was for bloody Ollie to get a crush on me. I coloured slightly at letting such a ridiculous thought even enter my head. We’d known each other since we were five. He’d shown me his teeny-weenie in the playground and I’d seen him cry when he’d fallen over. He was sweet and kind and funny, but he was Ollie. Burp king and serial shagger. And, anyway, why on earth would he fancy me? I leant across the table and gave him a hug.

‘Thanks, Ol.’

He shrugged and smiled. ‘Anytime, flower.’

The morning dragged like wading through water. I had French, which was fine but I wasn’t in the mood, and then a free period, which I spent in the library doing research for my art-history essay. Boring boring boring. As the clock hands dragged themselves towards lunchtime, my mind kept drifting away from the use of painterly techniques in the work of Jackson Pollock and on to a way more pressing dilemma. What to do? Should I avoid the girls (my favoured option), or swan into the canteen casually as if nothing was wrong (not ideal, but the non-confrontational
side of me was all for it)? As upset as I was, avoiding them would only be putting off the inevitable. So –
sigh
– facing up to them it was.

Although obvs I wouldn’t do any
actual
facing up. That would most definitely be classed as confrontation. All I needed to do was show my face. Be normal. Not ‘obsessed’. It hurt that they thought that about me, but at the same time I kind of knew how they felt. I was beginning to annoy myself. I scuffed my toe against the floor irritably as I waited for the ancient PC to log me off. Why couldn’t Joe just
arrange
to see me? Did it always have to be last minute? I reminded myself that not everyone was as obsessed with planning ahead as I was. But still. A
bit
of planning couldn’t hurt.

The canteen was nearly empty when I got there, but Cass and Jack were sitting at our usual table. They both had Spanish before lunch on a Tuesday – they must have been let out early. I bought a pasta salad and my usual Ribena and went to join them.

Cass started talking before I’d even sat down. ‘Sarah, what are you doing over half term?’

I stared at her. ‘What?’

‘The boys are planning a trip to Devon. I was just thinking we could borrow Charlie’s car and go too.’ Cass’s brother was, like, twenty-five, but he still lived at home. He was supposed to be doing a part-time IT
course, but he never seemed to be doing anything except eating crisps and doing suspect things on the Internet. But, handily for us, he had a car. Even better, he never used it.

‘Well, I might be seeing Joe,’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘But we wouldn’t be going for the whole week, right?’ I added quickly. ‘I could just see him the other days.’ Even as I said it I knew that if Joe asked I’d blow my friends out to see him. It wasn’t like that would always be the case. Just for now, while he was so busy with work and uni and I had to take any opportunity that arose. Cass should understand that better than anyone.

‘Exactly,’ said Cass, casually getting a notebook and pen from her bag as if the conversation in the loos had never happened. ‘I’ll be doing the same with Adam.’

I couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit smug. Cass might get to see Adam all the time, but at least Joe was faithful. Or why would that Mimi girl be so jealous?

‘So, I’ll put you down as a yes, yes?’ Cass had her pen poised. I saw that she’d written ‘Trip to Devon’ at the top of the page and underlined it twice. The girl does love a list.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Although obvs I’ll have to check with my parents.’

‘And, Jack, you’re a yes?’

Jack laughed. ‘Well, since it’s our trip you’re crashing …’

Cass scratched her forehead with her pen. ‘Oh duh, of course. Sorry.’ She wrote all the boys’ names down and added hers and mine underneath. ‘This is going to be such a giggle,’ she said, tapping her pen on the table excitedly. ‘We haven’t done anything like this since Glastonbury.’

Jack nodded enthusiastically. ‘Exactly what we said.’ He started chuckling to himself. ‘Rich and that stoned girl.’ Cass burst out laughing and I smiled. God, that really had been funny. Rich had spent about two hours trying to give this random girl the slip. She was off her face and kept telling Rich he had a beautiful soul then trying to stick her tongue down his throat. I started laughing too. Cass and Jack’s enthusiasm was infectious. I felt a flutter of excitement. Maybe a holiday with my friends was exactly what I needed. Get away from all the Joe stuff and just hang out together.

‘What’s so funny?’ Rich pulled out a chair and sat down, closely followed by Ollie, Donna and Ashley.

‘We were just remembering your Glastonbury girlfriend,’ giggled Cass.

Rich rolled his eyes. ‘Oh God, don’t remind me. She was awful. And she stank of marzipan.’

I poked his arm. ‘She wasn’t to know you hate almonds.’

‘Sweetheart, nobody in their right mind likes almonds. It’s what cyanide smells of.’

We all laughed. We’d told this story a million times, always in the same way. It was a little flag in the map of our friendship.

The conversation moved on to Devon. When we’d go, how we’d get there. We all leant in to the table and offered suggestions while Cass made her lists. After a while I tuned out. Maybe me and Joe could go somewhere next summer. Maybe even back to Spain. I looked at my phone. No messages. I tapped out a quick text.

I snickered to myself as I hit Send. He’d like this one. And, sure enough, a message pinged back a few minutes later.

I bit my lip. Was he talking about phone sex? I didn’t even really know what phone sex involved, although I could make a pretty good guess. Making a mental
note to Google it later, and a further mental note to erase my Internet history afterwards, I put my phone away. I wriggled in my chair. I was going to be thinking about sex with Joe for the rest of the day. Not ideal when I was about to go to English, although I bet Jane Eyre felt the same about Mr Rochester. And I’d take the horn over abject misery any day. (Yeah, high five, Jane. We’re totally on the same page.)

I sat next to Rich in English, as usual. Mr Roberts liked to spend the first half of every lesson telling us exactly what was written in black and white on the handouts we all had in front of us. A massive waste of thirty minutes, which we usually spent earnestly looking like we were making notes while actually writing notes to each other. Rich was brilliant at nodding enthusiastically at just the right moment then apparently scribbling screeds of inspired stuff. Of course, the other thing with writing notes to each other is that you can say stuff you wouldn’t necessarily say out loud. Which I guess is why straight off Rich came out with:
So what gives with u and Joe, hmmmm?

I raised an eyebrow and scribbled:
No holding back with u is there?

Rich sniggered and wrote:
You know it.

Me:
What do u want to know?

Rich:
Is he your BOYFRIEND????

Me:
We’re seeing each other.

Rich:
Riiiiiiight.

Me:
What’s that mean??

Rich:
Sarah & Joe, sitting in a tree …

Me:
Sigh. So mature.

Rich:
Seriously. U really like him?

Me:
I do.

Rich:
And he really likes u?

I paused. Now that was more difficult. I sighed and scrawled:
Who knows?

Rich looked at me, but I pretended to be concentrating on what Mr Roberts was saying. He scribbled something else, but I didn’t look down. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell him. I knew that whatever I told him would get back to the others, and, even if Rich didn’t judge me, the others would. And I hated the thought of being talked about, even if it was good stuff.

I saw Rich write something and underline it three times. I swivelled my eyes so I could read it without him noticing.
HAHA MADE U LOOK!!

I stifled a laugh and scrawled,
Do u mind, am transfixed by Mr R’s beauty
. Rich squeaked and Mr Roberts frowned across at us, but we both instantly adopted the bored-but-listening stance, and he looked away.

I quickly wrote:
I’m taking it as it comes. He’s busy at uni etc. But we have gr8 time together & i think it’s worth working at. OK????

Immediately Rich replied with:
Whatever you want, girlfriend. We just don’t want u to get hurt.

We? So the boys had been talking about me too. I sighed and turned my attention back to the front of the classroom. I didn’t want any drama, I just wanted Joe to like me as much as I liked him. Was it such a big thing to ask?

At the end of the lesson there was the usual synchronized turning on of phones. Mr Roberts was a notorious phone confiscator – if he so much as caught sight of one, it was his for the rest of the day. You always knew if someone was about to go into a lesson with him, cos they’d be turning their phone to Silent and burying it in the bottom of their bag to muffle any vibration.

I didn’t have any messages, but Rich had a voicemail. ‘Gimme a sec?’ I nodded and he put his phone to his ear. I knew straight away that something was badly wrong. The colour drained from his face and his mouth set into a thin line, turned down at the corners.

I put my hand on his arm. ‘Are you OK?’ Stupid question. He blinked and cleared his throat.

‘Uh. No, actually.’ He did a strange, confused smile, as if what he was about to say was so freaky that it was almost funny. ‘My nan died.’

‘Oh, Rich. Oh no. Not Nanny Blue?’ They were
really close, him and his nan. She’d looked after him until he was old enough to walk home from school by himself, and he still visited her all the time. He nodded and his chin wobbled, so I lightly pushed him forward. ‘C’mon, let’s get out of here.’ We walked out of school and across the field in silence. He’d talk when he’d got it together.

‘She died in the night,’ he said, after a minute. ‘They think she had a stroke. My granddad woke up next to her, and she was dead.’

I rubbed his back, not knowing what to say.

‘Like, I know she was really old, but she wasn’t ill. She was healthy …’ His voice trailed off.

‘I’m so sorry, Rich.’

He turned to me. ‘The funeral’s probably going to be on Friday. Will you …?’

I interrupted him. ‘Course I’ll come. We’ll all be there. No question.’

Rich stopped walking and half turned in the direction of school. ‘Actually, I’m OK. I just want to get on with it. D’you know what I mean?’

‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘Do you want to be on your own?’

He shot me a quick, sad smile. ‘Nah, you’re OK.’ He hooked his arm through mine. ‘Come and be with me when I tell the others.’

He was really brave. There was a shaky moment when Jack wrapped him in a hug, but he held it together. On the way to find the others he’d called his mum – Nanny Blue was her mum – and had a short but heartbreaking conversation. His mum was obviously devastated, which was really hard for Rich. Poor him. I felt so sorry for him. I still had all my grandparents and had never lost anyone I loved, and the very thought scared the shit out of me. The more so cos I knew it’d have to happen one day.

Nanny Blue’s funeral was definitely going to be on Friday. It would mean we’d have to miss school, but I was pretty sure my parents would be OK with it. Frankly, it was tough if they weren’t. Anyway, Friday was the last day before half term, so it’s not like we’d miss much.

I walked home with Cass, and of course we talked about Rich, but the closer I got to our house the more my thoughts turned to Joe, and phone sex. By the time I got in I was itching to get on the computer. I ran upstairs to my room then screeched to a comedy halt when I saw the empty space on my desk and remembered that my computer had broken. Mum had taken it to work to get one of the IT bods to fix it. I groaned out loud at the thought of having to use the family one. I could already hear
tapping coming from the spare room: Daniel. Excellent.

I plastered on a smile as I popped my head round the door. ‘All right, Dan? You going to be long?’

‘Ages,’ he said, without looking round. ‘I’m doing my homework.’

God, he was SO irritating. And that so wasn’t homework he was doing. ‘Really? Does Mum know you’re doing World of Warcraft at school?’

‘Piss off, this is a history site.’ I could see his cheekbones rise as he smirked to himself.

I swallowed the urge to shove his face into the screen. ‘No, it isn’t, dickhead. I’m not stupid.’

He sucked his teeth. ‘See, if you’re going to be rude I’m just going to have to stay on here all night.’

Screeching with frustration, I slammed the door and went back to my room. I could have dragged him off the chair – I was still stronger than him – but then he’d have pulled my hair, I’d have had to wrench his arm behind his back, he’d have gone crying to Mum … It just wasn’t worth it. But that still left the phone-sex dilemma.

As it got later and later, I started to panic. What if Joe called me and I said completely the wrong thing? The humiliation would just about finish me off. In the end I barricaded myself in my room and called Ashley. She acted like she was asked that kind of
thing all the time. I was so grateful I pretty much forgave her toilet tattling there and then.

‘You say sexy stuff to each other while you both wank,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Why? Has Joe suggested it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ I read out his text.

‘Sounds like it,’ said Ashley. ‘I take it you’re up for it?’

‘Um. Not sure,’ I said again. ‘We’ve never done … that when we’re together.’