CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One of the weird things about Really Good Days is you never know when they’re going to happen. I’d quite like it if you did, so you could prepare, because I really don’t like surprises. Instead, Really Good Days sneak up when you’re not looking.
‘Grace?’ Mum shouts upstairs. ‘Phone for you.’
I lean over the banister and see her standing there, brandishing the landline phone.
‘For me?’
‘It’s Anna.’
I gallop downstairs two at a time and grab it from her, closeting myself in Dad’s study with my feet curled up underneath me on his office chair.
‘Hello. Welcome to 2001.’ Anna giggles. ‘You didn’t answer the mobile when I rang it seventy million times so I thought I’d try the old-fashioned method.’ She must have found some signal in the depths of Wales. I relax back into my seat, feeling myself smiling. ‘D’you want the good news or the even better news?’
‘Both?’ I reply.
‘I’m not in Wales.’ There’s a little squeak and a thud, and I suspect Anna is dancing on the spot, wherever she is. ‘I am HOME. Free. There was some major disaster at the surgery so Mum had to come back, so I am here and I am freeeeee, and we can do whatever we want for the whole week.’
‘Stay where you are. I’m on my way over.’
‘Excellent thinking.’
‘Give me twenty minutes. Bye.’ I stand up and make my way towards the door, the sitting room and my phone, which must now be fully charged.
‘Oh, and, Grace?’ Just as I am about to end the call, she asks the question. ‘What happened with Gabe?’
‘I’ll tell you the whole story when I get there.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
I unplug the phone from the charger and look at the blank screen. I don’t turn it on.
‘Um. I don’t quite know.’
‘Grace . . .’
And so I’m walking to Anna’s house to escape home because the same-not-same thing is making me feel odd, and the fresh air is making me feel better about what happened last night. Mum’s quite happy for me to be out of her hair (I bet she’s got That Person coming round again, but I’m not even going to think about that) and she gave me a tenner to go and do something nice. So we’re going to the seafront.
I haven’t switched my phone on yet, because I’ve reached the point where I’m feeling a bit like turning it on and seeing a ‘hi, thanks for yesterday, but see you around’ text is not what I want to see right now. I’m not sure why my brain’s decided that’s what has happened, but, really, the whole going-out-with-Gabe-Kowalski thing is so unlikely that I’ve half convinced myself I imagined it, anyway. And I shouldn’t be leaping on the phone even if he has texted me, because I’m busy doing important things and definitely not thinking about him every five seconds.
(Every ten, perhaps. All right, every five. Or three. But it’s ridiculous and I’m a hideous cliché, so now I’ve agreed with myself that I’ll turn the phone on when I get to Anna’s house and not before. And her house is right across the other side of town, so that’s ages. And I’m thinking about important things like the state of the economy instead.)
This might be a lie.
Because it’s sunny and half-term the town is suddenly heaving with people and noise and I’ve got my headphones in even though I’ve got no music playing (because of no phone, which I might have mentioned, because of Gabe, which I might also have – SHUT UP, brain). They make the world a bit muffled, which helps when it’s busy, because sometimes everything starts to whoosh alarmingly in a way that’s like someone turning up and down the volume in my head. And sometimes it whooshes in time with my footsteps, and I look at all the other people going to WHSmith and buying newspapers and coming out of HMV with shopping bags and I wonder if they hear it too. But I don’t know how to ask people if their world whooshes, so for now it remains a Great Mystery of Life.
‘Jellybeans,’ I say, patting my pocket, when Anna opens the door.
‘Excellent,’ she says, which is why I love her. Because she doesn’t say ‘you need to explain what you’re thinking, Grace’ and ‘other people can’t read your mind, Grace’ and all the other sensible things I’ve heard a million times from Mum and the therapist at the Jigsaw Centre when I was little (before Mum realized that place was hellish, and that forcing me to go there was causing everyone more stress than anything else).
And then she looks at me. And because she knows me too well she holds out her hand.
‘Phone.’
‘I can’t,’ I say.
‘Hand it over,’ she says.
I don’t want to know.
I turn round on the spot while she turns the phone on. If it switches on when I’m on an odd number, I decide, it’ll be a good thing, and if I stop on an even number it’ll be back to normal, which I realize might actually be quite relaxing because this is all incredibly stressful and I don’t think –
(Five.)
‘Shall I read it?’
I hold my breath. I shake my head and hold my hand out, take the phone as if it’s made of something radioactive (which it is, actually, I think, but even I can see that I’m digressing at this point) and then hand it back again.
‘Nope.’
‘Nope?’
‘You do it.’
‘Had a great time last night. Hit me up when you can :-)’
Anna reads it aloud, but I can see the words on the screen even though they’re upside down.
‘Last night?’ She raises her eyebrows.
‘I’ll explain while we’re walking,’ I say.
‘That means –’ she hands the phone back – ‘call me.’
Anna’s not being rude. It’s just that I’m better with unambiguous, and ‘hit me up’ is a bit vague for my liking.
She holds up her hand and I look at it for a moment before realizing she’s expecting a high five.
‘Result.’ She beams.
I feel a bit sick.
Anna pulls her coat on and we head down to the seafront. Because it’s half-term the amusement park is open, and we’re going to spend Mum’s money on the thing I love best. (Besides Anna and Mabel and Doctor Who and old John Hughes films and cake and chocolate and . . . Well, it’s one of the things I love best – let’s leave it at that.)
It’s sunny, but the wind is howling in our faces. The trees grow sideways, blown at an angle by the wind that never stops, even though it’s summer. I sometimes wonder if everyone who lives here is bent at the same angle, and when we go away from the coast, people notice us standing in office blocks and train platforms and wonder why we’re at an angle, which I would know the number of, except I am appallingly bad at maths.
As we walk, I tell Anna what happened with Gabe. The wind steals my secrets and whirls them up into the air, blowing them away.
I don’t know why the flashing lights and the thumping music and the whirling chaos of the amusement park doesn’t send me mad, but it does the opposite. After last night it’s like a sensory comfort blanket. We stop at the kiosk to change our money into tokens, then run to get to the waltzers, because we can see that the cars are filling up and we don’t want to wait.
‘I can’t believe you haven’t messaged him back,’ says Anna, squished up beside me. I’m holding on to the metal safety bar and she’s swinging herself back and forth, trying to make the car move before we’ve even started.
‘All right, girls?’ A boy leans over the back of the car and I reach up, handing him two tokens. It’s cheap at this time of year, so we get twice as many rides.
He drops the money into his apron thing and grabs our car with both hands at the same time as the ride creaks into action.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I reply, but the words are spun out into the air.
I laugh and laugh as we spin round and round, never fast enough, shouting for more when the boy twirls our car until there’s a lull and Anna is gasping for breath and shoving her orange hair back out of her face before it starts again. We kaleidoscope in a spin of lights and distorted music and chaos. And I wonder why in the middle of all this, somehow, I feel safe, and ordered, and happy.
We stagger off afterwards, with our legs all out of control, and lurch on to the wooden bench beside the candyfloss stand.
‘D’you want some?’
‘In a minute,’ I say, reaching into my pocket for the jelly beans. ‘We’ve got these, remember?’
‘Where’s your phone?’ says Anna with her mouth full.
I pull it out of my pocket. I know that I need to reply to Gabe, but it’s become a thing now, a big invisible solid thing, and I don’t know how to climb over it or what to say. And I don’t want today to be about that.
So I type How about Wednesday? and hit send with an unusually decisive tap.
Gabe, who clearly hasn’t read the same rule book that I have (because aren’t you supposed to wait and look cool before you text back?), replies straight away.
Sounds good. Same place same time?
See you then, I reply. And Anna, who has been looking over my shoulder and picking all the red jelly babies out of the bag while I did it, gives a little whistle.
‘Impressive.’