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  And on that clichéd note, she rang off.

  “Shit!” I threw my phone across the room and flung back the covers in preparation for banging my head repeatedly against the same spot of wall, except there was a hand holding tight to my arm. “Get off me!”

  “Come back to bed,” Smith said in his most cajoling voice, trying to brush my hair away from my cheek so he could kiss me, but I gripped the side of the mattress with one hand and attempted to work myself free.

  “I’ve got to go now,” I bit out, because he was not appreciating that I was on a Code Red. “My friend, who’s turned into a gloating bitch overnight, is coming around to my house and I have to be there.”

  “Hmmm,” he mumbled into my neck, still trying to make with the smoochies—and I didn’t want to do it, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all that, so I pinched him really hard on his upper arm. Hard enough that he yelped like a girl and immediately let me go so he could rub the red mark and do the reproachful, “you really hurt me” thing with his eyes, while I scooped up my clothes.

  “Sorry,” I said, crouching down so I didn’t flash him with any bits of girl flesh because everything was different in the morning when we were both sober, and daylight made the shadows go away.

  “This hot and cold thing is getting really boring,” he said flatly, and I yanked my T-shirt over my head so I didn’t have to look at the disappointment on his face.

  “It’s not a thing, it just is,” I said through a mouthful of cotton. “It’s not you. I just have stuff going on and I need to go home and sort it out.” That sounded better. Like, the kind of thing that an eighteen-year-old girl would say. Get me! With my sort-outable stuff.

  Smith reached for his cigarettes and sat there, propped up by the pillows, looking totally unamused at my endearing attempts to locate my phone.

  “It skidded under the crates when you threw it.” He sighed. “I hate this. I feel like Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

  “Huh? What the hell are you talking about?” I lay flat on the floor, swatting my hand through a mound of dust bunnies to get to the phone. “Are you too good to plug in a vacuum cleaner?”

  “It always ends up the same way,” he elaborated. “You scrambling to get out the door as fast as possible and I’m left feeling like a mug. Like, I’m just convenient.”

  “You’re not convenient,” I said, then realized how it sounded. Though it was true in a way. He was one of the most inconvenient people I’d ever met. I managed to get a fingertip on my phone and concentrated on prying it free.

  “Here, let me. I’ve got longer arms than you,” Smith said behind me, and I shifted over so he could pull out my phone with an ease that was really, really irritating. “Not gonna give it back, though, till you at least give me a kiss,” he drawled.

  I bussed my lips against his for a count of three and rolled my eyes when he tried to slip me some tongue because we were kinda in the middle of an argument, and he knew I had my sort-outable stuff going on, so it was just inappropriate.

  “Thank you,” I said snottily, snatching the phone from him, but it was too cold to just leave him kneeling there on the floor when things were getting scratchy and I wanted to come back. Wanted him to want me to come back. I kissed him again and I think it worked.

  “I’ll call you and you can come around and start on the living room,” he said when he saw me to the front door.

  “Make sure you get some proper cleaning fluids and bleach,” I reminded him. “Bleach is good.”

  “Isabel, I was joking.” He laughed, even though household hygiene is not something I can ever laugh about.

  I spent the whole morning hanging in the hall, waiting for Dot and her usual two rings on the doorbell. There was no way I could risk her bumping into Dad and having an illuminating little chat about the sleepover that never was.

  He’d even acted pleased to see me when I got home, though that might have been because I had a hankering for toasted bacon sandwiches and made him one, too, as I craned my neck and kept the front door in my line of sight.

  But even I had bodily functions and, of course I was in the downstairs loo when she arrived. Still zipping up my jeans, I hobbled toward the hall, but I was far too late.

  “Hello, Dr. Clarke,” I could hear Dot chirping. “Jeans! I didn’t know you had anything but suits.”

  She was such a little suck-up at times.

  “Thank you, yes, Dot. On weekends I’ve been known to experiment with other forms of clothing,” he replied, which would usually be the cue for awkward silence as Dot tried to figure out whether he was joking or being deeply sarcastic. But she was too het up about the Art History notes for it to even register.

  “There you are!” she said as I hurried toward them, like she’d been waiting for hours. She was wearing a pale blue twinset and a tweedy skirt designed not to offend the eyes of the Lord, who obviously hadn’t seen the bum-skimming dress she was wearing the other night.

  “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll get those notes for you,” I muttered, dragging her stairwards.

  Dot nodded eagerly. “We’ve got so much to talk about!”

  “But you only saw each other a few hours ago.” Dad chuckled, shaking his head in bemusement and all but vibrating with joy at the way I appeared to be exhibiting the normal tendencies of an adolescent girl. Dot’s head swiveled around and I watched her slowly and succinctly get a clue, her eyes opening wide and then closing slowly as all the facts slotted themselves into the right order.

  “You know Isabel, it’s hard to shut her up when she starts talking.” Dot grinned, and I could feel her hand tight against my shoulder, see the malice behind her smile, and I never knew she could look like that. Nancy and Ella, yeah, but not Dot.

  “Stairs, now,” I growled, and I knew it looked like I couldn’t wait to drag her to my inner sanctum so we could settle down for a long girly gossip. But, really? I just wanted her as far away from him as possible.

  Which was just as well because we were barely out of earshot before she started.

  “So, spill,” she ordered bluntly, throwing herself down on my bed with total lack of regard for my clean quilt and her dirty shoes. “Who is he?”

  I pulled out my computer chair and plunked myself down. “No one you know.”

  Dot rested her head on my pillow, which made me grit my teeth and make a mental note to wash it when she finally left and please, God, let it be soon. “Oh, c’mon, Is, I promise I won’t tell anyone! Where did you meet him?”

  “It’s the guy from the party,” I admitted unwillingly, because she was going to get it out of me sooner or later and, at least, sooner meant it would be over quicker. Like yanking off a plaster in superfast time so it hurt for a second and then the pain was just a distant memory.

  “I knew it!” she said triumphantly. “So how long have you been shagging him, then?”

  “It’s not like that,” I snapped, because she made it sound so dirty and cold. When it should have been private. It was private; it was between me and Smith, just like all the things we said to each other in the dark. “I bumped into him a couple of days after the party and we swapped iPods and started hanging out. And last night, I popped around and I ended up crashing at his place. No shagging, no big mystery, no big deal, okay?”

  “Oh, please,” she snorted. “You were in bed with him this morning.”

  “I was on the sofa,” I insisted doggedly. “We fell asleep on the sofa.”

  “Yeah, right, and your dad was all sunny smiles this morning after you stayed out all night. I don’t think so! He thought you were staying around at my place while that geek ravaged your tender young flesh.” She gloated, and held up her hands dramatically. “Now, there’s an image that’s going to be permanently etched in my mind.”

  I jiggled around in the chair for a bit. “He’s not a geek,” I said finally.

  “Looks like a geek. Talks like a geek.”

  “He’s said about three words to
you ever!” I protested. “It’s hardly enough to base an opinion on.”

  “Whatever. I’m not leaving until you tell me all the gory details.” She settled back on the bed and peered around curiously before her hand crept out to the drawer of my nightstand.

  “Don’t open that!”

  “Is that where you keep your stash of condoms for when you’re having sex with geeky boys?” Dot’s hand closed around the drawer knob and I was off the bed in a flash, slamming it shut so hard that she squealed as I caught her fingers.

  “How fucking dare you?” I was right in her face, so close I could see the mascara clinging to her eyelashes. “Who the hell do you think you are? You just come in here and start trying to trample over my life . . .”

  “Is, Is. God, I’m sorry,” she wheezed, giving my arms these jerky little pats to calm me down. “I was joking. Please, chill.”

  I slumped down heavily on the bed next to her. “What is wrong with you? Why are you being like this?”

  Dot finally had the good manners to look sheepish. It didn’t last long, though, before she gave a tiny, couldn’t-care-less shrug. “What? Like, you and Nancy have the monopoly on hurting people’s feelings? I’ve tried being nice and that didn’t get me very far, did it?” She took a deep breath like she’d suddenly had a great epiphany. “Do you ever wish that we weren’t like we were? That we’d never started it? I don’t even remember how it all happened.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, but that wasn’t exactly true. It was the very first day of the first term at Brighton Girls’ when I’d made myself a solemn vow that I was done with being bullied and tormented and letting anyone walk all over me.

  “So sometimes, maybe I need to take my inner bitch out for a walk,” Dot muttered, staring at her nails.

  “You don’t. You really, really don’t,” I told her, stretching my legs out in front of me. “It doesn’t solve your problems, just makes them more complicated.”

  I expected Dot to make some dismissive remark and call me a loser, because she seemed to have been taking lessons from Nancy and Ella, but she leaned over and touched my leg. “It sounds lonely.”

  “Being alone and being lonely are two different things,” I pointed out. “Y’know, I used to be happy being quiet, but no one would let me get on with it.”

  “Well, you’ve managed to hook a foxy boy somehow, so it can’t be too bad,” Dot said carefully.

  “You just said he was a geek!”

  “Well, he’s a foxy geek or a geeky fox, whatever.” She patted the bed invitingly. “So, what do you talk to him about?”

  I gave up after that. Instead I sat cross-legged on my bed and I told Dot about how Smith made me feel like I wasn’t just some awkward loner, but an enigma that he wanted to unravel. And how I liked it when he unraveled me. Liked how he looked at me and smiled at me and held my hand. Liked how he didn’t want me to hide my oddness but to wear it like a shield.

  But what I didn’t tell her was all the stuff that she was dying to hear. That the first time we’d had sex, it hurt for a second. Like, stubbing my toe. And that I’d never get used to being naked in front of him. Or, well, anyone. Didn’t tell her about all the lies I’d told him, either, and that there was no hope that it was going to last or be meaningful because I’d built our whole relationship on this precarious web of deceit.

  “And he thinks I’m a complete bitch, too,” I finished. “Because that’s the only thing I know how to be, but he never lets me get away it. Not for one second. He’s all, like, ‘You’re being nasty, stop it right now,’ and the really weird thing is that usually I do. Like, he’s my Kryptonite or something . . .”

  There was this dreamy tone to my voice and I knew that it sounded as if I was madly, hopelessly, irredeemably in love with him, but I somehow couldn’t shut up.

  Let'sGetLost

  Let's Get Lost

  16

  Dot finally left, after a lazy day of homework, eating our body weight in chocolate, and curling up on my bed to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again. She swore that what had happened in Smith’s room would stay in Smith’s room, but I knew how easily she caved in under pressure. ’Sides, Monday morning meant a brand-new week, which meant a brand-new power struggle.

  “Snogged any geeks lately?” was Nancy’s cheery greeting as I strolled into the common room, and Dot, who was perched on the arm of her chair, became engrossed in the rickrack around the hem of her skirt and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  “Not lately, no,” I said blandly, heart pounding, but then Nancy started a convoluted story about some girl from her drama group and someone who played football with her brother and nothing had changed.

  Except everything had changed because just after lunch, I got a text from Smith: “When can we hook up again?”

  I looked up to see the Trio of Evil, power-walking down the corridor Mean Girls style, and settled for a cryptic, “Patience, Grasshopper, patience.” It sounded far more alluring than the sad truth—that I wasn’t allowed out on school nights under pain of death.

  “You’re surgically attached to your phone today,” Dot said, linking her arm through mine so she could haul me off.

  “He just texted me,” I hissed once we were sitting on the stairs that led up to the Domestic Science kitchens. I couldn’t hold it in any longer, despite all the stern lectures I’d given myself about trusting no one, not even Dot. “Do you think he’s really into me?”

  I’d officially turned into one of those sappy girls who had no topic of conversation other than a boy. It didn’t help that Smith and I were now having text sex, like, all the time. Man, he could be really rude without using any vowels. Not that I showed Dot his hundred and sixty character eulogy to my “bttm,” but the way I went on about Smith, you’d have thought that he was the main reason why the sun rose up every morning and the earth rotated and there were stars in the sky.

  Dot took it in very good humor. She listened dutifully, every afternoon, eyes wide and head nodding gravely as I glossed over that day’s text messages and speculated on how I could string him along until the weekend. But all she really wanted to know was about the sex, because obviously the scant details I’d already provided weren’t enough.

  “What did it feel like? Did it hurt? Did he say weird stuff while you were doing it? Did you have an orgasm?”

  It was like I’d become the Oracle of doing it. She followed me home so she could keep throwing these X-rated questions at me out of the side of her mouth. Felix was lurking, and every now and again, his eyes would go really wide and he’d squeak, “Ewwwww!” He sounded uncannily like Summer from The OC, which freaked me out.

  I could just imagine the great delight he’d take in asking Dad what a condom or a multiple orgasm was, too. There was only one person in my life who didn’t make my skin itch with irritation and that was Smith. He made my skin itch in an entirely different way.

  “Is! I just asked you if you got completely naked,” Dot hissed at me frantically, and I blinked at her in horror.

  “Oh, God, just stop going on about it.” I shoved my Art History textbook at her. “I thought you wanted to look something up in this.”

  After she’d gone and after I’d all but written her essay on Cubism for her, I didn’t feel good. Wasn’t that how you were meant to feel when you and a friend had exchanged some deep, meaningful bonding? I felt horrible and grubby, like she’d rooted through my knicker drawer. Letting people into your life really and truly sucked. Not for the first time, I wished that I could be homeschooled, if the homeschooling was done by someone who wasn’t my father.

  But it wasn’t quite that simple, and when I got home from school the next day—so grouchy that I nearly punched Felix when he burped in my ear—I realized that the irritable, “just lost my keys” feeling was because I was missing Smith.

  I wanted to tell him about how the Kit Kat I’d eaten at lunch had turned out to be solid chocolate and no wafer. And the A-minus I’d got on my
French literature test. I wanted to tell him all the boring shit that had happened to me during the day and I couldn’t. Or maybe I could.

  “I was just talking about you,” he said when I rang him. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” I squeaked. “What were you saying about me?”

  “I was musing out loud about your plans for next weekend,” he said, and I could hear him breathing heavily, footsteps, and then a door shutting. “That’s better. So, yeah, what are you doing next Saturday?”

  I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes so his voice sounded even huskier. “I don’t know. Painting my nails. Washing my hair. I might even go really wild and rearrange my sock drawer.”

  “Well, what if I said you were already pretty enough to skip your thrilling beauty routine and go out with me instead?” he purred.