What’s Up With Jody Barton?, page 5
Liam said, ‘So how about I drop by straight after school? Be about fourish?’
‘Yes,’ I said. And then I remembered that Monday after school is always Maths Club. Normally I never miss it. In fact, me and Chatty Chong are Mrs Hamood’s Maths Club.
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘And don’t worry about your phone, – I’ll look after it.’
‘Cheers,’ said Liam. And then he paused and said, ‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Jo.’
‘See you tomorrow then, Jo,’ said Liam. And he rang off.
I held his phone in my hand, leaned back in my chair and thought about Liam’s voice. It was soft but slightly gruff. Confident but not cocky. Breezy. Boyish. Beautiful. Liam had a beautiful voice. Just like Jim Morrison.
I sat there for about an hour just thinking about that.
Finally, somewhere below, I heard footsteps and I knew that the time for thinking and dreaming was over. After all, thinking and dreaming can only get you so far in life. Actions are what really matter. And if you’re not in a position to take action or don’t dare to it’s best not to torture yourself.
I firmly pushed all thoughts of Liam and his beautiful face and his geometric cheekbones and his lovely voice out of my head. And then I stood up, poked my head into the hallway and shouted, ‘Jolene? Is that you?’
My sister’s voice floated up the stairs. ‘Well, it’s hardly Dad, is it? Can you feel the floor shaking?’ She clearly hadn’t cheered up.
‘Dad’s not that fat,’ I said defensively. ‘And, anyway, you might have been Mum. She’s due back from The Talon Salon about now. Anyway, come up here a moment, will you? I need to show you something.’
I waited. Jolene’s footsteps thumped upward. I took a deep breath and held it until she reached the top.
A moment later, Jolene plonked herself down on my bed and said, ‘So what’s up?’
I didn’t answer her straight away. I think I waited for about a second. And in that second, I could hear a voice in my head saying, ‘You really don’t have to do this! She doesn’t own him or anything. You do NOT have to do this!’
But I knew I did have to do it. Because it was the only thing to do.
And she’s my twin. And she spotted Liam first. And, to be perfectly honest, the whole situation was so complicated that it was making my brain melt.
It was a very long second.
And then I put the phone in Jolene’s hand and said, ‘His name is Liam. And he’s coming to the cafe at four o’clock tomorrow to get this back. And you’re going to be there to stun him with your full charm offensive when he does.’
One thing I’ve learned in maths is that it’s mostly about patterns. Right back as far as Reception class, I’ve been filling my head up with them. To begin with, it was easy patterns like 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . but then by the time I was in Year 4 I could do trickier ones like 8, 16, 24, 32 . . . And then when I got to high school Mrs Hamood introduced me to a whole load more of them. She taught me about square numbers and cube numbers and the Fibonacci sequence and Kaprekar’s sequence and Pascal’s triangle and Penrose’s tiling pattern, and I could go on and on talking like this forever because you can never really run out of patterns and sequences in maths. And, anyway, you can always have a go at making up a few of your own. Or, if you’re a daydreamer like me, you can do what I do and just draw pictures in your maths book until the lesson ends.
Interestingly, there is no logical pattern to prime numbers. As far as I can tell, primes appear along the number line completely at random. This is probably why I find them fascinating.
But patterns don’t just happen in maths. They happen in life too. All the time. In fact, my life pretty much follows one great big massive pattern. During the week, I get up at seven, have a shower and eat my breakfast, and then I brush my teeth and walk to school with Jolene. When I’m there, I follow a timetable, which is the same every single week, and then I come home and work for a couple of hours in the cafe and then I do whatever I like for the rest of the evening. Sometimes I might go to Maths Club – if it’s a Monday – or I might work on my project with Chatty Chong or I might hang out with Jolene at Brent Cross Shopping Centre or walk down to Kilburn Market and talk to the nice woman who sells me posters of River Phoenix and The Doors. And, even though my life might not seem fantastically spectacular, I almost never get bored. Because I like these recurring patterns. It means that everything in my world is ticking along nicely.
But after Liam left his phone in our cafe I started to behave a lot more randomly.
Normally, I don’t do much on Sunday evenings. There’s not really anything very interesting to do and there’s never anything much cop on telly. So usually I just stay in my room and play on my Xbox or go to Jolene’s room and play on hers. And sometimes, if we want to play each other but can’t be bothered to leave the comfort of our own individual rooms, we put on these hysterical wi-fi gaming helmets that my dad got cheap from Frosty Frank and we zap the crap out of each other that way.
But the other Sunday I didn’t do either of those things. After setting my sister up with the boy who had blown my mind, I just lay on my bed for about three hours and looked at my posters. And, even though Jolene barged into my room four times to challenge me to a game of Call of Duty, I didn’t budge. In the end, I told her I had a headache and, eventually, she took the hint and left me alone.
I didn’t have a headache though. I was just discovering what the word heartache meant.
And then on Monday everything went even more random. Jolene and I were walking to school and everything was fine until Natalie Snell and Latasha Joy rocked up and started walking with us. Natalie Snell is the hardest girl in my school and Latasha Joy thinks she’s it just because she’s got bigger bazookas than Dolly Parton.
I don’t like either of them.
And they don’t like me because I’m quiet and good at maths.
They like Jolene though because she’s crap at maths and good at netball. And, to be fair, everyone likes Jolene.
Natalie Snell said, ‘All riiiiiight twinny twin twinnies!’
Latasha Joy pushed her bazookas out and said, ‘What’s up?’
And Jolene suddenly acquired this fake gangster accent and said, ‘Heeeeyyyy, wassup, sisters?’
And I just sort of smiled and didn’t say anything because I didn’t really want them to be there.
Natalie Snell ignored me and said, ‘Been meaning to catch up with you, yeah, Joles. There’s this guy in my geography class that’s got the hots for you big time! Tyler Smith. D’you know him?’
Latasha Joy pushed her bazookas out and said, ‘He’s Nat’s cousin, innit.’
And Jolene laughed and said, ‘Flattered, yeah. But I ain’t interested. Soz.’
And I just kept walking and looked at my feet because I hate these kind of conversations.
Natalie Snell frowned. And then she said, ‘What’s wrong with Tyler?’
Latasha Joy said, ‘Yeah, wassup with him? You got a problem with his face or something?’
And Jolene said, ‘No! There’s nothing wrong with his face. Relaaax! I’m just well into someone else right now.’
And I sighed but nobody heard me because nobody was paying any attention to me.
Natalie Snell’s eyes went big and round and interested. ‘Who is it?’
Jolene said, ‘He’s called Liam. He doesn’t go to our school. He’s fitter than a McFitty biscuit.’
I cringed. Jolene commits really chronic word abuse sometimes.
Natalie Snell said, ‘Wow! So you’re saying he’s even buffer than my own blood relation, is it?’
Latasha Joy wiggled around behind her big bazookas and said, ‘Ain’t no bloke more nang than Nat’s cousin, is it?’
My crazy sister Jolene just laughed really casually as if she didn’t have a worry in the world and said, ‘I ain’t saying Tyler ain’t good-looking or nothing. Cos he blatantly is. But I just ain’t into him right now. Cos this Liam guy is raaaaaaaw!’
And then, after a nasty moment where I truly thought Jolene might get beaten to a pulp for disrespecting Natalie Snell’s blood relation, all three of them relaxed and started laughing and cackling and crowing on and on about how completely fit and buff and nang and raw Liam was.
And although I didn’t exactly disagree with them I couldn’t easily join in. And, anyway, I didn’t want to. It seemed a bit disrespectful and tasteless somehow.
In fact, I just wanted to get as far away from all three of them as I could.
So, for the first time in my entire life, I decided to break my Monday pattern and do something I’d never ever done before in my whole fifteen years and eleven months of existence – although that’s actually only three genuine birthdays, remember.
I decided to bunk off school.
I didn’t spend ages thinking it through. Actually, I didn’t even think it through at all. I just pulled Jolene back by her arm and said, ‘You know what – I don’t fancy going in today. But don’t say anything to Mum and Dad though, will you?’
Jolene looked shocked. Even Natalie and Latasha looked a bit surprised.
‘Why?’
‘I ain’t done my extended maths homework,’ I lied. ‘I don’t wanna get any grief from Mrs Hamood.’
Jolene frowned. ‘I didn’t even know we had any maths homework. You haven’t done any for me. Does that mean I’m going to get a load of grief as well?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This is extended maths homework. Only me and Chatty Chong had to do it.’ I was speaking at about a million miles per hour. I tend to do that when I’m lying.
Jolene laughed. ‘As if you’d get any grief from her! She totally loves you!’
I shrugged. ‘I just don’t feel like going in,’ I said. And then, without another word, I did a 180° turn and walked back towards Willesden High Road.
Above the noise of the buses and cars, I heard Jolene shout after me a couple of times – but I just kept right on walking. I needed to be on my own. This can happen occasionally when you’re a twin.
There was no way I was going home though. Because I knew my mum and dad would be in the cafe and that my mum would insist on dragging me over to the doctor’s surgery the very second I tried spinning her any sort of rubbish story about being sick or something.
(FYI, our family doctor is called Dr Rash and practically every time I’ve ever had to see him I’ve left the surgery with a little plastic bottle to wee in and a prescription for those pills that have to be inserted via the back door. To be honest, I’d rather just go to school.)
So I completely avoided Willesden High Road and carried on walking until I got to Gladstone Park and then I sat down on a bench and stared at the ducks.
Gladstone Park is nice. It’s a massive green space that touches the edges of Willesden Green and Neasden and Cricklewood – and that’s a really good thing because we don’t have many massive green spaces. To be honest, we don’t have many little ones either. The other good things about Gladstone Park are the hill in the middle of it, which gives you a really smart view of the whole of Wembley stadium – not just the arch – and the big duck pond on the top of the hill. The only bad thing about the park is that my school sometimes forces us to do cross-country running all the flipping way round it.
Luckily, Year 11 doesn’t have PE or games on a Monday so I was able to sit and stare at the ducks in total peace.
I couldn’t even hear any buses for once.
I’ve no idea how long I sat there. I gave the ducks my sandwiches. They were cheese and tomato and the ducks seemed to like them quite a lot. Especially the ones with the emerald-green heads. Then, after a while, I stood up and leaned against the pond railings so that I could watch the ducks push and shove each other out of the way to get to my shredded sarnies. And it was while I was doing this that I became aware of a really very weird sensation rolling around inside my head and in my belly. And it was this:
Yes. I was jealous of the ducks!
Because it suddenly occurred to me that being born a duck is a whole lot less complicated and a whole lot less stressful than being born a human being. Even for twin ducks. After all, the biggest thing they ever have to worry about is grabbing a piece of bread before any other duck does.
I bet they don’t ever get into a flap about love and loyalty and doing the right twinny thing. And I bet they don’t get themselves into a state because they can’t stop thinking about the wrong duck.
After thinking that, I didn’t want to look at them any more, because being jealous of a bunch of flipping ducks doesn’t make you feel that great about yourself, if I’m honest.
So I left the park and walked back towards Willesden High Road and this meant that I had to use the footbridge that crosses the train tracks by Dollis Hill tube station. And rather than walk straight across the footbridge like I normally do I did another random thing. I walked as far as the middle of the bridge and then I stopped. Don’t ask me why I stopped, because I don’t actually know. It was just another unpredictable act that followed no particular kind of pattern.
And then I stood there for about twenty-five minutes, with my chin resting on the top of the railing, and watched the tube trains coming and going beneath me. You can do this in my part of London. Because this far out of the centre the tube trains don’t actually travel through tubes.
And, even though I’ve always thought that trainspotters are a seriously weird bunch of people, I’m now wondering if, actually, they’re on to something very interesting. Because my twenty-five minutes on the footbridge were totally and utterly fascinating. And for a while I think I even forgot to feel messed up and confused about Liam.
Very quickly, I saw a strict pattern emerging. Firstly, a train would pull slowly out of Dollis Hill station and rumble away towards the West End. As it curved round a bend in the track, I could see that a few passengers were reading paperbacks and newspapers, but mostly they were just staring into space.
And then, about two or three minutes after I’d lost sight of that train, another one, on a parallel track and heading back from the West End, would crawl into Dollis Hill station and stop with a big hiss right beneath my feet. There were never many people on these trains either.
But the trains that interested me the most were the ones which passed by on a third piece of track set slightly over to one side. These were the high-speed trains on the Metropolitan line, and they whizzed through Dollis Hill station without even stopping. Every six minutes, the track began to rattle and hum, and seconds later a blur of red, white and blue metal raced by underneath me. I’ve got no way of knowing whether the passengers inside were reading newspapers or staring into space or whether there was actually a single person on board or not, because the trains were moving much too fast for me to take a look inside.
But I do know that I definitely wouldn’t want to get in the way.
Because those things could do some seriously nasty damage.
And that got me thinking about just how vitally important maths is. Because, without the careful sequencing of trains going in and out of Dollis Hill tube station, it’s fair to say that there would be total and utter carnage. But it also got me thinking about how vitally important and skilled and alert those train drivers have to be. Because they’ve got a serious amount of responsibility sitting on their shoulders. They’re the only ones who have the power to prevent a really catastrophic collision.
And all at once I realized that I absolutely, necessarily and categorically needed to stop giving this mysterious Liam ANY of my headspace at all.
In actual fact, I couldn’t even understand why I still was. It was like he had morphed into some kind of weird boomerang. I kept throwing him out of my brain and he kept flying straight back in again.
But I had to find a way of shutting him out of my head completely. Because even thinking about him was dangerous. Thinking about him made me want to be with him.
Just like Jolene wanted to be with him.
And if I didn’t back right off, me and her were inevitably going to wind up in a really ugly and hideous collision.
In fact, if I didn’t back right off, I was in serious danger of getting myself into something I couldn’t really cope with.
And, just like the tube-train drivers, I was the only person who had the power to prevent this from happening.
It was a big responsibility.
So I should have stayed right away from the cafe that afternoon. I should have gone to Maths Club like I normally do on Mondays and played lame games on the computer, which have names like Sonic the Hexagon or Super Mario Cartesian Co-ordinates, and helped little kids in Year 7 with their maths homework. But I couldn’t do any of that because I’d skipped off school. And as I was cold and a bit bored and as it had started to rain and as I had absolutely nothing else to do, I stayed out until 3 p.m. and then I went back home.
I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m not much good at skipping school.
My mum was behind the counter when I got back. She always is on Mondays. It’s my dad’s only day off, and every Monday afternoon he gets on the train with Frosty Frank and they travel all the way to Romford in Essex just to watch greyhounds race each other round a track. My dad reckons it’s like going to a gym but better. Because the greyhounds run much faster than he ever could and gambling is a much easier way to lose a few pounds.
Like I said before, my dad is a very funny man.
My mum gave me a massive smile and said, ‘You’re home early! Where’s your sister?’
And I said, ‘Maths Club was cancelled.’ And then I said, ‘I don’t flipping well know where she is. We might be twins, but that doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip.’
My mum said, ‘Oooh, what’s up with you?’ And then she put her hands behind her back to untie her apron and said, ‘Be an angel, will you? Now you’re here, you couldn’t just keep an eye on the cafe for me while I nip across the road and top my tan up?’
‘Oh, Mummm,’ I said.
