I"m steaming mad about what happened with Stu, but I don"t know what to do about it. Tell Kaz that I went looking for trouble and got burned? For starters, I don"t think I"ve quite been forgiven for the Lauren strop. See you back on the hill is not the friendliest text in the world and my picture of a star-nosed mole didn"t even get a response. Plus Kaz is hardly likely to be tea and sympathy after all that shouting I did last night on the matter of her ex...
She might be more understanding if I told her the truth that I have been totally lying to myself about being over Stu but we all know that"s not going to happen.
From here I can see Lee, Parvati, Kaz and Lauren on the rugs, and Dongle, Anna and Owen coming back from wherever they"ve been. I should be there, with them, not standing here watching. How did I get here? So far away from the people I want to be with.
I pull my phone from my pocket and delete the missed call from Stu and the text he sent that I haven"t read. I might have deleted his name from my contacts list, but I still recognize his number one of three that I know off by heart. I open up my list and dither between "L" and "K".
Then I dial.
"I need a hug." My voice wobbles as I try and keep it together. I don"t cry.
KAZ.
Lee gets up as Owen goes to sit down with a "I"m not avoiding you".
Owen"s "That"s not what it looks like" is easier to catch, although no one but me seems to notice. Not even Lee. I try and catch Owen"s eye, but he"s looking away up the hill, watching his boyfriend walk away.
His expression is one I recognize.
Owen is looking at Lee the way I"ve been looking at Tom: as if he is the one thing in the world that he can"t have.
RUBY.
As Lee gets closer I can see he"s caught the sun across the tops of his cheeks and his freckles are blurring together. He pulls me into his bony chest, arms warm and safe around me and I bury my face in his vest and breathe there quietly, letting it out before it turns into tears. When I fight with my parents about school, when Callum winds me up about things in the news or when Ed dropped me on my face during a piggy-back race and broke my nose it has always been Lee who"s there to put me back together. Guess I"m going to have to learn how to do this myself once he"s gone.
"It"s all right, Ruby," he murmurs, not asking me anything, letting me be whatever it is I want to be, even if all I want is to be sad. We stay like this until I feel I can talk again. I don"t tell him about Stu, or how upset I am with Kaz. Instead, I ask about him and Owen, thinking of the hug I saw last night, wanting to hear something nice about someone else"s life now everything in mine is going to s.h.i.t. Lee tenses slightly, but he"s smiling when he says he hasn"t seen much of Owen, who"s been "off on a mission to sweat in as many crowds as possible".
"Don"t you want to see any of the bands?"
Lee shrugs pink shoulders and fiddles with his watch. "Not that fussed. This weekend is about more than the music."
"I came here to share it with my best mate and look how well that"s turned out."
Lee looks at me for a moment, measuring how much I won"t like what he"s planning on saying. "Ruby. You"re acting like a d.i.c.k about Lauren. Really you are. She"s harmless."
"So say you. How would you feel if Owen was hanging out with some guy who kept telling him how awesome he was at guitar, how buff he was and what great taste he has in music?"
I think I"m making a good point, but Lee looks nonplussed. "Boyfriends aren"t for sharesies. But the same does not go for friends even the ones you love best."
"Why not?" It"s out before I can stop it. "How come I have to share everyone I love?"
"Everyone?"
"I have to share you with your wanderl.u.s.t. I have to share Kaz with Lauren. I have to share Stu with every girl in the whole of the rest of the world."
"You didn"t love St-"
"That"s not the point!" I"m being unreasonable, but I can"t help it. "I want to be enough for someone, all right? Enough for you to stay in the stupid f.u.c.king country, enough for Kaz not to need Lauren, enough for Stu to stay faithful!"
"I don"t know what-"
"I just want to be good enough for a change for anyone." I"d even settle for it to be my parents. Tears are threatening to flood my eyes, but I refuse to let them.
"Let"s go back to the others," Lee says quietly. "You need to talk to Kaz."
"Because talking to you made me feel so great." It"s a mean thing to say and I deserve the look I get.
"Whatever you think that was, it was not you talking to me. It was you venting. I"m not Kaz. I"m not Stu." He steps closer, forcing me to look him in the eyes. "You are my little sister, and no matter how important you are to me, you can"t be "enough" for me to pa.s.s up on a chance to travel the world. I don"t believe you want it to be any different, no matter how hormonal you"re being."
I stare at the floor. The toe of my boot is inches away from Lee"s left foot and I edge it forwards, gently kicking my foot against his. "Such a b.l.o.o.d.y know-it-all," I mutter and he swings an arm around me, pulling me back down the hill and whispering, "I"m going to miss you too, Rubik"s p.u.b.e."
I will not miss all his stupid nicknames.
KAZ.
Lauren has insisted that she can braid my hair to look just like the girl in one of the series of street-style pictures posted on the Festblog feed. I hadn"t realized that by commenting how good that style looked I was asking to model it myself. Mostly I prefer to wear my hair down.
There"s no talking Lauren out of something.
Suppressing a wince at how tightly she"s pulling on my scalp, I think how odd it is to be the one having her hair done. In junior school you were either a plaiter or a plaitee and I was always the former, and (since my previous school was even less diverse than Flickers) I was also subject to a lovely bit of racism when one girl told me that no one knew how to make my weird hair look good. The upside is that I"m pretty good at hairdressing and when Ruby had the notion to cut all her hair off, I was the one she asked to do it. Despite the fact that she hates having her hair short, it"s not because it looks bad. Actually, when I catch sight of her walking towards us, tucked neatly in the crook of Lee"s elbow, I think how good her hair"s looking now it"s grown out slightly.
I feel the tug and twist as Lauren plaits the remaining section of hair, using the last of the spare hair ties that we"ve cobbled together between Anna, Lauren and Dongle (who pretends they"re Anna"s spares even though I saw him tie his hair back at camp when he brushed his teeth). I turn round and all three of them give me the thumbs up.
RUBY.
Whatever catharsis there was in my chat with Lee fell away at the sight of Lauren doing Kaz"s hair. That"s a best mate"s job, surely?
You don"t get to own her.
But there"s a horrible little part of me that thinks I do get to own her, because Kaz is mine. Isn"t the point of being someone"s best mate the fact that you"re the one who brings out the best in them? It"s not a t.i.tle given to you because you"re the person they prefer to everyone else, the way little kids say that purple is their best or Marmite or their bike. It"s about how you make them feel their best.
That"s what Kaz does for me, anyway.
"You look aces," I say as I approach, nudging Kaz with my boot since my feet are the only part of me capable of expressing affection. It seems to work Kaz is beaming up at me like we never even fell out.
"So does your left arm." Kaz"s reflex response to a compliment is to pay it back straightaway, but she lightly runs her fingers over her head and adds, "The hair was Lauren"s idea."
Of course it was. Lauren"s saying something, but I"m thinking of all the times I"ve said how awesome Kaz would look with her hair back and how sad I am that she can"t remember a single one of them.
"Good work, Lauren." And because I can"t think of a meaningful way to say something nice, I follow this up with, "You should go pro."
At which she snort-laughs. "Yeah. Thanks."
Seriously. And I"m the one being a d.i.c.k?
"Your "tattoo"" her use of air quotes makes me want to snap her fingers "is, er, nice?"
The way her voice rises is not a compliment.
"Yes. It is nice. Not what I"d have inked for ever, but it"s not bad."
"You"d seriously get a tattoo?"
Kaz is completely oblivious to the fact that Lauren"s words were dipped in disapproval and rolled around in a bed of contempt when she explains, "Ruby"s going to be a tattoo artist."
""Artist"," Lauren says, using air quotes again. I regret not snapping her fingers the first time.
"Yes, an artist, as in body art," I say.
"OK..." She eyeb.a.l.l.s me. "If that"s what you want to call it."
Kaz is looking uncomfortable. She"s been caught up in these conversations with me before, with my art teacher, with Callum, with my parents with Tom. I guess it"s not surprising that his bland new girlfriend agrees with him.
"I call it art, because that"s what it is." My voice is unintentionally loud and Lee looks up, sees who I"m talking to and shakes his head at me. Stung, I raise my voice to explain for his and the others" benefit. "Apparently Lauren doesn"t think tattoos can be art."
"Because they can"t," she mutters.
"How can you say that? Who are you to define what someone else calls art?"
"You"re trying to define what I mean by art, aren"t you? Stretching it to include tattoos."
My brain skips a beat. This does sound like what I"m doing, but...
Lauren shrugs. "Whatever. It"s hardly like it matters what I think anyway." She looks at the time on her watch. "Doesn"t the signing start soon?"
In one short conversation, Lauren has managed to hate on my tattoo, question the importance of something I really care about and dismiss me for caring enough to want to convince her. Now she"s hauling Kaz up from the rug, saying a cheery farewell to Lee and the others and hooking her arm in Kaz"s.
I hate her.
22 * LOVE IS A KNIFE
RUBY.
When I saw the screen earlier, the thought of queuing up to meet Adam Wexler nearly melted my mind, let alone my pants. Now, trudging back from the toilets after washing the dried ink from my arm, I can"t even summon up the kind of excitement I feel when I wear a new T-shirt for the first time. Kaz broke the seal when she let Lauren in and now all the colour"s drained out of my mood and as I turn greyer, Kaz grows brighter. I get close to the source of the sunshine as Lauren"s telling Kaz she could totally get a kiss on the cheek from Adam Wexter.
"Adam Wexler," I say with more force than necessary as I join Lauren and Kaz in the queue.
"Wexter, Wexler, Dexter, whatever," Lauren sings. "He won"t be able to resist this." And she frames Kaz"s face with her hands Vogue-style, but instead of making some self-deprecating comment, Kaz is totally into it, sucking her cheeks in and pouting/giggling.
How come Kaz is deaf to all the nice things I say about her, but hears them loud and clear when they come out of Lauren"s mouth?
"Pose, pose..." There"s a frozen moment when Lauren clicks a selfie of her and Kaz. She does not ask me to get involved, because as I appear to be the only one who"s noticed she doesn"t give a s.h.i.t about anything I do. They look at the screen and just as Kaz wrinkles her nose at the picture of herself, Lauren says, "Smokin", Kaz. They should name you a fire hazard."
G.o.d. Who says stuff like that?
And Kaz blushes like she believes it. The last time I told her she looked good in a photo, she declared she had an extra chin and deleted it from my phone, as she does almost all my favourite photos of her. If Kaz goes missing tomorrow, it"ll be this one of her and Lauren that the police will plaster all over the papers.
"Doesn"t she look good, Ruby?" Lauren shoves the stupid thing under my nose and I nod, barely looking.
"No better than usual." Which I only realize sounds catty once I"ve said it. I mean that Kaz usually looks that good, but that"s not how it sounds. Lauren gives me a look and Kaz reaches for the phone to delete the picture out of habit, but Lauren s.n.a.t.c.hes it away.
"Doesn"t my mate look hot?"
My mate.