It’s safe to assume I didn’t sleep much.
Whenever I closed my eyes, it all came back. Me lurching in like an unattractive freight train. Lunging with my mouth open. Smashing into Harry’s face.
One thing was very clear. I needed to stop doing sexual things with boys. I was obviously incapable. Of being alluring. Of putting my head in the right position. Of knowing someone was interested. Or even where their mouth was, as opposed to their jaw.
The shame was so huge that I even cried, smothering my face into my pillow so Mum wouldn’t hear me.
He’d laughed.
I’d tried to kiss him, and he’d laughed.
Why had I tried to kiss him?
The night dragged on. I grabbed snatches of sleep where I could. But it was like a film entitled Audrey’s Sexual Humiliation had been pushed into my mind and some evil twat had pressed the play button repeatedly.
Flashes of Milo’s hands on me, and then how they flopped off my body when he couldn’t get in. Flashes of him saying It’s okay, it’s okay over and over, but not looking me in the eye. Harry’s laugh bouncing off my shoulder. My head hitting his jaw… I’d tried so hard to repress this. So hard to run away from the zinging shame of what happened with Milo and now, kissing Harry and embarrassing myself AGAIN, sent it catapulting back. All the more vividly as the humiliation had had months to stew inside the locked vaults of my mind.
I was jarred awake by my alarm clock. I lurched up in bed to bash it onto snooze. I closed my eyes slowly, feeling sleep finding me, then…
It all came rushing back and I was too humiliated to even doze for ten minutes. I got up and showered, to try and wash off my shame. I gathered my hair up, squeezing it into Mum’s flowery shower cap so I could stand totally under the water. Then I dried off. I shoved on some clothes for school and lumbered downstairs.
Mum was whistling in the kitchen, stirring a pan of porridge. “Morning. Didn’t hear you come in last night.”
The only way through this morning would be coffee. I went to put the kettle on. “I stayed at work late, there was this…umm…thing I had to watch after closing.”
A beautiful film made of kisses where people didn’t lurch in madly and smack heads…
“I worry you’re not getting enough sleep.”
“It’s fine, I’m good. I like my job.”
Mum’s whistling turned to humming as she poured her porridge into a bowl. “I’ve made enough for you.”
“Amazing, thank you.”
We ate in what I guess she would assume was contented silence. I was too tired to analyse why she was so cheerful. Mum finished before me and clattered around the kitchen, asking if I wanted to maybe watch a film later tonight as I wasn’t working. “Although you’re probably sick of movies, aren’t you?”
I grunted non-committally, dripping porridge into my mouth like a baby bird, thinking.
I had some initial thoughts:
I needed to quit my job, sharpish – even though it was the only thing I liked right now
And the zombie movie
And then go hide somewhere where Harry would never be
…and possibly get some advice on how to go about doing this.
I needed brutal, honest advice.
I needed Leroy.
He couldn’t stop laughing.
“Leroy, stop it! It’s not funny!”
He threw his head back as we skidded along the icy pavements to school together. I was already doubting if tough love was actually what I needed this time.
“Oh, but, Audrey, it is. You HEADBUTTED him.”
I shook my head and tried to storm off in a mood, but it was too slippy to really storm off anywhere properly.
“Audrey? Come on, Audrey!”
I sighed, stopped.
“Sorry,” he said eventually. “I’m just in shock. I thought you were sworn off boys?”
“I am.”
“So headbutting him was an attack?”
My face glowed again at the memory; it was going to take a long time to get immune to it. “No, I was trying to kiss him.”
“But…” It was no good. Leroy collasped into laughter again and I couldn’t laugh back. Not yet. It was still too raw and ripe and, oh God…I could never see Harry again! I was too ashamed.
Also, as I thumped Leroy on the arm and told him I didn’t want to talk about it any more, I realized I was something else.
I was confused.
Nothing about what I’d done last night made any sense.
I had Media first thing. Mr Simmons paced the room, talking about the different types of film shots we would need to know for our exams, but I couldn’t concentrate. I descended into a confused-about-Harry abyss, trying to make sense of my emotions. Alice scribbled notes eagerly and I watched her pen move over the page. She was the only person I knew who still put circles as the dots of her i’s. She must’ve sensed something was wrong because she pulled out a page of her notebook.
I picked it up, wondering what to do. When Milo broke up with me, shattering any emotional progress I’d made since Dad left, I’d thought I only wanted harsh honesty. People who didn’t sugar-coat. Or bullshit. Or simper. Or say things would be okay when they wouldn’t be. That’s why I’d gravitated towards Leroy – he was the embodiment of that. But now my heart had begun to open again. Working with Harry on the movie, embracing my pain rather than staying numb, I’d started to actually work through some of it. And the crushing embarrassment of yesterday was my big wake-up call. I couldn’t shut out what had happened any more – it was resurfacing like potent acid reflux and I didn’t know what to do or where to go or how I felt. It made me realize I needed…girls.
Not just girls, The Girls.
I shook my head and scribbled back.
Alice was still. She stared at the page, probably as shocked as I was. After essentially freezing her out for six months, she was entitled to write Piss off, Audrey.
Instead, she just wrote Sure, followed by two smiley faces with hearts for eyes, and I almost welled up at the kindness.
The lesson dwindled on and I took no notes. So when Mr Simmons asked me to stay behind, I prepared myself for a telling-off.
“Audrey, sit.” He gestured to a chair he’d pulled over to his desk. “You got a class right now?”
“I’m free until after lunch.”
“Good. Well then, I’ve been meaning to chat to you.”
The apology was on my lips when he charged right on. “It’s about this coursework of yours. I read through the kissing research you did and, well, Audrey. It’s impressive.”
“It…it…is?” I’d never excelled at any subject other than Drama before.
“It is. It was very interesting, but more than that, I like how you’ve interpreted the statistics. I was marking last night, and I hope you don’t mind, but I showed my wife. She was riveted. She also told me to tell you that it’s a travesty that A Room with a View only got one nomination.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
He laughed. “Anyway, I didn’t call you back just to share my wife’s opinions. It’s about two things actually. The first is about the project itself. I thought you’d benefit from maybe adding a professional opinion.”
“Sir?”
“Like interviewing an expert? See what they have to say about 10 Things I Don’t Like About You.”
“I hate about you.”
“You know what I mean.” He batted my correction away with his hand. “But maybe ring a relationship therapist, someone like that? See if they’ll talk to you.”
I chewed my lip. A relationship therapist? Was there such a thing? “Will I get extra marks?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. And, God forbid, Audrey, you may also find it interesting.”
“Okay…” It couldn’t hurt. My other grades were tanking. I fiddled with my bag strap. “What’s the other thing?”
“I was just going to ask about your uni application. Where are you thinking of going? What subject do you want to do? Do you know?”
I shook my head. It was always going to be Drama, Drama, Drama. That’s all it had ever been. What I’d spent my whole life working towards. And then Milo had happened and I’d just dropped it.
Hang on…
For a second, the hugeness of that thought hit me. WHAT THE HELL? I DITCHED Drama because of Milo? Because I was embarrassed?
It was like a ton of concrete dropped on my head. Not only had I allowed my shame to mess up my relationships with people, but I’d allowed it to screw up school as well. Not just school – my whole future. I twisted my hands around on themselves, hardly listening to Mr Simmons blah on about UCAS as the enormity of that decision grabbed me in a chokehold, making me gasp for air. How had I allowed this to happen to my life? How had Mum and Dad let me do this? They were too busy imploding to save me from imploding. I mean, Leroy had tried, once, to talk me out of it but all I could remember was crying so hard in humiliation that I could barely hear what he said. My Drama teacher had tried before he left but I was so, so determined to quit.
“Audrey?”
I mean, what was I thinking? I’d just given Milo that power over me? To ruin my chances, to take away the thing I loved the most?
“Audrey?”
Mr Simmons’s voice cut through my fog of revelation.
“Yes?”
“I was just saying, I could help you write your personal statement. If you did want to apply for a Media Studies degree that is.”
“Huh? You think I should do Media? At university?”
“Yes.” He had his hands together in a praying motion. “It’s something to think about. The deadline isn’t for another month or so, but you should really get a move on.”
I smiled through closed lips – his words unleashing all sorts of emotions. I guessed I should feel good. That he thought I could get into uni, that I’d found a subject, besides Drama, that I was okay at.
“I guess I could apply…” I trailed off. I hadn’t even thought about university. Dad obviously wanted me to go so he could turf Mum out of the house. But since he left, and especially since Milo, I’d just focused on getting through each hour, each day, each week. The Future was something intangible. Something I would worry about later, once I’d got through the complicated act of continuing to breathe when it felt like my world had caved in.
“That’s great, just great.” He beamed at me, like I’d jumped up and air-punched with joy. “Well, shall we check in next week? You can have some time to think about it. Plus” – he screeched back his chair, lifting his arms up to reveal small sweat patches seeping through his shirt – “a friend of my wife’s is a couples counsellor, shall I ask her if she’d be willing to talk to you?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, umm, sure. That would be…ace.”
“I look forward to reading the interview then!”
“Yep.”
He smiled and held his coffee mug upside down. “Whoops, out of caffeine. I better go top up my levels.”
I pretended to laugh. He swooshed out of his classroom, leaving me sitting at an empty desk, surrounded by empty chairs, blinking a lot as if the act would dislodge all the thoughts cramming into my skull – punching each other in the face. The school was quiet – everyone had finished migrating from one lesson to another, the corridors eerily empty. I picked up my bag and strode through them, looking at my phone.
Alice: Can chat now? At Nero. Hope you’re okay x
Reading it melted away some of my bad feelings.
Audrey: On my way x x x
The conversation with Mr Simmons had taken my mind off things for a whole ten minutes, but the shame bloomed in me as soon as I stepped off school property.
I really did need a girl to talk to.