My Invisible Boyfriend (3 page)

“Anything of interest?”

They break off. Fili’s leaning on the wall, Gothboy just behind, looking bemused.

“Ryder here has just turned down the tongue services of one Etienne Gracey, on account of having—drumroll please—a secret boyfriend.”

Ludo nods her head superfast, mouth wide open.

Fili quirks a brow. “Seriously?”

I look at Ludo, lipstick smeared into a doughnut round her mouth. I look at Dai, Henry’s hand resting ever so casually on Dai’s belt. I look at Fili, and how close Gothboy is standing, fingers twining in hers.

New season. New lineup.
Leftover Squad: The Boyfriend Years.
No room for Frog Girls here.

Well, honestly, what would you do?

“An imaginary boyfriend?” Betsy breathes in through her nose. “OK. That’s…uh…”

“The most amazingly brilliant idea in the history of the universe?”

“I was going to say ‘creative,’ honeypie. But hey, he’s your imaginary lovemonkey. Maybe you’ve seen a side to him I’m missing.”

It’s the Saturday after the first week of school, and I’m back in my apron, playing waitress at the Little Leaf café. If the Finch is one step sideways from normal, then the Little Leaf is a bus ride away. If you don’t look too closely, it’s a perfect picture-postcard tearoom on the village green. It sells homemade scones with jam and clotted cream, twenty-four different kinds of tea, and only one kind of coffee (instant and horrible), and there are still lacy tablecloths on half of the tables. There’s even a shelf running round the ceiling displaying novelty teapots in the shape of red London buses. Traditional British Hospitality.

Only Betsy is American, with her own take on what counts as “traditional.”

So the walls are tangerine, sky blue, and pink—one of each, with a dusty black wall behind the counter that we use as a chalkboard for the day’s specials, Teddy’s daft little doodles of customers, and the Daily Wisdom: S
MILE
!
I
T MAKES ME REMEMBER TO WASH MY HANDS BEFORE SERVING YOU
.
E
AT A CAKE
!
O
R THE KITTEN DIES
.
There are squashy sofas and armchairs
infiltrating their way between the lace tablecloths. The shelf with the buses also has dragons, a bust of Shakespeare with a red plastic clown nose, and a selection of novelty hats, from Deerstalker to Top. There’s even a picture of the Queen (and you can only see the felt-pen moustache if you stand on a chair).

Tourists eat it up. Tourists take photos of themselves pointing at the menu. Locals go to the Big Bean coffeehouse opposite for venti mochas.

I still smile every time I walk through the door anyway. Betsy’s been the provider of sanity (and cake) all summer. If anyone’s going to understand the logic of my sudden need for an imaginary boyfriend, I reckon it’s her.

She slides a trayload of scones and tea across the counter, and I dutifully deliver it to a concertina-spined elderly couple by the Little Leaf window. The place is deadsville again: September is back-to-school time for the tourists, too. It’s raining. Even the Daily Wisdom (T
ODAY’S MUFFINS ARE ROUND FLAT BREADY THINGS
:
T
HOSE OTHER ONES ARE JUST CUPCAKES WITH EGOS
) seems a bit glum. The first week back in Finchworld hasn’t been a breeze, either. Mr. Prowse has already rejected my Poem on an Autumn Leaf homework and demanded I do it again for next week, on pain of being reported to Mrs. Kemble, the Demon Headmistress. The Mothership’s decided we’re on a Red Foods Only phase on the Traffic Light diet, now Dad Man’s back to sleeping up at the Finch six nights a week and isn’t around to demand fish fingers and chips. The post-McCartney Party fallout is still ongoing, what with
Etienne Gracey glaring at me for failure to distract, Jo-Jo Bemelmans getting busted with a pillowcase full of empty vodka bottles, and Flick Henshall having ended up in a clinic after having her stomach pumped. Dad Man had to drive her out there at 4 in the morning. He looked all stringy the next day. I’m sworn to secrecy, of course, which in reality means I have to sit there pretending I know nothing while everyone else talks about it, because Flick Henshall does this about twice a term, and her completely empty bedroom is sort of a giveaway. Basically, my own parents are making me lie. No wonder I’m entering the subterfuge business.

And then there’s…the other stuff.

“We going to have the company of the gang from up on the hill today?” Betsy asks, dusting invisible crumbs off the green velvet sofa, as if that’ll magically make some customers appear on it.

“Not sure if they’ll make it, actually. They’re all pretty busy. With, you know, homework. And…things.”

Betsy peers out at me from beneath her hair, narrows her eyes, and pointedly sets us up with a large pot of English Breakfast.

“Feeling a little left behind, hon?” she says gently.

OK, maybe not that good. She’s a bit clever, Betsy.

“It’s just not how I pictured the first week back, that’s all.”

I’m being an idiot, I know it. It’s not as if over the summer my little room magically flew five miles closer to school, so I could spend my evenings being exposed to Bad Influences
and Extreme Teenage Behaviors like everyone else, and come home at curfew on the Bike o’ Doom, by myself. And we hadn’t actually made
plans
to watch kittens on YouTube when everyone got back. Fili never promised to be perching on the end of the balance beam at the end of every day, waiting to lend me an earbud. We’re still hanging out, like we used to, kind of: the Leftover Squad, plus extras.
I am not Frog Girl.

I pick up the tufty end of my left braid, and glare at it. “It’s like everyone else got a different script, you know? And I’m having to make it up as I go.”

“Including a boyfriend?”

“Including a boyfriend. And don’t look at me like that! It’s not because I’m jealous. I think it’s nice that all my friends have hooked up with people. They’re happy, I’m happy.”

That part is totally true. Dai’s so giddy about having snagged Henry he keeps walking into doorframes. Ludo is even squeakier than usual over her Peroxide Eric. Fili and Gothboy float around in matching outfits (and since Gothboy has turned out to be Simon Grove, who last year was a wispy blond guy in a “Jesus Saves” T-shirt who used to fall asleep a lot in Biology, his transformation into her perfect twin seems like some extra-special romantic gesture). It’s kind of amusing to observe.

Betsy’s still looking unconvinced.

“I’m just mucking about, honest. It’s not like I set out to make up a boyfriend. Ludo got the wrong idea: I didn’t put
her right. Actually it’s pretty entertaining, working out what he should be like. Like…pick ‘n’ mix. Only with body parts.”

She’s smirking now. “OK, honey, I’ll buy it. I wish my first boyfriend had been imaginary. Then I could go ahead and unimagine him again. Along with the acne, and the poison breath, and the creepy kid sister who used to stare in at us through his car window…”

“See? This is why it’s the most amazing idea ever. Imaginary Boy is not going to have any of those.”

After all, I am kind of an expert at this. I’ve been having imaginary boyfriends since I learned how to turn on a TV. So far, I’ve had theoretical romantic shenanigans with:

The Milkybar Kid (I was eight. He was (a) equivalent to me on the dorkage scale and (b) had chocolate: (b) was totally the clincher)

The kilt-wearing man on the porridge oats advert (KILT! No further explanation required)

Carson Kressley (
sigh
)

Peter from off of Narnia

Ellen Page (obligatory girl crush)

Peter Petrelli (shirtless)

MYCROFT CHRISTIE ♥

I’m practically a slut. Etienne Gracey would probably turn me down all over again, due to my intimidating sexual prowess.

“So, does he have a name? Because ‘Imaginary Boy’ is kind of a giveaway, hon.”

“Still working on it.”

Names are surprisingly tricky. All of the good ones are taken. And I can hardly call him Mycroft. I don’t think my imagination is up to fake-dating a Mycroft, let alone anyone else’s.

“Anything but Rupert!” comes a muffled voice from the kitchen.

Teddy. Teddy, who is usually still asleep at this hour of the morning (apparently, occasionally, I may have noticed in passing), creating his beautiful extra-fluffy curly bed hair. Fabulous tousled Teddy, seventeen-year-old god of baking, who is apparently not asleep, but in the kitchen, listening to my pathetic lack of a life.

ODE.

EAR.

I don’t know why I’m embarrassed: Teddy’s quite aware of how hopeless I am already. He’s seen me doing sweaty karaoke to Katrina and the Waves at closing time cleanup, after all. And anyway, I happen to know he’s a Teddy who is secretly not a Teddy at all, but a Rupert. (Betsy thought it sounded like a nice British name, until they moved here, and found out it translates locally as “hit me, hard, many times.” There aren’t even any Ruperts at the Finch. So: Rupert, Rupert Bear, Teddy.) He’s kind of touchy about it. If he wants to start a mockery war, I have ammunition.

“I’ve got an outstanding ‘How We Met’ anecdote all
mapped out, though,” I say, quickly, because Betsy’s starting to look unconvinced. “Can you check it for plot holes? Because Ludo’s starting to invent her own version, and I’m running out of enigmatic coy looks.”

“Have at it,” she says, pouring more tea.

I settle myself on the stool, and take a deep breath.

“OK, so, we met at Paddington station. Buying gummy bears. I mean, I was buying gummy bears. Only I was running late, and I heard the train arrive so I ran for it, and I must’ve left my purse in the shop when I did, because just as I was about to get on the train, someone grabbed my arm. And he was all breathless because he’d been running to catch up with me, so he couldn’t get the words out to say, ‘Here is your purse,’ and then the train doors went BEEP BEEP BEEP and closed, and the train left, and we both just stood there. And he went, ‘You missed your train,’ and I went, ‘Nnnnnnnngh,’ because he was all tall, dark, and leather-jackety. And holding my purse, which is the purple felt one with the flower on it that’s falling off a bit. So he gave it back to me, and I said, ‘Thank you,’ and probably our fingers brushed together with sparks of electricity, though I might skip that bit? And we just stood there, on this train platform, just the two of us. So I offered him a gummy bear and he said, ‘Only if I can have a red one, they’re the best,’ and I said I liked the green ones best anyway, and then we just carried on talking, and la la la snogs, the end.”

I take a big swig of tea.

“So, what do you think?”

“Adorable,” says Betsy. “A little too adorable, maybe? But hey, that’s what fantasies are for, right?”

“I could ditch the gummy bears?”

“I like the gummy bears. Nice detail.”

“The ending needs a little work.”

“Yeah, but still, it’s a good beginning.
Love
the leather jacket.”

“OK, stop, I can’t take any more!”

Teddy appears in the kitchen doorway, tousled bed hair in place (lightly dusted with flour), apron on over the top of stripy pajama trousers and monster-feet slippers.

“Nobody’s going to give a crap about the leather jacket and the gummy bears,” he says, wagging a spoon at us and dripping icing on the floor, “not when the rest of it doesn’t make any sense. Heidi, if you left your purse in the shop, how did you get through the turnstile onto the platform? Are you at Paddington
train
station or
underground
station? What are you even doing in London? I mean, don’t you have somewhere to go? Doesn’t he? And seriously, if some strange guy steals your purse and grabs your arm at a train station, you want to push him onto the tracks, not kiss him. Just a suggestion.”

He grabs the chalk, doodles a gummy bear with a sad face on the wall, and heads back to the kitchen with a grin.

“My son, the death of romance,” sighs Betsy.

“Nope, he’s right. It’s not exactly realistic, is it?”

I decide not to mention the previous draft versions I came up with in Chemistry, when I was meant to be doing experimental things with potassium permanganate. There were pirates. And giraffe riding. And he had a beret.

Apparently imaginary boyfriend–construction is harder than it looks.

“Maybe you should keep it simple,” Betsy offers. “There don’t need to be fireworks. Just go with something you’ll be able to remember. Something familiar, you know?”

I spend the total lack of a lunchtime rush contemplating alternative locations for Imaginary Boy to share my gummy bears. Then I decide he (Michael?) is a vegetarian, and so we strike up a conversation about how gummy bears contain bits of dead cow. Then I decide that discussing bits of dead cow is probably not the ideal date conversation, and actually that he (Mikhail) is kind of a jerk for even mentioning it, in fact, ruining my gummy bears. And who does he (Mickey) even think he (Mikey) is, coming and hassling me in the park?

By the end of the day, I’ve dumped him (Artemis) about seventeen times, before we’ve even properly met. And he still doesn’t have a name that isn’t stupid.

“Inspiration for you,” says Betsy as we close up early, sliding me a paper bag along with the little brown envelope of cash that I really obviously haven’t earned.

“What’s this?”

I peer inside the bag and find a warm, solid gingerbread man; his iced-on eyes and buttons still slightly soft.

Betsy looks innocent.

“The Perfect Boyfriend. And he’s not even imaginary.”

Boarding school Dining Halls are not what you imagine. I’ve seen six, and I can tell you now: Forget what the pictures in the brochures say, and put all Hogwarty thoughts from your mind. There will be no mahogany paneling, or portraits of old dead guys, or feasting on roasted wild boar by candlelight. The Finch Dining Hall is strip-lit, smells of beans, and looks a bit like a posh McDonald’s. The food is just as enticing: Oil Pie, Lettuce in Soup, and the ever-popular Armored Pizza. (If the Mothership’s Red Peppers stuffed with Red Lentils, Red Onion, and Red Cabbage don’t kill me, their Fish Surprise will.)