“No. I’m saying boyfriends and girlfriends in general mess each other about. I just want to make sure you’re strong enough to cope with the mess, alongside everything else.”
I crossed my arms.
“I’m still going on the date.”
It was a bit of a walk to the train station. The sun set gradually, making the sky an inky purple. There is lots of sky about where I live. Most houses are detached, with big sprawling gardens. The town centre has a Starbucks and a Pizza Express, a few pubs and all the other usuals, but it’s still just an island of buzz in a vast sea of suburbia.
Ethan sent another message, telling me when his train was due to arrive. He lived a couple of towns over. It was exactly a nineteen minute train journey.
BAD THOUGHT
What if he holds onto a pole on the train? What if someone with norovirus sneezed into their hands, and then held the same part of the bar before Ethan? What if Ethan then holds my hand?
I stumbled on nothing and almost fell flat. Dating did bring a whole load of new mess into my brain. But, as ever in my brain, it was never “normal” mess.
Things I reckon it’s normal to worry about before a first date
Will it be awkward?
Will they fancy me?
How do I look?
Will I like them?
I’d had all the above, on a recurring merry-go-round of neurosis ALL DAY, but I’d also had stupid stupid bad thoughts about stupid stupid bacteria. As bloody always.
To distract myself, I replayed how Ethan and I had got to this first date.
How Ethan and I got to our first date
He’d come into our second lesson looking pretty damn pleased with himself.
“Hey,” I said, shyly, as he sat opposite me.
“Alien hand syndrome,” he answered, nodding cockily.
“Huh?”
“It’s a new thing for you to be scared of. Alien hand syndrome.”
He’d remembered our conversation! And he’d done his own research! I grinned and tilted my head. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
Hang on… WHAT THE HELL IS ALIEN HAND SYNDROME? WILL I CATCH IT?
“It’s proper weird.” He waved his hands about all crazy. “It’s a neurological condition where your hand, like, grows its own brain and does crap all on its own accord.” He grabbed his throat and pretended to strangle himself.
“What, even jazz hands?” I asked, trying to make light of it through my inner doomness.
He made his fingers jazzy, waving them in my face as I laughed nervously. “Yeah, maybe. But alien hand randomly slaps people, or chucks stuff on the floor; it might even try and strangle someone else. Here, I’ll show you.”
He got out his phone and pulled up a YouTube clip, checking our sociology teacher still hadn’t arrived, leaning right in close so we could watch together. It was the closest a guy’s face had ever been to mine and I felt all panicky, in a good way. Ethan smelled of bonfire, in a good way. I could hardly concentrate on the hand video.
I drew back first, and got my textbook out. “I don’t believe it,” I said. Not wanting to believe it.
“It’s real, honest.”
“How do you get it?”
Ethan put his phone back in his pocket. “It’s usually a side effect of an operation to cure epilepsy.”
I let out a big, real, sigh of relief. “Oh, good. I’m past the age where you develop epilepsy.”
Ethan burst out laughing again, just as our teacher arrived and shushed him.
Class began. Our teacher paced in front of the interactive whiteboard, introducing us to Marxism and Functionalism. Ethan kicked me under the desk. I looked up and he held my gaze intensely, before retreating back under his hair, a small smile on his rounded dimpled face. I withheld a grin and delivered a retaliatory kick. When he looked up, I held eye contact for only a second.
Best game ever. Kick, stare. Kick, stare. Goosepimples stood to attention all over my body as our teacher’s lecture faded into background noise.
I didn’t have one bad thought the entire lesson.
In our next class, I was ready for him.
“Capgras Delusion,” I said, before he’d even sat down.
He threw back his hands. “Aww, man, I’ve got one too. I wanna go first.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Mine first.”
“All right, all right. What’s Capgras Delusion?” he asked.
I put on an authoritative voice. “It’s when you suddenly believe someone close to you, like your husband, or your sister or something, has been replaced by an identical imposter trying to take over their life.”
“Woooooah. No way.”
“I know.”
“Like an evil twin?”
“I guess.”
“That is so cool.”
“I guess.” I’d already checked on Google and I wasn’t in the high-risk category.
Ethan threw his bag down and stretched back in his chair.
“Pica,” he said.
“Whata?”
“Pica. It’s an eating disorder where you love eating inedible objects with no nutritional value. Like rocks, and laptops and stuff. You’re just compulsively hungry. You’re always in and out of hospital because you’ve eaten stuff you shouldn’t.”
I was about to open my mouth but he stopped me.
“Don’t worry. You’re unlikely to get it. It’s linked with autism.”
I nodded happily. “Cheers.”
We smiled at one another but were, once again, interrupted by our teacher, daring to teach us.
Over the next few lessons, we took it in turns to share a new disorder we’d discovered. Until suddenly one day Ethan seemed intent on actually learning. I watched him scribbling in his notebook as we were introduced to Karl Marx’s big revelation that poor people aren’t treated right by rich people. I tried to concentrate too, opening my own pad to make notes.
That was, until his notepad slid across my desk.
Can I ask you out?
My breath ran out of me and I smiled the entire lesson. I wrote back only one word…
Maybe…
The bell rang and everyone stood to reload their bags. “So,” he said, sitting on my desk right in front of me. He was so confident. I liked it.
“So, what?”
“Are you about this weekend?” he asked. “I like you, Evie, you’re on the cute and kooky side of weird.”
KOOKY!? I’d finally made it down the weirdness spectrum to merely kooky!
I flicked through my plans. “I’m going to a house party on Saturday. There’s this girl in my form, Anna. She said her mum is really cool and lets her have house parties. Her first one is this weekend.”
“Cool. Can I come? With you I mean?”
OHMYOHMYOHMYOHMYOHMYGODDDDD.
“Sure,” I said, as nerves and goodness went crazy in my bloodstream.
“Great, where is it?”
I reached the platform two minutes before the train was due and tapped my foot whilst waiting. I allowed myself to get excited. Like, really excited. Was I going to fall in love? Was this the start of it? Had I managed to find a nice sexy boy in my very first attempt at dating? Was this karma making up for the crap my life had been for the past three years?
Yes. Maybe. No, hell, yes.
The train was coming. Ethan was coming. For once, finally, I was living my life as it should be. For once I was going to catch a break.
The train doors opened… Ethan appeared amongst a crowd of passengers getting off…and tripped over his feet, landing flat on his face. An empty two-litre bottle of cider rolled out of his hand.
“Bollocks,” he yelled. He tried to stand but fell again, rolling onto his side and laughing.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I took a tentative step towards him. Passengers sidestepped us, giving us both dirty looks.
“Ethan?” I asked.
“WOAH, EVIE, I NEED YOU TO GIVE ME A HAND HERE.”
He reached out for my arm, and I took his body weight – staggering under it as he righted himself. He absolutely stank. Of cider. And maybe a bit of sick.