Pink, p.6
Pink, page 6
Sam took a step forward, so we were quite close. He smelled like boy-deodorant and sawdust. I’d never been this close to a boy before. I had to tilt my head up to see his face, which was a funny mixture of grave and amused.
‘The workman whistled at you because he’s a sexist dickhead who thinks it’s okay to objectify women because they’re hot,’ he said, his voice quiet and somehow intimate. ‘I opened the door for you because it’s polite. I’m not sure you can really draw a comparison.’
I felt myself blush again. I wanted to argue, but all I could think was does Sam think I’m hot?
I was in love with Ethan.
Well, I wasn’t quite there yet. But I would be soon.
I’d only spoken to him a couple of times, but he was a total gentleman. I bumped into him in the corridor outside his French class (a total coincidence, I swear. It wasn’t as if I’d memorised his timetable or anything. Really), and he said hi and I said hi back and then he told me he liked my jumper (the pink argyle cashmere one) and I said thank you. He was wearing slouchy, expensive-looking jeans and some kind of designer T-shirt. His hair was neat and blond, and when he smiled at me, straight white teeth sparkled beneath his soft pink lips.
I imagined those pink lips pressed against mine.
Then we walked down the corridor together and he held the door open for me as we went into the courtyard.
It was the second time a boy had held a door open for me in a week, but this time I wasn’t annoyed at all. This time there was no lecture about misogyny. This time I didn’t feel all hot and angry and defensive.
This time I felt like a princess.
Then he said see you round, and wandered off to join his friends.
It was perfect.
At stage crew, we were building more flats. Sam, Jules and Kobe cut bits of wood to size and nailed them to other bits of wood to make a rectangle. Jen and Jacob stretched canvas over the rectangle and staple-gunned it into place to make a flat panel, which would be painted to make a wall or a door or a part of the Brooklyn Bridge. Jen, of course, wasn’t allowed to use the staple-gun, but she was entrusted with the task of measuring and cutting the canvas from a big roll.
My job was not so glamorous. I held the measuring tape. I passed the pencil. I read out the measurements on the plans. I held the wood steady. I counted nails from a jar.
This was it. The result of a centuries-old struggle for women’s liberation. My right to count nails from a jar. I was disgusted with myself.
Dennis sauntered out of his office after lunch, surrounded by a choking haze of cigar smoke.
‘Do you think you children will be able to manage without me?’ he asked, taking a heavy drag.
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like he’d even been supervising us, he was always holed up in his office. Probably watching porn on the internet.
‘Why?’ asked Sam with a grin. ‘Are you dying?’
Dennis looked at him with a stare as hard as granite. ‘Actually, since you ask, I have a doctor’s appointment.’
Jules nodded seriously. ‘Finally getting that sex-change,’ he said, clapping Dennis on the shoulder. ‘I’m proud of you, brother. I mean sister.’
Dennis took another deep puff on his cigar. ‘Just try not to burn the school down while I’m gone.’
As soon as he was out the door, I snatched up the plans from the table.
‘Easy, tiger,’ said Sam.
I clenched my teeth. ‘I’m sick of being treated like some kind of delicate wilting flower,’ I said. ‘Dennis isn’t here, so why shouldn’t I get to do the same work as a boy?’
Sam and Jules shared a look.
‘What?’ I said. ‘Don’t you think I can handle it?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Have you ever done carpentry before?’
I wanted to punch him in the nose. ‘It can’t be that hard,’ I said, glaring at him, ‘if you can do it.’ I glanced over at Jen. ‘Are you coming?’
She shook her head and smiled apologetically. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I’m good here.’
Traitor.
I grabbed a hammer, saw and some nails, and marched outside. I could do this.
Even though I’d been looking at the plans and reading from them all day, I realised pretty quickly that I didn’t understand them at all. There was some kind of diagonal bit that was supposed to brace the flat so it didn’t turn into a parallelogram. How was I supposed to get the angle at the end right?
I took a deep breath. This was just geometry. I knew geometry. Geometry was easy.
I picked up the measuring tape and grabbed a piece of wood.
After an hour and a half, I stepped back and studied my flat. It was wrong. It was all wrong. The pieces just didn’t join together. It was wonky and awkward and there was no way that I was going to be able to fix it before Dennis got back. I’d proven him right. Girls couldn’t do carpentry. I should have stuck with making sandwiches and pouring ginger beer.
I couldn’t help it. Tears welled up and my throat closed over. I blinked, trying to shake them away.
‘Oh,’ said a voice behind me. ‘That is the most fail thing I’ve ever seen.’
It was Sam. Absolutely the last person I wanted to witness my failure. Even Dennis would have been better. Now Sam would just mock me and make me feel like an idiot the way he did the other day.
He frowned and bent over my flat. ‘Ah. Yes. I see what you’ve done.’
He picked up the measuring tape and pulled out the long yellow strip.
‘Here,’ he said, indicating the little black marks on the tape, ‘are the measurements. See? And the diagram said six hundred millimetres. Yes?’
I nodded, a feeling of utter humiliation creeping over me as I realised what I’d done.
‘So here’s where it says six hundred millimetres.’ He pointed. ‘Which is also known as sixty centimetres. This is what we call the metric system. Introduced in Revolutionary France in 1799, and now used in every country in the world except Liberia, Burma and the US.’
How did he know this stuff?
I shook my head. ‘You are so patronising.’
‘Nah, just childish. He turned the measuring tape over with a grin. ‘Now, here’s what you were measuring with.’
Inches. I had measured it in inches. I should have cut a sixty-centimetre piece of wood, but instead I cut a sixty-inch piece of wood. How stupid. I felt hot and red and trembly.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
Sam didn’t say anything. I could only imagine how much he was going to delight in telling everyone else about this. Especially Dennis.
I looked at my misshapen stupid wood failure, and burst into tears.
‘Oh,’ said Sam, like I’d been sick on his carpet. ‘Don’t do that. Please.’
This was so humiliating. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, though it was more like a hiccup this time. ‘I just really wanted to prove that I could do this. To Dennis and Alexis and … and me.’
‘Right,’ said Sam awkwardly.
We stood silently for a moment, me biting back sobs and Sam looking embarrassed. Probably wishing he was somewhere else. I didn’t blame him.
‘It’s just really hard.’ I sniffed and wished I had a tissue. ‘Everyone wants me to be something different. I don’t know if I can be them all. I’m tired.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sam in the kind of tone that meant holy hell, get me away from this crazy sobbing girl.
‘I don’t seem to be doing anything right,’ I wailed. A part of me was saying shut up! leave the poor boy alone! but I couldn’t. ‘I can’t sing well enough to be in the musical—’ ‘At all,’ interrupted Sam. ‘I heard you can’t sing at all.’
Did everyone know about my audition? But now I was unstoppable. ‘I can’t understand anything my French teacher is saying, and I’ve almost got a handle on my Maths homework, but Chemistry is totally confusing, and I spilt glue on my only nice pair of jeans and I don’t know how to get it out.’
‘Cover it with a tea towel and then iron over it.’
Who was this guy, Martha Stewart? I pulled my sleeve across my wet cheeks and drew a deep breath.
‘Basically,’ I said, ‘I’m a screw-up.’
‘Ava,’ said Sam. I hadn’t realised he even knew my name. At least someone was finally going to be nice to me. I waited for the words I needed to hear. Of course you’re not a screw-up. You’re doing fine.
‘You’re a total screw-up,’ he said.
I didn’t like this boy at all.
Then he grinned at me. ‘That’s why you fit in,’ he said gently. ‘We’re all screw-ups here. That’s what we’re called.
Screw. Stage crew. Get it?’
‘But you all seem so happy.’
Sam snorted. ‘Jacob’s not smart enough to be at Billy Hughes. Kobe hates being Asian. Jules hates all the other gay people at our school. Jen is a terminal nerd, and I’m—’ He broke off.
‘And you’re—?’
Sam sighed. ‘Let’s just say I’m a terminal disappointment. And a ranga.’
I frowned. ‘What is that? The others keep saying it.’
Sam hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s … Greek. It means debonair and handsome and generally made of awesome.
’ I regarded him sceptically. ‘It’s short for orangutan, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Because you’re a redhead.’
Sam looked disappointed. ‘Maybe.’
I laughed in a rather wet, hiccupy way.
I didn’t want to be a screw-up. I didn’t want to be labelled a freak by people like Alexis. I wanted to fit in and be pink and pretty and go out with Ethan.
‘You gotta own it,’ said Sam, reaching out and touching my arm with long, callused fingers. ‘Be a screw-up. Live it. Otherwise you’ll be miserable and empty like all the other Pastels.’
I swallowed, but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t like him. I didn’t belong in Screw.
‘Hey.’ Sam pushed his bottom lip out and smiled at me in a half-teasing, half-conspiratorial way. ‘I think maybe we should be thankful that you only cut a sixty-inch piece of timber, not a six hundred-inch one.’
I choked out a laugh. ‘That would have been bad.’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Very bad. I dread to think how long it would have been.’
‘About fifteen metres,’ I said, without really thinking.
Sam raised an eyebrow, and I felt myself go red again.
‘About fifteen metres?’ he repeated. ‘More or less?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘Fifteen point two four.’
‘And you know this how?’
I shrugged. ‘There’s 25.4 millimetres in an inch. It’s just multiplication.’
Sam chuckled. ‘You can do that in your head, but you can’t measure a piece of timber?’
I liked the way he said timber instead of wood. ‘I’m good at Maths,’ I said. ‘But not so good at the practical stuff.’
‘We should do a mind-meld,’ he said. ‘I’m great at the practical stuff, but it doesn’t stop me from failing Maths.’
‘You’re failing?’ I’d thought everyone at Billy Hughes coasted by on waves of brilliance.
Sam hung his head, and his ginger hair flopped into his eyes. He brushed it away impatiently. ‘Apparently, if I don’t pass the next test …’ His voice trailed off.
‘What?’
‘Boarding school.’
‘No! Billy Hughes wouldn’t kick you out. It’s too progressive.’
Sam wrinkled his nose. ‘They do kick people out. The school has a perfect academic record to maintain, after all. Basically, to survive at Billy Hughes you need either brains, athletic prowess or money. That’s why Jacob hasn’t been kicked out – because his parents are loaded.’
I wondered if Sam’s family was rich. The holes in his jeans and the decaying state of his sneakers suggested not. It seemed rude to ask.
I looked at him properly for the first time. He was a bit weird-looking. He had strange pale skin – white, blotchy-pink and absolutely covered with freckles. His lips were almost white, and his eyes were the palest blue. He looked washed-out, like an overexposed photo. Even his red hair was kind of faded, hanging in shaggy, pale ringlets.
‘I could help you,’ I blurted, before I had a chance to think about it.
He nodded quickly, almost like he’d known what I was going to say.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘That’d be great.’
‘Er,’ I said. ‘Sorry about before. The crying. I sort of lost my bottle of oil.’
Sam looked startled. ‘Lost your what?’
I smiled and wiped my nose on my sleeve. ‘My bottle of oil. It’s something that Chl— a friend of mine says. It’s from The Frogs, by Aristophanes?’
‘Can’t say I’m familiar with it.’
‘It’s one of those Ancient Greek plays,’ I said. ‘But it was written ages after all the famous Ancient Greeks died. And it’s about what might happen if Aeschylus and Euripides were having a fight in the Underworld about who was the better poet.’
‘Uh-huh …’
‘And Aeschylus says Euripides’ poetry is so predictable that you can end every line with the words and lost his bottle of oil.’
Sam raised a ginger eyebrow.
‘Like, “Bacchus jumped around in a fawnskin, doing a fancy dance … and lost his bottle of oil” .’
Sam laughed. ‘That’s a direct translation from the Ancient Greek, right?’
‘You know it,’ I nodded. ‘Anyway. Euripides keeps reading out lines from his poems, and Aeschylus keeps butting in with and lost his bottle of oil.’
‘And lost his bottle of oil,’ Sam repeated. ‘I like it.’
‘So,’ I told him, ‘I’m sorry I lost my bottle of oil.’
‘Apology accepted. No bottles of oil were harmed in the making of this screw-up.’ Sam smiled, a sort of cheeky-apologetic-friendly smile that made me smile back. And then we had a Moment.
Neither of us said anything, or did anything. We just looked at each other and smiled for a bit longer than was appropriate. What was going on?
‘So,’ he said, glancing away. ‘Right. We’re, um, going to Kalahari. If you want to come.’
‘Okay,’ I said, confused. He said it like he didn’t care if I came or not. Like he was only doing it to be polite and because I cried in front of him five minutes ago. So what was with the Moment?
I didn’t know what Kalahari was (I assumed we weren’t going to the African desert), but it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. I wasn’t meeting Chloe until seven, and Alexis and the others were going to some kind of cast bonding session that involved bowling.
Kalahari turned out to be a café above a second-hand clothing shop called Deadthreads, down an alleyway in the city. There was no sign to indicate it was there, and the staircase smelled of stale urine.
As we trooped up the stairs to a heavy door covered in graffiti, I started to feel slightly nervous. Had these people led me to a crack den? Were they going to fleece me and knock me unconscious?
Jacob pushed the door open and we went in.
It was just a café. The walls were mint-green and hung with kitschy prints of kittens and unicorns. The music was old-school, ambient and very mellow. Couches and laminex tables were occupied by fashionably dishevelled people sipping tea and chatting. An Indian guy with a shaved head was bending over a turntable. There was a live budgie on his shoulder, bobbing its head up and down in time to the bass. A cute girl in a black halter-top waved at us from behind the bar.
‘Hi guys,’ she said. ‘Have a seat.’
‘Thanks, Cate,’ said Sam, with a nod.
We nabbed a low table by a window that looked out onto the alley and the back of a Chinese restaurant. I sank into a couch. It was old and smelled a little musty and the springs had all gone, but it was super-comfortable.
Chloe would have loved this place. She was always dragging me to the latest poky little uber-trendy café hidden down some alley. As soon as they got a review in the paper, though, that was it. Time to move on. I smiled, thinking about bringing her here, being able to introduce her to a new place, rather than the other way around. I was surprised to realise I missed her, and that I was really looking forward to seeing her.
Cate brought us cups of mint tea, and a pile of Turkish bread with dips and olives.
‘How’s the show coming along?’ she asked.
Sam shrugged. ‘The sets are going to be awesome. Hopefully it’ll distract from all the nonsense going on onstage.’
Jules made a disgusted noise. ‘Cate,’ he said, with a world-weary voice. ‘My darling. My angel. What have I told you about the evils of the pink dip?’
He held up the little bowl of taramasalata with an offended air.
Cate rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry, Jules,’ she said, taking the dip. ‘I’ll bring you some extra hummus.’
‘You don’t like taramasalata?’ I asked.
Jules grimaced. ‘It’s fish-flavoured, overprocessed evil. Plus it’s pink. Offensively so.’
‘What’s wrong with pink?’
‘I can think of a couple of things.’
‘Just because you’re not into girls,’ I said, ‘doesn’t mean you should hate pink.’
‘It’s not actually a colour,’ said Kobe, sipping his mint tea calmly.
We all turned to look at him.‘What?’
‘Pink. Well, magenta, actually. It isn’t a colour.’
‘Of course it’s a colour,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s pink. It’s in the rainbow song, in between yellow and green.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kobe, ‘but it’s not in an actual rainbow, is it? Pink is a mixture of violet and red, which are at opposite ends of the spectrum. So they can’t mix together.’
‘But they can!’ said Jacob. ‘You can make pink paint by mixing purple and red and white.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s subtractive colour,’ I said. ‘Kobe’s talking about additive colour – with lights.’
Sam nodded at Jacob. ‘Like with gels.’
‘Gotcha,’ said Jacob. ‘Sort of.’
Kobe put his teacup down. ‘When your eye sees colour, it’s actually detecting the different wavelengths of light hitting your retina. Your brain interprets certain wavelengths as blue, or yellow, or orange.’
‘So all colours are imaginary,’ I said. ‘Not just pink.’
