Page 3 of Don't You Forget About Me
I love your laugh. X
It was there, in Bic blue, an unexpected page footer. It was so casual, I’d almost missed it. Why didn’t he text me? (We’d exchanged numbers, in case pressing, Brontë-related questions arose.) I knew why. A direct message was unequivocal. This could be denied if necessary.
So it was mutual, this newfound obsession with the company of Lucas McCarthy. I’d never had a spark like this before, and certainly not with a male, whose skin, I’d noticed, was like the inside of a seashell.
I’d gone from not noticing Lucas ever to being consumed by noticing him constantly. I developed the sensory awareness of an apex predator: at any time I could tell you where Lucas was in the common room, without you ever seeing my eyes flicker toward him.
Eventually, I had printed shakily underneath:
I love yours too. X
I handed the folder back to Lucas at the end of the next lesson, our eyes darting guiltily towards each other and away again. When it was once more in my possession, that page had gone missing.
I didn’t know what falling love felt like, I’d never done it before. I discovered you recognise it easily when it arrives.
We found every excuse to revise, out of hours, and the weather meant we could use the excuse of meeting outdoors, in the Botanical Gardens.
We were going on dates, but the revision aids strewn around the grass provided a fig leaf. Truly, I could’ve hugged Mrs Pemberton.
At first, we talked incessantly, devouring information. His life in Dublin, our families, our plans for the future, favourite music, films, books. This dark, serious, laconic Irish boy was an ongoing surprise. He put nothing on show, you had to find it out for yourself: not the deadpan quick humour, not the good looks he could’ve worn conspicuously simply by walking tall, not the sharp intelligence. He was self-contained. By contrast, I felt uncontained.
When I spoke, he concentrated on me intently. Through Lucas’s fascination, I saw myself differently. I was worthy. I didn’t have to try so hard.
The third time we met, in about five days, Lucas leaned over to whisper something in my ear about a group nearby, and I shivered. It was a ruse, he didn’t need to get so close, and I felt us move up a gear.
Lucas said, as he tentatively smoothed the wisps from my ponytail back into place: ‘Is your hair real?’
We collapsed in hysterics.
‘Is that the realcolour!Colour! That’s what I meant. Ah, God …’
I wiped tears away. ‘Yes this wig is my real colour. I get my wiggist to match them up.’
Lucas said, unguarded and weak from the mirth: ‘It’s beautiful.’
We both gulped and looked at each other heavily and that was it, we were kissing.
After that, we started revising every day. Barrier broken with that kiss, our feelings spilled out more each time we met. Secrets were whispered between us, fears and desires, the risky intimacies piled up. He had a pet name for me. I had never been seen like this before. I had never dared to be seen like this before.
Before I met Lucas, my body had been something to angst over and regret: not thin enough, chest too big, thighs too much in contact. When grappling with him, I learned to love it. Despite being fully clothed, I couldn’t miss the dramatic effect it had on him: the heat between us, his heart rate, our rapid breathing. I pushed myself against him so I could feel the lump in his jeans and think: I caused that. The thought of being some place private where we could properly clash pelvises was almost too thrilling for me to contemplate.
We kept it all a secret. I don’t quite know why, there was no moment we agreed to it. It was simply an understanding.
There was still this giant ridiculous stigma at school about anybody getting together with anyone. I couldn’t face the whooping and applause in the corridors, the nudging, the smirking, the questions about what we’d done that would make both our faces burn. And I knew I’d get teased, more so than him. For lads, a notch was a notch, and, brutally, I was well liked and Lucas wasn’t. The boys would caw and mock and the girls would say ‘ewwww?’
It was much easier to wait, because soon the captivity, school and its cruel rules, would be over.
It’s factually accurate to say the first male to see my outfit for the leavers’ party was stunned, and his jaw dropped. Sadly, he was eight years old, and a right little toerag.
As I stepped out into the balmy early evening, dolled not up to the nines but the tens, the next-door neighbour’s son was flipping the door knocker to be let in, using the tattered stick of the ice pop he’d been gnawing on. His mouth was dyed alien-raspberry.
‘Why is your face so bright?’ he said, which could sound like he’d correctly assessed my mood, but he meant the sixty-eight cosmetics I’d plastered myself with.
‘Piss off, Willard,’ I said, jovially. ‘Look at the state of yours.’
‘I can see your boobies!’ he added, and darted indoors before I could cuff him.
I adjusted my dress and fretted that Willard – despite being noVogueintern himself, in his Elmo sweatshirt – was right, it was too much. It was deep scarlet with a sweetheart neckline that was quite low cut, and I had the kind of bosoms that tended to assert themselves. I’d been distracted getting ready because it was the first time in my life I’d put on underwear knowing I wouldn’t be the person taking it off. The thought gave me vertigo.
