“Oh my God!”
“You’re a witch!” Kim declared with genuine excitement. “Seriously, how did you know?”
Jessica shrugged again. “I’ve just read a few books, that’s all. I can’t chart or anything, not yet.”
We all stared in amazement at this glittering new person in our lives, tingling with the newness of her. Jessica had caused quite a stir in her first week—winning the unofficial Hottest Girl of the Year competition the boys always ran in September. But she seemed uninterested in her celebrity and had latched on to us after I invited her to have lunch on her first day. I felt a swell of pride she’d picked our group, alongside a deep jealousy that I hadn’t made the Hot Girl short list.
“Is Sagittarius compatible with Aries?” Kim asked, without needing to tell us Matt was an Aries.
“Oh yes, they’re very good together. Usually start as friends first.”
“You see!” Amy clapped Kim on the back. “This is why Operation Casual is such a good idea. You two will become friends over our super casual milkshakes today and it will become something beautiful.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course. Though,” Amy picked up her phone. “We need to get a move on if we want to shop beforehand. It’s almost twelve.”
“But my fringe...”
“Is perfect. Come on.”
* * *
Once we stepped out into the autumnal sunshine, we fell into two pairs. Amy and Kim linked arms up front, while Jessica and I dawdled behind. She was quiet beside me, hiding behind her hair sheet, while I asked her more about being a Capricorn. She paused for a second, her arms around her chest.
“Are you OK?”
“Hmm, yes.”
“Are you sure?”
She hesitated, and let out a small sigh, then granted me eye contact. “It’s just...is what I’m wearing OK?”
“What?”
In my fog of teen self-absorption, I hadn’t noticed that Jessica hadn’t yet taken off her denim jacket. “Well, it’s just... I didn’t know what the ‘casual’ dress code meant. I’m scared I look like a slut.” She sighed, flinging her jacket open to reveal her outfit.
“OK, you look amazing.” This was the first time I witnessed Jessica’s ability to curate a look—any look, on demand, even with no money. She’d paired dark jeans with a red low-cut tunic top, hanging almost like a dress, the sexiness of the red balanced out by the casualness of the denim jacket. A pang of envy throbbed through me. I instantly hated my own outfit, with my stupid baggy jeans trying to be cool, and long sleeves to cover my scars. I wanted to shed my body and step into hers.
“You sure I don’t look slutty?”
“What? No. Where’d you get that from?”
She shook her head. “I... Just. Back in Guildford, just as my Dad fucked off with his new girlfriend, some of the girls weren’t very nice. Not to me, anyway.” She shrugged. “They called me a slut one week and then a geek the next when I turned up at a fancy dress party dressed as Hermione.”
I pulled a face. “They sound like bitches.”
“They were.”
“You don’t have to worry about stuff like that with us,” I reassured her. “We’re not like that. Well...unless you came to a party dressed as a slutty Hermione, but I’d only be angry because that isn’t true to the books.”
Jessica laughed and we grinned at one another. Something glowing and growing between us. Then Kim yelled at us from outside the entrance to the shopping center.
“Come on, guys, by the time we get there Matt won’t even be an Aries anymore!”
* * *
“OK, so do I look more casual if I slurp from the front of my mouth? Or the side?” Kim positioned her striped straw into her heavily lipsticked lips.
Only Amy took the question seriously. “From the side of your mouth initially,” she said, nodding. “But then, once you start talking to him, move it to the front of your mouth.”
“OK, so like this?”
Jessica and I shared another look while Kim trialed her sucking technique. To be honest, it was hard to taste my milkshake over the cloud of fumes congregating above our booth. We all wore at least four different kinds of perfume, spritzed from Boots testers up various parts of our inner arms, looking for our “signature scent.” We all jumped whenever anyone pushed through into McDonald’s, then giggled. The manager shot us dirty looks. It had not gone unnoticed that we’d made our four milkshakes last over an hour. Matt was late. “By about twenty minutes,” Kim said, making me quite certain she really should be served a restraining order. The doors swung open and she let out a doglike squeak. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God, it’s HIM. Be casual, eyes down.”
I was kind of deliriously excited by the whole plan. I had literally no skin in the game, as that particular gang of boys were about as sexually enticing to me as a bunch of rats wearing human clothes. Since I’d got sick, my sexual awakening had been more like waking up from a series of afternoon naps—where you sleep too long, and wake up confused about what time it is, and still feel really exhausted. Sometimes I felt no pull to any guys at all, and quietly wondered if I was a lesbian, or a potato, the only two options available on the current agreed spectrum. Other times, I was feverishly horny, yet the source of my crushes were unequivocally unreciprocated, maybe out of self-protection. I’d narrowed my two options down to Francesco, a very good-looking Italian boy in the lower sixth; and Leonardo DiCaprio. I was slightly worried Leo would be put off by my scars though.
The boys ordered their shakes and wandered away from the counter, so I waved at Eric from my chemistry class, and said, “Hey, Eric.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Kim whispered.
The boys took in the girl-shaped contents of our booth, silently nodded to one another, and made their way over.
“You all right?” Kim started manically giggling, and Amy elbowed her.
“Room for us?” Eric gestured with his head.
“Sure!”
We all budged up for them. They too had their own orbit of combined synthetic scent. As they crammed themselves in, their smell cloud and ours combined, and it was so overwhelming I’m surprised it didn’t start its own weather system.
“Hey, do you guys know Jessica?” I asked.
The boys used this as an opportunity to look her up and down, pretending they didn’t know she was the Hottest Girl of the Year.
“You’re new, right?” Sean asked with faux naivety. He was Eric’s best mate. A very short boy, with chronic acne, who managed to dodge the inevitable bullying by being immensely good at football.