“And?”
“I’m saying that if he was more, you know, smaller he’d be more my type, got it?”
“Wow,” I say.
“What?”
“Just wow,” I say.
It doesn’t seem to cross Chloe’s mind for a moment that her judging boys based on their size might piss me off a little bit. And this just pisses me off more. Especially now I’ve got the whole Leo thing on my mind. It reminds me that looks, body shape, and size are what matter to most people. I don’t stand a chance. Not with Leo. Not with anyone probably. And Chloe doesn’t get that—how could she? The world of boyfriends and dating: it’s all there for her taking. All the pop songs we listen to about gorgeousness and perfection and love at first sight and being sexy on the dance floor—they’re written for her. She can be a part of that world. Not me. I don’t belong there. Never will. And, thanks to being a strident feminist, I used to be totally fine with that. But now with Leo…
“Seriously, though,” she says, “you OK? You’ve been… weird since this morning.”
“Weird? Weird how?” I say, weirdly.
She leans back in her chair and looks me up and down as I try to look anywhere but in her direction. I do not want her to know about my Leo thing. It’s a hopeless, pathetic lost cause. I know that, but the last thing I need is to be told that by Chloe.
“Guilty-weird,” she says, “and maybe a little bit creepy-weird.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Chloe,” I babble. “I’m just, y’know, getting on with my Thursday. Feeling all Thursday-ey, I suppose. I mean, Thursday’s a weird day, isn’t it? It’s neither one thing nor the other. Friday’s got that Friday feeling, and the weekend’s the weekend, right? Monday and Tuesday have the fresh, beginning-of-the-week vibe going on, Wednesday’s the hill of the week, then you get past that and you know things are picking up. I mean, it’s all pedal to the metal to the weekend, right! Except then you’ve gotta get through the buzzkill dullard that is Thursday. So, you know, if I’m being weird, then that’s all it is. I’m lost in the half-baked cloudy crap of the nothing that is Thursday.”
She laughs. “OK, now you’re just being normal Pig-weird again. That’s fine,” and she carries on with the copying.
But, with Chloe thrown off the scent, my mind drifts back to Leo. And suddenly—without my permission—it concocts a Leo-based daydream.
He’s onstage at a big comedy club, bringing the house down, and at the end of his set he introduces me as the next amazing act. I smile as I pass him and grab the mic.
Stop! This is tragic and ludicrous.
I snap myself out of my imagination and get back to dividing fractions, knowing that whatever I don’t get done in the lesson I’ll just have to finish as homework tonight. But it’s only so long before my brain tires of reality and slips back into the warm embrace of the unreal again.
This pattern repeats itself all day. Every time my brain is left to its own devices, it delves back into the daydream, each time making edits and improvements.
In English, daydream-Leo winks at me, having spent longer introducing me than on his own set.
Stop it.
Instead of concentrating on faking parental letters to get five schoolmates out of PE in the afternoon (my ability to fake grown-up penmanship regularly earns me two quid a letter), the daydream fills my mind again, and the audience chants for me before I come onstage, with Leo longingly reaching for my hand as I pass him.
Stop it!
I say goodbye to Chloe and Kas and head off to pick up Noah from after-school club. But the daydream gets more detailed and enjoyable with each step, and now has the beginnings of an elaborate subplot involving various famous comedians all begging me to be the next host of SNL.
By the time I’ve picked up Noah, I’m being presented with an award for Best Comedy Newcomer by Leo morphed into MC. As I come onstage, he holds my hands and we kiss for ages to thunderous applause from the audience, before I have them all in stitches with my first joke.
Seriously—just stop it! I really try to will myself as I indulge in this final version while walking Noah home. All the while, Noah does his best to yank me back to his own twisted version of reality by firing his nonsensical questions at me.
“Why do dogs not wear shoes?
“Why don’t bald babies wear wigs?
“Can Jesus fly? And does he live with Santa?”
And on and on.
My annoyance with him at least makes me feel less guilty about dragging him a slightly longer way home, that happens to pass by Leo’s front door.
I only know it’s Leo’s front door because me and the girls almost gatecrashed his party there last year when it got out to everyone that his parents were away and it was an open house. When we got there though, it was really quiet. So, like a spangly, crop-top-wearing James Bond, Chloe led the way as we stealthily crept up to Leo’s window. Our adrenaline-fueled giggles were soon dampened as through it we could just see Leo and a handful of his friends sitting around a table, playing poker. Not even strip poker, just poker. Or it could have been any card game, I suppose. They might have been playing Snap for all I know.
Chloe swore a lot and called them all “a bunch of dullard fun-sponges,” and we all stomped off back to hers to play Scrabble. Which, yes, OK, sounds as lame as Snap, but at least it was our own version called Blue Scrabble, which is basically Scrabble, but you can only put down rude words. I remember laughing uncontrollably as Kas tried to convince us that in the right context her word “gazebo” could be extremely filthy. So actually it turned out to be a pretty good night.
And, now I think back on it, I find it so cute and classy that Leo could have yet didn’t throw the big, clichéd, wild teen party. But at the time it wasn’t quite the high-school, rock-and-roll, life-changing evening we, or at least Chloe, had hoped for.
Anyway, that’s why I’ve been here before. Not because of some seedy stalker intentions. They’re new to today.
And it’s only now that I notice that this is a much nicer road than the one we live on. But then this is Leo—of course he’d live in a road where people don’t have their Christmas lights up all year round, a road where stolen, wheel-less bikes aren’t left in bushes, a road that you can confidently walk down without being called a “skank” by an eight-year-old sitting on a vandalized postbox.
“But why are we going this way?” Noah moans.
“It’s a short cut,” I say.
“What’s a shot gut?”
“It just means it’s quicker, OK?”
“My legs hurt. They feel heavy,” he says, reaching down to grab and raise each knee at every step.
“Look, I’ll take your bags, all right?”
He hands me his huge assortment of bookbags and rucksacks stuffed with the soft toys and plastic figures he insists on taking into school every day, and stacks of today’s “drawings” which will be crap as always yet Mum will stick them on the fridge anyway, and a library-load of books we’re supposed to read with him before tomorrow. Like that’s gonna happen.
And now that I’m laden down, sweaty and panting, like a knackered old bag lady, I’m beginning to regret my decision to walk home via Leo’s house, but here we are all the same. Luckily, he’s nowhere to be seen. I mean, it’s not like I’d talk to him even if I did see him.