I instantly felt so alone.
“Don’t be silly, they don’t hate you,” I replied hollowly. Though I gave myself away by not asking who she meant.
“They do. They just think I’m a Stepford Girlfriend. Amber, like, really hates me.”
“Amber hates the world.” I wasn’t sure why I was consoling her still. Default maybe? “She’s funny with all of us about boys. She’s made spinster membership cards, remember?”
Jane tugged at her top, trying to get the edges pulled over her muffin top. “I just thought if I invited them round, they’d see I was cool, you know?”
“And they will…I mean, they have.”
“I dunno.” She looked sadly at the rug again. Maybe I was reading too much into it but it seemed like, for the first time, Jane was jealous of me. Jealous of the friendships I’d made, the identity I was carving out for myself, independent of anyone else. Despite the odd Guy blip.
We heard a clattering of glasses downstairs and some giggling. The wine was on its way.
Jane walked past me to the mirror to check her reflection. “My new hair’s okay, isn’t it? I’ve got this patchy bit at the back where I missed some across my parting. I had to do it by myself…”
“Oh…yeah, well, it doesn’t show.”
She pouted and turned her head side to side. “When Joel saw it he said we should try and spend more time with our friends. He said we spend too much time together.”
A-ha! Joel was steering her sudden burst of friendliness. I felt suddenly angry at her – that this change had come from Joel, not her. Angry that she couldn’t see that I was hurting…or that she was just choosing not to see it. Because she’d seen too much already. She’d reached her threshold.
“Ahh, well, I mean, it’s important to have friends, isn’t it?” I tried to make myself feel sorry for her, to calm down the inner anger.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I would do without you, Evie.” It came out empty. Forced. I looked at my friend’s reflection with her. She’d changed so much in the past few months. Different hair, new piercings, crazy outfits – but that didn’t stand out to me – that didn’t make me really look. It was the way she carried herself now – none of her sass, none of her attitude. It was like someone had slowly turned her from Technicolor into sepia tone.
“How are things with you and Joel?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Just asking.”
“Well, they’re fine. Great. Wonderful. Just wait till you fall in love, Evie.” I sneered slightly at the back of her head. “But, as Joel said, it’s important to have friends too. That’s why I invited you all around tonight.”
Because Joel suggested it…
The bedroom door opened and Lottie and Amber came in brandishing wine and glasses.
“We’ve got Merlot!” Lottie announced, setting it clumsily on the carpet and pouring it slapdash into four glasses. Some splashed on the carpet. Nobody said anything. Maybe nobody else but me noticed. “I stole it from my parents. We’re going to class-up the college band night by drinking red wine. We will be the most sophisticated girls there.”
I pointed to Amber who was carefully pouring another bottle of red wine into an empty plastic Coke bottle. “Not if anyone sees us swigging from that.”
“Nonsense,” Lottie said. “That’s for the walk there. Nobody will see us drink it. We’ll be walking through the alleyways.”
“Classy as hell.”
“Too right. Come on, let’s chink.”
The overly-full glasses were passed about and we cheers-ed each other.
“To Joel’s band winning tonight?” Jane suggested.
Lottie cackled. “No chance. Let’s drink to the sisterhood.” And we chinked again.
I was on an even lower dose than I’d been at the house party. And this wasn’t shots. So I drained my glass as quickly as you can drain red wine without making little wincing faces that give away you’re not really a grown-up yet.
It took ages to leave the house in the cold, what with ten layers of coats and scarves to put on. We were glad for them though when we filtered out onto Jane’s front porch.
Lottie let out a little squeal. “It’s colder than liquid nitrogen! Pass me that bottle of wine.”
Amber obliged and Lottie drank some and passed it over. I pretended to drink, not letting it near my lips. I just couldn’t share. And anyway, I already felt a bit fuzzy from the wine I’d had at Jane’s, from a nice, safe glass.
“It’s so cold,” I said, to cover my lack of drinking, “that it is scientifically impossible for me to unclench my buttocks right now.”
Amber and Lottie cracked up. “That’s sophistication, sister.”
“Don’t pretend your arse cheeks aren’t hiked together with freezingness right now.”
“Oh, mine are so tight, I could crack walnuts between them,” Lottie said, and we laughed again. We bobbed between side-streets, dodging from lamplight glow to lamplight glow, the wine disappearing from the bottle.
Jane launched into some monologue about Joel’s set list. We listened dutifully without really listening until she said, “Guy talks about you a lot, Evie.”
I almost stopped walking. If I was a rabbit, my ears would’ve shot right up. If I was a meerkat, I would’ve rocked up onto my hind legs. Lottie and Amber groaned before I could reply.
“Aww, Jane, don’t tell her stuff like that,” Lottie said.
“Yeah, she’s managed to go two whole hours without bringing him up.”
“Shut up.” I turned to Jane and tried to keep my voice casual. “Oh, really? What does he say?”
I thought I sounded disinterested and vague but the other two groaned louder. “Oh, man, now you’ve done it.”
“What did he say, Jane?” Amber said, in a high squeaky voice. “Can you tell me again? Can you write it down? What do you think of this full-stop he used? What does it mean? Do you think he likes me?”
I thumped her on the head with the empty Coke/wine bottle. “Shut it. I’m not that bad.”
“Yes you are.”
“Well, maybe I am. But he makes me that way.”
Jane watched us with a puzzled face. “What’s going on?”
Amber flailed her arms dramatically. “You mean Evie hasn’t told you about her romantic game of conkers?”
“Followed by an all-out communication blackout,” Lottie added.
“Or the almost-kiss at the house party?” Amber asked.
“Followed by an all-out communication blackout,” Lottie added.
“Or the unnecessary deviations from his walking-home routes so he can sit on a fence with her and chat about nothing.”
“Followed by an all-out communication blackout.”
“Or how he slags off every guy she considers dating…”
“Before an all-out communication blackout.”
I hit them both on the head with the empty bottle.
“Oww.”
“If you were trying to make a point,” I said, “you could’ve stopped a while back.”
“Hang on,” Jane said. “Stuff’s been going on with you and Guy?”
Why did I like hearing his name so much? Why was I so pathetic?
“Have you not been listening?” Amber asked. “He’s been so changeable with her I’m surprised he’s not been accepted to Hogwarts for his transfiguration skills.”
We exited an alleyway and came out on the road next to college. Cheap cars were parked everywhere, students pouring out of them, heading towards the light of our school.
“He does talk about her a lot,” Jane insisted.
“I’m sure he does,” Amber said. “But that doesn’t make him a nice guy.”
“I am under no illusions that he’s a nice guy,” I protested.
“Then why are you so hung up on him?”
“I’m not…well…I can’t help it. And I told you, enough’s enough. I’m not messaging him any more. He is dead to me.”
Jane walked up close to me and whispered like we were old friends. Which we were, I guess. “Well, you’re certainly not dead to him.”