‘Hey,’ I said suddenly, remembering something Sam had said at Screw the other day. ‘Did you know that DH Lawrence used to climb naked up a mulberry tree to get himself in the mood for writing?’

  A corner of Chloe’s mouth twitched. ‘Well, that explains a lot.’

  I smiled. ‘Apparently he liked the feeling of the bark against his skin.’

  Chloe made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. ‘Freak,’ she muttered.

  I took this as a sign of encouragement, and leaned over to take her hand. Chloe stiffened, but didn’t pull away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about everything. I did it all wrong. I’ve been such a bitch to you, and you absolutely didn’t deserve it.’

  Chloe looked down at her bedspread.

  ‘I’ve been so confused,’ I told her. ‘About you, and about liking girls, and liking boys, and school, and everything. I just wanted to see what it was like. Being different.’

  Chloe looked up, her face suddenly open and just a little hopeful. ‘So you’re not?’ she asked. ‘Different?’

  Why did this have to be so hard?

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I know that I like you.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘But …’

  Cold, hard blankness slammed down over the vulnerability in Chloe’s eyes. ‘I see,’ she said, wrenching her hand away.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t. It’s not just about liking boys or girls. It’s about who I am. I like school. I like studying. I want to go to university and I don’t care if it’s a breeding ground for white-collar nouveau-riche fascism. I like wearing skirts and dresses, and I don’t care if Jen wears stupid T-shirts or has a Star Trek badge. I want to be pretty. I want to be girly. I like pink.’

  Chloe’s lips curled in a sneer, but her eyes were hurt and surprised.

  ‘But I like you too,’ I said. ‘And I know everything that’s happened this year hasn’t been fair. So that’s why I’m here. To apologise.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And to say that … if you want to, we could try. Again.’

  Chloe stood and walked over to the mirror. Her long white fingers picked up a necklace from her chest of drawers and toyed with it absently. I was pretty sure she didn’t even notice she was doing it. If we’d been outside, or in my room, she would have lit up a cigarette. But her mother didn’t let her smoke inside the house.

  ‘I’m sorry I was mean to your friend,’ she said, not looking at me.

  It was the first time I’d ever heard Chloe apologise for anything. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and meant it.

  I looked around at Chloe’s room, and realised how similar it was to mine. The same books, the same dark, textured fabrics. The same splashes of silver jewellery. Except my room didn’t stand out in my house. Chloe’s did. The rest of Chloe’s house was all plush carpet and beige leather and pine-scented freshness. I remembered how hunched and sad Sam was in his house, and realised it was the same for Chloe. She didn’t feel at home here. She’d felt at home in my house, drinking espressos, listening to Joni Mitchell and discussing the Deleuzian theory of becoming with my parents.

  I looked at her reflection in the mirror and our eyes met.

  ‘Leave Billy Hughes,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come back to our school. Then we can forget any of this ever happened, and go back to how we were.’

  Her eyes were bright in the mirror. She was very still, nervous. Her fingers tangled in the necklace.

  I thought about it. The idea was not without its merits. I could go back to my old school. Go back to being the best student there, without even trying. Get away from all the people who now hated me. Ethan. Jen. Alexis. Sam.

  I thought about the way Sam had looked at me.

  I thought you were different. Not one of them. I was right. You’re not a Pastel. You’re worse.

  I never wanted him to look at me like that again. With that sad, wounded disappointment. If I left Billy Hughes, I’d never have to see him again. I could pretend that none of this had ever existed.

  I bit my lip.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t leave.’

  Chloe closed her eyes for a moment, and her shoulders sagged. She took three deep breaths, then straightened and turned and looked directly at me.

  ‘It’s all or nothing, Ava,’ she said. ‘Either you come back and it goes back to exactly how it was, or it’s over.’

  Her voice wavered a little on those last words, and I knew that underneath all the coldness and smoothness, she was falling apart. I wanted to rush over and wrap my arms around her, tell her it would be all right. I wanted to give her what she wanted, make her happy.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said.

  She nodded, her lips thin. ‘All or nothing.’

  I gazed at her, trying to memorise the soft paleness of her skin, the way her black hair whispered at the nape of her neck.

  ‘Then I guess it’s over.’ I stood up.

  Chloe’s lips tightened, and I could see she was trying not to cry.

  ‘Do you think it would be okay if I called you next week?’ I asked. ‘To have a coffee or something?’

  Chloe didn’t say anything, which I decided to take as a good sign. It wasn’t a no.

  I felt shaky walking away from Chloe’s house, as if I’d had too much caffeine. But I knew I’d done the right thing. I hoped they wouldn’t all be that hard.

  I needed a plan. I needed to apologise properly to Jen. I needed to fix things with Alexis.

  And I needed Sam to see that I wasn’t the evil bitch he thought I was.

  I was going to need help. I pulled out my phone.

  It rang three or four times before I heard fumbling, and a muffled voice.

  ‘Dude,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s like six o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘It is nearly midday,’ I informed him.

  ‘Same thing.’

  I listened to Jacob breathing into the phone.

  ‘I screwed everything up last night,’ I said at last. ‘Big time.’

  ‘So I hear,’ said Jacob. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m trying to be. How are the others?’

  The phone crackled as Jacob let out a long breath. ‘Jen was pretty upset,’ he said. ‘But Jules and I managed to cheer her up by re-enacting the whole of The Sound of Music as performed by Space Monkeys from the future. Kobe was notably absent, apparently on account of him spending the whole night checking for cavities in Ella-Grace’s mouth.’

  ‘Kobe hooked up with Ella-Grace?’

  ‘Big time,’ said Jacob. ‘I expect a save-the-date card any day now. The whole knight-in-shining-armour thing is totally working for him.’ He paused. ‘Next time I get to fish the girl out of the orchestra pit.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘And Sam?’

  The phone went silent for a few seconds. ‘Sam,’ said Jacob. ‘Sam is pissed as hell.’

  ‘I want to fix everything,’ I said. ‘But I need your help.’

  ‘My help?’ said Jacob. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘I have a plan,’ I told him. ‘Or at least the beginnings of a plan.’

  ‘Do I have to put on pants?’

  I grinned. ‘Not at this stage of the plan. But tomorrow, pants-wearing will be required.’

  Jacob sighed. ‘The things I do,’ he said in a martyred voice. ‘Fine. What do you need?’

  ‘I need you to call Jen and offer brotherly comfort by taking her to the movies tomorrow.’ My next stop was Alexis’s house. It was large and ornate, with a well-maintained garden featuring an array of interesting native plants.

  Alexis answered the door, and slammed it shut when she saw me.

  I knocked again. ‘Come on, Alexis,’ I said. ‘Let me in.’

  The door opened, and I saw a pair of baleful blue eyes.

  ‘Get lost,’ she said.

  I wondered how many times I was going to have to have this conversation before today was over. ‘I just want to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to apologise.’

  There was a pause, and the door opened a bit wider. Alexis was wearing shortie pyjamas and a pale-pink dressing-gown. Her hair was adorably rumpled. She glared at me.

  ‘I slept in,’ she said defensively, pulling her dressing-gown tighter.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘You’re not my type.’

  Alexis blushed, and I suddenly knew everything would be fine.

  ‘So can I come in?’ I asked.

  ‘You have five minutes.’

  She made me a cup of herbal tea, and carefully positioned herself on the other side of the breakfast bar so I wouldn’t be tempted to molest her.

  A ball of chocolate-brown frizz trotted into the kitchen and stared at me with black beady eyes.

  ‘Is this Coco?’ I asked, leaning down and stretching out my hand.

  ‘Mocha,’ said Alexis. ‘And don’t pat her. She bites.’

  I snatched my hand back. The frizzy ball sniffed my shoes, and then sat by Alexis’s feet.

  ‘So,’ I said, sipping my tea. ‘I hear Ella-Grace and Kobe hooked up.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What happened to …’ I tried to remember which one of the C boys Ella-Grace was dating. ‘Caleb?’

  Alexis raised one shoulder. ‘They broke up a couple of weeks ago. They had a fight about real-life applications of the Large Hadron Collider.’

  I blinked. I supposed it was typical for Ella-Grace to break up with her boyfriend over quantum physics.

  ‘So now she’s with Kobe,’ I said. ‘One of the freaks.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Alexis replied miserably.

  She looked like she was about to burst into tears. I couldn’t blame her – all her perfect friends were turning into stage crew freaks and lesbians before her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry I lied to you,’ I said. ‘I just … I wanted to be something I’m not. I wanted to try being perfect for a while. I wanted to be like you.’

  Alexis seemed flattered, but then scowled.

  ‘Like me? Nobody is like me,’ she said. ‘I thought I had friends. I thought I knew them. It turns out everyone was lying.’

  I nodded. ‘People do.’

  Alexis examined a perfect fingernail intently.

  ‘But you know what I’ve realised?’ I continued. ‘Everyone has parts of themselves that they hide away. Chloe pretends she’s cool and aloof, but I really upset her. I suppose I didn’t think I could, because she’s always so dignified. But I hurt her. And even people like Jen.’ I saw Alexis flinch. ‘Even Jen, who seems to be so blind to what other people think of her, even she has secrets.’

  I levelled a meaningful look at Alexis, who was suddenly fascinated with the depths of her mug.

  ‘And you,’ I said. ‘You have more secrets than anyone I know. Maybe even more than me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Alexis, putting her mug down on the bench and folding her arms. ‘I don’t have any secrets.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Maybe I’m mistaken.’

  ‘You are,’ said Alexis flatly. ‘After all, you’re the one who’s so confused.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  We stood in silence for a moment, and then Alexis sort of lost it.

  ‘I was so nice to you!’ she burst out. ‘I introduced myself, and invited you to sit with us, and hung out with you on weekends!’

  I nodded. Alexis paced around the kitchen, her lower lip trembling and her voice shrill and cracking.

  ‘And I thought you were one of us, even though you didn’t talk much and weren’t very good at shopping. I thought you were just shy.’

  ‘I am shy,’ I said.

  ‘And I helped you! I set you up with Ethan and made you try out for the musical and gave you my History notes. I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We were friends!’ I told her. ‘We are friends.’

  ‘But you lied to me. You lied to me about everything, and now I have no idea who you are.’

  She aimed a kick at the pantry door, stubbed her toe and swore. Mocha jumped and skittered out of the kitchen. I’d never heard Alexis swear before, and my surprise must have registered, because Alexis glowered at me.

  ‘What?’ she said, hopping on one foot and clutching her toe in her hand.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t know you knew those words.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said, and I saw the faintest glimmer of a smile somewhere beneath the scowl. ‘There’s plenty you don’t know about me.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I said. ‘I thought you had no secrets.’

  Alexis clamped her mouth shut.

  ‘Did I mention that I was sorry?’

  Alexis shook her head. ‘Why did you do it?’ she said, in a much more reasonable tone of voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I just always felt like I was pretending to be a real person, no matter where I was. Like I could never really be myself. Like I was a robot pretending to be a human. Like the Silars in Battlestar Galactica or something.’

  ‘Cylons,’ said Alexis, without thinking. ‘They’re called Cylons. Silar is the bad guy from Heroes.’

  I raised my eyebrows. Alexis laughed nervously.

  ‘Or so I hear,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t really know.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘What?’ she said, scowling again.

  I felt a smile twitch at the edge of my mouth.

  ‘Okay,’ said Alexis huffily. ‘So I have, in the past, seen the occasional episode of Battlestar Galactica. So sue me. It doesn’t make me a freak.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And it’s not like I kept watching it, after Jen …’ She bit her lip.

  I grinned. ‘After Jen came out to you and you guys stopped being friends?’

  Alexis froze. She was busted and she knew it. She looked down at the kitchen floor.

  ‘Frak,’ she said, and burst into tears.

  I went and put my arms around her and she stiffened, but then relaxed and sobbed into my shoulder.

  ‘Everything was fine,’ she said, sniffing. ‘We were fine. We hung out and watched sci-fi and read stupid fantasy novels and played Warcraft.’

  ‘Warcraft?’ I said. ‘You really were a nerd.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked.

  Alexis gulped. ‘She told me she was a l-lesbian.’ Her voice lowered on the last word, like it might turn around in her mouth and bite her.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I knew that everything would change. She’d want to hang out with other lesbians and wear polar fleece and stop watching BSG and start watching The L Word.’

  I tried to imagine Chloe in polar fleece and laughed.

  ‘I didn’t want anything to change,’ said Alexis. ‘I didn’t want to get left behind, and for her to go off and have this whole new life without me. So I changed instead.’

  She broke into another fit of sobbing.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I’m sick of pretending that I don’t care about BSG and Doctor Who. But I don’t want to go back to being a huge nerd. I like being a Pastel!’

  I laughed out loud. ‘You can’t be both?’

  Alexis stared at me like I was insane.

  ‘Why did you want to be friends with me?’ I asked.

  Alexis wiped her nose on her sleeve and shrugged. ‘You were different,’ she said. ‘But not too different. Not dangerously different. But interesting.’ She laughed. ‘Pastel perfection can get boring, you know?’

  ‘I really don’t,’ I replied. ‘Perfection is something I have never managed to attain, in any guise.’

  ‘It’s overrated.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m beginning to see that now.’

  ‘So.’ Alexis looked away. ‘Are you, like, a lesbian? Because you seemed pretty into Ethan when he had his hand up your top at the party last night.’

  ‘I—’ I took a breath. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Alexis stared at the kitchen bench. ‘I miss her,’ she said wetly.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll help me.’

  It was ridiculously early.

  The man at the ticket booth handed over our passes, and waggled his fingers in the Star Trek salute. Alexis winced.

  The foyer of the Westgarth was packed with sleepy weirdos. People in costume, or wearing T-shirts saying things like Live Long and Prosper and Mr Flibble Is Very Cross and Party Like It’s 5.5/apple/26 and Ask Me About My Timey-Wimey Detector. Hair was dyed every colour of the rainbow and nearly everyone had a strange piercing. There were more pairs of black jeans than I had ever seen.

  A barbeque was sizzling on the front footpath, and people were balancing paper plates piled high with sausages and pancakes, blinking and looking confused and surly. I guessed most of these people weren’t normally aware that there was a seven a.m. Alexis wrinkled her nose at her own paper plate.

  ‘Think of the calories!’ she wailed.

  ‘You’ll eat it,’ I told her. ‘And you’ll like it.’

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The first film’s starting in about five minutes.’

  We jostled our way into the theatre. For a moment I was afraid that my plan wouldn’t work. What if Jacob hadn’t managed to convince Jen to come? What if he’d fallen straight back to sleep after talking to me yesterday and had forgotten the plan?

  Then I spotted his sloping hulk in the third row from the back, and the hunched shoulders of Jen beside him. Jacob was telling some kind of hilarious story that involved lots of gesticulating, trying really hard to make her laugh. Jen was smiling politely, but it was an empty smile plastered over what was clearly utter misery.

  Kobe was there too, with a casual arm around Ella-Grace, whose long hair was out and messy, and her cheeks flushed. My heart stuttered as I realised that Sam might also be there, but I couldn’t see his ginger hair.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ said Alexis in a choked voice. ‘She hates me. She won’t speak to me.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘And trust me.’

  Alexis made an indelicate sound. ‘Because that’s worked out so well before.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said with a grin. ‘It worked okay for Emma.’

 

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