What’s Up With Jody Barton?, page 10
And it’s all because of ‘A Boy Named Sue.’
I think it’s my least favourite song in the world.
It was playing in the cafe when I went to find Jolene.
‘Go and have a chat with her,’ my mum had pleaded. ‘She always listens to you. It’s because you’re twins. I know you scrap like a couple of alley cats, but, at the end of the day, there’s nothing stronger than the bond between twins, is there? You’ll cheer her up. I know you will.’
I sank my chin into my hands and blew the air out of my cheeks. It made a puh sound. Just like the sound that Liam’s mum had made on the phone when I’d spoken to her exactly one week before. And back then I’d felt
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
. . . because I was speaking to Liam Mackie’s mum and because she was going to tell Liam Mackie I’d called and because Liam Mackie knew that I actually existed.
And now I just felt sick. A lot can change in a week.
But I went down to find Jolene anyway – partly just to get away from my mum. Like I said before, it isn’t easy telling lies to someone who views the world through eyes identical to your own. Then again, sometimes it isn’t easy telling the truth either.
Downstairs in the cafe, my dad was flipping burgers and singing along to a Johnny Cash song which he’d turned right up so that it was making the speakers rattle. It was that Stupid Record. The one I don’t like. Nobody else seemed bothered by it. The old ladies, Vee and Doreen, were clapping their hands and chair-dancing and Whispering Bob Harris was sound asleep and snoring. I looked around for Jolene, but she wasn’t there. Plenty of other people were though. The crowd of foreign workmen had disappeared, but the cafe was still busy because a group of cyclists had taken their table. I could tell they were cyclists because they were wearing Lycra shorts even though it was cold enough outside to snow, and under the table were cycle helmets, water bottles and energy drinks. They were also speaking way too loudly in posh Polo-shirt voices. As I looked over, I heard one of them say, ‘Crispian, should we really be eating these Champion Chunky wotyoucallits? There’s so much grease on these sausages I could lube my entire bike chain.’
And Crispian, a skinny man who had a big bushy beard but hardly any essential head hair, said, ‘It may look ghastly, Rufus, but we’ve got to keep the calories on board if we’re going to manage thirty miles by sunset. Especially in this weather. Just get it down you and try not to think about it.’
I frowned and shot a quick glance back at my dad. He was still flipping his burgers and singing in a comedy voice about a boy named Sue. I was glad he hadn’t heard what the cyclists had said because he’s proud of his breakfasts. Suddenly annoyed, I picked up a squeezy sauce bottle from an empty table and plonked it down in the middle of them.
‘There’s a truckload of calories in ketchup,’ I said. ‘Help yourself.’
The Lycra-wearing cyclists all looked up at me to nod their thanks. And then they caught sight of my fighter’s face and quickly looked away again. For the first time since Liam punched me, I smiled. And, even though it was only a lame little smile that probably didn’t even stay on my face for more than half a second, it was still a step forward. I felt different having a puffed-up purple eye. But I think I felt OK.
Just so long as nobody asked me how I got it.
‘Oi, Sulky Sue,’ bellowed my dad. ‘What’s up with your face?’
I groaned out loud. In the furthest corner of the cafe, I was aware that Natalie Snell and Latasha Joy – who’d been about to leave – had slammed themselves back down in their seats and were staring my way with open-mouthed faces of pure devil delight. I gave another inner groan. Natalie Snell shouted, ‘Nice shiner, Jody. Did you have a bust-up with your calculator or somethink?’
And Latasha Joy stuck out her torpedoes and said, ‘Yeah, did you and Chatty have a lover’s tiff over who gets to use the pertractor?’
I felt my face sting – almost as if I’d been thumped all over again. Why was Latasha Joy dragging Chatty Chong into all of this? What had he done? What had he ever done? And why was she using words like lover’s tiff? She had no right to say we’d had a lover’s tiff! I didn’t like what she was suggesting one little bit. Just like I didn’t like Latasha Joy one little bit. Or Natalie Stupid Snell. They were a couple of fungus-faced miserable old hog-heads and it was high time somebody just came straight out with it and told them.
I cleared my throat. And then I muttered, ‘It’s not a pertractor – it’s a protractor.’
Natalie Snell and Latasha Joy started laughing their arses off.
‘Jody, get over here!’
It was my dad again. He’d turned off the stereo and was waiting for me behind the counter with his thumbs hooked into his belt-loops. I felt my heart sink. He only ever does this thumb-hooking thing when he’s seriously miffed about something or when he’s line-dancing. He wasn’t line-dancing now. He was looking blatantly and seriously miffed. I took my quadrillionth deep breath of the day and walked over to him.
My dad unhooked one thumb, jerked it in the direction of my right eye and said, ‘What’s all this?’
I blew the air out of my cheeks. It made that puh sound again. And then, because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say, I said, ‘I dunno, Dad. But Lady Gaga is rocking this look as well so I thought I’d copy her.’
My dad didn’t laugh. ‘Don’t be smart, sunshine. How did you get it?’
‘Oh, Daaaaad,’ I said. ‘Do we have to go into all of this?’
‘Yep,’ said my dad.
‘But we’re in a public place,’ I protested.
‘Oh, don’t mind us, love,’ interrupted a voice from a table close by. ‘We aren’t listening, are we, Vee?’
My dad and I both turned. The old lady called Doreen was smiling at me with a wide-eyed look of wrinkly innocence. Meanwhile, her friend Vee had placed both her hands over her ears to show me how much she blatantly wasn’t listening.
‘Not a single word,’ said Vee. And, then she winked and added, ‘And even if we were, I can assure you that we are both the very models of discretion.’
‘Yeah,’ added Doreen, ‘you can open up to us all you like. We aren’t shocked by anything, are we, Vee? Nothing at all!’
And then she winked at Vee and they both started laughing their arses off even harder than Natalie Snell and Latasha Joy had done.
On the table behind them, Whispering Bob Harris suddenly twitched in his seat, opened his eyes and shouted, ‘Speak up, son. I can’t hear you!’
My dad put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I tell you what, kid. We’ll talk about this later.’
And even though my dad sometimes gets mistaken for a bit of a thug just because he’s got a big bald head and because he’s almost always wearing a Spurs football shirt and grumbling at everyone, it’s the tiny little things like this which make him a legend.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I muttered.
My dad looked me straight in the eye. ‘I just don’t want to find out that you’ve been up to no good.’
I held my dad’s gaze and didn’t move. I couldn’t. The slightest flicker of movement would have caused my face to crack.
Then he said, ‘Now go and make yourself useful and have a word with your sister. She’s out in the backyard being all emotional. Something to do with this Liam she’s been hanging around with. I couldn’t get any sense out of her at all. But you probably can. See if you can put a smile back on her face.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ I muttered, but I started to go anyway.
‘Oh, and, Sulky Sue,’ shouted my dad, ‘no more fighting!’
I paused. And then I turned round, took a deep breath and said, ‘Don’t call me Sue, Dad. It really narks my nerves.’
For a split second, my dad looked surprised, but then he stopped looking surprised and started laughing his arse off.
‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘I’m being serious.’
My dad immediately stopped laughing and tried to look apologetic. He wasn’t making a very good job of it though, because his eyes were twinkling way too much and his mouth was twitching at the corners. ‘Sorry, son,’ he said. ‘You know I’m only trying to help. It’s a rough old world out there and I’m trying to toughen you up a bit. Stop you from being a Big Girl’s Blouse. And it’s working innit because you’re standing up for yourself. Life ain’t a bed of roses for a bloke named Sulky Sue, is it?’
And then he leaned over to the stereo and pressed the POWER button, instantly filling the cafe with Johnny Cash’s deep dark terrifying voice all over again.
I stood perfectly still for a moment. My heart was thumping so hard that it sounded like part of that Stupid Record.
Boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom.
And then, just like it was happening to someone else, I saw myself walk over to the stereo, press the EJECT button, take out the Johnny Cash CD and push it through the flap of the food-waste bin.
‘Don’t call me Sulky Sue,’ I said. ‘And never EVER call me a Big Girl’s Blouse.’
My dad looked over at the bin and frowned and then he looked at me. My heart was still going boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom.
And, even though I wanted to turn round and run like the clappers, I stared straight at my dad and dared him to have a pop at me.
My dad’s face had gone red. He looked over at the bin again and then he lifted up his hand and scratched the back of his head. Finally, after what seemed like several perishing Ice Ages, he said, ‘You’ve just put Johnny in the rubbish bin! What the heck are you playing at?’
I swallowed hard, looked my dad right in the eye and said, ‘Call me a Big Girl’s Blouse ONE MORE TIME and it’ll be YOU in the rubbish bin.’ And then I felt sick and waited for my dad to go absolutely flipping mental.
But he just stared at me. And then he nodded. And then – to my utter relief and bewilderment – a smile spread across his face. ‘OK, son,’ he said. ‘Point taken. No more nicknames.’
‘Good,’ I whispered. It was as much as I could manage. My heart was still beating so hard that I could hardly breathe.
Still smiling, my dad raised his hand to his left eye and gave me a little salute. ‘Now do me a favour, my good man, and go and sort your sister out.’
I nodded silently and turned to leave. But I hadn’t even got as far as the door when I heard my dad’s voice ringing out proudly above all the clatter and chatter. He was talking to those two nosy old women.
‘D’you hear that? My boy is turning out to be a right proper geezer! There ain’t nothing Fairy Mary about that one, thank God!’
I stood there for a second with my hand frozen on the handle of the door. And then I forced myself back to life and stumbled out of the cafe.
Jolene was still sitting outside by the bins. I found her sitting cross-legged on a plastic garden chair and half hidden beneath a My Little Pony sleeping bag. This wasn’t a good sign. She’s had that sleeping bag since she was five and, even though it’s now way too small for her to actually fit inside, she still likes to hang on to it for Extreme Emotional Emergencies.
I pushed open the back door. She looked up to see who it was and then rolled her eyes and looked away. She’d clearly been crying. There were dried-up trickles of black mascara running down both her cheeks and it made her look like some scary singer in a death metal band. Even a few of her My Little Ponies now looked like they were wearing bad-ass eyeliner. I stood on the doorstep for a moment and considered doing a 180° turn. But then I forced myself forward and said, ‘You all right?’
Jolene looked back at me and rolled her eyes again. ‘What do you think, Sherlock?’
I put my thumbnail in my mouth and bit it. This was tricky. Not because I didn’t know the answer. I did. I knew exactly what I was thinking. It was this:
How much has Liam told you?
Do you hate me?
Are you going to hate me forever?
What is Dad going to say when he finds out?
Why oh why oh why did I kiss Liam Mackie?
. . . But I wasn’t prepared to share any of it. So instead I just shifted my thumbnail ever so slightly and muttered, ‘Sorry.’
Jolene shivered and pulled her sleeping bag tighter. ‘Yeah, well, I can do without your sympathy, thanks.’ And then she frowned and said, ‘What’s happened to your face?’
I frowned. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘Would I be asking if I did?’
Confused, I put my fingers up to my battered cheekbone and touched it. Even in the freezing February air, it still felt seriously sore. In fact, the swelling seemed to be getting worse. I could now actually see the fuzzy outline of my own right cheek through my slowly closing right eye. It’s not a part of me that I’ve ever been able to look at before. Not without a mirror anyway.
Jolene said, ‘So?’
I frowned again. Surely she knew? She must! Liam would have told her, wouldn’t he? But, then again, maybe he had told her and she was just putting me through some sort of lie-detector test. Maybe it was a twintuition trap?
Yeah, that was it.
She was checking out my honesty.
I shut my eyes and thought about my face and what had happened to it and why it had happened. And it brought me back to that same question, which was practically glued to the inside of my eyelids.
Why did I kiss Liam Mackie?
With my eyes still shut, I said, ‘I don’t know, Jolene. I just . . . I . . . I really don’t know. I got this feeling inside and . . . I shouldn’t have done it . . . but I did.’
I stood there and waited for her to start screaming.
She didn’t.
For the quintillionth time, I frowned and then I tried to open my eyes but my bad eye was stuck and wouldn’t budge. So, instead, I squinted at Jolene through my good eye and said, ‘I’m so very sorry. I really and truly am.’
Jolene looked at me with a strange expression on her face. And then she said, ‘Well that makes sense!’
‘Does it?’ My voice wobbled and a massive sensation of relief flooded over me. Finding someone who understands you at a time when you don’t even understand yourself probably feels a lot like being pulled out of the sea by a search-and-rescue helicopter.
‘Nope,’ said Jolene. ‘I was being sarcastic! I actually haven’t got the foggiest clue what you’re on about! And stop telling me you’re sorry, will you? The last thing I want right now is anyone’s stupid sympathy.’ Then she burst into tears.
Somewhere in a parallel universe, I felt myself plunge head first from a helicopter straight into the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean.
Jolene started crying louder. I put my thumbnail back between my teeth. I hadn’t heard her cry like that since The Black-Eyed Peas announced that they were having an indefinite career break. It was horrible to hear and it also made me feel as worthless as a worm.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I muttered.
‘Stop . . . sob . . . saying . . . you’re . . . sob . . . sorry,’ said Jolene.
‘Sorry,’ I said, and then I bit my lip.
Jolene put her face in her hands and continued to cry. ‘I’m not . . . sob . . . crying because I was . . . sob . . . in love . . . sob sob sob . . . or anything. I just don’t . . . sob . . . like being . . . sob hiccup . . . dumped.’
‘Ohhh,’ I said, and suddenly felt slightly less like a worm. ‘That’s a relief!’
Jolene dropped her hands and looked furious. ‘How exactly is that a relief?’
But before I could even answer, she added, ‘I’ve been humiliated, Jody! Humiliated and destroyed. And I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong. One second I’m going out with Liam and the next second I’m as dumped as a dodgy dishwasher. I’ve never been dumped before! It’s usually me that does the dumping.’
She stopped looking furious and started crying again. I stood there feeling useless. After another minute or two, she hiccupped a bit and sniffed a bit and said, ‘Did he say anything to you?’
I shivered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘While you were upstairs. Did Liam say anything about me? Did he tell you he was going to dump me?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘He must have said something,’ said Jolene.
‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘We didn’t talk about you.’ And then I shivered again.
Jolene shook her head. ‘I just don’t get it. Everything was OK until he went upstairs. And then he came down and left without even saying bye. I tried phoning him but he’d switched his phone off. And then a little while later I got this text.’
She fumbled about beneath her sleeping bag and pulled out her Shame Box. After fiddling about with it for a few seconds, she handed it to me.
I looked at it.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘He couldn’t even tell you himself?’
‘No,’ said Jolene. ‘I couldn’t get my head round it either. So I tried calling him again and then I got another text.’
She waggled her fingers to get her phone back. I gave it to her. After fiddling about with it for another few seconds, she handed it to me.
I looked at it.
And I continued to look at it.
Even though I’m better with numbers than I am with letters, I’m not a slow reader. If I’d wanted to, I could have handed that phone back in the time that it takes to blink. But the truth was that I needed something to stare at. I didn’t want Jolene to look me straight in the eye and see the disappointment I was feeling.
Because, only a couple of hours before, I’d thought Liam Mackie was beautiful. Properly. Perfectly. Beautiful. But, in fact, he’s just a spineless, lily-livered wimp.
