CHAPTER TEN
Even I know that there’s something a bit weird about your thirteen-year-old sister being the person who helps you get ready for a first date. Well, if we’re being exact, my first date. Because this is literally the first time that I have ever been out on a date with another human being.
I haven’t told Mum, of course, because a) oh my God, the mortification, and b) she would probably have some kind of Grace’s First Date photo shoot where she’d insist on taking photos to send to Dad, and yeah, well. Also she’s still being weird and living on Planet Eve and, considering I’m supposed to be the one who gets obsessed with things, she seems to be pretty much focusing on that and nothing else. When I got up this morning, there were no clean knickers left in my drawer, and I had to go and rootle about in the tumble dryer until I found some.
Anyway, I haven’t told Mum, and Leah’s promised to keep it secret – and usually I’d think that would last precisely as long as it took for me to start annoying her, at which time she’d blurt it out by ‘accident’ just to piss me off. But Leah’s acting a bit weird at the moment, which is either some kind of being-thirteen thing or maybe because she doesn’t seem to be friends with her BFF Meg at the moment. Normally in the holidays Meg basically lives here, but she hasn’t been around at all, and when Mum asked the other day Leah just shrugged and left the room. And usually Mum would have been chasing after her, hassling to know what was going on, but it’s weird. It feels like the whole family is unravelling and nobody seems to have noticed.
I want to know what’s going on with Leah and Meg, but I’m too busy stressing about what I’m supposed to do on a date. My knowledge so far is basically gleaned from a million books (not helpful) and another million retro 80s films (chances of Gabe turning up in a beaten-up convertible borrowed from his dad: zero) so I’m on my own here.
And, just to make things even better, Anna’s parents have taken her to a cottage in the middle of Wales where there’s literally no wifi or mobile phone coverage. We had a little farewell ceremony for her phone yesterday in the bedroom. She’s promised me that she’ll keep it charged and attempt to connect to every single open wifi network she can find in the whole of the Welsh mountains. (Surely farmers must need to check stuff on the internet?)
‘Right.’ Leah hands me an outfit that isn’t my usual jeans-T-shirt-cardigan. ‘Black dress, cardigan, tights, DMs.’
‘But what about my Doctor Who T-shirt? I wore that at the party and . . .’
I trail off because Leah is giving me a look that says NO very clearly. Well, that, and the fact that she’s actually taken the TARDIS T-shirt off the bedroom floor and has balled it up in one hand and hidden it behind her back.
‘It’s a date, Grace. The idea is you make a bit of an effort.’
‘Fine.’
Sometimes I feel like everyone else was handed a copy of the rules and mine got lost.
‘Hey.’
I’ve walked up to the top of Walnut Street where we arranged to meet and Gabe’s standing there, wearing the exact same things he was wearing at Saturday night’s party, which seems a bit unfair if you ask me. I feel like I should be on top of a Christmas tree in this dress. Admittedly I haven’t seen many fairies wearing black dresses with tiny Day of the Dead skull patterns all over them, but I suspect it could be a thing. It should be a thing.
‘Hello,’ I say, because when I’m anxious I find it really uncomfortable to say abbreviated words.
Gabe looks at me with his very brown eyes, and smiles with his crossed-over teeth.
‘You got here OK, then?’
‘Well, actually, I got here ten minutes early,’ I say. ‘But I realized that I was going to stand here like a spare part for ten minutes and that would be awkward so I thought I’d walk round the block because that would kill time, but it didn’t, it only killed two minutes, so I walked round four other blocks and . . .’
Oh God.
‘D’you fancy going to the Botanic Gardens, seeing as it’s nice? We can get a coffee or something.’
I don’t know if Gabe’s just naturally polite, or whether he was hoping if he said that I’d shut up, but, anyway, I stop talking.
We walk along together, side by side, and there’s a silence that you could call companionable except I think it’s actually the other one, and I try desperately to come up with things to say. And all I can think of are the classes Mum used to take me to at the centre when I was younger, where I was supposed to learn how to be a functioning human being, except the woman who ran them was possibly the weirdest person I’ve ever met.
‘So,’ Gabe says, and there’s a little note of something in his voice which makes me think that maybe he’s as nervous as I am, because he sounds a bit odd. ‘Doctor Who.’
And I say, ‘Yes.’
And he says, ‘So. The big question remains. The Master, or Missy?’
And I say, ‘Oh God, that’s really hard, because John Simm was perfect as the Master, but Missy’s so deliciously evil and –’
And that’s it. And we talk and talk all the way to the Botanic Gardens and not just about Doctor Who, either. We talk about school and how Miss Jones the Biology teacher is really Victorian and how obsessed Charlotte was with having the perfect party and about our pets and about living here and then we find the cafe and we get a coffee each and decide to sit outside in the park because it’s weirdly nice for the time of year.
And there are lots of old people on all the usual benches around the flower-bed bits, and down by the duck-pond bit, and so we walk along the path to the huge old oak tree that we used to try to climb when we were smaller, and we make our way through the little path where the rhododendron bushes flap wetly against your face as if they’ve been saving up for a not-rainy day, and we sit down on the little bench where the rose garden is, where there are no people at all.
I drink my coffee even though I don’t really want it, because I realize in that moment, surrounded by rose bushes and the smell of disintegrating autumn things and the still-damp wood of the bench, that I know what’s supposed to happen now, but I don’t know how it happens. All I know is that my heart is galloping loudly in my chest and I can feel the warmth of Gabe sitting beside me drinking his coffee and he doesn’t smell of wood smoke or toothpaste or any of the things boys in books always smell of. He smells of bluebell-and-lavender fabric softener, and I know that because it’s the one I like best. And he smells a bit of shampoo, I notice, as he turns towards me, but I don’t recognize that smell. It’s not horrible, though.
I’ve watched loads and loads of films to see how it happens when a girl and a boy kiss for the first time and what seems to happen is that one of them looks at the other one for a moment and they look away and then they look back and then one of them looks at the other one’s mouth, which is the universal signal for I Want To Kiss You, and then it just sort of happens.
Except that when you’re fifteen, and even if you’re with the boy who everyone in your year fancies, the truth is that you both just sit there drinking your coffee and looking at a small brown bird scraping around in the dead leaves of the flowerbed and then, only then, when you reach down to put your coffee cup on the ground at the same time as he does, your faces sort of collide in a way you can’t ever explain afterwards and –
Kissing Gabe is like – well, actually, I don’t have anything to compare this to. Mainly I’m thinking, YES, at least this means that factually if anyone says ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’ I shall be able to contradict them, even if it’s in my head, and then I’m thinking about Pretty in Pink when Iona asks Andie, ‘Did he have strong lips?’ and I’m wondering if Gabe’s constitute strong lips because my knees feel a bit dizzy and oh my God tongue in mouth. Tongue. In. Mouth.
I pull back for a moment. Gabe looks at me, and does a small smile. And I try and arrange my face into an appropriate shape, because I have this serious Resting Bitch Face thing going on, and it wouldn’t really be the done thing to be scowling at someone with whom you’ve just exchanged saliva. (Oh God. Don’t think about that. This is no time for science.)
And then he leans towards me again, and takes a strand of my hair, and I sort of recoil backwards, because I don’t like people touching my hair, and he doesn’t seem to notice, because he tucks it behind my ear like someone in a film would do. It’s such a film-cliché thing to do that I realize he’s just winging it too, and I laugh.
And he says, ‘What are you laughing at?’
And I reach out, because for a moment it feels as if maybe everyone else doesn’t know the rules all that well, either, and I watch as my fingers lace between his, and I lean forward this time, and I kiss Gabe Kowalski. And this time I don’t think about anything.